Talk About Tues... oh heck...

 

In Which It's Late, and I'm Tired, so Here's a Story.

Not gonna lie, today's blog is Wednesday's blog because I flaked. This is on me lol. I probably could've written this an hour ago if I'd been paying attention, but, well, y'all know me by now.

Why do now what I can panic and half-ass five minutes before a deadline?

Today was another super-saturated day - muggy, warm, very foggy. I baked some marmite bread (it was really good and we demolished it before I got pictures of the loaf because I'm impatient and gluttonous). I watched a lot of non-Herb-Abrams UWF. It was a good day.

Since I'm so sleepy, I want to tell you all a lil story, and since it's basically Falloween (oh my god, really, already?!), I'll make it a bit of a spooky one.

This is the story of the Y2K Ghost.

I've mentioned, I think, that my father is an IT guy. He used to be in the Air Force, but he got out before I was born and moved on from that into a lengthy career in tech. I tell you he was military so you know he was a man trained for combat. I tell you he's in IT to let you know he's a fairly logical person (though as many will tell you, logical people are often still highly emotional... which doesn't factor into this story, but he is an emotive dude).

The IT career is also why I have the story.

As you might've guessed by the title of the story, my dad had to work on Y2K bug fixes in the later part of 1999, and they'd just moved into a new facility. I say new, but the building itself is quite old. I'd heard rumors of it being a factory where people had died (rumors he, himself, had told me). I'd had harrowing experiences in the basement (okay, that was because I was a pre-teen helping to build an elaborate Halloween Haunted House and maybe it was a bit much for my wimpy lil self). It was a big, creepy building which almost never had the lights on, and my father was running on stress, cola, and very little sleep.

And one night, as the deadline for Y2K approached, he was working alone in the server room, running updates and bugfixes when he heard someone typing away on their clicky mechanical keyboard.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

My old man is a bit confused by this - the business, a call center, basically shut down after 7PM, and he was in the server room near midnight pulling another 18 hour shift in a long line of 18 hour shifts. No one should be up in the area he was in.

So he went looking for the mystery typist.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

Was it one of the programmers, staying late to build a software patch? But no, the only programmer who would have stayed that late was his brother (my most musically-inclined uncle who lent me my first D&D novel), who would've said hello and chatted with him if he was staying late.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

Maybe it was his boss staying late to get work done? No he'd said good night hours ago.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

One of the owners? No, he was in Sweden, visiting family (he would send me stamps, from time to time, because I collected them).

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

The sound was really starting to get to him, so he kept looking and looking, but he couldn't find anyone on the entire floor. He checked the conference room. He checked the cafeteria in case it was someone using their chunky 1990s laptop. He checked the ancient typewriter in the hallway. Nothing. No one. He was completely alone.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

In the end, he just left work and came home, wracking his brains for what he could possibly be hearing. He told my mother and me - my sisters all in bed, and me having another sleepless night because I just can't sleep sometimes.

But of course, the story can't end there, can it?

Of course not!

He went back to work the next day (no days off during the tech crunch of Y2K!) and asked around - no one knew what he was talking about, and no one had stayed late.

Strange.

And 7PM rolled around, and everyone left except for my dad. And one other person. I don't remember if this was my uncle who stayed behind (possible, he did networking as well as programming, and the Network had to be Y2K Compliant, too), but whoever stayed that night heard it too.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

And they searched the whole floor again. There was no way for it to be anyone upstairs - the floor and ceiling were very, very thick to prevent the call center above from having noise pollution from below (and vice versa). There was no way for it to be anyone in the floor below - there weren't any offices below, only storage!

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

It was driving them absolutely batty.

Batty?

Hmmm...

There had been bat problems before, so they started listening to the walls.

Nothing. Not a scratch or scrabble from mouse, rat, or bat. Nothing there. But when they pulled their heads from the wall...

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

Infuriated and slightly alarmed, my dad and the other man wandered around trying to figure out what it was for a good hour or so, but it wasn't until the printing room needed to be checked that they finally realized what was happening.

ticka ticka tiCK CKLCKL CKLCKL

Opening the door to the printer room made the clicky sound much louder, but it also changed what it sounded like. Instead of a fingers-on-keys sound, now it was a rattly clatter like... like something was stuck in something else.

Like maybe something stuck...

in an air vent.

My dad looked up and saw it.

A strip of clear plastic (maybe tape?) that had somehow gotten caught in the air exchange vent and was fluttering around, flicking against the vent cover.

There was their ghost.

(Years later, my father would pick up an inflatable T-Rex costume and we'd joke that it was cousins with the dinos that had sacrificed their lives for the Ghost Plastic.)

So I guess the moral to this story is: Ghosts are usually something much more disappointing than an actual ghost.

And always look up.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC