Bubbles / Cones / Zones / Instances Of Silence (IHTM)

[tygerkat]

Krobone, I went to Netflix and found two movies called Carnival of Souls. One was from 1962 and the other from 1998. The 2nd was listed as based on the first. The first sounds VERY creepy :eek!!!!: so I'm guessing that's the one you were referring to? I think I'd have to watch it in broad daylight with my husband right next to me and even then, I may not be able to sleep! :shock:

 

[Graylien]

And who knows that mosquitoes can fly between raindrops? ... They don't experience time differently. They're just smaller and more sensitive to air movement.

It's certainly open to debate. In a recent study of fruit flies at Harvard, researchers who filmed fruit flies fighting had to watch the playback in slow motion to be able to see the individual moves in the battle. Also, there are songbirds which sing more notes per second than the human brain is capable of perceiving: presumably the birds themselves can hear every note, which implies that they perceive time at a different rate than we do. But, as you suggest, this is pure conjecture.

The sheer volume of information our brain has to process these days compared with the sounds a cow in a rural field must process surely give the human brain an excuse to have a blip or two?

Many 'Oz Factor' experiences take place under precisely such conditions: while the percipient is alone in a rural area. Temporary sensory overload seems unlikely to be a factor in such cases.

 

[Anonymous]

Chantie, given your time of establishment and number of posts and the way you posted here, I would be suspicious that you were Spillage weren't it for your obsession with killing a fly with such emotion!
We of course know that mosquitos can dodge raindrops because after observing them surviving the deluge of monsterous, (and to them, syrupy) droplets of water, we used high speed photography to show this.
Getting back to the subject matter though, Oh no! I didn't read the rest of the bloody thread! lol! I just scrolled down for referrence and saw the other posts on the next page! lol! Silly me!-------The nasal prelude to the silencio moment could be simply physical reactions to air pressure. The synuses react in this way and the ears can temporarily become blocked, thus experiencing the differentual subjective sonic reception.

Can I just say that the common house fly actually does prefer to take of backwards in a looping motion then forwards so if you time it right, you can actually clap your hands together a few inces above one and make it pass out and peacefully dispose of it. A simple way of ridding houseflies is to cause turbulance (they hate it!) in the opposite direction to an open window and they will bugger off out. The larger buzzing variety always seek the simplest route to lighter more breezier outlets, so open a window and pull back the curtains and watch them fly out unharmed. They are an important source of nutrition for birds, amphibians, mammals and other insects and arachnidia.
*To be impatient and kill a fly---- is to crush a nation with a lower economy*

 

[AnthonyClifton]

I have experienced odd moments of silence, rather like the silence you get when you briefly nod off for a second or two, or the feeling when you know you are about to fall asleep.

I often (to my shame) nod off during meditation and, because I'm sitting, wake up just moments later when my head drops to my chest.

Usually I notice an odd rushing sound which terminates, resulting in a creepy silence, when I wake. I presume that it is the sound of blood rushing in my veins or of air entering/leaving my lungs.

Also, I often find that, underneath my thoughts (especially when I'm stressed), I'm continuously humming some song over and over in my mind. When I finally notice it, take a deep breath and stop it...everything seems oddly silent.

 

[Doggeral]

First post. Fifteen years ago, I was walking in a N. Mercer Island Park by Seattle on an early weekend morning. It was breezy and partly cloudy. Despite the terrain and trees, I could hear the sounds of traffic from I-90 and the occasional jet on ascent from SeaTac.

I was walking along the lake shore when I noticed a sudden quiet. Almost dead silence. Deafness? I could feel the breeze in my face and hear it rustling in my ears, but there was no sounds of traffic from the interstate, none from the nearby shores of I-405. Even though I could see cars along the distant shore. Turning around, I noticed I was the only person in that stretch of the park. And it felt as if all sounds of civilization had fled the area.

For what seemed to be a half minute, I stood there dumbfounded in the silence. Then I heard a distance car and the abrupt resumption of traffic noise from the interstate and the upwelling roar of a jet overhead.

