Halloween Story: The Ladle

If you read C Jane regularly, today she shared a chilling story that happened to her recently. I encourage you to read it - it's convinced me to never own a piano.

It's inspired me to tell the strange story that happened to us recently. Well it happened more to Brett, but still it happened in our house.

It's not really creepy, but more unexplainable. The kind of unexplainable when you're trying to remember laws of physics and geometry formulas and still coming up blank on how this happened. The only explanation we have is that an invisible entity threw something at our fridge. As stupid as that sounds (trust me, I just re-read it), it's the only explanation for the following story.

Our story begins with a dirty sink:

I had a few dishes in the sink waiting for the next load because I simply had too many dirty dishes for one load. So inside the sink were the following items:

A plastic ladle (exactly like the one pictured)

Two regular size dinner plates

A crock pot

They were placed in the sink in just that order with the plastic ladle sitting at the bottom. Now, the ladle itself was placed so the spoon portion was visible if you were looking straight down into the sink, but the rest of the handle had two plates and a heavy crock pot on top of it. Is that clear? No part of the handle was sticking out - remember that.

I had been at work when I got a picture message from Brett with what looked like the plastic tip of some sort of utensil and underneath he said, "Do you know what this goes to?" I tried to take a mental inventory of our utensils and remember which ones were plastic and could have tips like that. The only possible answer was the plastic punch ladle that I had used for a cousin's bridal shower so I told Brett that's what I thought it could be. He answered back with "Where is it?" So I told him that I couldn't remember if it was in the dishwasher or still in the sink and he should check both of those places.

I didn't hear back from him until about ten minutes later when he called me. He said that the reason he asked was that he was sitting in his Man-Cave/ office when he heard what sounded like a magnet falling off the fridge and onto the floor. It was loud so when he went to investigate, the plastic tip was on the floor in front of the fridge.

Before we go any further let me explain my kitchen layout. The kitchen sink is in the middle of the counter which faces toward our living room. About 4-5 feet to the left of the sink is our fridge. Hopefully I'm not confusing anyone...

So he went to find the ladle which was sitting at the bottom of the sink. Yes, he did have to move the crock pot and two dinner plates to find it there, but he did replace everything exactly how he found it so he could later show me and explain how strange it was. When I got home he walked me through his findings:

Somehow, the tip of the ladle had snapped off, come out from under two dinner plates and a crock pot, flown wildly five feet to the left and smack into the fridge and land on the floor in front of it.

It makes sense that it broke, don't get me wrong - it was just a cheap plastic ladle that was under too much weight, BUT if the tip of the ladle was sitting under three large obstacles - how did it get all the way over by the fridge by itself?!

The only logical explanation if it had snapped off under the weight, would have been if it had stayed put, and then the dishes and large crock pot would have shifted in the sink, making a loud enough noise for Brett to hear and see from where he was in the man-cave/ office. But according to Brett the only thing he heard was the sound of the plastic hitting the floor. (Is this making sense?)

If the tip of the ladle had actually been out from under the dishes and crock pot, it still would have shifted the dishes and crock pot when it snapped under the pressure - so we have to assume it wasn't exposed, right? And if it the tip was actually hidden underneath those three heavy items, it's only logical place to land if it had broken off, was either to stay put OR go down the drain in the sink.

But it somehow snapped off without shifting anything in the sink on top of it, flew out from under two dishes and a crock pot - veered left and hit the fridge?

Now, I have no business talking about math formulas or quoting scientific theory, but I'm pretty sure using the common knowledge I've acquired over the last 25 years, that this is pretty impossible. In no way should that ladle have hit the fridge five feet to the left, hard enough for it to land on the floor as loudly as it did.

It was literally as if it had been picked up out of the sink and thrown at the fridge. Except my husband was sitting in the man-cave/ office and he was obviously the only one home...

After I got home, of course Brett had to go into work for an over-night inventory audit leaving me alone in my home with a phantom ladle. I wasn't really scared, but so completely perplexed that I walked myself through the situation again about four more times. I'm sorry - it's simply not possible! So I sat down to watch TV. Over the course of the night I started to hear weird cracking noises. If anyone has a George Forman grill, they'll know the noise when I say that it sounded exactly like the George when it's heating up - it makes a cracking noise. It sounded so much like it that I went to check our George Forman grill but it was unplugged and hadn't been used since the night before.

Then a few hours later, when I was listening to a quiet commercial, the two plates and crock pot (which hadn't been moved since being replaced by Brett for visual aide) shifted down in the sink. I saw it from the corner of my eye and the noise had me jump roughly about 6 feet off the couch! I went to investigate and pulled the crock pot and two plates out of the sink one by one to discover the ladle - snapped into two more pieces. So I know for myself if it had broken off originally under all that weight - exposed or not - it would have made a loud noise and Brett would have heard it no matter what.

I sent a picture message to Brett about what had just happened and we decided that even if we were being unreasonable, it was best that the ladle should go in the garbage...outside...away from our home. So I took it straight to the dumpster. As I was walking back Brett said, "Wouldn't it be so creepy if you walked back into the house and it was sitting on the counter?!" And the notion scared me so much that I was unsure about opening my door to find out! But I did and it wasn't there.

Now...after that LONG explanation can someone please explain to me, using logic, HOW THAT PIECE OF PLASTIC FLEW AT OUR FRIDGE?!

I'd appreciate it since it has boggled both our minds since it occurred.