Hey YouTube, Jim here! Welcome to Top 10 Archive! Have you ever heard a sound that
made your hair stand on end? Some sounds are — on their own — enough to give us chills.
Others, it only takes a little context to make a sound take on a brand new dreadful meaning.
Today we’re going through the 10 scariest sounds ever recorded,
so pop on some headphones if you don’t want to frighten your entire house!
10. Hurricane Ike What do you think a hurricane really sounds like?
Maybe you already know. What about a category four hurricane - like the one that tore through a few
states in 2008. A person at a resort in Galveston, Texas, got footage of Hurricane Ike while they
were in its eye, and it’s so scary it could easily be edited into a horror film. Listen to this:
[play clip] 9. Thomas Edison’s Christmas Message
It’s not just natural disasters that you can listen to for a thrill at 2 a.m. Recordings
of people can be just as scary. Thomas Edison recorded Harry Humphrey on the
phonograph he invented. It was supposed to be a happy recording for Christmas time.
In reality, it’s more of a Halloween recording. Take a listen:
[play clip] 8. Saturn's Rings
Do you enjoy looking at pictures of other planets? I used to,
until I heard how some of them sound - and now they’re more like monsters under the bed.
Take Saturn’s Rings for example. The Cassini spacecraft detected radio emissions from Saturn
that were, well, out of this world. Scientists turned this into a frequency range that’s fit
for human hearing and oh, boy I wish they hadn’t. Listen to this absolute nightmare:
[play clip] 7. Alessandro Moreschi
If you’re a history buff, you might know that back in the day,
boys, known as castrato's, would be castrated to keep their voices high before puberty. They’d
sing in choirs, but never had the technology or the thought to record it. Except for this guy,
Alessandro Moreschi, the only castrated man to have made a solo sound recording.
Without context, this would be a beautiful song. With context, it’s mostly just scary and sad.
6. The Max Headroom Incident This video gives you a ticket into the mysterious
horror that two Chicago TV stations and their viewers lived through back in November of 1987.
It was late evening and things were as usual when all of a sudden the signal got weird.
Someone took over the broadcast to instead mock viewers in a Max headroom costume,
with a swiveling corrugated metal panel in the background. Both broadcasts lasted
25 and 90 seconds, respectively, and despite an FCC investigation and decades of speculation,
the culprits were never caught and have not been positively identified.
5. Red Fox Sounds Red foxes look cute, but have you ever heard
one call out? I thought they’d sound like dogs or wolves, but oh no. It’s bad. These orphaned red
fox cubs were calling out in a screech so eerie you can almost hear the longing for their parents.
They were later returned to the wild but the calls will stay with me forever, reminding
me more of a screaming woman being chased than the adorable animals they actually come from.
4. Vietnamese War Tactics During the Vietnam war,
soldiers would often use recordings to scare away enemies. They had ghostly voices,
which spoke like fallen soldiers telling others to turn around, and even strange animal noises that
sounded like monsters. This is just one example of what soldiers would have heard: [play clip]
Regardless if it were a ghost, the enemy, or even a friend, I’d run in the opposite direction of
wherever this sound came from. Would you? 3. The Aztec Death Whistle
From the title alone you know this one has to be intense —and it is. The Aztec Death
Whistle was developed to scare enemies, and in the shape of a skull, it did just that.
Listen to it in action: [play clip] Similar to the Vietnamese recordings, hearing this would make you
feel like someone is screaming. 2. Kevin Cosgrove 9/11 call
If you’re not a fan of 911 calls, skip ahead a few minutes because
this one is notoriously scary. Kevin Cosgrove is a man who called 911 during the 9/11 attacks.
He was trapped in an office with two other people on the 105th floor, and he’s concerned
about whether they’ll make it out or not. He talks about his wife and he says they’re near a window.
Next, we can only assume that he was killed as the tower fell and a rumbling is heard.
1. Nuclear Attack Warning You’ve likely never heard something like this,
but the United States has a system for warning of a nuclear attack. Some places have Hurricane
or Tornado sirens, and you’d likely hear a siren for a nuclear attack as well,
but then the emergency alert system should interrupt all other programming. Radio, TV,
everything pauses. If you ever hear this sound, you’ll be wondering what place will
be sturdy enough to keep you safe. [play sound] Hopefully none of us will ever have to hear it.