Carrie

by Stephen King

An ancient pinball machine that always tilted on the third ball stuttered lights on and off in the back beside the rack of dirty books.

My brain is cluttered with a fair amount of useless knowledge about the internals of pinball machines, and I can’t think of any failure mode that would cause a tilt when a specific ball was in play. I suspect Mr. King hadn’t intended me to get hung up on that, though.