Picture this: it's 2 a.m., the rest of the neighborhood is asleep, and the only thing casting light across the backyard isn't the porch lamp; it's the headlights of a parked Cadillac Escalade, turning on and off like a cosmic Morse code.
This eerie scenario isn't the plot of a low-budget sci-fi flick. It's an actual automotive mystery that left both owner and mechanic scratching their heads. Until the culprit turned out not to be paranormal, but electromagnetic interference from a nearby power line.
The Trouble Starts at Night
A new mom reached out to a mechanic after noticing something bizarre: her Escalade would power its lights on and off overnight without anyone near the car. She'd wake up to her backyard bathed in high-beam glow, then plunged back into darkness. The pattern repeated night after night for about two weeks straight.
Imagine trying to debug that! No one touching the SUV, no security footage of a prankster; just the luxurious all-American SUV performing its own private light show. It's enough to make you wonder if the thing has a ghost in its circuitry. But, as it turns out, this mystery had a very real-world explanation.
Mechanics Hit a Wall — Literally
When the Escalade was brought into the shop, the problem immediately disappeared. That's the nightmare scenario for technicians: a car that only misbehaves in its owner's driveway and nowhere else. No warning lights. No diagnostic codes. Nothing. It's like the car itself played psychic games.
Even seasoned technicians were thrown off. It's notoriously tricky to track down electrical gremlins when they don't happen in a controlled environment. Things like loose ground wires, bad modules, or weird sensor glitches usually throw codes. But this? Zero codes. Just unexplained headlights.
Then came the service manager's off-the-wall question: "Do you live near a power line?" That might sound like a stretch — after all, what do power lines have to do with car headlights turning on at night? But this manager had seen a similar issue with a Porsche previously.
Turns out, electromagnetic fields (EMF) from damaged or malfunctioning overhead electrical infrastructure can induce signals in nearby electronics. Modern vehicles, especially high-end ones like the Escalade, have computers that control nearly every function, from lights to infotainment systems, and can be sensitive to EM interference.
When the mechanic asked the owner about nearby power lines, she confirmed there was an electrical line running right over her property. Sure enough, not long after this discovery, the utility company repaired a blown transformer on that line. Once that fix was made… the nighttime light show stopped dead.
Electronics, Environment, and the Unexpected
It's a fascinating intersection of technology and environment. We're used to thinking of cars as isolated systems, but the truth is that modern vehicles are massive networks of sensors and ECUs (electronic control units). These networks can sometimes pick up stray electrical noise from outside sources, including radio towers, power lines, and yes, transformers.
In this case, the interference was strong enough to be interpreted by the Escalade's control systems as a legitimate instruction to switch on exterior lighting. Little wonder the system behaved like it had a mind of its own: from the SUV's electronics perspective, it wasn't "weird noise," it was just another signal .
What makes this story especially interesting isn't just the oddball nature of the glitch, but how it underscores something every car owner — and tech enthusiast — should remember: not all vehicle problems originate inside the vehicle.
Electromagnetic interference isn't something most of us think about when the headlights come on without warning or a gadget misbehaves. But as cars become more computerized and more sensitive, the world around them, from faulty power lines to high-power transmitters, becomes part of the troubleshooting landscape.
So next time your SUV decides to put on its own light show, maybe don't call the ghost hunters first — ask yourself: do I live near a power line?
