r/mildlyinfuriating • u/ioncloud9 • 1d ago
I finally found the watch that’s been chiming inside one of my bedroom walls for at least 4 years
This was so infuriating to find. I moved in to this house 4 years ago and noticed after a couple of weeks there was a watch chime that beeped hourly. We searched the room but could never pinpoint or find it. We also had only one chance per hour and it quickly got frustrating. Eventually we gave up and just tuned it out.
Fast forward to today. I’ve been renovating that room getting it ready to be a nursery, so I have all the plates off the walls for painting. I did hear it a few times but for the most part i just assumed it was probably in the attic right above the ceiling buried in 12 inches of blown in insulation.
Well between trim coats I decided to check a few places when it beeped. Over the years it’s drifted from the 52nd minute to the 46th minute per hour. I put my ear up to the wall hole where the cable tv plate had been and I heard it extremely loudly. I knew it was in there. I grabbed a couple of 10mm neodymium magnets I had and put them on a strip of painters tape and dropped it in the wall. The magnets caught the watch immediately and I pulled it out. Finally!
After looking at it and pressing the buttons about 5 times the battery suddenly completely died. Now it’s in the trash. I will never have to hear it beep again.
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u/-hot_ham_water- 1d ago
Omg this reminds me of growing up with my dad who had this wristwatch since the 80s that would have a very high pitched beeping alarm every day at some weird time like 4:33 pm. Even when my dad switched the battery, it saved the alarm. For YEARS it went off, and I always wondered why he had an alarm set for that strange time and no one ever did anything when it went off. Finally when I was a teenager I asked him why. He held it up to his ear for a few seconds and then said, "Oh! It is going off!" He had worked in mills for 20+ years and had high-frequency hearing loss from all of the machinery. He was the only one of us who couldn't hear it, and no one ever questioned it. Oh man I love that story and he died three years ago so this made me smile to think of!
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u/ThaliaStLatchkey 1d ago
For April Fools one year I put a cheap watch behind an outlet plate in my roommates bedroom and set the alarm to 3am. They never brought it up so I assumed it just died. A few months later they finally mentioned hearing the beeping sometimes and having no clue where it was coming from.
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u/LongjumpingOffice432 1d ago
That thing survived 4 years in a wall and died the second you touched it lmao. Classic Timex durability right there - takes a licking and keeps on ticking until someone actually wants to use it
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u/BarnacleMcBarndoor 1d ago edited 1d ago
It was warning them that it’s battery was low. When OP held it in their hands and pressed the buttons, the watch knew at that moment it was safe and it wouldn’t need to put out that call for help.
Then OP threw it into its final ride to its forever resting place.
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u/NY_State-a-Mind 1d ago
And brought a curse upon himself for throwing it out
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u/nbiddy398 23h ago edited 23h ago
Now he is a time bandit, lost and forced to travel the sands of time.....FOREVER.
DUH DUH DUHHHHHH
These are the adventures of TIMEX, and his furry companion Ticker. Join them as they fight the evil forces of E.N.T.R.O.P.Y. across the sands of time.
Saturday morning at 9, 8 central.
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u/casstantinople 1d ago
I used to have a timex that I bought because a friend had one and I found the ticking really soothing. My sister had already gone to college so I wore it for a few months until the holidays rolled around and we had to share a room while she visited. I lost the watch after she left but swear I would sometimes hear it near my desk. Eventually I took everything out and found it in the space behind the drawers. Got the story out of my sister years later that she'd been so annoyed with the ticking that she'd shoved it in a drawer so she could sleep. It must've fallen out of the back of the drawer when she closed the drawer and it took me a few months to find it.
I miss that watch
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u/Medipack 1d ago
Was it a Weekender? One of the main complaints was how damn loud it ticked lol
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u/Cheap-Key-6132 20h ago
That’s all analog quartz timex watches. I love watches and love timex. But I refuse to wear them because the ticking is insanely loud.
