I first heard this sound sometime this evening, around 7 or 8pm. It's still going. Every 18 seconds, DING! It's the sound of a small bell ringing, just once. The best reference I can come up with is to an egg timer, or the timer of an old (pre-digital ) microwave. DING! It's not loud, it's just muffled, as though coming through the floor or a wall.
Well, I'm fairly sure it's not my hot water heater. The sound is fainter when I stand by the door to that appliance. The sound is louder when I'm standing in the middle of the kitchen. I know what it's not: my washing machine, dryer, refrigerator, microwave, toaster, A/C, furnace, or clocks.
I think the DING! is coming from my downstairs neighbor's apartment. But I can't imagine what is creating that noise. A demented egg-timer? Maybe they're thawing frozen bread in their old microwave? One slice at a time? Hey, some people are weird like that. But they could've thawed a few dozen loaves at this rate.
I don't hear anybody downstairs, and we're not on friendly terms - just tolerating each other as neighbors who have no common interests. Ideas? Wild guesses? Suggestions that will make me want to cower, shaking with fear, under my bed tonight?
I'm reminded of a story I read back in elementary school... The House with a Clock in Its Walls Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
Message waiting on the answering machine?
A haunted typewriter?
In one apartment we lived in, our neighbor's fire alarm ran low on batteries once and started beeping. Took us forever to figure out what it was. They had moved out, so the place was empty and locked up. We had to call our landlord at o'dark thirty in the morning to come and shut it off.
Posted by MandyM (Member # 8375) on :
A smoke alarm with almost dead batteries was my first thought too. Mine makes a definite beep; not a ding though.
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
Our smoke alarms beep, so I'm fairly sure it's not their smoke alarm. I've never heard of a smoke alarm with a bell, either. That would be a first.
I'll keep my ears open for sounds of typing, though. If I hear a typewriter going at 2AM, along with that bell, man, I'm outta here. Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
It's just your failing sanity. I wouldn't worry about it.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
Just think--you could be the star of a horror movie everyone's watching RIGHT NOW. And the killer is RIGHT BEHIND YOU. Every time you hear a ding, he ADVANCES ANOTHER STEP.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Maybe you're feeling guilty--"The Curious Tale of the Telltale Ding."
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
This reminds me of the revenge prank that -- someone I know, and maybe her now husband -- pulled on a raucous house of frat boys who had hosted one too many parties that lasted until 3am on a weeknight, spilling out onto the road and up to her house.
A few days later, they went to WalMart and cleared out all of the little alarm clocks on sale for 99 cents (about 4 dozen), set them to go off at [5 am], and tossed them under their crawlspace, near several different windows. They came with batteries. Loud little suckers with that metal bell on top, 48 going off all at once. Or so I heard.
I heard that the crawlspace looked pretty grimy, too.
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
CT, that's kinda funny.
rollainm, if it was my failing sanity, wouldn't I hear the sound in every room of the apartment?
At any rate, I don't hear it this morning.
Posted by dean (Member # 167) on :
You can buy a thing on thinkgeek that's designed to drive people nuts by intermittently making a noise.
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
No suggestions as to what it could have been.
However, I occasionally hear the sound of a ticking clock. In my old house, I figured it was a clock ticking as we had an old alarm clock that ticked. However, I still hear it sometimes even though we don't have any ticking clocks in the apartment, but only digital clocks.
I also sometimes hear bells, but I know what that is. I live right across the street from a CSU campus, and they have a carillon that strikes the hours. Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
quote:I felt that I must scream or die!—and now—again!—hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!— “Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks!—here, here!—it is the beating of his hideous heart!”
</Tell-Tale Heart>
(sorry, it's what this thread made me think of)
Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tstorm: Our smoke alarms beep, so I'm fairly sure it's not their smoke alarm. I've never heard of a smoke alarm with a bell, either. That would be a first.
PING, you're in mortal peril!
Posted by docmagik (Member # 1131) on :
I have this thing that happens to me a lot.
