Can you think of anything creepier in the middle of the night than the distant, melancholy sounds of children singing? It’s pure nightmare fuel, but it was also the reality for a small family in eastern England, who for months reportedly had to endure a haunting rendition of “It’s Raining, It’s Pouring” from children who couldn’t be found.
As reported by the Ipswich Star, a mother and her two children were left terrified by the sounds they could hear from their home randomly in the night on countless occasions.
After it was apparent the singing wasn’t going to stop on its own, the mother reached out to her local town council. Eventually, early in the morning of September 12, she heard the familiar lyrics yet again and called the council’s rapid response team who joined her on a hunt for the source of the haunting.
To the relief of anyone who didn’t want this story to end inconclusively with a mysterious tale about kids being involved in a tragic accident 100 years ago, the music was traced to a nearby industrial building where it was actually playing from a loudspeaker.
The next day, a spokesperson for the industrial site reportedly confirmed the nursery rhyme was part of a security system and designed to act as a deterrent to trespassers in the middle of the night. The music was apparently triggered by over-sensitive, motion-detecting cameras reacting to the movement of spiders across the lenses. (This is the part where the Scooby-Doo gang laughs uncontrollably just before the cartoon’s end credits roll.)
The sensitivity of the security system has reportedly since been tweaked, and the volume of the loudspeakers was turned down so as not to terrify local residents any more. But it’s unknown if any charges were pressed against the spiders for trespassing.
[Ipswich Star via Boing Boing]