Either Paranormal or Something Worse....

Originally posted by grubblesnert
A couple of thoughts,
Settling of the ground if this condo is fairly new and built on newly cleared, filled or had another building there before it.

Built 20 years ago. 1991. Not very new.

Wind, temp varience,water intrusion, varmit intrusion, improper remodeling or alterations. All or some combined to compromise the engineered strength of the structure.

If it was happening all over, or if the snaps shifted at all from that one very small area (other than quick snaps right next to my head - once in a while - when I'm downstairs on the sofa next to the recessed window box area) then I'd have already assumed what you suggest here. I've had bona fide paranormal stuff happen, and nothing vague about those instances, so this is why I'm stumped as to what this is. It's like a cross between normal and paranormal, and not much like either.

The reason for more noise when people are present could be due to the vibrations given of by walking, opening & closing doors(along with pressure changes) Just enough vibration and change to cause the built up tension of whatever the weakness is to slip (pop!)

What about the rapid fire 4-6 snap bursts? And the room is 22"x14", with the wall in question one of the 14" walls. Kinda hard for one person, lying on the bed and trying to get to sleep for an hour or more, to affect a otherwise sturdy structure of that size to that extent. I probably wouldn't reach that far for an explanation. Occam's Razor, and all that.

Check your doors opening windows corners window sills etc for signs of uneveness, cracks, misalignments.
check the electrical outlets, cable line placements, light switch opening for temperature changes, breeze or air movement. Keep real or mental notes and keep checking these areas You may notice changes after a series of pops. Don't think your place was put together correct or according to code. A "Firewall" is only as good as the guy who built it and the other guys that drill holes through it or whatever.

I have done all that, and - as I already stated - I had the condo association's repairs contractor take a look at it. He's a pro, and he couldn't figure it out. I don't know. You could insist that he's an idiot, but that'd be pretty presumptuous if you did.

What is the load of the units or area above you. Is an overloaded overhead area a contributing factor.

No attic, no basement. The unit sits on a cement pad, and has no unit above it. It's a two story loft 2 bedroom unit. And as I said, nothing at all (no wiring, no duct work, no water pipes) located near where the snaps happen.

I wish I was there! I bet you I could figure it out for you and it would be a good adventure too.

I'd love it if someone could nail this down. What's also weird is that it suddenly stops for a week or so, and then just as I think it's fixed - or whatever it takes for it to not happen - it immediately starts up again, and it's almost as if it wanted to say "Ha! I'm still here." I don't know. Nothing environmental seems consistent with these snaps except the very unusual sound of them.

It's a firewall. Nothing runs through that wall. Nothing at all.

.......Or so you've been told. Muhahahah

Put the tape up. I want to hear what it sounds like.

Originally posted by angeldoll

It's a firewall. Nothing runs through that wall. Nothing at all.

Put the tape up. I want to hear what it sounds like.

I bet you do. I'm looking for some answers. Not looking for stars and flags. The tapes are 30 minutes of nothing, with maybe a couple snaps here and there. I stated that the recordings only proved that the snaps DON'T happen when no one's in the room. I don't need to tape them to hear them. They happen a lot. More than enough for me.

Besides, you don't come across like someone who'd be able to discern anything from a recording of a wall snap. So why bother?

Originally posted by roaland
it being a firewall that, if i understood you right, was solid, it probably has some cinder block in between the wooden studs. The block would be more susceptible to temperature changes then the wood would be. I may be wrong about the block but seeing as brick and stone change temps quicker then wood does from ambient temps its worth wondering about.


But as an earlier poster suggested, try asking your electric company if they would inspect it for free.

I'm going to get with the local fire dept as soon as the holidays are over (my wife refuses to start this until after the new year). I just was hoping for more technical info before approaching them. Don't want to be dismissed without a good hearing out.

Now as a Ghost Hunter, I'm going to have to ask you to use a digital recorder to try to get the evp's instead of your laptop. A laptop will have a heck of a lot more of an electromagnetic field around it then a smaller recorder would. Just my experience and my opinion.

