BS: Things that go bump in the night.

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Apr 01 - 01:10 PM

That's part of it Bert!

Yup, early abuse can really suck things up later on!

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: sophocleese
Date: 13 Apr 01 - 11:17 AM

One night when I was in my mid teens I was half-woken by some loud bang or crash. I lay in bed and waited for it to repeat but nothing happened so I went back to sleep. At the breakfast table I mentioned this and fiound that everyone else in the house had also been woken by it and also gone back to sleep. We shrugged got into the car wnd went into town for our weekly market and library run. When we came back we found our road closed with cop cars, a tow truck and various other vehicles parked around. It turned out that in the night some thieves had gotten into a store in a nearby town and taken the safe. They'd loaded it onto the back of a truck and driven away but had been seen so they were chased by the police around several back roads for a while until they came to our road when they decided to dump the safe down the side of the hill. That had woken us up. What really annoyed us was that if we had investigated we would have found the safe and gotten the reward but instead it went to a passing cyclist.

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Sarah the flute
Date: 13 Apr 01 - 09:12 AM

When I was staying on the West Coast of Ireland we decided to walk to the local pub about a mile down this country lane. As we passed the cemetary we heard this strange wailing sound which was a bit eerie but carried on our way pretending to be very brave. We had just started down the hill when to our horror on the opposite side of the dip, silently, there came gliding towards us this old man's head and then the wailing sound started again. We were scared stiff by this point but after a few seconds (that seemed like eternity) it turned out to be an old chap on a bicycle with his torch stuck in the front basket so that it shone on his face. We breathed a sigh of relief as the wailing noise stopped when he reached the bottom of the hill so we assumed it had been his brakes. We laughed nervously said hello and said we were sorry we'd thought he was a ghost but I think he thought we were just mad. We had a good laugh about it and carried on down the road. Suddenly the wailing noise started again this time even closer like it was alongside. We didn't stop to find out but bolted to the pub. Only there did the landlord tell us that what we heard had been a kind of plover and the noise was it's wings beating to warn predators away from the nest. Needless to say someone gave us a lift home - what might we have heard after 4 pints of guinness ???

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Bert
Date: 13 Apr 01 - 01:16 AM

I got my car back from the mechanic one time and heard this strange bonking noise while I was driving. I couldn't figure out what it was. It got worse and worse, then a wheel fell off.

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Bert
Date: 13 Apr 01 - 01:14 AM

So THAT'S why you're so crazy WYSI? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: wysiwyg
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 10:36 PM

If you tie a string to a bearing beam under the house next door (or even to a window frame I think) you can play it like a violin string. Inside the house it sounds like hell has come to call.... oooooeeeeeeoooooeeeeerrroooo.......

Ask Hardi, he can tell you all about it.

Me, all I know is a rat chewing through our wall a little at a time for weeks until we finally baited the attic space.

Oh and the fella whose apartment I stayed at one night in my yoot, very respectful of all life... including the MILLIONS OF COCKROACHES that crawled all over me in my SLEEP! I had thought it was bad childhood memories flash-backing-- I had a young male babysitter who would sneak into our apartment late at night and do HORRIBLE THINGS to me when I was too little to speak, and he'd say those tickles were just bugs crawling on me when I woke up-- "Don;t bother calling yer mom either, I killed her, the hallway is full of blood, don't go out there! And don't get out of bed either, the bedframe is ELECTRIFIED and you'll FRY!"

Oh! Now we are full circle back to Hardi! One of his brothers held another captive in a bedroom for hours, telling him he'd electrified the floor and it was going to fry him if he walked on it! I guess Nature finally called and the charade eneded.

THEN THERE WAS THE NIGHT BISKIT DIVED INTO MY SLEEPING BAG! But that was just a Tavern event.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Helen
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 08:38 PM

Jingle,

That reminds me about when I got my car back from the mechanic once. Every time I made a left turn there was a very loud squawking-chirping noise coming from the left hand side of the dashboard. I thought there was a cricket or some other insect stuck in the air vent.

When I got home I checked in the air vent with the torch, couldn't see anything, so I checked the glovebox. The push button personal alarm I had in there - forgotten it was there - was lying in a position so that every time I went left it pushed the button. I had told the mechanic that the part which needed to be replaced was in the glovebox so he had moved everything around to find it.

