Have you heard 'the Hum'?

BBC ^ | May 19th, 2009

[TaraP]

For decades, hundreds of people worldwide have been plagued by an elusive buzzing noise known as "the Hum". Some have blamed gas pipes or power lines, others think their ears are faulty. A few even think sinister forces could be at work. "It's a kind of torture, sometimes you just want to scream," exclaims retired head teacher Katie Jacques. Sitting in the living room of her home in the suburbs of Leeds, the 69-year-old grandmother describes the dull drone she says is making her life a misery. Most visitors hear nothing, but to Katie the noise is painful, vivid and constant. "It has a rhythm to it - it goes up and down. It sounds almost like a diesel car idling in the distance and you want to go and ask somebody to switch the engine off - and you can't." Katie says she no longer has any quiet moments and getting a good night's sleep has become impossible. "It's worst at night. It's hard to get off to sleep because I hear this throbbing sound in the background and you know what it's like when you can't get to sleep and you're tossing and turning and you get more and more agitated about it."

[devane617]

Taos????? I get a humming in my head each time I go to Taos....

[yldstrk]

I’ll tell you what it is.........she’s batty

[SatinDoll]

She probably has tinnitus. I’ve had it all my life. It can be very annoying but she needs to get over herself.

[TaraP]

Ping.. 'Cover-up' So what is the cause? Various features of modern life have been blamed - gas pipes, power lines, mobile phone masts, wind farms, nuclear waste, even low-frequency submarine communications. The internet is abuzz with rumour and speculation. There are dark mutterings about secret military activity, alien contact and government cover-ups. The hum even featured in an episode of the sci-fi drama "The X-Files". Such conspiracy theories are understandable, but unhelpful, according to Dr David Baguley, who's head of audiology at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. He estimates that in about a third of cases there is some environmental source that can be tracked down and dealt with. "It may be a fridge or an industrial fan or a piece of heavy machinery at a nearby factory that is causing the disturbance and can be switched off," he says. Most of the time, however, there is no external noise that can be recorded or identified. "People do come up with some strongly constructed, sometimes strange theories," says Dr Baguley

[wastedyears]

60 cycle hum

[fortunate sun]

I know exactly the sound they are referring to.

[Anti-Bubba182]

She should turn off the vibrator.

[Pablo64]

Only things around our place that hum are the alpacas, but it's a nice, pleasant kind of hum, so they can't be causing it.

Maybe this is all in their heads??

[Jagdgewehr]

Sitting in the living room of her home in the suburbs of Leeds, the 69-year-old grandmother describes the dull drone she says is making her life a misery.

Turn off the TV, Grandma. That dull droning is B. Hussein 0bama giving a press conference.

[TaraP]

Bad vibrations

The hum is a phenomenon that has been reported in towns and cities across the world from Vancouver in Canada to Auckland in New Zealand.

In Britain, the most famous example was the so-called “Bristol hum” that made headlines in the late 1970s. One newspaper asked readers in the city: “Have you heard the Hum?” Almost 800 people said they had.

The problem persisted for years. Residents complained of sleep loss, headaches, sickness and nosebleeds. Experts eventually found traffic and factories were to blame.

There have been other cases in Cheshire, Cornwall, Gloucestershire, London, Shropshire, Suffolk and Wiltshire.

A low-pitched drone known as the “Largs hum” has troubled the coastal town of Largs in Strathclyde for more than two decades.

At least one suicide in the UK has been linked with the hum.

[Old Professer]

High blood pressure

[knarf]

Sistahhh !

I live with locusts every waking moment ... no one knows except others with tinitus.

[balch3]

Mr Bell, Mr Art Bell, please pick up the courtesy phone.

[whodathunkit]

Faulty power supply in the Matrix.

Take a blue pill and go back to bed.

[Star Traveler]

I’ve got ringing in my ears... does that count?

I’ve had it for about 30 years. Some days it’s worse and others better, but it never goes away. I’ve just gotten used to it.

Heck, you can get used to anything, I think. If you heard drums all the time, you would get used to that. I used to live in a place where the train would go by at around 5 AM every day and lay on its horn when crossing the main street. After a while, I never heard it any more... LOL..

I almost have to ask why anyone would write some article about this. I can’t see any reason, from what was in the article, to be any more concerned about this than someone having a mole, or a limp or whatever other ailment.

I mean, it’s almost like me getting a newspaper article written about me, because I got a cold last week. What’s the big deal? ... LOL...

[Star Traveler]

Oh, and another thing..., when I was a kid I used to be able to hear the high-pitched whine of the TV, when it was on. But, I can’t hear that anymore, over the ringing in my ears...

[bubbacluck]

Bad vibrations

Is this a cover version of a parallel universe "evil" Beach Boys hit tune?

[SatinDoll]

Locusts, eh?

My background noise sounds exactly like the static produced by a switched on television when nothing is being broadcast.

I’ve read that “static” is actually the residual sound left over by the BIG BANG when it occurred 13 billions of years ago.

[exDemMom]

I’ve had tinnitis ever since I can remember. While it would be nice to know why, it’s not something I’m going to obsess over.

I find that having some other sound going on helps to mask the tinnitis. Maybe what this lady needs is to make her house less quiet, so she has something more pleasant to focus on. A white noise generator might help.

Tinnitis has many forms. For me, it’s two or three high pitched constant tones. Sometimes I hear an extra tone of a different pitch, but it typically fades away after a while.