An intermittent rumbling similar to a case investigated on The X-Files has been driving some residents berserk for years – with similar noises heard around the world. The truth is out there ...

What is the Windsor hum and is it really US Steel’s fault?

Name: The Windsor Hum.

Age: About seven years old.

Appearance: Invisible, fleeting.

What is it? An intermittent low juddering or rumbling sound, inaudible to many Windsor residents, but torture to others. It may last minutes, hours or days, before subsiding again.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Click here to hear the Windsor hum for yourself.

Could it be something to do with the castle? Someone’s vacuuming the corgis? Unlikely. This is Windsor, Ontario, a city of around 220,000 people, just across the river from Detroit.

Well they’re Canadians, so they have the same royal family. Just forget the royals for a moment.

If they’re not making the hum, what is? That is the mystery of the hum. Some say it is coming from a secret installation built on a Native American burial ground.

Ha ha. Yes, but seriously. No, there is actually a restricted American steel mill just across the river on Zug Island, that also happens to be a former Native American burial ground. You may scoff ...

I plan to ... But a Canadian government report in 2011 found that Zug Island was the most likely cause, as did a University of Windsor report in 2014. Unfortunately, US Steel won’t let anyone investigate the site, or even discuss what it is for.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Another recording of the Windsor hum.

Sounds like a job for Mulder and Scully. Yes, and they already looked into something similar in 1998, when a man (played by Bryan Cranston, no less) is tortured by what Mulder calls “electrical nerve gas”, which he says “may be behind the so-called Taos hum”.

Another one? Yes, the Taos hum has bothered some residents of Taos, New Mexico for a long time. And similar hums have been reported around the world, everywhere from Auckland to Bristol.

Cripes. Is US Steel trying to take over the world? It may well be, although it probably had nothing to do with all those other hums, which were most likely a combination of traffic and industrial noise.

Boo! Boring. Or people with tinnitus might believe there is a hum. Or people might listen so attentively to background noise that it feels like a hum.

So nuisance hums sometimes happen for a variety of industrial, physiological and psychological reasons? You have a talent for taking the fun out of things.

Do say: “Why does a secret factory built on a Native American burial ground hum?”

Don’t say: “Because it doesn’t know the words.”