My house is newly haunted -- help ID a weird noise?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Weird sound – hoping to definitively ID it :slight_smile:

On about June 15th, I pulled the innards out of one of our Panasonic bathroom exhaust fans to clean it. It had been a decade or more.

Everything went fine.

Starting about three days later, while sitting in another part of the same level of the house, I heard a “WHOOP” sound. Over the next 20 days, I heard the noise 12 times. On the days I didn’t hear it, it may not have happened. I also may not have been in the house.

The noise always happens between 11:45am and 3:30pm.

My wife reports having heard the same noise on two different occasions … at 10:30pm. I’m not awake at that hour and have to take her word for it.

This (about 7s in) is the noise … in all its glory. I put a digital recorder in the bathroom for the above-referenced daytime period last week and … caught the bastard.

I had to start with the assumption that I did something wrong. Some of you will understand :wink:

I pulled the fan guts again, disassembled them, made sure everything was tight and right, checked the operation of the ‘damper’ (in the attic, juxtaposed to the fan’s (permanent) housing), and everything worked as expected.

Three days later, though, we heard the noise again. 1:58pm.

I was assuming that the noise was expansion as the attic (where the fan housing lives) warms up, and that a 10:30pm noise was contraction as the attic cools down. That does line up with our temperature patterns around here.

Another possibility is an animal … something, something. But I’ve neither heard nor seen any evidence whatsoever that we have an animal freeloading in our house.

Are we positive that it’s the fan? No. Are we positive that it’s coming from the powder room? No. Pretty darned sure on both fronts, though.

My early thought was some weird “low battery” notification from … something electronic, but we can’t identify anything electronic in that part of the house.

And why a four-hour window for something electronic?

My brother suggested … take the fan guts back out and leave them out for a few days to see if the noise ceases. But – practically – that takes the powder room out of commission because setting up and tearing down … twice … for the fan R&R is a lot of work … for this sickly guy. So is running up and down the stairs to use the lav, truth be told :wink:

When I cleaned out the fan entrails, I also air sealed the junction between the fan box (in the attic) and the drywall bathroom ceiling using metal HVAC tape.

Like so:

PIC

My theory (sparked by my wife’s comment that it “sounds like opening a canning jar”) is that the air sealing created some sort of nearly air tight connection between the fan housing and the drywall that – like a jar of spaghetti sauce – breaks suction when you open it. I think it probably ‘breathed’ better until I monkeyed with it, and – as the roof and attic above the fan warm up – expansion “breaks the seal.” Later at night, as the roof and attic cool down, the seal breaks again.

Anybody ever heard this kind of noise in a home before? Anybody buy my theory? Anybody have another possibility for me to consider?

Anybody think an exorcism or forced sale of the house is in order?

I know the next test would be to just get back up on the ladder and break the seal, either by removing one side of HVAC tape or simply cutting a single slice in one piece. But I don’t want to go up on the ladder (9ft ceilings) again any time soon, and … knowing the right answer probably wouldn’t change my strategy – ie, I’d still take air sealing and a weird noise over an air gap and blissful quiet :wink:

But if it’s something else … well … that really would be something else :slight_smile:

ETA: there’s no correlation between the noise and whether the fan is ON or OFF.

2

3

Have you checked the attic for Baron Samedi?
Is there a filter on the fan? Can you partially block the fan to slow the movement of air?

4

Dude, it’s a ghost.
Who you gonna call?

5

It’s most likely a ghost. But it might be a vent damper closing. Wind can make that happen. The damper might get stuck open for a while and the close at some unexpected time. But still probably just ghosts.

6

I’d move.

Soon.

7

Recently I hears a strange rattling noise which I couldn’t identify. It almost sounded like my cat’s food bowl being knocked around, except that the cat was in the room with me when I heard it. I walked around trying to find something that might have fallen. Finally in the spare bedroom, which is currently pretty much just storage space, I found two fluorescent tubes which had been sitting on top of a box waiting to be recycled were on the floor. When I picked them up and lightly tapped them together they made the same noise I had heard. I still don’t know what made them fall (ghosts?) but at least the mystery was solved.

8

When the ghost speaks or pushes you, you’ll believe.:ghost:
I promise😊

9

Maybe Tag Team is making “whoomp” sounds in your attic.

10

Roof rats, probably black Norwegians, no I am not making that up. Some rats prefer to be in the roof.

How to Identify and Eliminate Roof Rats in You’re Home (victorpest.com)

11

It sounds more artificial than organic to me, like a metal sheet that is popping. I am guessing it’s not happening right when the hvac is turning off/on, but maybe near it?

12

Yeah, I’d move for those too.

:open_mouth:

13

That’s really what I’m thinking, too.

We’re very fortunate to have a very well insulated house. We don’t run the HVAC during the day, so it’s never been running within 2-3hrs of the time I’ve heard The Sound.

I find that simultaneously charming and terrifying.

I did have to go into “another attic” recently, in order to change out two upstairs bathroom exhaust fans and saw no evidence of squatters, rodent or otherwise.

I was also thinking about nutria:

I wasn’t thinking of them as a possibility in my situation. I was simply thinking about them. My mind wanders. Probability dictates that I’ll eventually think about ROUS’s.

I actually checked. On a few dates in question, they were playing Bar Mitzvahs, VFW halls, and a sparsely-attended Heaven’s Gate reunion.

So … there it is.

Yesterday was HOT. The sound happened just before the noon hour – one of the earlier WHOOMPs in recorded history. The temp correlation … is holding nicely, as is my inability to stay awake for the 10:30pm show.

I’ll try smudging the house, and then a bona fide non-denominational exorcism next.

Moving still seems a bit dramatic to my wife.

Because … interest rates.

She’s as practical as we both are bemused and terrified.

14

Try not thinking about Nutria.

Eeek!
Now I’m thinking about them.

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Denying the nutria their due does nothing to diminish their actual presence. As Descartes famously said, Nutria ergo sum.

Or something like that.

It’s also a bit like “not thinking about a pink elephant:”