This Troper has a few examples.

A few years back, I was sitting around on my front porch, listening to my MP3 player. Earlier in the day, I had added some new songs onto it, one of which being "Rock Star" by Nickelback (I have since realized how awful Nickelback is, but I digress.). So, the song pops up on the MP3 player, and I proceed to listen, not really paying too much attention, until about a minute and a half in, I hear what sounds like a man yelling out. I'll admit it, I got scared shitless, and immediately turned off the MP3. Trust me, if you've listened to the song with earphones in at a fairly loud volume, you've heard it. It's pretty tough to hear without them. Here's a link to the song, it's at 1:44 or so.

A more recent example, while I was trying to sleep one night, I found out that my toilet moans. Yes, MOANS. Quite loudly, actually. It's since stopped, though.

There's a species of hornbill that I've heard make this staticky, StarWars laser-y noise. It's creepy when you hear it walking around the zoo and don't know where the eff it's coming from.

Even better: there is a bird native to Papau New Guinea that has a call, a high, descending whistle, that sounds EXACTLY like a falling artillery shell. Guarantee that bird scared the pants off of some soldiers circa 1941-42.

This Troper's brother plays a hurdy-gurdy. Hearing it at night, after an hour of reading creepypastas - priceless

Car alarms. Especially when they wake you up in the early morning or keep you from sleeping at night, and particularly the NNNG-NNNG-NNNG variety thereof. This Troper once talked to a girl from Chicago who actually found them soothing...and hated the sound of crickets. Never will understand that one.

One of another Troper's neighbours has a car alarm that has three problems: #QUOTE# 1: It sometimes goes off without any way to tell beforehand. #QUOTE# 2: Said neighbour doesn't care when it goes off, so it can go on for minutes that feel like hours. #QUOTE# 3: It is WAY too loud even if you close all the windows and put headphones on. Not to mention that it's Hell itself... *shudders*

I caused this for almost half of my school with the mouthpiece for a saxophone and a reed.

Ever wondered what a humidifier sounds like without water in the tank?

This troper thought nothing of Emergency Broadcast Tests. Then, Modern Warfare 2 had a level that opened with an Emergency Broadcast, complete with the scrolling text and that beeping. That BEEPING. That is hell.

Oh my god yes. That still sends shivers down my spine whenever I hear that. Didn't help that my grandmother always had a police scanner on in the house somewhere.

Previous troper, are you me?

This troper has a few minor, personal ones from some video games.

From ''KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'', we have both Aqua's death scream from whenever you get a game over, and Eraqus's loud yell right before he rushes you with a stabby-attack. The former because I ''never'' imagined Aqua could make a noise like that, and the latter because (1) I've been in Tae-Kwan-Do for four years now and I ''know'' that yell, that's a ki-up, and it's meant to intimidate; in real life, this troper has heard the noise several times in sparring, and it is quite startling if the person actually means it (my dad tells me I've actually made small children cry with mine); it works quite well here, as it's loud and comes out of nowhere, and (2) I very quickly learned to associate the yell with a swift, unavoidable death.

Several other boss audio cues, like those preceding Xigbar's uber-bullet-spam attack, Xaldin's "Beware the winds of despair!", Xemnas's "Can you spare a heart?", and, worst of all for this troper, [[KingdomHearts358DaysOver2 Xion's]] "How's this?", "Is that all you got?" and "STOP HOLDING BACK!" all rendered in that horrible... distorted voice... They are all directly wired into my OhCrap RUN AWAY reflex now.

Also, real life: the house settling at night. It sounds far too much life footsteps... footsteps when I know everyone else is asleep...

NOAA WEATHER RADIOS, DEAR GOD. It makes some surreal trilling, beeping noise, and will not stop until you push a button and a creepy monotone voice informs you there's a tornado/severe storm/flood heading your way. Maybe it's just me, but my heart races whenever I hear it and I insist it was manufactured personally by Satan....Granted, I'm Afraid Of Thunder so it's like a harbinger of doom, for me...

And how. *shudders*

What's wrong with 8-N-0 AFSK data bursts? I think they're kind of hypnotic. Or are you referring to the 1050Hz attention signal? Cause I find that more annoying than the data bursts.

I'm gonna admit, I've spent the better part of an hour on Youtube listening to NOAA weather radios and other Emergency Broadcasts. I don't find the weather announcements creepy, but some of the Emergency Broadcasts gave me the chills.

Maybe it's because this troper is an Aspie and therefore has very acute hearing, but the sound of voices being fast-forwarded SCARED THE CRAP out of me as a kid. I was seriously afraid to touch the button on the VCR (yeah, back in the mid-90s...) for fear that the chipmunk voices would come again and I would have to run out of the room screaming with my hands over my ears. Very high-pitched noises (or very low-pitched noises, for that matter) still tend to give me the creeps.

Very High-pitched noises just drive this Troper Aspie nuts.

The sound of air conditioners starting up through vents has a tendency to freak This Troper out. It doesn't help his job is in dark, empty office buildings at night where he is alone and the nearest friendly backup is a five minute walk away.

This troper happens to be deaf (with a cochlear implant on most of the time); I haven't heard a single sound that compares with true silence. In the end, your mind starts making up noises, because it can't handle the silence for long.

This troper was 10 when my family moved from a prestigious city to a mildly-modernized village, of course, being 10 I am, everything sounds like "The HellIsThatNoise!", especially GoddamnedBats, Goddamed Owls and alike. Until that day comes where I and my friends are playing on a rice field (14 at the time), every animal shout like HatePlague on crack and scared us, with everyone going "OhCrap!" and "ThisIsGonnaSuck!". This troper and half of the kids not run, other half is. We're stunned until everything goes silent, COMPLETELY, and this troper launch a "OH FUCK!" for the first time and going "SHUT THE FUCK UP AND RUN!!"

This troper was 10 when he first got an Internet connection and about 11, when he stumbled upon a flash game called "Scary Scavenger Hunt". He was like "that'd be scary in real life, but this is not only cartoony, it's deliciously cheesy." Still, there was the neat music with that one unsettling sound and this troper couldn't figure out what the sound is. Then at summer we moved into a summer cottage. He was outside, enjoying the weather. The tune from "Scary Scavenger Hunt" was an EarWorm that played in his mind over and over when suddenly, he heard one of the notes (that long unsettling sound) in real life. No apparent sound source, it was just ''around.'' Then the next one. And the next. ''And then the next.'' First thought: "wait, why is there a soundtrack in real life?" second thought "wait, the game's scenario in real life would be scary..." and then that was it. It was a moment where scary stories turned to life and all hell breaks loose. He was standing there, paralyzed by fear, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to do ''anything.'' This only lasted four or five sounds (about eight seconds at most) but back then it felt like an eternity passed before the sound finally changed into something that definitely wasn't in the original tune. Then the timbre of the sound changed as well. If the sound source is right below you and the echo is good enough, you perceive it as "around" and grasshoppers can do ''a lot more sound timbres than we think.'' To give you an idea how scary it was back then: even once this troper found out what actually happened... there was no laughter. He weakly walked back inside to stop himself from shivering.

During this troper's childhood, a friend was spending the night, and for some reason or another we had to go down into my house's creepy daddy-long-legs-filled-lit-by-only-a-few-hanging-incandescent-light-bulbs-and-can-only-be-accessed-from-outside-the-house basement, in order to retrieve a videotape I had recorded earlier. My friend and I both had arachnophobia, so we didn't want to stay long; while trying eject, the VCR started to rewind and I decided to let it finish. I thought the sound it made while rewinding was very "unique" so a conversation resembling the following took place: #QUOTE# '''Me:''' Do you think that sounds creepy? #QUOTE# '''Friend:''' Do I think it sounds like a chainsaw with chains made out of human teeth that was constructed in the bowels of Hell itself? Why no, I don't, why do you ask?

My guess is that you caught a spider in the tape while you were rewinding it, the sound was ''it screaming''.

You motherfucker.

This troper has a large metal box-swamp cooler-thing in her living room, which shares a wall with her bedroom. Late one night I kept hearing a THUMPTHUMP-THUMPTHUMP coming from the other room and couldn't sleep AT ALL. The next morning I figured out that it was my pet cat jumping on the top of the box... But still... *shiver*

When I was in college, I lived in a dorm that was famous around campus for being haunted. It had its own page on a website about Ohio ghost stories, there were that many rumors and legends about it. It was also built in the late 1940s, so when winter term rolled around, there were a lot of nights when the pipes would start making noises like GASHUNK GASHUNK GASHUNK WOMP CLANK. ''Loudly.'' And the plumbing would occasionally get crabby and start squealing and moaning a few minutes after someone flushed a toilet or turned on a shower. Even knowing what those sounds were, they tended to make me jump out of my skin if I wasn't expecting them. Of course, there was also the night something spent pounding on the wall next to my bed from the empty room next door, but... the pipes. Yes. That was the pipes too. Totally.

Everyone knows this noise. Dripping taps. When none of the taps in your house are on, that noise becomes major paranoia fuel. ''Where is it coming from!?''

