At around 0350 this (Sunday) morning I half awoke to a very strange sound. It was loud and sounded to be coming from out on the street. I looked at the clock and misread it as 3150, so assumed I was having a lucid dream. Louisa woke too and I mentioned the dream noise, and she told me she heard it too, so I decided that I was definitely awake. At this point, the sound repeated itself. It was an metallicy almost alien noise. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like it. It was ungodly. It sounded perhaps like 5 road sweepers with metal brushes driving close to a row of parked cars. Or the Terminator having rough sex with a robotic pig. It repeated a few times, sounding very much like the source of it was moving around the estate, away from us.
It was so freakishly bizzarre, I decided to get up and try find out what was causing it. I went downstairs in my dressing gown and sat out on the door step and listened. There was a longer delay this time but then it sounded again, quite clearly, from around the corner at the end of the street. Again, the noise unlike anything I could relate to. It repeated a few times, getting quieter. I just couldn’t let this go, so I got dressed and walked to the end of the road. The noise had stopped. I got in my car and drove around the estate, stopping and cutting the engine to listen. Eventually it reoccurred and I decided it was coming from somewhere in, or beyond the woods that surround our estate. I had no desire to wander around in the pitch black park on my own, so I drove around behind the park where there is an industrial estate, which, to be honest, is almost as scary.
It was at this point that Lousia called me on my mobile phone and told me she was worried and scared, so I had to go back. We shut the bedroom window and the curtains and went back to sleep.
What the source of this weird noise was has been bothering me all day. We’ve decided it was something to do with the train tracks that run through the bottom of the park. Perhaps a damaged and very heavy slow moving freight train. Though it would have to have taken almost 30 minutes to travel out of range, and there surely must have been more than one train to explain the reoccurring sound. I still can’t forget about it though. Did anybody else hear it?
Solved: Slashbuster
As suggested by Peter Hite (4 years after I posted this blog!), the sounds were almost certainly due to a machine like the “Slashbuster” clearing brush from around the train tracks. Presumably they do it at night when there are no trains. Check out this crazy machine in action on youtube.
Comments
Years ago I used to hear a metallic noise, sounding like someone dropping a pipe onto a metallic surface, a sort of “bong, ga-lang, ga-lang” noise. It came from the direction of both a railway and a pipeline running adjacent to each other. Perhaps you and I were hearing the noise of railway workers hitting stuff into the tracks?
Sorry, just to clarify, I don’t live anywhere near you :)
[…] Realising when it went dark, it would be REALLY dark, we headed back to the hotel before it got too late, and read in our room until nothing could be seen out of the window apart from blackness and stars. The bed was big and comfortable but I didn’t sleep too well: my brain, now accustomed to screeching tires, car alarms, unwarranted shouting and FREAKY noises, obviously found the silence too suspicious to relax. […]
Reading this is really strange, because a few years ago I heard a similar unexplained, almost weird and ungodly (as you put it!) metallic noise on the other side of the Pennines in Ashton-u-Lyne. This noise was the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. It was almost that it was pervading everywhere, like it had no source that I could make out. It really chilled me.
I forgot about it after a while, and then a few weeks later there was a personal advert in the local paper asking if anyone had heard strange noises around the Tameside area late at night.
Last night I heard a noise very similar to what you describe (I have read this article before and decided to locate it again after my experience). I live in a town called Sawley in between Derby and Nottingham. My apartment is situated on the edge of the town and overlooks miles of fields. There is a freight train line about 300 meters away but I’m almost certain this was no train and sounded much closer.
Firstly I’d just gone to bed around midnight (this may be of no relevance to the noise but I though I’d mention it) and I was awoken by flashing blue lights outside. I had a look through my blinds and there was a police car and also what I believe was an unmarked police car both stationary across the road as if they were looking into the fields. After a couple of seconds they both pulled off fairly quickly in opposite directions.
At 02:30 I was awoken again – this time by, the best I can describe it; as a noise like a steam roller driving over broken glass and metal. It was very loud and seemed to pass right by the road outside my apartment. As it faded into the distance I heard two shot gun like noised (again in the distance) then pretty much silence. I was so unnerved by the whole situation I got up, open the blinds and made a cup of tea staring out of the window for about an hour but I saw or heard nothing. Very bizarre!
Tim Wainwright
After reading your blog i feel i have to reply.
This happened to me tonight aprox 9.40, i was walking home on my own across a lane, i was out in the light and next to a hill when i heard this metalic/alien noise (as you described it) the best way i can explain it is that it sounded like a cross between a metal dectector and when a walky talky is changing the frequency. The noises followed me all the way to the bottom of my street but it stayed on the lane (my esate is surrounded by lanes and hills) this freaked me out so much and i’ve been googling this noise ever since!
