To be amused rather than freaked out? (Woo!!)

[Elphame]

Ok to get the mundane stuff out of the way

No one but DP and me have been in the house since Friday

We’ve lived here 20 years and are the only ones with keys. All spares are where they should be

We have 2 burglars alarms which we set when we go out. They have not been activated.

We have cctv camera front and rear covering all entrances to the house and garden. The only comings and goings recorded are DP and me.

We have 2 dogs

DP never plays practical jokes.

Now the mystery. My lovely heirloom grandfather clock stopped sometime since Monday night. I can’t say exactly when but I noticed this afternoon and asked DP to wind it.

5 minutes later he came into the kitchen looking rather pale and told me that the clock has stopped as the winding chains are missing. Both of them. They are some 8ft long with heavy weights on the ends and to remove them requires some dismantling of the clock as well as knowing how they are fixed.

They are not on the floor of the clock case. They have quite simply vanished.

We’ve gone from WTAF to freaked out, annoyed and now somewhat amused. Clearly something doesn’t like my clock!

I am totalling unable to come up with a rational explanation for this. There just isn’t one that either of us can come up with

anyone who knows the type of clock you describe, and the weights and chains, will know that any of the theories mentioned might happen to one chain, but not to both at once. so the only logical explanation is that your DP removed them. if he's been "driven crazy" by the chiming for years he may finally have been driven to it. perhaps as a joke? but your reaction may have prevented him from coming clean, and now he's stuck with it.

😱

I think someone has a key to your house or is able to unlock a door without a key AND that your camera system isn’t as robust as you think it is.

Not a coincidence that the draught excluder fabric went from the same spot.

The fact your new shoes were returned worn MUST mean someone is messing with you.

It’s the low value items going missing that suggests this is done to irritate and annoy you. But not too much. It’s someone with a connection to the house, rather than to you (unless your DH is having an affair…?!)

Also, just fyi, this is EXACTLY why I would never live in a village!

[The glass lampshade is easy: there were more parts to it than you realised, you didn't screw them all in properly and had left one metal ring on the floor - boom! Of course the bulb fell out, of course you found the metal ring exactly where you’d left it.]

This is fascinating, I’m only commenting so that I will receive updates.😳

Have you asked politely for them to be put back ?
I once stayed in a v strange house, it was only for a weekend, so I didn’t have much with me. I unpacked my clothes and put them in a drawer. Later that evening (after a lot of loud banging upstairs that we couldn’t find a cause for) I went to get a thermal top from the drawer . It wasn’t there, I emptied the drawer item by item. No sign of it. I was thinking perhaps I had left it at home but something made me ask out loud for it to be returned. I went downstairs again for a while. When I went back up I opened the drawer and it was folded very neatly on top of everything else.

The bulb was still in place, that was the strange thing in the story.

You’re right - the lampshade broke. Because it wasn’t clamped in properly. Because the clamping ring was lying on the floor.

The ring was clamped in properly. It also managed to escape leaving the bulb holder clamp closed and move itself over a lightbulb that was at least 3 times its diameter without breaking either itself or the light bulb…..

The fabric was 20 years ago, the light-shade about 5 and the clock this week.

I am absolutely 100% sure that no one has a key, my cameras ARE robust and having been married to DP for 39 years today ( its our wedding anniversary) I know it is simply not a thing he would do.

I think the chains are in your father's house. He will turn up with them at your family get together.

Loving this thread. But as with Danny Robins' excellent Uncanny series, you do get to the point where the desperate 'explanations' from the sceptics become so far fetched that the supernatural explanation is much more credible.

Congratulations, OP! Coincidentally I believe the traditional gift for the 39th wedding anniversary is... clock chains. 🤣

I definitely agree.

When my parents died within 13 days of each other we had a few weird happenings with a clock moving from sitting on a sideboard to being in the middle of the floor. The final time it moved me and DH were sitting on the settee quite a way from the sideboard and the clock literally flew off the sideboard sideways. It definitely did not just fall.

I posted about it on a thread about strange happenings and some posters were falling over themselves trying to come up with supposed logical explanations.

I was also told it was DH playing a prank. Definitely wasn't and what about the time we were sitting together? Told the wind must have blown the clock off. The clock is too heavy for the wind to blow plus there was no window open any of the times.

Also told we must have uneven floor and something moving on the floor made the clock move. We don't have uneven floor and the clock had been in the same place for 3 years and never moved before.

The most ridiculous explanation was that it was caused by an earthquake! So an earthquake on 3 separate occasions in the East Midlands that didn't make the news and neither us nor any neighbours felt!

So interesting! Do you have any history of the house / could you get one done?

You’re right - the lampshade broke. Because it wasn’t clamped in properly. Because the clamping ring was lying on the floor

Assuming the lampshade the the usual type that is attached by a small ring clamped to the bulb holder, how would it fall off leaving the bulb in place? The ring is a smaller diameter than the bulb.

There was a fabulous thread of people reminiscing about Singing Together some time ago. I can never find anything using the search function on here, but might be worth trying.

I used to love Singing Together at primary school in the late 60s. It was on Mondays I think. There was another programme that was similar on Wednesdays, but with more childish songs.

@thenightsky @VenusClapTrap I can’t work out the mumsnet search but using Google I found this?
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/primary/1205182-What-songs-did-you-sing-at-Primary-School

Stand in front of the clock, talk openly about how weird it's been the chains disappearing and how much you miss the clock. See what happens.

My family ghosts love to move tools when I'm doing some sort of DIY. If I get upset, perhaps I'm In a hurry etc, I tell them out loud and say I'm going to wash my hands, always, without fail missing item reappears by the time I return.

To be chanted whilst standing in front of the clock:

Dear ghost/s, I know not what to do,
And therefore I appeal to you:
My clock needs chains, my shoes need mended -
It's time that this whole farce was ended!
I'm tired of playing nicey-nicey;
New chains would be obscenely pricey,
The clock mender thinks we are bonkers,
So fuck this for a game of conkers!
I'm asking nicely, as you see,
To please give back my chains to me,
I'll burn sage if you want me to,
Although I'm not the least bit woo.
Oh spooks and entities folklorical,
Phantoms and geists phantasmagorical,
Who haunt our houses, fields and lanes,
Please give me back my fecking chains!

😱😂😂😂

👏👏👏

Brilliant! 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

OMG!! I just sang/read this in my head! New memory unlocked. This must go back too many years to count

PERFECT! 😂

OMG singing together. In the 1970s I was in a school with 'temporary' classrooms and they had a built in radio with a speaker high up.