The ghost who sabotaged the mainframe

Everyone missed Ernie -- until he came back, and started messing with the mainframe. I don't know where you stand on ghosts. Some people think if you believe in ghosts you've failed a primal intelligence test. I used to be one of those people. Then, in June of 1980, a ghost sabotaged the installation of an HP 3000 mini/mainframe. This is a true story. Really. Several Hewlett Packard engineers and their support l

Ralph and I stood frozen with terror; every hair on our bodies stood on end. Then I slammed the door shut and put my back up against it. Ralph and I stood in the hall, breathing heavily. We gave ourselves several minutes to calm down before we went back to the meeting.

One look at our faces was all my staff needed. "That's it, man, I'm outta here." "No way!" We all grabbed our coats and were heading down the hall when we heard the door knob to the computer room click. The door opened. By itself. It closed by itself too. Nothing went in, nothing came out. But we all felt that eerie breeze move over us.

Gradually, we began to accept the fact that somehow Ernie was still with us. In a strange way, it felt nice. He seemed fairly harmless, and gradually his intrusions into our world faded away. Life continued normally at the office -- at least until eight years later, the day the HP 3000 arrived.

I had chosen the HP to replace the Honeywell, and hired a consulting firm to design and program the new system. On the big day, the 3000 was delivered and placed next to our old Honeywell workhorse. The hardware installation went smoothly. We were ready for conversion and parallel testing.

The next three weeks saw the most bizarre and incredible hardware problems HP had ever dealt with. Every damn thing would go wrong, mysteriously correct itself, manifest somewhere else, disappear, and then reoccur. We replaced every piece of hardware -- some more than once: logic boards, memory boards, cables, wires, Mux channels, ports, operating system, motors, gears, power supplies.... We sent tons of system dumps to HP's labs for analysis. (Of course they all ran perfectly at HP's lab.) I was so frustrated, I felt my emotional state getting shaky.

Then, at 1 AM one morning -- a couple of hours into what was supposed to be an eight hour conversion -- all three tape drives simply stopped. That eerie cool breeze moved over me, the lights flickered, and the computer room door opened by itself. Ernie! I should have known!

I didn't feel comfortable telling the HP engineers. All they would have offered was more replacement parts and the number of a good psychiatrist. I was desperate. And in desperation, who do you call?

My rabbi seemed unsurprised when I told him I needed help with a ghost. "Be forceful," he said. "Demand that he leave. Show no fear. Make your demands clear. Scream if you have to."

I tried to picture myself arguing with a ghost, and for the first time I realized that lunacy is relative.