Quiet eerie if you ask me.

 

[GNC]

That's what they call "The Oz Factor", a passing feeling of otherworldiness in normal surroundings. Happens quite a lot during UFO encounters, but you didn't see one of them that time.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

This reminds me somewhat of the "zone of fear" described by John Keel in THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES. Keel reportedly discovered that this zone had sharply delineated edges, so much so that he was able to walk into and out of it, several time over.

But as I recall it wasn't permanent and disapated within hours.

Or did it? I found myself wondering if this zone might not have been not only permanent but peripatetic.

 

[Billynotalent75]

I'm a keen hiker and I enjoy rambles through the countryside. On one of my walks I experianced something similiar to this. Along the North Wales (UK) coastline there is a small village called Penmaenmawr just off the main coast road. Above this village high up on top of a hill there sits an old Druids circle of stones.

Anyway both my girlfriend and I had the same experiance it was a warm summers day birds were singing and you could hear the distant hum of the traffic far below us on the coastline road. We both stepped into the circle of stones and immmediatly all outside noise stopped, we could no longer hear the hum of the traffic or the birds singing just nothing. But as soon as we stepped back out of the circle the noises resumed. Very eerie and it gave me the creeps.

 

[EnolaGaia]

I've had multiple similar (localized silence) experiences with specific characteristics, but localized with respect to an event rather than a fixed place.

I grew up in a house on a major highway where major auto accidents happened all too often. It was not unusual for a multi-car fatal accident to occur in 'our front yard' (figuratively speaking). By the time I was 10 I'd been a first-arriving witness to people dead or dying on the spot. What struck me even then was that when I'd run up to (e.g.) an overturned car I'd hit a 'bubble' or 'zone' of eerie dead silence when I got within about 10 - 20 meters of the wreck. This only seemed to occur when approaching the scene of a death, and never occurred when approaching a scene with injuries only.

By the time I was a teen I'd come to recognize this 'silence envelope' as a clear sign of death at accident scenes. The last time I recall this happening was around 1976 (last period I lived at the family home). I heard the telltale 'crunch' sound from the highway and immediately sprinted toward the scene. There was a semi-truck sitting still in the middle of the road, with no apparent damage. It was a big tractor-trailer rig with a flat-bed trailer onto which some massive industrial apparatus unit was secured. The truck had been accelerating to maintain speed climbing the extended upward slope in front of my family home.

As I approached I saw the truck driver climb down out of the cab and look around as if confused. As I got closer, (maybe 10 - 15 meters away) I entered a notable 'silence bubble' of the type I'd experienced before. I stopped - confused at the observable situation but sure there was death about it.

The driver saw me and said his truck had simply jerked to a grinding halt as he began to climb the long slope. He was looking at the rear of the tractor / rig, apparently believing his driveline had somehow failed.

That's when I saw the taillights of a 1970s-era Ford Maverick or Mercury Comet (compact sedan) ...

They were 'peeking out' from underneath the semi-truck's front bumper.

The car had come out of a side road, crossed to the far side of the divided highway, and turned the wrong way - directly into the path of the oncoming accelerating tractor-trailer. The truck had literally 'run over' the car, within which the occupant was quite dead.

I told the truck driver to 'freeze' and told him it was a collision. I advised him to steel himself and walk up to the front of his rig to confirm it, but warned him it was not a pleasant sight. He did so, and freaked out. He said he'd accelerated for the upward grade and had reached over to adjust his radio when the 'crunch' happened.

Anyway ... In this case the bubble of silence cued me to death well before I could even tell there'd been an accident.

 

[decipheringscars]

I've had multiple similar (localized silence) experiences with specific characteristics, but localized with respect to an event rather than a fixed place.

I grew up in a house on a major highway where major auto accidents happened all too often. It was not unusual for a multi-car fatal accident to occur in 'our front yard' (figuratively speaking). By the time I was 10 I'd been a first-arriving witness to people dead or dying on the spot. What struck me even then was that when I'd run up to (e.g.) an overturned car I'd hit a 'bubble' or 'zone' of eerie dead silence when I got within about 10 - 20 meters of the wreck. This only seemed to occur when approaching the scene of a death, and never occurred when approaching a scene with injuries only.

