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So far inexplicable beeping, help?

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Pett_Ridge

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
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Jul 15, 2009
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Yesterday morning I woke up at about 4.30, and rested there until about 5.00. I was kind of dozing, shall we say, when suddenly this beeping started. It was shrill, high pitched and hurt my ears. I got up after about five minutes since it was driving me insane. I was wide awake, and I checked my alarm clock, my pc, everything electronical in my room and came up empty handed. Then I noticed something strange: If I turned to the windows, it sounded like it was coming from outside on the street, but if I turned to my bedroom door, it sounded as thought it was within the house. It had me puzzled quite a bit.

It was about 6.00 when it stopped, and my ears were ringing. My mum was awake at about 6.30, and when I aksed her if she had heard it, she said yes. (I heard her snoring in the other room when the beeping was happening, so this I found somewhat odd). My dad, little sister and little brother, however, hadn't heard anything. My sister was awake in her room, but still hadn't heard it.

I checked over the other electrical appliances in the house but found nothing. Is this just me being paranoid or what? Or is there something reported like this elsewhere?
 
Did you check any smoke alarms? They beep if the battery is running low.

I often take one of mine down and hide it because it goes off the minute I start toasting bread, and if I forget to put it back it eventually starts beeping from my coat pocket or in my boot or wherever I've shoved it out of the way.
 
I don't think it was the fire alarms- it wasn't as loud as they would be and it sounded different, if that makes sense? I mean, our fire alarms always go off when my dad's cooking (need I say more about his paella? lol), and this beeping wasn't that, it was something else... it's hard to describe, but I don't think I've heard it before, because it didn't sound like my (or my mum's) alarm clock (no one else in the famil have alram clocks). So... I don't know. But yeah, that was one of my first thoughts "Is it an appliance or something?"
 
Lots of smoke alarms have a different pitch to remind you to check the batteries - it won't necessarily sound like a regular alarm
 
I suffered from something similar to this once.

Woke up at two in the morning with the incessant bleeping noise. Took me a while to work out where it was originating from as well.

In the end it was a digital watch (A Swatch I think) which was in a shoe box on top of the wardrobe. It had suddenly decided to activate it's alarm at two in the morning even though it's face said it was 7.30 am.

Have you tried having a good look in boxes, under beds or in cupboards for long forgotten electrical equipment equipped with an alarm?

Another classic is the oven alarm going of at the wrong time. Happens when I fiddle with the oven knobs and accidentally set the alarm.

Just a couple of suggestions!

mooks out
 
Thanks- I'll look into boxes and cupboards. It probably is something along those lines. My sister has probably been fidling with something.
 
It might not even be an electrical appliance .........

A couple of years ago, we could hear a strange noise coming from somewhere in our hallway. It was usually late at night or early morning - when it was very quiet. It sounded like someone was whispering the same word over and over again.

We checked everything - the phone, the pc, the television, the microwave, washing machine....

Then one afternoon I was walking along the hall towards the kitchen when I heard it again. It was definitely coming from the hall cupboard.

I peered in, then began to empty the boxes out until I pinpointed the noise coming from a box at the back of the cupboard. A voice was saying over and over "excellent"

It was a small gold coloured plastic figurine of Mr Burns from the Simpsons that the kids had got from a MacDonalds meal. When you pressed the button he looked like he was rubbing his hands together and saying "excellent" in a very creepy voice. Where it had been squashed up in the box the button had been held pressed down.

I'm surprised the battery didn't run out.
 
Sometimes particularly piercing sounds can cause a bit of disorientation and can have a habit of dislocating themselves if you know what I mean, might explain the fact that is sounded like it was in the house.

The reason I say that is because the first thing I thought of was a car alarm, or some kind alert from another building or vehicle or something.

Or, is there any chance you left your landline phone of the hook? The alarm that comes down the line is bloody loud.

Final option: could you have been dreaming in some way?
 
Even though I've never used the alarm on my iPod speakers, it goes off if the unit has been turned off at the plug (or after a power cut)

First time it went off it drove me nuts because I didn't even know there was an alarm on the unit's clock.

If you have anything like that, which you haven't checked because you were unaware it had an alarm, it's worth a look.

The scariest thing that happened like that in my house was when I was sitting watching tv one night with my daughter and we heard Scooby Doo's voice saying 'Scooby Dooby Doooooooooo' from the other side of the room. We just looked at each other in disbelief!! It was a book in the toy box and nothing had touched it for hours but the battery must have been running low and set it off...that's all we could think by way of explanation, but it scared the life out of us
 
I was going to suggest you were hearing a bird calling, many species can mimic things like trimphones, reversing alarms etc, and when they are in full flow as we are just waking up can be heard a long way away. There are some birds that really piss me off with their racket at 6 am during the Summer, I'm already prone to waking early thanks to early sunrise, and generally have my window open.

As I say, I was going to suggest that, but then saw that it was loud enough to hurt your ears!!!! Are you serious? High pitched bleeps that are loud enough to hurt your ears are bloody loud, if was me, I WOULD have found the source, I'd have been outside the house with Mr Browning to fill it full of lead.
I'm assuming that since you didn't immediately get your boots on to get outside to find out WTF was going on that you are exaggerating about the loudness, that it just seemed to drill into your head as you tried to get back to sleep, right? Then I see your ears were ringing afterwards.....!!

Were the bleeps long, how far apart were they? I'll try to recall the URL for a tone generator, to see if you can estimate what sort of frequency the beeps were at.................
 
So many damn things beep nowadays...

Vehicle reversing warnings - there's a car park for the shops and post office near me, and sometimes I think I hear my smoke alarm going off... :roll:

Especially this time of year, when I'll have one or more windows open. (In winter, the double-glazing cuts out most outside noise.)
 
i was rummaging through some old boxes of things a few months ago. one box full of old toys started making a sort of beeping and whistling pulsing tone which became more insistant. at first i just thought it was a toy but then it made me think it could be an owl chick or a rat or a mouse so i dropped the box and moved well away expecting to see something emerge. nothing did so when i plucked the courage up to delve into it i did. nothing in the box was electronic and nothing animal. i opened every book page every toy and pressed every thing but there was nothing that could or would have made that noise. i am still baffled as it definitely came from the box. i could feel it as it beepd or whistled. :? :shock:
 
In our case, it was a cheap digital watch we'd bought our son and which somehow got programmed to beep around 11:30pm - very annoying...
 
I found a bash script for linux that would cause the computer to randomly beep - but I've never used it.
 
rynner2 said:
So many damn things beep nowadays...
Click to expand...

Indeed. I love gadgets and have bought tons of them over the years, most of them beep. Both my kids have loads of toys and games that beep, chipper and whirr at random intervals. Now its the school holidays my house sound like a damm amusement arcade.
 
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