Mysterious Hum Driving People Around the World Crazy

[Hum]

It creeps in slowly in the dark of night, and once inside, it almost never goes away. :shifty:

It's known as the Hum, a steady, droning sound that's heard in places as disparate as Taos, N.M.; Bristol, England; and Largs, Scotland.

But what causes the Hum, and why it only affects a small percentage of the population in certain areas, remain a mystery, despite a number of scientific investigations.

Reports started trickling in during the 1950s from people who had never heard anything unusual before; suddenly, they were bedeviled by an annoying, low-frequency humming, throbbing or rumbling sound.

The cases seem to have several factors in common: Generally, the Hum is only heard indoors, and it's louder at night than during the day. It's also more common in rural or suburban environments; reports of a hum are rare in urban areas, probably because of the steady background noise in crowded cities.

    Only about 2 percent of the people living in any given Hum-prone area can hear the sound, and most of them are ages 55 to 70, according to a 2003 study by acoustical consultant Geoff Leventhall of Surrey, England.

Most of the people who hear the Hum (sometimes referred to as "hearers" or "hummers") describe the sound as similar to a diesel engine idling nearby. And the Hum has driven virtually every one of them to the point of despair.

    "It's a kind of torture; sometimes, you just want to scream," retiree Katie Jacques of Leeds, England, told the BBC. Leeds is one of several places in Great Britain where the Hum has recently appeared.

"It's worst at night," Jacques said. "It's hard to get off to sleep because I hear this throbbing sound in the background ? You're tossing and turning, and you get more and more agitated about it."

Being dismissed as crackpots or whiners only exacerbates the distress for these complainants, most of whom have perfectly normal hearing. Sufferers complain of headaches, nausea, dizziness, nosebleeds and sleep disturbances. At least one suicide in the United Kingdom has been blamed on the Hum, the BBC reports.

    Bristol, England, was one of the first places on Earth where the Hum was reported. In the 1970s, about 800 people in the coastal city reported hearing a steady thrumming sound, which was eventually blamed on vehicular traffic and local factories working 24-hour shifts.

Another famous hum occurs near Taos, N.M. Starting in spring 1991, residents of the area complained of a low-level rumbling noise. A team of researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of New Mexico, Sandia National Laboratories and other regional experts were unable to identify the source of the sound.

Windsor, Ontario, is another Hum hotspot. Researchers from the University of Windsor and Western University in London, Ontario, were recently given a grant to analyze the Windsor Hum and determine its cause.

Researchers also have been investigating the Hum in Bondi, a seaside area of Sydney, Australia, for several years, to no avail. "It sends people around here crazy ? all you can do is put music on to block it out. Some people leave fans on," one resident told the Daily Telegraph.

Back in the United States, the Kokomo Hum was isolated in a 2003 study financed by the Indiana city's municipal government. The investigation revealed that two industrial sites ? one a Daimler Chrysler plant ? were producing noise at specific frequencies. Despite noise-abatement measures, some residents continue to complain of the Hum.

    Most researchers investigating the Hum express some confidence that the phenomenon is real, and not the result of mass hysteria or hearers' hypochondria (or extraterrestrials beaming signals to Earth from their spaceships).

As in the case of the Kokomo Hum, industrial equipment is usually the first suspected source of the Hum. In one instance, Leventhall was able to trace the noise to a neighboring building's central heating unit.

Other suspected sources include high-pressure gas lines, electrical power lines, wireless communication devices or other sources. But only in a few cases has a Hum been linked to a mechanical or electrical source.

There's some speculation that the Hum could be the result of low-frequency electromagnetic radiation, audible only to some people. And there are verified cases in which individuals have particular sensitivities to signals outside the normal range of human hearing.

Medical experts are quick to point out that tinnitus (the perception of sound when no external noise is present) is a likely cause, but repeated testing has found that many hearers have normal hearing and no occurrences of tinnitus.

Environmental factors have also been blamed, including seismic activity such as microseisms ? very faint, low-frequency earth tremors that can be generated by the action of ocean waves.

Other hypotheses, including military experiments and submarine communications, have yet to bear any fruit. For now, hearers of the Hum have to resort to white-noise machines and other devices to reduce or eliminate the annoying noise.

Leventhall, who recommends that some hearers turn to cognitive-behavioral therapy to relieve the symptoms caused by the Hum, isn't confident that the puzzle will be solved anytime soon.

"It's been a mystery for 40 years, so it may well remain one for a lot longer," Leventhall told the BBC.

source & video

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Irony of article and poster is not lost!

[Dot Matrix]

Hum, please quit driving people crazy.

 

 

Problem solved. :rofl:

[Boo Berry]

I've heard about people hearing the hum for over 15 years now. Very strange indeed.

