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Posted: 12-06-2011 09:10 Post subject:

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/8566281/Tiny-village-is-latest-victim-of-the-The-hum.html

Posted: 13-06-2011 15:10 Post subject:

Are there any particular months of the year when reports of the Hum are most common?

Posted: 13-06-2011 17:16 Post subject:

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

Posted: 13-06-2011 17:31 Post subject:

Posted: 13-06-2011 20:07 Post subject:

Posted: 15-06-2011 08:50 Post subject:

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.

Posted: 15-06-2011 11:24 Post subject:

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.

Posted: 15-06-2011 18:04 Post subject:

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.

Posted: 25-08-2011 14:47 Post subject:

Windsor abuzz with mystery hum rocking neighborhoods late at night, early morning

Posted: 25-08-2011 16:34 Post subject:

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.

Posted: 31-08-2011 10:07 Post subject:

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.

Posted: 31-08-2011 20:49 Post subject:

Perhaps it's a generator on a farm nearby? Perhaps the farmer needs extra power for something...milking the cows?

Posted: 01-09-2011 09:45 Post subject:

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.

Posted: 01-09-2011 17:58 Post subject:

The Deros are obviously about to break through to our world.

Posted: 01-09-2011 20:46 Post subject:

Top secret underground facility?