Wouldn't the electromagnetic field be a plus? Then again, I've never ghost hunted, so maybe I'm misunderstanding the role of electromagnetic fields in that work.

reply to post by NorEaster


Honestly I would say that it's some basic shifting of wood/ other materials throughout seasonal weather changes but, if I understood you correctly I think that I have the exact experience you are describing. Exceptions being it seems to happen anywhere at anytime, and as you mentioned it seems to "show off" the more I pay attention to it, to the point where it only happens right at the end of meaning-full conversations or right after I come out of deep thought. I have confirmed that i'm not crazy and that other people can hear it to but they generally don't pay much attention to it. It sounds like a loud snap or crack or crack inside the walls coming from usually higher near the ceiling and sometimes they happen in successive order usually about 2 - 5 seconds between each occurrence. I still hold somewhere in my mind that this may be something to do with the structure of buildings but it is definitely reaching a point where i'm questioning the nature of this sound.

P.S This is my first post I just made it because I have always wondered what the [SNIP] that sound is
I hope we find out what this is!

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reply to post by NorEaster
I was impressed with the time and seriousness you gave to my thoughts! You appear to have given this situation a lot of thought and it looks like you have a bonafide mystery on your hands. Could be a paranormal type thing especially if you are sensitive and have experienced such things before, but I'm no expert on that.
Got to say.................So far you got me stumped my friend!
I'd still like to experience all of these things first hand, I've always had a knack for thinking in a abstract manner and always try to approach problems with an open mind,
Then again based on your descriptions Maybe not. Loud rapping noises close to my head might be a bit to much!

I'm pretty sure I know exactly what this noise is.

Our house is well over 100yrs old but we recently had forced air heat put in with ducting running all through the walls and above ceilings.

The exact snapping kind of noise you describe we were hearing in one area. It was insulated ducting for the AC/heat expanding with the warm air. the outer foil on the hoses expanding. Only ever happened when heat and fan was on.

We have the same kind of hoses and ducting all over the house but just this one area was doing it or was the only section where the sound was loud enough to be noticed.

Hope this helps. Might be a similar thing causing your noises?

Originally posted by NorEaster

Originally posted by electricalpup
I would check to see if the builders used steel studding for your firewall this may explain the noises.

Please explain. This might be important.

Hey I went back and read your OP and along with this steel stud question it made me think...........
You said the fire wall was the dividing wall between your unit and the one next. If it's possible ask the occupants of the unit next to you if they have anything mounted to the wall they share with you. My initial thought would be a plasma screen wall mount or set of shelves with heavy objects like an aquarium or stereo.
This could put tension and unusual load on this wall especially if this was screwed right into the metal studs.
Also, the uneven heating or cooling of your side of the wall versus their side may cause an uneven expansion and contraction of the drywall or whatever the surfaces are. combine the two and something weird could happen.

Whadaya think???

P.S I own a Condo unit as rental property. Built 1984. I do all my own work and can tell you it is a disgrace to anyone claiming to be a professional carpenter. Everything done off level, fast & cheap. I have to deal with the maintainence people once in a while and can tell you, They are not very smart! Point being take your building's "Super" with a grain of salt. He may not be that super

reply to post by NorEaster


You bet I do? Stars and flags? You are way off what I meant. Sometimes I am pretty good at "discerning" things, but in this case, why bother? It's very rude to dismiss someone in the way you have here.
Good Evening. I hope you find your ghostly noise.

reply to post by NorEaster


Can the "Super" obtain a copy of the original blueprints? A firewall would have cinderblock between unit walls. You say you heard the sound 7 feet up, so my educated guess, the rebar may NOT be uniform in all rows, so you would have none re enforced blocks stressing the load bearing rebarres blocks. As nothing is above (other than the roof) not a structural issue. You also mention slab construction, the footer poured under that wall could also be suspect in colder months. How far north is your locale? Frost line plus a not so great masonry crew can lead to all kinds of fun years after construction is completed.

Twenty year old building issues are not so much age as quality issues. They truly don't build em like they used too.

