Halloween noises

Posted by Ric on 02.11.04

At Halloween, I went to a glam punk concert (Rachel Stamp and Johnny Panic, for anyone who cares). Between the bands, the DJ played Alice Cooper: 'Poison', 'Sweet transvestite' from Rocky Horror, and 'Monster mash' on loop. Accordingly, my Halloween was predicated on noises, and my retrospective can only follow this lead.

Cat fight (.mp3, 547kb)     This one is pretty lame. It attempts to give the impression of several individual cats until 0:28 when these are speeded up and overlayed. It then sounds like Donald Duck.

Chain rattling (.mp3, 586kb)     This is fairly effective, sounding like Jacob Marley until the creator makes an ill-advised attempt at character development, as the hurried shaking to the end is more akin to the janitor locking the school gates at hometime.

Chainsaws (.mp3, 521kb)     I didn't actually hear any chainsaws, but I have the mp3 for it. The operator has some difficulty getting it started and stalls it towards the end. Overall, there seems little reason to be scared.

Dogs barking (.mp3, 846kb)     On my way home, I did hear dogs barking. I walked past a gate with a sign warning that the premises were protected by Cujo. I thought this was a joke, but discovered it not to be. This was quite scary. However, these dogs are not.

Door Creak 8 (.mp3, 771kb)     While I only have one creaking door sound, the one that I have was originally identified as Door Creak 8 and I maintain this for the benefit of anyone who may already have others. Comedically, this sounds like someone with very bad gas.

Guts being mangled (.mp3, 706kb)     This sounds like someone fisting a jar of jam. I like to think that this is exactly how this noise was made, and that someone gave servious thought to what consistency and fruit content would give the best results.

Haunting music (.mp3, 1.05mb)     A most unsettling choice of chord progressions!

Heart beat (.mp3, 506kb)     The heart beat grows faster as the mp3 progresses. As this is a reaction to fear, we can infer that this person is scared. The reason for the fear remains unclear, which is nerve-racking.

Man eaten by dog (.mp3, 576kb)     This one is great. It involves the same sceram noise being repeated, interspersed with the same dog growl being repeated. The impression that the dog is eating the man is given by the addition of the earlier 'Guts being mangled noise'.

Mix of scary noises (.mp3, 1.73mb)     Several seconds of laughter descend into screaming upon the addition of wind chimes. This continues until a noise like when someone is blowing across the rim of a bottle attempting to sound a note. Someone plays a xylophone and then groans - spine-chilling!

Psychopath (.mp3, 650kb)     This is halfway between the Michael Myers music and a techno version of the Jaws music.

Scary noises (.mp3, 1.06mb)     This is the first 1 minute and 10 seconds of the 1 minute 53 second 'Mix of scary noises'.

Screams (.mp3, 976kb)     The screams of the title only begin after 30 seconds of what sounds like Rolf Harris trying to play his wobbleboard while drunk. They then sounds suitably distressed.

Wolves (.mp3, 512kb)     These are sufficiently like wolves.

Woman in dungeon (.mp3, 1.00mb)     The title is misleading, as there is more than one woman screaming, and the screams sound somewhat pathetic and annoying, like in Police Academy when Mauser catches Mahonney looking into the female shower block, and Mauser makes a noise immediately after Mahonney has gone, causing Mauser to look like the peeping Tom.

Jaws theme (.mp3, 546kb)     I am not entirely sure why this is specifically Halloween. To reasonably fear shark attack, one must be in water with sharks; an unlikely situation in late October.

The Munsters theme (.mp3, 735kb)     The Munsters are cool and this theme tune is cool.

Twilight Zone theme (.mp3, 882kb)     As entertaining as the Twilight Zone undoubtedly is, I am not sure that any music containing bongos is particularly intimidating.