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The other day I kept hearing a noise, difficult to describe, but at first I thought it was someone upstairs dragging furniture around. But the noise kept repeating itself for too long, so that explanation didn't really make sense.

Eventually I decided the noise came from outside, where the painters had left some scaffolding, and I figured the sound came from the wind blowing over the scaffold pipes (like blowing across the top of a bottle). This would explain why it was intermittent, and I hadn't noticed it before, since it probably only happened with certain wind directions and velocities.

Now the painting was finished months ago, and most of the scaffolding was taken down then. The Housing Association has been calling the contractors and other scaffolding firms to take the rest away, but they all claim it's not their scaffolding! :shock: It's a mad, mad world.

No noise today, there's been no wind...
 
With regard to some of the cases above, in particular the Anglesey one, did any of the outside agencies admit there was a noise/vibration?

It seems evryone is quick to say that their equipment is all working correctly, but no actual confirmation that there is a genuine nuisance caused by whatever. You can check your kit all you like, and it might be fine, but if due to some geographic anomaly it is the source of a sound which is making people ill, your kit is faulty, IMHO. I suppose it's down to money, really.
If an expensive sewage plant is not causing a problem at the treatment works, case closed, no need to own up to unforseen problems which might be expensive to remedy, they aren't going to dig too deeply into the complaint, are they?
 
Some time ago Bill Bailey presented a R4 programme about the hum:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00773qg

I hear it too now and again. Sometimes I'm convinced it must be down to a car engine left to run but the car not pulling away and sometimes I think it must be down to the nearby water works. Other times I accept that it may be the internal amplification effect that is sometimes blamed (ie it's in my head).

I did notice, however, that while there was snow on the ground the noise was much louder. This could be because there was less traffic noise and the like which might ordinarily mask it. I also heard it whilst out walking in the evenings with friends who could hear it too.

Anyone else find the hum louder on a snowy evening?
 
Tiny village is latest victim of the 'The hum'
It is a mysterious sound on the very edge of perception that has driven thousands of people around the world to distraction.
By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent
6:00PM BST 09 Jun 2011

Now a tiny English village is the latest community to claim to be being hit by the phenomenon known as "the hum".
Residents of Woodland, in County Durham, claim that every night a noise permeates the air similar to the throb of a car engine.
It is sometimes so strong that it even shakes the bed of one of the householders.

But no matter how hard they look, the community cannot find the source of the problem and, at their wits end, have called in the council to investigate.
The 300-strong population is the latest around the world to be hit by the rumble which has in the past led to wild conspiracy theories blaming it on UFOs, government experiments and abandoned mine shafts.

It's most famous occurrence was in Bristol in the 1970s when more than a thousand people complained of the consistent drone causing nosebleeds, sleeplessness and headaches.
It vanished as mysteriously as it arrived and was never explained.

Residents of Woodland, a community consisting of one main street surrounded by farmland, claims their version of "the hum" is constant from midnight until 4am every night and stops them sleeping.
There are no pylons, factories or abandoned mines nearby.
The noise started about two months ago and has been plaguing the isolated village every day since.

Marylin Grech, 57, a retired store detective, said: "In certain areas of the house you can hear it more loudly. It is definitely from outside, it's in the air, all around, very faint.
"It vibrates through the house. We've turned all the electricity off in the house and we can still hear it, so it's not that.
"Sometimes we'll be in bed and it vibrates right through our bed, like a throbbing.

"It's not tinnitus, that's a high pitched sound and this is very low. If I put my fingers in my ears it stops, so I know it's not in my head.
"At 4am it's so clear, because we live in such an isolated place with no traffic, it's heaven.
"But it leaves a buzzing in your head for the rest of the day."

Gary Hutchinson, an environmental protection manager at Durham County Council, said: "I can confirm that we received a call regarding a humming sound in the Woodland area earlier on June 1 and we will now make further enquiries before deciding what action we will take."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... e-hum.html
 
Are there any particular months of the year when reports of the Hum are most common?
 
Who, What, Why: Why is 'the hum' such a mystery

A village in Durham is the latest place to report a strange vibrating noise - known as "the hum". Why is it such a mystery?
According to sufferers, it is as if someone has parked next to your house and left the engine running. The Hum is a mystery low frequency noise, a phenomenon that has been reported across Britain, North America and Australia in the past four decades.

There are a range of theories from farm or factory machinery to conspiracy theories such as flying saucers. And yet, 'the hum' remains an unsolved case.

