Lucia Peters’ previous work for The Toast can be found here.
There’s a story out there with the deliciously bizarre title of “The Noise Coming from Inside Children.” Written by a little-known author by the name of Ed Kann, it’s widely considered by those who have read it to be one of the most disturbing pieces of fiction ever conceived. It didn’t drive anyone mad just because they read it or anything; it did, however, receive such backlash at its initial publication for its horrific content that it was never reprinted, and as a result, it’s gained quite a reputation — it’s thought to be one of the horror genre’s greatest and rarest works. I mean, consider that title alone: “The Noise Coming from Inside Children.” If that isn’t the perfect title for a spooky story, I don’t know what is. Creepy noises, coming from somewhere creepy and involving creepy children… it’s everything weird and unsettling, all rolled up in one simple turn of phrase. It’s a title that makes me desperately want to read the story it’s attached to…
…except that I can’t. We don’t know where it is. Or — and here’s the next layer of the tale — whether it actually exists at all.
There are a few mentions of Kann and his story floating around the Internet; I first encountered them in a listicle posted on WhatCulture. According to WhatCulture, the story was published in a small town newspaper in the 1970s; a little further digging reveals that Kann was allegedly something of a cult legend, with one of his earlier works, “In Concrete Basements,” achieving fervent, if subdued, acclaim. His follow-up, the aforementioned “The Noise Coming from Inside Children,” was therefore greatly anticipated… but its release didn’t go quite as planned. People complained, but not because the story wasn’t effective; if anything, it was too effective. It was, in fact, so effective that the only surviving review of it, which described it as “desperately difficult to finish,” called for the relabeling of “horror” as a genre in its entirety:
I’ll be honest and admit that I did something no critic should ever do: I started the story with the intention of giving it a positive review. I desperately wanted to be the one voice of dissent, and also wanted to show people that there is value in that which so effectively disturbs and disgruntles us. I thought fans of horror should recognize that more than anyone else.
But I cannot give ‘The Noise Coming from inside Children’ a good review, because I hated it. I hated the entire experience of reading it, and only through some strange combination of obsession and masochism did I finish it. Because of this fact, I realize that I am a hypocrite, as is anyone who declares themselves to be a fan of ‘horror stories.’
It is a shame so few people will actually finish this story…. Because it would surely lead to us carefully changing the name of the genre we all love. I know now that ‘horror’ certainly isn’t the name for it. ‘Creepy fiction’ might be a better choice. If more people read ‘The Noise Coming from inside Children,’ then the genre of ‘horror’ would be reserved… for it alone. And no one would ever claim to be a fan of it.
If you read those few paragraphs and thought, “Gee, that’s not much of a review,” you’d be absolutely right. It’s more of a reaction or a response to the work, rather than an assessment it. But words have power, and those particular words have even more power than most. What on earth could be so bad about this story that it would inspire this sort of response? And where has its author been in the years since its publication? A quick Google search reveals that there are a lot of Ed Kanns out there, but unless the supposed author of “The Noise Coming from Inside Children” is really good at covering his tracks, it’s unlikely that any of them are the guy we’re looking for. How can that be the case?
You’ll find little drips and drabs about “The Noise Coming Inside Children” and its illusive creator scattered across the web, but most of what we know about them both points back to one source: A blog titled Who Is Ed Kann?
Begun (and seemingly either concluded or abandoned) in November of 2010, it chronicles the attempts of one anonymous fan as he or she sought to find any information that might shed some light on the whole thing. According to the blog’s writer, s/he first encountered the name “Ed Kann” as a child, stumbling upon a flier for an event in his or her hometown featuring various underground authors reading their work. The story Kann was scheduled to read was called “In Concrete Basements” — and although Who Is Ed Kann?’s writer was too young to attend at the time, both the title and the author’s name stuck with him or her. “What exactly did happen in concrete basements?” s/he wondered. Several years later, s/he found an interview with Kann in a local magazine — something resembling, although not identical to, Seattle Regional Horror Quarterly — about his recently published piece, “The Noise Coming from Inside Children.” And then… nothing. Nothing for years.
