Mysterious sounds

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

https://mic.com/articles/91091/a-my...and-nobody-knows-what-s-causing-it#.OddkhWDw7


I'm trying to sleep and this sound is exactly as described. Inside it's louder than outside. It has a perceived direction, sort of. At times, it feels like the inside of your ear is vibrating even if you wear ear protectors. So, it's not just me. Elderly Mom hears it too.

 

[alec_t]

Here's a simple (non-definitive) test you could try.
Get some neighbours round to your house. If they hear the hum when you do then it suggests the source is external to you.
Go to the neighbours houses. If you hear the hum there but they don't it suggests the source is within you (such as a low-frequency form of tinnitus).

 

[jpanhalt]

I agree that one likely cause is some form of tinnitus. However, it is well known that sensory perceptions vary from person to person. That is, the fact that a neighbor doesn't hear it (or smell it) doesn't mean the source is within the subject. Some people may just not hear the LF sound or be susceptible to whatever is causing it.

One very good example of that is the effect of eating asparagus on urine odor. Some people just done't have the ability to smell the odoriferous metabolic products. (While that may be the major cause, there are other complexities.)

John

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

I have tinnitus, but usually at 2600 Hz. Mom had it too, which was unusual. I went outside and it was less in front of the house and louder between the houses and loudest inside.

 

[killivolt]

I hear that sound but, just thought it was from air-pressure inside the house. Maybe a Furnace Blower or My Swamp-cooler depending on the season.

kv

 

[tcmtech]

Had those sounds here all my life. Most of my family can hear it as well.

Personally I find the low drumming beat rather relaxing.

 

[zahwi]

https://mic.com/articles/91091/a-mys...and-nobody-knows-what-s-causing-it#.OddkhWDw7


I'm trying to sleep and this sound is exactly as described. Inside it's louder than outside. It has a perceived direction, sort of. At times, it feels like the inside of your ear is vibrating even if you wear ear protectors. So, it's not just me. Elderly Mom hears it too.

I read the article and accept everything in it. During the last 5 years I read many articles and researches about this subject, I also did my own simple researches.
There are many sources for the VLF that sound like a lorry running outside your house. They are real and hard to detect because they can be very far. It is also hard to detect the direction.
People that can hear VLF can hear it up to 100 times louder than people who aren't sensitive to VLF. This means that there are sounds that only one in 20 people can hear. Once a person is tuned to the sound he can hear it loudly and clearly, people that hear the sound at very low levels can ignore it completely.
Most homes now have double glazed windows and good thermal insulation inside the walls. These block high frequencies but let through VLF. At home you get VLF without the high frequencies noise that destruct your attention from it.
Human brain adjusts its sensitivity to the sounds around. When you are at your quiet home the sensitivity is turned high by your brain and you hear the hum better.
Many people at middle age hear low frequencies better and high frequencies lower.
When you tell your friends or neighbors that you hear a sound that they don't hear they label you as crazy because they are scared of the idea that there is something around them that they can't sense.
I don't hear a hum for the last 3 months but I heard a hum for 3 years before that. The hum affects me in the worst possible way, it turns me angry and violent, it is known side effect. The reason I don't hear a hum now is only because I moved to live in an area that there is no hum.
My first experience with hum started 6 months after moving to my new semi-detached house in Northampton. The neighbor didn't want a foreigner living next door to her so with the help of her friends and family they decided to use noise to drive me away. It started with loud TV and early morning banging on the wall. After 6 months they also learned that the sound from their fan heater attached to the party wall disturbs me. They brought another fan heater to the house and put the two fans running without heat for 18 months 24 hours a day until I sold the house. The old woman who lived there was deaf. Her sons who didn't live there did all the tricks.
3 months after the hum started I moved to live in the garage because the noise was too hard to take. During this time I studied the subject of VLF for the purpose of trying to defend myself. The noise inside my house sounded like a lorry running outside and the highest amplitude was at 35Hz.
From Northampton I moved to France to a house in the country. There was a very similar hum there. It took me several months to find out that the hum source was a quarry 2 miles away that had a saw that stops only every 100 hours or so to load a new piece of granite. I met 2 locals that can hear the hum but they were ignored because most people don't hear it.
Now I live in Nottingham for 3 months and I don't hear any hum.
My advice to you is to go and stay for a few days in another place in another town for a few days and if the hum stops that is likely because there is a hum in your area. You may be lucky and find the source of the noise but you have to be more than lucky to be able to stop it. It is likely that you will have to move to a place that has no hum.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

The hum goes and comes. Mostly at night at bedtime is when I hear it. It could be a train, but I didn't drive out and check. Maybe the next time I hear it, I could. The area of unloading is about 2 miles away.

