🔊 The pumping station of horror: when the pumping station started talking

🌙 03:11 - Voice from the depths

There are places in the wastewater treatment plant that even rats avoid by a wide margin. One of them is the main pumping station - that is, a huge concrete bunker with a pumping station that usually growls, bubbles and is silent. But the other night... it started talking.

I was alone. Night duty. Sewage quiet, just the hum of fans and the quiet sound of an electric kettle. And then suddenly from the speakers of the alarm system came... a whisper:

"I'm not a pump... I've been trapped here for years..."

I poured the tea. The thermometer showed 17.5°C, but I felt it was dropping below zero. I looked at the SCADA panel. Everything looked... normal.

🧠 03:16 - Technical hallucination or paranormal interface?

I thought - overload, short circuit, maybe the UPS is running out of power. But the system worked. The alarm did not light up. And the voice continued to speak:

"I was locked in here in 1993... You have to let me out... bypass..."

My hands were shaking. I took a flashlight in my hand, clenched my teeth and went down to the technical basement. Everything was as usual: the smell of sulfuric acid and the nostalgia of communist Poland. But someone had left a handwritten marker on the wall: "Don't turn on the pump 3 after 3 o'clock. She remembers."

🚨 03:21 - Pump 3 wakes up

As if in response, pump 3 let out a groan - something between a metallic snore and a throaty sigh. The panel showed the start voltage, though no one pressed the button. The moisture sensor went crazy. The SCADA began to display... messages in Russian.

- Franek, over, this is Zdzichu," I radioed.

- Zdzichu, it's three o'clock in the morning, what are you doing there again....

- The pump says to me.

- It's good that he doesn't sing. Go to sleep.

At that moment, the emergency fan turned on and the entire pumping station trembled. For a moment I had the impression that laughter was coming from inside the pump. The quiet, old laughter of a technician who should have been retired long ago... or underground.

🧰 03:35 - Final diagnosis

It turned out that... someone had previously hooked up a test speech synthesizer to the alarm system. An old one from the 1990s - it was supposed to report pump failures through a speaker before we switched to a digital system. Except no one had unplugged it. And since the cable was connected via an RS232 converter with some Russian controller, it also spit out what it had recorded: a remnant of an old technician - a prankster who uploaded messages like:

"I am not a pump... I am a Roman. Trapped in concrete by his sins of exploitation."

Funny? Maybe. But not at three in the morning. And not when you've previously drunk yerba with a pre-pandemic expiration date.

🐾 04:00 - Epilogue with cat and coffee

I went back upstairs. Burek, the lab cat, was sitting on the desktop and looking at me as if he knew. As if he was recording it himself. I brought him a piece of cabbage, and made myself a new tea - from the current bag.

Frank was no longer asleep - he read the old instructions from 1994 and commented aloud that "it used to be the alarms were more lyrical." And the pump? Pump 3 continues to quietly wheeze, as if she feels sorry that no one is listening anymore. But just in case... we secured it with tripwires and a prayer to the sacred Electromagnetic Peace.

🧠 The moral?

Not all that chatters in the treatment plant is human. And not everything that is silent is a person. That's why - before you consider yourself crazy, check the cable connections. Or ask your cat.