I'll be somewhere, like a store or something, and I'll start hearing either muffled music or muffled talking. Not loud enough to understand, but loud enough to hear.
And as I walk around to try to find it, the noise doesn't seem to get any louder. But it doesn't seem to get any quieter either. It's almost like it's following me from a great distance.
It's really weird and frustrating, and I eventually stop, unsure which direction to go.
But then I realize it's my iPod in my shirt pocket that's come on.
I am getting faster at realizing what it is, though.
Posted by Artemisia Tridentata (Member # 8746) on :
Back when I was closer to the median age of present company, we made a small variable oscilator, set it for a steady pitch high enough to be nondirectional, and hid it in a friend's dorm room. The resulting disarray took several days to remedy. Now I don't see it as particularly amusing. I have had a steady pitch, high enough to seem nondirectional, sounding in my own ears for several years now.
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
I understand that as hearing deteriorates, some people hear high pitched frequencies in their ears. But a bell? Every 18 seconds?
Farmgirl, I also thought of the Edgar Allen Poe story. Since I don't hide the bodies in the apartment below me, that's certainly not the source of the noise. Posted by Feer (Member # 9846) on :
We had a dishwasher that would Beep for no reason. It would beep when there was a load being washed and when the dishwasher was just sitting there. Thats what I first thought of. It took us a long time to figuer it out. But its a beep not a ding.
Posted by theCrowsWife (Member # 8302) on :
Approximately every fifteen minutes, my computer makes a noise like a muffled kazoo. I have no idea why. I only notice it if everything else is very quiet, so it took a while to figure out what was causing it.
--Mel
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
Could be a fan that's about to die. Sometimes computer fans start making strange noises before they cease operating completely.
That's my guess anyway. Posted by theCrowsWife (Member # 8302) on :
It's been doing it for at least three years. You'd think it would have died by now, if it was going to. My computer also occasionally says "clickbeepclick", maybe once every day or so. It's talkative.
--Mel
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
I still think it's a smoke alarm with an almost dead battery. This one's beep must sound more like a ding.
My refrigerator occasionally makes a weird popping noise like a 2 liter coke bottle that's been crushed popping back out to full size. I don't know what it is but I doubt it's good.
Posted by MandyM (Member # 8375) on :
Maybe from above the smoke alarm sounds like a ding rather than a beep.
Either that or it is an angel getting its wings.
Posted by Artemisia Tridentata (Member # 8746) on :
This year I have been trying to domesticate a couple of cats. One is successfully a pet. The other got out of the house last week, and is now playing with the neighborhood coyotes. In any case, to the present point. The unsuccessful cat used to sit at a floor level window and chirp from time to time. Her sound might well have been discribed as a DING. It took several weeks for me to discover where that sound was coming from. Have you a cat?
Posted by Eowyn-sama (Member # 11096) on :
I used to hear a low ringing noise every night that I happened to be awake at midnight. I didn't worry about it too much until it started following me around. Midnight at my apartment, midnight at my parent's house, and finally midnight while I was vacationing in Italy! I finally discovered that my ipod alarm had been set somehow, which was something I'd never considered, I didn't even know the silly things had alarms!
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
I have no cats. My neighbors should not have a cat, either, and I'm fairly sure they don't.
The smoke alarm theory sounds ok, and it's the only thing I've got to go on. The sound has stopped, I didn't hear anything last night. Perhaps they removed or replaced the battery. Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
Mystery solved.
I thought about hosting a little game of "Guess what the answer is," but we've already done that.
I came home from work, and the door to their apartment happened to be open. As I was opening my door, I heard that mystery bell sound again. I went back, found the neighbor just outside the door, and asked, "Hey, by the way, I heard this bell sound the other night - it wasn't disturbing me or anything - I just wondered what it was?"
"It's my dryer."
Apparently, the dryer has a broken timer and the bell sounds every 18 seconds while a load of laundry is drying. That would be amusing for about the first minute and extremely annoying thereafter. I'm glad it's their dryer and not mine. Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
Well, yeah, that was my next guess.
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
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