In 1986, Randy Davis was working as a Senior Computer Operator for a hospital in Saint Louis, Missouri. Randy should have been forewarned when he found out that the "Penthouse" floor that the MIS department was located on was actually just a cover-up for it being floor 13. But he was not prepared for the supernatural activity that was about to haunt the hospital computer system.
As if the unlucky number of 13 was not enough, the hospital network had been installed via a thick net cable down the elevator shaft with "vampire" taps into thin nets spider webbing on the different floors. The whole network of some 50 computers was on nothing but a bus architecture network… Meaning that they were set up like Christmas tree lights, if one goes out, the whole string is a goner.
It was only a matter of time before the ghosts and goblins came out. Starting in the early summer of that year, the network would go down for 10 minutes every Wednesday and Friday afternoon at approximately 4:00pm, without any explanation, and then mysteriously just come back up by itself. The outage was too short to be able to track down where the problem was, but long enough for people to lose their work.
Randy and his team checked the servers, all of the computers on the network, and they even rented a network scanner, and everything checked out normal! They then contacted the vendor, who did a large investigation, and came to the conclusion that there was no problem what-so-ever with their equipment.
After months of aggravation, Randy and his team had had enough. They were going to catch this phantom caper! They stationed people in every department on a Wednesday afternoon at 3:50pm. Everyone had their eyes and ears open waiting for the "haunting" to start. Randy, along with another tech, was perched in the Medical Records department.
At 3:55 a cleaning woman came in to the room and began to vacuum. At exactly 4:00, swoosh, the network went down just as Randy had expected. At 4:10 the cleaning woman walked out, and magically the network came back. Randy and his coworker began to think that the cleaning woman had some sort of supernatural force, but then it occurred to them! The network had gone down right when her vacuum reached a certain spot on the floor. As they looked closer, it was clear! Every Wednesday and Friday at 4:00pm, a vacuum was being run back and forth, back and forth, right on top of the network LAN cable, knocking one computer off and thus causing the whole building to follow! Little did the cleaning lady know, she almost got taken out by a "proton gun!"
So, if you find yourself on the 13th floor with vampire taps and spider webbed nets, don't say we didn't warn you!
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