Is anyone here affected by this strange, mysterious phenomenon?
The so-called Hum, in German "Brummtonphänomen", is known since decades, maybe even centuries already, and the only thing that is known for sure is that we know nothing for sure.
It is a low humming sound that is heared by approximatley 2% of the population. There seems to be changing sensibility over a person's life, with a climax in the years between 50 and 70, and twice as many women than men seem to be affected.
The Hum is typically heard by night, often one can note quite clearly when it is "switched on", and off again.
It is not even clear whether the Hum represents just one or several different kind of phenomenons. One thing is clear, however: it is no tinnitus, we are not talking about a nervous illness or suffering of the nerves. Tinnitus patients locate the subjective soundsource inside their ears or skull, whereas the Hum is described as being located clearly in the outside environment, though a direction is almost impossible to be given.
The walls of buildings and rooms can serve as amplifying the volume at which the hum is to be heard. It often gets described or referred to as a distant Diesel running, construction machines at far distance, or a water pump running, or the sound that badly isolated tubes of teleheating system can create. If it is hard, it is coming from everywhere, and it is everywhere.
Theories are many, from tectonic acitvities of continental plates, to waves hitting the rocks on a distant shore, electromagnetic fields around powerplants and gridlines, and cosmic radiation. The ELF communication system of the US navy to radio its submarines around the globe is loved to get quoted by certain guys. The latest I read was about gravitational waves
. The most absurd theory said it are aliens telling us they come for dinner - with us being their meal. Microwave-cooking over a distance, so to speak.
It can be technology-caused, but reports on people hearing a strange humming sound date back centuries already. In Britain it became known since the 50s, in America it was examined in depth in New Mexico in the town of Taos in the be late 80s (thus the phenomeneon often gets called as The Taos Hum), and since some years there even are live recordings of the sound in the air. This is critical, since there are as many explanations for accoustic wave sources as there are theories for electromagnetic wave sources. We know that some people can "hear'" the Aurora Borealis, some people can hear the entrance of meteors into the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere , both phenomenons produce immense quantums of electromagnetic energy that the human body may fetch up like an antenna would do - maybe with the nervous system or parts of the brain, both functioning bioelectrical, or with the skin. Accoustic waves can be received also by the bones of the human body, and the skin.
In the early sixties, a scientist at the Cornell university in New York demonstrated that people who since their birth had no aural nerves, could get accoucstic perceptions by exposing their brain to (harmless) electromagnetic waves. It got described as a cracking, chaotic rumbling sound. While maintainign the exposition, the perception could be interrupted when putting a plaster with I think metallic fibres on their foreheads, so that the exposition of the brain was reduced or completly blocked.
Some people claim they can listen to radars operating in certain low frequency ranges.
TBC.