A locked lantern mystery

If there is a God, he definately has a sense of humour.

Thriller writers often have fun with "Locked Room" mysteries in which the detective has to work out how the villain arranged for something to happen inside room which appears to have been locked from the inside - usually the death of the victim.

But sometimes things can happen inside a closed space without the intervention of a human agency and you think "How did that happen?"

This evening I thought I had to change the light bulb on the lantern outside my front door as it had stopped working.

The nuts holding the top of the lantern were rusted and it took considerable effort to open it.

When I did, as soon as I attempted to unscrew the bulb, it came on. So it was working, but twisted out of alignment.

So how did it manage to twist itself inside a compartment which was rusted shut and had not been opened for years?

Sometimes odd things happen and we just have to accept that occasionally the Universe is a little perverse. 

Comments

Jim said…
The one I have always wondered about is the Washing machine mystery. This is where you can wash nothing but a single pair of socks. Once the machine is finished you will still remove 2 odd socks from it.

I wonder if they have a secret sock compartment which stores a sock from the last wash and then swaps it with a sock from the current wash. For the first wash it simply takes a single sock, thus achiving its odd sock goal.
9:46 am
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