When I moved into my condo, I found the neighbors had found a way to switch off the previous owner’s backyard motion-sensor lights: they threw rocks at the lights until they broke.
I wasn’t interested in having the lights on (they were ridiculously sensitive), so left them alone. It took me a year to realize the switch at the back of the main floor master bedroom actually controlled those lights. Instead of, say, a switch in the walkout basement that they illuminated. Furthermore, the switch is apparently wired to turn the lights ON (regardless of motion sensor), rather than to turn them OFF (regardless of motion).
The prior owner was an old lady, and I have a feeling she was very paranoid about break-ins through the walkout (there’s also motion sensors and breaking glass sensors in the basement).
Now that you mention it, when we bought the house the side flood lights were broken, with shattered glass on the ground. It wouldn’t surprise me if the neighbors had taken a similar stand. I’m pretty sympathetic, they must have illuminated their bedroom windows really badly. Horrible things.
I had one in my den. It was near the door, seemed to do nothing. Then I figured out it enabled the power to an outlet in the opposite corner of the room. So I plugged a lamp into that. That same room also has a control for an electric wall heater, but no wall heater to be found.
When we moved in to our current house, a ranch on a basement, there was a switch in the middle of the hallway - between a bathroom and bedroom door - that we could not figure out. it didn’t see to control anything. It took us years to figure out that it was part of a 3-way switch that controls the back yard floodlight. The other one is by the basement door, where one would logically expect it. Standing in the hall one can’t see the backyard at all, much less the flood light. Figuring that out also solved the mystery of why the backyard flood light was on at odd times :smack:
They did something like this on Ask This Old House recently. A homeowner wanted a sensor-activated floodlight over the main door of an attached garage, and the only place the electrician could find to tie into the existing wiring was in the bedroom directly above the garage. On the bedroom side of the electrical box the light was using, the electrician put a switch. I don’t recall if the switch was to keep the light on or keep it off.
So an unaware later homeowner in that bedroom would see a light switch on the short wall below the bedroom window, controlling god-knows-what.
My house is riddled with phantom light switches. West wall of kitchen has a 3 switch right next to a 4 switch. Across from it on the North wall is a two switch. They mess with my kitchen lighting depending which hallway someone is walking through. Of the 9 total, I know what 3 of them are for, the others, might control someone’s life support system somewhere.
Same thing in our family room. There are 4 fans, 15 recessed lights, a dome light and a fluorescent tube length where I assume a phantom cocktail bar once stood. For the life of me I cannot get what does what, but it would be an electricians dream to re wire, I’m sure.
I moved a ceiling fan to another location. The old speed control/wall switch is still there. Does nothing now. But a fan could be reinstalled if someone wanted too.
One guy saw a circuit breaker leading to underground wiring that went to parts unknown. Figuring it was for a long removed shed or something he flipped it off and left it. A few days later their neighbor casually mentioned the lights on their back porch had stopped working.
I have a phantom switch in the front hall, and this is a new house so it’s not the result of some renovation. I’m aware of switches that operate the top or bottom half of wall outlets so you can turn on table lamps, but this one operates no outlet. It has nothing to do with the outdoor lights, indoor lights, plugs, or anything in the garage. It’s just a decorative switch AFAICT.
In a more interesting world, turning on this switch would cause the lights to dim briefly and then a mysterious hum to pervade the house, clocks would be observed to be running erratically as if the very fabric of space and time was in flux, and then everything would suddenly return to normal except that I could only speak with a comical Swedish accent and was inexplicably engaged to Princess Sofia, the Duchess of Värmland.