This troper has Tourette's Syndrome. A side-effect of this is usually ''not'' involuntary swearing, but often an increased sensitivity to a variety of stimuli. Often this is sound. In the case of this troper, just about anything can become this trope under certain conditions or stress. And due to her Tourette's, when she is startled, she practically screams. It's not fun at all when you scream like you are being murdered just because your father knocked on the door while you were studying.

Seconded. This troper picked up a lot of her tics from her cats -- mewling noises, yowls, chittering -- so when she's startled, she tends to make humorous noises. Understandably, people laugh. In the best case scenario, this becomes a second unwanted stimuli; in times of extreme stress, it's an eerie dissonant soundtrack.

THIS troper watched MarbleHornets. At night. Alone. On his ipod. Under the covers. Aving a neighbor come over her house to play. Her neighbor wanted to play Operation, but she didn't. That night, she cowered behind one of her parents as the other one threw it away. To this day she still won't play it.

One summer, a colony of wasps took up residence in the wall to which this troper's bed was attached. She had to move into the guest room until they'd all been poisoned, because the noise of them crawling inside the wall right beside her head unnerved her so badly she couldn't sleep.

This troper, as one of his {{Disability Superpower}}s associated with his Asperger's and slight bipolar, has a super high sense of hearing. Whenever microphone feedback occurs, I feel extreme discomfort as a result, while most others laugh it off.

This troper does not like taking the back stairs of one particular building at his university, because said stairs have a fairly loud air vent that sounds like something out of Hell.

This troper's computers seem to love scaring her through the use of this trope. she used to have a computer that was connected to what I thought was a surge protector (it served a similar purpose, but had fewer outlets and was much bigger, looking like it was made specifically for that computer). occasionally, when the computer was shut down but the "surge protector" remained on (once I got the message "It is now safe to turn off the computer"), the computer, regardless of speaker settings, would make this horrible sound (the details are sketchy, as this was years ago, but I remember something like the U.S. Emergency Broadcast Siren, only it was continuous, and sounded higher pitched.) What made it creepier was that it didn't do it every time, and it was impossible to predict when it would make that noise. For this reason, this troper was afraid to shut down her computer and would either leave it in power-saving mode, or just turn off the surge protector. The computer was eventually replaced, but we kept the surge protector and connected it to a different computer; it then proceeded to make a lower pitched BEEEEP*3 seconds*BEEEEP*3 seconds*BEEEEP sound whenever it was on when there was a blackout. The sound became even worse when the first time I had the gall to leave it on during a power failure, I got on it afterward to find that I couldn't type ''anything'' on it and I had to get the computer replaced because it wouldn't let me log on.

from the same troper as above, her 5th grade elementary school was stationed close to a fire station that had an alarm similar to an air raid siren (the difference being that each "cycle" was much more drawn out) Combine that with the fact that it went off often during this troper's recess and this troper's pyrophobia (fear of flames)....

This troper recently used a somewhat risky sounding method to fix his XBOX. He was aware it was likely to break it, but he was desperate. The instructions said to block the fans, causing it to overheat until the three red lights changed to two, and then switch it off, wait, and switch it back on. That didn't happen. What happened was it turned off by itself, so I removed the blockage and switched it back on. The fans made their usual racket... And then got louder. And louder. AND LOUDER. ''AND LOUDER''. '''''AND LOUDER.''''' Until I panicked and switched it off. Good news is the trick worked temporarily, so I was happy.

This troper volunteers at her local zoo. Occasionally, on one side of the zoo, somewhat early in the morning, one can hear the gibbons calling. It used to scare this troper quite a bit until I found out what it was.

The song ''Counting Bodies Like To The Rhythm Of War Drums'' by A Perfect Circle creeps this troper out every time.

I've recently moved to a small town in Japan where there are higurashi cicadas. Maybe it's just because I'm a HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi fan, but I find the noise they make ''really'' unsettling.

This troper also finds the drone of cicadas incredibly disturbing, but mostly due to formative experience at my grandparents' house... with dead and shattered cicadas ''everywhere'' and ''that drone''.

''The cicadas.'' Dear god I'm not alone. I can't imagine how it would've been to actually hear them around you in real life, but even in a movie, even when the context is completely peaceful, as soon as I hear cicadas, I tense up.

Depends on distance for its fright factor. This Troper lives in an area where cicadas are heard 24-7 from about mid-June to late September. If the sound comes from far off, then it's just white noise. But if you hear that buzzing very, very nearby, you can't help but freeze and glance around to make sure you're not near the offending bug. The loudest I ever heard it was when I sat up on my beach towel, looked down and found one sitting squarely on my bare thigh. There was much screaming.

This troper gets the feeling that clawing her ears off of her head will not get rid of the sound every time she heards those goddamn cicadas.

This troper's living room has a fireplace that makes a rather loud noise of metal clanging when the wind blows. Just recently I was sitting quietly, alone in the house, watching a semi-scary television show, it was getting dark out... You get the picture. The fireplace made an especially loud ''CLANK'' and I jumped about a foot into the air. Even after I realized what it was I was a little creeped out.

For this troper, the sound of my phone vibrating, especially against a hard object, scares the piss out of me. And of course where I work and live requires I leave it on vibrate. Also, for a long time I used Meebo to keep in touch with friends who had AIM. We all had slightly troubled lives and I came to associate the conversations we'd have on IM with what I referred to, with no better way of understanding them, as "freakouts". And sometimes even after I'd logged out of Meebo in a panic I'd hear the little sound of an incoming IM... an innocuous-sounding''donk''. Yeah, I don't use Meebo any more.

T.T. used to have an absolutely ''massive'' fear of fire alarms--not due to the associations of fire, but that ''noise'' they make. Something about them sunk into my bones and terrified me. I hated it so much that, if I knew there would be a fire drill at one of my schools, I would actually try to ''skip class'' or ask for permission to be excused outside when this happened. Some of my teachers were understanding of my phobia; others, not so much.

This troper has been scared of the "ding!" error message on computers, the sound her computer makes when starting up (this is understandable because it is an EXTREMELY noisy computer which has recently broken down because there was too much dust in it), and her house burglar alarm (which is more loud than anything).

For this troper, it is the sound of an old air conditioner his grandfather owns. Despite being a 1985 model, it still works, though it has been gutted and repaired countless times by said granddaddy. As the result, it makes a sound very similar to '''''ZUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUL''''' in a deep, dooming, demonic voice. And it has recently been handed over to me. I have to ceased to watch {{Ghostbusters}} while at home.

When I was kid, Blanka's cry in the pre-Super versions of StreetFighterII was that noise. It was bad enough that just the sight of a SFII arcade cabinet would make me nervous. Whenever I saw someone pick Blanka, I quietly rooted for the CPU or the other player, hoping I wouldn't have to hear that ungodly noise. (Ironically, Blanka became my main in StreetFighterII and StreetFighterIV.) and I would dread getting instant messages out of the

Out of the what? The NoodleIncident?

o.o

The sound of a cat barfing, usually because it means having to clean up the resulting barf, ew.

This Troper was just sitting around in her room, it was around midnight, she was surfing the web, minding her own business when... "BAAWK! Bo-bobawbawk!" go the chickens. Next time someone went out back, there were little pieces of snow-white Silky rooster (named Horus) sitting around in the yard, and the hens (Caramel and Dansen) and chick (Tigereye) were scared shitless. We think a fox got him. I hadn't said anything when I heard it, and have regretted it even since.

On a less unfortunate note, she has also changes her windows sound so that the Default Beep is Homer Simpson saying "D'oh!", Critical Stop is an interchange between Sonic and Eggman from ''SonicX'' that goes "Oh, Sonic~!" "Yeah, what?" "You're going nowhere, fast~!" "Huh?", Asterisk is Bart Simpson saying "I didn't do it!" for the kidnapped child as a result of the media getting in the way.

Amber alerts are only supposed to be played for an actual kidnapping/endangerment -- but a number of them have turned out to be false alarms.

You think that's bad? Try the French version. And for the love of God, ''turn your volume down before you click that link!''

Certain fire alarms. For example, the pulsing Simplex horn listed in StockSoundEffects, which kind of sounds like a nuclear meltdown buzzer.

This troper was pee-her-pants scared of fire drills in elementary school on account of that alarm exactly. Hell is, in fact, that noise.

Oh God. This troper's high school had the worst one. A high-pitched, whining buzz that gained weird acoustic properties in our marble hallways, so that you could barely hear it until you turned a corner, and then you wanted to claw your ears off. '''OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SOUND''' is not the best state of mind in a crisis situation.

This troper lived in a dorm for a few months where the fire alarms would make this wierd clicky noise (which, for some reason, reminded me of an indrawn breath) right before blaring extremely loudly in every bedroom and hallway. Which would have been alright, except the alarms went off fairly regularly (averaging about 2-3 times a month), and the heaters in the rooms made a very similar ticking noise when they would turn on. On more than one occasion, I'd react out of sheer instinct and quickly plug my ears when the heater turned on.

