Electric discharge in the server room captured on cam

Hello fellow members,

At work i have a small room where we store our servers, software and hardware. A little while ago we decided to mount a webcam to monitor during the evening hours because our big boss has the habit of getting items like phone charges for his family at night without reporting it leaving us with a improper balanced inventory. Well the camera proved it was him but it also captured something interesting i think or at least something that i personally cannot explain, and is still doing it.

The company i work at is a Installations technics company, we build gas-station, server-farms, cooling, etc. with about 350 people working here. It has been here for some 40y. Before this building was a factory for a old printing company with lots of heavy machinery. My department is located on the second floor.

The camera is set to capture a pic 1 second after movement, so what it catches has to have been there for at least 1sec.

A picture of the server room with lights on:


Here are the pic of the white dots:


(closeup of the previous one)

there are more captures but these are the most obvious.
Camera distortion, electric static discharge, what is happening here, any idea?

a reply to: Dimens

Hmm seems like static discharge to me but I am by far no expert. One house of mine has had a bit of a history that prompted me to set up cameras in the are it happened, BTW it was a murder/ suicide back in the late 80’s of a husband and wife. I had them running with no motion sensor at night for a week. They remotely feed to my phone and I had it play the event while I was at work doing work things. I did catch some very odd things. Like weird sounds of something hitting a wall one or two times. One time the entire room lit up as if a light was on but I think I went down stairs for a glass of milk. The weirdest one was the slow sound of something going up and down my stairs repeatedly. Most likely my oversized dog but still creepy.

a reply to: Allaroundyou

Woow that does sound a place where you would want to setup a cam yea! Something actually happened there.
That is actually a good idea, maybe i could also setup a recorder and capture audio as a added source of information, could be around the time the discharge happens there is also sound. Thanks for the idea.

a reply to: Dimens

That's definitely from a vapor bubble of swamp gas from Venus that intersected with a fart from DBCowboy's Taco Tuesday, which managed to get stuck to the sidewalk when a "Ovenbird" (one of the NW Coast's native birds) did that technique where they drop a load while in flight. Then someone with server room access (YOU!) stepped on it, and managed to transfer it onto the floor in there as evidenced by the initial white 'dot' light.

I'd lock down the building with quarantine procedures at once. Last time this happened the electronics in entire building became infected with "gremlins" and it (the building) had to be "put down" to stop the spread.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

Haha Venus swamp gas!!! I knew it!!
Thanks for the heads up i will report to my colleagues doom is awaiting us all in the very near future and cut off the water supply NOW, just to be sure.

originally posted by: Dimens
a reply to: Allaroundyou

Woow that does sound a place where you would want to setup a cam yea! Something actually happened there.
That is actually a good idea, maybe i could also setup a recorder and capture audio as a added source of information, could be around the time the discharge happens there is also sound. Thanks for the idea.

Ya the husband shot his wife a few times and after she died he turned the gun on himself. My neighbor told me about it but at first I didn’t believe him. I google boxed the address and sure enough it really did happen. I read the article about and contacted a friend I have that has access to police records and he confirmed it. I only have two times that actually truly freaked me out though. Both times are my dog and I in the master with the door closed sleeping. Both times I woke up to something running up and down the hall upstairs and stopping in front of my door. Both times my dog woke up and growling and I opened my side dresser and grabbed one of my guns. And just waited for like ten minutes. But other than that nothing besides pigeons dropping from the sky all the time ever happened.

a reply to: Allaroundyou

Interesting story, thanks for sharing, it seems like animals have a sixth sense for things like this. Good thing you had him close to alert you aldo it seems you woke up from the sound yourself too, maybe the unconscious part of us also has that sixth sense i don't know, at least you where armed as it can always still be just a ordinary burglar that is up to no good
Hmm that is a very odd thing to happen, i expect they dropped dead out of the air? Now that is spooky!

a reply to: Dimens

After a some time I opened the door to inspect and well you guessed it nothing. I woke up the same time my dog did also. We both looked at each other in confusion then we both got in our position to defend our home. I kept thinking the girl from “The Ring” was going to open the door and just stand.

originally posted by: Dimens
a reply to: Allaroundyou

Interesting story, thanks for sharing, it seems like animals have a sixth sense for things like this. Good thing you had him close to alert you aldo it seems you woke up from the sound yourself too, maybe the unconscious part of us also has that sixth sense i don't know, at least you where armed as it can always still be just a ordinary burglar that is up to no good

Hmm that is a very odd thing to happen, i expect they dropped dead out of the air? Now that is spooky!

Sorry, this is going to be abit off topic but speaking about animals and their "sixth sense" I wanted to share something really freaky deaky that happened several years ago.
At the time i was living in Gippsland, Victoria(Australia) and was driving in a town called Moe with my ex and our dog, Cooper(a long haired Weimaraner, a type of large hunting dog).
He was extremely intelligent and easygoing and always had a placid, friendly nature.

