Yeah Micah, puzzling indeed. I'm not quite at the point that we'd reached with Randy and the mysterious goings on in his HT when I suggested that he call in a priest for an exorcism, but we're getting there.
Edit: deleted a comment about doing the battery test for polarity, since I now see that you've done it and found no problem there. Shows that in audio we can't trust either our ears or our eyes! One step closer to an exorcism?