Street light interference, sometimes called high voltage syndrome, is the claimed ability of individuals to turn

street light A street light, light pole, lamp pole, lamppost, street lamp, light standard, or lamp standard is a raised source of light on the edge of a road or path. Similar lights may be found on a railway platform. When urban electric power distribution ...

s or outside building security lights on or off when passing near them. Believers in Street light interference (SLI) allege that they experience it on a regular basis with specific lamps and street lights and more frequently than chance would explain; however, SLI has never been demonstrated to occur in a scientific experiment, and those who claim the ability have been found to be unable to reproduce the effect on demand.Linton Weeks. "Bad Karma, Or Just Bad Lightbulbs?; The Mystery Of Blinking Street Lights."

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

. Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive. 2002
HighBeam Research
. 19 September 2014 The term Street light interference was coined by

paranormal Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Nota ...

author

Hilary Evans Hilary Agard Evans (6 March 1929 – 27 July 2011) was a British pictorial archivist, author, and researcher into UFOs and other paranormal phenomena. Biography Evans was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, United KingdomErnest Kay ''The Internati ...

Proponents

According to Evans, SLI is a phenomenon "based on claims by many people that they involuntarily, and usually spontaneously, cause street lamps to go out." Evans' 1993 book ''The SLI Effect'' proposes that the phenomenon is "not consistent with our current knowledge of how people interact with the physical world." Evans coined the term "SLIder" to refer to someone who allegedly causes this effect, and cites SLIders' claims of being able to "extinguish a row of

sodium vapor lamp A sodium-vapor lamp is a gas-discharge lamp that uses sodium in an excited state to produce light at a characteristic wavelength near 589 nm. Two varieties of such lamps exist: low pressure and high pressure. Low-pressure sodium lamps are ...

s in sequence, each one going out as the witnesses nears it." Some proponents believe static electricity or "some kind of “energy” emitted by the human body" is responsible for SLI. Others claim the alleged phenomenon is caused by individuals having

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, ...

psychokinetic Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...

ability.

Reception

Author

Massimo Polidoro Massimo Polidoro (born 10 March 1969) is an Italian psychologist, writer, journalist, television personality, and co-founder and executive director of the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Pseudosciences (CICAP). Early lif ...

writing in ''

Skeptical Inquirer ''Skeptical Inquirer'' is a bimonthly American general-audience magazine published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) with the subtitle: ''The Magazine for Science and Reason''. Mission statement and goals Daniel Loxton, writing in ...

'' has considered claims of SLI to be examples of correlation not implying causation, or of

confirmation bias Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring ...

: people are much more likely to notice when a nearby street light turns on or off than they are to notice a light turning on or off at a distance, or a street light in a steady state at any distance. This is compounded by a failure mode of street lights, known as "cycling", in which street lights of the high pressure sodium type turn off and on more frequently at the end of their life cycle.Cecil" Adams
"Can some people extinguish streetlamps by means of their bodily emanations?"
In "The Straight Dope", October 28, 1994. Retrieved April 6, 2007. A high pressure sodium engineer at

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

, quoted by

Cecil Adams Cecil Adams is the pseudonymous author of ''The Straight Dope'', a popular question and answer column published in ''The Chicago Reader'' from 2 February 1973 to 2018. The true identity of Adams, whether a single individual or a group of authors, ...

, summarizes SLI as "a combination of coincidence and wishful thinking". Polidoro notes that "Paranormal phenomenon is the least likely possibility."

References

External links

* *{{Cite web , last=Morrow , first=David , date=1995-08-30 , title=Close encounters of the street lamp kind , url=https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/close-encounters-of-the-street-lamp-kind-1598726.html , access-date=2022-09-12 , website=

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

, language=en , ref=none Psychokinesis Street lighting Forteana

Proponents

Reception

See also

References

Further reading

External links