Cynthia Kuhn

Mysteries Everywhere

Mysteries happen all the time. Even to mild-mannered college professors. At work.

(This is a true story.)

After class one day, I went to my office to catch up on some grading. On the floor in the hallway, there was a small, saucer-shaped pod with what looked like a puddle of oil underneath. I yelped at the sight of it, and my neighboring colleague came out to see what all the hubbub was about.

“What IS that thing? A UFO?” he asked, as he recoiled from it.  I decided to get a closer look, despite his warnings that it looked “disgusting and possibly dangerous.”

I leaned down and scrutinized the object. Inside, I could see mysterious dark liquid, with puffy white clumps resembling brain matter floating in it.  Carefully, I lifted the saucer. As I moved in to analyze further, it emitted a whooshing sound, like an air-locked door was opening.

I shrieked, “It’s Alive!” and my colleague yelled, “Drop it!”

As I transferred the saucer gently into the observation unit (flung it into the nearby trashcan), a few drops from the object landed on my hand, prompting me to screech, “Ow, it burns! I think it’s acid!” while my colleague looked frantically around to locate something to throw onto my skin. Or maybe he was trying to locate something that would make me stop screeching.

When it became clear that I was not, in fact, melting, I proposed that the object, through some weird confluence of optimal conditions that may or may not have involved alien technologies, had recently developed enough intelligence to try to escape from whatever dark crevice in which it had lain dormant for centuries.

My colleague agreed.

But then we concluded via a chain of highly complex reasoning—by which I mean realized from the hideous smell—that it actually was probably once a container of soy sauce.  And that the saucer shape was formed by the flat lid swelling in response to the teeming botulism colony which had just, unfortunately, made contact with my unprotected hand.

Colleague and I decided that the best next step would be to sprint to the nearest sink for a major decontamination festival.

And then we went back to grading. Because we are professors and that’s what we do. 🙂

 

What mysteries have you encountered at work or around the house lately?

32 thoughts on “Mysteries Everywhere”

  1. Hestia here.
    That is so funny! Sounds like something I’d make up.
    Any mysterious stuff on my end?
    Work is always a mystery to me. Papers that seem Greek to me. Websites that are supposed to have research I need, and I can’t find it.
    A good one. My work phone refusing to work through my computer, and it’s not just me. I called a coworker’s office phone from my government cell, and I couldn’t hear him and he couldn’t hear me. But when I called the same number from my personal cell, we could hear each other just fine.
    And the time the hubbs and I were driving down 295 toward home? We were joking around about some of the “secret happenings” in the area because I work in DC. Because that’s what we do, make up s#^t. My personal cell rings from a blocked number as we are literally passing the secure exit that only leads to the NSA compound.
    Believe you me, I didn’t answer it. No message was left. Big Brother is even watching me!

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    1. Oh my goodness what is happening with the phone, Hestia! And the Alien Autopsy Room too? WOW, Hestia!

      Btw, I don’t know what’s going on today, but it’s almost impossible to comment. I don’t even know how I got this first one to work and I’m going in through the editing panel to add more now since it’s the only one that appeared to actually post. So let me say this, if this one goes through (the last three did not): thank you so much for visiting today, all, and for sharing your mysteries!<3

      ps: New mystery: what is happening with the comments?????

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  2. Oh, and you know that urban legend about the Pentagon having an alien autopsy room?
    It’s no legend. It’s real! I had a friend who was making deliveries at the pentagon, and he got lost. He stumbled across a room that had several different types of locks in place (he couldn’t describe them because he’s so last century he doesn’t know how to check email on his cell phone). I know there was a key hole, some number key pad, and a black box that I am assuming is a badge scanner of sorts.
    And it was labeled (a brass sign!) Alien Autopsy Room.
    I don’t know what they do in there, but the room name itself is real people!
    I double dawg dare Cynthia and Leslie to come out here and investigate!

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    2. LOL, Liz! There’s nothing mysterious about my house either … unless you count our ceiling fan turning on randomly. Different days with weeks in between, different times of day, and at different speeds. It’s just a normal fan to look at it, then BLAMMO—it’s a mystery! We’ve tried everything but an exorcism.

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  4. Soy sauce. Or was it…? Recently, we had the confounding case of the missing sock. After thoroughly searching the laundry room and various bedrooms, we eventually found it at my son’s apartment. He’d recently moved out of the house, and somehow the sock in question got mixed up with his socks and ended up making the move with him. Case closed!

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  6. So funny! The only mysteries at our house is constantly discovering where our socks have disappeared to. But it’s an easy mystery to solve – Cammie keeps sneaking off with them to her special place in the den!

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  7. Well, gosh, Cynthia. You were very brave. I’ll be sure to stick with you at the next conference. (You know, just behind you.) I would maybe have guessed some kind of drone with leaking battery acid (but fortunately you still have skin on your hand). There are plenty of mysteries up here in NH. I do live near a Space Force base, so every time there’s a weird loud noise or strange sky machine, we blame it on them.

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  8. The most recent mystery I had was at my brother’s house. There was some odd buzzing noise in his garage and flickering lights. Turns out that some metal piece got loose and was shorting the circuit–but only at certain times.

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  10. That’s hysterical! ‘When it became clear that I was not, in fact, melting…’ cracked me up! The only mystery around here right now is who keeps stealing my pen? How is it possible to be sitting at my desk and suddenly lose the pen I was using two seconds ago??
    -Paula Niziolek

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  11. OMG, I love this story SO much, Cyn! And only partly because it involves food.

    As for mysteries in my own home, I guess that besides the enormous mysterious world of modern technology, the only one is–like for Paula–where the heck all the pens get to. And I can’t, alas, blame the dog for that….

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    1. I read that smoke alarm batteries have to work harder when room temps are lower, typically at night, so a faulty battery gives up then. Sounds plausible, but makes the beep no less annoying.

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  13. Fun post, Cynthia! We have an exterior wall that makes noises. It could be haunted. Or it’s mice and squirrels, which is worse than being haunted.

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  14. Great mystery and detective work, Cynthia!!

    The only mystery I’ve had of late was The Secret of the Missing Shoe. Unsurprisingly, it was associated with The Mystery of the Larcenous Dog Who Very Much Enjoys Playing with Shoe Laces.

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  16. You are all so brave and even living with mysteries daily. If a fan and tv kept coming on in my house, or if the wall was haunted, I would be so freaked out! (The smoke alarm battery thing is also familiar here, Leslie–why not during the day? and why not gradual rather than 0 to 10-level beeping immediately?)

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  18. Two mysterious things have happened in our house. The recent one was that I just finished a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle and was missing one piece. I looked everywhere. I moved furniture, looked under a stack of puzzles waiting to be worked, under the bed which is right near where my jigsaw puzzle table is set up, and everywhere else that was near where I worked. No piece. I did this twice and still no piece. I then did it again the next day. Again, no piece. Three days later, I was going to bed and lo and behold right next to the bed where I walk every night to go to bed, was the puzzle piece. It was just there where it wasn’t for the last two days. Where did it come from? The other mystery was about 9 years ago. Our sweet Needa dog died in the house after being diagnosed at 10 with a heart problem a month earlier. Two weeks or so later, a neighbor was walking by the house and saw Needa looking out the front window (which she always did) at him. And when we got the new pup Texie, she all of a sudden started doing things that we had not taught her yet but had taught Needa. Needa never went upstairs. Never tried. Texie never has gone upstairs or tried. The first two weeks that we had her, she lunged at her food as she was one of 12 and all of a sudden, she started sitting and waited to be released to eat like Needa had done. Many other examples. Ghost dog lives with us.

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