As an adult, s/he rediscovered the magazine while cleaning out the closet in his or her childhood bedroom; accordingly, s/he set out to hunt down whatever s/he could about Kann and his work. Weirdly, no one the writer of Who Is Ed Kann? had ever spoken to knew anything about the man; furthermore, when a few Googled him out of curiosity, no evidence of him or his stories was to be found online. “People eventually assumed I had made him up,” the blog’s author wrote. “They believed that for some reason, I had nonchalantly invented an entire person and book as some kind of strange lie. I was accused of attempting to perpetrate a hoax.” Beyond that, however, was this:
What interested me most, though, was not evidence for Ed Kann’s existence, but rather the lack of evidence. How can an entire person and their work fade so quickly? In this age can dozens of people searching the entire Internet really fail to find a single mention of a living, breathing person (assuming he is still living)?
At this point, it’s worth noting that Kann is also occasionally mentioned in conjunction with a 1995 roleplaying video game for the Super Nintendo called Secret of Evermore. According to this portion of the tale, Kann, then 22, was originally on the development team for Evermore; during Kann’s tenure on the team, the game looked as though it was going to go in a much darker direction, artistically speaking, than the finished version might suggest. Kann was allegedly fired from the team for taking this element of darkness too far, and “later gained temporary cult status for his disturbing short story ‘The Noise Coming from Inside Children.’”
But here, I think, is where the story begins to unravel. Although the Who Is Ed Kann? blog acknowledges that the scarcity of information about Kann is its raison d’etre, the fact that what little we know about him and “The Noise Coming from Inside Children” consistently leads back to this one source is troublesome. A lack of any way to corroborate the information contained on the site suggests that it may not be entirely trustworthy; additionally, a few of the details don’t quite add up. For one, there seems to be some debate about whether “The Noise Coming from Inside Children” is a short story, or whether it’s a full book; it’s referred to as both, so I’ve been unable to conclude which, if either, it might actually be. Additionally, the timeline of the whole thing — Ed Kann, his stories’ publication dates, the writer of Who Is Ed Kann?’s personal history, its relation to the Secret of Evermore’s development period — is… shall we say, a little suspect.
Let’s assume for the moment that the maintainer of Who Is Ed Kann? has an impeccable memory and has accurately identified the points in time at which s/he came into contact with “The Noise Coming from Inside Children” and its author. If this is the case, here’s how the timeline works out:
Who Is Ed Kann?’s writer references looking something up on Wikipedia (about the Clinton sex scandal) at the age of 21. The earliest year in which this could have occurred is 2001; Wikipedia first launched on January 15 of that year. This means that, at his or her absolute oldest, the author of Who Is Ed Kann? is currently 35 with a birth year of 1980. This puts the “In Concrete Basements” flier incident happening between the years of 1988 and 1990; in seventh grade, s/he would have been 12 or 13 years old, putting the magazine not called Seattle Regional Horror Quarterly’s year of publication around 1992/1993; and since magazine interview describes “The Noise Coming from Inside Children” as having been “recently released,” then the earliest the story could have been published is within the five-year-period between 1988 and 1993.
With me so far?
Secret of Evermore, meanwhile, began early development in 1994. If a 22-year-old Ed Kann had been part of the team at that point, he would have been born in 1972 — and here’s where it starts to fall apart even more: If Kann was born in 1972, and “In Concrete Basements” had already been published by 1988 or 1990, then he was A) between the ages of 16 and 18 when “In Concrete Basements” was published, and B) between the ages of 16 and 21 when “The Noise Coming from Inside Children.” That’s extremely young to have achieved fame as a horror writer, which certainly would have gone remarked upon in any press surrounding his work — and yet, in his/her discussion of the article, the writer of Who Is Ed Kann? makes no mention of anything of that sort. Odd, no?
