I LOVE STORIES. I'm in love with Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are the best movies in existence. Reading is one my favorite things in the world. My favorite books include Harry Potter, Inkheart, Pride and Prejudice, The Thirteenth Tale and The Infernal Devices. TV shows: Once Upon a Time, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Friends, How to Get Away With Murder, Parks and Rec, Elementary, Sherlock, and Merlin. Movies: LOTR, all Marvel, all Disney, and Sherlock Holmes. I love Meryl Streep and my heart just beats for Robert Downey Jr.
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Fun Fact, thats, more or less, something that wealthy people in China and Japan did, they were called “musical floorboards.” Designed to squeak when stood upon. A person could make noise all the way down a corridor.
The residents and servants knew which floorboards made a sound and avoided them. But a burglar, or assassin didn’t. If you heard the creaking of floorboards, you knew danger was coming.
Even better, despite what movies may show, a lot of the old west was founded by Chinese immigrants, so there could have been carpenters around who knew how to make the musical floorboards!
They were also called Nightingale Floors, and looking up to make sure I had the right term, I found they were super clever! They were more than just ill-fit boards or whatever makes floors creak normally, they actually used little metal bars under the boards placed into small holes in the boards to cause the creak.
The best things on the internet are when someone makes a joke and then Miss Frizzle rolls up for an educational adventure.
A nightingale floor is maintained in the Nijo castle of Kyoto. All the corridors and porches are made that way, so you get to walk on it as you visit the building, and it is extremely impressive.
As a tour guide explained it, more than a legitimate warning system for danger, the purpose of it was basically intimidation through psychological warfare. The point isn’t so much that it lets you hear where intruders are, it’s to let them know that you know they’re here.
At the time, the castle would have many visitors from rival lords and clans etc (forgive my shoddy Japanese history I just remembered the cool anecdote), with rooms dedicated specifically to meeting ambassadors and messengers. The architecture of those rooms is designed to drive home who’s in charge, and so is the fact that you have to walk along a nightingale floor to get there: the entire corridor creaaaaaaks with every step you take on your way. The lord of the castle knows you’re here. The lord of the castle knows exactly where you are.
If you’ve ever tried to discreetly sneak inside an old-timey church while a ceremony is happening, and the door is heavy and slowly squeaking and every goddamn step you take on the stone floors echoes horribly up in the high ceilings and even if no one looks at you you feel like eyes are boring through the back of your skull – that’s the feeling, and it’s done to you on purpose.
Psychological warfare counter-strategy: Intimidate the lord by using the floor to play the theme from Beverly Hills Cop.
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