Woodland, a village in county Durham, is the latest place to fall victim to the noise. Some residents have reported hearing a buzzing noise like electricity or a car engine that won't go away.
"It sounds like an overhead power line with this constant humming buzz," says Kevin Fail, a 53 year-old bathroom installer who lives in the village.
He said that he and his wife hear it in bed, downstairs in the house and outside in the garden, but some residents have heard nothing. Fail believes it may have something to do with a disused mine shaft in their garden.
Durham County Council says it is planning to send someone with sound monitoring equipment to the village to investigate.

There are "crackpot theories" doing the rounds about UFOs, and Fail says his daughter, whose hobby is ghost hunting, hasn't ruled out the possibility that the mine is haunted. But unlike some residents, Fail says he's not worried. "This has been happening all over the world for decades. Whatever's out there is not going to hurt you."

Another resident of the village said they had received media interest from all over the world.
"The hum" is an international phenomenon. The beach front neighbourhood of Bondi in Sydney was afflicted by it two years ago. One local resident told Australia's Sunday Telegraph at the time: "It sends people around here crazy, all you can do is put music on to block it out. Some people leave fans on.''

One case that was partially solved was in Kokomo, Indiana. The source of "the hum" was located to a fan and a compressor on an industrial site, and yet even after these were turned off some people complained the noise had not stopped.

The Largs Hum in Scotland and Bristol's mystery noise in the 1970s are two of Britain's most famous cases. Often the source of the noise is never found but disappears unexpectedly.

The truth is no-one really knows the cause of "the hum", says Geoff Leventhall, a noise and vibration consultant who has advised the government on the issue.
Despite years working in the field, he has never heard the hum himself and has only rarely been able to pick it up on recording equipment. In one case, his recording equipment picked up a 200 hertz signal at a complainant's house that was detectable in the lab. He managed to trace the buzz to a neighbour's central heating. But this, he says, was an exception.

"Some experts say if you can't measure a noise the presumption is tinnitus," he says. "It all gets rather fraught because people say there's nothing wrong with my hearing."
"The hum" is sometimes heard in cities but is more likely to be audible in the countryside and at night, when there is less background noise. Most complainants are people aged 50-60. The most plausible causes are industrial compressors and fans or farm machinery, Leventhall says.

In the 1970s he worked with the News of the World on their campaign to discover the mystery behind "the hum". They received 800 letters from readers complaining of the phenomenon - some of them citing UFOs. But no specific explanations emerged.

In 2009, Dr David Baguley, head of audiology at Addenbrooke's Hospital told the BBC that in about two thirds of cases no external noise could be found. He believed that sufferers' hearing had become over-sensitive. "It becomes a vicious cycle. The more people focus on the noise, the more anxious and fearful they get, the more the body responds by amplifying the sound, and that causes even more upset and distress."

In the end, the solution for sufferers may be to adopt a more accepting mindset, Leventhall argues. He prepared a report for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that suggested cognitive behaviour therapy was effective in treating the symptoms. "It's a question of whether you tense up to the noise or are relaxed about it. The CBT was shown to work, by helping people to take a different attitude to it."

As for the source of "the hum", don't expect a breakthrough anytime soon, he says.
"It's been a mystery for 40 years so it may well remain one for a lot longer."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13752688
 
staticgirl said:
Are there any particular months of the year when reports of the Hum are most common?

I think it's fairly random. Do you mean it could be weather conditions setting off the sound, like the buzz of a hot summer (well, that would be insects, but you know). At this stage just about everything that could be put forward as an explanation has been, and it still hasn't been cleared up. I think it's something atmospheric turning the afflicted into human tuning forks.
 
gncxx said:
staticgirl said:
Are there any particular months of the year when reports of the Hum are most common?

I think it's fairly random. Do you mean it could be weather conditions setting off the sound, like the buzz of a hot summer (well, that would be insects, but you know). At this stage just about everything that could be put forward as an explanation has been, and it still hasn't been cleared up. I think it's something atmospheric turning the afflicted into human tuning forks.

Interesting point about insects.
One summer a few years ago, a large bush in the front of my neighbour's garden became very noisy indeed.
There was a sound like a very loud humming that I could hear clearly from across the road. When I went closer to hear it, it sounded like lots of insects (probably bees, but I didn't see any). There was a particularly 'distressed' sound, as if they were dying. After a while (maybe 2 months?), the sound went away. Maybe the bees died. :(
 
I experience the hum in Norwich some times. On occasions it's definitely an idling car or similar and eventually moves away, other times it's almost certainly generated inside my head/ears/whatever. However, when there is snow on the ground there is a definite distinct hum outside that is much louder.
 
