Ticking sound driving us crazy

Here's a puzzle for you all. I only raise it here because it's probably better than taking the sledgehammer to my living room wall.

For the past few weeks now we've been bugged by a repetitive rapid ticking sound in the living room. None of us have been able to pinpoint the source. It sounds like an analogue clock but much more rapid.

I've taken the battery out of the only analogue clock in the house. The ticking persists. I've searched for any of the kids old toys down the back of the sofa and everywhere. Nope. I considered it might be vibration from the fridge coming through the wall from the kitchen, but there is no ticking in the hallway or the kitchen, only the living room. It's not the neighbour, as the ticking is not coming from the wall between us and them.

This house is weird. I'm sure it's haunted. It's not the first time we've been plagued by weird noises. I had several tradesmen round trying to track down the intermittent knocking on the bedroom ceiling, before learning that the old TV aerial was loose. That got solved eventually. But now it's this elusive ticking sound.

Any ideas how I can track it down? It's like when you approach where you think it's coming from, it either stops temporarily or suddenly sounds like it's coming from somewhere else.

Oh and it's not just me going insane. My wife and two kids hear it too.

 

Have you checked your loft/attic, either for wildlife or pipes expanding or contracting? Rodents will silence the second they hear any movement in the house. There's also the possibility of acoustics taking a hand, a noise heard somewhere could be coming from elsewhere.

Sound rises so it may be worthwhile spending ten minutes or so in your loft just to listen, and whilst there check for vermin.

 

It's not creatures. It's far too regular. One could say as regular as clockwork. But it's not the clock.

It's only in the living room.

Weird discovery time. We have a string on the wall to hold greetings cards of various times. One of them was a huge hand drawn one my youngest son made. It sounded like it was coming from behind that so I took it down to see if anything had got stuck behind it. It had been there for weeks. The wife and I can't hear it now.

The thing was just paper. But my working hypothesis is this. Something, be it an air current or something else barely measurable, was setting up a resonance in the large sheet of paper, causing it to rapidly tap gently on the wall. It sounds implausible, but in the wise words of some fictitious detective, something like, once you've ruled out the obvious, whatever is left must be it. Or something like that.

Now I've wrote this, I bet it starts up again.

 

And if that doesn't happen you'll be constantly listening for it until it fades from your mind.

 

We had this problem many years ago too. Only began at night when it was dark and stopped when the light was switched on. Eventually after a week or so it was traced to behind a wardrobe. On moving the said wardrobe, out flew a tiny moth. The ticking noise stopped.

 

Death watch beetle.

 

So far, no ticking noise since I took down the picture my son had drawn. I'm going with some very faint vibration or air current setting up a chance resonance in the paper. I think it's one of those things that's technically possible, physics certainly allows for it, but highly improbable. The circumstances would have to be so exactly right. It would also explain why it would sometimes stop when hunting it down, as us moving about to find it would make minor changes to surrounding air currents.

 

Sounds like a Big Bang theory to me.
Sheldon.
I mean Clueless.

 

Long before the Big Bang Theory first appeared on TV, some of my friends nicknamed me Mr Spock.

 

I guess it's the ears, is it.

 

That and my dry, sometimes unintentionally condescending sense of humour, and my inability to understand things that are highly illogical.