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Ghost Rats?

A

Anonymous

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This happened to me about four months ago, and I have thought about it since.

I was up and about at around 1 or 2 am...sometimes I don't sleep very well. Some nights I get just a few hours sleep and then my body wont stop moving. It's like 'sleepy leg' syndrome but all over - I hate it. Some nights I'm tired and just want to sleep but have to get up, have a cup of tea or be active in some way until it goes.

This was such a night, and I was up and about, and had been for some while, because I was stark cold awake. (I used to work nights, so that may help, but when I get up I am awake, as opposed to one of these people that drag their feet around yawning for the first hour of being up!)

I had been up for about 1/2hr, and I was standing up by the window rerranging (putting away properly) the books in my bookcase when there was a rustling-squeeking.

I have two rats, and very occasionaly they squeek. These are female so they don't speak often, unlike their male counterparts! Anyway, point being - I know what a rodent squeeking sounds like. My two (Sarah and Elizabeth) are downstairs in a tank, and CANNOT be heard squeeking up in my room.

This was loud - inside the room - mad and repetative, and there was rustling like a plastic bag along with it. I quickly located the sound as coming from the top of the cupboard. I moved the stuff up there to one side and found the noise to be coming from a bag at the far end against the wall.

My one and only thought was that one of the rats had somehow escaped, gotten upstairs and become trapped in the bag. It was a destressing sound - I thought she was suffocating. The only thing that struck me as odd at that moment was that the bag wasn't moving.

I took everything else of the cupboard and at that point the squeeking did what I can only describe as a jokey deathrcy, with two long prolonged squeeks and one final, drawn out squeek that seemed to trail off as if it had died.

I can't express the distress I felt. I gently lifted the bag down, but there was not rat inside. Just the stuff that had been in there before.

I was wide awake, up and moving. The sound was loud (the next day I asked stepson next door if it had disturbed him, but it hadn't) and prolonged. I tracked down the location to an area and listened for about 4 minutes.

The two rats I have now have never been in my room, but I had two male rats who lived in a cage in my room, years ago.

I'm not seriously thinking 'ghost rat,' but there was no question of sensory deception. Looking at the time, one tends to think that if it happens in the early hours it is sensory misenterpretation, but I having already been aware of such mistakes from posts on here was sure of myself at the time.
 
Is it possible that you just have some "wild" mice or rats living in your house? They can get into tiny spaces and be quite undetectable if they want to be.
 
That's a good question, and had the noise been untraicable and/or indistinct I would be inclined to agree with you, and would not have posted.

After listening to the sound for a while, stood in one place trying to work out what was going on, I went and opened the bedroom door out onto the landing to make sure it wasn't coming from there - which it wasn't.

Having done so, I found the noise to be louder by the cupboard beside the door. Standing on the bed I felt as if I was directly in front of the sound.

As I have mentioned, it was loud squeeking in conjunction with the plastic rustle of a bag: now, it makes sense that seeing one bag ahead of me and hearing the noise to be louder, it seems logical that my brain would tell me, rightly or wrongly, that the noise had to be eminating from the bag in sight.

That's a fair point, but it then leads to the question of where the noise would have been coming from if not there? It was louder when I was stood on the bed, as loud as a bag can be when rustled. I could not have heard it if it were happening in the attic, so it had to be in the room.

As there are no plastic bags in the room apart from on top of the cupboard and lining the waste paper bin, I cannot reach a satisfactory conclusion as to it's source.
 
2 winters ago. unknown to my friend, a rat got into his kitchen (we assume when the back door was open), with food going missing, he eventially worked out he had vermin, through lack of food left out, it eventially ate its way into the back of the fridge (chewed through the fridge back!), it took the council rat catcher 3 weeks to outwit the rat and catch it (a sticky tile was used in the end, rat came on it for food and was glued to it), after this i am convinced they can hide anywhere (the kitchen was searched daily, we never found its hiding place), and ghost rats? no - just rats!
 
Could it be stuck down the back of the cupboard, trapped between the cupboard and the wall? Inside the cupboard? Inside the wall? We had an awful lot of mice in our house when I was a child - there was a whole social life going on inside the lathe and plaster walls and ceilings, and it was tremendously noisy.
 
Good points.

The cupboard is one of two flatpack jobbies I constructed years ago, and fit flat against the wall. The wall in qestion is internal, and divides our room from my stepson's room. It is a simple brick-and-plaster internal wall, or whatever the technical term may be, and I doubt it had room for anything to travel through.