Originally posted by NorEaster
I have this problem in our condo and it's been going on for a few years now, but only during the late Fall, Winter, and early Spring months. It's kind of like knocking in the wall, in one corner of our bedroom - although every now and then it'll knock inside a window frame as well, but mostly the one corner of the room. The bedroom is on the 2nd floor and is - if i were to take the door assembly out - a loft style layout that is the 2nd floor on the place. The knocks are more like sharp snaps, but do sound like they are happening to 2x4s, as opposed to the drywall. I've never heard anything like these noise before, and they sometimes happen in quick bursts of 4 to 6 snaps, with the snaps evenly spaced - which causes me to wonder how they can be naturally occurring.

There are some other odd aspects that I need to note here, though. These are the things that have me confused as to what it could be, and why I'm not ready to call these "knocks" spirit communication, even though I can't seem to explain them as being "normal" either.

• The wall in question is a fire wall, and has no wiring at all behind it.
  
• The snaps happen only when the heater thermostat has been turned on - and only when the switch is on "heat", and not when the switch has been set to "A/C cool" - even though there's no requirement for the electric heater unit to be turned on. The heat is forced air and is electric, as is everything else (stove, water heater, etc.) in the place.
  
• All heating air ducts lie between the 1st floor ceiling and 2nd floor surface, and are at least 10 feet from that wall.
  
• The snaps are located" about 7 ft up the wall, and 3 feet from the corner where the outer wall (with windows and such) intersects. That section of firewall is also offset from the condo next door, so it also is an outer wall, although it is a firewall - meaning that it's much more isolated from the outside than a "normal" wall is.
  
• The snaps do not ever correspond to temperature changes inside or outside.
  
• They variate in volume from obvious to pretty damn loud, and (as I said) sometimes they repeat in rapid succession, with a definite interval consistency, and then go back to single snaps for a while.
  
• They rarely occur when no one's in the room - I've recorded the room (30 minute segments) with my laptop, and maybe one or two snaps will occur on some recordings. Also, no EVPs have been recorded during these sessions.
  
• I've had the maintenance guy from the condo association stand there and shake his head as he listens to them. He's got no idea what they are, and no idea what could be causing them.
  

They started about 3/4 of a year after a close friend of mine was murdered, so of course I "blamed" her for them, but the truth is that they don't seem as interactive as you'd expect from a paranormal source. To be completely frank, my concern is fire of some sort, but I can't figure out how anything "natural" could be causing these things - especially the rapid count snaps bursts that this whateveritis seems to have learned in the last year or so. In truth, it's actually getting more proficient, and even showing off (it seems) lately. Again, that doesn't really align with the idea of wood expanding and contracting, or metal in there somewhere whacking against wood (not that it sounds like either of those, but that's what you'd go to initially as an explanation).

I'm at a loss here. Any ideas - other than the usual troll stuff, of course - would be welcome. My worst nightmare would be that I let 3 years of clear warnings go by without fixing something that ended up burning the place to the ground, but the truth is that the wall itself is completely solid and blank. Nothing "inside" it at all, and even the super was stumped.

edit on 12/29/2011 by NorEaster because: (no reason given)

heat causes most objects to expand, the snaps are wood and paint expanding slightly due to temperature rising.

Crap.....

So here's the latest on this thing.

After fielding this thread, I decided to try an analog noise-activated handheld tape recorder last night, and set it near the wall. I got only two snaps, and both I heard myself when they happened. One really loud snap just after I turned out the light, and the next one happened when I finally got my wife out of bed this morning (6 AM) for work. The damn thing decided to shut down completely on me, and this after being a constant "companion" from the middle of October, when I first turned the thermostat from cool to heat.

My wife laughed, "It knows you were posting about it."

I don't know. Just doesn't make sense if it's expansion/contraction of the unit's frame, but then it's too non-interactive for it to be paranormal. It's like it sits in some sort of gray area between the two. Definitely isn't duct work, or something in the wall (hell, if it was something in a crawl space, then after three years, the damn thing should be dead by now anyway - making it paranormal in a completely different sense of what that means).

I got nothing.

