Hell Is That Noise/Video Games/Silent Hill

• The radio static in the series whenever monsters are near.
  • The sound of the dogs and the flying creatures in the first game.
  • The screeching of the goddamned Pendulums in 3.
    • The victims in 4.
  • Background noises can get pretty freaky, especially in the Otherworld. The sound of metal scraping across the floor in the next room, the noise of machinery grinding away above you, and other bizarre sounds with no apparent source can get absolutely unnerving really fast.
    • In SH2, the metal scraping is Pyramid Head dragging his Great Knife.
    • The squealing noise (apparently your radio, although you still hear it with the sound effects or radio off) after you leave the hospital in the first game, heard in the track "Over" on the OST, and the high-pitched siren sound(not the traditional siren) when you jump into the abyss in the second game.
    • The Final Boss music of the first game, "My Heaven". It's a nightmarish mixture of a shrill whining, shrieking noise that has been compared to both dentist drills and synthesized baby cries alongside mechanical crashing. It should be noted that this is your radio reacting to the presence of the monster.
  • The worst sounds in the series are arguably the ones that appear without warning or reason. Several empty rooms in the second game sound like there's something huge breathing heavily inside the walls, and an empty sewer passageway in Silent Hill 3 is marked by a woman's scream, running footsteps, and then the sounds of tearing meat. Said scream is also heard during the Nightmare Sequence at the beginning of the game.
    • The "Black Fairy" music in the alternate hotel, and the music in its basement. Your flashlight and radio stop working, making the ambient music/noises much creepier. Although the radio no longer works, you still hear a static-type background noise in the basement.
    • There's that freaky music that plays when you're about to go into the Otherworld in 3. And the ambient sound in the underground passage also sounds like the walls are breathing.
      • The music that plays in the final hallway leading to the inner sanctum of the church is essentially that music with the scare factor turned Up to Eleven. Run.
    • There's a room in the hospital in the first game where you constantly hear the sound of breaking glass, even though there is nothing at all in the area which could make this noise. There's also the room with the bird cage in Nowhere - you hear a bird flutter madly, even though the cage is empty. And the sound stops once you open the cage.
    • You will never forget the sound of the Red Light of Death.
  • The metallic scraping/grinding noises in the Amusement Park.
  • One of the worst moments in the first game is the trip through the sewers. Your radio doesn't work down there; you have to detect approaching enemies by the noises they make. It doesn't help that the soundtrack in the sewers is full of creepy noises that make it sound like something's coming even when nothing is - distant mechanical groans, odd echoes, splashes that sound like something was right behind you then dove into the water as you were turning to look...
    • The periodic hissing sound in the second sewer (heard in "Never Again 2" and "Die" on the OST).
  • The butterfly apartment in SH2 combines a repetitive slamming noise with the soft flutter of apparently resurrected insect-collection butterflies into a sheer percussive force of horror sound. Neither the slamming noise or the mysterious resurrection of the butterflies are ever explained or even touched on, which makes it much worse.
  • In 3, there's a mannequin room - only one of them has a head. What's worse is that the room is completely silent save the sound of your footsteps, so you're lulled into a false sense of security. Only when you round the corner do you hear a scream, and return to the sight of a decapitated mannequin, blood included.
  • All of the ambiance in Toluca Prison.
  • One of the worst has be that squealing noise in the basement in the Otherworld hospital in 2. WHAT THE HELL IS MAKING THAT SOUND?! It's like someone gutting a piglet slowly with a blender.
  • "Ritual."
• 4 also has its own share of disturbing noises. One of the most famous collections of them happens in the Building World: there's a pet shop that you visit the first time around, and it's as silent as most rooms. However, when you re-visit the world, there's a gigantic ruckus of dogs and cats in there - even though the shop is empty. After you head out the back door, you can find and read a newspaper regarding a shootout in the Garland Pet Shop - and then you hear things breaking and the animals dying violently, all to the background sound of an automatic firearm shooting almost nonstop. If you enter the pet shop again, it's completely trashed, the wall is full of pockmarks, there's a lot of blood on the floor, and police tape restricts you to only a small passage you can use to go back and forth.
  • Another one from the Building World: when you are descending a staircase near some elevators, you hear what sounds like a microphone feedback. It comes completely out of the blue and has no clear relation to the plot or the backstory. And it's creepy as all hell.
• The noise the Needler from Homecoming makes as it walks.
• Shattered Memories also has a lot of sound-based horror, considering one of the central gimmicks is Harry's cell phone. The infamous "I love my daddy! I love my daddy!" replay can grate a player's nerves, until they come across a TV where this is looping over and over and distorting itself that soundly places it back into creepy.
  • "That's a nice new belt, Todd."
• An interesting and missable example are the radio dedications in Silent Hill: Downpour. It isn't outright stated, but the dedications are apparently an indication of monsters. DJ Bobby Ricks receives calls to his radio station asking him to play songs with dedications to Murphy, which he obligingly does. When Murphy hears these dedications, there are seemingly always monsters nearby. When Bobby finally meets Murphy and begins to discuss his plans to escape Silent Hill, he gets another call for a dedication... for himself. His next line to Murphy is "They're coming."