Ghost in the Machine? my printer seems possessed.

S

Skirrow

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 25, 2005
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The last few years have been quite odd to me and i'm pretty sure that my house is haunted by a ghost. Wierd noises at night, a womans voice calling my name right next to my ear and somone stroking my hair when i sleep, freaky stuff like that. Luckily it doesnt seem to be a malicious ghost since she hasnt broken anything yet and not attacked me. Well apart from a few unexplained scratches here and there.

Anyway. For the last 3 or 4 years I've had an HP Photosmart P1000 printer and its been great to me. Never had a problem with it. Great picture quality. But for the last 18 months something wierd has been happening.

I'll be sat surfing the net, playing a game, watching a movie etc, and the printer will just suddenly spring to life and print a page. The page is usually blank with the exception of a single lone smiley in the corner. I thought it could just be the printer doing self diagnostics or something but then it started printing the smileys with a heart next to it. I thought i may have been hacked, but my firewall was running fine, no other usual activity and my anti-virus/adware/spyware programs tell me i have a clean system. This i thought was a little odd.

I began to notice a pattern to this also. I leave my pc on 24hours a day. While i sleep and when i'm at work. Yet the printer ONLY prints the smileys when i'm in the same room and awake. Never when i'm asleep, or at work. So i wont come home or awaken to find a bunch of smiley printouts. So my printer must be possessed or even perhaps self aware and lonely. Even more odd is that on the rare occasions that my pc is switched off, the printer STILL prints the pages.

So what do you think? Am i the victim of some hacker? some diagnostic tool? a succubus? a desperately lonely printer? or something else.

(BTW, i wrote this just after the printer smiled at me again)
 
Well, if your printer prints on its own, especially as you say "in the bottom corner" which seems to be very odd since any document would start from the top, especially when your pc is turned off, AND you hear voices in your ears (lay off the drugs!) Id say it was possessed. But im sure you knew that yourself... and um, 18 months and you question this now?? I would have moved out on the third day. But I do hope you were posting here because you were honestly curious, otherwise I dont think the mods enjoy jokes wasting space.

edit: Nevermind about the "bottom corner" bit. I just noticed you only said in the corner, so that really doesnt specify which.
 
You have multiple personalities and thats the other one communicating with you.

That or go tell your doctor to change your meds.
 
I say smash the printer and move as far as you can from where you live as soon as possible. Thats what I would do. :)
 
That is a strange problem. Is the printer hooked up through USB or Parallel Port?

If its hooked up through parallel, than it could be a bad connection/bad wire; I've seen it happen with old printer wires before; when you twist them the wrong way the printer starts spewing out garbage :p
 
After the 1st time a printer smiled at me...I'd kick it in the ink cartridge and run like hell....

that is some very weird stuff indeed...
 
haha great thread!

really tho.........maybe some how your eaither hitting the print screen or some crap, or changed the print screen hotkey??

i dunno, but thatd be funny to me maybe you are being hacked?! by yahoo who wants you to see all THE NEW SMILY FACES OF YAHOO MESSANGER 8.1!!!!!!!!

soulsaver
 
Man, thats whacked. I would have thought it funny for a while, but it would soon freak me out too much. Have you got Norton Ghost anwhere in the room? You know, the new supernatural edition? :p
Jokes aside, have you tried turning the printer off while you are in the room? If it doesn't turn itself on while you are in the room, when it normally does its trick, then you don't have to call a priest (well, for a while anyway). Also, try disconnecting the printer from the computer while it is on. Any change?

And are you sure that the "ghost" that strokes your hair at night isn't just your girlfriend/spouse?
 
Don't kick it. You will only anger whatever is posessing it and it will start doing other things like nagging at you or something.
 
So long as it doesn't print a skull and crossbones or redrum over and over again I think your ok. If I was to guess I'd say that some wires are crossed or there is some interference or some EM signal getting into the wires (like thru unshielded wires) causing it to do this.
 
I seriously cannot stop laughing, this is great!

Try this, take the paper that the smiley was printed on and while its idle put that paper back in and write something on it. Maybe its waiting for a response?

:p ;)
 
You sound like you might have schizophrenia... don't take this offencively, but I've know a few people with schizophrenia and they experience similar things, often they think they can communicate with other people with just their minds or that objects in their room have taken on personalities and are trying to cause harm to them... They will hear voices... etc.

I myself experience something called sleep paralysis from time to time and people who experience this often think they've been abducted by aliens. About 99% of alien abduction stories could be attributed to sleep paraylsis.

So either you have schizophrenia or there is just a bizarre set of circumstances happening around you that could be explained rationally with logic or perhaps a combination of both.
 
deathBOB said:
You have multiple personalities and thats the other one communicating with you.

That or go tell your doctor to change your meds.
Click to expand...

Wow, that would be pretty scary . Looks like i bring a whole new meaning to the phrase 'getting in touch with your feminine side'
 
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