AIKEN --- If you've ever shopped in downtown Aiken around noon or 6 p.m., you've likely heard it -- church bells ringing out hymns back to back for several minutes.

"I love it because I live downtown and I can get up in the morning, go out and get the paper and I can hear the bells. It's neat," said Catherine Stapleton Nance, the music director for St. John's United Methodist Church, which plays the hymns from its Newberry Street site.

But there's one little detail some might not know.

"They are not real bells up there," in the steeple, Ms. Stapleton Nance said. "It's some sort of a speaker system way up high."

Ms. Stapleton Nance said the hymns are changed out with the seasons via disks that operate through a computer system. That system can be programmed to have a particular bell toll based on certain circumstances, to include funerals and weddings.

She said the playing of hymns, which are digital recordings of real bells, started around the time the church moved to a new location in 2000, enhancing its system so it would do more than just chime on the hour.

The hymns that play at noon and 6 p.m. last 15 minutes and can be heard up to a mile away, she said.

Bell ringing in downtown Aiken, though, isn't exclusive to St. John's.

Other church bells also ring -- live ones, that is.

There's the bell at St. Mary Help of Christians Catholic Church at the corner of Park Avenue and York Street. It dates back to about 1950 and rings many times throughout the day, said Father James LeBlanc.

Father LeBlanc said the bell's mechanics are computerized to ring on the hour and half hour during daylight and to also chime something known as "the angelus ringing of the bells" at 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m.

"It's a ringing to facilitate prayer, so it rings three times and a pause, three times and a pause, three times and a pause for prayers, and then it rings for a full minute wide open," he said.

The bell also rings a full minute at the start of each mass.

Then there's the bell at St. Thaddeus Episcopal Church on Pendleton Street.

It's not played on the hour throughout the day as it's a manual bell, but it is played immediately after 11 a.m. Sunday services, according to church volunteer Halley Townsend, who dated the bell to 1853.

Ms. Townsend said the bells of downtown Aiken add to the city's charm.

She said she's also a fan of the hymns played near her church from St. John's, adding she wasn't aware that the St. John's bell isn't real, "But it sure does sound good."