Minor spoilers for some events - I don't give exact details, but just a head's up for anyone who wants to avoid them entirely.

I'm REALLY hoping this experience was some kind of unintentional bug or bizarre one-off glitch, because I had to lose progress and was very frustrating.

I was close to day 45 when I realized I couldn't save nor could I go to the pause menu - which I usually don't have an issue with - spooky events and all - but it became an issue when the "no saving/no pausing" thing continued for a very long period of time. I assume it's cause there was some kind of event happening, as I've recently had some kind of purple lights in the sky appear last night, but I don't know if that's actually the cause. 
One of the things I also suspected to be the culprit was the thing in the lockers that appears and then quickly vanishes. I checked all of the lockers in the house, and yet the problem with saving persisted after checking all of them.
I'd also checked all of the servers (I'll be checking the transformers as soon as I get the chance), assuming there might be an event that would trigger and end my problem - but I had no such luck.

It got to the point where I couldn't sleep and I couldn't do the servers because I was below the required limit of stamina. Eventually decided to just kill myself via the tower and lose the 10-20 minutes or so. Dunno if the issue is still present in my current game or not - I'd need to play it to find out. Might try testing it out again tomorrow night, but I might not. Really frustrated me - not because it happened, but because I'm mainly concerned that was intentional in one way or another. 

If it was a bug or some screw-up, okay, that can be fixed, whatever. Losing that progress sucks, but I'll live.
My actual worry is that this sort of thing will happen again - I know for a fact something similar happened with an event in the garage, something to do with the ATV. (This one was a me problem.) I don't necessarily have a problem with this kind of system when monsters/creatures are around, but I'd also suggest that if a player doesn't find/"interact" with an event after some amount of time, it should go away on it's own (depending on what it is, of course). Say, just for example, if there's gonna be something in or near the entryway of the building and the "no save/menu/sleep" thing goes off, then I think that's more than justified - most players will go near the entry and exits of the building, or at least look in the general direction of the entryways. With any garage events, I think it's pretty reasonable to make those "required" (in a sense) since it's an important part of the base.
However, as another example, if there's something in the basement, I would argue that kind of event should be on a "timer" of sorts - I don't imagine most players go down there that often, or at least not as much late-game. It's a very specific place to go - during a spooky event, I'm not going down in the basement, I'm most likely going to be looking outside or going to exit the building to investigate. So if there are events that result in the player NEEDING to see them, I would argue they should be in places that the player is likely to go to or will have reason to go to.

I realize that this might seem a bit off-topic or out of left field, but when I have a problem with a game's mechanics, how the dev implements the mechanics can make or break my interest in it - even something as simple as not being able to save for a certain reason can result in me dropping a game like a rock if I think it's annoying or implemented poorly. That does not mean, however, I think this currently has a poorly implemented save system - quite the opposite, I think it's probably one of the best versions of the "save basically whenever you want" - I just also want it to be emphasized (even though I imagine the dev is fully cognizant and completely aware of the fact) that the saving system and events could be a problem if not implemented with as much consideration and deliberate care as possible.