A couple of weeks ago, just after turning off the light in our bedroom and getting verrrry sleeeepy, I had what I could have sworn was a waking dream: a sharp popping noise and a bright blue-white flash visible through my eyelids, like a flashbulb or a strobe light. I surfaced immediately, but since neither my sleeping wife nor pussycats seemed to notice, I wrote it off as a hallucination.
Last night, the same thing happened, but I wasn’t asleep. I had just rolled over to slumber but my eyes were slightly open and there it was again: a sharp “zap!” like static discharge and a strobe light flash.
Since we haven’t installed a disco in our bedroom, I can only assume the television is the culprit. What is happening here? The television had been off (standbye mode, not off-off) for maybe twenty minutes in both cases.
I get this too but without the popping sound; it’s like a camera flash going off. It’s only started happening within the last few years, and only rarely, but it’s definitely not a TV in my case. The first time it happened I was pretty spooked—I thought there was someone in my room photographing me!
It’s funny, because Lady Lacha & myself were just discussing auditory hallucinations at bedtime just the other day. I get them a lot; this could just be another one for my collection.
Well, I don’t fall into any of the high-risk group; I don’t even wear glasses. I’ll keep an eye on this (so to speak), though. It’s about time I had an opthomological exam anyway.
Not saying the rest are wrong but do you have a flannel blanket?
In the winter mine sparks so bright with static electricity that in my dark room it looks like a lightning storm. I swear I could read by it. It took me a long time to believe that that was what it was because I seemed to only ever see it out of the corner of my eye.
No, no flannel. Actually, I’m in South Florida and although we’re having a bit of a cold spell now, the first episode occured before I had put a blanket on the bed. We just had a sheet & comforter; it was that warm.
I’ve had the same thing happen with the static charge from a blanket. No noise that I recall, but the lightning bolt flash freaked me out! I didn’t know what it was until one time I lifted the blanket up for some reason and actually SAW the bolt and then realized that’s what had caused the flash I’d seen before.
So it happened again Friday night, and I didn’t let it bother me. And then it happened last night - AND MY WIFE SAW IT, TOO! So it IS the television and it’s NOT me and I’m NOT crazy i’m not i’m not i’m not!
So back to square one: why is our television strobing like this? Also, I think it might happen after we’ve been watching a DVD in the bedroom. We watch, we turn the TV off, lights out, ten minutes later – zztFLASH!!!
It sounds to me like one of the electrolytic capacitors in the power supply is discharging after you turn the power off. They usually cause problems on start-up but they do fail with age quite often. If that High voltage faults will cause the screen to flash blue sometimes but that would appear while the tv was on.