Originally posted by ZeroUnlmtd

Originally posted by NorEaster
I have this problem in our condo and it's been going on for a few years now, but only during the late Fall, Winter, and early Spring months. It's kind of like knocking in the wall, in one corner of our bedroom - although every now and then it'll knock inside a window frame as well, but mostly the one corner of the room. The bedroom is on the 2nd floor and is - if i were to take the door assembly out - a loft style layout that is the 2nd floor on the place. The knocks are more like sharp snaps, but do sound like they are happening to 2x4s, as opposed to the drywall. I've never heard anything like these noise before, and they sometimes happen in quick bursts of 4 to 6 snaps, with the snaps evenly spaced - which causes me to wonder how they can be naturally occurring.

There are some other odd aspects that I need to note here, though. These are the things that have me confused as to what it could be, and why I'm not ready to call these "knocks" spirit communication, even though I can't seem to explain them as being "normal" either.

• The wall in question is a fire wall, and has no wiring at all behind it.
  
• The snaps happen only when the heater thermostat has been turned on - and only when the switch is on "heat", and not when the switch has been set to "A/C cool" - even though there's no requirement for the electric heater unit to be turned on. The heat is forced air and is electric, as is everything else (stove, water heater, etc.) in the place.
  
• All heating air ducts lie between the 1st floor ceiling and 2nd floor surface, and are at least 10 feet from that wall.
  
• The snaps are located" about 7 ft up the wall, and 3 feet from the corner where the outer wall (with windows and such) intersects. That section of firewall is also offset from the condo next door, so it also is an outer wall, although it is a firewall - meaning that it's much more isolated from the outside than a "normal" wall is.
  
• The snaps do not ever correspond to temperature changes inside or outside.
  
• They variate in volume from obvious to pretty damn loud, and (as I said) sometimes they repeat in rapid succession, with a definite interval consistency, and then go back to single snaps for a while.
  
• They rarely occur when no one's in the room - I've recorded the room (30 minute segments) with my laptop, and maybe one or two snaps will occur on some recordings. Also, no EVPs have been recorded during these sessions.
  
• I've had the maintenance guy from the condo association stand there and shake his head as he listens to them. He's got no idea what they are, and no idea what could be causing them.
  

They started about 3/4 of a year after a close friend of mine was murdered, so of course I "blamed" her for them, but the truth is that they don't seem as interactive as you'd expect from a paranormal source. To be completely frank, my concern is fire of some sort, but I can't figure out how anything "natural" could be causing these things - especially the rapid count snaps bursts that this whateveritis seems to have learned in the last year or so. In truth, it's actually getting more proficient, and even showing off (it seems) lately. Again, that doesn't really align with the idea of wood expanding and contracting, or metal in there somewhere whacking against wood (not that it sounds like either of those, but that's what you'd go to initially as an explanation).

I'm at a loss here. Any ideas - other than the usual troll stuff, of course - would be welcome. My worst nightmare would be that I let 3 years of clear warnings go by without fixing something that ended up burning the place to the ground, but the truth is that the wall itself is completely solid and blank. Nothing "inside" it at all, and even the super was stumped.

edit on 12/29/2011 by NorEaster because: (no reason given)

heat causes most objects to expand, the snaps are wood and paint expanding slightly due to temperature rising.

The snaps do not ever correspond to temperature changes inside or outside. (see bulleted item #5 above)

Originally posted by Glinda
reply to post by NorEaster

 

Can the "Super" obtain a copy of the original blueprints?

He did refer to the blueprints that he has in his office, and was convinced that it's not a design/construction issue. He's an independent maintenance contractor, and has no dog in the fight concerning the viability of the unit designs, and made sure I knew it while he was explaining how the units were built. Also, I'm the only one in the entire subdivision (over 200 other condo units) that's ever had anything like this happen. My wife brought it up at a condo association meeting last year, and no one had ever had a similar experience with their units.

