Experiences of JOTT
Just One Of Those Things: Otherwise known as disappearing object phenomenon. Mary Rose Barrington classified this weird occurrence into two different categories:
Jottles: This is the more common of the two where objects are displaced either via teleportation, poltergeist phenomena or an apport (a spirit moving an object).
Oddjott: Miscellaneous weird episodes that have no rational explanation
Jottles are then further broken down into subcategories:
- Walkabout. This is the most common jottle, where an item disappears from a known location and is found later in another and often bizarre location, without any sort of explanation as to how it got there.
- Comeback. An item disappears from a known location and anywhere from minutes to years, reappears in this very same location.
- Flyaway. An item disappears from a known location and never reappears.
- Turnup. An item which appears in a location which it couldn’t have been in before.
- Windfall. An unknown item to you randomly appears.
- Trade-in. An item that disappears and never comes back, but a similar item appears instead
You can read more about this here: https://llifs.com.au/blog/jott-just-one-of-those-things/
I asked for readers to submit their own stories. Here is a small selection.
*I am not including any names here for privacy and all submissions were aware the stories would be published. I will not be publishing any stories where people have asked them to remain private.
Real stories of JOTT
I lived in an old house with my sister and her husband. Before they moved in an elderly lady had died there and I'd had some strange things go on there before this incident. Anyway, I was in the bathroom getting ready to go out for the evening. I had a hair tie sitting on the edge of the sink. I brushed my hair and reached for the hair tie only to find it gone. I searched all over looking for it, and it was nowhere to be found. There was no way anyone could have taken it, as the family was downstairs and the bathroom was too small for another person to get past me unnoticed. Resigned that my hair tie was gone, I went to my room and got another. When I returned to the bathroom there on the edge of the sink, right where I'd left it, was my hair tie. I figured it was just the previous owner of the house playing with me.
My first experience was 10 years ago and I would have discounted it if not for the reference of two later experiences. It was a "walkabout". We were staying with a friend after selling our house and I was in bed late with my laptop just browsing the net. My partner was asleep and when I felt drowsy took the dongle from the side of the laptop, closed it and left the dongle on top of the laptop on the bedside table. In the morning it had disappeared and no matter where we searched inside the room it just wasn't there. (door was locked) It turned up later in a coat pocket and I thought.."just one of those things" and forgot about it. A few years later came the second experience. One of the only things I'd kept from the old house was my favourite small kitchen knife. Ask any woman how important the favourite vege knife is! One day it was gone as I was working in the kitchen and I turned the place upside down searching for it but nothing. I bought other small knives but was never satisfied with them and occasionally moaned about losing the original..thinking it had been thrown out with the rubbish but unlikely as we seperate our green waste. a few years passed and one day, there it was..exactly where I'd left it on the kitchen bench. We were stunned but glad to have it back but after a few days it left again. Never came back. The last and most important was this year and it's driving me mad as it's changed my view of how I look at the world and what's real. My reading glasses disappeared at the beginning of lock down and we had no visitors and didn't leave the house. They were there one minute and gone the next. I even stood in the middle of the house and demanded them back but I had gotten a new pair of every day glasses so was able to use them instead. A few months later when restrictions lifted we went to a favourite spot on the coast and I left my partner to buy a coffee and walked down to a track I knew that had a good view. The track has a large rock at the entrance to deter people walking it as it is a bit steep and near a dangerous cliff. You have to walk around the rock to get to the track and mostly locals know about it. As I turned to leave, there on the rock were a pair of black glasses almost identical the the lost pair but cheaper and lighter but not my prescription. I took them home but wish I hadn't now. That's it. 9 months later and no glasses.
As a teen, I returned to high school after the summer holidays and was unable to find my calculator. I'd searched everywhere, it had vanished. After a few weeks, I was getting changed after my paper round, I'd folded my clothes and put them on my bed. I reached into my wardrobe for something and when I turned to my bed, my calculator was sitting on top of my folded clothes! I said thank you, put it in my bag and went to school.
Hello, i am a watchmaker, and a while ago, i was repairing a watch, when a part went missing. This is unusual as the parts are always put into little containers together with their respective screws and another parts, so everything is in order. However one part was missing, thinking that i must have missed the container, i looked around my bench, found nothing. Then looked around the floor, again nothing. I then moved all the furniture, swept up under them found nothing. So then each and every part of my bench was examined, as well as every container be it sealed or not, again nothing. Seeing the bench was clean i then washed it, scrubbed it, and polished the bench-top with wax, dusted and cleaned everything, still the item was not found. I then went mad at the spirit/ghost as this was the only thing i could think of as to where it went. [the shop next door had the previous owner hand himself, and just down from them a little girl died of asthma]. I went home by this time it was late in the night. Next morning i went in early to continue looking only to find the part, right in the middle of the work space!
Now if someone has a rational explanation as to how something was found in the middle of my work space when the whole bench was not only washed down but was also polished with wax, I’ll listen.
I was given a necklace with a silver heart from my sister in-law not long after my husband had passed. She had a wedding photo of us engraved on it. When I was staying at my in-laws house not long after. I went to to sleep that night with the necklace on. When I woke up in the morning I looked at the little table next to me and there was the necklace, the clasp done up, but I did not take it off. I Was on my own in the room all night.
This is just a handful of the submissions I have received. If you would like to submit your story which may be included in a future article or book, head to: https://forms.gle/ifGX6iaRWeNsosQY8
If you enjoy LLIFS, consider buying me a book (otherwise known as buy me a coffee but I don't drink coffee and I LOVE books). Your donation helps to fund the LLIFS website so everyone can continue to access great paranormal content and resources for FREE!
Top pages with similar subjects
Don't forget to follow the Facebook page for regular updates
Join the mailing list to receive weekly updates of NEW articles. Never miss an article again!
Buy the latest and past issues Haunted Magazine
Check out the books written by LLIFS