This happened last night in Kirkstall. it was around half 2 maybe and this freaky sound like the chimes on a ice-cream van going backwards, it seemed like it was moving around the area. Then it changed into this epic and terrifying metallic alien roaring which seemed to be coming from down in the valley where the river is, possibly near the abbey.
I really want to know what it was.
J.D: I heard the same thing the next night (last Thursday) up in Armley! Just like ice-cream van chimes playing backwards, yes, perfect description!
Then the metallic roaring. It sounded to be coming from down from the canal or the train tracks. It wasn’t as loud as the first time I heard it back in 2005 and it didn’t seem to be be moving around, but basically the same sound.
I’m assuming this is some kind of machine works down there, but as to why they only seem to work in the middle of the night…
I think I can shed some light on what was causing the noise.
There is a device that network rail use to remove trackside trees that makes an incredible din, it’s basically a huge set of metal teeth attached to a swing arm using a chain, they attach it to the top of a tree trunk and it eats it way down to ground level, reducing the tree to shreds.
They were using one near me last year and it made the same noises you were describing.
Thanks Steve, I’m seeing if I can find any more details.
This perhaps is the culprit. I now live in Canada and have seen these in action, they use them during the day here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp8NxbgjsiY
Check out the railway to see if there is any fresh scarring.
How did I get to this page anyhow?
I heard this last night in Bramley. Woke me at 2am and haven’t slept since!
Could see the engine on the tracks but couldn’t make out what it was doing or why all the noise so thanks for clearing it up!
So, I was frantically googleing the strange noise I heard last night at 2 am and came across this page. It is a spot on description of what I heard last night. I thought I was just hearing things until my husband woke up and heard it too. It has me really freaked out! Have you heard anyother ideas of what it might be other than what Steve Frost suggested?
I live near Moortown and I heard a weird noise last week about 12/1am…started off low then got higher pitched..like a woooop..wooop..wooop..prob not great description, but was very radar like.( my sister was awoken by similar noise days later).then a massive lorry type vehicle went down my street min or so after and that never happens as it is a small quiet road in an estate
I was woken up by the same noises around 3:00am last night. It was making such a loud, rhythmic, metallic noise I initially thought it was some kind of obnoxious dance music. My garden back onto the train tracks and from what I could see one train was very, very slowly pulling another train, kind of like a two truck. The two trains were also very brightly lit
I saw (heard to start with) similar last night in England last night, from 12:25-1:40ish in the morning. I figured after a while (as the metallic screeching was so repetitive) the awful racket was coming from the freight tracks near my house, so shoved my head out the window to look but couldn’t see anything. After half an hour or so it was ALOT louder.
So I got up again and looked out the window (tracks are through some trees) and noticed a two, maybe three carriage train moving slower than a turtle, would go and stop over and over. The train was unbelievably bright (only reason I could see it all so clearly through all the trees), little bright white lights at the bottom, with blue, green and red ones, one large wide vertical bright white panel (almost like a door) and some other translucent horizontal panels higher up near the ceiling. I’ve never heard or seen anything like it! Almost looked like a heavy duty passenger train (which it shouldn’t be). Either way it was stopping and starting the WHOLE way, taking a blooming long time over it. Hope the driver didn’t think he was sneaking through…
Pretty sure I was just woken up by this, scoured online trying to find an explanation. I’m near the train station in Cottingley, not far from the tracks. The noise I heard was like a hybrid of mechanical squealing, engine grinding and liquid sloshing about. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before, I initially guessed it might have been something trawling the sewer pipes cleaning them but it was too obviously above ground. A bit hard to place its direction though.
I hear this a lot I’ve recently moved to Hyde park/ headingley area and every Friday and Saturday mighty at around 9 & 10pm I hear sounds like a scary version of an ice cream van, I thought it may have some relation to drug dealers as I live in the student area? Not sure but all I know is it’s very freaky and very loud!!!
I live in Hyde park Leeds, every night at around half 7 a very loud weird James Bond theme tune is played.. Very weird. Also at around 12 midday another weird tune can be heard almost Mexican sounding. I have also heard a weird ice cream truck sounding noise between half 3-4pm. The noises are really freaky especially when alone. Neither me nor my friends can figure out what the sounds are or where they are coming from?
Anybody have any ideas?
that’s weird I have never herd any of those sounds and noises before
I’ve just heard a weird noise of voices outside my flat Me and my boyfriend were just about to fall asleep and we heard what I could describe as a really loud robotic voice saying ” I’m watching you” I turned
Off my phone light and I got up and looked outside but there was nobody standing in the street honestly we don’t take drugs and haven’t been drinking but It was so strange hearing that, we live near Bradford train station but it was a pretty clear voice.
I live in Armley, quite near the train line and I have heard this noise a couple of times and wondered what the hell it was…… this morning at 3 -3.30 am. I could also hear a Helicopter but couldn’t see it so I don’t know if it was the police Helicopter and was just a coincidence but I did come to the conclusion that the weird noise was something to do with the train line.