A few days ago, this Troper walked past the newest building in her university, which is still under construction. This particular day, they were testing the fire alarms. AND THEY ARE TALKING FIRE ALARMS. The kind that say, in this horrible end-of-the-world voice, "A FIRE EMERGENCY HAS BEEN REPORTED. PLEASE LEAVE THE BUILDING IMMEDIATELY USING THE EMERGENCY EXITS. DO NOT USE THE STAIRS." She had chills the rest of the afternoon. Now that's the only talking fire alarm on campus. The other buildings use old-style bells or klaxons. I hope to God I never have a class in that building.

Really, alarms of any type would probably count as an intentional application of this trope.

Although I know of one alarm that's mostly {{Narm}}, as it sounds like an 8-bit sound effect.

This troper's depression era elementary school had big red alarm clock style dual bells that made the kindergarteners CRY. The middle school (90s) has a happy beeping sound and strobe lights, and the 50s high school has an alarm reminiscent of ancient police sirens.....

This troper's parents tried a fire dril on my and my siblings when we were younger. The others handled it fine. I was so shaken up I had to go out the front door (instead of climbing out the window, which I had done many many times before) where I ended up crying on the porch for a good ten minutes. And that was ''just'' from the noise.

The mooing of cows has become an example of this trope for the entire nation of Japan due to WorldWarII; when the bomb sirens would go off, ''every cow would start '''screaming''' at the top of its lungs''. Now you know why that really creepy track of nothing but alternating bass tones on the ''KatamariDamacy'' soundtrack is called "Night Moo Moo".

Jeezus, I wonder how they'd react to the THX bumper with the cow sounds that was in Pixar movies for a while!

Speaking of the THX sound. Just... just listen to it! Uugh...

During basketball games, how about the loud buzzing sound the timer makes to signify the end of each quarter? This troper hated going to see her brother play in the basketball games when she was younger for this very reason. She'd always hide under her coat, stick her fingers in her ears and scream, "Mom! Make the zeroes stop buzzing!" ParanoiaFuel at its finest.

Exploding Head Syndrome. You know, when you wake up and you hear a loud explosion-like noise in your head. It's a fairly well documented occurrence actually.

I actually have this. The first episode I had was while watching The Ruins. On a laptop. On my lap. Yeah, it fell, and it was half an hour before I could make myself move to pick it up. I didn't stop shaking until the next day. It didn't help that in my case the sound was accompanied by a flash of light. Not. Fun.

It's an extremely ominous sound to wake up to. It never bothers me because I almost always get them when someone's giving me a scalp massage, which is an extremely sedating experience for me (understatement -- I could forget my own name during those...)

This troper has it, as well, and I always get it when I'm trying to sleep. The noises are pretty varied-I've heard pops, bangs, explosions, a laser firing, and even a barking sound. The noises can be REALLY loud sometimes, and like the above troper, I sometimes see flashes of light. Not fun ''at all''...

A few months ago this troper had not gotten very much sleep in the past 24 hours, so when I went to bed I was completely exhausted and fell asleep almost instantly--or would have, if I hadn't heard a very loud BRRRZZZZZHHHHHPPPP! noise coming from inside my head. Needless to say, I jerked awake, hyperventilating, heart racing. When I finally calmed down enough to try to go back to sleep, I laid down again, closed my eyes, started to drift off to sleep--and the sound happened AGAIN, still inside my head. (This time I was more annoyed at it, though. Luckily, it didn't happen a third time.)

I get that when I'm really tired. It sounds as if someone is cleaning out a closet and dropped a box. Still asleep, I once yelled "Ma, you need help?" ''Then'' I woke up.

There was an old PSA commercial about smoke alarms geared towards kids. The smoke alarm introduces himself as Seymour (See-more) Smoke voiced by none other than Gilbert Gottfried. Seymour tells the kids how to be safe when the alarm goes off and proceeds to demonstrate. The alarm is actually a puppet in the ceiling and the alarm is not that ear-piercing BEEPBEEPBEEP everyone knows, but is in fact THE SCREAM OF A DYING UNIVERSE that I can't recall without shuddering. The expression and seizure-like shaking the puppet does while screaming the alarm doesn't help.

It was like if you stuck a steam whistle on the end of a vacuum cleaner's hose and turned it on. Probably because if they used a real smoke detector sound, parents in the other room might think it was the real thing and panic. I wonder if there are FCC regulations forbidding such a thing...

Gilbert Gottfried's voice alone probably qualifies.

For those who are brave enough to listen, here's what is probably the original 21-second sound file: [[http://http://www.sounddogs.com/sound-effects/36/mp3/291943_SOUNDDOGS__sm.mp3]] Older smoke detectors from the 70s actually had this kind of sound.

A rabbit screaming is often cited as one of the most haunting noises for its rather uncanny resemblance to a human baby's cry, and that generally humans perceives the animal as being silent otherwise.

Hey guys! I found a video of it! Go to 1:40 if you dare.

I HATE YOU!!

Sounds more like a shopping cart with wheels that haven't been greased in a long time.

Be warned; the video shows horrifying cruelty to animals rabbits being electrically shocked multiple times, hung upside down by their feet (the metal wires don't always provide a firm grip, anyway) having their throats slit, still being conscious enough to shiver and squirm, and having their heads and paws cut off.

Even more unsettling that the actor that portrayed Scully on TheXFiles is narrating the slaughter of rabbits.

Actually, there areplenty of rabbit screams that come in a variety of ways, as you can see being demonstrated in all these, enjoy.

Does someone with a strong stomach want to put warning labels on these videos? The first one is a rabbit being eaten by a python.

Are you sure it's the first one?

What do you mean, "a variety of ways?!" EVERY ONE OF THEM WAS A RABBIT GETTING KILLED BY A SNAKE.

There's a book about child abuse called ''When Rabbit Howls''. Now you know why.

There is a ''reason'' why the Loon's distinctive cry has become a StockSoundEffect; it's a mourning-sounding wail is very good at evoking the "Alone in the scary nature" atmosphere.

YourMileageMayVary. People who live near lakes in northern places where loons are common often find it soothing.

Exactly, it's more relaxing than creepy, that's why it's in Pacific by 808 State.

The sound of TV Static, for some. The following from [=YouTube=] is a video people have taken of the US analog TV switchoff. It's just creepy, as most of them went from everything as normal, to static. As if all of civilization had just suddenly collapsed. Goodbye. *tssssssssssssssssssssssh*

I think anyone who saw ''Poltergeist'' as a kid (a movie that to this day can reduce me to tears and shaking in fear btw) is creeped out by television static

This becomes even creepier if you've read certain creepypasta.

Why is that television painted like that...?

Thanks for giving this troper a new hobby. Her favorite is so creepy it's almost hilarious. Most of them just make her a little misty-eyed, though.

TV (and radio) static aren't that bad: that sound you're hearing? That's the sound of the universe around you. <3 How can you possibly be lonely when you know that? (Well, to be more accurate, it's the sound of the Cosmic Microwave Background -- the residual heat and light from the Big Bang, redshifted over billions of years, and because the universe expanded out over time supposedly, everything was all on top of each other, so the big bang was everywhere at once, hence why we can still hear it, if you just detune your television or radio a bit. :) )

I can't believe nobody's mentioned the sine wave that used to accompany The Test Pattern. Apparently a lot of people were extremely unnerved by it, especially as it generally occurred in the wee small hours. Fall asleep watching TV and wake up to this, it could go straight down your spine. Dooooooooooooooooooooooooooot. I kind of like it, but I also think the WWV time signal is soothing.

An injured and screaming horse sounds a lot like an injured woman screaming bloody murder. It's also quite creepy. Whenever a cowboy protagonist puts his horse out of its misery, he's also putting it out of ''his'' misery.

Alarm clocks. No matter how soon you set your alarm... hell, even if you just set it five minutes from now so TV Tropes doesn't make you late for work, that sound will always make some people jump.

Unless you set it to a radio station that plays smooth, soft music (or news), but then that defeats the purpose thereof.

There's at least one cell phone alarm sound that manages to have that cake and eat it, a pleasant humming-ringing sound that can wake you up on the first go but in case it didn't keeps on getting louder as it repeats.

For extra fun, use your cellphone as an alarm and set the alarm sound to the {{Sonic}} drowning music.

You're a twisted sonuvabitch, you know that?

Well, ''duh''. I mean, with an alarm like Sonic's drowning, I ''dare'' you to even try to sleep. It could make me spend the whole day on a bad mood, I think. And I don't even wanna try, I'm sure about it alreasy.

This troper did exactly that about a year ago for pretty much those reasons. I don't think I've overslept yet.

A friend of This Troper's decided to set the Dalek warcry as her alarm. ...Well, it worked...

This troper had an old alarm/radio once with 2 alarms available on it. The first was your typical BEEPBEEPBEEP junk. The second was about twice as fast, but half as loud. What put it in this category, however, is when you set both to go off at the same time...at which point the two combine into a near-deafening klaxon blare, with every other beat of the 2nd sounding like it's echoing off in the distance to make it seem even louder. Only ever did that once...feeling like your house is about to go into ''nuclear meltdown'' is not fun.

One of this troper's phone alarms is the {{Predator}} war cry/roar. It works.

Some {{Vanity Plate}}s, like the Screen Gems "S from Hell" (inspiring a documentary/horror film)

YourMileageMayVary: that VanityPlate's just so fucking ''relaxing.''

