March 22, 2012

"Clintonville noises: City's equipment fails to tape mystery booms."

"The city set up audio and video recorders overnight Wednesday but didn’t capture anything. There was at least one loud boom at 5 a.m. The booms started Sunday. Residents describe them as sounding like thunder, fireworks or someone slamming a heavy door."

They hear things, but then when officials set up recording equipment, nothing is recorded. I said it yesterday: I think it's nothing.

Or does your mind travel in the other direction? Failure to record the booms is evidence of the supernatural, like the way Dracula isn't reflected in a mirror?
Karl: Well, the mirror thing, he can't look in mirrors, can he?

Steve: Well he can look in mirrors but he can't see himself in a mirror.

Karl: That still doesn't work.

Ricky: It doesn't work at all Karl.

Karl: His centre parting is always really neat.



Steve: His centre parting is always really neat?

Ricky: (laughs) How does he do it if he can't look in the mirror.... I love the flaw in the Dracula film is that his centre parting is too neat, how did he do it without a mirror.... You know there aren't really vampires in that sense.

Karl: Yeah, yeah.

Ricky: Yeah but it still annoyed you that his centre parting was too neat.

Karl: Well if you're gonna do it, d'you know what I mean.

Ricky: I'd like to see him with a fringe sort of pushed forward and maybe a hood up "alright, I've come to suck your blood n' that, alright".

Steve: Yeah, just bits of tissue paper all over his face where he's cut himself shaving.

Ricky: "Oh, I can't see in bloody mirror, it's annoying me", I'd love to see that, a little Manc Drac, that would be great wouldn't it, Mancula, Count Mancula, "alright, you got any rave, you got any rave music, you got any Oasis", that would be brilliant, "he came from Manchester, please welcome Mancula", that would be great wouldn't it, his hair's a mess, "well I can't see in mirror".

21 comments:

Scott M said...

Are they going to try an Ouija board next?

Mark O said...

I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's,
His hair was perfect

rhhardin said...

I don't know what they recorded with, but there's a low frequency cutoff on most microphones.

You'd want to preserve exactly the lows in this case.

Wince said...

Steve: Yeah, just bits of tissue paper all over his face where he's cut himself shaving.

Ricky: "Oh, I can't see in bloody mirror, it's annoying me", I'd love to see that...


How about Barnabus Collins brushing his fangs?

LakeLevel said...

why don't they set several seismic monitors? If they are time syncronised, when a boom occurs, they can triangulate and get the exact location of the source. You could probably do it with iPhones.

Bob Ellison said...

I saw some Clintonvillians interviewed about this. They were all trying to figure oat what it's all a boat. It's a mystery, without a dote.

Scott M said...

I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's,
His hair was perfect


Do Italian werewolves have more fur than others?

Do Scottish werewolves have red fur?

Are Native American werewolves mostly furless?

Are Chinese werewolves shorter than other werewolves?

If a black woman is a werewolf, once she transforms, can she be literally called a nappy-headed bitch? Would saying that get you canned from your nationally syndicated morning show?

garage mahal said...

We should get a collection up and send rhhardin to Clintonville to investigate.

garage mahal said...

And @Bob Ellsion
I see what you did there!

dbp said...

"Mark O said...

I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's,
His hair was perfect"

Well, werewolves can see themselves in a mirror, but they don't like to get too close to the silvering.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

How about Barnabus Collins brushing his fangs?

@ EDH

Bwahahahaaaa! OMG I must see this movie.

edutcher said...

It's GodZero's Civilian Defense Corpse using special silent explosives preparing to set fire to the Reichstag so he can use his new Executive Order to take over.

Scott M said...

How about Barnabus Collins brushing his fangs?

I only got that because the new character marketing posters are out now. Depp looks amazing as per usual.

ricpic said...

And the boom goes on,
And the boom goes on,
Pounding pounding pounding in my brain,
Ya Da Ya Da Ya, Ya Da Ya Da Yay...

Patrick said...

Prof: When you say "it's nothing," do you mean that these people really aren't hearing anything, or feeling anything? Is this a hoax?

Darrell said...

If you can hear it, a recorder will record it.

Your brain can replicate simple sounds beautifully--just like it does those complex dream scenes that can't be told from reality. Did you ever hear your doorbell when you were drifting off to sleep? The only way I can tell it wasn't real is that there is no reverberation coming from my long tubular chimes that usually lasts at least five seconds. Did you ever hear an "explosion" that sounds close--and it takes you afew seconds to realize that it didn't happen? You can even hear ringing in your ears afterward. I swear that one is the cause of death of many with weak hearts. But we will never know. The dead don't talk.

Now that the idea is firmly planted in peoples' monds there will be lots of future reports. Keep track of when they occur--how near to the start/end of sleep cycles.

Sigivald said...

rhhardin: A boom that sounds like "thunder, fireworks, or someone slamming a heavy door" isn't exactly infrasonic.

All the common microphone response diagrams I can find show a roughly 40hz cutoff (at worst!) - and general experience shows that cheap common microphones easily capture the sounds of the above phenomena; perhaps not perfectly accurately, but enough to note that they definitely happened.

It's an interesting hypothesis, but seems very, very unlikely to explain.

Nate said...

Had these in inner-city Minneapolis a few years ago. Odd hours of the night. No elected official or police body could figure it out, supposedly.

We find out later (citizen journalist IIRC) it was fighter jets and their sonic booms practicing a rapid-response drill. (The airport is in the 'middle' of town...close enough).

The president (Bush) showed up in town the following week. After the pres left, no more booms.

Calypso Facto said...

The US Geological Survey disagrees with your assessment, Althouse.

Earthquake!

leslyn said...

Clintonville booming caused by 1.5-magnitude earthquake. http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/the-clintonville-booming-was-caused-by-a-15-earthquake-j74mshb-143878006.html.

lemondog said...

It's official. See USGS Earthquake Map