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People around the world say they are hearing a mysterious drone that has been dubbed The World Hum.
© Low Frequency Hum Sufferers/Facebook |
April 18, 2016 - EARTH - Glen MacPherson first heard the Hum in 2012. He was in Sechelt when he
detected a low-level drone that he thought was coming from nearby float
planes. Over time, he started to realize the Hum had nothing to do with
planes and tried to figure out what exactly was going on. So, he did
what most people do when they have an unanswered question: he Googled
it.
He found out he wasn't alone. MacPherson
discovered an online community of people who say they have been hearing a mysterious drone that has been dubbed The World Hum.
"Much to my surprise, it turns out I was one of the people who can sense
what seems to be a very unusual low-frequency sound," he said.
Four years later, when curious people like MacPherson Google information about the Hum, they come across his website,
The World Hum Map and Database.
MacPherson, a schoolteacher in Gibsons who has also worked as an
instructor at the University of British Columbia, says he wanted to
apply a measure of scientific rigour to this unexplained phenomenon, so
he created the database to track reports from people around the world
who say they too hear the Hum.
MacPherson has heard from thousands of people from locations as far as
Iceland, New Zealand, Kazakhstan and the Philippines. The data, he
admits, is skewed since the site only reaches English speakers. He plans
to the translate the site into Chinese, which means he could get a
flood of new data from the world's most populous country. He says if you
look at the data he has accumulated, a few things stand out.
"I caution anybody who looks at the Hum Map to not be distracted by the
high concentration of points on the Eastern Seaboard of the US and, in
particular, over in England. Over in England, it would appear that
they're being absolutely clobbered," MacPherson said.
He also notes that Vancouver Island has a "significantly higher concentration of Hum reports."
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| The World Hum Map and Database Project. © The Hum Info |
So what is the Hum?
MacPherson says the Hum may be a relatively recent phenomenon, with a
significant number of reports first emerging in the late 60 and early
70s.There are three major theories as to what is causing the Hum. The
main suspect is very low-frequency (VLF) radio emissions that are used
by the military to communicate with submarines.
"When I say VLF, I'm not referring to sound," MacPherson said. "That
leads to another striking and startling conclusion, the fact that the
Hum may not be a sound in the traditional sense. It may be the body's
reaction to a particular band of radio frequencies. That's not an
outrageous idea. The concept that the body can interpret certain
electromagnetic frequencies as sound is reasonably well-established in
research literature."
Another theory is that the World Hum is "nothing more than the grand
accumulation of human activity" that could include noise from highways,
marine traffic, mining, windmill farms, hydroelectric dams and other
forms of industry.
In 2014, a federally funded study confirmed a
humming noise in Windsor, Ont., known as the Windsor Hum, emanated from an island across the Detroit River.
An acoustic monitoring study showed the rumbling was real and reached
Windsor from heavily industrial Zug Island in River Rouge, Mich.
However, the investigation - done by scientists at the University of
Windsor and Western University - failed to pinpoint just what was
causing the phenomenon. A third theory is that the noise stems from
geological processes at work.
Then there's the idea that people who hear the Hum are just suffering
from tinnitus, a medical condition that results in a ringing of the
ears. David Demings, a University of Oklahoma professor who was one of
the first researchers to examine the Hum, noted that "Hum symptoms are
distinctly different from classic tinnitus. Tinnitus is typically a
high-frequency ringing sound — not a low-frequency rumble."
"What I always like to point out about tinnitus is that it's
self-reported," MacPherson said. "There is no external metric for it. If
we believe that tinnitus is real, then the question is what
differentiates it from reports of the World Hum?"
There are plenty of other more far-fetched theories out there, and MacPherson has heard them all.
"Whenever you're dealing with something unexplained, it invites all
manner of people who have creative ways of interpreting reality," he
says diplomatically.
Part of his work, he says, is using his science background to separate
plausible theories from crazed conspiracies that circulate online.
"It's plant life, it's huge boring tunnel machines, it's weather
projects, it's aliens," he says. "At least we didn't hear about the
Illuminati."
MacPherson understands that some might think that he is no different
than some of the conspiracy theorists who visit his site. But he says
his dedication to the scientific method is what separates him from the
tinfoil-hat crowd.
What's in the box?
A
recent article in the New Republic
outlined MacPherson's experiment with a so-called Deming Box. Named
after the professor who first delved into this phenomenon, the steel box
is designed to "create within it a VLF radio free space." If a person
who can hear the Hum gets into the box and no longer detects the noise,
that could suggest VLF radio waves are the culprit.
Shortly after the article was published, MacPherson got inside the box
to see what would happen. He said he got "mixed results" and plans to
move the box to an undisclosed location on the Sunshine Coast and try
again.
"If I get a positive result, I've got a handful of volunteers on the
Sunshine Coast who can hear the Hum and who are ready to go in as well,"
he said.
He also plans to continue maintaining the database, which he says has
helped him connect with people who are also looking for answers.
"There are large numbers of perfectly sensible, everyday individuals and
this is what we all have in common. We can hear this noise." -
Global News.