Agreed. I always thought it was elegant. But there are whole websites, a wiki, a film, and a book soon, dedicated to fear of television logos!

The virus detection sound for ''Avira Antivirus''. It's especially jarring because the sound comes directly from your PC speaker. If you've had any particularly nightmarish battles against viruses, that beeping noise ''will'' echo in your ears for days afterward.

This troper's university uses it as their main AV in all machines. It's EXTREMELY scary to have it detect a virus on one of the [=PCs=] at the library (which is, most of the time, a dead silent place) and go beeping.

Why does a library have computers with speakers in the first place?

Most [=PCs=] have an internal speaker, mainly for the purpose of reporting errors or hardware faults by beeping. That's where the virus detection noise comes from.

No mention of ''Avast! Antivirus 4''? '''BREEE! BREEE! BREEE! WARNING!!! A VIRUS HAS BEEN DETECTED!!!''' Complete with giant popup window and animated radioactive symbol! For version 5, they replaced the booming announcer guy for a woman's voice, and decided to just dong you instead of doing klaxons. '''DONGDONGDONG!!! THREAT HAS BEEN DETECTED!!!'''

Not to mention the '''DOONK!!! VIRUS DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED!!!''' great way to remind you to turn down your speakers.

Want to know what's even worse? I can't figure out why, but if I don't have headphones plugged in and my Virus database says it's updated, it will stop and go "VIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-" until I put headphones in. It scares me all the time. Even if I'm downstairs looking for headphones, I can still hear it, like ZALGO just decided to say hi upstairs on my laptop.

The "low battery" sound on cellphones. What makes it worse is that on many models, it will go off ''regardless of your sound settings.''

The wall mounted phones aren't safe either. At one point my phone was beeping and flashing with such a frightening pace to this day I swear it was going to explode in my hand.

The sound of lightning and/or thunder during a thunderstorm.

Particularly when said thunder has been a quiet rumble in the distance, and then... BAROOOM!

Or the thunder that starts with the "ka-ka-rak-a-rak" sound (the one that sounds like a gigantic piece of tinfoil being shaken) and goes to the deep shuddering BABOOM.

YMMV, this troper finds thunder either soothing or exhilarating depending on the type.

Thunder is bloody terrifying when it's so loud that the sound is like a solid wall and ''you're outside with no shelter''. True story, it sounded like a shotgun, only longer.

I've always found the monotone beeping noise that a phone makes when left off the hook for more than a minute or so to be sublimely unsettling. Then Aronofsky had to go and use it in RequiemForADream in the creepiest part of the entire movie.

BT phones in the UK make a more siren-like noise under similar circumstances, but it's pretty unsettling too.

The Windows "Critical Stop" sound. You're just minding your business when all of a sudden, '''DUN.'''

The Windows 3.x series and early versions of Windows 95 had by far the creepiest ones. However, even on Vista, it's a little nerve-wracking to await the inevitable '''DENG''' noise that accompanies that [=nVidia=] Control Panel error I always get at startup.

The error beeps in DOS.

How about the BIOS sound-coded errors you get while booting? Memory error? A low continuous '''BEEEEEEP BEEEEEEP BEEEEEEP'''. Power supply or motherboard problems? A normal-toned, continuous '''BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP'''. And so on.

Mac Death Chimes. Usually accompanied by the Sad Mac / Dead Mac icon.

Car horns, though YourMileageMayVary depending on where you live. In the Philippines, for instance, you use your horn to assert right-of-way, so having someone honk at you is nothing big. In the U.S., it can cause quite a jolt as it typically means "WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING!" or "YOU FUCKING IDIOT!"

It can also cause Road Rage. Perhaps it should be HellIsThatNoise for the one doing the honking.

When vacationing in Bermuda, I was often startled by people honking their horns while driving, because like most Americans I associated it with aggression or an accident. However, I came to realize that nearly everyone, even bus drivers would honk their horn in a greeting manner if they saw a friend driving down the road or on the sidewalk.

Pretty much any LastNoteNightmare, especially anything used by TheBeatles. Strawberry Fields Forever and Revolution 9 in particular

Audio engineers find the Beatle tracks funny and interesting instead of scary. This says something about audio engineers. Considering how "Strawberry Fields Forever" was produced... it involved scissors...

No mention of air raid sirens? Many are very much still in use, repurposed for other emergencies such as tornadoes. The one in this editor's town is also tested on a regular schedule. I heard a story about someone who had been caught in an actual air raid once, moving to this town and hearing the test for the first time without realizing what it was for...

Heh. Air raid sirens are very much still in use in their ORIGINAL capacity as well. This troper lived in Tel-Aviv during the Gulf War, and his heart still gets racing when he hears something that reminds him of that sound.

This Troper's town has an old english Air Raid siren repurposed as the dispatch signal for the volunteer fire company. Creepy. You can hear it in the next school district!

Same deal in my town except we also have a train station with a horn like a semi truck. Sometimes they both sound at the same time. I call this the Nightmare Alarm.

The town that is right beside the one that this troper lives uses an air raid siren FOR A CURFEW!

This Troper forgot that he had set his alarm on his phone to play an air raid siren. Outcome wasn't pretty.

At the University of Washington, when the football team enters, and when they score. "Wait, wasn't that a good thing that just happened?!?"

This troper lives in an area that adds an extra wrinkle. The "air raid" siren is actually the local nuclear power plant's "Oopsy Daisy" alarm. If you aren't aware they are performing a test today, it's pants-fillingly scary.

This English troper has been afraid of Air Raid sirens for years, so imagine my horror one morning when I heard a faint yet distinct warbling note on the edge of hearing. Initially I thought I was going mad, but turns out it's the chemical plant down river from my town's emergency siren that they test EVERY THURSDAY. This has hardly been a reassuring revelation, and now I religiously keep my windows shut on a Thursday

The mysterious signal known as "the Buzzer" emanating from the Russian shortwave radio station UVB-76. It's creepy, it's been playing continuously for 28 years (aside from three interruptions), and no one knows what purpose it serves.

What's even creeper is the fact that you can sometimes hear background noise and distant conversations, suggesting that the Buzzer isn't an automated transmission, but a device in a room with an open mike.

UVB-76 is probably part of the Russian "Dead Hand" system. When that buzzer stops, the world ends. Sleep well.

I hate you.

Since August 23rd, it has gotten more active, including a list of numbers and names, the buzzing stopping completely, intermittent buzzing, morse code and part of the Swan Lake playing in the background. Activity peaked on Sept 1st, when all events happened within a span of 3 hours.

I think it sounds awesome. In a creepy way. And I would very much like a link to the above broadcast.

Ever hear the Backward Music Station? It is very creepy. Cracked describes it well. #QUOTE#The "Backward Music Station" doesn't actually play backward music. That's just what they call it. What it is broadcasting instead is something from the fucking bowels of Hell itself.

That sounds suspiciously like the Hunters from ''{{Half-Life}} 2 Episode 2''.

''Any'' numbers station falls into this category. The one this troper found particularly creepy was Swedish Rhapsody. Loud beeping, followed by a jaunty little tune played by what sounds like an ice cream truck from hell, followed by a series of recorded German numbers ''in a little girl's voice''.

Even just the static between regular stations is creepy as hell. Listen to it long enough and you can hear almost anything you imagine in it.

This troper is (non-Asperger) autistic and used to play numbers stations and WWV's time signal on his shortwave radio to go to sleep by.

This troper's been listening to Swedish Rhapsody for the past hour. It's awesome. She likes pretty much every numbers station.

Dot. Matrix. Printers. Particularly when they jammed or experienced an error. Thank god almost no one uses them anymore.

I did until it got broken. Normal operating sound... loud an annoying, but no big problem. The sound of a paper jam? Turn. It. Off. ''NOW.''

Here! Take this Nightmare Retardant!

Not too different from the sound of old dial-up modems. Try calling a fax number on your phone for the same experience.

The sound of a dying hard drive. This page has many PC versions. Now GO BACK UP YOUR DATA!!

The worst ones are the bad bearings, and the stuck spindle beeps.

Anything scratching a chalkboard. Need I say more?

This troper has never seen the problem with that. She finds it a tiny bit soothing.

The sound of a knife or fork scraping on a plate when your hand slips. Gosh I'm cringing just thinking about it.

You don't want to piss off the owls. You really don't.

Awwww, look at the little one in the back, at ten seconds in ... bless their hearts ...

Listening to the radio in times of severe weather. Creepy Robotic Voice: "BWWWWWWEEEEEEEEP BWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEP ''The National Weather Service has just issued a tornado warning for: {Insert your county)''. But if you love storms, YourMilageMayVary.

Try this, get a plastic wheelie bin, tape the wheels so they can't move, fill it with bricks and drag it along the asphalt.

Certain kinds of binaural beats can ''really'' have this effect.

The sound of steam escaping from a lobster's shell as it's boiled. It almost sounds as if the lobster is screaming as it dies. In front of you. On '''your''' stove. (Contrary to popular belief, they do not actually scream; they don't even have vocal chords.)

