The world is noisy, so noisy in fact that even things you thought were silent make all kinds of boisterous noises. Some are strange, others terrifying. Here are 10 of the most unexpected.

10. You, when you think you’re being silent

Even master meditators and expert ninjas can’t quite silence the body — at least according to science. It’s always making a racket. You just can’t hear it because, similar to noise-canceling headphones, the brain tunes it out to keep self and other distinct.

Neuroscientists studied this mechanism in electric fish, most species of which have an electrosensory lobe that receives electrical signals both from inside the fish and from its surroundings. It’s able to tell them apart by subtracting electrical signals matching inputs relating to the fish’s behavior, such as motor signals. A swish of its own tail as it swims, for instance, will not register in the same way as something else swishing its tail right by it. There’s a similar mechanism in mammalian brains too, called the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN), which subtracts sounds matching our movements from the total auditory input.

9. Ants

Ants typically communicate by chemical signal, but that’s not the only way. They also chirp. And it’s a little like maniacal laughter.

The sounds are produced by what’s known as ‘stridulation’, scraping an abdominal appendage against ridges on the backside — a lot like a spoon against a washboard. Workers sound different to queens; their chirps are of a slightly lower pitch. So when the workers hear the queen, they become more attentive. Researchers have actually found they’ll stand guard around a speaker playing sounds from a queen — maintaining “a hunched-over posture with antennae out and jaws slightly open” for hours.

Maculinea rebeli caterpillars exploit this vulnerability, mimicking queen sounds, as well as smells, to infiltrate colonies and steal the royal treatment — including both feeding and grooming. Beetles also mimic ant sounds for admission to the nests.

8. Giraffes

OK, so maybe you didn’t think giraffes were silent but think about it: what sound did you think giraffes made? Until recently, biologists assumed giraffes made sounds impossible for humans to hear — similar to the infrasonic “secret language” of elephants. More recently, however, research has revealed that giraffes make perfectly audible (92Hz) humming sounds. But they only make them at night.

This humming is believed to be how giraffes keep in contact in the dark. But there is an alternative explanation: it’s the sound of giraffes snoring or talking in their sleep.

7. Fish

Although fish lack vocal cords, they do make sound — and we don’t just mean by swimming and splashing around. In fact, far from being mute, thousands of the estimated 34,000 fish species worldwide are thought to make noise. Just under 1,000 of these have been documented. You can listen to them here.

Sounds come from rubbing or clicking together bony structures, or from beating the swim bladder like a drum, among other mechanisms. Two species of stingray, for instance, previously thought to be silent, both produce clicks. Just like other animals, these “vocalizations” are used to communicate reproductive and territorial information. And, because sound travels much faster in water, fish are relatively much louder than animals of the land and air; their signals travel much further.

Perhaps the strangest, most terrifying fish noise of all belongs to the three-spined toadfish, which “cries like a baby”. 

6. Marine worms

It’s probably fair to say you don’t think much about marine worms at all; but if you do, you probably don’t think they make noise. But they do. And, actually, it’s one of the loudest sounds of any sea-dwelling creature. 

Polychaetes, or bristle worms, which are less than 3 centimeters in length, are usually silent — hiding themselves away in sea sponge holes. When threatened, however, they open their pharyngeal muscles to create a bubble, then release the pressure with a shockingly loud, 157-decibel “battle pop.” 

By way of comparison, the blue whale’s call — the loudest of any on Earth — is 180 decibels. The sound of a jet plane taking off is 140 decibels. And the human ear drum breaks when exposed to sounds of 160 decibels. But the marine worm’s pop is nothing compared to that of the snapping shrimp’s snap, which at 189 decibels, is capable of breaking glass.

5. Plants

Science has taken a while to catch up to what the intuitive have said for millennia: plants can talk. A 2019 study actually recorded their vocalizations, the “ultrasonic squeals” of plants being cut. The 20-150 kHz sounds, which lay outside the range of human hearing, came from tobacco and tomato plants and were recorded over the course of an hour of cutting. The tobacco produced 15 sounds, while the tomato produced 25. But they don’t just make sound when they’re injured. The researchers noted that “even happy, healthy plants made the occasional noise.”

So the next question is: can they hear? According to a paper in 2013, there needs to be more research in this area — because evidence suggests the answer is yes. Beyond anecdotal reports of singing to plants to encourage strong growth, there exist numerous (albeit now dated) scientific reports that plants germinate and grow at different rates in response to different frequency sounds. 

4. Bacteria

Though 10 billion times softer than a fist connecting with a punch bag, the nanoscale beats of bacteria’s flagella (tails) can be amplified and listened to as sound. And these sounds may help scientists determine whether certain bacteria are resistant to antibiotics — a major concern in a global population increasingly resistant to the treatment.

