Source of ‘haunting,’ ‘terrifying’ nursery rhyme revealed

For months, usually around bedtime, the sound of a distant nursery rhyme would drift through a neighborhood in Ipswich, a seaside town in England. The words were familiar: “It’s raining, it’s pouring; the old man is snoring.”

But it wasn’t soothing. And it wasn’t putting anyone to sleep. For several residents, the tune was the stuff of nightmares.

The culprits, unmasked last week, turned out to be spiders.

An investigation tracked the sound to a nearby industrial park, where a speaker system at a unit inside blared a childlike recording of the song.

The racket was actually an alarm system, meant to deter would-be trespassers, according to a BBC report.

The alarm was triggered by spiders scuttling across a camera linked to the system, a spokesman for the industrial park told the BBC, which also noted that the alarm system had been “very successful” at scaring off intruders.

That spokesman did not elaborate on why the park selected a nursery rhyme for its burglar deterrence.

Park employees told British reporters that they turned the volume down after they became aware of the complaints.

Randle was apparently one of several Ipswich residents who were disturbed and annoyed by the haunting tune that woke them over a period of more than a year.

The local Ipswich Star reported that residents complained repeatedly to their local officials, who eventually responded and tracked down the eerie song’s source.

One woman, whom the newspaper did not name, said she would hear the song throughout the night — sometimes just once, other times again and again for hours.

“It was absolutely terrifying,” she told the Star. “I heard it at all times of the night — 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 4 a.m. — it was sporadic, sometimes it would play once, other times it was over and over. Last week, it played for hours; it was just horrible.”

One woman told the BBC that the first time she heard the song it was “the most terrifying thing ever.”

“I went cold and felt sick, and thought, ‘What on Earth was that?’ ” she said.