Here's a good Halloween mystery for you. On Tuesday morning I saw a spooky apparition...the vague, spectral shape of 15 rep points off in the distance in a dark corner, that vanished before my eyes as I approached to get a closer look--without leaving a trace!   Despite its rapid dissolution into nothingness, I managed to snap a picture of it, and I'm hoping some paranormal investigator (or maybe a mod) can explain how it is that I have a picture proving that it was not my imagination, despite the total lack of physical evidence.  Here's the ghost story: When I first looked at SO on Tuedsday morning, I saw the this banner at the top of a previously open tab:    My rep had been at 2,580 just before I went to bed the night before, so naturally I figured an answer must have been accepted. However, the very next SO page I looked at (I don't recall what, just some other page) showed that the rep was back down to 2,580. I figured there must have been an accept/unaccept. I took a look at my profile to find out which answer so I could see if it required further attention. To my utter befuddlement, the profile not only showed no record of an accept/unaccept, it showed no reputation changes at all for the day:     I'm on Eastern Standard Time, so when I went to bed with the rep at 2,580, it was already about 6 hours into this zero-change day (which in fact remains at zero, with no indication of any changes at all).  After reading "", I checked out  , but it shed no light on this eerie enigma:    BTW, in case anyone jumps to assume that any question having to do with lost rep is a complaint or a lament, I want to be clear: This isn't "hey, no fair, I want my rep back, boo-hoo!" I don't necessarily know that there was ever any reason for the rep to have gone up in the first place, since it appeared as mysteriously as it disappeared, and no clues were left behind. But I'm the curious sort and I like to understand how things work, especially if I see something that seems out of whack. If I were a cat I'd be dead. (Unless I had black fur, in which case this would be my big night.)  So, what happened? It it possible for someone to accept/unaccept fast enough that it doesn't leave any record? And if so, why would I see the rep change in the banner? Or did I just see the ghost of an accepted answer long deceased that rose from the dead to practice haunting in preparation for tonight?
5109
When I visit the reputation tab of my profile, I see a lot of stuff. I can make out some of it, but not all.   What do all the event types mean? Why do some events show an odd reputation gain or not show any reputation change at all? Why are some events sometimes highlighted in yellow? My reputation suddenly dropped, but I don't see anything. What happened? Why do some events disappear from my reputation history?
2736
I was reviewing some stuff today, and I came across a rather ridiculous answer (see screenshot). I wanted to see the question and other answers, so I clicked on the link, and found that the answer I was reviewing was in fact deleted. Could someone take a look at it?
66474
This is actually about my sister-in-law who lives in Georgia. She just received a "cashiers check" for $2395 from a company in Indiana. It looks like this:    She said that she has been doing "mystery shopper" work for a company and thought that this would be payment for that, but that usually the payments she received for that work were just a couple of hundreds of dollars.  She said she had not done that much of that "mystery shopper" work that she would have expected to receive anything close to the amount on this check.  She was asking me about it but I thought that if she does not know the sender, perhaps this could be some kind of new scam and she should check with the local police (which she said she was going to do).  Anyway I wanted to ask here if anyone knows of a scam like this? Considering that the check here seems to be a "cashiers check", how would a scam like this even work?  Update: I just found out that there was indeed a letter included with the check (and it seems to have instructions similar to those mentioned in the answer by "BrenBarn"). This is indeed related to that "mystery shopper" work. Turns out the reason she was not sure was because the sender of that check has a different company name than the company she normally dealt with. Here is a part of the letter:
9164
There has been a change in our DB and one of the SPs has been deleted. We have no idea who did it or when.  Is there any way to find it out? Or enabling an option to be able to track this in future?
87099
I noticed a really huge, beautiful web on my porch last week, and tonight, I discovered its resident. I'm thinking it's an Araneus diadematus (Cross Orbweaver), but I was hoping for some confirmation.   Can anyone confirm this or offer a better suggestion?
34907
Am I so myopic as to not see the obvious link somewhere? I came looking for it immediately after seeing King Atwood's post but couldn't find it.  It seems appropriate to just put the list on the "reputation" tab of user profile, or at least a prominent link.
