If horror movies have taught us anything, it’s that disembodied children’s voices singing nursery rhymes never portend anything good. It’s no wonder, then, that people in Ipswich, Suffolk (UK) were unsettled, to say the least, to hear exactly that.
For months, apparently, residents were tormented by the ghostly-sounding voice of a child singing “It’s Raining, It’s Pouring” — in the middle of the night, no less. But as creeped out as some people were, no one reported it. And it went on for months.
Why did no one report it? Well, one Ipswitch resident was afraid she was imagining it — or at least that people would think she was. And that, apparently, was even more frightening than hearing the voices in the first place.
But she wasn’t imagining it, and neither was anyone else. You can hear an actual recording here:
Finally, after months of this creepiness, one resident contacted the local council. Fortunately, the council members took her complaint seriously, and initiated an investigation. They traced the music to the nearby Farthing Road Estate business park.
The owners of the business park blamed the malfunction on spiders getting into the wiring. Which makes it even worse, in my opinion.
But my question is, why would there be a recording of children singing creepy nursery rhymes set up to play over the loudspeaker system at a business park, anyway?
Well, according to the property managers, the nursery rhyme was supposed to scare off burglars. Nontraditional, I suppose, but fair enough. If I were a burglar, I’d be more frightened by ghost children than by your usual siren noises. The spiders, apparently, were triggering the alarm by walking across the motion sensors.
The property managers promised to adjust the settings on the motion sensors to prevent the problem from happening again. Here’s hoping the people of Ipswitch are sleeping a bit more soundly now.
Featured Image: CC0 by Brenkee, via Pixabay
Jess Faraday 