The timeline shifts in a slightly more believable way if the mystery person who maintains Who Is Ed Kann? is assumed to be younger, but even then, it remains a tiny bit questionable. For example, a mere five-year shift puts the Wikipedia access at 2006, “In Concrete Basement’s” publication between 1993 and 1995, the magazine’s publication date around 1997/1998, and “The Noise Coming from Inside Children’s” publication date between 1993 and 1998. Or, assume that the writer of Who is Ed Kann? is 23. S/he mentions being out of college for a long enough period of time to suggest that s/he hadn’t just graduated in 2010; it’s probably therefore safe to estimate the shortest amount of time between the writing of the blog and the exit from school is about a year (making the graduation date at the age of 22 2009). This puts the Wikipedia search at age 21 in 2008 and the anonymous writer’s birth year around 1987; additionally, “In Concrete Basements” would have been discovered between 1995 and 1997, the magazine interview’s publication date would have happened around 1999/2000, and “The Noise Coming from Inside Children’s” would have been published between 1995 and 2000. Although all of this lines up a little more with the Evermore timeline, it still seems a little unusual. If Ed Kann had been writing during the late ‘90s and early 2000s, he likely would have left much more of a digital trail due to the Internet’s rising prominence during that time.
None of this, by the way, matches with the WhatCulture piece’s blurb — the place I originally heard about Ed Kann — claiming “The Noise Coming from Inside Children” originally appeared in the 1970s.
Ultimately, the conclusion I’ve arrived at is this: All of it is fiction. Ed Kann, “In Concrete Basements,” “The Noise Coming from Inside Children,” the possible connection to Secret of Evermore… the whole thing is a complete fabrication. When you get down to it, Who Is Ed Kann? resembles a creepypasta written in the form of a blog; but while this format can be harnessed effectively (see: The Princess), here, it seems simply not to have lived up to its potential. The fact that the blog consists of only a few entries, all posted within the space of a month, suggests not that its writer was unable to discover anything more about the story, but rather that the person who dreamed up Ed Kann and “The Noise Coming from Inside Children” simply lost interest in maintaining the illusion. I suspect the abandonment came down to planning, or a lack thereof: Unless you have a clear idea of where you’re going when you embark on a long-form, line-blurring project like this one, it can not only become difficult to continue after a while, but even worse, it can begin to feel like a chore. It’s a shame, really; the idea was a good one, with many avenues left unexplored. And as for the connection with Secret of Evermore? Although that element is possible the only truthful one in the whole tale — the game is, in fact, real — it appears to be unrelated to Who Is Ed Kann? Perhaps it was added on to the mythology by someone else in the manner of the hivemind, collective horror on which stories like “Boothworld Industries” thrive.
But if we’re willing to suspend our disbelief for a moment, “The Noise Coming from Inside Children” and all of the mysteries attached to it still continue to intrigue. I have always believed that what we don’t see is always far creepier than what we do see; it’s why I don’t find movies like Hostel very frightening (or even memorable), but why The Blair Witch Project kept me theorizing about the mythology and avoiding the woods at night for years. Not being able to read the “The Noise Coming from Inside Children” makes it all the more desirable: We’ll never know what about it made it so disturbing as to need to be buried and never seen again. And indeed, even though I’m pretty sure at this juncture that it never existed in the first place, the possibility, however slim, remains that it might exist — which adds even more to its draw. I so badly want to believe in a story with the power to horrify so many people in such a visceral way.
Maybe “The Noise Coming from Inside Children” is different things to different people. Maybe it’s what every reader wants it to be — or even what every reader requires it to be. And perhaps that is where its power ultimately lies: We see in it what we each of us need to see.
Just what does that noise coming from inside those children sound like, anyway? And what might be making it?
Recommended reading:
Who Is Ed Kann?
The Original Story Behind Secret of Evermore.
Encyclopaedia of the Impossible: The Noise Coming from Inside Children.
20 Terrifying Internet Urban Legends.
I had a feeling from the beginning that this might end up being a creepypasta-type thing, but man was I hoping it was real!
I love everything about this.
I will be creeping myself out for the rest of the day with those links now!
I would just like to say that my favorite version of the dog in Secret of Evermore was the robot one that looked like a toaster. I loved that game so much.
THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE CHILDREN
thank you – that was, of course, my first reaction!
Speaking of that creepy title, has anyone ever read Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child? Too creepy to re-read.
I have! But honestly I thought it was more sad than frightening.
