The Taos Hum
The ‘Taos Hum’ is a low-pitched sound heard in numerous
places worldwide, especially in the USA, UK, and northern europe. It is usually
heard only in quiet environments, and is often described as sounding like a
distant diesel engine. Since it has proven indetectable by microphones or VLF
antennae, its source and nature is still a mystery.
In 1997 Congress directed scientists and observers from some
of the most prestigious research institutes in the nation to look into a
strange low frequency noise heard by residents in and around the small town of
Taos, New Mexico. For years those who had heard the noise, often described by
them as a “hum”, had been looking for answers. To this day no one knows the
cause of the hum.
The Hum
The Hum is a phenomenon, or collection of phenomena,
involving a persistent and invasive low-frequency humming, rumbling, or droning
noise not audible to all people. Hums have been widely reported by national
media in the UK and the United States. The Hum is sometimes prefixed
with the name of a locality where the problem has been particularly publicized:
e.g., the "
Bristol Hum",
the "
Taos Hum", or the "
Bondi Hum".
Data from a Taos Hum study suggests that a minimum of two
percent and
perhaps as many as 11 percent of the population could detect
the Taos Hum and the Daily Telegraph in 1996 likewise reported a
figure of two percent of people hearing the Bristol Hum. For those who can hear
the Hum it can be a very disturbing phenomenon and it has been linked to at
least three suicides in the UK. However, amongst those who cannot hear the
hum and some specialists, there has been skepticism about whether it, in fact,
exists.
Description
The essential element that defines the Hum is what is
perceived as a persistent low-frequency sound, often described as being
comparable to that of a distant
diesel
engine idling, or to some similar low-pitched sound for which obvious
sources (e.g., household appliances, traffic noise, etc.) have been ruled out.
There are a number of audio reproductions of the Hum available on the web.
Other elements seem to be significantly associated with the
Hum, being reported by an important proportion of hearers, but not by all of
them. Some people hear the Hum only, or much more, inside buildings as compared
with outdoors. Some perceive vibrations that can be felt through the body.
Earplugs are reported as not decreasing the Hum.
The Daily Telegraph reported that two percent of people
could hear the Bristol Hum. Research into the Taos Hum indicated that between
two percent and 11 percent of people could hear the hum, with the actual figure
likely being at the lower end of the range. The hum does appear to be
geographically focused, i.e. it does appear to be possible for hearers to move
away from it; the range of the Taos Hum was reported to be 48 km to
72 km. Women may be more likely to be affected than men. Age does appear
to be a factor, with older people being more likely to hear it.
On November 15, 2006, Dr. Tom Moir of the
Massey
University in
Auckland,
New Zealand made
a recording of the Auckland Hum and has published it on the university's
website. The captured Hum's
power spectral density peaks at a
frequency of
56
hertz. The
Taos Hum was between 40 to 80 hertz. Higher-pitched tones have also been
reported; the Hueytown (Alabama) Hum has been compared the sound to that made
by a dentist’s drill or the sound made by a fluorescent light bulb near the end
of its life.
In 2009, the head of audiology at
Addenbrooke's Hospital in
Cambridge, Dr
David Baguley, said that he believed people's problems with hum were based on
the physical world about one-third of the time and the other two-thirds stemmed
from people focusing too keenly on innocuous background sounds.
Image: strangesounds.org
History
Only a handful of articles have been published in the
scientific literature including Deming, 2004; Broner, 1978; Cowan, 2003;
Fox, 1989; Leventhall, 2003; Mullins & Kelly, 1995, 1998; Hanlon,
1973; Vasudevan & Gordon, 1977; Wilson, 1979.
The World Hum Database and Mapping Project was launched in
December 2012, in order to build detailed mappings of hum locations and to
provide a database of Hum-related data for professional and independent
researchers.