I have not heard any other unusual noises at any other time in the seven years that I have lived here, and I have often been up at night.

I am not against the idea of rats somewhere about, but we have two cats and I feel sure that if they became exposed to be loud enough for me to hear (I have Tinitus) then they would be rodent-food.

(And no, it wasn't the cats meowing or having any kind of fight. They were both asleep downstairs when I checked, and the noise was coming from inside the room, and - I feel - on top of the cupboard.)

This does not rule out the possibility of hot-blooded rodents though. :D
 
Ghost rats

Dave, how about an experiement here?

If you can be sure your own rats can be let out in your room, why not do so and put them in the vicinity of the strange squeaking?

If there was any chance a strange rodent had been there, surely your own rats would smell its trail and try to track it (I'm not an expert on rodents by any means, but animals do follow scent trails that are new or strange to them).

If they react with excitement or curiosity, then it might indicate you had a small furry visitor.

What do you think?

PK
 
That's one hell of an idea!

I'll transfer them to the cage we use when cleaning the tank and leave it up on the cupboard with the door open. I do leave the lid off the tank sometimes and although they like to get out and explore, they never let themselves get out of sight of their home, so I doubt if they would try to loose themselves.

Having said that - doh! If they're on top of the cupboard I guess they wont be going far! I' watching 'The Village' so my mind isn't focused right now!

I would have to make some preperation were I to let them loose on the bedroom floor as the bed is raised and whole heaps of my junk (old photographs, momentoes etc) are scattered around beneath.

I'll try the top of the cupboard first as no preperation is needed for that apart from removing the, cough, Star Wars minis...will let you know what happens.

Tommorow is my day off, so hopefully I will have time to attempt same at floor level.

Thank you for a very interesting and logical idea.
 
Could it have been a bird somewhere in the wall? Where I used to live birds would sometimes get up under the roof and end up in the wall cavity where they would flutter about. Maybe if a bird had got in you might have disturbed it causing it to flap about and make tweeting noises.
 
Although your wall sounds quite solid, is there a space between the ceiling and the roof/floor of attic above it? Maybe the animal was above the ceiling and the noise was travelling down the wall? As a child, my bedroom had a sloping ceiling, above which was the roof, but there was still enough space for the mice. I remember hearing one sliding down it and thinking what fun it must be to slide down the inside of the roof (it probably just lost its footing).

Where I live at present, some people get members of the stoat family called marders living in their attics. They become 'attic trained' so that a urine-coloured stain appears on the ceiling below.
 
Don't read Lovecraft's "The Rats In The Walls"... ;)

Sounds like you could well have a live wild rat tho. They can be extremely elusive - I had a rat in one house i lived in once, and was woken up by a noise that sounded like extremely loud rain or the popping and crackling of a large bonfire - turned out to be the rat running back and forth in a skirting board, as i found out by putting my eye to a small hole in it and getting a furry snout right in my face!

A couple of days later, i also saw a plastic bag jumping about in my kitchen - running into the kitchen to investigate, all i saw was a long tail streaking away behind the fridge to disappear into some hole invisible to the human eye - rats seem to like plastic bags (i've also seen pet rats and hamsters display an interest in them)...

(I had to go away for a couple of days after that, and got back to find a note from my landlord saying he had killed the rat - as it never went near the mousetraps i put out baited with bits of fresh vegetables (apparently more attractive to rats and mice than the standard cheese), i don't know how, and didn't really want to inquire...)

In another house i also once had a starling trapped beneath my bath, which made all kinds of strange bumping and rattling noises...

You could try putting out a "humane trap" (box trap with a door mechanism which shuts behind the animal and traps it alive in the box) baited with some food and see if you catch anything...

Aarauer - where do you live? I presume "marders" is a local term for some type of martens - in the UK, they are very rare and elusive creatures, but i've heard that in parts of Europe they (possibly a different species) can be found living in houses... I find all mustelids fascinating, but also more than a little scary, so having them living in your house must be a real thrill...
 
There was a rat specialist on NPR who said that rats didn't care much for fresh veg either - they'd starve rather than eat carrots - he said they liked fried foods and fats the most - they grow strong on the food that's killing us!
 
Natajara, I live in the flat part of Switzerland just outside the town of Aarau (hence the name). Marders are some kind of marten. They really like getting under car bonnets and chewing the rubber round cables - BMW had to change the type of rubber. They did this to my ex's car - ther were lots of scrabbly claw marks in the insulation under the bonnet - it must have been lying on its back and playing.
 