By the time I was a teen I'd come to recognize this 'silence envelope' as a clear sign of death at accident scenes. The last time I recall this happening was around 1976 (last period I lived at the family home). I heard the telltale 'crunch' sound from the highway and immediately sprinted toward the scene. There was a semi-truck sitting still in the middle of the road, with no apparent damage. It was a big tractor-trailer rig with a flat-bed trailer onto which some massive industrial apparatus unit was secured. The truck had been accelerating to maintain speed climbing the extended upward slope in front of my family home. ...

:shock:

I wonder if many EMTs experience something like that.

BTW, Doggeral, nice first post!

 

[Mythopoeika]

EnolaGaia - that's a spooky one, definitely weird.
Re cone of silence in a stone circle - perhaps there's some kind of magnetic/gravity anomaly in that spot, and people noticed the cone of silence thousands of years ago. They probably marked it with stones because it's something unusual...

 

[OldTimeRadio]

One of the claimed abilities of magicians, White and Black, is the creation of "sanctuaries," small consecrated areas indoors or out which can be used as storage batteries for occult experiments. In spite of the name, these places seem to be more often set up for evil than for beneficial purposes, and the unwary visitor who accidentally stumbles into or through one sometimes answers with his (her) life.

Could our cones and zones of silence be such places, or their remnants as they eventually begin to disintegrate?

 

[hallybods]

I've only ever experienced this kind of strange silence once. Myself, the t'other half and a friend became interested in an old building not far from my home called Ingress Abbey. The place had been empty for a few years and the surrounding estate had become overgrown. We were poking through the wooded area behind the main house when we came upon an area that was about 15 feet round that was completely silent, in fact you could step in and out of it. One side you could hear the birds singing, trees rustling and the sound of local traffic on the nearby road and inside there was nothing. We spent a bemused ten minutes or so stepping inside and out of the circle.

It's just a shame that the place has been re-developed now and it looks like the old mansion house is now surrounded by housing.

 

[henry]

I wonder if there are any acoustic anomalies that could help explain these stories?

With the circle of stones, could the effect have been marked by the contruction of stones, or even stranger, caused by them, by some esoteric acoustic equation?

Although the RTA blackspot is a tricky one to make fit.

i remember a occasion that wound up being noted in my diary, i had walked around the mission district of san fran one afternoon, thatd be early 92, an i had hit a few bars along the way, but not many, maybe 2 or 3, i guess i was out on a bukowski ticket at the time, being a young man. The point of note was that I had been walking along the main drag of mission street itself for a stretch in a kind of viscous internal lull out of which i suddenly snapped/stepped and was immediately assaulted by an incredible cacophany of street noise - line of traffic, sidewalk vendors, a whole load of people and bustle. it did seem that it was a entirely internal quietude that i had hit up on though, and not a zone that could have been shared by anyone around me.

 

[will_cooke]

Me too.

I've been meaning to post this for years, but never got round to it: (edit: first post btw)


Many many years ago myself and about 10 friends went up to Edinburgh for the fringe festival as a treat to ourselves for having finished our A levels and to have a last blow out before we all went our separate ways to university and whatnot.

On the second or third day there (mid week) we had gone to do a bit of shopping on Princes Street.

Me and 3 or 4 of the group had gone in to a department store (I forget the name, but a fairly big one) to buy a towel. We left the shop and my friend, who was wearing shorts, wrapped the towel around his middle giving the impression he had no trousers on, and we carried on down Princes Street to the nearest pub, all laughing at how funny we were.

Then it went quiet.

I mean silent. This is a very busy street, at a very busy time of the year. There were loads of people about but making no sound. You could have heard a pin drop.
We all noticed this at about the same time, and started whispering to each other, "Ooooo, spooky" etc. So it wasn't just me that was noticing the weirdness. We could hear each other perfectly.