London and Southampton, United Kingdom 1940s
More than 2,000 people reported hearing sounds dating back
to the 1940s in the London and Southampton areas of Great Britain. Deming cited
Glasgow, Scotland's Sunday Herald 1995 report claiming that the Hum
was, "first reported in the late 1950s when people in Britain began to
report hearing a most unusual noise—a combination of a humming, droning, and
buzzing sound."
Bristol Hum, Bristol, Britain 1979
In Britain, the most famous example was the Bristol Hum that
made headlines in the late 1970s.
Largs, Scotland 1980s
Since the 1980s, the Hum has been bothering people living in
coastal towns in the west coastal area of Scotland including Largs, a coastal
town about 31 km west of Glasgow.
Taos Hum, Taos, New Mexico, USA 1992
It was in 1992 that the Hum phenomenon began to be reported
in
North America following complaints from many
citizens living near the town of
Taos,
New Mexico.
The University of New Mexico undertook studies of hum
sufferers in Taos. One of the researchers reported that the Hum was close
to 66 hertz, two octaves below middle C, although it could go as low as the
lowest E on a piano.
An ongoing low frequency noise, audible only to some, is
thought to originate somewhere near this town and is consequently sometimes
known as the Taos Hum. Those who have heard the Hum usually hear it west of
Taos near Tres Orejas. The Taos Hum was featured on the TV show
Unsolved Mysteries, and it was also briefly
mentioned in an episode of
The X-Files.
Kokomo, Indiana, USA 1999
Kokomo, a city of 47,000, allocated $100,000 in 2002 to
investigate a hum after nearly 100 complaints were made since 1999. Some
sufferers blamed physical symptoms on the hum, including headaches, nausea,
diarrhea, fatigue, and joint pain, with one reporting that her health improved
when she moved out of the town. In November 2002, Acentech was hired by
the Board of Public Works and Safety of the City of Kokomo to investigate the Hum.
Following a public meeting held 2 December 2002, Acentech investigation of
acoustic sources did not find any conclusive cause and suggested non-acoustic
phenomena, such as microwave (radio frequency) hearing, electrosensitivity,
chemical sensitivity, hypersensitivity to natural geomagnetic phenomena may
cause the "types of symptoms that these people are experiencing."
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada pre-2003
The Hum has also been heard since before 2003 by residents
on Canada's southwest Coast in the region around the city of Vancouver.
Woodland, County Durham, England 2011
In June 2011, residents of the small rural village of
Woodland, England reported experiencing
a hum that had already lasted for over two months.
Windsor, Ontario, Canada 2011
This phenomenon, first noticed in 2009, has also been
reported since 2011 throughout
Windsor and
Essex County in
Ontario,
Canada. A 2011 study by
Earthquakes Canada indicated
that it may be originating from the heavily-industrialised
Zug Island area
on the US side of the Detroit river. A two-hour telephone town hall
meeting in 2012 received calls from 13,000 residents, with another 9,000
leaving comments over the next week, although not all of those were from people
who could hear the hum.
In 2013 the Canadian Government allocated $60,000 for
research by the
University of Windsor to determine the
source of the noise. As of April 2013, a Canadian scientist is using
sound-level meters and a portable "pentangular array" of cameras and
microphones to try and precisely identify the source of the sound, in order to
know who exactly to ask to fix it.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada 2008
The volunteer Ranchlands Noise Investigation Team began
investigating the Ranchlands hum in 2008. Marcia Epstein, an acoustic ecologist
at the
University of Calgary and a member of
the Ranchlands Noise Investigation Team, described the hum as "a
concentration of frequencies around 40 hertz, and 40 cycles per
second", sometimes described as a "vibrational
feeling", affecting "12 to 20 per cent of the community."
County Kerry, Ireland 2012
The Hum has also frustrated residents in
County
Kerry, Ireland. This led to it being raised in the Irish
Parliament by
Michael
Healy-Rae, who personally heard the Hum. The official response was
described by Healy-Rae as "away with the fairies
gobbledygook."
