There’s nothing more distracting than the bass from a house party or the droning sound of an engine outside the window when trying to relax at home. But lately, people have reported hearing strange sounds around the world, notably an interminable humming.

No one has been able to definitively explain this audible annoyance, but some believe it may be related to bizarre operations the government or corporations don’t want us to know about.

Mysterious Hums 

There is a multitude of areas around the world where people claim to hear a strange hum varying in tone and intensity. About two percent of the population can hear it, typically resembling a monotonous subwoofer or diesel truck engine idling in the distance.

There are several well-known cities with a hum, including Taos, New Mexico; Winsdor, Ontario; Auckland, New Zealand; and Bristol, England. In some of these cities, residents have heard the hum for decades, while others say it began just within the past few years.

Some put their homes up for sale and tried to move, others went on medication to take their mind off it, and in the U.K., there have even been three suicides related to it.

Doctors provided inadequate explanations ranging from tinnitus to people focusing too hard on background noises. Those who hear it say earplugs do nothing to silence it, leading some to believe the source is causing vibrations throughout sufferers’ bodies.

In Windsor, Mike Provost created a Facebook group that has grown to include over 2,000 members hearing the hum. Windsor is situated across the river from Detroit and several miles from a small island filled with industrial foundries and steel mills, that many believe to be the source of the hum.

Zug Island is considered Detroit’s Area 51 and every attempt to illuminate operations conducted there is met with staunch resistance from the government and corporations. The island, which was once a Native American burial ground, is heavily guarded by the companies operating there as well as the Department of Homeland Security. Spokespersons for companies operating on Zug Island refuse to disclose their operations, while also denying the possibility they could be the source of the hum.

The hum can only be heard on the Canadian side of the river, no one in Detroit or elsewhere in Michigan can hear it. Some nights, Windsor residents say it gets so loud it shakes their homes and rattles glassware in cupboards.

The Taos Hum and TACAMO

In Taos, a similar hum has been reported by residents since the 1950s. There, descriptions of the hum vary, with locals saying it might not be coming from a single source. Some describe it as a hum, others say it’s more of a whir or buzz.

In an interview with Gaia, Taos resident, Georgie Jones, says she started hearing the hum shortly after she moved to the city, initially believing she was hearing the low end from a stereo system at a nearby house. When she woke up in the morning, she asked her roommates if the neighbor’s rave party kept them awake last night.

“I asked my friends about it and they said, ‘I think you’re hearing the hum,’” Jones said. “It varies, but you hear it usually in the evening or at night. It’ll go every day for several weeks at a time – it’s really annoying.”

Jones said the hum is a single monotonous tone that varies in pulse and intensity. Sometimes the hum is louder than others, but it remains monotone. She said it’s been so bad that she occasionally considers moving out of the city.

Recordings of what the hum supposedly sounds like can be found on YouTube, and after listening to it in the background for 10 minutes, one can understand how distracting and frustrating it is.

One popular theory that many, including Jones, are familiar with, is that the hum comes from a military program which employs very low-frequency radio waves, or VLF, for communication between submarines and aircraft. This idea was first proposed in a paper by David Deming, a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma.

Deming offered a number of possible sources for the hum, including wave frequencies bounced off the ionosphere from HAARP to long-range radio navigation transmitters, a.k.a. LORAN. But the one explanation many have ascribed to is from a military project known as TACAMO, or Take Charge and Move Out.

TACAMO was coined in 1961 and was outfitted on aircraft the following year. TACAMO essentially relays radio frequencies to nuclear-armed submarines telling them to surface and receive commands.

The frequencies sent and received by TACAMO-equipped aircraft are complemented by land-based transmitters, some of which are the most powerful radio stations in the world operating at two million watts.

Most bases where TACAMO missions are conducted are located in coastal areas, which would explain locations like Bristol experiencing the hum. Bristol was also a primary area of submarine operations for the U.S. during the Cold War.

Since the hum is infrequent and nearly impossible to pinpoint, so it would make sense that it might be coming from an aircraft flying sporadic, classified missions.

But there are some flaws in Demings’ theory, such as the fact that there aren’t hums reported in areas of the country where similar high-powered ground transmitters are located. Also, Taos isn’t in a coastal area, it’s in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, at least 900 miles from the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean.

Taos is, however, located a short distance from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a military base originally built for the design of nuclear weapons during the Manhattan Project. Today, it continues to be involved in projects regarding nuclear security, defense, and energy.

The Earth is Vibrating

A popular theory some say puts the hum conundrum to rest is that scientists have discovered the Earth gives off a subtle vibration at a frequency of 10-millihertz. Humans aren’t supposed to be able to hear at this low of a frequency, but some say there is a possibility sensitive ears could pick up on this.

This delicate hum is thought to be caused by the force of the ocean moving against the surface of the planet, creating something called microseisms. These faint Earth tremors are sometimes referred to as a “hum,” though skeptics say this is entirely different than the hum they hear.

Microseisms can create electromagnetic noise signals, but the frequencies heard by those suffering from the hum are significantly higher than 10-millihertz. Many have measured local hums to be somewhere between 30 and 80 Hz.

The average range of human hearing is anywhere between 20 Hz to 20,000 kHz, so the ocean vibration frequency falls significantly below our hearing range. It also wouldn’t explain why it is only heard in specific areas across the world, especially landlocked areas.

So, what are these strange hums? It’s almost certain the Windsor hum is coming from one of the factories on Zug Island, but why is the company being secretive about what’s going on there? And what about the Taos hum? Are these sound frequencies physically harming residents, aside from the lack of sleep and annoyance it’s causing them?

Whatever it is, no one has been able to definitively prove the cause of these mysterious hums. For now, the only solution for sufferers is to either put up with the hum or move away from an area affected by the hum. If neither of these solutions is practical, Dr. Glen Macpherson has devised a way to eliminate the hum by building a VLF-blocking aluminum box, originally proposed by Deming, that looks more like a metal coffin. Macpherson calls it a Deming Box.

Unfortunately, the box isn’t very practical for hum sufferers’ day to day life and is more of a tool to attract media attention to help bring awareness to the inexorable frustration of this small percent of the population.

Will the humming ever stop?