This lasted perhaps a minute and we were walking all the time. Then bit by bit the sounds returned. The best way I can describe it is like when you surface in a swimming pool. The water drains from your ears and the sounds return slowly rather than all at once.

I don't know what happened, I just put it down to a strange coincident. Perhaps a minutes silence? But then how come people were still going about their business, plus I would have thought I would have known that something was going on.


Dunno.

I like to think it was some kind of Fortean event!


-Will

 

[GNC]

That's a good one. Am I right in saying such weird silences happen usually when nobody is around?

Either that or people in Edinburgh have no sense of humour.

 

[henry]

Re: Me too.

...and we carried on down Princes Street to the nearest pub, all laughing at how funny we were.

Then it went quiet.

I mean silent. This is a very busy street, at a very busy time of the year. There were loads of people about but making no sound. You could have heard a pin drop... The best way I can describe it is like when you surface in a swimming pool. The water drains from your ears and the sounds return slowly rather than all at once...

Weird how this echoes my san fran story... i had always thought maybe a couple of pre-3pm bottles had hit me harder than usual... had you guys been drinking pre-towel moment?

your description of the incident and surfacing from under water has reminded that the viscous internal lull(tm) i felt had a kind of watery quality to it... kind of like when youre in the shower and you catch yourself humming...

 

[will_cooke]

Re: Me too.

Weird how this echoes my san fran story... i had always thought maybe a couple of pre-3pm bottles had hit me harder than usual... had you guys been drinking pre-towel moment?

No, this was before we'd started drinking!

kind of like when youre in the shower and you catch yourself humming...

My wife said I was humming Postman Pat in the shower the other morning. I don't remember doing it. The plot thickens.

 

[decipheringscars]

I so poorly remember only fragments of physics class, but could there be something perfectly natural going on, some phenomenon of acoustics where sound waves happen to be cancelling each other out for some reason in these places? Or something like that?

Obviously, the post about the person encountering silence in instances of death wouldn't seem to fit, but could the others be explained along those lines? Any physicists or sound engineers here?

 

[mindalai]

I seem to remember about 20 years ago someone invented a thing for cars that generated some sort of white noise that cancelled out engine noise. Possibly there's some sort of natural phenomenon like this (although it wouldn't account for all of the stories here).

 

[Mythopoeika]

Re: Me too.

I've been meaning to post this for years, but never got round to it: (edit: first post btw)


Many many years ago myself and about 10 friends went up to Edinburgh for the fringe festival as a treat to ourselves for having finished our A levels and to have a last blow out before we all went our separate ways to university and whatnot.

On the second or third day there (mid week) we had gone to do a bit of shopping on Princes Street.

Me and 3 or 4 of the group had gone in to a department store (I forget the name, but a fairly big one) to buy a towel. We left the shop and my friend, who was wearing shorts, wrapped the towel around his middle giving the impression he had no trousers on, and we carried on down Princes Street to the nearest pub, all laughing at how funny we were.

Then it went quiet.

I mean silent. This is a very busy street, at a very busy time of the year. There were loads of people about but making no sound. You could have heard a pin drop.
We all noticed this at about the same time, and started whispering to each other, "Ooooo, spooky" etc. So it wasn't just me that was noticing the weirdness. We could hear each other perfectly.

This lasted perhaps a minute and we were walking all the time. Then bit by bit the sounds returned. The best way I can describe it is like when you surface in a swimming pool. The water drains from your ears and the sounds return slowly rather than all at once.

I don't know what happened, I just put it down to a strange coincident. Perhaps a minutes silence? But then how come people were still going about their business, plus I would have thought I would have known that something was going on.


Dunno.

I like to think it was some kind of Fortean event!


-Will

It may well have been a minute's silence, like poppy day or something.
I remember going into Peterborough once, and when I got to the town centre, everybody was standing around completely silent. It spooked the heck out of me, because I'd forgotten completely about the special day. I thought the aliens had landed!

 

[henry]

Destructive interference - think it would only make sense for stationary sound sources and a stationary receiver, but open to suggestions...

