# Little mysteries at your house **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 11, 2010, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434 "2010-09-11T21:11:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/61 "2010-09-15T05:39:32Z")
The “horn-o-plenty” hair conditioner? I swear, I have no idea when I bought this bottle, but it has to have been at least 6 months, and it never runs out. And I have a lot of hair and use a lot for each use! Strange. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/62 "2010-09-15T12:36:37Z")
I’m going on my third year with a bottle of Infusium leave-in conditioner. Third year! ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/63 "2010-09-15T12:48:11Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > > [@EvilTOJ](#): > > > > I can answer your second question; because when electricity was invented, only a few things could use power so one circuit was plenty for the entire house. This is assuming you have a house older than the 1940’s though. > > 1920, if I’m not mistaken, but… ye gods, please don’t tell me the wiring in my house is ninety years old. The wiring in my grandparents’ house is over 100 years old; so are the majority of the pipes. The plugs themselves aren’t, but they do need to be replaced (most of them are an itty bit too narrow for present day plugs). I’d like to get that flat some day and plan on milking those old wires for all they’re worth, when pricing discussions come up… For the K and M, maybe it’s the initials of “Kings” and “Magi”? ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/64 "2010-09-15T15:14:50Z")
When I was five or so we rented in a huge house that was built prior to the Revolutionary war. Over the years it had gone through various renovations: It started as a largish single family/farm house, then had additions put on over the years. For a stretch it was a tavern/rooming house, for a while a single family home for a rather rich biiiig family with servants, broken up into a SRO boarding house during the thirties, and was a sort of commune for a while. By the time we got there it was being rented in four chunks while the (rather strange) landlady lived in the basement. Anyway, as you can imagine, the changes left all sorts of architectural oddities. For example, there was a door on the second floor that opened (except it was nailed securely shut) to NOTHING. If you could have opened it, you’d be standing at the verge of nothing, ten feet above the ground. The oddity that most affected me was the ‘closet room.’ The bedroom my sister and I used had a closet that was of ordinary size and appearance, maybe three feet deep by five feet wide. But there was a smaller than normal door, like only five feet tall and eighteen inches wide, set into one of the short (side) walls. And through it was another room! With a window! Okay, the room was tiny, only a few feet each way. And the window was small and very strange to my young eyes: it was a square made of four smaller squares of glass that were all thick and not smooth so the world looked strange through them. Plus the square was set on ‘end’ so it formed a diamond. It didn’t open, obviously. In hindsight, it was probaby a remant of a hallway or something that got ‘cut off’ while adding walls in one renovation or another but my sister convinced me that trolls used to live there. ☹ Well, obviously. Who else would want to live in such a small room? Not only did trolls used to live there, but OTHER trolls thought they’d left their treasure behind (don’t all troll have treasure troves?) and so they often would sneak into the house and search the room. And _that_ was the reason we would hear strange creaks and snaps in the night. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/65 "2010-09-15T15:21:43Z")
> [@howye](#): > > Between the door to my bedroom and the door to the connected bathroom there is a switch. The switch does nothing. There is a light switch not two feet away that turns the lights on over the sinks. There are switches in the bathroom for everything in there. On the other side of the door there is switch to turn the ceiling fan off and an unused switch to the never installed fan lights on and off. The mystery switch controls none of the outlets in the room, whereas nearly every other room in the house has a switch that turns an outlet on and off. > > The mystery switch appears to be connected to nothing at all. Although I will occasionally play with the switch and hope I am turning the neighbors tv on and off. The house I grew up in has a mystery switch, too. It’s really weird. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/66 "2010-09-15T15:28:42Z")
**StarvingButStrong** , I would have assumed that the little room was where they kept the…unusual children. Yes, I read a lot. ---
**Author:** ![VanLandry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/eb9ed0/32.png) [@VanLandry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VanLandry)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/67 "2010-09-16T13:52:06Z")
> [@](#): > > This is a Catholic thing, a blessing associated with the Epiphany, if I’m not mistaken. Thanks, Rasa.. and everyone else for their input on this solved ‘mystery’. Although I must admit, I was hoping the answer was going to be, “it’s a treasure map.. go ‘here’ and dig.” ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/68 "2010-09-16T16:25:35Z")
> [@Bam\_Boo\_Gut](#): > > There’s a pop sound over in the vicinity of the bathroom that sounds like someones sent me a facebook chat message. The wind is pushing the bathroom fan blades backwards a nudge. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/69 "2010-09-17T14:28:39Z")
Here’s another one: there’s a particular spike or flat nail in the hardwood floor in front of the door to my bedroom that, every couple of months or so, will pop about a millimetre or two out from the surface of the floor. I hammer it down so nobody will cut their foot on it, and then lo and behold a few months later will pop back out again. The most recent time was today. There are a lot of spikes in the floor and this is the only one that exhibits this behaviour. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/70 "2010-09-17T23:45:37Z")
