I live in a fairly-populated neighborhood, in a semi-detached house. Nothing creepy at all so far. Our neighbors just had a baby so hearing repeated crying was normal. Months had passed of repetitive, nighttime crying. Our family was to polite to complain and what are you meant to do about it anyway? Anyway, the crying stopped some time. We got used to the quiet. Months had passed since the crying and we eventually started getting real, good sleep.

But the crying started again a few months later. By now the toddler was a bit too old for 2AM crying and I started to freak out about this random crying. I told myself that the toddler was having nightmares, but I was lying to myself because (forgive me if I'm wrong) I thought it was pretty much impossible to have nightmares worth of crying every, single night. This carried on for many weeks but again, it stopped.

...And again it started. By this time the child was 8 or 9 years old, way too old for this crying. One day when I was on my way home from school I walked past my neighbor. I saw this as my chance so I took it. I asked my neighbor about the crying and his words were "What crying?". I explained about the monotonous crying while he stared at me in complete confusion and a hint of worry. He told me that she's been sleeping perfectly and spends 4 out of 7 days at her grandparents house. By this point I guessed he's thinking I'm mentally unstable so I make up a story about being late to an art class. I walk away thinking about what's just happened literally shaking.

It turns out that dodgy pipes were the problem. Sometimes the pipes would make noises that sounded very much like crying. I only found out a month or 2 ago. I feel so stupid I worried for like 9 years about some squeaky pipes.