The transit authorities in Paris exploited both this and the MostWonderfulSound to encourage you to keep your Navigo transit pass in order. When you put a valid pass in the scanner, you're rewarded with a wonderful "DINNGGG!"... but when your pass has expired, it goes all the way around to a painfully ear-grating "BRRRRRRRZZZZZZZTTTTTTT!!!".

Heck, most of the sounds in the Paris Metro, period. The dun-du-uh-dun to signify announcements, the NNNNNHHHH! of the closing doors (as opposed to the rather nice ding-dong in the Chicago El, for example) and worst of all, the horrible WHOOOOOOSHHHHH as it goes away. It's particularly creepy for this troper since for a brief but frightening time, she and her dad got separated from her mom on the Metro as she was on a train pulling away without them. (This troper speaks French but it was totally broken after a 7 hour flight, and her dad doesn't at all.)

They just added a vuvuzela (those traditional african horn things that they play at the FIFA world cup) button on youtube. At first when I clicked on the button (which looks like a soccer ball), it played a looping sound of the vuvuzelas which sounded really creepy until I actually found out what it was.

Even knowing what it is, it still sounds rather creepy to me.

Vuvuzelas are the greatest instrument known to mankind.

Tornado warning alarms, especially in the middle of the day.

Many US military bases feature the "Giant Voice" system, basically a network of loudspeakers on telephone poles that play all the daily bugle calls such as Reveille, Retreat, and Taps. They have a couple of tones that play to warn people on base (and really, anywhere near that zipcode off base} of impending sources of concern. One tone is for natural disasters like tornadoes. The other is for imminent enemy attack.

And speaking of the Giant Voice System, for anybody in the military, that hellish song known as Reveille. Most especially during Basic Training, when the song, played at very high volume, was the alarm clock which announced that it was time for you to tumble out of bed and launch into your day at a full sprint, complete with Drill Sergeant Nasties screaming at you to hurry up.

Protect and Survive, a series of subtly terrifying PublicInformationFilms that were to be used in the case of a impending nuclear event, had a terrifying musical phrase at the end of each of them that was even more unsettling than the ad itself.

The phrase in question was written by British electronic music composer Roger Limb, better known for his work on ''Doctor Who'' in the early 1980s. It's sublimely unsettling - even without the context of the film, it just sounds ''wrong''. A sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGMdnod8VPI

Air vents. Particularly louder ones, especially in larger spaces where they tend to ''echo.''

Mosquitoes. Especially when you're trying to sleep, dammit!

WHEEEEEN. WHEEEEEEEN. I'm starting to freak out just thinking about it.

Imagine hearing this at 2AM outside your window.

The first time I heard that for real, at night, I thought it was a woman being attacked, and almost called the police.

The video's been deleted. Anyone know what it was?

It was a fox barking. Not particularly scary on repeated viewings, but the troper who first mentioned it is correct in saying it would be frightening in the middle of the night.

That high-pitched "I've seen you and am about to blast you with decibels" noise that house alarms make. QUICKLY, PRESS THE BUTTONS, PRESS THE BUTTONS

That freakish noise you hear when everything is silent.

It's called Tinnitus. This troper maintains his sanity with constantly operating electric fans.

I have a friend who has that!

This troper is DEATHLY scared of that. To combat it, this troper just listens to an mp3 of counting sheep.

This troper, often gets tinnitus, sometimes even '''''over environmental sounds.''''' It does not even have to be silent.

The sound of a ship scraping against the seafloor.

The sound of a sonar's ping, scares the hell out of me

Honestly, having hydrophobia, ANYTHING underwater. Seriously, just listen to that weird noise it makes. Like, you can TELL just how ''big'' it is. REALLY scary with whales.

Stone Curlews

The screaming call of a Barking Owl and one of the calls of the Purple Swamphen are usually emitted and night, and both sound like women being murdered.

A sneeze in a silent house in the middle of the night, when everyone is in bed and you haven't heard anyone else wake up and move around for at least two hours. Made even creepier if it's a small sneeze and close to your bedroom door.

Try sleeping after scary movie day with a friend then you hear what sounds like the cries of the damned at 3 in the morning coming from the direction of the woods...

Guitar feedback can range anywhere from ear-grating to musically amazing. This troper, however, once found the perfect combination of amp settings, that, when a note was bent on the 21st fret on the high E string and allowed to feed back, not only became an '''EXTREMELY''' high pitched shriek, but also had under- and overtones that sounded ghostly wails. I was extremely freaked out, yet amazed and delighted at the same time.

Saturn seems like a peaceful giant planet, but when the radio waves it emits are converted into audio, the result is a blasting, howling, screaming sound literally from beyond our world. Try not to go mad after hearing Saturn.

Reapers perhaps?

This troper finds it terribly beautiful.

My God, that's lovely. I'm going to use that in an audio mix. I know just where to put it. Thank you.

Are you going to put the sound of the sun as the base?

Yes, thank you! Wow, that's great! (What there was ''of'' it what with the narrator and all.)

This troper thought it sounded like the Soup Dragon trying to access dial-up...

The Canadian film ''Music Of The Spheres'' was about aliens who heard those sounds as actual music and became concerned when humans started moving asteroids around to use as power sources.

Silence. Pure, unbroken, unnatural ''silence'' when you know there ''should'' be sound of some sort. The kind of effect you get when some television program messes with your head and has an empty room with no noise, no characters, no music. The sort of silence that will drive you mad until you wail in despair if only to comfort your own disturbing loneliness.

''OH GOD YES.'' This troper was reading the original visual novels for HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi and the second arc (Watanagashi-hen) has a moment that uses this for ''terrifying'' impact.

I have tinnitus (further up, if you're wondering, though I don't find it scary) and I found a way to get rid of it for a while. The little ringing noise that I've listened to all my life was replaced with silence. Eeriee, creepy-as-hell silence. I've not switched off my tinnitus since.

ThisTroper always leaves the tvs on when he's alone at home. My house isn't exactly big, but its so freaking creepy when it's empty, I feel like I'm in a horror movie.

The hissing sound of steam flooding a steam room.

While watching video footage of the WTC collapse, someone noticed this high pitched ringing sound in all the video after a certain point, that seemed to be exceptionally loud in video taken of firefighters sifting through the rubble of the South Tower just after the collapse. It wasn't until later that it was found out that noise is the sound a Firefighter's Uniform gives off (thanks to a device in the jacket) when the wearer is still for more than a few minutes, intended to allow for unconscious or wounded Firefighters to be found in smokey buildings. Except here,there were hundreds of them going off at once. Underneath the feet of the Firefighters searching through the rubble. Imagine being able to hear the uniforms of hundreds of people, ten, twenty, a hundred feet below the ground you're walking on. That is hell.

Audible on the documentary filmed on the Fire Department that became the 9/11 documentary are gunshots. Listen closely to the sound when the camera is inside the lobby, filming the initial response from the emergency services personnel. Except what you're hearing as a loud, sharp crack are the sounds of the jumpers from above the fire. To this troper, and to the firefighters, it was truly Hell indeed when you find out it's not gunshots.

An EKG flatlining. Made infinitely worse if you're in a hospital when it happens.

Probably the most literally taken example. Some Russians were examining places to put a new oil well in Siberia. They stuck a microphone that would stand up to 2000 degrees and listened in. It's been described as the sound of tortured souls and is now used in the "Existence of Hell" debate.

It's a hoax. snopes has an article on it. That being said, it is still pretty creepy sounding.

Anyone else find the anti-mouse wall plugs really creepy? This troper finds that you can't hear them, but they create a weird silence around them where you're sure there should be some sound.

Theres one at my house, and it started to make a little "bzzz bzzz bzzz" noise one morning when I was alone. It freaked me out.

Trust me, you're lucky you can only hear "the weird silence". The whole point of them is supposedly that humans can't hear them... except that this troper for some unfathomable reason can, and it's not a nice sound. I can't even describe it, let me just say that I understand why it's used to scare off mice.

Why must we have superhuman hearing? This troper shares your pain.

Imagine drifting into a peaceful sleep while camping, then all of a sudden you hear a Barn Owl screeching

This troper has just finished the MarbleHornets videos...and there is an unidentified squeaking somewhere in the house. Those of you who are religious, PRAY FOR ME.

Clickclickclickclick... SNAP.

Holy '''FUCK.'''

GOD, who would give that to a child!? It doesn't even make the same face twice...

I was asked to look after a friends house while they were on holiday. They live in a flat, and it was so quiet when nobody was here, but I could hear the neighbours who lived below them talking, but not make out actual words. That scared me, before I realised what was going on, I was walking round the house looking for whatever was making it, finding only empty rooms.

"Death rattle", the breathing sounds of a dying person.

Once when I was around twelve or so, I was alone at home on a really windy night. I was on the computer upstairs, doing some homework, when suddenly there was this incredibly loud GZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. I jumped out of my pants and ran into the hallway to see what was going on. Nothing. SO I sat back down at the computer and tried to forget about, then it happened again. It must have made that noise five times, and I started panicking and yelling. I finally figured out what it was when I went downstairs: the wind was blowing against the screen door and causing the spring that held it shut to vibrate.

Hell, a windy night at all freaks me out. I live in a valley, so wind isn't usually very strong, but when it is I can't sleep. Once I was curled up around my teddy practically crying and just wishing the wind would go away. Fuck you wind.