Helen

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Jingle
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 01:26 PM

I used to drive an old Allegro and one night there was an alarming loud knocking noise everytime I turned left. It sounded just like somebody knocking on the car door. Spooky! Panicking, I found a garage that was open and after checking the engine, all the bearings, etc., the mechanic said he could find nothing wrong - except maybe it might help if I took the can of WD40 out of the glove compartment.

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: GUEST,Wavestar
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 08:37 AM

To relate this back to music just a little bit - has anyone else heard Bill Staines' story before he sings "All God's Critters" on some early album? We always had a tape copy when I was a kid, and he tells a wonderful story about going camping, and hearing this noise outside the tent. He thinks it couold be anything up to aliens, but (like Rollo) it's a hedgehog. It's a wonderful story, told in his typical off beat humour. If would fit right in here, except it works better heard than read.

-J

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: JudeL
Date: 12 Apr 01 - 07:41 AM

Gee thanks Dave, you silver tongued devil you - nice to know who your friends are ...Moooo

But I think it had a lot more to do with the fact that
1) my mam had never before lived in a rural area, and
2) she was more asleep than awake

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: ddw
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 08:31 PM

Opps, that was me — forgot to reset the cookie.

ddw

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 08:28 PM

Gee, Jude — not many kids sound enough like cows in labour for their mother to be fooled.....

:>) david

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Mr Red
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 06:39 PM

Years ago, in the days when alarm/clock/radios were just a glimmer in an electronics engineers imagination I connected up a radio to a cooker clock to wake me up.
Several mornings I awoke a minute before the alarm and knew what song would be playing. I thought I had developed telepaphy (radiopathy ?) until one day the next door neighbours' had their radio on just a tad louder.
A local brand of cider is called "Woodpecker" and it makes me feel like I have been banging my head all night when I wake up.
real woodpeckers have a shock absorber between the bill & the substantial skull.

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Ebbie
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 01:31 PM

This didn't happen in the night but it certainly had enough adrenalin pumping to qualify:

Shortly after moving onto rural property I was clearing brush one day when I heard the deep-throated voice of a man in distress: HAAAALP coming from a distance. I listened from different points until there was no doubt in my mind- it was coming from the place next to mine, down by the river about a quarter mile away: There was a man caught in the river!

As I ran through the woods to help, I was going through what I must do- get a long branch to extend to him, (there should be some loose stuff on the river bank); should I swing by the neighbor's house for help? No, that was uphill and would take that much longer; what if the man had a broken leg or worse, a broken back and was in the river? Maybe I could secure him and go for help- if someone was home in the house...

As I got close enough to the river to start looking for where he must be, I saw that the neigbor's brainless sheep were undisturbed by the commotion; they were grazing along the riverbank, completely oblivious to the emergency. Then the old ram raised his head and bawled a last mournful HAAAALP.

Ebbie

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Lyrical Lady
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 01:00 PM

In the middle of this particular night, not only were things going bump ... but crash, bang, boom and grind. Scared out of my wits, I gathered enough courage to get up and see what was happening on the back deck. As I peered out the sliding door, I could see that this huge buck had gotten his rack tangled in a fancy iron chair and he was desperately trying to shake it loose. I frightened him when I opened the door and he trotted off with this chair attached to his head! Luckily, he was able to shake it off before he cleared the fence. What a 'rack' et....LL

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Pseudolus
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 12:06 PM

This is almost the opposite of "things that go bump in the night" but a couple years back my wife and I were sleeping and in that haze when something has woken you up, I heard a sound like a plane taking off. It came and went (to me) in an instant. I asked my wife if she heard it, she said yeah, it was kinda weird, and then we both went back to sleep. as it turns out, a tornado had sprung up traveling right by our house. several trees were uprooted, one just missing my neighbors house waking up the entire neighborhood, except of course for us. While the entire neighborhood came out of their houses like the munchkins welcoming Dorothy to the land of Oz, we slept through (almost!) the entire thing!!

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: GUEST,Matt_R
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 11:54 AM

I would sure like to bump in the night!

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: mousethief
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 11:44 AM

Not long after my maternal grandmother died, my mom experienced a lot of weird phenomena. She would hear her brother calling her name even though he lives 50 miles away; the doors would slam shut even though all the windows were closed and there was no draft in the house. Finally the bathroom sink exploded after she was brushing her hair over it and had just turned around. While she might have been imagining the voices and the doors, the sink definitely needed replacement.

A few weeks later it stopped as suddenly as it had started.

