Anybody hear "The Hum"?

Post Reply New Topic

There is a sound I'm sensitive to. I think no one I know can hear it but me. I especially hear it during the fall and winter. It sounds like a super - low register sound. It sounds like a big barge in a river. Sometimes I hear it so loud, I can feel it in my head. I have to sleep with a humidifier running to block out "The Hum".

Anyone else hear things that no one else can hear.

There's a website about it, but I can't post it because I'm new on WrongPlanet.

People all over the world have reported The Hum.

I don't think so, at least from your description. I hear the hums from electronics, and small motors. I still hear the squeal in mall stores said to deter adolescents. It is always there, but not a nature driven seasonal force that you describe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum

I pick up on faint sounds and smells that my family doesn't. I also hear things like faint indistinguishable talking that's a result of having mild schizophrenia.

In the Nineties you started to hear about what is now called "the Taos Hum" that some folks in the Taos area of New Mexico were hearing.At the time I figured that since thats near our southern border it must be "the sucking sound" that Ross Perot had recently warned us we would hear if they enacted NAFTA.

But then you began to hear about "the Bristol Hum" in the UK, and other hums around the World.


So its a mystery.

The Hum

I ran across an article today about research into the HUM, a low frequency humming noise heard by a few people.

The classic description of the Hum is that it sounds like a truck engine idling. For some, it’s a distant rumbling or droning noise. It can start and stop suddenly or wax and wane over time. For others, the Hum is loud, relentless and life-altering.

Deming began by describing the standard history: The Hum was first documented in the late 1960s, around Bristol, England. It first appeared in the United States in the late 1980s, in Taos, New Mexico.

Deming eventually fingered Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio waves (between 3 kHz and 30 kHz) as the most likely culprit. The world’s military powers use massive land-based and airborne transmitters on these frequencies in order to communicate with submerged submarines. Radio waves at these frequencies can penetrate up to a solid inch of aluminum.

Given the need for disciplined inquiry into the phenomenon, in late 2012 Glen MacPherson started The World Hum Map and Database Project. The database gathers, documents and maps detailed and anonymous information from people who can hear the Hum. It provides raw data for research in a strictly moderated and serious forum for research and commentary, while providing a sense of community for people whose lives have been negatively affected by the Hum.

Most people have some experience with how disruptive some types of noises can be, which is why there are often noise ordinances in many cities and towns, especially at night. There are many sufferers who dread the nighttime because of how loud and relentless the Hum can be. The Hum database is replete with descriptions of desperate people who have been tormented by the noise for years. The phrase “driving me crazy” is all too common. (I feel fortunate that, in my case, the Hum is more of a curiosity than it is an irritant.)

The update of the Hum Map from June 6, 2016 presents roughly 10,000 map and data points, and we’ve already made some notable findings.

For example, we’ve found that the mean and median age of Hum hearers is 40.5 years, and 55 percent of hearers are men. This goes against the widely repeated theory that the Hum mainly affects middle-aged and older women.

Interestingly, there are eight times as many ambidextrous people among hearers as there are in the general population.

In his view, there are currently four hypotheses for the source of the world Hum that survive the most superficial scrutiny.

The first hypothesis – argued by Deming and the one I’m currently pursuing – is that the Hum is rooted in Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio transmissions. It’s increasingly accepted now that the human body will sometimes experience electromagnetic (EM) energy and interpret it in a way that creates sounds. This was established for high-frequency EM energy by the American neuroscientist Alan Frey in his infamous “microwave hearing” experiments, which showed that certain radio frequencies can actually be heard as sounds.

Today, there are biophysical models that predict and explain the impact VLF EM energy has on living tissue. I have designed and built a VLF radio blocking box that should be able to test whether VLF radio frequencies are a prerequisite for generating the Hum.

The second hypothesis is that the Hum is the grand accumulation of low-frequency sound and human-generated infrasound (sounds with audio frequencies below roughly 20 Hz and which can be felt more than they can be heard). This includes everything from highway noise to all manner of industrial activity.

