Today most of us have multiple television sets, and the vast majority of us receive our TV via satellite or cable.  All of those connected TV’s across the country tend to have some kind of receiver box as well to bring in the various channels.  We actually have four television sets in the house and three of the little black boxes.   Have you noticed how many little lights seem to be on all the time in our homes, even at night?  Everything from our electric toothbrushes, to the digital readout on the clock radio, to the wireless router, and on and on, glows at us in the dark.  They all have their little green, red, yellow, or blue lights glowing at us continuously. No wonder the experts say we are all suffering from varying degrees of sleep interruption.

Late one night last October I was driving home from the airport, returning from a business trip.  Most of the time I try to avoid these late returns, but occasionally it is unavoidable.  Heading back to my house always entails driving dark mountain roads through one canyon or another.  The main hazard is a sudden deer or moose darting out in front of the car.  With a deer, you’re probably OK, but if you should happen to hit a moose, the car and driver will definitely get the worst of it!

Anyway, it was a few days before Halloween, and I had the car radio on to keep me company.  We don’t get good radio reception at the house so about the only time I ever listen to the radio is in the car.  I have to tell you that there are some strange radio programs on late at night!  That night the program was about various types of demonic hauntings of people and houses, along the line of the Amityville horror story.  I’m driving along listening to tales of lights going off and on, shades going up and down, objects moving on their own, etc. It was a little creepy driving through the darkness and hearing these weird stories.

Now we have a TV and a box in our bedroom, but we rarely ever turn on the television in the bedroom.  A few nights after getting back from this particular trip, I woke up in the middle of the night and noticed that the two little blue lights on the receiver box were on.  I didn’t think too much about it and just turned the box off with the remote control.  With two elderly dogs with weak bladders, getting awakened in the middle of the night is a very frequent occurrence,

Then I started noticing, every time I looked over in the middle of the night, those two little blue lights on the receiver box were on again.  I would once again turn the box off with the remote.  The next time I looked, there they would be, on again.  This was definitely getting stranger and stranger.  This pattern continued, and I was growing more and more puzzled.  Could it be a power surge or interruption?  No, the stove clock and microwave always have to be reset when that occurs so I would definitely know when that had happened.  Could it be some sort of programming change from our satellite company?  No, if that were the case, why wouldn’t the other two boxes also be on from time to time?  The other two boxes are also more advanced with recording capabilities than the basic one in the bedroom, so I would expect that they would be more likely to be getting programming updates.

The on off pattern continued.  Now I was really starting to wonder about the source.  Sometimes the lights would be on in the middle of the night and then off in the morning.  When I woke up during the night, I would take a fast peek at the box out from under the security of the covers.  Lights on?  Lights off?  Finally I figured out the source.  Mystery solved!  It was a purely serendipity find I must admit.  Caley, one of our two Irish girls, likes to lie on the floor in front  of the TV stand.  Now both of our dogs have very nice Orvis dog beds, but half of the time they prefer just to sleep on the floor and perhaps use the dog bed for a pillow.

Ah ha!  Caley was sleeping on the floor with her front legs propped up on the bottom shelf of the TV stand right where the little black box sits.   Apparently those long toenails clicked against the Off-On button.  Blue lights on and blue lights off.  A nice haunting might have been more exciting, but it was a relief to get the on-going mystery solved.  Now the big question is, did she do it intentionally just to spook me out?

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2017