Mysterious Heartbeat

We were living in Northwest Houston in the late 80’s. My wife and two children along with myself were watching TV and winding down an uneventful evening. When my wife came to me with a worrisome look. She asked me to turn off the TV.

She said, “Something’s very strange is going on in this house.” I kept asking her, “What?” She said, “There’s a heartbeat sound coming from the bedroom hallway.” I asked her, “Is this some kind of a joke?”

She had me get up and go to the hallway and listen. I waited a couple of minuets and I could hear a definite sound of a heart beating and there was no explanation.

We both had experienced some paranormal activity previously in our life and we both believed in the supernatural world of spirits of good and evil. But it had been many years ago and our home was not haunted and I was certain about that until now.

“Ok,” I said, “We need to find where that’s coming from. Which means we are going to have to go in every room and closet in the house and listen to find this source.” As it turned out the sound was in only one place, the hallway. I thought we haven’t gone in the garage and attic.

A trip to the garage and attic produced nothing. Outside was calm with the normal everyday sounds in the neighborhood. So back we went to the hallway. The heartbeat was clearly still beating.

We went into our daughters bedroom and did another search. The bed was made and the room was picked up. We searched the closet and even looked under the bed. Nothing was found.

“Ok, we are going to have to power down the house. Turn off all the lights and I’m gonna shut off all the power coming into the house.” I went to the electrical panel and flipped all the breakers to off. The house went dark. I located the flashlight and went back to the hallway.

I’m thinking no power there will be no heartbeat. With the house completely dark and no sounds anywhere the heartbeat was still beating but even more pronounced than before. My wife said, “Maybe it’s a rodent that got stuck in walls.”

I replied, “Honey if that’s a rodent’s heartbeat he would have to be 8 feet tall. I’m in no mode to tackle a giant mouse larger than myself.” So back to the breaker box and I flipped all the breakers back on. The lights came back on. The heartbeat continued in the hallway.

“Let’s take a break. We are getting all worked up. We need just rest a little while and think this through.” We all sat in the living room close together. Nobody was saying anything. They were all looking at me.

After a few minutes I said, “The next thing we are going to do is pull our daughters bed away from that wall.”
When the bed was moved from the wall a doll fell to the floor that had been wedged between the bed and wall. We didn’t see it earlier because the bedspread had covered it.

The mysterious heartbeat stopped. I was still perplexed and confused. My wife gingerly picked up the doll and started laughing. She explained, “This was a sounds like baby doll. When it was squeezed the baby‘s heart would beat.”

I was still in a serious business mood and wasn’t laughing. I told her, “We need to get rid of that creepy thing and take the batteries out and throw it in the trash.” By this time the kids were laughing. We had been duped by a realistic sounding baby doll.

To be honest I don’t remember what we did with the doll. But we did remove the batteries and never put them back in again. The heartbeat was gone for good.