How do they make all those erie sounds in a horror movie?  A keyboard?  A computer?  Random things found on a sound stage?  None of those.  The instrument is called a Waterphone.

A Waterphone is responsible for most of the sounds you hear in horror flicks.  It doesn't look like much but the sounds that emit from it have been the reason you've left your fingerprints in the seat in front of you at the theater.

 

Waterphones are made up of a stainless steel resonator bowl or pan with a neck for holding.  Bronze rods of many different lengths protrude from the the bowl/pan and resonate when struck by the resonator.  A Waterphone can produce an endless variation is sounds.  Waterphones have been used in movie soundtracks, on records and even live performances and was developed in the late 1960s by Richard Waters.

 

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