PORTSMOUTH, Va. - Something was in the air earlier this week.
"When I try to leave, I get to my car, I try to use my entry and nothing."
Sheila Figueroa's problem soon became her son's.
"My son pulls up, he's in his car, as soon as he pulls up I noticed him standing in front of his car pushing his remote. I said, 'What's wrong' and he said, 'My remote's not working. It was working a little while ago.'"
The invisible force wasn't just outside her home. It was affecting her entire Portsmouth neighborhood.
"I kept noticing alarms going off all over the place."
Portsmouth Police officers were experiencing the problem too, according to police spokesperson Jan Westerbeck.
"The remote unlocking device they have on their key rings was not working."
Whatever was in the air affected employees at WAVY-TV. So we made some calls to the military, surrounding shipyards, even the power company. All said the same thing, it wasn't them.
Ten On Your Side turned to local expert Dr. Kyo Song for a lesson on electro-magnetic interference. The Norfolk State professor says whatever it was had a frequency close enough to the remotes to render them useless. In our high-tech world you can expect more moments of silence.
"You see the wireless phone and it generates to megahertz, to now gigahertz level, and everything is heading that direction, but nobody is filtering," says Dr. Song.
As the saying goes, good things come to those who wait. Two days later, everything was back to normal.
(Original headline: Keyless remote mystery )