Anyway a couple of days earlier 4 young local fellas died tragically in a car accident whilst being chased by the cops, they hit a tree at high speed in the centre of town and they all died instantly.
So we were driving past the tree and other than a few scrapes and some bunches of flowers it looked like any other tree, nothing notable about it.
Cooper was in his usual spot in the back seat, as we were passing the tree he suddenly started growling and barking hysterically at it!
This is a dog that usually was Mr Cool but now his hackles were fully raised and he was close to panic, he'd NEVER reacted this way to anything before and to say we were well spooked is an understatement.
It took us several minutes to calm him down afterword, and that was the first time in my life that I was confronted with something that I %100 feel was "supernatural".
There was nothing visible to us that might somehow explain his freakout, I don't know what Cooper saw that day but whatever it was defies rational explanation.

originally posted by: Dimens
Hello fellow members,

At work i have a small room where we store our servers, software and hardware. A little while ago we decided to mount a webcam to monitor during the evening hours because our big boss has the habit of getting items like phone charges for his family at night without reporting it leaving us with a improper balanced inventory. Well the camera proved it was him

but it also captured something interesting i think or at least something that i personally cannot explain, and is still doing it.

The company i work at is a Installations technics company, we build gas-station, server-farms, cooling, etc. with about 350 people working here. It has been here for some 40y. Before this building was a factory for a old printing company with lots of heavy machinery. My department is located on the second floor.

The camera is set to capture a pic 1 second after movement, so what it catches has to have been there for at least 1sec.

A picture of the server room with lights on:

Here are the pic of the white dots:

(closeup of the previous one)

there are more captures but these are the most obvious.
Camera distortion, electric static discharge, what is happening here, any idea?

Great find and that appears to be a static electrical discharge. A big one and I have witnessed some that big. A few decades ago we had those cable boxes with a dial and an off button. I had one of the first remote controlled version that was brand new and digital dial. We lived in a gas warmed house and didn't know to add humidity back into the house. I couldn't find the remote fast enough on the way out the door. My wife reaches for it and I say don't touch it and an arc jumps about 5 inches and destroyed my box!

a reply to: Dimens

Could be bugs.

The camera in our office used to catch random bugs floating around in the early AM. Probably due to reflections from the IR.

a reply to: Dimens

I am going to guess the 3 pics are taken from the camera, and the camera has not been moved? (not counting the closeup pic)

I also cranked up the bright in the 1st dark pic. Surprise there.



Anyways, I overlaid the 2 pics on top of the lit room pic:



This includes the enhanced second pic, and sharpening to bring it all out for easy viewing.

Let discussion begin...

a reply to: Osirisvset

Thanks for sharing your story Osirisvet, i wonder if you also had cold chills when you passed that location but i doubt it as you describe it as a ordinary site. A crash like that where people instantly perish, makes me wonder if one or 2 of them decide to hang around or still not realize they have had a fatal crash and are sitting in that car just waiting, brrrrr.
To me that is indeed a very obvious reaction to something he must have seen or smelled that he really didn't like, makes you wonder what, it must have been bad seeing it freaked him out so much.

Hope you gave him a extra treat that evening to calm his nerves, it must indeed have been scary for a old solid rock like him.

a reply to: Justoneman

Ouch.. im sorry to hear that, it can be devastating i know, it is a reason why we have to be grounded when we work with electronics (that is expensive).

I also remember a story/myth where people say to unplug all your electrical equipment during a thunderstorm to keep it safe, but hearing your story you better put that disconnected cable a couple of feet from the socket if you want it to help or with a bit of humidity in the air it will still make that jump

a reply to: wylekat

Wow, thanks for that Wylekat, it seems like there is a extra anomaly visible, great find and good work!!!

You are correct in stating that the camera has NOT moved, i put the capture with lights in there for that exact reason so you can see for yourself there is no light or equipment on the location of the anomaly.

We are amazed here there is even more visible when playing with the image settings, i did not expect that.

I will add some extra images tomorrow, maybe they show more hidden "stuff".

Have you tried using a different camera or placing the same camera in a different location?

a reply to: grey580

We got a new air-conditioning system that gets cold air from outside as much as it can, so there could definitely be bugs in this room flying around at night that survived the airco filter.

The cam we use is a Logitech C920 HD Pro Webcam



Are those IR or have IR function?

a reply to: ProjectedLogic

I can add another camera perhaps, or move this one. But no i have not touched this cam after it was placed the first time, it is on top of a very high server closet from APC.

a reply to: Dimens

I was wondering if you might be getting a static build up in the camera itself. From the overlay image, the anomalies almost look internal to the lens.

If this is sitting on top of a server closet, that would be my first guess. Try setting up another camera or moving this camera to a more isolated place where static is less likely to build.

a reply to: wylekat

I noticed that there is also a white dot about a foot up from the bottom of the door; near the doorjamb. You can see it in the fully lit image.

That dot appears, to me, to be on a straight line that connects the two flashes caught in the 1st dark image. Also, the trajectory of the flash from the 2nd dark image seems to intersect with that same dot on the door.

Also, this is a great job in overlaying those images to get a better appreciation of the context of the flash events!

-dex