So, what in your everyday life would cause you to swear that we are being invaded by aliens? For me, it is the fluorescent lights in the room I work in. Each time someone hits the switch, the dingus that kicks the tubes to life sounds like a phaser going off. Each individual tube sounds like that. I swear, every morning (I always leave them off) someone sneaks in and hits that switch and I want to dive under the desk to avoid the phaser barrage.
One more, before I leave the room (or the OP): how many here are old enough to remember the last appearance of the 17 (or however many year) locusts? When the woods get full of those little critters, it sounds like a constant tricorder or something: a hollow sound the whole time, constant. They could use it as the creepy undertone for one of those movies.
In my high school gym, the huge sodium lights or whatever they are make an incessantly annoying buzzing sound the ENTIRE TIME THEY ARE ON! It sounds like a hive of pissed off bees inside an extremely small space. Or some alien communication device from another dimension.
Another, smaller brood of cicadas emerged just last year in Northern Virginia. I remember someone on this board likened their sound to a Star Trek phaser. (Incidentally, according to the link provided to me by Oblio, that hatch appeared to be an anomalous hatch of Brood VI. They must have caught a good wind from the Carolinas.)
The sound effects for the blasters used in the original Star Wars were produced by tapping a telephone pole suspension wire with a hammer.
One of the most popular sound effects in commercials is the sound of the uber-boss from Doom II spawning a bad guy.
Around my parents house in Cincinnati, there is some kind of bird whose call sounds like some sort of weird computer noise. It’s an odd warbling, throaty, but somehow artificial sound. Add to that the fact that I have never actually seen the bird that makes this sound (at least, not WHILE it was making the sound) and also the fact that it is not continuous. You hear it only once at random intervals during the day. Gives me the shivers and makes me think microchip spy birds are watching me for the government…
The other thing is this weird gadget truck drivers here in Japan have on their cabs. Truck drivers here (as everywhere) are a unique breed, and they decorate the interior of their cabs (which are HUGE and spacious…moreso, I think, than their American counterparts) with hanging tapestries and other items. Lately the craze has been something that makes a birdish noise every time the truck turns a corner. It starts at a high tone and drops in that same kind of birdy tone as the Cinci bird I talked about. I don’t know why they do it. It serves no purpose I can see.
A lot of the sounds used in video games are from sound libraries that are used for many different media. I remember a commercial that had the same sound effect that was used when Natalya in Goldeneye (for the N64) was shot.
We get some cicadas every year and I can remember mowing the backyard when I was a teen - every time I’d mow under these huge apple trees the insects would go into a virtual frenzy. Maybe they thought the lawnmower was a really big, hot cicada mama.
At the lab where I work now there’s an instrument that issues forth several different robotic type sounds. Sort of like R2D2 chattering away. I’ve actually wondered if all the instruments are really talking to each other about us poor humans, what with our limited mental capacities and all.
And I think I’m definitely up too late…
In India near where I stayed there was a Hindu temple atop a hill where every morning around sunrise the priests would chant for about an hour. They broadcast the monotonous chanting all around the neighborhood with loudspeakers. The sound of their voices was thin, pinched, nasal. Sounded to me exactly like little green men from outer space.
The branch library nearest to my house has these automatic doors that sound exactly like the doors to the holodeck on Star Trek. All it needs is a female voice saying “Program complete…Enter when ready.”
Of course, I don’t know if that means that the Avis G. Williams branch of the DeKalb County Public Library is an illusion…or if the Avis. G. Williams library is the real world, and everything else is an illusion.
Around here the crows make two sounds: their usual “caw”, and a strange rattling clicking sound that the producers of Predator must have decided sounded cool.
“Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Avis G. Williams Library is…you have to see it for yourself.”
[sub]Okay, so now I’m mixing my sci-fi allusions. So sue me.[/sub]