posted on Mar, 25 2009 @ 10:24 PM
When I bought my current home about 4 years ago, the previous owners kind of hinted that I may hear some "unusual noises," but they hastened
to attribute it to the age and size of the house... It's a 5700 square foot two-story with 11 fireplaces, built in 1910. So, I expected to hear
drafty noises, wind in the chimneys and such.
After living here for about six months, I got into a routine of working at my computer for most of the night and sleeping late the next day. It was
while working into the wee hours that I first heard the singing.
Just on the edge of my hearing, I started catching this very faint, wispy and intermittent string music and a woman's soprano voice singing these
long, warbling notes...like something from a Puccini opera, right? At first I thought it was my wife's CD player upstairs; however, upon
investigating, I'd find her asleep and her CD player silent.
After a few weeks of listening to this opera in the middle of the night, it really started getting on my nerves, to the extent that I would
stop working and wander around the house looking in earnest for its source. I found, oddly enough, that the noise seemed to be coming from the
kitchen; however, by the time I reached the kitchen and began snooping around, the opera music would cease.
Yes, I started to suspect that the house was haunted.
After a couple of months, I was positively distracted by the phantom opera and its ghostly soprano, so much so that I couldn't even work for
more than a few minutes at a time without stopping to listen for the music. When I did hear it, I'd leap up and hurry to the kitchen, almost always
arriving just as the noise faded away.
So... One night I chose not to work; instead, I placed a dining room chair squarely in the middle of the kitchen and sat down to wait
for the opera. After about an hour, the music began — my skin was crawling because it was such a mournful lament. I slowly turned my head this way
and that to get a fix on the source, and just as the music ended I was pretty sure it was coming from the refrigerator.
Moving the chair closer to the fridge, I waited again. Perhaps another hour passed. Then the strange, lonely opera crept back for a few more seconds
before fading away. It was definitely coming from the refrigerator.
At about 2:00 AM, the music returned, and this time I threw open the refrigerator's double doors to listen. My patience was rewarded, as the
volume of the music easily doubled when I opened the doors, and I was able to pinpoint the source immediately.
It was the ice-maker water filter. Roughly every hour or so, the ice-maker quietly squeezed out a fresh rack of ice cubes, and the reservoir would
refill with water. For the few seconds that the water was flowing, the filter would whine and warble right on the fringes of audibility, but just
enough to irritate the hell out of me.
Of course, it was my mind that assigned the noise its operatic quality. After a good 3 month run, I closed down the production by
simply installing a new filter.
— Doc Velocity