On Friday night, well actually it was the early hours of Saturday morning (around 2am when we returned to Sensone from Barga, and no I promise, we hadn’t been drinking that much!), both Richard and I heard a very loud audible Hum. Did anyone else hear it?
It was a persistent Hum, for me it sounded like a distant helicopter. For Richard it was more like a machine, say a refrigerator noise running in the background. But for at least half an hour we both heard it simultaneously and it only stopped once we were inside the house.
On giving it more thought, I remembered talking to Richard several times over the last few weeks about hearing a distant helicopter rumbling in my ears, but this had been inside the house and this was definitely the first time that Richard had ever collaborated hearing something at the same time as me.
There is actually an article (look it up on Wikipedia, for instance, and it’s the source of my information together with The Hum website). The Hum is described as a phenomenon, or a collection of phenomena, involving widespread reports of a persistent humming, rumbling, or droning noise which is not always audible to all people. In the UK, the United State, Canada and New Zealand this phenomena has been widely reported by national media, normally labeled by the prefix of the locality its been heard. So I have named this one “The Sensone Hum”.
There is even a website www.thehum.info launched in December 2012 by Dr Glen MacPherson, in to order to provide and build a database of Hum related data for professional and independent research. Whilst only a handful of articles have been published in the scientific literature, one of the earliest was Hanlon’s in 1973. In London and Southampton more that 2000 people reported hearing sounds dating back to the 1940’s.
Research has found that some suffers feel that headaches, nausea, diarrhea, fatigue and aching joints were attributed to “The Hum”. (All I would add that I have been suffering with over the last few days).
The Hum is defined as a persistent low-frequency sound, more often than not compared to the sound of a distant diesel engine idling, or to some similar low pitched sound for which all obvious sources (e.g., household appliances, traffic noise etc) have been ruled out and if you go on the web there are a number of audio reproductions available.
When we heard it on Friday night we were at our gate, several hundred yards away from the house, we certainly don’t get any traffic up where we are and the Cioco helicopter wasn’t flying that night.
World research has shown that between 2 -11% of people can hear The Hum, it does appear to be geographically focused and its possible for hearers to move away from the sound, women and older people are more likely to hear it and the reported range of the Taos Hum, New Mexico was reported to be 48 – 72 km.
Although two of the reported Hums have been linked to mechanical sources most of then could not be traced to any specific mechanical source. It is suggested that Tinnitus, a disturbance of the auditory system a theory that often fails to explain why The Hum can be heard only at certain geographical locations subject to the accuracy of the reports and there also exists many variable individual differences as to the personal threshold of perception of acoustic stimuli, or other normal individual variations that could contribute to the perception of The Hum. People who have tinnitus and have heard The Hum report them as noticeable different and many Hum suffers can find locations where they don’t hear it. And an investigation by a team of scientists in Taos dismissed the possibility that The Hum was tinnitus as highly unlikely.
The human ear can generate their own noises and these spontaneous otoacoustic emissions but due to current research data and the reported differences mainly in that The Hum is more regional this otoacoustic emission does not explain all of the occurrences.
There is also a workable theory that explains how pulsed (oscillating) radio waves at lower frequencies can activate human nerve cells (http://kyttariki.biol.uoa.gr/mobile_phones/article-2002.pdf).
For more than 50 years, increasing numbers of powerful VLF transmitters (mobile, stationary, and airborne), have been in operation. By line of sight, ground wave, sky wave, antipodal focusing, and geomagnetic coupling, the surface of planet Earth is riddled with zones of oscillating and high intensity VLF electromagnetic (EM) radiation. A small proportion of people – I now estimate no more than four percent of the adult population – have auditory systems that are sensitive to lower frequencies and the type of biological activation described in the above paper. They may be able to detect the Hum in many places on Earth solely by interaction with VLF, while there may be another group of people who may need some extant sub-audible low frequency sound or infrasound at certain frequencies in order to create sufficient auditory activation that would be interpreted as sound. Also, because the majority of Hum hearers are in the 40s or older, it is possible that certain age-related anatomical changes may initiate Hum hearing. Sources of industrial infrasound, such as mining, hydro-electric projects, windmills, high pressure gas pipelines, and massive construction projects may or may not be a prerequisite or aggravating factor in some settings. When there is strong but sub-audible infrasound such as from a large industrial site, it may take little VLF activation in order to activate the auditory system. High levels of ambient noise during the day from traffic, industry, mechanical devices, and other people, often mask the Hum and explain why the Hum is stronger at night when society has quieted down somewhat, and why the Hum can become very loud in sound-reduced rooms. Because the Hum is affected by the behaviour of the Earth’s magnetic field and by the height and layers of the ionosphere, it is affected by solar activity, the time of day, the season, and the behaviour of the sun. The Hum also is rooted in the particular radio frequencies that governments use for communication. Therefore, when a powerful VLF transmitter suddenly stops broadcasting or changes frequency, this will cause a simultaneous change in the Hum at multiple locations across the planet. During a big solar storm, anything could happen. In fact it’s been shown the correlation between solar activity and posting activity on some Hum support forums is very high. The Hum can also slowly drift over an area as do the entry and exit points for geomagnetic conjugate magnetic field lines.
It has been suggested that wind patterns together with oppositely travelling waves could produce an energetic source as the compression of the waves create a through the “organ pipe” resonance. Researchers from the US Array Earthscope have tracked down a series of infrasonic humming noises produced by waves crashing together and then into the ocean floor and potentially, these sounds from these collisions cold travel to many parts of the globe. There has even been one report that The Hum could be produced by a “sonic fish”.
For me, I don’t know what it was and due to my location I know I can knock off the “sonic fish” option but I would be really interested to know if anyone else has heard The Hum in the last few weeks.
Let me know. Carol.condurrouk@gmail.com
Article by Sensone