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Odd Loud Hissing Noise

zoltan_g

Devoted Cultist
Joined
Jul 1, 2005
Messages
202
I just wanted to relate something that happened on Saturday evening and see whether anybody had any idea what the cause was.

I'm certain it's nothing supernatural or unearthly, I'm just intrigued as to what it is, anyway, here's what happened.

I live in rural Suffolk (in the UK) in a quiet location , although there are other houses in the area, we only have one set of neighbours. We have a large garden surrounded by open farmland, so it's pretty quiet and secluded.

Now on Saturday evening I went outside to feed our cat. The cat lives outside in a large wooden outbuilding (it's like a really big wooden shed, but with properly insulated walls, roof and floor, quite nice really).

The shed is about 25-30 feet away from the back door of the house, towards one corner of the garden. This corner of the garden houses a large woodpile, the boundary being made of hawthorn trees, a plum tree and some blackberry bushes in a hedge.
On the other side of the hedge are two fields, one partially made up of corn and grasses. The other field made up of tall grasses, no crops.

It was about 8.30-8.45pm, so it had just gotten dark. I began to walk towards the shed when the cat appeared out of the darkness and trotted upto me. I stopped to stroke him, then began to walk to the shed again.

Suddenly, I heard a very loud hissing noise, I assumed the cat had seen something and was hissing, I then heard the cat purring, I thought that's odd but carried on.

I then heard it again, it seemed to be coming from the hedge, it was very loud, the point it was coming from was about 20 feet away and I could hear it clearly.

I stopped and listened, it hissed again, then about 3-4 seconds later it hissed again.
I was quite intrigued and shone the torch on the spot it was coming from (there is no lighting at all apart from a small outside light on the house, so it's pretty bloody dark) I couldn't see anything at all.

Now the hissing sounded very strange, it was very loud and it certainly wasn't a cat. It sounded almost like a throaty hiss, like a giant snake would make I imagine.

I carried on listening, the hissing carried on about every 4-5 seconds. I decided to throw a stone at the hedge to see what would happen. The stone hit the hedge but the noise continued, Odd, I thought.

After a few minutes, I heard something moving in the hedge and the corn, the hissing then began to move away, although it kept repeating every 5 seconds or so.
It carried on moving across the field until it had reached a barn about 200 feet away. I could still hear it clearly even at that distance, after another 5-10 minutes it began to move back.
I waited until it got a bit closer then threw about 5-6 large stones at the noise which did absolutely nothing, it just carried on.

I called my wife to listen to it too, she also had no idea what it was, she said it sounded too wierd and retreated back to the house.
I stayed for another minute or two then decided I wasn't going to find out what it was and went back into the house.

I popped out later on and I heard it hiss once again.

Has anybody any idea what this was?
Our garden is beginning to get a little wierd and I'd like an explanation, I've given up on trying to explain the pair of glowing eyes that I saw in the field last year, although I put that down to light reflected from a deer's eyes.
Anyway, any ideas?
 
Barn Owls, they have a very distinctive call which is a very loud hissing sound. Particularly the young. At this stage of the year the Juveniles would have left the nest but are still being supplied by the parents. There was probably one sitting in the hedge waitng to be fed and another in the corn field. Sounds like the location is ideal for them as well. You lucky devil, keep an eye out for the adults at dawn and dusk as they are the most beautiful of birds and absolutley silent in flight.
 
Well, it could be a large snake. Lots escape from captivity and go into the wild never to be heard from again.
 
I've been startled in my own suburban garden a couple of times this year by a very sudden, loud hiss from a hedge. Round this sort of area I'd have been amazed if it's either a snake or a barn owl. I finally decided it was a bird call. The main suspects are the dunnocks or blue tits which I've seen in the area at the time.

With you being somewhere a bit more rural isn't it possible it was a native snake?
 
mindalai said:
With you being somewhere a bit more rural isn't it possible it was a native snake?

