When I had lain awake a little while, those extraordinary voices with which silence teems began to make themselves audible. The closet whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little washing-stand ticked, and one guitar-string played occasionally in the chest of drawers.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 45. A worried Pip spends a night in a dingy hotel after the warning from Wemmick not to go home. His sense of unease is reflected in personification of the objects in the room whispering, sighing and ticking.