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I so poorly remember only fragments of physics class, but could there be something perfectly natural going on, some phenomenon of acoustics where sound waves happen to be cancelling each other out for some reason in these places? Or something like that?

I remember a physics teacher in Northern Kentucky who claimed that the massed traffic and industrial noises of Cincinnati, Ohio, "would drive us absolutely crazy, day and night" if it weren't for all the intervening, "cancelling" noises.

And of course those same noises-neutralizers also work for the residents of Cincinnati.

 

[Peripart]

Destructive interference - think it would only make sense for stationary sound sources and a stationary receiver, but open to suggestions...

Certainly, that would be the best way to cancel out noise in a predictable fashion. As Minda mentioned, someone tried to develop a system for sports cars, using a microphone and speaker near to the driver's head. I seem to remember seeing a Lotus Esprit fitted with such a system on Tomorrow's World or some similar show. I guess it didn't work brilliantly, or we'd all have it by now. Or maybe the inventors missed the point - when some idiot drives by in a really noisy car, the chances are that he wants it to be noisy!

Anyhow, apart from artificially trying to induce "anti-noise", I feel sure that there must be some spots where the lie of the land or the surrounding architecture cause sounds to occasionally cancel themselves out, depending on the listener, but that's still some way from explaining shared experiences of this phenomenon by people walking down the street. Maybe a sudden localised change in air pressure (like you find in tunnels or aeroplanes) could cause the effect?

 

[AFCSC]

Cone of silence/city of silence

Years ago Cassadaga, Forida was noted for its erie silence. All vehicle noise was muffeled. You could easily converse even when vehilces were going by. Airplane traffic was virtually inaudible. Several years ago the town started to deteriorate...and the silence is no longer evident. All of the old visitors have noted the change.

I heard about this place from a rout driver that made deliveries to the one and only drugstore. His car stalled out and he had to restart it every time. A group of us went there at night to take photographs. I had some problems with my Polaroid camera: I got 'white outs' and 'black outs' most of the time. My old reliable film camera never gave me any problems.

Here are some links:

http://www.cassadaga.com
http://www.cassadaga.org/

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Re: Cone of silence/city of silence

Years ago Cassadaga, Forida was noted for its erie silence.

I wonder if any of the other Spiritualist camps/settlements have or have had similar acoustical quirks.

 

[volfie]

The only time I ever encountered an absence of sound was in the presence of a lightening ball that had floated in the livingroom window during a thunderstorm. While it drifted across the room, downward toward the floor and until it disappeared, I don't remember hearing a sound from the TV or the other people in the house or the thunderstorm outside. Maybe I just was so mezmerized by the phenomena that I was blocking out sounds. <shrug> But one of the outstanding things I've always remembered about that event was NO SOUND.

And, no, it didn't disappear with a bang -- at least not one I heard.

 

[JoeWestSydney]

Back in the 1980s my younger brother who is a bit of a computer wizz worked for a consultancy firm that had a peoject to put forward a plan to reduce the noise from the shipyards where the British nuclear submarines were being built.

They did this by analysing the noise signature of the yards at nearby housing estates then generating an opposite noise with the whole thing overseen by a fairly primitive computer.

The outcome was areas with doubled noise and areas with almost complete silence as you moved away fron the shipyard. This resulted in practically noise free living for the people on the nearby housing estates.

I do not know the physics behind it but I do know it worked.

With advances in computing power surely it should be possible to generate "cones of silence" at will.

And anyway how do we know they are cone shaped?

Joe

 

[Shady]

Has anyone been in a crash?, i ask because when i was in my first one, a few seconds before, probably two, i experienced total silence before the impact, like the world went quiet to see what the result would be, anyone had that?

 

[GNC]

Has anyone been in a crash?, i ask because when i was in my first one, a few seconds before, probably two, i experienced total silence before the impact, like the world went quiet to see what the result would be, anyone had that?

Did you know the collision was coming? Might have made a difference as your body braced for impact. When I was in a car crash it was a complete surprise, so I didn't get any odd effects from it.