Every day, a homeowner in Pennsylvania is reminded of a mistake he made 13 years ago. At around 8 in the evening, his otherwise peaceful house comes alive with the beeping of an alarm clock he accidentally dropped down a vent over a decade ago. It’s been stuck in the wall ever since.

13 years ago, Jerry Lynn, of Ross Township, Pennsylvania, wanted to punch a whole through his living room wall, so he could pas the television cable through it. He didn’t want to puncture any pipes or wires in the wall, so he came up with a brilliant idea to ensure that he was drilling in an unobstructed place. He grabbed his alarm clock, tied it to a string and programmed it to go off in 10 minutes. Then he lowered it into the wall through a vent, and waited for it to ring. His goal was to drill near the place where the ringing was coming from, ensuring that there was nothing to puncture through there. It all went according to plan, until the alarm clock fell into the wall.

Photo: video screengrab

“As I was laying it down, all of a sudden I heard it go ‘thunk!’ as it came loose,” Lynn recently told CBS Pittsburgh. “I thought, well, that’s not a real problem. You know it’s still going to go off. And it did.”

Try as he might, the man couldn’t retrieve the alarm clock, but figured it would probably run out of battery in three or four months, so he wasn’t too worried about it. That was in September 2004, but 13 years later, the alarm clock still rings every day, at 10 minutes to 8 in the evening during daylight savings time, and ten minutes to seven, during standard time.

Photo: video screengrab

As you can imagine, Jerry and his wife, Sylvia, have gotten used to the ringing living room wall after 13 years, but it can still shock unsuspecting guests. “It starts with a soft ‘beep beep beep beep’ and it gets louder and closer together, and that will set people like, ‘What is that?'” Sylvia says.

I would have probably teared down that wall after only 2 days, just to stop that damn thing, but after putting up with it for 13 years, that would be a shame. I’ve never herd of a clock battery lasting that long, even though they don’t use too much power, so it will be interesting to see how long it will keep ringing for.