“Just what does that noise coming from inside those children sound like, anyway?”
I don’t know, but if it’s anything like the noise that comes out of children, I’m guessing it’s pretty annoying.
Oh dang, the Encyclopedia of the Impossible is going to maybe be my new favorite website.
(sorry, the Toast)
It’s funny because I was just thinking about how I wanted to do a project about a group of people who slowly recover memories of this really weird TV show that they saw when they were kids and had forgotten, but that they can’t find evidence of anywhere.
Maybe you watch an old home movie on VHS and you see it playing on the TV in the background and then suddenly you remember part of it, but you can’t figure out what it was, &c.
Did you mean CANDLE COVE (http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Candle_Cove)?
“Internet Explorer cannot display webpage”
my god, it’s real, and it’s happening
It works when you search ‘candle cove’ and click on the result, but not from that link for some reason.
The brackets are in the hyperlink – if you click the link and then delete them from either end it works.
Hahaha, I found it.
It’s kind of like this idea, except to my mind Candle Cove’s show-within-a-show is a little too 1) coherent and 2) obvious.
You can’t just have a guy called the Skin-Taker and have him be a skeleton that walks around taking skins on a children’s show, come on — what makes children’s shows like this scary is that they’re nominally ordinary or silly but carry grotesque implications; the point is that it’s something you don’t notice as a child, but become frightened by when you reflect back on it.
Though obviously it’s going to have to do with Muppets, because this idea has been percolating ever since I was in college and couldn’t convince anyone I knew that there had been a third muppet show that had been weird and sometimes scary.
(It turned out I had been thinking of the Jim Henson’s Storyteller series.)
Whoops, sorry about my formatting fail!
I agree with the Muppet/Jim Henson connection for that kind of story. It’s sort of been rediscovered at this point, but I used to terrify myself remembering bits and pieces of Labyrinth when I was a kid, having no idea where they came from.
“You can’t just have a guy called the Skin-Taker and have him be a skeleton that walks around taking skins on a children’s show.”
I dunno, I distinctly remember being highly alarmed by Vend-A-Face, a Muppet Show skit about a coin-operated machine that pulls Muppets’ faces off. I mean: five years old, of course the Muppets are real people, and Sesame Street and “Rainbow Connection” and all of that, and then all of a sudden you have to deal with a machine that pulls their faces off. Oh god what if Kermit gets too close? DAD HOW DO I CALL KERMIT? Dad went into the other room to call Kermit.
” there had been a third muppet show that had been weird and sometimes scary.”
Well there was that “Land of Gorch” series on Saturday Night Live, their design aesthetic was a bit extreme for Muppets, especially when glimpsed at midnight.
Well, right but that’s it exactly. “Vend-a-Face” just seems like a silly joke idea, it’s not implicitly malevolent the way “Skin-Taker” (who is obviously a guy who takes your skin) is.
So you’re thinking less childhood nightmare fuel (like the All Dogs Go to Heaven hell sequence), and more fridge horror – something that becomes terrifying after the fact.
I recently uncovered memories of a weird TV show I saw as a child, a show about vampires who turned into cars instead of bats. I told my boyfriend about it and then was like “lol, I had to have manufactured that memory, right? Convoluted Transformers and Gargoyles?” Totally thought it was going to be that creepy unresolved thing you’re talking about here.
Unfortuately (fortunately?) it did exist and we have record of it. Sigh.
one of those clear cases where someone thought up the name and worked backwards from there
There are at least two shows (with puppets) I remember from my early childhood that are weird and my sister and I remember Pinwheel which was on Nick before it got huge and then before that I alone remember a show called Hot Fudge. Although they both have a presence on the internet, I don’t know anyone else who remembers them. There are other shows I remember flashes of, but I don’t remember enough to search.
shall we consider that the noises are coming from “inside children” i.e. the children that are kept inside? and perhaps it is the outside children who listen to them, at night, wondering when they’ll be brought in.
I didn’t need to sleep tonight. THANKS
Yeah, I thought it was “Noises Coming from (the) Inside Children,” as well.
Noises coming.
