The Mysterious Beep

Let me tell you a story, maybe it will be of use to someone one day so they don't get played like me for all this time!

From April until today, which is about 7 months, a loud "beep" sound was coming in my house that continued once every 45 seconds, sometimes for an hour or two and sometimes all day. It could start at any time of the day or night: from early morning to almost noon, middle of the night, even 2-3 AM.

The constant elements of this sound: • The interval between two "beep" sounds was exactly 45 seconds. • The sound always came from the left side of the house.

But everything else varied, even the volume of the sound. This very change in volume made me think many times that the location of the sound had changed. The house isn't that big either for me to notice a tangible change in volume by moving away. It was almost the same everywhere.

The first time I heard the sound, I thought it was coming from the upstairs floor because I felt the direction of the sound from above my head, but it echoed throughout the whole house. I went and knocked on the upstairs neighbor's door and said: "Sir, is this sound coming from you?" The poor guy had no idea and said: "No, honestly, Seyed."

A few days passed and the sound stopped, but it staaaaarted again. I messaged the landlord and even recorded a voice memo of the "beep" sound for him, but he claimed ignorance. Then I thought the sound was coming from the hallway. I suspected that maybe the next-door neighbor, who has a company, had installed an alarm for themselves, and it goes off when they leave. My hypothesis was confirmed very quickly. The next morning when the company opened, the sound stopped. At night when they left, the sound started again a few hours later. I said let's wait a few days to be sure and then go tell them that this sound of yours is annoying, but well, right then the sound stopped completely. I told myself maybe they figured it out themselves or someone else went and pulled their ears. There was no news of the sound for a few months, at least when I was awake. Until a few weeks ago, this damn thing started again, and this time it wouldn't let go. It practically beeped for several days straight. The sound was sometimes so loud that I would jump out of my sleep with my ears ringing. It was as if it was whining right in my ear.

To eliminate options, I would turn off the electricity, but the sound still came. My suspicion went to devices that have batteries, but I had nothing in the house that worked on batteries except a radio and a digital wristwatch.

I even thought the house doorbell had short-circuited and was making the sound, but that wouldn't work without electricity either. Besides, the constant interval showed that there was no short circuit. Once I suspected that maybe there was a sensor or something in the house, but there was nothing on the ceiling. Not on the ceiling, not on the wall. Only once my eyes caught the top of the lamp. But I thought that white thing that was hard to see from below was related to the lamp's transformer and ignored it.

After all this time, just when I had gotten used to the sound, tonight in a meeting, my colleague who was very tired, suddenly turned around frustrated and said: "Ali, go change your smoke detector battery! It's dying. Its sound is really annoying." I was like: Dude, what smoke detector?! The sound is coming from inside the wall; and there's nothing on the ceiling. He said: "But I'm sure it's the sound of that."

At that moment I remembered that the only suspicious thing in the house was that same white object I had seen above the lamp. I immediately brought a ladder, and I saw, yes! A smoke detector was abandoned up there that I hadn't seen after a year. Of course I had the right, it wasn't visible at all!

Just as I brought it down, it blasted the next whistle right in my face! Truly, this was the most delightful whistle I had heard from it in these 7 months of filth.

I took its batteries out, and it finally calmed down and shut up forever. This scene and this silence were so enjoyable that I said let me come here and tell the story of our months-long soul-crusher. Maybe it will be of use to someone. I'll post its picture in the next post too.

A few important conclusions:

• A smoke sensor (or anything like it) is not necessarily on the ceiling. It might even have fallen into a corner at the back of a cabinet.
• These work with batteries and won't stop until they suck the battery's juice dry. This one here has been powerfully using the last remnants of the battery for 7 months to beep so I change its battery because it doesn't have enough battery to make noise for a long time due to, say, smoke.
• A sound that comes from the ceiling usually spreads throughout the house.

IMG_5389 (1).MOV