The sound of two pieces of Velcro separating. *SKRRRIIIIP* Makes my eardrums feel like they're being shredded.

Quick version: Air Force base maintenance bay. C-130 in bay. Me not authorized to be in bay with C-130 but there by accident after going in the wrong door on a tech support call. Heard four loud puffs of air from engines. Stood there thinking WTF... long enough to realize that it would be very bad for my hearing if I didn't vacate my current location quite quickly.

This troper ''swears'' his house is haunted. occasionally, I'll be sitting at home, ''alone'', when suddenly, I hear footsteps coming from upstairs. I don't mean faint noises that sound kinda like footsteps, I mean '''actual footsteps'''. I know FOR A FACT that i'm alone when this happens. Hell, sometimes it even happens ''while i'm in the hallway where it always happens''. Nothing is scarier than disembodied footsteps following absolute silence. ESPECIALLY at night.

Fran Dreschers laughter. Nothing personal against her, but that is the noise This Troper hears when he thinks of Hell. (well, combined with screams of anguish, of course)

Personally, this troper is indeed freaked out by the Abandoned Vault music in ''Fallout 3'', as mentioned on the Video Games page of this trope. The Yao Guai know how to get my paranoia going too. But my worst fear in the game, is the Deathclaws. Good ''God'', the Deathclaws. Doesn't help that they're ''everywhere'' in the sewers beneath Old Olney, barely audible to me aside from their footsteps, waiting to come out of the dark to rip me to shreds... I'm constantly turning around at the slightest footstep or tapping sound because of those damn things.

This troper lives in a densely populated residential area and frequently hears noises from the surrounding houses and streets that are...less than pleasant. Sudden screams, immensely loud cracks and bangs, rattling engines, bass stereos that slowly magnify in volume until you can feel the noise in your rib cage...and once, on a cloudy autumn afternoon when I was alone in the house, a strange, inhuman wail the likes of which I've not heard before or since. Many of these noises can be written off as the general hustle and bustle of the city, but sometimes you really have to wonder what the neighbors get up to...

Broken CTR [=TVs=] and monitors. This troper has recently gotten rid of a TV that incessantly made a high-pitched whining noise. It took him a few months to figure out it WAS the TV, and more of being driven insane by it until discovering it stopped when smacked. Impossible to concentrate with it going.

You should ALWAYS try smacking your TV if it acts up. It usually works.

This troper has an alarm that pretty much embodies this trope. While the alarm itself isn't that bad (it is just loud enough to wake her up), every time she pushes the button to turn it off, the alarm, for some unfathomable reason, decides to try to pick up a radio station. But since we get no reception in our house for some reason, it becomes this horrible static that can't even be turned off through the same means; you have to unplug it to turn it off! Thankfully, this troper discovered that the volume knob affects only the radio but not the alarm, so she just has the volume minimized most of the time. But when that happened for the first time, it left her too freaked out to go back to sleep (this was on a Saturday, at five in the morning, when I had stayed up until midnight). She discovered the following day that the same alarm apparently has a backup battery; same time (five AM), it goes off, still unplugged, at least ''4X louder that it did the previous morning!'' Bonus Points for not being able to turn it off by normal means and having to wait until it shut off on it's own!

So, you all know the highly amusing ''trololololololol'' that you've seen in forums, ad nauseum, right? Well, here's the one that was surely spewed from hell. Sleep well~

OHMYGOD OHMYGOD OHMYGOD AAAAAAAAAH!! I HATE YOUUUU! *cries*

Actually, no, this one is from someplace worse than hell... Yes, there is such a place.

I'll do you one better. At least you could pick out the voice among the cacophony of the first two. This one has no trace of humanity whatsoever.

...I hate you.

...Am I supposed to be scared?

Reality being unrealistic this troper (an Iraq war vet) was surprised at just how much incoming mortar fire sounded like a car door closing. 3 years later that sound (a car door) will still wake me from the deepest sleep instantly.

Steam hammer. A sudden, metallic clang when a boiler is started up... followed by about 30 more clangs as the pipes get used to the stress.

This troper has uninentionally invoked this with Bella's lullaby. I have it on my cell phone, and have been using it as my alarm. I thought it was a good choice, because it's calm enough that it doesn't shock you like most regular alarm clocks, but it's still loud enough that it actually wakes you. However, using it as my alarm has made me despise it to the point where I now have a minor freak out whenever I hear it.

Well... Rattlesnakes, right? They're like the epitome of a "don't fuck with me" sound effect in RealLife.

This troper has a few:

When I was about fifteen or sixteen (in the mid-'90s), my dad decided to play an audio cassette tape in our old tape player (which dated from probably the late '70s). Said player would bork up sometimes and emit an incredibly loud, very high-pitched screeching noise (kind of like feedback, but MUCH higher-pitched and lasting for however long you had the tape playing). It decided to do this when my dad was playing his tape, and he couldn't hear it, so he didn't believe me when I clapped my hands over my ears and begged him to turn it off because of that "horrible noise" (he thought I was complaining about the music itself). He left it in until my little brother came downstairs and asked what that screeching sound was, whereupon my dad turned it off finally.

I always used to hurry to push "Stop" on cassettes before they got to the end, cause the noise they made when they stopped on their own scared me.

A few years ago, I was awoken from a pretty sound sleep by a "tunk, tunk, tunk, tunk, tunk" sound coming from somewhere in my bedroom. The sound kept repeating and at first I thought it was my alarm clock for some reason, but it wouldn't turn off, and I couldn't figure out why. Then, in my soporific state, I thought the inside of the wall might be on fire, but it was cold when I felt it. All the while the "tunk tunk tunk" sound was still happening, and I finally woke up enough to get out of bed and investigate. It turned out to be an empty paper cup (like from a take-out coffee place) that had landed on top of the furnace vent, which was blowing out air and subsequently lifting and dropping the cup on top of it repeatedly.

I was playing Pinball on my old laptop one day, and had gotten pretty good at it, racking up a score of over 3 million. All of a sudden the laptop emitted a SUPER loud, continuous "BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP" noise. I freaked out and turned off the laptop. Luckily it was okay, but I never played Pinball on that machine ever again.

Dogs fighting. This troper has been known, when her dogs fight, to find herself inexplicably on the other side of the house with her hands clapped over her ears.

That weird distortion that sounds in your ears when you and someone else are yelling or screaming at the same time at exactly the right pitch. It sounds like someone torturing a radio, and this troper never wants to hear it again.

This troper remembers coming home from work at 4 AM one day, tired and sick. He lives down the street from a school that borders a forest, and often sees deer and the like. Not tonight. As he attempted to work the garage code, he heard barking...and snarling..and growling near him. He turned towards the school and saw shadows from the park flood lights the school had shaped like rather large dogs. He's never been more terrified than that instant. He still can't sleep when he hears it.

For this troper, EVERYTHING AT NIGHT if I don't know what it is.

This troper agrees.

As does This Troper, who has found only one semi-solution: mentally work his way through a hypothetical scenario involving whatever that noise might be . . . and imagine himself as a Badass beating the *bleep* out of it. He also has a few Badass Boasts/Survival Mantras saved up to recite.

I'm pretty sure most people in the world agree.

This troper hears unsettling noises all the time at night. Once she was sitting, minding her own business, playing some Smash Bros, when she hears a noise that sounds like an old cat wailing, but jerky and scratchy. And it was ''loud''. This troper froze as the sound got louder and louder until it seemed like it was right outside her window. Then it disappeared. It creeped me the eff out.

Another time, I was ling in bed when I heard another noise. And guess what it sounded like? The noise the Dead Hand from Ocarina of Time makes. It got closer and closer, and stopped. I'm now scared.

One time, a hornet got into this troper's house. We all thought it flew out, but a couple of nights later, I'm sitting at my computer, when I hear this loud buzzing noise. I'm like, "What the hell is that?" Finally, I look up, and there's the hornet, trapped inside a plastic bag. Cue me jumping back three feet.

This troper has always walked home from school. One day she walked past a fairly intact piece of roadkill and noticed a car approaching. Out of morbid curiosity, she stopped to see what would happen. The resuting *CRUNCH* sent chills down this troper's spine.

Word of advice: ''Never'' walk under a bridge while a train is running above, especially at night. This Chicago troper learned that the hard way.

Just being close to the tracks at night is scary as hell. Actually, train sounds at all, if you're close enough.

This troper lives in a very, very old dormitory. The heating system in the basement sounds ''exactly'' like someone breathing heavily and dragging chains. I've never been able to figure out how they accomplish this.

Another fun one from the same troper as the one above is when I was woken in the middle of the night by a horrifying "RRRRAAAAAAARRRRGH" noise. Turned out to be someone being violently ill in the bathroom across the hall, only her retching had been amplified a million times by the echo.

For about two and a half years, this troper's family has been confused about the noises that come from our walls every few nights. It's certainly not the pipes, or mice. It sounds like breathing. Harsh, choking breathing. About a month ago, the walls in my room also began making high-pitched shrieking noises that would wake us up in the night.

