Chat log from 6/13/2008 (Friday 13):

7:57 AM me: um, so i was just at my computer, went upstairs, came back and a new game of ches is open…?
7:58 AM i dont even know where the games are on this computer.
7:59 AM Eric: ? me: ?
8:00 AM Eric: chess is in applications and comes with all OSX me: i dont know how it opened. Nexus was near, looking up at thecat tree hopefully, its possible she was walking on the laptop, but can she open that easily? Eric: was she walking on the keyboard? me: i dont know Eric: I mean, it’s possible. me: thats the only thing i can think of.
8:01 AM Eric: That’s annoying when cats walk across keyboards was baby with you? me: I assume she was trying to get to the food on the tree caushe she was on the floor looking up when i came back down
8:02 AM Eric: stupid cat. me: whatever how do you oepen a game without openg the applications window? is there a keyboard shaortcut
8:03 AM Eric: no, you have to go to finder, then applications, then click on the chess icon me: yeah, well, finder wasnt open just the game Eric: thats …odd me: yeah
8:04 AM besides a cat walking accross the board cant accidentally open finder, click on applications and click again on the game. . that would be odd but then she would have had to close the finder window after all that too Eric: and then close finder
8:05 AM me: yeah Eric: I dont know thats really weird

And it has only gotten more weird since then. (I only noticed recently that the date was a Friday 13th when it all began)
I will try to remember events in the best order I can:

Shortly after the first event of Chess opening, my computer randomly spouted Chess moves (or at least what sounded to be Chess moves). Most notably, I remember hearing, “rook to king 4” and occasionally, “checkmate.” I decided the Chess application must be buggy, so I uninstalled it. BTW, this laptop was nearly brand new at the time, only had it a few months. It’s a Macbook pro.

The first non-chess related word I heard was, “error” and some days later, “beware, fire is coming.” Sometime before or after this, itunes also began opening randomly. My computer volume would turn itself up on its own to max volume and itunes would open and start playing. One day I had my laptop plugged into external speakers and came home to hear music playing from the apartment parking lot. I’m surprised none of the neighbors complained.

The next thing I noticed was that Chess was installed again. So, I uninstalled it. But there it was again. The next time I tried to get rid of it, it had a red circle with a line through it (like a no smoking sign) and I could not click on it. Eventually, I was able to delete it again and it seemed to stay that way.

But, my computer kept talking just the same. Always about Chess, but eventually more meaningful things too and sometimes random sounding mumbles. When it talks, the volume goes up to max. Initially, i could mute it and it would stay muted. Now, when it talks, it will often say the same thing several times over and I can’t mute or turn the volume down while it does this.

My husband decided it must be a virus and thought installing the latest operating system would clear out the problem. But, no. It was dormant for a while though, so we thought it worked at first. This led us to consider a hacker. To this day, we have found no evidence of hacking (and my husband tried every possible method he knows to detect a hacker as well as securing our network and discontinuing wireless usage for my laptop).

My problems only got worse when my computer started sending messages to people through Gmail, and once even through my student email account. All messages so far contain something to do with Chess. It also changes my status message to such things as “living in a fashion world, playing chess” while I was browsing fashion-related websites.

When I was browsing images of Siamese cats, my computer sent a Google chat message to my husband saying, “Siamese!!!.” Chat messages won’t always contain the word Chess, but will contain three exclamation marks. Emails always contain the word Chess. Some other messages have been “Play Chess with Rosie!!!”(Rosie is one of our dogs) and “Play Chess, it’s good exercise!!!” (this one was sent to a UW personal trainer). It often addresses people in my chat list by name such as “Hello Amanda, play chess!!!” to my little sister.

When it speaks, it usually uses a default male computer voice, but a couple times it was a female voice which freaked my out because I didn’t expect it. Some things it has said out loud are “I am lonely”, “I am here”, “Open the closet and let me out”, “I miss Otis”, “Hello, Shelley”, “Winter, come here Winter” (Winter is my cat) and “Never return to Walmart, they suck your soul” (just after I got off the phone with Walmart).

My husband decided to go all out and buy me a new hard drive, determined to prove that it was the computer and not something else. Well, as we were planning this, my computer said “I warn you, if you try to get rid of me, things will go bump in the night.”

When my computer noticed that Google homepage has a custom background option, it changed it to a Chess image. After the threat noted above, it started changing my background to creepy clown images. First of all, I am uber scared of the dark and clowns and scary movies. I simply refuse to watch any and all horror films. So, needless to say, I was not amused. I made sure to sign out of Google when I wasn’t at the computer. This seemed to help a little bit, but it still messed with stuff while I was at the computer.