From 4 AM to around 6 AM every winter, a local factory idles some piece of it`s machinery. It makes a virtually inaudible, but just audible enough to drive me crazy, low hum. It seems that once they actually start running the machine normally the sound changes, so once the day starts the hum disappears - and quite abruptly at that.

It carries extremely well - you can hear it as seemingly the same volume over quite a wide area. It`s much clearer outside or with the windows open. Thankfully it`s not loud enough to actually wake me up if I`m sleeping, but due to work calls sometimes I am awake until after it begins... And it is a pain to fall asleep without turning a fan on to drown it out.

It wouldn`t be so bad if it were a straight hum, I think, but it has occasional blips where the frequency changes. Those are annoying enough that it takes forever to fall asleep without trying to drown it.

I had never thought to complain about it though. It just comes with living near large factories.
 
Don't some factories play a sort of "anti-sound" over their loudspeakers that is the opposite of machinery noise and cancels it out, making it silent? They could try that with the dreaded hum.
 
Windsor abuzz with mystery hum rocking neighborhoods late at night, early morning

WINDSOR -- Windsor attorney David Robins first heard the low rumbling while he was watching the NBA Finals on TV. The noise overcame the sound of his TV, so Robins went outside to investigate.

"My whole neighborhood was just rocking with this," he recalled, describing the noise he first heard in May as a deep, resonating vibration. "It went on for about an hour and a half. I'll be honest, I was a little bit scared by it. I wondered what could be so incredibly powerful to generate that deep a noise."

A whole lot of Windsor residents are wondering that. During the last several months, hundreds of people have heard the Windsor Hum, a late-night or early morning sound that vibrates, pulsates, thrums like trucks idling or throbs like the low bass from a car stereo.

So many people have complained that Canada's ministry of environment has set up seismic monitors. So far, there's no explanation.

Theories range from underground blasting in Windsor's salt mines to truck traffic off the Ambassador Bridge to industrial noise from Detroit's Zug Island. Some think the noise stems from the drilling for soil core samples being done for the Windsor highway that will connect to the planned New International Trade Crossing bridge, if and when it's built.

And, of course, there's plenty of Internet talk of UFOs.

"We've all had our chuckles about this, but the fun is over," said Al Maghnieh, a Windsor City Council member. "This is serious. And we need to get to the bottom of this."

Windsor residents, officials seek answers for unexplained hum
With a new baby now 9 months old, Sonya Skillings of Windsor first heard the mysterious humming outside her home during her infant's nighttime feedings last winter.

"It's like when a car goes by your house with really loud bass music, that thumping, but it goes on and on," she said last week.

Dave Robins, a Windsor attorney, has heard the unexplained noise, too.

"It sounds very similar to having 50 Mack trucks idling outside your house," Robins said. "It sometimes makes the windows vibrate."

The mysterious Windsor Hum of recent months -- officially without any explanation despite months of investigation -- has added Detroit's neighboring city to the ranks of worldwide communities experiencing odd environmental phenomena.

There was the Kokomo Hum in Indiana, the Bristol Hum in England and the Taos Hum in New Mexico. Sometimes there's an explanation. In Kokomo, one apparent cause was traced to cooling fans at a local automotive casting plant. Other times, there's never an answer.

Just don't tell them that it's all in their imaginations.

Skillings said that on one occasion last May, the noise and vibration were almost overwhelming.

"I felt like the front windows of my living room were going to come crashing in," she said. "It vibrated so much I thought they were going to pop."

So far, the hum doesn't seem to be an issue in Detroit. But Teri Gilbert, a spokeswoman for the Ontario Environmental Ministry, said her office has received about 300 complaints since March from residents in and near Windsor. Her office ruled out an industrial source because no industry operates at all the times when the hum has been reported.

Canada's national environmental ministry set up seismic monitoring equipment used for earthquakes in mid-June to collect data on the vibration and hum, but no conclusions have been reached.

Brian Masse, a member of Canada's Parliament who represents the Windsor area, has asked the environmental office to make results known as soon as possible. Masse said he hasn't heard the hum, but wants answers.

"It's coming across such a broad sector of individuals and areas," Masse said this week. "We need to take it seriously."