Living in a port town in Alaska, you'd have to be prepared for the possibilities of a tsunami. Every day in this tropers town a test siren goes off, and its so suspenseful waiting to see if theres going to be a second wail. But then a certain movie has a familiar (and universal?) siren, so that could be the only reason.

I believe that would be a British Castle Castings siren

We have a Silent Hill siren in town and a friend of mine was listening to the Silent Hill sound track when she went out to check the mail, one foggy morning. Cue siren!

This troper heard what sounded exactly like an air raid, but ''must'' have been something else, one day '''at school'''. Randomly, while I was supposed to be in class (I was late, not skipping) I walked around a building that I usually go through, and BAM there it was. This was one week after I saw SilentHill. To make matters worse, and I feel quite guilty about this, so don't vilify me, in the cafeteria that day, a mere 2 hours or so later, I turned around to find a mentally challenged girl who was very upset. Her mannerisms at the time were uncannily like the Grey Children of Silent Hill. Again, I feel bad, but she scared the bejeezus out of me.

This troper has an animal outside her window ever night that sounds like a little kid saying "Awew" over and over and over again. It scares the hell out of her, and the worst part? She has never seen the animal. It just... dissapears.

This troper's laptop has a tendency to seize sometimes, causing any noise to come from the speakers to do the same. Gives me a heart attack every time.

This troper's old laptop (towards the end of it's life) used to do that whenever I played sound, and there was no way to stop it. No matter what level the previous volume was at, it would go up to the highest possible volume and just 'repeat', over and over. I'd mash the keyboard and scream "I'MSORRY, WHATAMISUPPOSEDTODO?! PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE STOPSTOPSTOPSTOP," then mash the power button while taking out the battery. Just thinking about it makes me shiver.

This troper used to have a one of those little hammers that you'd tap something with and they'd make a smashing glass and general breakage sound. Used to keep it in my closet, for some odd reason and some nights it would just activate in the middle of silence, scaring the living hell out of me.

Bare feet on lenoleum. Flap. Flap. Flap. Reduced me to tears in my early days.

When this troper plugs his iPod (touch, 4th Gen) into his computer, it makes a horrendous *bwoink* sound.

My dad just got one of those. The noise it makes... it sounded like something was wrong at least.

This troper is afraid of the Happy Birthday song. Yes, really. I get uncomfortable whenever I hear people sing it.

This troper's car's speakers malfunctioned on a Monday to spectacular effect. A crossed/shorted wire somewhere causes all the speakers to emit extremely loud popping, crackling, rumbling and static. The volume knob has been rendered impotent. Combine this with her hyperacusis (a crippling hypersensitivity to sound) and the fact that she couldn't get to the dealership to have it repaired until Saturday and it is her only means of transportation...

This British troper's always been a bit creeped out by air raid sirens, and seems to vaguely remember a siren going off late at night once in her childhood (she also seems to vaguely remember someone telling her at the time that it was maybe just the nearby mental hospital...) She also has a morbid fascination for the nuclear terror of the 40s through late 80s, and recalls listening to an atonal piece once in music that was supposed to be about the bomb in Japan. So you can imagine her being supremely creeped out upon hearing tornado sirens in a video from Birmingham, Alabama, which sounds something like the "music" representing the nukes dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I live in Birmingham, AL, and for the past two weeks, those alarms have gone off every other day. I've been able to ignore them for the most part, but one night when I was working the overnight shift at the Waffle House (which has large windows in the front of the store), three things happened: 1. The power went out, 2. a flash of lightning flared and thunder struck a mile away, and 3. the DAMN SIRENS CAME ON. The whole restaurant lost it.

This she-Troper once went into the high school science lab early for a biology class said she-Troper was volunteering in. That day was when everyone from all class periods had begun to bring in their insect samples, storing them in the cubbyholes in the science lab's utilities closet. The sound of a single praying mantis skittering against cardboard and glass, somehow still alive from sloppy student work, wriggling about and impaled on a pin over it's ID tags...not the best of sounds (let alone sights!) when eating mini-Oreos.

I have two different emulator programs on my computer, each having one game each. (For those who might rant about this, I purchase all my other games legally, and now's not really the place to get into ROM discussions.) Problem is, my laptop was not designed with gaming as a priority, which I assume is what causes the following problem: both emulators occasionally freeze for about two seconds before going back to normal. The sound lag in those two seconds, however...well, it varies from area to area. In Tazmily Village? Not so bad, mildly annoying. In Moonside? Pure hell.

My grandmother has a doll. A troll doll. It's rather small, maybe five or six inches tall. It's got removable, bright orange hair and it's body is dressed in something akin to a clowns, blue polka dots on one side with a white base and white polka dots on the other on a blue base. He sits on the top of a cupboard with the rest of her tins, which she collects. It's eyes are dull and soulless and the doll generally creeps me out. My grandmother says his name is Zachary. The other day, I was cleaning and without noticing, I had picked it up by it's head to dust under it. It lets out this long, high pitched ''DOOOOOOOOOOOOOO'' sound. I drop it and run into the computer room where she was cleaning. Turns out 'Zachary' had a music box you wound up in it's back. It's been dead for ten years.

This troper finds the whirr that Verizon phones make when they vibrate very, VERY annoying. It seems characteristic, as every verizon phone he's owned, and the verizon iphone on the commercials all make the exact same whirring noise.

This troper has a ''lot'' of noise problems.

Any unidentifiable or unexpected noise at night, especially when alone.

The squeaking of a branch against glass. (Worse alone at night when housesitting.)

The 60hz hum of AC electricity, particularly when walking too close past transformer-boxes.

The buzzing of the phone on vibrate when it's an unexpected call and there have been a lot of unwanted callers.

Arcing electricity, particularly unexpected (like a short in one's oven, or sparks in the microwave).

Fire alarms. They're bad enough on their own, given that they're designed to be alarming, but as if that were not bad enough, there was a childhood trauma involving a fire drill, getting separated from the rest of the class, and not being physically strong enough to work the crash bar on the exit door. (I was about four.)

Scritching or crinkling sounds when there's nothing that should make that noise unless disturbed, and there's nothing that should be disturbing anything.

Dying power supplies also shriek at an incredibly high, tooth-grinding pitch. A teacher had one of those old tiny all-one-piece Macs that would start shrieking intermittently, but would shut up if you gave it a good thump. I gave it a lot of them.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Played on the violin. By children, aged three to seven. Out of tune. Out of sync. Over and over. All independently practicing in a huge room during the lunch hour.

Personally, this Troper is not scared by many things,but there are a few things that do it. Due to a combination of an evil baby sitter (who told us all the vacuum was a monster when she turned it on) and an evil dentist (drilled my cavity without numbing it in any way, shape, or form) when I was very young, vacuuming is not something I can do very easily even now and drills make me incredibly uncomfortable. This also applies to basically anything that sounds akin to either of those sounds, which are quite common around basically anywhere if you know when to accidentally listen. Thunder also has this effect on me to the point I cant sleep without headphones, oddly though only when I'm inside. If I'm outside when it's rolling I'm perfectly alright.

This troper had one while playing ResidentEvil5 on Professional Mode with his friend, offline co-op. We were seperated for just a moment, I had entered a house and heard some sort of noise and yelled out "Oh shit!", which in turn, caused my friend to jump as well with a "What the hell?" sort of ordeal. Turns out it was a Majini that had jumped down, so I blew his brains out with a shotgun. Any other difficulty I would've been okay, but with the one shot kill ordeal, I wasn't taking any chances.

Not only is the music in ''{{Spectre}} VR'' NightmareFuel, but the sonar ping of the landshark-type enemies (Slicers) severely traumatized me in my early teen years.

When the sensor that tells your car the door is closed breaks, that incessant dinging becomes HELL.

I had major MAJOR orthopedic surgery when I was an infant, (5 months old and the surgery involved among other things carving, breaking and resetting the bones in my feet, severing the achilles tendons and steel pins) I was in and out of leg casts and wheelchairs until I was 6 years old and didn't even learn how to walk until I was 7, my earliest memory ever is a cast saw cutting off my casts and me screaming in bloody terror, until I was school age anything that sounded even remotly like a cast saw caused me to completely loose my shit, once when I was 5 some relatives took me to get my hair cut and when the barber switched on the electric clippers it took 3 grown adults to hold me down

This troper's car makes some pretty godawful noises if you screw things up. Forgetting to come off the accelerator when changing gears results in a sound akin to the engine attempted to rip itself apart. Crunch the gears, and it sounds like the gearbox is about to fall out. This troper is not comfortable with cars however, so I regularly freak out if it makes any sort of strange noise. I once didn't realise my seat wasn't quite in place after pulling it forward, and it clicked in while I was halfway down a busy road. Cue huge 'oh shit' moment until I realised nothing was wrong.

This troper has also had the unpleasant privilege of hearing badly-malfunctioning cars attempting to run. They do not sound nice.

While being taught to drive, this troper tried to change gears ''while the car was in motion''. Cue a horrible screech from the car, and perhaps more terrifyingly, a "What the HELL are you doing?!" from her father.

This troper did not know how bad dogs fighting sounded until a pair of pitbulls in the house next door tried to kill each other in the early hours of the morning. Cats sound pretty inhuman once they get into a fight too - and apparently, possums are even worse.