Bacterial beats are recorded on a graphene-skinned drum, a membrane just one layer of carbon atoms thick. In this way, even the infinitesimally soft sound of a single bacterium’s flagellum can be recorded. When exposed to antibiotics, the beating either stops in a couple of hours or it doesn’t, telling us whether such treatments will work.

Viruses can also be converted to sound, but in a different way and for nothing more than fun. The DNA sequence of COVID-19, for example, has been translated into music that sounds like synth-pop or classical.

3. Cells

Not only do cells make noises, or “songs,” there’s a whole branch of science devoted to their study. Sonocytology is the study and application of cells’ nanoscale oscillations, which, because each different type of cell sings a different song that changes when they’re stressed, can be used to spot diseases early on.

Researchers at the University of Manchester, for example, have differentiated between healthy and cancerous prostate cells by blasting them with infrared light and recording the “squeals.” Like comparing two large orchestras, one of which has an out-of-tune tuba, the difference is there but it’s not easy listening. In fact, the sound of cells is more like a “high-pitched scream.” According to Andrew Pelling of University College London, “if you listened to it for too long, you would go mad.”

Fortunately, they can’t be heard by the naked ear. Sonocytologists record the sounds using an atomic force microscope, which touches cells with a small tip to record oscillations — similar to the way a record player’s needle responds to the bumps in a record.

2. The vacuum of space

It’s a common misconception that outer space is silent. While it’s true that in space no one can hear you scream, scientists have captured some frightening extraterrestrial sounds. And we don’t just mean those eerie planetary radio waves converted by into sound. We mean actual sounds (or proof of them anyway).

Space is mostly a vacuum, of course, which is why sound waves can’t cross it. But there’s enough hot gas and plasma surrounding the supermassive black hole in the Perseus galaxy cluster that sound waves have something to traverse. Needless to say, we don’t have microphones powerful or close enough to pick them up, but the sound waves are unmistakeable. 

Extracted from the data, the harrowing baritone of the Perseus black hole was 57 octaves below middle C — so deep that to make it audible, its frequency had to be increased quadrillions (millions of billions) of times.

1. Silence

Even silence isn’t silent — at least to the human brain. Anechoic chambers, with walls designed not only to keep noise out but also to capture and mute any noise within the room, are the quietest places on Earth. The quietest of them all belongs to Microsoft, holding the world record at -20.6 decibels (whereas a silent house is around +40).

However, people who sit in these places for any length of time report not a tranquil silence, or even a disturbing silence, but a lot of strange and terrifying noises. The normally inaudible sounds of the body, for example, are suddenly amplified: “spontaneous firings of the auditory nerve can cause a high-pitched hiss”; people hear their blood pumping; “their digestive system’s symphony of gurgles and blurbs,”; their breath, and so on. 

But that’s just the beginning. Sit in true silence for an hour or more and you start hearing all sorts of disembodied noises as well: swarms of bees; old pop songs; wind in the trees; sirens…

Our first films were silent, making that era in filmmaking an artistic wild west. Many rules and regulations had yet to be created, mainly because a lot of the accidents that prompted them were still occurring.

In many silent films, lead actors performed their own stunts. Also, in these films, the stunts performed were batsh*t crazy. When you combine that with the stars’ personal lives, which seemed to be an epic mishmash of drama and scandal, you get an era full of stories that just get crazier and crazier.

That’s where this list comes in: bringing together ten stories about silent film stars that nonetheless scream crazy.

Related: 10 Shocking Facts About Silent-Era Hollywood

10 Stunt Pilot Ormer Locklear

Green screens, mechanical rigs, and special effects help actors and actresses with absolutely zero qualifications drift through high-speed chases, fly TIE fighters, and even battle the odd dragon or two. But back when movies were still new, and people’s imaginations were wild, you would just have to do it all yourself.

That brings us to Ormer Locklear—one of the most famous stunt pilots of his day and inventor of such feats as the “wing walk” (which is exactly what it sounds like and obviously absurdly dangerous). After achieving mainstay success as a daredevil superstar in The Great Air Robbery in 1919, Locklear’s hubris would catch up to him when he unsuccessfully pulled out of a nighttime dive for the 1920 film The Skywayman during its final day of shooting, killing both himself and his co-pilot. Sadly, neither of these films has survived to this day, although his legacy would remain.

9 The Falling House—Buster Keaton

Today, stunt doubles are a mainstay in the film industry. Buster Keaton is one of the prime examples of why stunt doubles are a necessity…and also why even stunt doubles have their limits.