Al Maghnieh, a member of Windsor's City Council, has not only heard the hum, but has experimented with setting a glass of water on a table, shutting off all appliances and power systems, and watching the water ripple slightly during the hum.

Residents report touching the siding of their houses during the humming and feeling a vibration.

Mostly the sound is heard in west Windsor, a district of affluent middle-class working people. Perhaps significantly, Huron Church Road, the main truck route to and from the Ambassador Bridge, runs through that area. But reports also have come from all over the city and nearby suburbs.

A new Facebook page, Windsor/Essex County Hum, had 367 members as of Wednesday evening. A notice atop the Facebook page warns that all postings must be approved to weed out the more fanciful theories such as UFOs, covert ops or secret tunneling.

Some Windsorites say the hum grows louder after a rainstorm, leading to much discussion about the conductivity of sound in moist air. Skillings finds the sound louder as she jogs nearer the Detroit River.

Meanwhile, people like Maghnieh and Robins are getting calls and e-mails from across Canada and from as far away as Europe from people dealing with their own unexplained hums.

http://www.freep.com/article/201108...ods-late-night-early-morning?odyssey=nav|head
 
The woodland case in durham is interesting because it is in a rural area, so there are less potential man-made sources of the sound.
 
We have the sound up here in Gwynedd, and we are certainly rural. It's not apparent all the time, and has been much less frequent over the last three years or so. It sounds very like a diesel engine idling, starts about 5am, and goes away about 10am. (It doesn't keep to absolutely exact times, I've checked with my watch back when it first started). It was reported in the local papers back then too, but that was years ago now. Most people who hear it (including myself) no longer bother about it as it seems to produce no apparent harm.

I live half a mile away from any public roads, and yet the sound is as if there was a delvery van parked outside with its engine ticking over.

You'd have thought this is such a widely reported phenomenon that by now some serious scientific explanation would have taken place instead of some wholly inappropriate dissmissal such as tinnitus.
 
Perhaps it's a generator on a farm nearby? Perhaps the farmer needs extra power for something...milking the cows?
 
No cows up here. No working farms, actually. The nearest farm is about two miles away, but they are only a small scale outfit, The nearest remotely industrial location is 6 miles away. There is a water processing plant but I've been over there and the hum is no louder. There are sheep on their summer grazing but I doubt they are running a generator. :nah:

In any case, why would a generator be idling? You'd expect it to be running with a load. If I was in town I might suspect I lived close to a backup generator being tested, but you don't do that virtually every day.

Also, if it really was a diesel engine being run, wouldn't it be intolerably loud to anyone close to it? There's nowhere such a generator could possibly live within maybe three quarters of a mile. Plus it would get louder as you got closer to it - but actually. no-one seems to hear the hum loudly, wherever in the area they are it is only a background noise.
 
The Deros are obviously about to break through to our world.
 
Top secret underground facility?
 
It seems these sounds generally can't be recorded very successfully on audio equipment (true?). Then I wonder if they could be electrophonic (brain converting electromagnetic waves into perceived sound). Which is itself I think not really accepted by science but which is trotted out sometimes to explain people thinking they can hear meteors. Maybe these hums are caused by some industrial or military radio emissions. It would fit with the fact that they crop up in an area and then go away again after a time, and that not everyone hears them.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Top secret underground facility?

Well, I wouldn't know, would I? It'd be secret :D
 
Windsor Rumble Intensifies: 'It was the loudest it's ever been'
By Kristie Pearce, The Windsor Star September 13, 2011


WINDSOR, Ont. -- It seemed as if the mysterious rumblings had subsided, according to Grete MaKenzie, but Sunday night through early Monday the low pitch humming came back with a vengeance.

“It was the loudest it’s ever been,” she said about the inexplicable rumblings she and thousands of Windsorites have reported hearing in the past eight months.

The 61-year-old said the noise woke her at home about 5:30 a.m. Monday in the 3000 block of Sandwich Street.

“Last night it was really bad,” said MaKenzie. “We went outside and it was almost like it was vibrating your eardrums.”

She said the noise comes and goes, but has been going on far too long.

“We need to identify it," she said.

The Ministry of the Environment has ruled out industrial sources as the culprit, but Coun. Al Maghnieh wants to know why.

“They’re not giving us answers,” he said.

Maghnieh believes the study is not complete. He said he’s received thousands of calls — mostly concentrated in the Windsor West area by Brighton Beach.