Cats scratching cardboard or playing on the staircase. I've never had anything mammal as indoor pets (snakes and a turtle once) so my boyfriend's 2 cats rustling about downstairs at 4 in the morning gives me the niaca-niacas...

When this troper was 11, an F5 tornado hit her hometown. You have not known sheer terror until you're cowering under a blanket in the basement of a house that's ''directly in the path of the storm'', and all you can hear is a ''cacophonous symphony'' of sirens, the violent rattling of the (''horizontally-oriented'') cellar door, the sounds of very heavy objects being dragged and dropped on the porch above you, trees being broken and knocked over, and, over top of it all, the nightmarishly hellish roaring/shrieking/howling cacophony of the tornado passing ''directly overhead.'' She imagines that that, altogether, is ''exactly'' what Hell must sound like.

And one of the worst parts wasn't even the tornado itself - it was the warbling sound of the siren ''dying as the firehouse roof was torn off.'' The very same firehouse where her father and several family friends were - meaning that that sound potentially heralded the ''deaths'' of several friends and family members. Luckily, no one died, but at the moment it happened, well...

For some reason, when this troper's phone is on at the same time as the Interweb, if you pick up the phone it makes the most ''TERRIFYING NOISE.'' It's like someone breathing extremely loudly, but with no pause for them to breathe back in. Of course it only takes a second to realise what it is, but in that one second you've gone to Hell and back.

At tech for the plays at our school, there is one of those circle saws that cuts cardboard and plywood. Ignoring the fact that those things are ''fucking scary'', the noise they make is really, really godawful. It makes you want to gouge your ears out. We decided that Hell would be that noise going on constantly, while measuring something out for one of the signs only to get to the end and realise your measurements were ''ever'' so slightly off. ''FOREVER.''

This troper has a massive problem with fire alarms. Not when they're being tested or actually responding to a fire, but rather, when the batteries are low, and they'll beep every 5-10 minutes. I can't get ''anything'' done if one of them is beeping at me.

No mention of 56K dial-up modems?

YMMV. This troper loves 56k dialup modems, and finds them nostalgically soothing. They remind her of her teenage years. <3

This troper lives near an Air Force base. When the weather forecast is particularly bad, sirens go off at the base, followed by a vocal warning that no one should go near any of the planes until the storm has passed. (Why members of the U.S. Armed Forces need to be reminded not to fly in a thunderstorm, I don't know.) Anyway, both the siren and the announcement are loud enough that they can be heard not only all over the base, but ''all over town.'' Only to people off the base, it just sounds like an air raid siren followed by someone shouting indistinctly, which is even creepier.

This troper had one of these combined with a Dude Not Funny when one of her best friends had his cell phone set as a siren that sounds like the severe weather siren in their hometown while they were at school. At night. During a thunderstorm. Needless to say, the first several times it went off before he switched ringtones, everyone in the room jumped.

This troper has had two permanent tooth implants done. In order to have an implant, the periodontist had to anchor the base into the bone of her jaw. There is NO WORSE SOUND IN THE WORLD than the sound of a dental drill forcing a titanium screw into the living bone of your own jaw. The vibrations within your bones, even with Novocaine, make the sound even worse. And I had to have it done twice. On two separate occasions. Brrrrrrrrr.

Screaming. Rabbits. Yes, rabbits scream. And I don't want to hear that sound again. I thank my dog for giving me that experience, damn rabbit killer.

For this troper, the sound of her cell phone vibrating against a hard surface has become this, especially since she uses it as an alarm in the morning. It's even invaded her dreams, once as one of those twilight birds from Twilight Princess and another time as a siren.

This Troper is living in a high-rise apartment in China, and apparently her above-floor neighbor thinks the best time to do some home improvement is right when she's getting ready to go to bed. You have not known extreme annoyance edging on insanity until you have lain in bed listening to someone cut drywall and bang things with a hammer for two hours around 11:00 at night.

This troper's city has a tornado siren that tests on the first Wednesday of every month. No big deal, right? In fact we can barely hear the siren from our house, which is why we have a weather radio in the first place. Except, well, one Wednesday it wasn't the tornado siren -- it was a strange, quiet, ululating sound that didn't sound of this Earth. I thought it was an alien invasion or something, because, being twelve years old the time, this was the only sound I thought it could have possibly been. I even asked my mother if she could hear it, and she said she couldn't hear anything, which made it worse. I only found out later that the sound was actually the ''nuclear air raid siren'', and the guy at the emergency station's finger had slipped. Thanks, guys.

No mention of Furbies? I absolutely could not stand it when mine talked to me. Especially when it woke me up at three in the morning to demand that I tell it a story.

CIIIIIIIICAAAAAAADAAAAAAAAAS

The sound an Assasin Bug makes when walking on a paper bag which can best be described as Phi-Phi-Phi-Phi the only other time this troper heard that noise was when playing Hannah and the Ice Cave whenever Hannah and Armin the Small were moving only much scarier. Heck Assasin Bugs in general fall under this.

Did anyone even mention the infamous bloop of 1997?

Linked for your convenience.

Another example of this is one of the video suggestions to it called "Alien Speech? Found in NASA's Radio Signal" that sounds like... some kind of Ominous Alien EldritchAbominations chanting... in a Cthuluesque Language that sounds something like Ighyorm-Haktheth-Mu*Phhhhhhhhhhhh!*-Mu*Phhhhhhhhhhhh!* over... and over... and over...

Hell is the sound of your mother screaming because she just saw your father collapse and die on the front lawn. It will NEVER leave your brain.

UNGREASED CAR BRAKES. That screech is the audio of what you'd get if you inhale ammonia and vinegar together. *shudders*

This troper isn't afraid of many noises outside watching a horror film, except for one in particular. Since I was a child I've had a phobia of wasps, and bees. Pretty much any stinging insect. During the summer, I'll sometimes hear a loud buzzing noise which I recognize as either a wasp, bee, or large fly. But, I have NO IDEA WHERE IT IS. Cut to me standing around, with a fly swatter and/or can of wasp spray searching for it. Another recent one is video game related. In the game InFamous, once you reach the second island, you encounter the dust men. Like the reapers, they have their own suicide bomber units. Also like the reapers, they scream at the top of their lungs when charging twords you, and you have no idea where they are until they're near you. Dust men suicide bombers are more frightening to me, because their voice doesnt sound angry. It sounds like a sad, pitiful wailing, full of anguish as he charges twords his doom. The worst is after a mission inside a maze of shipping crates, you can hear one or two of them running around, and there's NO WAY TO KNOW WHERE HE IS. *Shudder*

Crickets. Not just any cricket sounds, if they're outside, it's fine. However, I have a pet lizard, and when it misses a cricket, said cricket will hole up in a log and chirp endlessly. Let me tell you, it is NOT PLEASANT when it's in the house.

This troper knew a young man who had the bad fortune to be hit by a train in the middle of the night. The engineer reported that he blew the train whistle as many times as he could to warn the young man (alas, he had passed out on the tracks from drinking too much). Ever since hearing that story, this troper has been deathly afraid of train whistles. Imagine being on a track, and the last thing you ever see and hear is the bright light...and the whistle...

FUCKING LOONS. This troper visited Maine when she was 10 and stayed up all night crying because of the loons' cries on the lake outside, which sounded uncannily like wolves howling around the cabin.

This troper doesn't give much thought to the idea of ghosts or the paranormal, but there is one particular room in her parents' house that she refuses to sleep in, because whenever she does, a few minutes after turning out the light, there is...this...weird...sound. This troper's distinct impression is that it is two wooden sticks being struck together. The sound only happens when the troper is facing the wall, and it gradually grows closer, until the troper turns and faces the room--then it is silent. Only when this troper turns back to the wall does it begin again, and then it comes closer. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Once, when the sound seemed to be coming from a foot away from this troper's head, she threw back the covers and SPRINTED upstairs into the other guest bedroom. A few minutes after turning off the light, the sound started again...from outside the window.

The sound made in speakers right before some blue screens of death. The computer is running excellently, then there's a sudden sound like the computer is screaming and someone is muffling it. Then there's just blue. I had this with a faulty hard drive a couple of times and it still horrifies me.

Or the sound that was playing starts looping like a {{broken record}}.

My version of the BSOD in my old computer : the picture starts freezing, but the sound is still fine. 15 seconds later (felt time = 1 minute) the sound repeats every 2 frames, and in half a second comes a quick BSOD I couldn't ever read.

Anyone who saw The =3 Website would understand when i say Koalas Fighting. I mean it starts out sounding like a wierd baby cry but then slowly garbles down into a Demonic sounding version of the sound it made before which makes any sane person want to say OhCrap!

This troper, due to being deaf in one ear, experiences ghost echoes similar to that of tinnitus since the brain is trying to interpret missing sensory data. This can happen at anytime, and it sounds like like a minor version of the same disorienting ringing before someone would enter, say, SilentHill. --- Go back to Hell Is That N- *BAAMP-BAAMP-BAAMP* *BAAMP-BAAMP-BAAMP* *BAAMP-BAAMP-BAAMP*