Buster “The Great Stone Face” Keaton was known for some of the greatest acting chops in history; he would also become unparalleled in his physical prowess. Not only would he perform dangerous stunts, including car crashes, explosions, and fight scenes without doubles, he would actually double for other actors and do their crazy stunts too.

There weren’t any rules—this is art we’re talking about here! This would come to a head in 1928’s Steamboat Bill, Jr. when an actual freaking house was dropped on him, and he thankfully was placed in the exact spot to pass through a window instead of being, you know, crushed to death. Move over, Wicked Witch of the East, he made this look like child’s play.

8 Jean Harlow in “Kill and Be Killed”

In the 1930s, few silent film star actresses were better-known than Jean “Baby” Harlow. She would explode into stardom as a rich L.A. socialite after an unintentional meeting with Fox executives—while driving her friend to auditions, no less. This “Blonde Bombshell” found further success in “Platinum Blonde,” a 1931 hit that inspired women worldwide to bleach their hair to match…with weekly applications of harsh chemicals such as ammonia, Clorox bleach, and soap flakes. And that’s just the beginning of where things seem to take a dark turn.

Baby was said to have mob connections, had nude photos taken of her at age 17, and her second husband was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head shortly after their wedding. She was also plagued with severe illnesses throughout her short life and continued to film through hypothesized kidney failure in 1937.

Baby died only a week later after being sent home. Rumors about her death would circulate for years afterward and captivate the country just like Baby did. However, it’s not so unbelievable that someone who once claimed to be a descendent of Edgar Allen Poe (or, at least, MGM marketed her as such to distinguish her from her peers) would die such a young, tragic death.

7 The Latin Lover Lied

Rudolph Valentino was huge in his time. The Italian actor developed a tremendous following, primarily female, by being one of the film industry’s earliest sex symbols. In fact, the popular nickname “Latin Lover” was coined specifically for Valentino. Alongside his other nom de sex, “The Great Lover,” it is clear that Valentino was the absolute epitome of masculine appeal. While that was true for his professional career, in his personal life, Valentino had little use for his way with women. Only decades after his death did people en masse begin realizing: Valentino was gay.

On the rare occasions in which Valentino’s sexuality was questioned during his life, the actor reacted like a raw nerve, quickly and instinctually. When one Chicago Tribune reporter labeled him a “Pink Powder Puff,” Valentino responded by challenging the writer to a boxing match. More than just being culturally taboo, admitting he was gay would have been career suicide for the Latin Lover.

6 Thelma Todd’s Impossible Suicide

The “Ice Cream Blonde” Thelma Todd was a comedy superstar in the ’20s and ’30s. Until, that is, her premature death in 1935 when she was only 29. After Todd was found dead inside her car, an autopsy and several investigations ruled her death as a suicide, which still stands today. That hasn’t stopped the speculation that foul play was involved, and some evidence at the scene supports that idea.

As the Chicago Tribune writes: “While a grand jury ruled that Todd committed suicide, it was unable to explain her broken nose, the bruises around her throat, and two cracked ribs. Apparently, the grand jury thought Todd also beat herself to death.” That, combined with unofficial claims that her blood-alcohol level was unnaturally high and her immaculate shoes (which would have been impossible to be clean if she had walked the 500 feet through the mud to get to the garage where her car was parked) leave questions in the minds of many.

5 Enemy of the State—Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin was one of the biggest stars of the silent film era. He was a wildly talented actor, comedian, and dancer, and—according to the United States government—a no-good, dirty commie. In fact, Chaplin was one of the earliest stars ever “blacklisted,” as the term grew out of McCarthyist hearings attempting to shun Un-American individuals and destroy their influence.

Due to his simple refusal to answer any questions about his political views, he was officially labeled a security risk and a communist (or, in their words, a Bolshevik). While overseas promoting his film Limelight, Chaplin was informed that the U.S. Attorney General had made it official: Chaplin was no longer allowed to re-enter the United States.

He spent the rest of his days living in Switzerland, his film career never at its pre-accusal peak. Finally, in the last years before his death, the political atmosphere shifted enough that he began to be celebrated stateside once more.

4 Weekend at Barrymore’s

Celebrated dramatic actor John Barrymore, known for both stage and screen, died in 1942 from a combination of ailments, all brought on by decades of alcohol abuse. He was 60 at the time, and his career had been long and lauded, so it wasn’t quite the untimely tragedy common to so many Hollywood actors. Instead, what makes Barrymore’s death so interesting is what his friend then did with his body.

