For years now I’ve noted a strange phenomenon when I go walking at night. Just as I walk under a street lamp it switches off. Not all the time, mind you, but enough that I’ve noticed.
I never really thought about it much, but I always assumed that there was some kind of malfunctioning movement detector that I was triggering.
Two nights ago I was out walking the dogs when a street light did the same thing: it turned off at the moment I walked under it, thereby plunging me into darkness.
Since I was only a block away from home at the time, I was still thinking about it when I returned to my abode. Immediately I went to my computer and did a Google search. It went like this:
Google is so amazing. There was my search topic, the third suggestion down. I clicked on and came to a Wikipedia article on something called “Street light interference phenomenon“. It turns out a lot of people report a similar phenomenon. And they believe this is a paranormal ability. According to these paranormal folks, I am a “SLIder”. On the scale of superhero powers, this is pretty low: the ability to turn streetlights on and/or off sporadically.
Oooooh. Ahhhh.
It may not be as cool as being Superman, but if I can learn to control this power, who knows? Maybe I could make a purse snatcher trip by cutting his light.
The more I thought about it, however, the less convinced I was that I was causing anything. Studies of SLIders have failed to reproduce the phenomenon under controlled conditions leaving me to suspect there is little more than chance at work here.
This is a disappointing conclusion, especially since I’d also noticed an inordinately high number of people in parking lots returning to their cars neighboring mine at the exact same moment I return to my vehicle. This would suggest I had the ability to control the moment people return to their cars. Still not Superman, but at least more interesting than making street lamps flicker.
Too bad chance got in the way.