Snakes that are native to rural England aren't big enough to make a loud hiss, AFAIK.
 
i don't know how to link you to it directly, but if you go to the page i gave you the link to before and click on "chicks begging" that's a clear and loud hissing.
 
feen5 said:
Barn Owls, they have a very distinctive call which is a very loud hissing sound. Particularly the young. At this stage of the year the Juveniles would have left the nest but are still being supplied by the parents. There was probably one sitting in the hedge waitng to be fed and another in the corn field. Sounds like the location is ideal for them as well. You lucky devil, keep an eye out for the adults at dawn and dusk as they are the most beautiful of birds and absolutley silent in flight.

We do have Barn owls in the area, I see them almost every day hunting over the fields.
I did wonder whether they could be responsible for the noise, however, I've heard them hissing before and didn't sound like this, it seemed to be coming from the ground when it moved.

The noise repeated every 3-4 seconds and it was about 2-3 seconds in duration each time, it just didn't sounds like that.
I've just had a thought, maybe it was a Screech Owl.
I'll keep a watch and see whether it returns.
 
That's really interesting. I was in Denmark, near Aarhus in July 2002 , in the village of Marslet. Walking into town, we heard a very loud hissing coming from the long grass. The grass was 30 cm max and I couldn't see it moving any where indicating anything hiding in it. It sounded very angry and like it may have had sharp teeth, so we didn't investigate any further. I have always wondered what it might have been.
 
Well, it sounds like it wasn't anything that alarmed the cat, which is surprising and interesting - perhaps it's a sound the cat has heard enough before to become accustomed to?
 
Yes, he certainly wasn't bothered in the slightest by the noise.
I haven't heard it again yet, oh well, unless it happens again I guess I'll never know what it was.
 
Sort of related (at least a weird noise) but not the same, I was awakened this
a.m. by what I can only describe as the sound of liguid pouring onto cardboard. I sleep with four dogs in my room, three of which are elderly, and I thought someone was having an accident. I turned on the light and checked and, no, no one had peed anywhere. I turned off the light thinking I must have dreamed it when the noise came again. AGAIN I checked and everyone was fast asleep and continent. I have absolutely no explanation for this noise.
 
zoltan_g said:
Suddenly, I heard a very loud hissing noise, I assumed the cat had seen something and was hissing, I then heard the cat purring, I thought that's odd but carried on.

I then heard it again, it seemed to be coming from the hedge, it was very loud, the point it was coming from was about 20 feet away and I could hear it clearly.

I stopped and listened, it hissed again, then about 3-4 seconds later it hissed again.

Do you have cicadas in the UK? Their noise might be described as "hissing" although after dark probably isn't their favorite time for noise making.

In the US we had two different cycles of cicadas hatch the same year (2005) and the noise was almost unbearable. There are a few late hatchers still purring away this year, but nothing like it was last year. It was almost unbearable. (And when they died, the smell of their little decomposing corpses WAS.)
 
Do you have cicadas in the UK? Their noise might be described as "hissing" although after dark probably isn't their favorite time for noise making.

In the US we had two different cycles of cicadas hatch the same year (2005) and the noise was almost unbearable. There are a few late hatchers still purring away this year, but nothing like it was last year. It was almost unbearable. (And when they died, the smell of their little decomposing corpses WAS.)

No, we don't have them over here, I know they are very noisy, I've heard them on holiday abroad.
 
I have just got back from a week in Rhayader in Wales, where we stayed in a log cabin surrounded by countryside. The first night we were there we could hear a noise that to me sounded like someone heavy breathing nearby. This could well have been interpreted as a hissing noise, as you mention in your post Zoltan_g. It was a hiss that lasted about 4 seconds and then stopped for about the same amount of time before doing it again, similar to your description. It was actually rather spooky that first night, but we heard the noise every night thereafter while standing on the terrace. When one of us approached the spot where we thought the noise was coming from it would stop so it was never possible to find out exactly where it was coming from. I put it down to an owl or a bird of sorts. One of the lads I was with thought it could have been a hedgehog, as he had seen one on the first night, but the sound was in the same place every night and of course hedgehogs would wander around. The noise only happened after dark, another reason why I think it was probably an owl of some sort. Perhaps this is the same as what you heard? It was certainly an eerie noise all the same! :shock:
 
Do you have opossums in your area? We have them in upstate New York and I have encountered on several occasions. They are usually nocturnal and I have heard them hissing several times in what I belive was a threat warning.
 
