英國版走近科學(xué)：夜半歌聲

When darkness fell, the child began to sing. Almost every evening, the shrill voice – somewhere distant and alone – would endlessly call out the same haunting nursery rhyme in the dead of night.

九旬老——為何每當(dāng)黑夜降臨時(shí)，孩子開始無休止地唱歌;每當(dāng)夜深人靜的時(shí)候，監(jiān)控器頻頻失靈，單身母親心悸難安，到底是人性的扭曲還是道——超自然的力量。

It's the stuff of nightmares, and it was driving Alice Connington mad. The 34-year-old mother of two, who lives in Ipswich in the UK, had been plagued for months by this eerie sing-song nightmare, and she had no idea where it was coming from, or why.

如同噩夢，它讓愛麗絲·康寧頓瘋狂。這位34歲的女士是兩個(gè)孩子的母親，住在英國的伊普斯威奇，幾個(gè)月來一直被令人毛骨悚然的夜半歌聲所困擾，她不知道它來自哪里，或者為什么出現(xiàn)。

You can't blame her for being unnerved – listen to this recording of the ghostly performance. "It's Raining, It's Pouring…" never sounded more sinister.

你不能責(zé)怪她膽小，她錄下了那幽靈般的聲音：“下雨了，大雨瓢潑下……”這段兒歌聽起來從未如此險(xiǎn)惡。

Now imagine it drifting into your house, night after night, like a bad dream that never ends.

現(xiàn)在想象一下，每到深夜它就飄進(jìn)你的屋子，就像永無止境的夢魘。

"It was waking me up in the night, it was absolutely terrifying," Connington told the Ipswich Star.

“夜里它吵醒了我，超級恐怖的我和你說，”康寧頓在當(dāng)?shù)氐膱?bào)紙上控訴。

"I heard it at all times of the night – 1am, 2am, 4am – it was sporadic, sometimes it would play once, other times it was over and over. Last week it played for hours, it was just horrible."

“夜間的不同時(shí)段都能聽到——凌晨1點(diǎn)、凌晨2點(diǎn)、凌晨4點(diǎn)——斷斷續(xù)續(xù)的，有時(shí)播放一次，有時(shí)會(huì)一遍又一遍。上周連續(xù)播放了幾個(gè)小時(shí)，真是太可怕了。”

Finally, enough was enough. After enduring months of this creepy night-time rendition, Connington took her complaint to Ipswich Borough Council. It was curtain time for this poltergeist.

是的，夠了。在經(jīng)歷了數(shù)月令人毛骨悚然的午夜歌聲后，康寧頓將她的投訴信發(fā)至伊普斯維奇自治市議會(huì)。對走近科學(xué)的愛好者來說，下面是揭曉謎底的時(shí)間。

Last week, when the ghostly songbird piped up once more, the council tracked down where the song was emanating from, pinpointing a nearby industrial estate.

上周，當(dāng)幽靈般的旋律再次出現(xiàn)時(shí)，委員會(huì)追蹤到了聲音的發(fā)源地——指向附近一處工業(yè)區(qū)。

But when they got there, they found no forlorn ghost child serenading the darkness – just a loudspeaker, endlessly playing "It's Raining, It's Pouring…" to an audience of no-one.

但是當(dāng)他們到達(dá)那里時(shí)，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)并沒有孤獨(dú)的幽靈小孩在黑暗中哼唱著小夜曲 ——只有一個(gè)揚(yáng)聲器，反反復(fù)復(fù)地向不存在的觀眾播放“下了雨，瓢潑大雨……”。

"This is unique in our experience – it was difficult to believe a nursery rhyme would be playing in the middle of the night," a council spokesman told the Ipswich Star."We did hear the nursery rhyme playing from an industrial premises and it sounded very eerie at that time of night. We appreciate that people living nearby would find it quite spooky."

“這在我們的經(jīng)歷里也是絕無僅有的，”一位議會(huì)發(fā)言人說，“我們確實(shí)聽到了從工廠中傳出來的童謠，并且在深夜里聽起來確實(shí)非常怪異。我們感謝附近的居民向我們投訴了這一事件。”

As for the cause of this spine-chilling tune?

至于播放童謠的原因?

It turns out the siren's song was just that – a siren – generated by an external security system, designed to warn off any would-be trespassers when a motion detector was triggered.

那是一個(gè)警報(bào)器，當(dāng)被動(dòng)作探測器觸發(fā)時(shí)，就會(huì)發(fā)出聲音，嚇阻可能的闖入者。

But what was triggering the alarm in the first place? The funny thing is, the answer is just as weird and creepy as the rest of this strange story.

但是，到底是什么觸發(fā)了警報(bào)?有趣的是，答案本身確實(shí)帶有毛骨悚然的元素.

It turns out spiders were crawling across the lenses of the security cameras, tripping up the motion sensors.

一只小蜘蛛!當(dāng)它爬過安全攝像機(jī)的鏡頭時(shí)，觸發(fā)了運(yùn)動(dòng)傳感器。

"Every time the spider went across the CCTV it set off the alarm," a council officer explained to the BBC.

“每當(dāng)蜘蛛穿過閉路電視時(shí)，都會(huì)引發(fā)警報(bào)，”一位議會(huì)官員向BBC解釋道。

"We apologise to everyone that has made us aware they were affected – the alarm's intention was never to have affected the residents."

“我們向所有受到夜半歌聲驚嚇的居民們道歉——警報(bào)器本不應(yīng)給大家制造困擾。”