 

[zahwi]

Yes, a train 2 miles away is a perfect source of hum.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

I agree. I also agree with the double insulated panes of glass in a brick house act as a selective filter/amplifier.

I know that there is a fair amount of train activity at about 10:30 PM which was the time I heard it. That particular section of track I may have to use the bridge over it at certain times of the day. 10:30 PM is prime for that. It's more loading/unloading than passing through.

 

[Overclocked]

Usually I hear a low hum, when people drive around with improper mufflers. Sometimes its subtle enough that you dont know where the car is. Its quite annoying.

Is it possible the low hum could be earth resonating?

It almost reminds me of this video, the sounds the sun makes.

Earth has one as well:
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/28sep_earthsong/

 

[jpanhalt]

I think the possibility of Earth resonating with mufflers at an intensity that you can detect with your ears is pure fantasy.
I also find kids with amplifier systems turned up high enough to rattle windows disturbing, but that is not Earth resonating. It is just fools who are too stupid to do anything useful.

John

 

[Overclocked]

I think the possibility of Earth resonating with mufflers at an intensity that you can detect with your ears is pure fantasy.
I also find kids with amplifier systems turned up high enough to rattle windows disturbing, but that is not Earth resonating. It is just fools who are too stupid to do anything useful.

John

Oh, you misunderstood! I meant that as a separate question with no relation between the two!

 

[atferrari]

At my mother's home, her she dog used to start howling maybe some 15 minutes a train crossed the area. Definitely, the dog was perceiving something that we could not.

 

[zahwi]

I also find kids with amplifier systems turned up high enough to rattle windows disturbing, but that is not Earth resonating. It is just fools who are too stupid to do anything useful.

Please be gentle with us, I used to have such an amplifier, didn't you?

At my mother's home, her she dog used to start howling maybe some 15 minutes a train crossed the area. Definitely, the dog was perceiving something that we could not.

Maybe the train carried dog food.

 

[atferrari]

Please be gentle with us, I used to have such an amplifier, didn't you?


Maybe the train carried dog food.

It seems you missed the point: how far the train was when she detected it.

 

[zahwi]

It seems you missed the point: how far the train was when she detected it.

I can hear trains 7 minutes before they arrived, so your mother's she dog hearing is only 4 times better than mine. It isn't unusual, I've learned from this forum that females have better hearing.

 

[atferrari]

I can hear trains 7 minutes before they arrived, so your mother's she dog hearing is only 4 times better than mine. It isn't unusual, I've learned from this forum that females have better hearing.

I cannot say how far, but given the high speed the train used to cross in the vicinity it was quite distant when the howling started.

Surprisingly, she stopped little after the train was out of sight. Still wondering the reason for the difference. The whole area is really open with no relevant obstructions other than trees, and quite distant.

 

[zahwi]

In modern houses you can't hear the birds in your garden because of the good insulation, but a train or lorry unloading 2 miles away stops you from sleeping, no wonder so many of us are turning mass murderers.

 

[spec]

I think you will find that the noise is in your brain/ auditory system. I had exactly the same thing. When it first started things were going wrong and I was under a load of stress at work. Noboby else could hear it but I figured I had more senitive hjearing and that it was some sort of low dronning cause by vibrations from the traffic on the road about 300 meters (yards) away resonating with the land mass in our area. Then I discovere that the start of the sound coincided with a new pumping station that was built, so I put it down to that.

It got so bad that I was thinking of moving house. I even slept, or tried to, with industrial grade ear defendes. When I had them on, I convinced myself that the sound had gone. After about 5 years of the noise I was in the reference roon of our local library, very quiet, and the sound started up. I asked the librarian if she could hear it. She gave me a funny look and said no!

This went on for about 7 years and it was really getting to me. Then one day our house was completely destroyed by a gas explosion. My wife was in the bathroom with the door closed so, thank god, she was unhurt, but I got the full blast of the flame and explosion. They rushed me to a special burns hopital and patched me up pretty good. We had a couple of years of hell after that, living in temporary accomodation and sorting out the insurance. But I never heard the rumble again.