Okay, so last afternoon, I put the detergent in the washer, then started it up and put my clothes in. I go back to Lusternia, or whatever else I'm doing. Five minutes later, I hear this horrible rumbling, then this loud clanging, so I run over to the washer and I see that it's shifted at least a foot away from its original position - and it's shaking like mad. I immediately stopped it and set it on slow.

Has this happened to anyone else? It never happened to me before, and I was kind of freaked out.

Your clothes were probably off-balance, meaning there was more on one side of the washer than the other. If not, then you have a possessed washer.

That's never happened before, and I almost never pay attention to the balance. It might have been both.

You're probably luck it hasn't happened many times before.

Mine decides that the laundry looks better as a swimming pool once in a while. A very soapy swimming pool.

I've had it happen, always when I've had a big load that's gotten off-balance. Far more common with older washing machings I've noticed.

We had a washer for 13 or something years, and it seldom made a pool of the laundry .

I've had more problems with driers over the past couple of years. Ignoring ones that flat out didn't dry, I've had clothes burnt (one the drier overheated to the point where it melted the plastic bar inside it that "tumbled" the clothes) in them twice in the past 18 months.