From, The Inside Children
All this is explained in the sequel, “The Service Guy Who Came Out To Take Care of That Noise Coming From Inside Children.”
Legend has it that if you stand in front of the bathroom mirror and recite: “Listen, I pay too much rent to have to put up with this noise coming from inside children,” three times, he will appear and overcharge you for repairs, and the children will never seem to work quite properly afterward, and the noise will start up again in about a week.
“Have you tried unplugging the child and plugging it back in?”
They should really get with the times and switch to high-speed children instead of dial-up.
“Mysterious document suggests a hidden world in which truth and fiction are blurred” is the starting point for basically everything I have ever loved. “I was sure the manuscript was a forgery until I stumbled upon the message boards–” YES okay you got me I will read literally anything that follows.
Man on man I love urban legends about mysterious authors or artists.
I’m enjoying The Princess, but particularly the comments on some of the posts that are like “This is obviously bullshit because you can’t use that weapon at that point in the game.” Like, the idea that there’s a sinister ghost princess who can appear in literally any videogame and cause all kinds of bizarre glitches and then COME OUT OF THE GAME AND MURDER YOU is not too much of a stretch, but having the boomerang when you’re not supposed to, that is A BRIDGE TOO FAR.
I didn’t read the comments. Should I?
I know right? Also now I want to make a game just to sneak a “The Princess” easter egg into it.
I don’t know how you could put this into story form, but I think it would be quite horrible to be around a child who just, for the first real time, realized how *unfair* life is — that the good guy doesn’t always win, sometimes there isn’t even a good guy — and the child turned that feeling of unfairness into a gut-wrenching wail or keening, and there was nothing you could do to comfort the child. Like the kid just keeps screaming that heart-breaking cry forever. I think it would quite quickly drive people insane.
Something like this happens in Don DeLillo’s “White Noise”! The baby in the story does eventually stop crying, after something like 12 straight hours of inexplicable heartbreaking wailing, but even though the kid ends up okay, that scene has never stopped haunting me.
I’m always happy when things come to a conclusion, but I wish the “Who Is Ed Kann?” blogger had given us a little more to go on, just made it a tiny bit less of an obvious end… I do like your comments on the maintainers of AR/creepypasta getting bored, though. I’ve always kind of felt like it would be fun to create creepypasta but lack the drive to make it convincing over time. (I remember all sorts of augmented realities my friends and I would make up as kids, like the rumor that a serial killer had stalked the woods behind our elementary school, or that the swimming quarry had flooded with miners still in it, but those were all oral and short-lived.)
Has anyone here ever originated a bit of alternate reality like this? Can you tell me about it? I’d be so curious!
That review reminds me of the time Roger Ebert refused to give a rating to The Human Centipede on the grounds that the star system was unsuited to it. Maybe it’s just as well that The Noise Coming from Inside Children doesn’t exist.
Ugh! The Human Centipede! I never saw it, but back when it came out I kept reading people’s reactions and thinking “Just what is so awful about this movie?” So I read the synopsis on Wikipedia. To this day thinking about it gives me this horrible feeling of despair. Like, yeah, the movie’s probably kind of dumb when you think about it, like most horror movies. But just thinking about if that actually happened….Gives me extreme creeps. If “The Noise…” is like that, I am definitely glad I can’t actually read it.
thank you – that was, of course, my first reaction!
I’m not sure about anybody else, but I’m personally more terrified of the horror story entitled “In Concrete Basements.” Although they get especially terrifying if you view In Concrete Basements as a prequel to The Noise Coming from Inside Children (in concrete basements). The Inside where the children are trapped is clearly a Concrete Basement, and they make horrible noises.
AUGH.
NOOOOOOO
NOOOOOOO
There are at least two shows (with puppets) I remember from my early childhood that are weird and my sister and I remember Pinwheel which was on Nick before it got huge and then before that I alone remember a show called Hot Fudge. Although they both have a presence on the internet, I don't know anyone else who remembers them. There are other shows I remember flashes of, but I don't remember enough to search.
CREEEEEPY!
Has anyone reached out to the other creators of the Evermore game to check and see whether Mr. Kann exists?