Town baffled by mystery sound at night likened to the Purge movies

A loud noise has been keeping the residents of Suitland, Maryland from getting to sleep at night.

The residents, who say the noise is similar to a siren, have been dealing with the strange noise on and off for years.

Scott Bovarnick, a resident of the town, which is about 10 miles south of Washington DC, likened the noise to something out of a horror movie.

“It sounds kind of like a combination of a tornado siren and a spaceship taking off, like the siren from the 'Purge' movies,” he said.

He said that a lot of young families live in the town and that everyone is fed up with the noise.

“A lot of my neighbours are having trouble sleeping, and it's disturbing,” he said.

Thus far, residents have not been able to determine a cause for the noise, despite making calls to local officials for explanations.

“I just want to know what it is, and can they turn it off, because people are trying to sleep,” another resident, Marcus Brent, said.

Andrews Air Force Base is only five miles from the town, and could be the source of the strange noises.

Prince George's County, where Suitland is located, was also home to numerous air-raid sirens during the Cold War, which, according to a 1991 Washington Post article, regularly malfunctioned.

On 26 January, 1991, the air-raid sirens in Suitland roared to life, causing resident to scramble for their nearest fire or police station to take cover.

While that might seem like an extreme reaction to modern readers, it's important to remember that the US had just entered the first Gulf War about a week prior. War – and the fear of Scud missiles – was prominent in the mind's of Americans.

One older resident, who claimed she had lived through World War II in Germany, called the fire department and was demanding access to a bomb shelter, according to the report.

Eventually it was discovered that a bad fuse was to blame for the freak alarm.

The federal government moved to remove the old sirens and replace them with the Emergency Broadcast System, though it seems like Suitland's siren problem continued long past the end of that programme.