102841
I've no idea if there's a suitable Stack Exchange for poltergeists. It appears to be software, hardware or virus related, so I thought I'd try here, seeing as Ghostbusters is just a film, so I can't call them.  I'm not going mad, and this isn't a joke.  There's what appears to be a radio stream coming out of my speakers, except I can only hear it when the volume knob is turned down to the min setting whilst the speakers are on, which makes no sense. Sometimes it's French, which also makes little to no sense.  The speakers are Logitech 5.1s, I forget the model number, and I'm running XP 64bit. If that makes a difference.  I'd suspect it could be some sort of crazy virus, but I've been randomly killing processes whilst the poltergeist is active and it hasn't killed it, so I'm not sure about that.  Once again, I'm perfectly sane and this really isn't a joke. Perhaps other people have had this problem but have been too afraid of the reaction to ask anyone (please don't have me committed to an insane asylum).  Googling for strange noises coming from speakers didn't really get me anywhere. Has anyone heard of a virus that can do this and affect the volume controls on the hardware in that way?
110399
Just ran across , which was bumped by  for having been unanswered. However, it was answered by Jeff (no upvotes), along with a  tag. I gave an upvote so that it wouldn't be bumped again. But, Community should ignore those posts, since they have an official answer.  Possible exceptions, as pointed out by random, are the statuses planned and deferred.  Statuses bydesign, completed and declined should be ignored by Community.
86943
I don't know if this is a bug. It could be, or there might be a simple explanation.   I was visiting a user's profile because they had become uncharacteristically quiet when I noticed the following. The user's last visit is recorded as being March 17         However, when I visited their answer page I saw the following        Is there an explanation for this (seemingly) odd behaviour? How is it possible to post an answer seven days later without that visit being recorded?
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(and everyone else's) is slightly misleading. Underneath my main account, it shows my Physics.SE badges and my total network rep. To me, it looks as if I have 13k rep on Phy.SE (w00t!)--which I don't.  Anyone think that it should be slightly clearer which is which?
42180
I recently filed what I initially thought was a bug, but was mostly user error here on Meta, and tweeted about it. Once it was pointed out to me that it was user error about 2 hours after I posted it, I deleted the question.  I've just been awarded the  for that deleted question, which while nice from a badge point of view feels fraudulent, as most people would see the question as a broken link:
48562
So when we view reputation, there is graph view. However, it seems to be off by a day. Here's what I mean:   I'm sure 70 + 20 + 15 is not 15. Its 105, which is what we see below:   And 40 + 10 is NOT 105, unless you did  :)     Anyways 40 + 10 is 50:   So yeah. Did you do what that post on codegolf says? Devs better fix that :)
105021
Well, I already searched meta as well as cleared my browser cache.  I realize this may be a SO cache problem, but it still seems kind of strange to me.    The deleted question is (assuming it still exists).  Shouldn't deleted questions only be visible to 10k users?  I'm only at 2k.
65247
This all started from the day before yesterday. I logged into my account and found out 2 reputation was gone. I checked my reputation changes, but didn't find any record. The same thing occurred yesterday and today.  What is wrong?
56844
A  appears to have been deleted, and deletion is attributed to a moderator,  deleted by Sathyajith Bhat♦ 12 hours ago , however,  (however, they did previously (unsuccessfully) tried migrating it to another site in the network where they're also a moderator, but migration was rejected by another moderator, it was then on hold on webapps, and then the hold was removed, which was supposed to have been the end of it).  Can someone explain what's going on here?  And restore the question that clearly wasn't meant to have been deleted, was a HNQ, and has 75 votes on the question, plus 74 votes on the top answer, and 56 on second answer; and 19 on third?  There's a lot of links to this question, too, and now they're all broken, making SE look like a community hostile to a popular question ontopic for the site it was on.
2056
While browsing Stack Overflow, I noticed that I lost a lot of reputation:        Is this serial downvoting? Will it be corrected by a rep-recalculation? How often are those done?    Here's a second instance:
96379
This has happened in a couple of different places on my server. Does anyone have any idea what causes it to happen?  Some facts about the phenomenon:   other players on the server can't see them, only I can other players can walk out onto the ground that's supposed to be there animals can also walk out onto the missing ground, but their movement becomes sporadic several holes can appear very close to one another after leaving for some time, and then returning, the hole may be gone mobs can sometimes be seen walking along the bottom of the recess there appears to be a room (possibly a dungeon) suspended in the middle of the second one these are incredibly creepy   I haven't been brave enough to venture out onto one yet, but will try and post results.  Edit: It turns out when you fully jump into one, you fall the length of a block, and then you're pushed back up again. This happens repeatedly, and very quickly, so that you get stuck midair and have to /tp to get out.  Also, the hole in the second picture came back, but there is no longer a big room at the bottom.