Been reading some of the demon stories posted from time to time on this forum. I for one am skeptical of them all because many of people I knew who reported such experiences seemed to be either mentally or emotionally unstable. I've personally never had any such experiences despite my AC/DC and Led Zeppelin collection - and never wanted to. But that all changed Sunday afternoon....
I was home alone, trying to dial in to work and get some things done, but my PC was having a problem connecting, so I switched to using my wife's PC with the broadband connection.
I went out to run an errand and just after I got back, I got a phone call. While I'm on the phone, I look over to see the Windows boot-up screen on my PC. I'm across the room from the PC and I did not remember turning it on. I would have no reason to do so because I didn't plan on using it. Nevertheless, here it was booting up. It was more than a little spooky. I had no recollection of turning it on, but finally chalked it up to "I might have". Maybe the phone was ringing and I did turn it on without thinking.
So I shut it down again and go to work on my wife's PC in the other room. After some time, my wife calls. I go in to answer it in the room with my PC. As I'm talking to her, my PC is booting back up. Now I know it's evil spirits. This time I was paying attention and I KNOW I did not touch the PC. I came into this room and headed straight to the phone. Some demonic force wanted that PC on. Maybe it was that pop-up window for an adult site that came up a couple weeks ago. Maybe "it" wanted me to go to back there.
Then I put it all together. I have an external modem, which stays on unless I shut it off and lately have gotten lazy about shutting it off. What's more, newer motherboards, when plugged in, aren't really off. It's more like a state of hibernation.
What happened is the modem is still plugged into the phone line and still on, although the PC is "off". The ringing of the phone triggered the modem to send a signal to the PC telling it the phone was ringing. I have my motherboard configured to wake-up on signals from the serial port (I didn't know it would wake it up from "shutdown" mode, but now I do). So, if the PC is off, a ringing telephone will turn it back on.
The reason I never noticed this before is that the phone jack is on the other side of the room, so my PC is almost never plugged into the phone unless I'm dialing out. As soon as I'm done, I disconnect it to avoid tripping over it. And I often shut off the modem too.
My evil demon was actually a little US Robotics modem. Guess I'm back to being a skeptic again.
-jws