Nail ghosts! :eek::eek::eek: ---
**Author:** ![jasonh300](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/46a35a/32.png) [@jasonh300](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasonh300)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/71 "2010-09-18T00:25:42Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > > [@Bam\_Boo\_Gut](#): > > > > There’s a pop sound over in the vicinity of the bathroom that sounds like someones sent me a facebook chat message. > > The wind is pushing the bathroom fan blades backwards a nudge. More likely the one way flapper that lets air out when the exhaust fan is running moving from airflow through the attic. They also tend to open and fall shut when you close or open the bathroom door. ---
**Author:** ![EvilTOJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee59a6/32.png) [@EvilTOJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilTOJ)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/72 "2010-09-18T00:41:15Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > > [@EvilTOJ](#): > > > > I can answer your second question; because when electricity was invented, only a few things could use power so one circuit was plenty for the entire house. This is assuming you have a house older than the 1940’s though. > > 1920, if I’m not mistaken, but… ye gods, please don’t tell me the wiring in my house is ninety years old. Most of the wiring in my house is the original knob and tube wiring. It was built in 1916. Yes most of it is on one circuit. The living room, half the kitchen, all of upstairs are on one circuit. So yes, your wiring is 90 years old. ---
**Author:** ![EvilTOJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee59a6/32.png) [@EvilTOJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilTOJ)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/73 "2010-09-18T00:43:56Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > > [@alphaboi867](#): > > > > I’m a little confused. You have a finished room with an attached bathroom in your basement that’s _completely_ sealed off (no outside access) from the rest of the house? 😕 How do you even know that the room is? Is there even a window? That sounds really, _really_ creepy. :eek: Like there’s a really nasty surprise in there waiting for you. > > There are no windows, and no apparent way in. The bathroom is fully accessible to the rest of the basement that I can get to; it was just built across the doorway to the wing’s basement, sealing it off. The forced-air ductwork goes through, as do electrical connections. > > Maybe there’s a long-dead guy chained to the wall down there, beside a cask of Amontillado. 😃 > > I guess if I really wanted to know someday, I could call the records people at City Hall and pull the original building permits. There might be the original plans on file too. That paperwork might indicate exactly where the original doorway was, and whether there were originally any windows. But for now, it’s kind of fun to have a mystery. How the hell can you have a mystery room and not want to see what’s inside? Open that sucker up! ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/74 "2010-09-18T03:08:44Z")
Where the hell did my pants go? Our apartment is great except I have one pair of brown work slacks that keep getting eaten by ghosts. They dissapeared for about 3 weeks. I found them shoved in the back of my “girly drawer” which only holds tampons/birth control types of things and has never before seen the likes of pants. I washed them, wore them, put them in the dirty laundry and they quickly disappeared again. They aren’t back in the same drawer so I don’t know what in the heck happened to them this time. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/75 "2010-09-18T04:28:01Z")
Check the pockets of all your fitted sheets - that’s where all my missing socks go. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434/76 "2010-09-18T04:57:38Z")
A house I lived in while in College was built in the 1890’s. It was split into a Triplex, based on the way it was split I have to assume it was a one family house at one time. That alone explains some of the oddities. But here’s the thing that I never understood. My bedroom had 6 doors. These were all very heavy, very well built 6 panel solid wood doors. 2 of them were for closets. Okay, no big deal there. 3 of them were for entering and exiting the room. One went to a small hallway type area were the other bedroom, the kitchen and the back door all met up, one went to the dining room and one to the living area. A friend suggested it may have originally been a type of staging room. An area were the ‘help’ would stay during parties to do whatever needed to be done, while being able to get to any of the other parts of the floor without having to climb around people getting from one side of the house to the other. Not that it was a big house. The other odd thing was the 6th door. Again, big heavy, solid wood, 6 panel door, it opened to a closet, with shelves, that was about 4 inches deep. Yup, that’s what I said, the closet was about 4 inches deep. Never did figure that out, I put my desk in front of it, it was pretty useless as a closet. The person that lived there before left it open and set his fish tank into the recess. It was on the same wall as one of the other doors, so I don’t think it would have been another door into the rest of the house. OTOH, on the other side was a built in banquet/curio type thing, so it’s possible if that was added later on, they just moved the door over, but that would be a lot of work and why not just get rid of the door at that point? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-mysteries-at-your-house/553434.md?page=3)