MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin

I consider myself a skeptic, but I saw something the other night that I can't totally explain.

We have a wireless baby monitor camera, which is basically just a middling quality web cam that has an infrared night vision mode. The other night we put the kids down, and they are super restless, tossing and turning. Then my wife hears our cat cry though the camera mic and realizes he got shut in the room. I go up, crack the door open, and shoo the cat out of the room. When I get back downstairs, my wife calls me over and tells me to look at the monitor. On one side of the room, between one of the cribs and a couch, there is a small bright spot dancing around on the floor. It appears to be about an inch or two in diameter, and the movements are very random. To me, it looked like the kind of movement you'd get from a laser pointer hanging on a string in a room with a very slight draft, except it seemed to be constrained more or less between the crib and the couch. A few times it would go up on to the crib a little and more so onto the couch. From the way it moved, I had the impression that the light was being projected or reflected from something close to the camera's perspective. In other words, it would jump immediately onto the surfaces that the camera could see, where if it were coming from a different angle, I would expect it to disappear for a moment as it climbed the surfaces the camera couldn't see.

I went upstairs to investigate, monitor in hand. Whatever it was, it was not visible to the naked eye. Even though it was still visible on the monitor, I could see nothing in the room, in the dark or with a light in the hall on. Finally, I went over to the camera and waved my hand close to it. The screen went white with the out of focus, washed out image of my hand, and when I stopped, the little light was gone.

It seems like it had to be something reflecting and focusing the infrared light from the camera, but I really have no idea what. Sometimes toys and stuff on the floor look a little weird in infrared, but there was nothing I could see that could have been moving like that. There is a mobile hanging from the ceiling, but it's on the opposite side of the room and the angle seems wrong for the behavior of the light. Anyway, it's mostly non-reflective plastic, except for the metal rods which aren't all that shiny, either. You see dust on the camera from time to time, but it generally just floats by. This definitely seemed to be staying in one area.

Very strange...