Are these the scariest sounds? (Part 2)

From ‘bloops’ to boreholes, sirens and ghosts to…laser printers? Here are five of my favourite scary sounds, including one I found myself in an unexpected place.

You can read the first part of this article here.

3. Sirens

When I was researching common sound-related fears, one of the categories that kept coming up again and again was sirens. I already mentioned Japanese early earthquake warning sirens in last week’s article: an answer to the stirrings of the deep.

There’s a one-two punch effect here when it comes to what makes sirens scary. Firstly, they sound chilling in their own right, a long loud wail designed to make you stop what you’re doing and pay attention. Secondly, they are announcing an impending danger of some kind, a herald of calamity. Various siren-like wails have been produced by armies marching on their enemies like the Roman carnyx.

The first air-raid siren was invented by John Robison, a Scottish scientist, back in 1799. Another key figure was Charles Cagniard de la Tour, a French engineer who is thought to have coined the term ‘siren’ in 1819 to describe his louder adaptation of Robison’s design. In Greek mythology, sirens are the seductive half-woman half-bird creatures who lure men to their deaths with their beautiful singing voices. Strictly speaking, these devices are more like the Irish banshees, ghostly women whose harsh discordant cry meant that danger and death was on its way. You can hear Cagniard de la Tour’s siren here:

For Brits like me, the classic siren is the air raid warnings from World War II when death fell on London from the sky. It sounds like the lamentations of lost souls (more on that in our next sound).

It was perhaps only a matter of time before someone turned a siren into a monster. In 2018 Canadian artist Trevor Hendersen created ‘Siren Head’ who came, like all the other internet monsters, with his own creepy found footage style artwork and Creepypasta lore:

trevorhenderson

A post shared by @trevorhenderson

“She was on vacation with her husband and they were scoping out graveyards on the way, as you do, when she saw it. Rising out of the old cemetery, big as an old (macabre) telephone pole. Was this some kind of bizarre art piece the authorities hadn't gotten wise to yet? Even as she stepped out of the car, the megaphones on it's "head" screeched to life. "NINE. EIGHTEEN. ONE. CHILD. SEVENTEEN. REMOVE. VILE.". A buzzing, doubled voice screamed random words at her. At this point, it jerked into motion, striding down the hill towards her.”

@trevorhenderson original Instagram caption for the image above.

It’s interesting that Junji Ito — one of the most brilliant living horror comic book artists and an extremely lovely man — singled out ‘Siren Head’ as his favourite from a series of scary pictures sent in by upcoming artists. “The siren-head gets me right here,” he says, tapping his heart “I can almost hear the spooky siren.”

He mentions his own manga ‘The Village of Sirens’ where the strange behaviour of an entire population and the vanishing of a number of babies seems to be linked to the uncanny sirens that sound every evening when the sun goes down. Here, like ancient Greeks approaching the island of the sirens, the characters must deliberately deafen themselves in self-defence.

4. Operation Wandering Soul

I still only half-believe that Operation Wandering Soul was real because everything about it sounds like an urban legend including that extraordinary name. During the Vietnam War, the US army trialled a bizarre psyop where they produced a recording of wailing and crying sounds to frighten members of the Việt Cộng into deserting and returning to their homes. The voices on the recording said things like:

“My body is gone. I am dead, my family. Tragic, how tragic! My friends, I come back to let you know that I am dead. I am dead. I am in hell. … Friends, while you are still alive … go home! … Go home, my friends—before it is too late.”

You can listen to ‘Ghost Tape 10’ here. It’s certainly creepy and upsetting, after all this is a foreign army manipulating people whose loved ones have died without proper burial. But it is, dare I say, also quite silly? It’s a step removed from sending an unlucky conscript through the jungle in a sheet with too eyeholes going ‘wooooo.’

And it didn’t work, obviously. People in Vietnam did in fact know what sound recordings were, and broadcasting a sound from a speaker is a good way of revealing your position. There was also the problem that, if its appeal to traditional superstition had been effective, it would surely have proved just as dangerous to the Southern Vietnamese force whom the US was supposed to be supporting in their war against the North.

Back in the 80s, one person who was extremely worried about the potentially for sound itself to become a weapon was British singer-songwriter Kate Bush. In ‘Experiment IV’ (which you can read more about in an article from my Kate Bush series of horror moments) she imagines a banshee monster being conjured up by unwise scientists who fail to contain its power. The music video was deemed too gory for tv: we see a man lying dead strapped to a chair with blood dripping from his burst ears (it is, in fact, Bush’s partner at the time Del Palmer).

5. A Demonic Laser Printer

I want you to imagine a young playwright who is stuck at home self-isolating during the ravages of Covid. The theatres are closed, which is making it harder than usual to get her plays produced, so she is trying her hand at creating a radio drama. She isn’t very good at audio editing, but there are plenty of free tutorials online and it’s a useful skill to practice given the way the arts world is going.

It’s a simple folk horror story, ten minutes long, and will be part of a student showcase of audio plays. She doesn’t know much about sound design, she just knows she wants to create a compelling soundscape as a farmer walks from point A (the farmhouse) to point B (a lambing shed) over the fields in the dead of night. Once he gets to the shed, something will start scratching, knocking and screeching as he cowers in the dark with the new lamb.

It was working on this project that drove home for me how much I love working with sound, but also how difficult it is to create something that sounds truly scary. For ‘The Winter Lamb’ I wanted something that sounded undeniably creepy or ‘off’ without being too literal (a roar or scream, for example). Because it was a folk horror set in the counryside, I thought I’d counterintiuitvely look for machine noises which would feel bizarre and out of place.

Thus began a weird few evenings of popping on sound effects compilations and listening until something leapt out. Finally I put on the following video and lo and behold, about a minute in, came the laser machine diagnostic test:

Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? The comments agreed. People who weren’t even looking for a scary effect were actually commenting on how much this one sounded like a demon. Just what I was looking for!

So it became part of my very amateur scary soundscape in my student audio play. You can hear the sequence from about 51 mins here.

I suppose it goes to show that what makes a scary sound is far more intuitive and emotional than logical. The US army tried really hard to make something that would frighten their enemies, but whoever designed that laser printer accidentally created something that sounds like it emanates from hell.

Do you have any memories of sounds you found unexpectedly scary? What about a sound that frightens you but doesn’t seem to affect anyone else? If you were designing a scary soundscape, what would you use?

I’ll leave you with this wonderful trailer for Alien (1979) which

Stephanie Vee

pointed out to me after last week’s article. It begins with a very simple, very eerie droning soundscape which builds to an otherworldly cacophony fit to make you scream…although of course, in space, no one can hear you.

Subscribe for more articles on a range of fascinating subjects. I publish my ‘horror moments’ on Thursdays, and other curious articles like this on Mondays.

Enjoyed this article? Remember that you can pay to subscribe for extra benefits or buy me a coffee here to keep me writing. You can also like, share, comment, and recommend to help the substack grow. Thank you!