A firewall would have cinderblock between unit walls. You say you heard the sound 7 feet up, so my educated guess, the rebar may NOT be uniform in all rows, so you would have none re enforced blocks stressing the load bearing rebarres blocks. As nothing is above (other than the roof) not a structural issue. You also mention slab construction, the footer poured under that wall could also be suspect in colder months. How far north is your locale? Frost line plus a not so great masonry crew can lead to all kinds of fun years after construction is completed.

I live about 20 miles from the Mason/Dixon line. No frozen ground here, ever. Snow lasts - maybe - three days before melting off, and the grass stays green all winter long.

The rebar issue would be way past my ability to verify. The section wall in question is exposed to the outside - the next condo unit is offset by about the 14 ft width of the room itself. Designed to prevent next door noise issues between units where a "master bedroom" is located.

Twenty year old building issues are not so much age as quality issues. They truly don't build em like they used too.

edit on 29-12-2011 by Glinda because: (no reason given)

Granted. That said, if you read the posts I've put up here in this thread, you'll see that the behavior of this snapping isn't typical of a structure issue. Hell, I've tested it every possible way, including turning the thermostat switch off in the dead of winter for two days (wasn't much below 35 degrees outside, so it didn't freeze us out) and noting that the knocking immediately stopped for the entire length, only to come right back as soon as I turned the switch back on - and long before the temperature inside had a chance to change.

Believe me, I've tested the hell out of this thing, and still have no idea what's going on here. This is why I'm posting this in a paranormal forum, and not the home repair/improvement forums I've been hitting with it.

Originally posted by grubblesnert
reply to post by NorEaster

 

Got to say.................So far you got me stumped my friend!
I'd still like to experience all of these things first hand, I've always had a knack for thinking in a abstract manner and always try to approach problems with an open mind,
Then again based on your descriptions Maybe not. Loud rapping noises close to my head might be a bit to much!

I've been sort of attributing it to my friend, so I don't get too unnerved. If I didn't have her on the other side, the stuff that's been happening around here since her death (the wall snaps, disembodied whistles and humming - sometimes between 1-2 ft in front of me while I'm wide awake, lights turned on/off here and there, ridiculously obvious item relocation incidents, and seemingly interactive cobweb "touches") would have me pretty uncomfortable. I'd hate the idea of being invaded by someone that I don't know.

With all the stuff going on, it'd be easiest to just associate the wall snaps with the rest of this stuff, but my fear is that they're a warning about a serious situation that has nothing to do with the rest of the odd stuff. A fire would be even worse if I'd been getting a heads up about a building problem all along. The hell of it is that - short of tearing out the wall - there's no way to isolate the cause of the noises. That's expensive and I need some real justification before I put that bill on our budget.

reply to post by NorEaster


I was awakened by five loud knocks around 3am and I was freaked out that it may have been paranormal. I live on the second floor too.

A few nights later, my neighbor below me knocked on my door and yelled at me about having my music up and complained that I keep playing music when she's trying to sleep.

Ah Ha.

I told her I was sleeping too and that I wasn't playing music. We walked downstairs and i listened for it. We didn't hear anything.

I haven't hear any knocking since then.

Originally posted by NorEaster
Crap.....

So here's the latest on this thing.

After fielding this thread, I decided to try an analog noise-activated handheld tape recorder last night, and set it near the wall. I got only two snaps, and both I heard myself when they happened. One really loud snap just after I turned out the light, and the next one happened when I finally got my wife out of bed this morning (6 AM) for work. The damn thing decided to shut down completely on me, and this after being a constant "companion" from the middle of October, when I first turned the thermostat from cool to heat.

My wife laughed, "It knows you were posting about it."

I don't know. Just doesn't make sense if it's expansion/contraction of the unit's frame, but then it's too non-interactive for it to be paranormal. It's like it sits in some sort of gray area between the two. Definitely isn't duct work, or something in the wall (hell, if it was something in a crawl space, then after three years, the damn thing should be dead by now anyway - making it paranormal in a completely different sense of what that means).