Alex

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: JudeL
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 10:14 AM

My mother tells a story about when my brother sister & I were all small . Shortly after we had moved house, she woke one night thinking she heard one of us calling out for her. So she checked on each of us and we were all fast asleep - then she heard the sound again, "maaa Maaaa " and now that she was fully awake realised that it wasn't coming from the house at all but came from the farm next door where, the cows were in labour !

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: JudeL
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 10:14 AM

My mother tells a story about when my brother sister & I were all small . Shortly after we had moved house, she woke one night thinking she heard one of us calling out for her. So she checked on each of us and we were all fast asleep - then she heard the sound again, "maaa Maaaa " and now that she was fully awake realised that it wasn't coming from the house at all but came from the farm next door where, the cows were in labour !

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Nancy King
Date: 11 Apr 01 - 12:50 AM

When I was about 10 years old, I was awakened about 5 am one summer Sunday morning by a knocking sound and a little voice calling, "Nancy! Na-a-an-cee!" It sounded like my 3-year-old brother Andy, but I couldn't see him. He kept knocking and calling, though, so I finally got up and went looking for him. He waasn't in my room, or in the hall, or even in his room. As I was coming back into my room I finally saw him -- outside my open window, looking in through the screen. Our two bedrooms, with a bathroom between, were on the second floor, with the windows forming one very long dormer. Below the dormer was a bit of steep roof, and a rain gutter. Then a long drop to the shrubbery below. Andy had climbed out his window and scooted along the gutter till he got to mine.

When I spotted him, he said, "Hi, Nancy! Get me in!" But I couldn't get close enough to the window because of some big stuff in front of it (remember I was only 10), and told him to go back to the bathroom window and I'd get him in there, which I did. Then I gave him a scolding and maybe even a forbidden spank, sent him back to bed, and went back to bed myself.

Later that morning, at the breakfast table, I related this tale to my parents. My Dad had a forkful of eggs halfway to his mouth, which became suspended in mid-air as I told the story. When I finished, he put the fork down, got up without a word, fetched the hammer, went upstairs, and nailed the screens shut. They stayed that way till the house was sold some 30 years later.

Cheers, Nancy

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: GUEST,#1
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 11:52 PM

Geilterposts- pogo sticks for hyperactive spirits.

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: ddw
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 11:41 PM

The Yorkshire Tornado and I moved into a house about 11 years ago in a quiet neighborhood in Windsor. Shortly thereafter, I began hearing a thrumming noise periodically — sometimes faintly, sometimes quite loudly. Checked local roads, rail lines, even nightclubs — couldn't find any reasonable source. Sometimes Joyce could hear it when I did, sometimes she couldn't. I heard it often enough so I think she started to think I was a little barmy.

The noise continued for years. It would come and go all through the spring, summer and fall, but I never heard it in winter.

Finally, about two years ago, we were having a late-night gab with friends whose house is about 100 yards from the Detroit River and the thrumming started, quite loudly. I stopped the conversation, asked if others could hear it.

Our host — who is almost deaf as a post without his hearing aid — said "Oh, that's just a ship going up the river. The screws send shock waves into the bank and Windsor's good old clay acts like a drum."

Some drum — our house is about a mile in a straight line from the river.

david

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 09:13 PM

When my parents were visiting my moms home town in Europe dad walked over to the cemetery while mom was chatting with some school friends. As he entered the old cemetery there was no one around and he looked straight ahead through a gate at a headstone (since it was quite old there were many that were leaning in all directions). Suddenly the tombstone he was looking at slowly tilted upright with a creaking noise about 5 inches to one side and just as quickly bounced back. My father did a double take and suddenly had the hair rising on his back. He is quite a logical person and doesnt really believe in ghosts etc. And he stood there staring for a minute the tombstone moved again. He thought to himself, I know Im old but Im not that stupid, I must be seeing things. As he slowly entered the gate he noticed a little man that had been out of sight partially hidden by the gate and the fact that the ground sloped downhill. The man was trying to straghten out the headstone with a lever. Apparently hed been hired to take care of the cemetery. Anyway they had a good laugh about it and it turns out he knew my mothe as a kid. petr

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Rollo
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 07:07 PM

Years ago I woke up my family due to the heavy, booted steps sounding from the wooden veranda outside. Someone moved very slowly from window to window. Then we heard a very, very bad cough, and the heavy booted steps moved around the corner of the house to the backdoor.

When my father gripped something heavy (a firepoker, if I remember right)and illuminated the garden with the flashlight, we saw an old hedgehog... producing incredible noises...

