If one guy hears a strange hum, he’s shunned and ostracized from society. As he should be. If a couple people get together and all hear a faint droning noise they are a cult and again rightfully shunned. But when hundreds of people in Taos, New Mexico complain about hearing “a persistent low-frequency sound” then attention must be paid.

What happened in Taos in 1992 is not an isolated incident, but part of wider phenomenon known as The Hum. Since 1950, when the Hum was first reported in London, communities from Wellington, New Zealand to Kokomo, Indiana have complained of hearing this disconcerting and dissonant noise.

Many have described the Hum “as being comparable to that of a distant diesel engine idling.” Furthermore many who hear the Hum notice it more, or only, inside buildings and often it is accompanied by “vibrations that can be felt through the body.”

The most prevalent theme of the Hum is that earplugs do not decrease it in those who suffer its tremors. Such terror makes the Hum distressing to all affected and,

It has been linked to at least three suicides in the UK.

The Hum has continually stayed in the news for the last six decades, prompting the creation of a World Hum database and Mapping Project in December 2012 in order to keep track of the phenomena.

In Taos, New Mexico audiologists noted the noise was “close to 66 hertz, two octaves below middle C, although it could go as low as the lowest E on a piano.”

X-Files devotees will be disappointed to hear that some cities discovered perfectly normal reasons for their Hum epidemics. Kokoma, Indiana spent $100,000 in 2002 to ascertain a Hum blamed for “headaches, diarrhea, fatigue and joint pain, with one [woman] reporting that her health improved when she moved out of town.”

An acoustic consultant determined the noises stemmed from a cooling tower at a local car factory and an air compressor at another factory. When the companies addressed these noises most, but not all, complaints of the Hum ceased.

For other Hum epidemics not so adequately explained a number of theories have been proffered:

1. Fish –

One of the possible causes of the West Seattle Hum considered was that it was related to the Midshipman fish. A previous hum in Sausalito, also on the west coast of the US, was determined to be the mating call of the male Midshipman.

This was ruled out as a primary cause since the mating call cannot penetrate inland.

2. Otoacoustic emissions –

Basically our ears mess with us and between 38-60% of humans are disturbed by noises generated by the ears themselves. However these noises are typically of the same frequency, whereas the Hum has been recorded at a wide range of frequencies.

3. Colliding Waves –

The oceans are toying with us. In 2008 scientists discovered,

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.’

This theory has proven the most tenable theory to explain the bizarre Hum. Though scientists still openly wonder how such an oceanic phenomena could transport the Hum thousands of miles inland.

Until then, you’re not crazy!