I got nothing.

expansion and contraction make perfect sense, too much sense to look into it further. the snaps are coming from the part of the frame that has the most moisture in the wood most likely, next to a wall where rain water will seep in from time to time, not enough to cause flooding or anything like that but where moisture gets in the wood, when the heat is on the moisture condensates in the wood causing the loud snaps because the wood is expanding faster than normal. debunked bro

reply to post by NorEaster


What my group tries to do is keep any electromagnetic interference as far away from the recorder as we possibly can, gives it more of a neutral environment to interact in. In my personal experience with recording ghosts, the type of energy that comes off of electronics and power wires and such seem to limit the amount of evp's we get what those fields are present in large amounts. its just what we as a group have come up with, everyone does it differently.

Well, it looks like my posting about this might've fixed the problem after all. Since posting this thread, there hasn't been any knocks at all (except for the two - one each - that happened as I turned out the light Thursday night and got out of bed on Friday morning, of course) Imagine that. It's almost like "the dog that didn't bark" clue in that Sherlock Holmes mystery.

Yeah, it's probably normal creaks and settlings that have finally settled for good - since posting this thread thread about them - regardless of the facts as I presented them in the 1st post. I must be a psychic or something. I mean it's just plain amazing that by posting about these relentless snaps on this forum, I've shut them down completely.

My wife insists that there must be money to be made with this strange and - possibly useful - power that I seem to have discovered that I possess. I should see what happens when I start a thread about how messed up the US economy is.

Frankly, I'm now beginning to suspect that environmental causes are being eliminated here. I mean, seriously, how much more deliberate can this sudden turn of events appear? Short of snapping out "Hey *sshole! I'm not a friggin' expanding wall joist!" in Morse Code, how obvious is a complete and sudden shut down of the snaps that have been ongoing since October - and for the two years before that? Occam's Razor, my *ss - this situation has me completely baffled now.

You guys are the Paranormal experts. You're clearly not the home foundation settling experts. What are the chances that this is some sort of attempt to - I don't know - maintain a superficial contact-level relationship? Has anyone ever experienced anything like this? It's like having a talkative person in the room, that's just chatting about small-talk stuff. Nothing important, but just sociable chatter. Kind of like how my (late) friend Rhonda was whenever we'd hang around and spend days on end together. Stream of consciousness stuff and more just letting our minds play with as our brains unloaded into each other than anything else.

I am clearly personifying this situation, but its hard to ignore the fact that it's now "behaving" like Rhonda, and pulling back completely as a protest over my having shared its existence online with strangers. That said, I hate it when anyone just jumps to supernatural explanations, so I feel caught between a rock and a hard place here.

Damn.

Originally posted by SuperMassiveBlackH0le
reply to post by NorEaster

 

Honestly I would say that it's some basic shifting of wood/ other materials throughout seasonal weather changes but, if I understood you correctly I think that I have the exact experience you are describing. Exceptions being it seems to happen anywhere at anytime, and as you mentioned it seems to "show off" the more I pay attention to it, to the point where it only happens right at the end of meaning-full conversations or right after I come out of deep thought. I have confirmed that i'm not crazy and that other people can hear it to but they generally don't pay much attention to it. It sounds like a loud snap or crack or crack inside the walls coming from usually higher near the ceiling and sometimes they happen in successive order usually about 2 - 5 seconds between each occurrence. I still hold somewhere in my mind that this may be something to do with the structure of buildings but it is definitely reaching a point where i'm questioning the nature of this sound.

P.S This is my first post I just made it because I have always wondered what the [SNIP] that sound is

I hope we find out what this is!

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edit on 30/12/11 by argentus because: edited censor circumvention

This is exactly what this snapping stuff is like. It seems to almost respond to lulls in conversation - like I said, it's as if there's a chatty person in the room. And the rapid succession snaps are about 1-3 seconds apart, although recently they've gotten even more dexterous, and can be less than a second apart, but always uniform intervals.

What kind of structure do you live in? New? Older? Stick-frame? Basement or concrete slab foundation? Anything that must be "in place" (such as with my thermostat switch, regardless of whether the heat actually kicks on or not) before the snaps will occur? Have you had anyone close to you pass on that you can - even vaguely - associate the arrival of these snaps with?

Oh, and what swear word did you use that got the mods on your *ss in that post? It must've been pretty good.