Floating in on the wind, yet again, the sound of It's Raining, It's Pouring being sung by a child on the creepiest siren in Britain.
The Ipswich Star reports on what one local described as "something from a horror movie." I've embedded a recording made by one alarmed local at the top of this post so you know what they were hearing.
A tormented mother living in Bramford Road with her two young children has been woken on an almost nightly basis by a tinny, distant rendition of ‘It’s Raining, It’s Pouring’. She said the threatening undertone of the song had left her frightened and questioning whether she was imagining things. After months of torment, she finally reported the unusual complaint to Ipswich Borough Council.
The next time it happened, they scrambled workers to her address and she helped them track down the unnerving music to a loudspeaker installed at "an industrial premises on the neighbouring Farthing Road estate [business park]." The council subsequently issued a press statement, which follows.
“This is unique in our experience – it was difficult to believe a nursery rhyme would be playing in the middle of the night.
“But we do take all complaints extremely seriously and asked the residents who contacted us to let us know when it was actually playing so we could investigate properly.
“We took a call around midnight and immediately went to the Bramford Road area to find out more – we did hear the nursery rhyme playing from an industrial premises and it sounded very eerie at that time of night. We appreciate that people living nearby would find it quite spooky.”
The premises' operators blamed spiders.
“The sound is only supposed to act as a deterrent for opportunistic thieves that come onto our property, and it’s designed only to be heard by people on our private land. We are now aware of the problem – the motion sensors were being triggered by spiders crawling across the lenses of our cameras and it looks like we’ve had it turned up too loudly. We’ve spoken to the resident who brought it to our attention and adjusted it so this shouldn’t happen again.”
The BBC adds that it had gone on for months.
For several months she would hear the rhyme, which would go away only to come again another day.
The woman, who did not wish to be named, said: "The first time I heard it it was the most terrifying thing ever, I went cold and felt sick, and thought 'what on earth was that?'"
