The Family Plan Poltergeist

I am a gadget person. That is the polite way to say it. The more accurate version is that if something in my house can be connected to Alexa, I have probably tried it. Lights, switches, music, grocery lists, reminders, timers, even the microwave. I like the convenience. I like the voice control. I like walking into a room and announcing my intentions to a small black box like I live in the future.

Naturally, this has gotten away from me.

A few years ago, my oldest daughter, Kate, finished her IT degree at a community college near her dad in Idaho and moved back near me. She lived with me for a while until she found work and got her own place.

Being an IT person, Kate is also a gadget person… a gadget person with training, so technically she is more dangerous.

Since we were living in the same house, we connected our Alexa accounts through Amazon Household. Everything worked fine… mostly. When she moved into her own place, we stayed connected, and that did not seem like a problem at first. In fact, it was kind of fun.

Every once in a while, Kate would use Alexa’s announcement feature from work to get her son’s attention at their house.

“Call me right now!” would suddenly come blasting through my Alexa at home.

There is nothing quite like standing in your own kitchen, minding your business, and being scolded by your adult daughter’s robot because your grandson is not answering his phone.

It did not happen constantly, just enough to remind me that our smart homes had boundary issues. Kate would forget to limit the announcement to her own devices, Alexa would take “all devices” very seriously, and I would get a brief, urgent glimpse into parenting from another location.

This went on for a few years; we found it amusing so we never had reason to fix it.

Then I got married, moved into a larger house, and acquired more Alexa devices. More rooms, more lights, more switches, more little conversations with Alexa throughout the day. At some point, I had created a house that could be run almost entirely by voice, assuming Alexa was in the mood to cooperate and did not decide the word “lamp” sounded like “ham.”

Most of the time, it worked seamlessly. Then my lights started coming on by themselves.

I would be sitting in bed at night, scrolling through TikTok, peaceful and half-useless, when suddenly every light in the house would turn on. Bedroom lights. Hall lights. Living room lights. Kitchen lights. The whole house went from quiet evening to surgical suite in one second.

No warning. No command. Just daylight.

I would sit there blinking, then say, “Alexa, turn off the lights.”

Everything would go dark again.

The first few times, I blamed my own system. I had so many devices connected that it seemed entirely possible I had created some kind of electrical group chat and lost control of the conversation. Maybe there was a routine buried somewhere. Maybe Alexa misheard the TV. Maybe one of the switches had developed ambition.

Then I remembered that Kate and I were connected and thought maybe it was her, so I messaged her and asked, “Did your lights just go off too?”

Nope.

That seemed to rule her out, so I went back to assuming the problem lived in my house. That felt reasonable; my house already has a dining room switch that controls a light in the upstairs bathroom, so unexplained lighting events are not exactly off-brand.

I bought a Wi-Fi booster, thinking I was probably overloading my system. The problem kept happening; annoying, but manageable.

Then the frequency picked up. I would be reading, folding laundry, getting ready for bed, or doing absolutely nothing worthy of interrogation lighting, and suddenly the house would light up.

Since Kate is my go-to IT solution, she and I started troubleshooting. We found it. One of her commands was too close to one of mine.

When she said, “Alexa, turn the lights on,” her lights came on.

So did mine… all of them. Her reverse command to turn them off was different than mine, so when I commanded mine back off, hers stayed on.

For months, possibly longer, my daughter had been turning on her lights and accidentally lighting up my entire house from wherever she was. I had been living in a haunted house with a cloud-based explanation.

Kate renamed her command to something more specific. We tested it. Her lights worked. My lights stayed off. Problem solved.

Except for Maddy.

Maddy is my teenage grandson, and teaching him to stop using the old command proved to be its own separate project.

Drifting off to sleep one night, all the lights came on again. Every single one.

I was startled awake, lying there in full daylight, wondering how many times one woman can be personally victimized by shared technology. I messaged Kate and asked if anyone over there had just told Alexa to turn the lights on.

Maddy had.

Of course he had.

Kate reminded him of the new command. Her house was supposed to use “power on” and “power down” now. That was the fix. That was the new system. The adults had solved the problem, and everyone simply needed to follow instructions.

About 30 minutes later, David came home, and I was explaining how we had finally figured it out. Kate’s old command had been turning my lights on. Her new command was supposed to keep the houses separate. I knew how the system was behaving now.

I also knew exactly what would happen.

So, I decided to test it, just for fun. I said, “Alexa, power down.”

All of Kate’s lights must have gone off, because a few seconds later, my phone lit up with a line of laughing emojis from Kate.

After several months of Kate lighting up my house from across town, it seemed only fair that I return the favor.

A little grace, a little grit, plenty of laughter,

~Stef