Sounds coming from Toys and other Devices

Toy & Device Sounds

Children's toys are usually made in foreign countries, with the cheapest labor, under the worst conditions, using the most inexpensive parts and components available. While the toys may seem state-of-the-art, they are unpredictable, buggy, and can malfunction unexpectedly.

1. Toys that make sounds (even one's not dropped in the bathtub) go off on their own all the time. We have a lot of toys in our house. They go off pretty often, actually.

2. When they go off, they startle the hell out of me. Sometimes they sound like someone calling out to me. Or someone passing some cryptic message. Or someone who's angry. I would say at least a dozen times a toy has gone off in our house, and startled me...until I tracked down the toy and made it make repeat the sound.

3. When I'm alone or the house is dark or I'm feeling a little creeped out anyway, the toy sounds have 10x the startle-effect on me. A few times late a night, a baby doll has said something...and about sent me running from the house!

4. When a toy's batteries are running down, they make weird, off-pitch, and sometimes unintelligible sounds. They might be programmed to say, "Do you Want to Play," in a cute little girl's voice...but with their batteries run down they can sound like the devil himself.

5. Some toys have batteries you don't even know about. You might think the toy is inactive or without batteries, but internal batteries built into the toy when it was manufactured might still be working...even if it is only occasionally, due to these batteries being run down.

6. When a toy is going off infrequently, its hard to find where that toy is. Our house has toys in almost every room. Identifying the direction from which the toy sound is coming can be difficult. For instance, the toy may be 5 feet from you and making a soft sound (because the batteries are low), but someone might mis-identify the toy sound as coming from another room. So its possible to misinterpret a soft-sound 5 feet from you, as a louder noise coming from farther away.

--Mark Stinson, Ghost Vigil Investigations