From my experience with pet rats, the easiest way to attract a rat would be with something sweet - a piece of doughnut, for example, or some cake.

.I do leave the lid off the tank sometimes
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I hope by "sometimes" you mean "daily". You really shouldn't keep rats cooped up in a tank all day long. They're not fish.
 
Thank you for a very interesting and logical idea.
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My pleasure - it was just something that occured to me, having had both dogs and cats, they become totally absorbed when they detect a new smell in the house; and since rodents communicate by scent (and like to leave trails unfortunately) I thought it might be worth giving it a go.

The other posts about wallspace/roof cavities also raise very good points. Check under your eaves for squirrel spoor - something to watch because the little buggers do like to gnaw on electrical cable, which has its obvious hazards.

And finally, I would agree with Nataraja: definitely DO NOT red the Rats in the Walls!
 
I was about to give you a run down of how things have gone following the experiment, but I must just do a search for this story! I found Pickman's Models on the web not long back, so I am certain to find the complete story of these rats somewhere... :arrow:

As a quick note, I had no luck on the top of the cupboard as they would not come out of the cage, which is unusual for them (although it was not their usual environment but a bare cage where they are housed while their tank is cleaned.)

Trying them on the floor was, and remains, a major pain. I moved everything onto the bed and although Sarah returned without trouble I lost Elizabeth. It turns out that in the corner of the room (our room is an odd shape with a small 'indented' corner) the floorboards were cut to fit but not secured in any way.

In the process of moving things I had unbeknownst to myself dislodged one of these boards, revealing a space to the gap beneath the floor. I spent a sleepless night in a fruitless attempt to coax her back, but she returned of her own accord yesterday afternoon, hence my delay in reporting.

Some more interesting ideas are up, I see, and having perused these, I no longer feel that this was an unexplainable incident, but a rather unfortunate missinterpretation of events, which I now feel slightly akward for having mentioned, especialy in light of the title of the thread!

I doubt if I shall post on this thread again, as I no longer think of the incident as possibly supernatural. Thank you all for your responses, which have been sensible and reassuring.

(edited for spelling)
 
graylien said:
.I do leave the lid off the tank sometimes
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I hope by "sometimes" you mean "daily". You really shouldn't keep rats cooped up in a tank all day long. They're not fish.
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Sorry, I just saw this. Yes, absolutely! They have a large tank filled with tunnels and I take the lid off as soon as I get home and leave it off until I go to bed. I just meant that it was on whan I was out or asleep, so that it would not seem like it was one of them having a night-time adventure! :)
 
DaVe7 said:
I have two rats, and very occasionaly they squeek. These are female so they don't speak often, unlike their male counterparts!
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Soryy to go OT, but I thought it was kinda relevant..ish. ;) I've had rats as pets too, manly male. I only ever heard them squeak if they were in pain or fighting, once crying, it was so cute! (Rattie was on the bed and I was distracted as I got up to leave the room when I heard a sort of wimpering/crying. I realised it was the rat who thought I was going to leave him alone on the bed. So cute!) Anyway, I got one of those 'spy' listening device things, the sort where you're supposed to 'hear conversations from 20 feet away!' (I'm not nuts, it was part of a kiddies spy presant for Christmas. Doesn't hurt to test these things does it? ;) ) I decidied to put it next to the cage and was amazed to hear the rats 'speaking' to each other. :D I didn't normally hear that and was surprised. They were always nattering away to each other when I used it, so presume did normally and it just wasn't loud enough for me.
Right, interval over folks, back OT! :D
 
That's so cute! My nephew has one of those, I think I'll try it out, if he'll let me borrow it...

;)
 
A few years ago I had a lovely rat called Izzy. Her favourite place to hang out was on one of the shelves in the corner of the living room, and she used to love the cabbage and gravy that came with my favourite dish from the Chinese Takeaway, although the smell of it always made her sneeze.

A couple of weeks after she died I had that same dish, and was about to tuck in when I got all tearful because I missed her. Just as I put my plate down, as my appetite had disappeared, I clearly heard 2 little sneezes coming from her shelf in the corner.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't dead Izzy come back to join me for dinner, but I don't know what it was. Could my brain have associated that particular meal with her sneezes and made me 'hear' it? I'm open to suggestions.
 
If the smell and the noise had gone together for so long, perhaps it became a Stone Tape which was 'replayed' after being activated by the smell...? :?
 
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