5 Spooky Problems, That Scare the IT Department
Now you might think of IT support staff as logical, rational beings. But truth be told, we’re all quite superstitious. While the celebration of Halloween has slowly been on the rise in Melbourne, we’ve always been concerned about the occult side of computers.
So with the Spooky Season upon us, I thought I would run you through the 5 biggest occult related fears IT support staff have, and a few of our recommended solutions.
1 – Cobwebs
Now while cobwebs are not inherently dangerous, they do tend to gather around computers. It’s also usually a symptom of a dusty computer area, clogging your computer up with dust just leads to a drop in performance.
Not to mention spiders.
No one likes spiders in or around their computers
Our Recommended Solution:
Luckily, Halloween occurs in the spring here in the Melbourne, so we recommend a bit of Spring Cleaning for your computer desk.
Giving the area around your computer a good dust, and clearing out those cobwebs will help keep your computer safe in the Spooky Season.
2 – Frankenstein’s Website
This one is a bit more common. I can almost guarantee that you’ve seen one, but you probably haven’t noticed it.
Some websites are kept alive in what’s often referred to as The Cache. This is a collection of old website parts that your computer keeps, to save time your computer refers to The Cache to build websites. To use Facebook as the example, you might notice that the
Now here’s the spooky part. Sometimes the website you’re looking at is a dead version of a website. An update to a website might go live; this update might completely change how the website looks and functions. But due to the existing version of the website in The Cache, you don’t see the update for days (Can you say Zombie Websites)
Our Recommended Solution:
It’s a good idea to clear out your internet cache frequently, bits of old code can exist in there and will sometimes mess with things. You can find instructions for clearing the cache at this handy website.
3 – Duplicate Emails
Like ghosts from the past, emails occasionally return from your deleted items to haunt you. There are many different types of haunted email. The most common one is your basic correspondence with old colleagues whom no longer work with you. These are merely annoying, and can usually just be deleted again.
The more dangerous variety of evil email is the Duplicate Demon. They can be trickier to detect, they usually duplicate emails of importance. For
Our Recommended Solution:
The way to deal with these demons is to place a circle of salt around your mouse while you delete the email. You may still need to call your bank afterwards to deal with that duplicate payment that has come out of your account.
4 – Laptop Skeletons
Not much is known about this incredibly rare phenomenon. As I am sure you’re aware, most laptops are made from metals and plastics. Neither of these elements
What’s more, these laptop skeletons are made of bone. We’ve asked a few manufacturers, and none of them
Our Recommended Solution:
Salt the bones, and burn them. It’s better to be safe than sorry. If your dead laptop’s spirit ever gets loose, you might be in trouble. It’s best to burn the bones to ensure that your laptop can rest in peace.
5 – Possessed Computers
We’ve all seen the movies like Poltergeist and Ghostbusters. Possessed electrical equipment floating around and harassing helpless individuals. It’s a harrowing thing to experience first-hand, and not a lot of IT service providers are prepared to deal with possessed equipment.
Symptoms of Computer possession evitation, and strange, red fluid dripping from the CD drive.
There are many factors to be aware of when dealing with possessed computers. First and foremost is, what is doing the possessing? There are two main categories of possession, Demonic and Spiritual. Or in layman’s terms: Ghosts or Demons.
Ghosts are the easier type to deal with, traditionally ghosts are less powerful beings. These are usually responsible for your minor symptoms, like sporadic mouse movement, or programs opening and closing without warning. Sprinkling pure salt over the device, or the right kind of anti-virus software can deal with most ghostly possessions.
Demonic possession however
Our Recommended Solution:
While the above options are effective, we would rather advocate for prevention here. It’s much easier and less costly to prevent the possession in the first place. Having your IT staff bless your computer can add a layer of protection that most minor level demons can’t bypass. More heavy-duty protection can be purchased, talismans and amulets widely available, these are usually unnecessary. Unless you’re actively dabbling in the occult, possession by powerful demons is rare.
We find that a simple blessing by the IT staff will handle most things.
Image credits: Ben Taylor 2016