The third is that the Hum is a terrestrial or geological phenomenon that generates low-frequency sounds or perceptions of those sounds. For example, there is a well-documented history of animals predicting earthquakes and taking action to save themselves. From an evolutionary perspective, there may be survival value in having members of a population highly sensitive to some types of vibrations. When it comes to the Hum, some humans may have a similar physiological mechanism in place.

The fourth is that the Hum is an internally generated phenomenon, perhaps rooted in a particular anatomical variation, genetic predisposition or the result of toxicity and medication.

Source: Cracking the Mystery of the ‘Worldwide Hum’

I wonder if Aspies are more sensitive to hearing the mysterious hum than the average population. Some research points to greater prevalence of left-handed or ambidextrous subjects in Aspies. If you are interested, you might post an unofficial survey. I hear a high frequency hum but that is tinnitus which comes with age. I have also heard the low frequency hum that precedes earthquakes. I can tell an earthquake is about to strike 5 seconds before the ground begins to move. But I do not hear a worldwide hum.

I can definately hear it. I am sensitive to sound. It causes me difficulty sleeping etc. Sometimes the one wall of the house vibrates with it so it is some sort of directed sound beam.

Human audio frequency response is supposed to be 20-20,000 Hz (cycles per second)

The electrical power grid in the US is 60Hz (50Hz in Europe)

Most devices that operate on electrical power from the grid will have a transformer to step down the voltage from 110VAC to something more usable. A transformer usually has an iron core to aid in the magnetic coupling of one side of the transformer to the other side. The coupling is less that 100% efficient so that some of the electrical energy is lost in the metal plates that usually make up an iron core of a transformer. Some of this energy becomes heat and some is mechanical energy that can result is a sort of "hum" that can be heard at the frequency of 60 Hz. This is close to a musical note of B in octave one (61.735 Hz)

^^ A transformer is usually silent, unless the magnet is vibrating the housing. They can get very loud if the rivets on the iron laminations become loose.

In search for the noise, I turned all the electricity off at the mains supply so everything was off. We live where the nearest neighbour is about a football pitch away so we are not near anyone. The house wall vibrates with this noise. We have very thick stone walls as the house was made before the 1600's. We do not know how old as in my area the locals would keep records by word of mouth and during te 1600's a tsunami wiped out a lot of the coastal population. But anyway... The side of the house where the wall was vibrating with this "Sound beam" was the seaward side so there is nothing else there except a weapons testing area the other side of the estuary. There is nothing else there really. We do not know what is causing it. The mind boggles!
There is one possibility that someone has re-opened the old mines underneath us and is running some machinery but no permissions have been given and a lot of work would be needed to make them safe, but to be honest, this sound wave vibration thing seems to be airborne rather then under the ground.

Interesting. It occurs to me that it wouldn't be that hard to find out if it was truly an external sound or internally / psychologically generated (one of the cited possible causes), by making a sound recording using a recorder known not to have a significant hum problem of its own. I've never heard it myself, but if I did I'd want to try recording it. If it were intermittent I'd be able to make recordings when I could hear it and when I couldn't, which ought to demonstrate whether it was internal or external. It would also be useful to check whether the frequency of the perceived hum was the same as that of the recorded hum, to help ensure the recording was detecting the right thing. If the hum were there all the time at constant volume and frequency regardless of where I went, that would suggest it was an internally-generated thing. But I would think that if a person had always been able to hear it constantly since birth, they'd be unlikely to perceive it, having never known what it was like for it not to be there.

If it was found to be external, I wouldn't expect it to be easy to find the source. Low-frequency sound is usually harder to locate than higher-frequency sound, but there are ways.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10 ... 9788056393

I don’t think I’ve heard it but I live in a densely packed city full of constant noises so I probably can’t hear It due to that. I do tend to have very sensitive hearing.

On the neighborhood app Nextdoor some people were saying they heard a strange hum right before we had an earthquake the other night. Interesting and scary!

"Low frequency mating calls of the Black Drum Fish are so strong that they can be heard in homes near the shore."