It's been weeks since the residents of North Olmsted, Ohio began finding their car key fobs had mysteriously stopped working, but now the residents finally know what happened.
If the city had been a part of an X-Files episode or a Stephen King novel, the culprit would have been an outcast with psychic powers or an alien visitor.
Instead, the powerful force messing with cars and garages has been traced to a local inventor who had no idea about the havoc he's caused.
A Force Blocking Wireless Devices
One day in late April, wireless garage door openers and car key fobs in North Olmsted suddenly began acting up or stopped functioning entirely. While an isolated case may have been understandable, the puzzling issues with these specific types of devices occurred in multiple neighborhoods across the suburban community.
A number of residents report their fobs working elsewhere such as the supermarket and then mysteriously stop working upon getting back to North Olmsted.
Given that the issue is plaguing so many of the locals, there have been many theories about what's causing it. Some speculate that the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport could be behind the malfunctioning devices, while others assumed the NASA facility a few miles away is at fault.
Chris Glassburn, the North Olmsted city councilman, told WKYC that he initially believed that the issue stemmed from utility companies' equipment, but crews from both AT&T and First Energy checked out the city and confirmed that there were no problems with their utilities.
Since wireless key fobs and garage openers are radio transmitters, Glassburn pointed out that something powerful must have been jamming their radio frequencies.
Amateur and experienced investigators dropped by the North Olmsted to see if they can figure out the source of the issue, but although they all agreed that something must be blocking the radio frequencies, no one could figure out what it was.
Mystery Solved
Finally, Glassburn announced that city officials have finally discovered the source of the issue last Saturday, May 4.
It turned out a local inventor put together a homemade battery-operated device designed to let him know whenever there's someone upstairs while he's working in his basement. The device alerted him by turning off a light.
The unnamed resident did not know that his device was rendering car key fobs and garage openers all over the city useless.
"The way he designed it, it was persistently putting out a 315 megahertz signal," Glassburn explained to New York Times, referring to a frequency that a lot of car fobs and garage door openers use. "There was no malicious intent of the device."