[neufuse Veteran]

The Hum has been driving people crazy around here for years also :rofl:

[guitmz]

Hum what u doing? Hum stahp

[Tigurinn]

it only affects a small percentage of the population in certain areas, remain a mystery, despite a number of scientific investigations [...] Only about 2 percent of the people living in any given Hum-prone area can hear the sound, and most of them are ages 55 to 70

 

They need better hearing aides ...either that or this guy has been tempering with their hearing aides

 

[DocM]

Power line hum....

Auroral sounds....

[Charisma Veteran]

I've heard about this before, but didn't realise it was almost exclusively limited to that age range. That's fascinating... it must be at a certain frequency only certain folks can hear. Like the way younger kids are using the "mosquito ringtone" in school now, a high-pitched sound the teachers can't detect, but their young ears can.

[Neo003]

They're coming

 

[Buttus]

H. P. Lovecraft was right!!

[Arachno 1D]

Normally crackpots that hear noises would be put in a sanitarium but as we no longer have any then I guess the physiologists at the news papers use them to fill column space.On second thoughts maybe its their alien implants getting a feedback loop :o :argh:

[Hum]

I sometimes hear 'cell phone' type sounds, that aren't there. :wacko:

[The Evil Overlord]

Need to add Wolverhampton to that :p

[jren207]

I remember at school, when teachers would put old CRT TVs on to show some educational video, and they made this kind of high pitched sound (The tube inside charging with electricity maybe?). Being 24 now, I'm not sure if my hearing has gotten worse, as I no longer come into contact with CRT TVs, so I can't make a comparison, but anyway...

[Davo]

Strange as I feel like I've heard this for a long time and could never explain it. Perhaps the earth's magnetic force?

[2xSilverKnight]

Power line hum....

Auroral sounds....

That's not it, but yes these do happens.

 

And several area around the world are reporting loud localized booms as well. It's been pretty intense for 2 years now.

[exotoxic]

Most researchers investigating the Hum express some confidence that the phenomenon is real,

 

How does this make sense?? Either it is real or it isn't, the article makes it appear as though the researches can detect a sound but can not find where it comes from.

[Torolol]

where did i read that conspiracy theorist said the Low Frequency Sound are used in some weird experiments to remotely modify human thought ...

[Hum]

Hartsville Nuclear Plant Incident, Tennessee

 

The nuclear power plant is a site that cost the general public millions of dollars that was supposedly never finished. The construction of the plant came to an abrupt halt some years back leaving the community devastated. TVA (Federal Government) will tell you it is being used as a storage area only. Yet I have calls at the radio station from listeners who claim to hear strange humming sounds coming from the location.

 

Listeners from the area have called talking about a strange humming sound. Comments like "you can feel it" "It makes the hair stand up on your neck" are common. We also hear that you can't locate the source of the humming it seems to be coming from everywhere. This has been mentioned only by people who live near the nuclear power plant site.

 

A rural elderly listener called my morning show extremely upset. He told us he had lost several beagle puppies in the area. A friend of his told him that he thought that he had seen the pups in the area near the cooling tower. He reported to us in a phone call that he had driven his truck to the area. He thought he was hearing the beagles out in the wooded area so he climbed over the fence and started calling to them. He told us he was greeted with an overhead helicopter and a ground force of about 30 people. They allegedly escorted him off the property in a very rough and crude manner. He said they were some kind of police, some in plain clothes. He told us they were rude and threatening.

 

A listener who is a tech that lives on a hill near the area has had fluorescent bulbs light in his hand on various spots on his property. He discovered this by accident but has witnesses to the phenomenon. He works with surveillance cameras, thermal imaging and a lot of high tech stuff. He tells us there is operational radar being used at the nuclear site at different times.

 

A Hartsville resident who's ex-husband worked at the site tells us that there is a reactor there. We have had several reports of this from different folks in the community. She tell us that her husband was told "don't eat the fish from the river or eat any deer shot in the area".

 

 

http://www.usufocenter.com/ufologist/general/hartsville2.html

[_dandy_]

I remember at school, when teachers would put old CRT TVs on to show some educational video, and they made this kind of high pitched sound (The tube inside charging with electricity maybe?). Being 24 now, I'm not sure if my hearing has gotten worse, as I no longer come into contact with CRT TVs, so I can't make a comparison, but anyway...

 

That's the flyback transformer.  When CRTs were the norm, I used to be able to tell, just walking through the front door, whether my folks had the TV on or not, even when muted.

[Tigurinn]

[Lord Zog]

Here in Gatineau, Quebec, my mom mentioned it to me a while back, that she can hear it.. She keeps calling asking me to come over to hear it.. I hear nothing...

[HawkMan]

Turn off your air conditioners and heat pumps. And don't keep chargers near our beds. Problem solved, unless you live near power lines.

[_dandy_]

Here in Gatineau, Quebec, my mom mentioned it to me a while back, that she can hear it.. She keeps calling asking me to come over to hear it.. I hear nothing...

 

Maybe those are from the Gatineau Car Club members, what with the coffee-can exhausts they put on their rice burners...