Haunted House

[thebluebus]

Recently, we've noticed the lights in our house flicker sometimes.

They flicker in unison, as though it's the power supply that fluctuates, rather than a problem with the individual lights themselves. It's something we've only noticed lately, since our washing machine exploded, in fact.

The power supply can't be too wobbly though, as nothing else seems to be affected - telly doesn't switch itself off, microwave clock doesn't decide it's now midnight. Just the lights.

I'm no electrician, but I know the wiring in our place is a collection of different ages, back to 1966.

What's making the lights do this? And why only since the death of the washing machine - coincidence?

It's really annoying.

[Ganglandboss]

If your wiring dates back to '66, you really want to think about getting a spark in anyway. It could be a problem on the lighting circuit or it could be an external problem - it cannot be diagnosed on an internet forum. It is not unusual for the microwave clock etc to be unaffected - capacitors will hold a bit of charge to keep them powered up for the fraction of a second there is no power.

Is there anything that may suggest paranormal activity? I'd get an exorcist in as well just to be safe.

[fastcaterham]

Static? EMP? Could be all number of things. Don't know much myself but had an old physics teacher who had been an electrical engineer or similar and he had loads of stories of similar weird occurances that people put down to ghosts etc and were eventually traced back to all sorts of down to earth electrical faults.