Kinda longish, but I guess you need the backstory.
I have a gas fireplace in the living room. It turns on via an electrical switch. On the same circuit and in the same box are switches for the fireplace blower and an overhead light for the fireplace. I had the propane company out to do a check because the fireplace was randomly turning itself off every 15-60 or so minutes. The tech found some weird voltage drops in the thermopile, so replaced that. Afterwards, though not as often, it still went out.
At this point he figured maybe something was wrong with the electrical switch and suggested replacing it (they can't touch that stuff). So I got a new one and did the replacement. Here is my issue. I am scared of electricity, so I always shut off breakers before I do something like a switch swap. I did so here. However, as I was disconnecting the wires from the old switch (rocker type) I accidentally flipped the switch. The fireplace came on. I checked the blower and light switches, and they did not come on. So I took my non-contact tester to it. It is "green light safe" red light with beep not safe". The red light came on sorta kinda without a beep.
My thought is there is a low voltage "leak" if that makes sense? Same thing happened after I installed the new switch and tested to see if it would still do it. So is this something with the circuit breaker going bad, or something else? I was reading that some switches are wired to use more than one breaker, but I don't think that's the case here, especially since the blower and light stayed off. I would imagine it must not take a lot of juice to make the fireplace go from pilot to "on".
Anyway, as an electricity idiot, I am confused. On the bright side, the swap did fix the fireplace issue and it has remained on as long as the switch is on.