A homeowner heard strange voices coming out of her microwave, and as she investigated further, she realized it could have something to do with “cutting-edge” technology from the turn of the millennium.
The TikTok videos documenting the strange occurrence come from San Antonio-based creator Cecil (@dieselhill). They got more than 10.3 million views as of Monday. In it, the creator shows a man’s bizarre monologue, which shifts into falsetto singing.
A strange feature
The on-screen caption implores, “HELP! Every time we flip the breaker for the kitchen, we hear someone talking SO CLEARLY through our microwave.” The creator then adds, “We have heard really creepy sounds.
In a follow-up video, in which the creator wonders “why there was a man talking to me about my microwave,” she digs a bit into the mystery, revealing that the old GE Spacemaker microwave oven in her kitchen had the capacity for recording voice messages that could then be played back.
The narrator in the follow-up video says, “When I posted that video, I did not know there was a message button on there. We haven’t lived here that long. And so that was news to me. I didn’t know that microwaves could even do that. We never had one like that when I was growing up.”
She then shows the message recording and playback instructions printed inside the microwave door and shows how to record a message. Her theory is that old messages that were deleted have somehow still been stored in the microwave’s memory and were playing back.
@dieselhill MY MICROWAVE IS TALKING BC OF OLD DELETED MESSAGES PLAYING/ITS MALFUNCTIONING
♬ original sound – cecil
“So it’s either that or people are saying that my wiring is faulty, which is probably true because this is a very old house with bad wiring in some areas that were getting fixed and that is acting as a radio,” she says. “I didn’t know that microwaves could do that either. I don’t know anything about microwaves or radio waves or hard drives.”
She then says, with a tinge of disappointment, “It unfortunately is not a millennial ghost.”
So what’s going on?
A 2021 Reddit post from the r/nonmurdermysteries subreddit reveals a similar voice-in-the-microwave phenomenon, with this one creepily intoning, “That feller right there is gone die soon,” right after the homeowner experienced the loss of a beloved family dog.
One respondent to that post reported, “So I did a little googling around and did find out that GE did make that microwave and did have a message button on it, so we know that more than one of these was produced. It was considered top of the line in 1998. It was also the same model in the picture that you posted.”
They continued, “The message feature was advertised as something to leave voice messages to other family members, even when the power is off so this means there was probably means that there was some sort of secondary power source such as a battery this battery would likely also be used to power the memory for the message button as well.”
That person theorized, “The battery powering the internal memory finally started to die, as some kind of planned obsolescence by GE and what you might have heard was something that was recorded from the previous owner.”
Viewers had a field day with the revelation
“HOW DOES SOMEONE HACK A MICROWAVE IM SO CONFUSED,” one responded in all caps.
Another quipped, “Microwave specialists here! It seems that your microwave is doing that because of the way that it is. Hope this helped.”
Someone else said, “Seems like your microwave is possessed by a really friendly, goofy ghost.”
Another wrote, “Appliance Sales man here…It’s called GE ‘My Plate’ records custom sounds when your food is done. Wish it was a cooler answer lol.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to the creator via TikTok direct message and to GE via email.
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