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"Did you hear that?"
When you pull up the plug to empty your kitchen sink,
just before the usual gurgling noises, there is a single cry
of horror emited from somewhere in the waste pipe.
Not sure if you heard it correctly you might fill and
empty the sink again and hear nothing, but it
wasn't your
imagination because your sink has been fitted with the
"Sink Plug Of Doom"
It's a simple two part device. The first part is a sensor
built into the plug. The second part is contained within a
new "S" bend and consists of a waterproof speaker,
power supply, signal receiver and randomising chip.
When the plug is pulled to release the water, the plug
sends a message to the S bend receiver. The randomiser
then decides on whether to make a noise or not and
what noise to make, and for how long etc.
This might be a simple "help me" such as featured at the
end of the first version of The Fly, or it could be a sharp
scream. In all cases, the sound is short, to present doubt
if it was even there at all. Repeated pulling up and down
of the plug does nothing as the device is programmed to
ignore this. Days may pass before the next sink horror
sound is emitted.
Sink Plug Of Doom is most suitable to be fitted to
properties rented out on platforms like Airbnb to help
create a "haunted house" myth.
[as mentioned in The Compression Maze Of Doom
annotation]
“Help Me!”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=saM-qxSI5vQ
famous ending scene from The Fly [xenzag, Nov 19 2021]
ET in vacation photos II
ET_20in_20vacation_20photos_20II
[Voice, Nov 22 2021]
https://xkcd.com/516/
[pertinax, Nov 22 2021]
[link]
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[+] A suitably short wavelength that won't become ensnared in hair and
grease buildup, and the regular soapings should ensure a clean signal. |
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Love the Airbnb Haunted House take. You could
make some real coin this way. |
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Hey 2f, hook up one of your rooms like this and
advertise it word-of-mouth-like as being a bit
"disturbed." I'll bet you'll be booked out for months by
adventurers trying to figure out the mystery. |
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Pair it with the HVAC ductwork of doom, and go to
town. |
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For some real fun make it programmable to read out the letters of
their license plates. |
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I think this would freak me out ! |
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//Hey 2f, hook up one of your rooms like this and advertise it word-of-mouth// |
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Funny you should mention that.
When all of the renovations are complete my wife is on board with me turning one of our rooms into the Bates Motel room.
So far it will consist of;
-Hydrochromic bath mats and towels that look like blood when wet.
-Personalized messages written in anti-fog on the bathroom mirror.
-A randomly self rocking chair.
-A magnet activated projector which will cast a shadow of a person with a knife on the curtain slowly growing in size which disappears the second the curtain is opened only to reappear the second the curtain closes again.
-A full length two-way wall mirror with a proximity sensor causing a skeletal image to be looking back at you when you get to within eight inches or so of it.
-Lights and radio on timers.
-Self slamming cupboard doors.
-etc... |
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This idea would make a fine addition. |
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I think just creepy, understated, and unanswered
would be much better. Go beyond that and you just
get the casual haunted house where everything is
expected to be ghastly. |
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I will run it past my wife.
My prediction for the Bates room is that people will book it for others who will be completely unaware of what's been rented for them. |
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Imagine all of those things happening in a room you didn't rent on purpose. You'll clue in pretty fast that you've been pranked and enjoy getting startled over and over again... and then figure out which people you want to prank. |
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and they prank three friends, and they prank three friends and so on, and so on. |
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The mere thought of this just made me let out a really
loud, guttural, bloody loud scream for help. |
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So a huge (+) from this old chicken shit. |
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Too much and the room will be famous on YouTube
fast, ruining the prank. |
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For it to be a real experience, you want it to be
just slightly “wrong.” Just one or two or at max
three weird things that could seem like
coincidence but just tickle the senses enough to be
freaky. |
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A bathroom door that latches randomly. A
shower knob that maybe slowly rotates just a
little. |
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A mysterious stain on the carpet that relocates or
grows nightly, getting closer and closer to the bed.
(Not sure how to pull that one off yet). |
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Furniture that relocates in the night. First night is
just a few inches, next night is a foot or so. |
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Ooh! Furniture that relocates at night will do just fine. |
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We're a backwater. Youtube stardom will not keep people from pranking their un-savvy friends. |
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Give me a year or so. I'll let you know how it goes. |
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Science people... science. |
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//A shower knob that maybe slowly rotates just a little//
A little servo wizardry, so it can "fight" them trying to turn it,
or turn on it's own, in either direction (ie. they turn it on & it
goes BLAM all the way to hot, then back to cold, then behaves
for the rest of the showering; or becomes harder to turn the
more they try to force it...). |
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^ nice. I wonder if you could make a dilatant door knob which would feel as though somebody were fighting you every time you wanted to leave the room. |
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A viscous damper (or dilitant or other non-newtonian) would
be do-able, but it would always be the same. A servo would
allow multiple different responses (at the expense of much
greater complexity).
Perhaps an easily-changeable (for you, the maintenance guy)
door? Have a bunch of otherwise-identical doors with different
dampers, springs, counterweights etc; swap them over
whenever possible. (Guest gone for the day? Swap the door.
Guest asleep? Swap the door...) |
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There are many great suggestions but the thing
about a sink is, it's totally innocuous and the noise
could easily be dismissed as an abberation of the
descending water flow. |
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Servos could be tricky in that they can usually be felt
by the gearing. Maybe something like a phase
change wax that adds resistant pressure against a
friction surface, activated by a small heat element.
The same could be applied to the door lock. |
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// Servos could be tricky in that they can usually be felt by
the gearing. // Maybe you could scavenge a motor from a
force-feedback joystick. The one I have moves fairly
smoothly. It's not strong enough to stop the person from
turning the knob, but it could definitely feel like someone is
holding or moving it on the other side of the door. |
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// A mysterious stain on the carpet that relocates or grows nightly, getting closer and closer to the bed. // |
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A carpet that drains easily and dries quickly. A pipe underneath, flat on the top and flush with the floor. Valves that actuate by remote to pump water into the carpet at appropriate times and places. Optional: the scent of blood and a carpet that turns red when wet. |
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Doors that open or close silently and only when the occupant is definitely asleep. They could swear they closed the bedroom door. The sound of footsteps is easy, but must not be overdone. |
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Wet carpet would be bad. Too much mustyness and
risk to ruin guests' electronic stuff. Needs to be
something that doesn't attract mildew. |
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Paintings that switch images overnight or simply go
black or have red letters scrawled on them for a few
minutes. Dozens of ways to pull that off. |
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//mysterious stain on the carpet//
//Paintings that switch images overnight//
2 words for those: thermochromic paint. A network of heating
wires under/behind & you're set. |
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Great ideas but the point about the sink sound is
that it's triggered by the most domestic of actions.
It's also fleeting, unpredictable and causes doubt
and dread. |
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Do we think something similar could be done with a toilet flush,
or would the bathos ruin it? |
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It could be, but repeated flushings would be very
wasteful of water. |
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// but the point about the sink sound is that it's triggered by the most domestic of actions. It's also fleeting, unpredictable and causes doubt and dread.// |
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but... you know that you feed pearls to swine.
Change is a given. |
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When I was a kid, my mom thought she'd try her hand at making sauerkraut. It didn't work, so she ended up stuffing it all into the garburator. I guess it was more than said g. could handle, though, as it started coming back up. I walked in at that moment, saw the sinister-looking mass emerging from the drain, and gasped, "What's that?" "It's sauerkraut," my mom said. For several years after, I thought sauerkraut was something that lived in sewers and occasionally tried to invade one's home. |
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