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Helen
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 06:47 PM

The Mudcat weird timing is happening again. Why this thread now?

Last night I got up in the middle of the night to let the cat out and when I opened the back door I could hear hubby's car alarm going off. It's one of those repeated electronic sounds, like a loud but melodic beeping, with two notes.

I grabbed his keys and ran out of the door, thinking that the neighbours would be ready to kill us by now, with this thing going off for who-knows-how-long in the middle of the night. When I got out the back door and turned right to head for the street I suddenly realised that the noise was down the back yard.

I went down to investigate. Yesterday, here in Newcastle, east coast Oz, we had a full day of heavy, persistent rain, which we haven't had for a long time. It had obviously woken up the tiny frogs (about an inch long when crouched, i.e. not with legs extended) and they had migrated to our yard. (I haven't heard frogs in our yard in the 3 years that I have lived here, except when I brought a tiny one home from the supermarket. I found it sitting comfortably on a potted plant, so I bought the plant just to rescue the frog.)

I was going to put this in the "You know it's 2001 when..." thread, but maybe this one is more appropriate.

The interesting thing was that the sound from within the house had a different quality than outside. It was similar to the doppler effect, but I could hear the deeper repetitive tones inside, but the higher notes outside. Very interesting acoustic effect.

Helen

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Linda Kelly
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 06:22 PM

when I owned two cats they were forever bringing mice into the house. One morning however, I was lying in bed and my foot touched something soft and twitching. Both cats were sitting on the bed softly purring. Suddenly the twitching became erratic and lifted up the bed covers. I leapt out of bed to discover a pigeon flapping wildly, with an injured wing, and the cats suddenly going berserk trying to recapture it. I am afraid I have been unable to warm to cats since.

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: sophocleese
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 04:59 PM

One night I was lying on the fold-out bed trying to sleep when a mouse wanders into the room and starts doing calisthenics on the floor under my head. If I'd been asleep it probably wouldn't have woken me, instead it stopped me getting to sleep so I banged on the bed to scare it away. It ran around the room to the fridge and proceeded on with its exercise program. This made more noise and I still couldn't sleep so I tried poking a ruler at it under the fridge. It GROWLED at me. My previous experience of mice had never included one that growled so I was startled and began to wonder if it was a mouse under there. I woke my husband and asked him if mice growled. "Sometimes, if they're cornered. Why?" "There's one growling at me from under the fridge." "Oh!" So he proceeded to spray insect repellant at it. That mouse ran REALLY REALLY fast, avoiding all the traps, back to the hole it had come through. It didn't try exercising in our kitchen again.

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 03:30 PM

My sister tells the story of when she was a girl with her first date, sitting in the living room late one night. Suddenly they heard a rattling, resonating sound pulsing from the dark corner of the room, coming closer and closer.

She says the next thing she knew, she and her date were standing by the bedside of her parents.

It was a mouse caught in a trap which it was dragging across the air intake grate.

Ebbie

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: UB Ed
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 03:07 PM

Upon moving to our first "older house" in the city, we soon learned that rodents (rats) could sometimes enter the house through the crawl space and then migrate to the attic (perfect nesting area)through the walls (lots of room between the exterior and plaster and the metal wire is perfect for climbing). After evicting a gang of squirrels the following Spring, I became more attuned to the problem.

The next fall, I placed a trap in the crawl space below what I thought was an express route to the attic.

One night, I awoke to a scratching sound in the wall. Amazingly frustrated, I left my bed and went to investigate. Sure enough, I could hear "something" in one of the walls downstairs, close to the express route. I figured if I banged on the wall, I could startle the intruder into my carefully laid trap.

So I did. I banged the hell out of the wall and then waited quietly. I could still hear a tap, tap, tap near the window. So I beat the hell out of the wall again. Same result.

After about a half hour of this, my wife wandered down the stairs and, in response to my explanation of what the hell I was doing, gently suggested I come back to bed as all I was doing was making the window weight bump against the wall in response to my pounding (this seemed to be interfering with her sleep). I followed her advice with the addition of a shot of Jamisons.

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Metchosin
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 02:56 PM

Friends of ours had recently moved into an old house with the bedrooms off a long uncarpeted upstairs hallway. About the second or third night they were wakened by a regular clunck, clunk, clunck, sound coming down the hall towards their room. Rob jumped from bed armed with a baseball bat, peeked out the doorway down the hall and saw nothing. He retired again, only to hear the clunk, clunk, clunck sound, this time closer to their room and again sprang from bed, threw on the hall lightswitch and again, nothing. Unsettled they lay there and again the sound resumed, ever closer and again he repeated his perfomance. This time he looked at the floor and before him was his son's hamster, balancing a teaspoon in its mouth which clunked from side to side as it travelled the length of the hallway with its prize. So much for ghosts.......

