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!

In Japan these are called “Nightengale Floors,” which I love.

I pinched the nightingale floor idea for my first novel “The Horse Lord”, called them ‘singing floors’, and described them as being installed in all the corridors with access to the Lord’s private apartments.

So far, so good, but back then (1983) I had no idea how they were made, what they sounded like, or any way to find out, so I guessed they were floorboards laid loose so as to rub against each other, and the sound would be a high wooden creak.

Turns out I was close but not spot-on: it involves metal spikes and brackets, and the actual sound is much more squeaky. Listen to this and try to imagine it without background chatter or shod footfalls:

https://micro.rohm.com/en/rohm-saijiki/nijoujou/4_recomend/images/uguisu.mp3

I wonder if there was any way to shut them up - perhaps tatami over the top? - when the security system wasn’t needed…