My parents have a smoke detector which blinks a red LED every ten minutes or so. It’s also placed in the hallway between my room and the toilet. Because that hallway is quite short and a little bit of light still came out of my room, I eventually started just not turning on the lights in the hallway, to kind of preserve the sleepiness.

Well, eventually I walked down that hallway in darkness and was right in front of the smoke detector when it decided to blink, shortly tinting everything around me faintly red. Fucking hell, that spooked me…

My grandma thought that there was a very intelligent mouse living in her hallway once. It would occasionally do a little squeak at her but never be found. She was a bit cross when she learned the truth about her mousy friend.

I also know of an older couple that was convinced the noise came from an earwig queen(!?!) that lived inside their living room table. Much more concerning story, both if true or false.