The ministry ruled out the Windsor Salt mine because the company only blasts once a day in the mid-afternoon.

Most residents find the rumblings more prominent between 1-3 a.m.

Zug Island, lake freighters and plane traffic from Detroit Metro Airport are also not suspected.

The ministry could not be reached Monday for comment.

Multiple Facebook groups have started to log times and locations of the mysterious humming, including The Windsor/Essex County Hum which has 523 members.

The page was flooded with posts describing Monday’s occurence as the loudest yet.

“It’s just frustrating,” said Jeff Temple, who lives in a basement unit on Curry and Adanac avenues. “I want to know what’s causing my walls to vibrate.”

He said he’s been hearing the rumblings since February.

“We’re talking about the middle of an industrial area with significant problems with thousands of complaints and yet the MoE seems to think that everything is fine,” Maghnieh said.“We have some serious issues here that need serious answers because people are frustrated.”

Maghnieh said he will be speaking with the MoE’s regional director Wednesday.

He is also holding a meeting open to residents and officials Sept. 29 at 6:30 p.m. The location has not yet been announced.

© Copyright (c) The Windsor Star


http://www.windsorstar.com/Windsor ...st ever been/5391414/story.html#ixzz1XvnWMR9P
 
Cochise said:
Mythopoeika said:
Top secret underground facility?

Well, I wouldn't know, would I? It'd be secret :D

How far away are you from Dinorwig? That goes into 'reverse' in the wee hours, and given the mountains and valleys there could be some strong acoustics.
 
I'm not sure, as the crow flies. Maybe 10 miles? There's a big mountain in the way, though. (Snowdon)

I discounted it because the noise is most often heard between about 5 and 10 in the morning, and I'd have thought they'd be pumping water back up the hill from about midnight. And if we could hear it over here, it'd be pretty loud in Llanberis, which is much nearer to the power station than we are.
 
UPDATE: Of late, I've heard a similar hum a couple of times during the day. This time I managed to track it down - its a standby generator at the new water treatment building across the valley.

This is definitly not the original hum, because its only been installed this year, but the way the sound reverberated made me reconsider. It actually sounded nearly as loud inside my house as it did just one field away from the source.

I now strongly suspect that the original hum might indeed be vibrations from Dinorwic transmitted through the rock and my house which is stone built acting as a kind of loudspeaker. The rock strata around here are extremely unusual (and very hard!) and my house is on a seam - there are trial borings for all kinds of minerals and metals round me, slate, ironstone, lead, even gold, and the same seam goes across to Llanberis / Dinorwic.
 
What’s That Hum In Costa Rica?

Costa Rica and some parts of the world experienced a windy-like hum of the earth yesterday which left everyone wondering what the heck was going on and what was going to happen!


The hum could be heard throughout Costa Rica and that has left many in Costa Rica wondering what caused the noise. Seismologists are weighing in and believe that the event should be studied. Records indicate that it was not as a result of seismic activity but the question remains, what caused the noise and why could it be heard in spots such as Canada and Costa Rica and even in Kiev, Ukraine.

Speculation High On Social Media

The event has created a buzz on social media networks with everyone speculating about the source and cause of the noise. No authoritative body has yet to comment on the cause of the noise and but what can be confirmed is that there were no earth movements recorded at the time of the sound.

Some believe that the hum could have been created by magnetic waves sent through the stratosphere resulting in the creation of the hum. If that is the case, why hasn’t anyone made an education statement about it. Instead we have been left to our own devices and imaginations to speculate about what caused the noise in the first place.

YouTube has been the only source of information, with two videos posted obtained from Costa Rica and the Ukraine. The comments have resulted in some great theories and possibilities. It is important to note that sometimes the unexplainable can be explained through social media as opinions weigh in.

As everyone has their own opinion, mine is simple. It sounds like someone opened a big window and let the air come in. After All, January is the time for out with the old and in with the new. If it’s the sign of the apocalypse batten down the hatches and let’s see what mother earth has in store for us!
http://costaricacloseup.com/2012/01/11/ ... osta-rica/

- Includes link to Youtube clip.
 
There was a feature on Radio Norfolk's breakfast show last week about someone reporting an ongoing humming sound inside her house in Norwich that only a few people could hear. A number of listeners subsequently texted in to claim that they too had heard the Norwich Hum.

Annoyingly, I can't seem to find any reference to it on the interweb at all, but I'm reasonably certain that I didn't dream it.
 
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