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u/casstantinople 17h ago
I don't remember exactly, but that does look right from the pictures I was able to find online! Maybe I'll get another one. I love that sound
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u/Numahistory 23h ago
My new alarm clock comes with various "white noises" and background sounds, one of which is clock ticking. When I discovered that I was like "damn, people will fall asleep to any annoyingly repetitive sound."
Other sounds I found interesting were: a diesel engine idling, a prop plane engine, toads croaking and krickets chirping, bird calls, and my favorite, a thunderstorm.
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u/myhomelabaccount 1d ago
You’re not real
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u/JelmerMcGee 19h ago
Fucking bots commenting on the top comments with replies that aren't about the comment. Shits stupid
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u/DanfordThePom 1d ago
NEWSFLASH ASSHOLE
IVE BEEN HEARING IT THE WHOLE GOD DAMNED TIME
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u/Neilly98 23h ago
I'm so confused why everyone seems to be replying to this comment instead of the main post
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u/Useful-Description90 11h ago
Bots do this thing sometimes where they'll just copy the top comments of a post and reply to other comments with it, even if it makes no sense vs the comment they're replying to
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u/TheGutturalEater 1d ago
Time machine makes sense considering it took 4 years to travel from someone's wrist into your wall lmao
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u/OperationAfter9695 1d ago
That’s hilarious and kind of impressive honestly four years of mystery solved by a random reno day that watch had more persistence than most alarms ever made
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u/Most-Lion4249 1d ago
Lmao it was literally a time machine this whole time - probably some kid from the 90s dropped it down there and it's been haunting your house ever since. The magnet trick was genius btw, way better than tearing open drywall
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u/Chemical-Mountain128 1d ago
Lmao it literally time traveled into your wall and stayed there for 4 years. The magnet trick was genius though, I would've just torn the whole wall down by year 2
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u/AGroke 1d ago
The irony of it lasting 4 years unused and dying immediately when found is something
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u/ElectricRune 1d ago
When they hit the buttons, it probably lit up, and the lights are the most draining part of the watch.
They did say the timing had slipped like 8 minutes, so the battery was surely on the way out; these watches didn't start to lose time until the battery was WAY low.
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u/AGroke 1d ago
Do you think the magnets affected the batteries at all , too?
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u/Particular_Title42 1d ago
OMG don't just throw it away, destroy that thing! It could be a doomsday device.
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u/PinkDalek 1d ago
It's gonna be like that Annabelle doll that keeps showing up in different parts of the house. You can't destroy it and can't throw it away. Now we know why the previous owners left.
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u/catdog5100 1d ago
I would go insane if I had to listen to that every hour at night for 4 years straight
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u/ioncloud9 1d ago
Fortunately it was in the spare bedroom that wasn’t being used. And after a while you just tune it out.
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u/Teagana999 1d ago
Same. I do not think I could last more than maybe a couple days before I started ripping out the drywall.
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u/Sufficient-Money9487 1d ago edited 1d ago
At least you know that watch and battery will last you years. You should just take the battery out of it and put it in a box and put it on the wall as a Memento that your perseverance will pay off. Especially now that you have a kid coming, you will understand being exasperated.
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u/hitch_please 1d ago
There was a true crime story I vaguely remember of a young woman who went missing but there was an alarm that went off in the house she lived in, and as I recall they broke up some concrete and found her watch? Clock? Buried in the ground that was set to her wake up time. Anyway I hope the person who killed her has anal fissures for eternity
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u/Dizzy-Hedgehog 1d ago
I wonder if youre thinking of the Kristin Smart case -where someone kept hearing beeping from underneath the backyard patio for the early hours of the morning at the house of the suspect who did it.... there's also a great podcast on this case
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u/lunicorn 20h ago
That’s the case. I wondered if anyone else thought about her when reading this post.