Seattle, Washington, USA 2012
The phenomenon was also recorded in 2012 in
Seattle, where
some residents report having heard it in previous years.
Wellington, New Zealand 2012
In
Wellington, New Zealand the City Council was flooded with
complaints about a mysterious hum.
Italian National Research Council, ISTI, Pisa, Italy, 2013
In
Pisa, Italy the ISTI institute for Science and Technology of the
Italian
CNR researchers
are reporting of a very disturbing hum especially in the area of the High
Performance Computing Laboratory. After some investigations, people from the
maintenance department have declared the problem solved. The hum remains and
annoyed people remain as well.
Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, 2013
Loud sounds were heard in many places of this city, these
noises commonly are heard by the night
Colima, Colima, Mexico, 2013
Loud industrial sounds were heard mostly in downtown at
afternoon.
Possible explanations
Some explanations of hums for which no definitive source has
been found have been put forth. These include:
Tinnitus
A suggested diagnosis of
tinnitus, a
disturbance of the auditory system, is used by some physicians in response to
complaints about The Hum. Tinnitus is generated internally by the auditory and
nervous systems, with no external stimulus. However, the theory that the Hum is
actually
tinnitus fails
to explain why the Hum can be heard only at certain geographical locations, to
the degree those reports are accurate. There may exist individual differences
as to the threshold of perception of acoustic or non-acoustic stimuli, or other
normal individual variations that could contribute to the perception of the Hum
by some people in the population and not by others.
While the Hum is hypothesized by some to be a form of low
frequency tinnitus such as the
venous hum,
some sufferers claim it is not internal, being worse inside their homes than
outside. However, others insist that it is equally bad indoors and outdoors.
Some people notice the Hum only at home, while others hear it everywhere they
go. Some sufferers report that it is made worse by soundproofing (e.g.,
double
glazing), which serves only to decrease other environmental noise, thus
making the Hum more apparent.
People who both suffer from tinnitus and hear the Hum
describe them as qualitatively different, and many hum sufferers can find
locations where they do not hear the hum at all. An investigation by a team of
scientists in Taos dismissed the possibility that the Hum was tinnitus as
highly unlikely.
Spontaneous otoacoustic emissions
Human ears generate their own noises, called
spontaneous
otoacoustic emissions, which affects between
38 percent to 60 percent of people, although the majority are unaware of these
sounds. The people who hear these sounds typically hear a faint buzzing or
ringing, especially if they are otherwise in complete silence. However,
these emissions occur with equal frequency across age groups within the
population, and the Hum typically occurs in regional clusters and to older
people. Recordings of sounds that appear to be the Hum, such as that made
in Auckland, would indicate that otoacoustic emissions cannot explain all
occurrences of the Hum.
Colliding ocean waves
On early June, 2008 an article published in
Proceedings of the Royal Society announced
the location of a "hum hotspot", an "energetic source area
stretching from the Labrador Sea to south of Iceland, where wind patterns are
especially conducive to generating oppositely traveling waves of same period,
and the ocean depth is favourable for efficient
microseism generation
through the ‘organ pipe’ resonance of the
compression
waves." Researchers from the USArray Earthscope have tracked down
a series of
infrasonic humming noises produced by waves crashing
together and thence into the ocean floor, off the North-West coast of the USA.
Potentially, sound from these collisions could travel to many parts of the
globe.
Mechanical devices
In the case of
Kokomo,
Indiana, a city with heavy industries, the origin of the hum was thought to
have been traced to two sources. The first was a pair of fans in a
cooling
tower at the local
DaimlerChrysler casting plant emitting a 36 Hz
tone. The second was an
air
compressor intake at the Haynes International plant emitting a
10 Hz tone. After those devices were corrected, however, the hum
persisted.
Fish
Media coverage
The Taos Hum was featured on the TV show
Unsolved Mysteries. It was also featured
in
LiveScience's
"Top Ten Unexplained Phenomena", where it took tenth place.
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