No, we don't have opossums in the UK, unless somebody has released one into my garden.
 
Hi Zoltan,
do you by any chance live near orfordness?



Suffolk must surely be one of the most interesting counties in the Uk from a Fortean perspective,
i'm sad that i didn't get chance to check out the hotspots during my short holiday in suffolk last summer
 
What about frogs? I'm no expert, but I know that different species make a variety of weird noises, snapping, popping, booming etc. Anyone know anything about the English hissing frog?

bob
 
Maybe it was an inflated frog gradually deflating?
 
Tim_Bucknall said:
Hi Zoltan,
do you by any chance live near orfordness?



Suffolk must surely be one of the most interesting counties in the Uk from a Fortean perspective,
i'm sad that i didn't get chance to check out the hotspots during my short holiday in suffolk last summer

Erm, sort of, I'm over near Framlingham.
 
feen5 said:
Barn Owls, they have a very distinctive call which is a very loud hissing sound...

I'd agree that it sounds very much like a barn owl. Barn owls make several different kinds of noises apart from the eerie screech most associated with them, all of which are a little disconcerting - especially the hiss.
 
I'd definitely go for hedgehog.

I have been startled by their noises more than once while walking the beat late at night.

They can produce a startlingly loud "breathing" sound, similar to an evilly-intentioned asthmatic lurking in a hedge to pounce!

While quarrelling with each other (over food or female companionship) they can also make a loud, roaring, hissing noise.

I have heard the latter several times in my former back garden in a Cambridgeshire housing estate.

The fact that you are putting out cat food tends to support this hypothesis. We lured 'hogs into our garden in numbers when we started putting out "Spike" brand dried hedgehog food.

As an aside, look after our spikey chums! Seek out the advice of the Oddie and make your garden 'hog-friendly. They really are delightful little creatures.

maximus otter
 
volfie said:
Sort of related (at least a weird noise) but not the same, I was awakened this
a.m. by what I can only describe as the sound of liguid pouring onto cardboard. I sleep with four dogs in my room, three of which are elderly, and I thought someone was having an accident. I turned on the light and checked and, no, no one had peed anywhere. I turned off the light thinking I must have dreamed it when the noise came again. AGAIN I checked and everyone was fast asleep and continent. I have absolutely no explanation for this noise.

Wow. I'm glad that I posted this story in here. I had completely forgotten about it! Now I'm going to start wondering all over again what that noise was.

BTW, since I posted the original note, two of my four dogs have gone on. One just yesterday.
 
Barn Owls, they have a very distinctive call which is a very loud hissing sound. Particularly the young. At this stage of the year the Juveniles would have left the nest but are still being supplied by the parents. There was probably one sitting in the hedge waitng to be fed and another in the corn field. Sounds like the location is ideal for them as well. You lucky devil, keep an eye out for the adults at dawn and dusk as they are the most beautiful of birds and absolutley silent in flight.
Hello there, i came across this post and you seem to know a but about barn owl behavours, we just moved in to a new place, beautiful countryside, quite peacfull place , but i have been awaken at night a barn owl that seem to come from time to time, this happened several times now around Semptember . Do you have any ideas if this something that would last for a lon time as , i am trying to understand since we have been in a new house since July and i startedhearing this hisses fromabout mid of August and Semptember. Any suggestions on this would be hughly apprciated.
 
Barn Owls, they have a very distinctive call which is a very loud hissing sound. Particularly the young. At this stage of the year the Juveniles would have left the nest but are still being supplied by the parents. There was probably one sitting in the hedge waitng to be fed and another in the corn field. Sounds like the location is ideal for them as well. You lucky devil, keep an eye out for the adults at dawn and dusk as they are the most beautiful of birds and absolutley silent in flight.
Sorry for the typos , texting from my phone.
 
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