This happened a couple years ago when I was doing remote support for a small accounting firm.

I get a ticket from someone, I'll call her Carol, saying her laptop turns on by itself in the middle of the night. She'd come in every morning to find it running, sometimes with a browser open on a page she didn't leave there. She was genuinely unsettled. Used the word "haunted" in the ticket without any apparent irony.

I remoted in and started going through the basics. Scheduled tasks, wake timers, nothing obvious. Asked her when it started. "About three weeks ago, right after we got the new cleaning crew."

I stopped typing for a second.

Asked her where she keeps the laptop overnight. On her desk, she says. Asked if anyone else has access to the office after hours. Just the cleaning crew, she says.

Background time. The overnight cleaners would move chairs and equipment around to vacuum, then put everything back. Standard stuff. I asked Carol to tell me exactly where on her desk the laptop usually sat. Directly in front of a wall outlet, as it turned out. The cleaning crew was almost certainly clipping the power button with the vacuum or the cord while working around her desk, turning it on, and just leaving it running.

The browser tabs were Carol herself. She'd been coming in early to check on it and forgetting what she'd opened.

Told her to move the laptop six inches to the left.

Ticket closed. No ghosts invloved.