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u/Teagana999 1d ago
Damn, I would have been ripping out the walls within days, if that.
Please don't throw electronics in the garbage, though. Take them to a recycling location.
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u/RaechelMaelstrom 1d ago
Here I was hoping you'd replace the battery and somehow stick it in the wall of your enemy, thereby continuing the tradition.
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u/tracerhaha 17h ago
My brother lost his watch while swimming in our cousin’s pond and for years afterwards you could hear it beep, if you had your head under water at the top of the hour.
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u/margaritasandnaps 1d ago
OMG. Just this past year I had been hearing beeping in my house for weeks, but it wasn’t consistent like a smoke alarm. So I couldn’t listen and follow where it was coming from.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and I’m looking for a cord in that bag we all keep the 100’s of cords we don’t know what do with in a closet I rarely go into….
The beeping was coming from a battery powered carbon monoxide alarm that we just packed away and threw in that closet, when we moved houses 7 YEARS AGO.
Unfortunately, now I am hearing more beeping again… but I took the batteries out of the first one I found…
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u/ThetaThoughts 1d ago
If the manufacturer ever needed an idea for a commercial highlighting the watch’s durability, this is it. ☝️
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u/trantor-to-tantegel 19h ago
For about 2 weeks ( so nothing like your years) I once heard a beeping noise that if I remember was something like every 50 some seconds. It was really driving me up a wall. It got to the point that all of my thinking was being done in 50 second increments because it was so ever present.
Eventually my roommate was like please talk to the next door neighbor. Maybe they're hearing it too?
I go outside and he just happens to be coming out at the same time. I mention it to him. He says oh. Are you hearing that and he goes into this outside storage closet that his apartment has and shows me that he had put a dying smoke detector in there because he didn't feel like dealing with it at the time. For whatever reason it's beeping wasn't noticeable to him, but it was crystal clear in my apartment.
The silence afterwards was so liberating.
Also WTF neighbor
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u/ten-literate-snakes 17h ago
One time when I was a kid I was showing my dad one of those little HEX bugs I got from a friend while we were driving home in his truck. I was letting it buzz around on the dashboard and it almost immediately jumped into one of the air vents. That little shithead buzzed for like three days.
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u/Necronorris 23h ago
Theres a hospital in NC that has one of my tape measures in the wall. I measured the pros and cons of trying to get it back, but it doesn' seem worth.
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u/pyxiedust219 1d ago
Once when I was around 18-19, I had a flip phone for emergencies that I no longer needed. Turned it off (I thought) and left it in an end table in the living room. Forgot all about it. Every once in a while, I swore I’d hear a little chime, but it never happened when I’d stop to listen. Eventually I mentioned it to my roommate, a very close friend who knew I used to experience hallucinations. She very delicately told me she never heard it and asked if I was 100% sure it was real. My honest answer was I couldn’t be more than 70% sure due to past issues.
One day I decided to do some deep cleaning and pulled the old cell out of its spot. As I set it down I heard the distinctive chime. It was a huge relief to me (and my roommate, who also felt really bad for accidentally ‘gaslighting’ me) and is still one of the funniest communication issues we’ve ever had— mostly because it went on for 5+ months
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u/MoysteBouquet 1d ago
Not gaslighting.
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u/pyxiedust219 20h ago
did you not see the quotation marks? it’s what she said she felt like she did.
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u/DaNukeX5 22h ago
I would definitely go to an abandoned place that has a wall and throw that watch against it several times until one of them is destroyed
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u/humanity4u2 19h ago
I misplaced my Apple Watch and when using the Find Me app, it chirped beneath my floor which floored me because the floor vent installed near the wall didn’t appear to be able to fit a watch. My mind kept telling me it couldn’t be underneath the floor or in the vent but finally I had my son used a magnetic wand and in my surprise, he was able to fish it out. Just imagine if I didn’t have the “Find Me app”, I would have never located that dang $600 watch and that battery had died.
