Oh dear...that freaked me out a little.  But then I’m just a teensy bit paranoid, so it doesn’t take much.  Lovely post.

i actually got a shiver. nice.

ok, this is pretty weird you writing about this. I had the same sort of experience not long ago. I was standing right next to a lighthouse when the foghorn went off… I haven’t been able to get what it sounded like and felt like out of my head since.

ann-marie macdonald’s latest novel (when the crow flies) has a chilling description of air-raid sirens.  she says something like (i’m paraphrasing as i’ve already sent the book on to my sister), they make you have to go to the bathroom.  they leave the backs of your knees shaking.  they make you crawl toward safety or fear, because even fear is better than their piercing irresistible call.

anyway, worth reading.

I used to live in an even smaller town than the one I am in, if you can believe that. Anyway this small town had a siren that could rouse the dead. They would sound it everyday, EVERYDAY, at noon. It served two purposes, make sure it was working properly and scare the living shit out of anyone within a mile of it!

We are fast approaching tornado season in Ohio, when the local governments will commence their weekly tests of the tornado warning siren system. In my old town, that was at noon on a weekday (possibly Tuesday). I never noticed it when I was at the office, but our house was near a siren. When I would go home for lunch, I’d let our dog out and she would howl the entire time the siren was going off. I learned to tune it out pretty quickly.

I grew up near Three Mile Island; after the March 1979 event, some agency installed warning sirens all over the area. I think the tests are only run once a month or with even less frequency, which means that we actually paid attention when the sirens would go off. Of course, the thought of a nuclear meltdown was a little more unsettling than the thought of a tornado.

i noticed when the tuesday/noon siren changed and i agree, i liked the sound of the old one much better.  but already i’ve found the new one has sunk its way into my routine, where i don’t even hear it.  and heaven forbid if it were to go off at any but the prescribed time—i’d have no idea what i was supposed to do!

if there’s something coming, i don’t want to know about it.  face disaster head-on and blind, that’s my motto!