A group of Barrymore’s friends, including legendary director Raoul Walsh, actually stole the late actor’s body from the morgue and brought it to the home of also-legendary actor Errol Flynn. They then propped it up and left it for Flynn to discover when he arrived home as a macabre prank. Though some sources have denied the prank ever occurred, Barrymore’s granddaughter Drew Barrymore (yes, that one) confirmed that the story was indeed true during her appearance on Hot Ones.

3 Fatty Arbuckle: Murderer?

Depending on who you ask, Roscoe Arbuckle, better known as Fatty, was either a violent murderer or a tragic patsy for a troubled woman. Either way, the actor/writer/director’s career has long since been overshadowed by one scandal: his alleged rape and manslaughter of actress Virginia Rappe.

While attending a party hosted by Arbuckle, Rappe was found ill and taken to a hospital. There, she accused Arbuckle of raping her and, three days later, died from a ruptured bladder. This ignited a media frenzy and perhaps the trial of the century. And a second trial. And a third trial. Though Arbuckle was eventually acquitted of all charges and even issued a formal apology by one of his juries, the black spot on his image was too dark, and his career in Hollywood rapidly faded away.

2 The Cold Case of William Desmond Taylor

We still don’t know how William Desmond Taylor died. We likely never will. That’s because almost every detail of the case is crazy. Let me explain.

Despite Taylor having an apparent bullet hole in his back, a fake daughter announces his death to be a natural one via stomach hemorrhage. The lack of a break-in and money on Taylor’s person—but not in his bank account—was all still accounted for. There are delusional statements Taylor made in the days leading up to his death. There is a report by local authorities that someone had told them to ease off their investigation. AND there are also the literal hundreds of confessions made by several acquaintances and strangers alike.

Watch the attached video for a start—the Ghoul Boys will get you hooked on this true murder mystery.

1 Most Expensive Scene Ever—Buster Keaton

Adjusted for inflation, it is likely that the single most expensive scene in movie history: the train crash from Buster Keaton’s The General. Keaton, who starred in and directed the film, received a $750,000 budget, equivalent to around $12 million today. Keaton chose to spend an undisclosed large fraction of that money on one scene.

The scene shows a two-car train attempting to cross a burning bridge, failing, and collapsing into a river. In typical silent film-era fashion, all of it was real. The train, the bridge, the fire, the river, the crash. Keaton actually bought the train and demolished it. Because of this, he only had one possible take, so he set up six cameras at once to ensure the stunt wasn’t wasted.

Arguably the most important aspect of music is sound. The Oxford English Dictionary defines music as “the art or science of combining vocal or instrumental sounds to produce beauty of form, harmony… etc.” When people think of music, they may think of short, melodically pleasing pieces that comforted them in their childhood. They may think of grating, overplayed earworms that they constantly hear on the radio. They may even consider avant-garde, purposefully unmelodic experimentation as musical compositions.

But what happens when artists release or compose music that is completely silent? How is it possible to gain meaning from these pieces? To answer that question, here are ten silent musical compositions and why their silence gives them artistic or historical value.

Related: Top 10 Crazy And Unconventional Music Genres

10 John Cage, “4’33″”

Possibly the most famous silent composition, avant-garde composer John Cage created “4’33″” in 1952. Originally performed by David Tudor on August 29 of that year, the transitions between the three movements of the piece were marked by the opening and closing of a piano lid. The duration of the performance itself was marked with a stopwatch. To the surprise of no one, many were baffled that a piece of what was supposed to be melodic sound would be performed without, you know, sound.

However, Cage was serious about his intentions. After visiting Harvard’s anechoic chamber in 1950, he discovered that there was no true silence. As such, he decided to show his audience that the sounds they heard in everyday life were, in fact, music. As the composer explained, “Music is continuous. It is only we who turn away.”^[1]

9 John Denver, “The Ballad of Richard Nixon”

Songwriter John Denver claimed that nuclear disarmament was a major goal of his. President Richard Nixon considered using nuclear weapons four times during his administration. Denver wanted to cut the defense budget. Nixon wanted to raise it. It’s safe to say that the two men had their fair share of political disagreements.

On his 1964 album Rhymes & Reasons, Denver expressed his opinions of Nixon’s administration twice. He composed a dig at Nixon’s vice president titled “The Ballad of Spiro Agnew,” of which the lyrics consist entirely of the words: I’ll sing you a song of Spiro Agnew and all the things he’s done. Denver didn’t bother thinking of anything good to say about Agnew, and his silent song dedicated to the President himself demonstrates that he bothered even less to think of good things about Nixon. Who knows what he would have done by the time Watergate rolled around?^[2]

8 Soulfly, “9-11-01”

Now onto a more serious subject matter. The American metal band Soulfly released their album 3 on June 25, 2002, less than a year after the tragic terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Soulfly dedicated a minute of silence to those affected by the event on their first release since the attacks occurred.

