The sound of the whistle

In his absolutely terrifying 1904 short story "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come For You, My Lad," British writer M. R. James tells us about a young professor named Parkins who is recovering from an emotional upset and decides to take a seaside R&R in coastal Suffolk.

Parkins is wandering the beach one day, and finds, half-buried in the sand, an ancient bronze whistle.  A historian himself, he is intrigued, and cleans it up, discovering upon inspection that it has two inscriptions, both in Latin: "Quis Est Iste Qui Venit?" ("Who is this who is coming?") and the more mysterious "Fur Fla/Fle Bis," which Parkins is unable to disentangle, but which James intended us to piece together as "Fūr: flābis, flēbis," which roughly translates to "Thief: if you shall blow, you shall weep."

Parkins, as it turns out, should have worked harder to figure out the second inscription.

Evidently not realizing that he is in a horror story, he blows the whistle, which is unexpectedly loud and shrill.  Nothing happens -- at least immediately.  But later that day, while out on the beach, he sees in the distance an "indistinct personage" who seems to be attempting to catch up with him, but never does.  The person moves in a strange way -- a kind of flapping, flailing motion, not at all like a human running.

Then he starts hearing noises at night, which at first he attributes to mice.  A bellhop has a panic attack while looking up at Parkins's room from the outside, saying that there was a "horrible face" in the window.  One of the maids complains that Parkins didn't have to pull all the bedclothes off the bed and throw them onto the floor in the morning -- when he'd done no such thing.

What the whistle had summoned was an incorporeal creature who fashions itself a body out of whatever happens to be handy -- in the case of the bellhop, for example, a twist of fabric from the curtains.  At the end of the story, as Parkins is lying in bed, sleepless, the light of the Moon coming in through the window, he sees the sheets and blankets on the other bed suddenly pull together into a crumpled humanoid form, and sit up -- then it reaches out its cloth arms, feeling around to try and find him.

It is one of the most flat-out terrifying scenes I've ever read.

I was put in mind of James's story (rather reluctantly) by a paper in the journal Nature Communications Psychology about a fascinating study of what are called "Aztec death whistles" -- ceramic whistles shaped like skulls, that when blown generate an unearthly sound that resembles a high-pitched human scream.

The study looked at human responses to the sounds, and found that one hundred percent of volunteers had "strongly aversive reactions," which is science-speak for "the test subjects nearly pissed their pants."  The researchers did fMRI scans of volunteers' brains, which showed strong responses in the auditory cortex and amygdala (the latter being central to the fear response).  The authors write:

All four skull whistle sound categories were rated similarly in terms of their high negative valence, and they revealed significantly the most negative valence compared with all other sound categories.  Skull whistles trigger significantly higher urgent tendencies than all other sound categories...  Skull whistles sounded more unnatural than original biological sounds (human, animal, nature) and exterior sounds, and they largely also sounded less natural than some musical sounds (music, instrument)...  The sound of skull whistles thus seems to carry a negative emotional meaning of relevant arousal intensity.  This seems to trigger urgent response tendencies in listeners, which is a typical psychoacoustic and affective profile of aversive, scary, and startling sounds.

The authors admit they have no idea what the whistles were used for, but suggest that they might have been played during human sacrifices.

Because those apparently weren't horrifying enough already.

Anyhow, naturally I wanted to hear these things for myself, so I clicked on the link that has clips of the whistles being blown.

I'd read the paper, so I should have been ready for it, but holy shit, those things are scary-sounding.  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.  I'm really sound-sensitive, so maybe I had a stronger reaction than you will; but it bears mention that when I listened to the clips, my dog Rosie was asleep on the papasan chair in my office, and she freaked.  Normally Rosie is the most placid of animals; she's very used to my having music going on my computer, as well as hearing voices and other sounds from things like YouTube videos, and ordinarily has zero reaction to any of it.  But when this thing sounded -- and I didn't even have the volume up very high -- she jolted awake, eyes wide, hackles raised, and looked terrified.

So whatever it is that these Aztec death whistles are doing to the brain, I can say with some confidence that dogs also have the same response (at least to judge by a sample size of one).

However, I'm happy to report that thus far, playing the whistle noises hasn't generated any other untoward effects.  I haven't seen any horrible faces in my office window, and I've yet to be chased around my house by an animated bedsheet.  So that's good.  But I don't think I'm going to listen to those whistle clips again.

Suffice it to say that, like M. R. James's character Parkins, I'm not eager to repeat the experience.

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