After the new hard drive, a couple of days passed with no activity before it all started up again. The first word it said was “Tornado.”

About this time, we had placed a deposit on a Cocker Spaniel puppy and were in the process of brain storming names. My computer changed my Gmail status message to “I named her Pawn!!!”

A couple of days after we brought our new puppy, Cassie, home, the computer printed out a paper from Eric’s printer that said “PAWN IS MINE!!!” in huge bold black letters. Which reminds me, the computer has been using the printer all along too. Usually to print out “Play Chess!!!” Each time it used the printer, we could find no logs of the printer being used from either of our computers. It is in Eric’s room, but I was connected through the network. Recently, however, my printer connection has been disabled so the last message couldn’t have come directly from my computer, and Eric’s computer has been free from all strange activity as far as we know.

Cassie’s favorite toy at the moment is a plush, semi-bone shaped thing that squeaks. I mentioned this toy in an Email, referring to it as a “green squeaky toy.” Today, my computer sent a message to Eric stating “Pawn loves her green squeeky!!!” Now, for a while, we have been considering that the computer is picking out words or phrases from my E-mails and just rearranging them. In this case, however, I did not spell squeeky with two E’s as the computer did, nor did I use the word “love” or refer to it as “her” toy in the Email.

That about sums up my computer’s behavior, but life in our house gets stranger yet. This is where the pennies come in. While living in Tallahassee, I seemed to find pennies more often than is natural. But, it wasn’t really so strange, so I thought little of it. Eric made fun of me, often asking, “what’s with you and the pennies?” With the exception of one penny hitting me on the head while I was in my car, most of them I just found on the ground as should be expected of a penny. After moving to our new house, however, the pennies became more active. One fell on my head as I was walking into the bedroom at night. One was under my pillow. One seemingly materialized between the fold of my leg as I was sleeping in one morning. One fell from the roof of the freezer when I opened it. One morning, I woke up to find a penny placed in the center of nearly every doorway in our house. One night a penny dropped to the floor right beside me as I was getting into bed. On several occasions, a penny is found on the bumper of my car. Upon opening my ipod case, I found a penny sitting on the screen. Well, you get the idea. At this time, however, the penny activity seems to be dormant. It has stopped completely a few times before, so no telling when it may start up again.

Sometimes, the strange activity is good:
My husband lost his wedding ring while snow-blowing the driveway one night. It was dark, and snow drifts were everywhere. We spent a while looking for it, but decided to wait for morning. We risked driving my car out of the garage that night, hoping we wouldn’t run over it. When we returned that night, we parked the car in the garage only to find the ring on the hood of the car later that night.

Sometimes the strange activity is obnoxious:
We hear thumping noises in the house from about 9pm to as late as 2am. They usually stop when we go to bed. Sometimes the noises are very faint. Sometimes they are so loud that the floor shakes. One time we even thought there was an earthquake, but nothing about an earthquake was in the news the next day.

Packages of cheese constantly go missing from the fridge. When we use the heater, it is almost always turned off or turned up as high as it goes during the night, This also happened in Tallahassee, except it was the air conditioning turned to the coldest setting. The control for the A/C in Tallahassee was an vertical switch, so I placed a piece of tape below it in an attempt to keep it in the same spot, assuming maybe it was slipping or that someone was bumping it accidentally. This worked for a while, but eventually we found the tape torn and the switch all the way down again. Here, the switch is horizontal, but I haven’t tried immobilizing it.

In addition to cheese, my nearly half-full large bottle of pomegranate flavored tea was emptied and placed back in the fridge. Now, we have considered that one of us sleep walks. But neither of us has caught the other doing such a thing, nor is there any evidence left behind. . .like the cheese wrappers in the garbage, a dish in the sink, etc.

Speaking of things with no evidence, we discovered one of Rosie’s ears had been very neatly trimmed in a blunt cut as if a groomer had done it, but the other ear was left alone. No hair trimmings were found in the house or in the garbage.

And, to wrap this all up:

strange things happened in the house I lived in with my parents and siblings, though not directly to me or affecting me. My family claims that nothing strange happened after I moved out and my siblings even said the basement didn’t feel scary anymore. So, make of that as you will, but is it possible I am the source of all this strangeness?

Well, bedtime now.