Historically, the United States has commemorated the attacks with six moments of silence, all linked to the exact times that the four planes crashed across the country and the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed. This piece can be used as a method of mourning during those moments of silence and has hopefully motivated people to commemorate the moment of silence on their own terms.^[3]

7 Vulfpeck, “Z”

There are ten Vulpeck songs eligible for this list, but this is the opening track of the album they all came from—Sleepify, an album of ten thirty-second snippets of complete silence. Here was Vulpeck’s plan—get users to stream the album, earn enough money from it to fund a tour, and allow admission to be completely free. Simple, right?

It turns out, yes! It took a month before Spotify took the album down, and they even responded in the meantime, calling the work “derivative of John Cage.” All in all, the band made $20,000 from streams and was able to fund the Sleepify Tour. Not bad for an album they called “the most silent album ever recorded.”^[4]

6 Taylor Swift, “Track 3”

At this point, there’s no way a household name like Taylor Swift won’t break charting records. When she released Folklore, only having announced the album the day before its release, the physical edition sold over 1.3 million copies, and the digital edition broke streaming records on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. It should be no surprise, then, that anything that Swift releases will be talked about—even when that release is a complete glitch.

In October 2014, days before the release of her synth-pop album 1989, iTunes released a song simply titled “Track 3.” Eager Swifties purchased the song only to discover…it was composed solely of eight seconds of silence. Despite this, it shot to No. 1 on iTunes in Canada before eventually being taken down. It just goes to show that excited fans will take whatever they can get their hands on.^[5]

5 Brett Black, “Silence–5 Seconds”

Once again, this is the opening track of a completely silent album—Brett Black’s Silent Tracks of Various Useful Lengths. The album is described as the first commercially available album of silence. Black claims he created the album after waking up one morning and hearing a “catchy” piece of silent music repeating in his head.

He cited John Cage and French mime Marcel Marceau as inspirations, saying he wanted to “take silence to new levels” with the album. He hopes that someday, Coldplay will be interested in performing the compositions.^[6]

4 John Lennon, “Nutopian International Anthem”

Threatened with deportation from the United States after a marijuana charge, beloved Beatle John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono held a press conference on April 1, 1973, to announce the birth of a brand new nation. This conceptual nation, Nutopia, had no boundaries or laws, only people.

As ambassadors of the nation, they asked for diplomatic immunity and recognition from the United Nations, giving 1 White Street in Tribeca as their address. On his 1973 album Mind Games, John Lennon included a five-second silent track titled the “Nutopian International Anthem,” demonstrating his true intent to have only people in his civilization. So, what, no music, either?^[7]

3 Yves Klein, “Monotone-Silence Symphony”

This entry is slightly cheating because Yves Klein’s symphonic piece does not contain complete silence. It opens with a single D major chord played for 20 minutes straight and then transitions into a 20-minute period of silence.

Klein conceptualized this piece in the 1940s, claiming that this expressed what he wished his own life to be. In 1960, in the only documented performance of the symphony during Klein’s lifetime, ten musicians participated in performing the piece. Over five decades later, in 2013, a New York performance of the piece consisted of 70 musicians and singers bringing this conception of Klein’s wishes to life. If only he could see his work now.^[8]

2 Raymond Scott, “Silent Music”

In 1941, Time Magazine reported on a 13-piece orchestra that performed a piece that its audience found rather strange. The brass and woodwind instruments mimed playing, the pianist softly pressed the keys, but hardly any sound came from the stage. To bandleader Raymond Scott, this was silent music.

It is still unknown why Scott decided to perform this silent piece. However, philosopher of music Julian Dodd claims that it could have been either an ironic comment on effort and failure or intended for comedic effect. Regardless, audience members were confused during the performance. They giggled, finding the performance amusing. According to the writer for Time, “it was just provocative enough to make listeners wonder whether the silence of other bands might sound better than Scott’s. Yikes.^[9]

1 Stiff Records, The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan

Closing out today’s list of silent musical compositions is another politically charged release. Clearly, someone had a beef against President Ronald Reagan, much like John Denver’s beef with Richard Nixon. The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan was not a song but a completely silent album released by Stiff Records.

The record contained grooves where you could play it, but it included no music. According to the BBC, it was intended as “an ironic alternative to more traditional protest songs.” Despite the silence of the album, the release was evidently somewhat popular as it sold over 30,000 copies during its release. It really is crazy what people will buy sometimes.^[10]