Posthuman Blues

SLIders & the Streetlight Phenomenon

The phenomenon is known as street lamp interference, or SLI, and it possibly is a psychic event that is just beginning to be recognized and studied. Like most phenomena of this type, the evidence is almost exclusively anecdotal. I have received several stories like the one above from readers.

Typically, a person who has this effect on streetlights - also known as a SLIder - finds that the light switches on or off when he or she walks or drives beneath it. Obviously, this could happen occasionally by chance with a faulty streetlight (you've probably noticed that it's happened to you once in a while), but SLIders claim that it happens to them on a regular basis.

(Via The Anomalist.)

I might be a "SLIder." I've seen quite a few steetlights die when I'm approximately below them. But is there a causal basis or is it statistically inevitable?

To date, I've had only two witness. Peter A. Gersten and a friend saw a lamp wink out above me while I was leaving my motel to deliver a talk about Cydonia (in Sedona, AZ of all places). Which proves nothing, of course, but it piqued my interest.

(I recall the lamp being motion-sensitive. But in that case, it should have stayed on when I was walking beneath it. Maybe if I return to Sedona I'll drop by the Super 8 and have another look.)