My first guess was someone was pranking him with an “annoyatron.”
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I would be intrigued to buy a house and find stuff from whomever previously lived there, I couldn’t imagine moving to a place and just ignoring a bunch of stuff in a closet and piling on more junk in it.
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The previous owner was a. a packrat and b. knew just enough about electronics to be dangerous (his public ID was a mathematician). He had kludged together several power systems that were iffy, if not downright dangerous and/or illegal, like the tap from the phone lines. That was one of the things that fell under the “Pull the plug, fast!” heading.
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I once thought I heard a phone ringing, walked around for a bit but couldn’t pinpoint it. Turned out to be my phone, in my pocket. I hardly ever get called any more so I didn’t expect it at all 
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I’ve had a mystery beep in my house for a few days. It doesn’t appear at any fixed interval and I can hear it on two different floors. It’s annoying as hell as it’s super infrequent but distinctive (two tones, rising). I’m sure it’s some random battery powered apparatus dying, since I’ve checked all the important stuff already.
Shame I don’t have his resources! I’d love to solve this.
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Should have tripped the main breaker first to see if it stopped. That would have eliminated several possibilities.
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Wife could hear a beep, I couldn’t (my high frequency hearing is shot). I used a spectrum analyser app on a tablet to show the beep, then walked around to maximize the level. It was a warning from a UV water sterilizer.
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Philip Glass wrote a beautiful song about something like this, lyrics by Paul Simon.
Experienced something quite like this once.
Turned out to be the fucking profanity buzzer.
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That’s the cleanest crawlspace I’ve ever seen.
Pretty much the same thing happened to me, except I’m not an audio engineer and the only equipment I had was my ears. I stood in one spot moving my head (which helps pinpoint sound) until I heard the beep and then moved in that direction. It took about 5 beeps (upstairs, end of hallway, kid’s bedroom, far side of room, bingo). I found our battery starved CO2 detector behind a dresser where it had fallen with a couple of shirts and got hung up on the chair rail. I felt like a superhero with the powers of an owl.
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“… and now a carbon monoxide alarm is going off. Let’s stay down here a little longer.”
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