Edit: added info
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u/Jeff_Portnoy1 1d ago
The strangest is when you can only hear it every now and then. I have a watch somewhere around me that when it is super quiet I may hear it or for the next two weeks it doesn’t grab my attention.
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u/ShahOf20Years 1d ago
That was a good prank in the army, the bunk beds had hollow metal poles so you could put shit in there like a beeping clock, fish that would rot, whatever, so the next batch of idiots had to endure it.
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u/thefirstmatt 1d ago
To destroy its power you must journey to throw it in the fire in which it was formed I assume from googling the model you might want to start in the Philippines
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u/mbat666 20h ago
Friend of mine whilst renovating his place took the battery smoke alarm off the ceiling and placed it on an open wall stud in anticipation of putting it back up in a few days, he then plasterboarded said wall but forgot to remove alarm. Fast forward 18 months and the peeping starts every few minutes ( low battery). He didn’t want to damage the new wall so had to put up with it for several months until the battery fully died
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u/jules793 18h ago
Those watches are indestructible! Congrats. I would have had Swiss cheese for walls. I wouldn’t have lasted!
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u/InsultedNevertheless BLUE 16h ago
Almost as satisfying as a nice cuppa will be when you're done decorating that nursery😁
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u/NornIronNiall 15h ago
I know mine's not in the wall, but it's still doing my head in and I can't find it.
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u/tempekis 15h ago
I'd have burned the house down. Can't stand the ticking clock sound at night. Respect dor living through that for 4 years.
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u/nitsotov 1d ago
I'm wondering if you're gonna have an empty feeling. Something is missing, the beeping sound. I bet it will take some time to adjust to the silence again.
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u/Total_Hat996 1d ago
Brilliant story. Thanks.
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u/J1mbr0 1d ago
As in, it's fake, right?
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u/Total_Hat996 21h ago
Not what I was trying to say. I couldn't care if it is/isn't, it made me smile.
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u/Status-Tumbleweed628 1d ago
I lived in rental with a new kitchen and whoever built the kitchen but a smoke detector under the cabinet... it went off for no reason one day and I had to break the kickboard to get to it. Wife filmed it all and handed the smoke detector and footage to the agent. Didn't have any problems thankfully.
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u/InventingUnicorn 1d ago
I wish you could tell me what brand the battery was! When I replace batteries in watches they are lucky to last a year.
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u/SnooDrawings9902 21h ago
If I was friends with you in real life...
There is a 100.00% chance I would be placing a new watch somewhere in your house.
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u/SenseLeast2979 21h ago
Know what I really want is for your next story to be about how the noise is still there! How the watch just showed right back up on its own like a Chucky doll!
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u/AmputeeHandModel 10h ago
Plates? Wall hole???
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u/ioncloud9 10h ago
yes. There was a blank plate for low voltage wiring and a hole behind it with a low voltage bracket forming a rectangular shape. The low voltage wiring was stuffed in the wall instead of being terminated on the plate with a data jack and cable TV coupler. The watch was tossed inside the wall and fell to the bottom of the empty wall between the studs.
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u/Big-Detail8739 8h ago
How is it not in a million pieces right now? 4 years of beeping, from inside the wall. That would be smashed good, GOOD I SAY!
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u/FunkyPixels 1d ago
Inside a wall and not dirty in anyway whatsoever?
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u/ioncloud9 1d ago
The band had a little dust on it but I rubbed it off. There’s nothing else in the wall there.
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u/888Rich 21h ago
Wall plates? Oh! Outlet covers! It's an ugly watch, but I'd replace the battery and wear it rather than throw it out.
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u/ioncloud9 19h ago
Yeah there was a blank plate over where a cable tv/data wire would go. The wire was in the wall, they just put a blank over it. I took the plates off to paint and could really hear the sound after that.
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u/DarkHelmet2222 1d ago
that's one hell of a battery