Post by Syko Nachoman on Mar 11, 2021 14:07:00 GMT -8
It's a peaceful Saturday night in early December 2020, a little past 2:00 AM. I'm in bed, reading a Pearls Before Swine collection and contemplating sleep, when suddenly my eardrums are assaulted by about ten very loud popping/banging noises in quick succession. They seem to have issued from somewhere outside. The cat, highly alarmed, bolts out of my room and into the bedroom down the hallway. About fifteen seconds later, there are four or five more pops. Then silence.
I check the windows. There are no people outside. I listen carefully. There are no voices. There are no floodlights on, either; it's more or less pitch black, or as pitch black as a city infested with light pollution can be at 2 in the morning. It's almost as if nothing at all happened. I go to sleep. The next day, I check the local news. There are no reports of anything having happened the previous night.
Flash forward in time three months. It's a peaceful Wednesday night in early 2021. It's a little past 1:00 AM, and I'm watching old Twitch streams on my computer, the most sensible way to spend one's evenings. Suddenly, my ears are assaulted by a very loud popping noise. The cat, highly alarmed, bolts out of my room and into the bedroom down the hallway. This is followed by two minutes of silence. Then, another, identical-sounding pop. Then another minute of silence. Then another pop.
Once again, I look for signs of activity outside. There are none; no people, no lights, no nothin'. Then I listen carefully for voices or noises of any sort. All I can hear is a dog barking in the distance, probably alarmed by the same noises. The next morning, I read the local news. Once again, there is nothing. It's almost as if the noises came from absolutely nowhere.
So it's kind of annoying to hear random, unexplained loud noises at 1 or 2 in the morning. If I weren't a night owl, I surely would have been indignantly awoken both times. But what gets me is that nothing explains the noise. Here's what I've likely ruled out:
My father, who also heard the noises, agrees that it doesn't sound like either fireworks or gunshots (he grew up in a worse neighborhood than I did, so I'll trust his judgment on that). We both came to the conclusion that "it was probably someone's car or something," but that's as much as we could narrow it down.
There's also the odd pattern. The first time, there were about ten bursts in quick succession, then a short pause, then four or five more. The second time, there were three separate bursts, each spaced a minute or two apart. So it's possible that the first pattern of noise and the second pattern of noise were caused by entirely different things.
I'm baffled and a little fascinated. I want to know what's causing the noise, but I have no good ideas, other than the probably-wrong ones I listed above. Does anyone have any idea what else could be making noises like the ones I described? If not, I might need to get Mulder and Scully involved.
I check the windows. There are no people outside. I listen carefully. There are no voices. There are no floodlights on, either; it's more or less pitch black, or as pitch black as a city infested with light pollution can be at 2 in the morning. It's almost as if nothing at all happened. I go to sleep. The next day, I check the local news. There are no reports of anything having happened the previous night.
Flash forward in time three months. It's a peaceful Wednesday night in early 2021. It's a little past 1:00 AM, and I'm watching old Twitch streams on my computer, the most sensible way to spend one's evenings. Suddenly, my ears are assaulted by a very loud popping noise. The cat, highly alarmed, bolts out of my room and into the bedroom down the hallway. This is followed by two minutes of silence. Then, another, identical-sounding pop. Then another minute of silence. Then another pop.
Once again, I look for signs of activity outside. There are none; no people, no lights, no nothin'. Then I listen carefully for voices or noises of any sort. All I can hear is a dog barking in the distance, probably alarmed by the same noises. The next morning, I read the local news. Once again, there is nothing. It's almost as if the noises came from absolutely nowhere.
So it's kind of annoying to hear random, unexplained loud noises at 1 or 2 in the morning. If I weren't a night owl, I surely would have been indignantly awoken both times. But what gets me is that nothing explains the noise. Here's what I've likely ruled out:
- Fireworks: The noises didn't have the same burst/fizzle sound that tends to accompany fireworks. There's also the fact that nobody would decide to go outside at 2 in the morning to set off fireworks, during the coldest part of the day, during the coldest part of the year, when they could simply set them off during the PM hours. And I haven't heard fireworks during the PM hours since July. *knock on wood*
- Gunshots: My immediate area doesn't see a lot of violent crime (if we're in the news for something negative, it's usually a car accident), so it seems unlikely that someone would randomly go outside and fire a gun multiple times in the middle of the night. The lack of any sort of commotion or follow-up noise (I imagine people would be shouting or screaming or something), police activity, or anything appearing in the news also suggests that it wasn't a gun.
- A car backfiring: This seems like the most likely option, and the noise did sound kind of like a backfiring car, but it still doesn't explain why I've only ever heard this noise on two different nights, three months apart, and both times well after midnight. If someone on my block had a noisy car, I definitely would have heard it during the day and/or more frequently than spaced three months apart.
- A huge cloud of very large balloons floated over my house during the night and burst on two separate occasions. Technically possible, but highly unlikely.
My father, who also heard the noises, agrees that it doesn't sound like either fireworks or gunshots (he grew up in a worse neighborhood than I did, so I'll trust his judgment on that). We both came to the conclusion that "it was probably someone's car or something," but that's as much as we could narrow it down.
There's also the odd pattern. The first time, there were about ten bursts in quick succession, then a short pause, then four or five more. The second time, there were three separate bursts, each spaced a minute or two apart. So it's possible that the first pattern of noise and the second pattern of noise were caused by entirely different things.
I'm baffled and a little fascinated. I want to know what's causing the noise, but I have no good ideas, other than the probably-wrong ones I listed above. Does anyone have any idea what else could be making noises like the ones I described? If not, I might need to get Mulder and Scully involved.
This is my signature achievement.
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