Things That Go Bump in the Night

"From ghoulies and ghosties/And long-legged beaties/And things that go bump in the night,!/Good Lord, deliver us!" Old Scottish prayer.

Houses make noise.  The most common and annoying noises, according to website “This Old House,” (from the popular show of the same name) are: gurgling radiators, rattling pipes, noisy hinges, squeaky stairs, and noisy furnaces.  All problems easily solved, if you follow their handy advice. 

Noises during the night can be especially troubling.  Even if we know it’s just the gurgling radiator or the rattling pipes, it sounds extra scary in the dark.  “Noise,” by definition, unlike “sound,” is annoying; the dictionary defines noise as “a sound, especially one that is loud or unpleasant or that causes disturbance.”  Synonyms are din, hubbub, clamor, racket, uproar, tumult, commotion, and pandemonium.  Even the derivation of noise is unpleasant – it’s related to “nausea.”

But I like house noises, even nighttime house noises.  And I live in a hand built house in the woods, so there are lots of noises and it’s really dark when they wake me up.  But I am rarely scared by them. 

Well, the time the giant redwood fell near the house in the middle of the night in a huge rainstorm, that sound was scary.  (I was there and awake, so I still don’t know the answer to the question, if I had been away from the house, would it have made any noise?)  But the tree falling wasn’t a house noise.  That was a nature noise.  I could hear it creaking and groaning in the wind, but I didn’t know which tree it was, how far from the house, how tall.  My husband was awake too.  Not to wake the kids I whispered, “What do we do if the tree falls on the house?”  He calmly explained that he built the house on a rise between two swales, big gullies, and that the redwoods grew down in the swales, because there more water and shelter there, and so they were too far from the house to be dangerous.  And, he said, when trees fall they fall slowly, so we will have warning.  I lay there a little relieved, and I remember actually sort of congratulating myself on dealing with my fear by getting a little more information. Then I heard the noise, the slow eerie creaking of the tree starting to fall. It was terrifying. And it actually was very slow, as Ron had said.  It fell with a huge crash.  But the house was untouched, because the tree was down in the swale.  The next day we went out and saw the giant lying as it had fallen, far from the house, straight up the hill, quiet again.)

Maybe it’s precisely because I hear so many noises in the woods that the house noises don’t scare me.  Just a lot of creaking in the not perfectly square corners, and scratching behind the walls (mice, bats), and odd gurgling in the walls from somewhat amateurish plumbing.  Things are always fine in the morning.

I was reminded of house noises when I read this passage from Sebastian Faulk’s novel, The Girl at the Lion D’Or this week:

In the night Christine could hear the house's creaks and groans: the wooden stairs would ease themselves out against the flanking wall with a mellow timber sigh, or snap with splintery temper in the contractions of the cold.  There was often a remote, irregular banging from the door to the scullery in the south tower which the maid, Marie, after washing the dinner dishes, unfailingly forgot to close before going to bed.  The shutters in the attic could occasionally be heard grating slowly on their thick rusted hinges, and down the long corridors of the first floor the worn planks rumbled and squeaked in a capricious but not discomforting way.  At times like these Christine imagined the whole body of the house and all its contents to be shifting in its sleep, the immobile outer walls and towers not quite able to hold in equal stillness all the disparate inner parts.  It was hardly surprising, when one considered the different portions of the earth and living world that had been plundered to fill the place: unrelated oxides fused to make glass and flattened into windows framed by felled and sliced trees; marble quarried and carved into decorative mantelpieces on which sat lamps compounded of different unwilling metals; powdery plaster fixed by water in a brittle firmness unnatural to both.  It was only to be expected that a little restlessness be shown at night - an aching of elemental parts which stretched to find their former selves.  In this way, Christine thought, the house was like a human brain stilled by a temporary sleep which allowed the brash constituents of its personality the indulgence of a brief and limited self-expression, like a dream.

Faithful readers may remember a column I wrote last year about novels that feature a building as a major character, as important as the people: Rebecca (Manderley,) Notre Dame (the Cathedral,) Bleak House. 

In Faulks’ story it’s an old French manor house in a coastal town.  Its decaying neglect personifies the relationship of Christine and her husband, also shaky.  Besides the routine noises Christine describes in the passage above, she also hears something that sounds like a gunshot.   Later, (spoiler alert!) part of the house collapses, with a big explosive sound.  As does their relationship.  More symbolism; the conflicted husband, trying to restore not just the house but his stature beside his father who built the house, hires a cheap contractor to enlarge his father’s old wine cellar.  Digging around in the dark undermines the foundations.  Not too subtle imagery, but effective.

And particularly effective, and familiar, to me, are the great verbs and nouns Faulks uses in the passage to describe the house noises:

-Rattling, gurgling, squeaking, sighing, grating, banging, rumbling, creaking, groaning.

-Restiveness, aching, sighing, self-expression, stretching.

If (as I firmly believe) our houses are not simply inanimate structures, but organic creations, more like bodies than just lifeless materials, then of course they will make noise.  We all make noise.  And most of our body noises aren’t a racket or a commotion.  We are just gurgling and squeaking. 

Both I and my house experience a fair amount of restiveness and aching, which we express noisily. 

Nighttime noises are often blamed on ghosts.  And on things that go bump in the night.  From which some pray for deliverance.  I just roll over and tell the house (and myself) it’s going to be ok.  And go back to sleep.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter