I set my camera to P mode, and the over/under exposure scale showed up with any number of bars and blinking (+) and (-) indicators. I thought the camera was broken. Took both batteries out overnight, and voila! everything was perfect. It started again today. Oh, no! send it back to Pentax! Wait for weeks while they fix it!
Then it registered - my k10d was telling me that I had bracketing on, and was showing me the brackets on the scale.
Sho' nuff, I had 5 at 2 stop intervals set. Turned it off, and the scales went away.