hell's bells

So, for a couple few weeks now we've been dealing with someone's very obnoxious alarm going off at 1:30 a.m. every night, just loud and long enough (i.e., very loud, 30 seconds) to wake us all up. And then recently it started also going off at 3:30 a.m. Awesome good times!

Except then the other night I finally realized it was our own land line phone out in the living room, i.e., we are in fact the incredibly obnoxious neighbors whose alarm goes off twice every night. And, OK, it might seem incredible that we could go for so long without realizing there was a phone making ungodly noises in our very apartment every night literally like clockwork, but work with me here, people. The alarm sounds are not very similar to normal phone ringing sounds. Not to mention WHY WOULD IT EVEN OCCUR TO ME THAT OUR PHONE HAD AN ALARM?!? What kind of phone (that isn't a cell phone) has an alarm?? So anyway, I have noooooo idea how it got programmed to go off at those times, and, unable to find an owner's manual in the house or online, I could not figure out how to unset it. So I took out its batteries, assuming that would take care of it. Except it did not. It went off again at 1:30, as per usual like the scream of Satan himself. Seriously, this sucker is LOUD. And SHRILL. Like so many things in India, come to think of it. So I removed the phone connection line, even though I thought to myself "Why the hell would the phone line being plugged in make any difference?", but I was getting desperate, and finally the display went blank and now it no longer makes any noises.

Seriously, we thought maybe it was possessed. Like the rest of the apartment.