Spooky Light Pops on in Middle of Night

There we were, sound asleep in bed, around five a. m. yesterday, the morning of Friday the 13th--when all of a sudden our ceiling light pops on! My husband Milt and I both sat bolt upright, shocked.

"Why did you turn on the light?" he asked.

"I didn't," I replied, thoroughly freaked out.

"You must have bumped the remote in your sleep," he said. Our ceiling light is part of a fan that we can run by remote control from a gadget that I keep on my nightstand. The off-on button for the light is quite small and requires pressure of at least a few seconds to bring the light on.

"I didn't," I reiterated.

"That's weird," he said, grabbing his flashlight from his nightstand and heading out to check out the rest of the otherwise totally dark house. I heard him trekking around, checking doors and even going down the basement to examine the circuit breakers. He returned puffing, and crawled back into bed. "Everything looks fine. The circuit breakers are all on."

"Even if they were off," I said, "that would hardly cause the light to turn on."

"I know," he replied, puzzled. "Maybe it was a car going by, using a remote control garage door opener that just happened to have the same code as our light."

"You think?"

"No," he said, "Unlikely. Probably just a short in the wiring. If it happens again, I'll call Jim." Jim is our trusty electrician--actually more like a friend of the family because he's repaired so many electrical problems for us. Gosh, I thought, maybe Jim set our ceiling light to malfunction so he'd be able to come out and repair it many months down the road. Get more business. Talk about conspiracy theory, Patricia.

"You know," I said to my spouse, "we're forgetting the obvious reason."

"What?"

"Ceiling light fixture goblins," I replied. "It is Friday the 13th." Milt groaned.

"Turn the light out and see if the goblins turn it on again," he ordered. "If they do, then we'll talk." I did. They didn't.

Any ideas why our ceiling light had a mind of its own on Friday the 13th? Has anything like this ever happened to you?