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May 26, 1988

GHOST IN THE MACHINE

By CBR Staff Writer

Experts are said to be completely baffled by a haunted Amstrad PC1512 personal computer, fast becoming the current Amstrad Computer Show’s prize exhibit. Office staff at a firm of architects in Stockport eventually refused to work with the machine, which groaned and glowed and even switched itself on, when completely unplugged from its wall socket. Finally, the company turned to the Amstrad PC magazine, fortuitously published in nearby Macclesfield, for help. The magazine’s editor, Ken Hughes, rose to the challenge and monitored the ghostly machine’s activities – via a video camera – for some three months. The tapes are currently on show, beside their subject, at the Amstrad exhibition: Ken Hughes is believed to be calling for an exorcist. So awesome is the machine’s reputation that the psychic press, invited to the Alexandra Palace-based show are conspicuous by their absence: an exhibition spokeswoman said she could only assume that they were too frightened to attend. Since arriving in London, the machine has been relatively well behaved: currently both the power switch and the disk drive lights are blazing away, but as yet, no groans have been reported. Some supernatural scoffers have dared to dismiss the whole affair as a calculated crowd-pulling exercise: we only hope they are not forced to recant, once back at their screens……

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