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Justa Picker
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 02:42 PM

A few weeks ago I was sound asleep, and became mildly aware of something soft and moist slithering up my neck and my cheek. At first I thought I was having an erotic dream and tried to ignore this sensation so as to continue with the dream. :-) But the sensation persisted and then I could feel something sniffing my ear. Then I remembered the tarantula scene in Connery's "You Only Live Twice", but ruled out a large spider. Finally I awoke with a start and flung whatever it was off of me. Moments later I discovered a startled but unharmed long haired hamster of my daughter's which had ingeniously figured out an escape route from it's cage and had found me. I laughed like hell upon the realization and now its cage is twist tied all over once we all hit the hay.

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: late 'n short 2
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 02:25 PM

Several years ago, in one of those in-between sleep and awake moments, my conciousness was raised by the chirping of a cricket outside our bedroom window. I lay there for sometime listening to it. At one point, I remembered that I had read or heard somewhere that you could determine the temperature by counting the seconds between the chirps and multiplying by something. So I tried. But I couldn't come up with a suitable multiplier that would produce a result close to what I knew the temperature should be. (Or does that only work with thunder and lightning?)

Anyway, as I became more awake, the volume of the chirping seemed so loud that I figured the cricket had to be in the house. It was way too loud to be outside. So I got out of bed and searched behind, under and around the bed, in the closet, all over the bedroom with no success. Off I went on a search of the first floor. I was obsessed.

Through the den, into the living room, on to the kitchen, altering my direction as the sound became louder or softer. All the time walking softly so as not to scare off my prey. Finally, as I turned the corner from the dining room into the hall, I knew success was in the offing. The chirping was louder than it had been at any point in my quest. I quickly returned to the kitchen for a plastic bag with which to capture the beast and return it to its natural backyard habitat. But upon returning to the hall I became disoriented. The sound was emanating not from the floor where I had suspected it to be, but from above my head.

And sure enough, as my gaze climbed slowly from the baseboard along the floor, up the flowered wall-paper, to the ceiling directly above my head, there it was! Staring back at me from its perch with it's single, menacing red eye threateningly flashing....













....the smoke alarm pleading for its battery to be changed.
In deference to my status as family patriarch, my wife and children only remind me of this when I am foolish enough to point out dumb things they've done. They will, however, ask me why I was looking for a cricket at 6:30 in the morning in June. ( Do they really only chirp at night? I'm still a city kid) And to this day my wife swears that if she could have found a glass jar big enough, she would have filled it with grass, dropped in the smoke alarm, put holes in the lid and given it a place of honor along with my High Gross golf trophies.

Dan

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Robby
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 11:00 AM

That probably could be cured by a pint, if it didn't kill 'em first. But then the headache would be gone.

Subject: RE: BS: Things that go bump in the night.
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 08:05 AM

ROTFL!
I remember reading somewhere that woodpeckers have the strongest neck muscles, weight for weight, of any bird.
And, bejaysus, does that little beggar need 'em, hammering away at a metal smoke-stack. Bet he had one hell of a headache!

Subject: Things that go bump in the night.
From: Robby
Date: 10 Apr 01 - 07:52 AM

Homes can be full of strange noises. This is my story. Do you have one.
Last Saturday, around 7 AM I heard a loud, low-tone rumbling, with the beat of a jack-hammer. After realizing it wasn't the alarm, we began searching through the house trying to find the source. About this time last year we replaced the interior works of a toilet, because the plumber told us weak valves were the source of the same or similar noise.
After determining that the source of the noise was not a toilet, or the hot water heater, or the furnace, I checked the crawl space over the bedrooms. The noise could be heard (now a very sharp metallic sound), but the source was not seen. I did determine that the roof fan was not the source of this noise.
I now knew about where it was coming from, but not the reason. I would check that after breakfast, and went out to get the morning paper. As I walked down the driveway, I heard the sound again, behind me. Turning around and looking up, there on the roof was a woodpecker merrily hammering away at the metal vent for the furnace. I was laughing by the time I got back in the house. Had I only looked at the roof last year, I might have saved the cost of the plumbing repairs.
Robby