It doesn’t take much cause for me to question my sanity. Although that makes one kind of ripe for gaslighting, I only fell prey to someone who used such tactics once. Not long into the relationship it dawned on me. I stayed as long as I did out of empathy. I had hope this deeply messed up individual would eventually be honest & get the help she needed. I gather that’s typical for those kinds of relationships. I detest being typical. Almost more than being manipulated.

During my living in an apartment on Queen Anne Hill there arose a crazy-making sound, intermittent in spring & summer months. It seemed to come from below, possibly off the hill, but was hard to pin down. Like the topography made it echo around. Similar to a car alarm; not an exact match. That’s what I thought it was at first. It would go off, then stop, often several times a day. Sometimes for 30, 45 minutes straight, as if someone had parked their car over a mile from their home & couldn’t hear it.

I lived in that apartment for many years, the longest I held residence anywhere. Every year without fail this thing went off. I would step out onto my back deck, try to locate where it was coming from. It would stop, or I’d get bored with the mystery & go back to whatever I was doing before. I grew up in a large family. One learns to tune things out to avoid madness.

A few times I tried to call in a disturbance complaint when the alarm had been going for an unusually long period of time. Since I didn’t know its exact location & it would stop when on the phone to lodge the complaint, nothing could be done.

Couple times I searched online for comments on neighborhood sites. Nothing. Then I paged through Q.A. Hill newspapers trying to find anything about an incessant alarm. Zip. Was no one else hearing this? How could that be? I was surrounded by homes in much better shape than my own, housing people way more picky & complain-y than myself. Surely there had to be someone, in their beautifully restored Craftsman with the artfully landscaped yard, in high dudgeon over this! Especially since it sounded on the rare occasions when Seattle had its windows open.

The year it ramped up, going for longer durations, I was in the midst of the afore-mentioned destructive relationship. My unpleasant partner was extremely sensitive to noises. By this point I was both inured to the sound & to said partner’s outbursts. Neither phased me. Was I a little mischievously amused she was so unnerved by it? Yes. Yes, I was. I’m not proud of that, but there it is. When she hit her breaking point, left the apartment to drive far away for several hours, I was celebratory. Ahh… peace. Alone with my ally, the noxious sound.

Yet one day she was stuck at home trying to complete some task when the alarm started up. She was instantly irate. I suggested, out of curiosity, that we track its source. Surprisingly she agreed. We jumped in the car with all the windows down & zigzagged through the neighborhood, back & forth, up & down the hill. Finally I caught a glimpse of something. We stopped & got out of the car for a better look.

On a building off the hill, across Elliott Avenue & near the train yards, was a revolving horn-shaped thing. Every time it swung around to face us the sound was clearer, louder. This was why it was so hard to locate. It was coming from everywhere, bouncing off Magnolia bluff, Q.A. Hill, & all points in-between. Like an old air raid siren.

Back in the car, race down the hill. Briefly thwarted by finding no street that led to the building, we cut through some business’ parking lot & stumbled upon a hidden access road. It led to a gatepost with a guard in a booth. In uniform. He stepped out saying “This is a restricted area,” & pointed to a sign behind us. We backed up & looked: NO TRESPASSING, U.S. Armed National Guard Property. In our zeal to uncover the alarm’s origin we’d totally missed that.

I waited while the guard was talking on the phone or radio, then said to him “We just want the alarm to stop. We live up on the hill & the noise is really irritating.” From down here, oddly, the siren was almost negligible, drowned out by traffic & the freight trains. How convenient for them. As if aimed to be audible only in the surrounding hills. The guard denied there was an alarm sounding. Now, or ever.

As we were leaving a SP patrol car stopped us. The officer asked what we were doing here. I told him about the alarm, how it could be heard all over our neighborhood. He said “I spoke with the guard here. The only alarms they use are silent. They can’t be heard off-base.” Then he proceeded to follow us for some blocks on our way home.

There was a Six Million Dollar Man episode (I recall, to my embarrassment) titled Population: Zero, where a small town was attacked with a sonic device. There’s no doubt other examples in sci-fi, but this was the one that came to mind. It didn’t tip me to believe in conspiracies, but something smelled hinkey here. So much of what goes on in human civilization is too mundane and/or depressing to pique anyone’s sense of intrigue. That’s why people make things up. Sure, governments & the obscenely wealthy are doing stuff I’d rather they didn’t, but the vast majority is in plain sight. They don’t need to hide it. Were the powerful suddenly benevolent, I wouldn’t be the only one to perish of shock. Nor the only one to be suspicious. My posthumous suspicion would be reflected on my tombstone: “So whaddaya want?”

Whatever was going on with the ‘silent alarm’ most likely lacked in the outrageous. Wouldn’t put it past the military for it to be simple incompetence. That alarm was either some new tech they couldn’t work properly, or some old tech nobody remembered how to use. They were probably in the dark as much as the citizenry. Also, disturbing the peace is exactly what the military was invented for. Better to gaslight the public than admit to being clueless.