In the Florentine Room on the tour last night, a 9 volt battery was found on the ground near the door to the hallway where the noise was heard (see previous post). It appeared to be somewhat damaged, as though it had fallen. It made a pretty good noise when dropped. Could the sound we heard just have been a battery falling?
It’s possible, but not likely. For one thing, the sound was much bigger than you’d expect from a battery, and dropping it tended to result in it bouncing around quite audibly. For another, there’s no way to tell if the battery was there on Thursday; if it was, we didn’t notice it – and we looked around pretty carefully. Since Thursday, tables had been set up for an upcoming function in the room – the battery more likely fell out of someone’s pocket (or something) during the setup. If it had been there Thursday, the setup crew on Friday or Saturday probably would have picked it up.
Most importantly, batteries usually don’t just randomly fall out of nowhere. Nothing battery powered was mounted to the ceiling.
So, as a skeptic, I was quite willing to say that the noise had just been the battery, but, frankly, the pieces don’t fit. Still working on this one!
(note: there may not be many entries this week, as I’ll be blogging from Denver at the DNC over on my normal blog as part of the “bonus material” for my upcoming SMART ALECK’S GUIDE TO US HISTORY (Delacorte Press, 2010)).
I was on this tour. I put fresh batteries in my camera when I left my hotel room and after taking probably 10-15 pics in the gold ballroom my batteries were drained. I can attest that immediately after hearing the “gunshot”in the Florentine Room everybody in the group did a thorough search of the entire area and would have certainly found a 9 volt battery if it was laying on the floor. Nothing appeared to be out of place. Theresa P.