A few months ago, we drove down to Harbor Freight to pick up a few things we saw in its sale catalog. While there, I found a five pack of power strips for $10, that included a bonus night light. I needed the power strips for the oldest part of the house, in which none of the rooms have more than three outlets, and the price was right, so I bought the package. The night light was a “come with,” for which I had a use in our guest biff/powder room.
The power strips work perfectly. The night light is a little wonky. If I were Nicky, I would write a nonsensical short story about how either the light or the biff is haunted. It uses a mere 7w, but is an old fashioned kind that has an on/off switch, instead of being photosensitive. Fine. So, switch it on after dark to throw just enough light to see where the porcelain god in the loo is, without switching on the 75w overhead light. But … it has a nasty habit of cutting out inexplicably. It’s a little trippy when it happens while you’re sitting on the pot, and you suddenly find yourself in total darkness. Reach down, knock the plastic casing around the bulb, and it comes back on. No big deal.
As much as I’d like to think my Civil War era house is haunted (benevolently, of course), it’s not the case. I will never attempt to write a 5000 word story about a wonky night light, or an exploding light bulb being proof positive of a house haunting. Most incandescent light bulbs don’t explode on their way out, but it has happened a few times in previous houses. Usually, they just make a pop, then die. Anyone who gets freaked out about nonsense like that is more than a little cray-cray. As they die, I’m replacing most of our bulbs, both ordinary, and floodlight, with LEDs, but the window “candles” and night light still use the incandescent ones. LEDs actually do cut down on our electricity bill, but all bets are off in July/August, when we can no longer tolerate the mugginess of open windows with fans, and have to close up to turn on the air conditioning.
I’m pretty sure that if our house is haunted, one or more of our critters would alert us to it. They don’t. It isn’t.
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