Are You a SLIder? Street Lamp and Other Electromagnetic

Are You a SLIder? Street Lamp and Other Electromagnetic
Interference

Until I started researching the subject of street lamp interference,
I didn't realize I was a SLIder. SLIder is the name given to anyone
who experiences the effects of street lamp interference and related
phenomena.

Sure, I'd driven under certain streetlights that would go out at the
same time that I drove by. In fact, it happened quite frequently on a
street where I used to live, but I figured it was just that I got home
from work at the hour that the light was timed to switch off.

The phenomenon, which is much researched in Britain but given little
attention by American parapsychologists, is not fully explained by
the issue of timing. electrical engineers, when posed the question, will
agree that some streetlights switch on and off at regular
intervals--especially when they're running out of energy.

Another explanation they have offered is that a car's headlights
approaching a streetlight may be bright enough to "fool" the lamp's
sensors into thinking it's daylight, hence shutting it off. Of course, this
explanation does not hold up when compared to some accounts of lights
switching off after people merely walked beneath them, or of lights spontaneously switching
on for no good reason.

Some SLIders claim they can affect the phenomenon at will--extending
it to the spontaneous turning on or off of televisions, radios, and
computers.

Phyllis Galde, editor of FATE magazine, has mentioned that this
phenomenon has happened to her, but as with many other American
parapsychologists, she didn't know it had a name. the term "SLIder" was
coined by British paranormal researcher Hilary Evans, founder of the Association for the
Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP). He founded Project
SLIDE or the Street Lamp Interference Data Exchange. Evans has experienced the street
light phenomena many times in his native London. though he has had
no "spooky" feelings while experiencing SLI, he has collected reports
from many other experiencers who have. Accounts range from one man who claims the
phenomenon started happening to him only after he'd had a severe injury of an
electrical origin. Another experiencer states that street light
interference only happens to her when she is in a highly emotional state or under extreme
stress.

Most parapsychologists who have studied the phenomenon think it is
related to other electromagnetic phenomena, such as the inability of
some people to wear watches. L the human body, like all other objects that
essentially run on electricity, has an electromagnetic field around it.
Some peoples'electromagnetic fields cause traditional watches to slow down and
eventually stop working over time.

My grandfather used to say he couldn't wear a watch. His watches
would eventually stop if he wore them every day. I can't wear a
traditional watch without it slowing down and eventually stopping, so I
was delighted when the new digital watches appeared. They seem impervious to such
interference, at least from me.

Then came computers, and guess what? Sometimes the mere presence of
a SLIder in a room with computers is enough to interfere with their
function. One of my students was the computer tech at one of the first
computer labs I used in teaching.

After a few weeks of using the lab, he began to swear that whenever I came into the lab, I disrupted the functions of the computers! Nowadays, more modern computers don't seem to be as affected by SLIders when they are in the room. Perhaps new advances in shielding
computers from outside electromagnetic radiation explains this change.

Still, during the writing of this article, a friend told me that he
has inexplicably "blown out" a rand new computer--the third one assigned
to him at his work place so far. His fellow workers are now considering
him a computer jinx. After he told me that he has experienced the streetlight
phenomenon as well, I dubbed him a fellow SLIder.

My research shows that SLIders often exhibit all three types of
phenomena recounted here, including sometimes disrupting the magnetic
strips on their credit and debit cards!

If we take these phenomena as a group, they all seem to lead us back
to the idea of disruptions in electromagnetic fields. Eerie though the
phenomena may seem, there is probably a scientific explanation that some
day

will be proven in the lab. Perhaps sometime in the future we SLIders can
look forward to getting our electromagnetic fields "adjusted"-- the way a
chiropractor "adjusts" the spine--so that we no longer affect
streetlights and other electrical and magnetic devices.

Until then, I guess we'll just keep SLIding along, and keeping the
digital watch companies in business---When we can get our credit cards
to work, that is!

by Denise Dumars,
copyright 2005