December 9, 2014 • 37 mins
There is a mysterious droning sound often described as like a diesel engine idling that is severely impacting the quality of life of 2 percent of people in places around the world. The thing is, no one knows what's causing it - or if it actually exists.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And I would
say it's stuff you should know, but it's not because
I haven't said Jerry, and now I did, So this
is stuffer. Yes, are people going crazy yet? I don't know.
(00:31):
There's probably some people who started going crazy in the
moment they hit play. Yeah, that's Chuck's version of the hum. Yeah,
capital T, capital H. Yeah. So the home you just
did it makes sense. It's a hum. But apparently, like
if you'd listened, I don't. I wonder if you can
hear the same thing I'm hearing because you're hearing it
in your head. But there's like a gravelly quality to it,
(00:55):
the vocal fry. Okay, if you want to call it that,
I say gravel, but it's not. It wasn't constant. The
gravelly thing gave it texture and it was kind of
broken up a little bit. That is more akin to
the hum than the unbroken part that was going throughout. Yeah.
So apparently, while this is called the hum, and we
(01:16):
should eventually explain what we're talking about, it's not the
classical definition of a hum that people here, right, It's
not it's it's it's like a diesel truck idling engine
idling is with a classic description of it. Yeah, the um.
That term vocal fry is one of those you ever
hear or learn of a new expression or a thing
and they've never heard of and then you see it
(01:36):
everywhere that is called the bottom mine huff phenomenon. And
that's happening to me with vocal fry. Where did you
hear that? I can't remember where I initially heard it,
But it's a thing now that they say um, like
Kim Kardashian is who they always blame. It's a vocal
affectation that's supposedly young women are using now where they
(01:56):
go into a that lower tone um, that grably tone
on certain like the ends of sentences. You I know you.
I heard that too, and it supposedly keeps them from
being promoted at work or something. Yeah. Yeah, And it's
the female equivalent of the guys who speak up yeah,
or all the valley girl thing, which is up speak,
like the valley girls talking like that. But now it's um.
(02:20):
You know, he was a nice guy. But I really
wasn't sure what his motivation was. Oh, okay, yeah, that's
a great interesting that's because it was dead on. Yeah,
I totally got that you had pigtails just now. Yeah.
I was talking Emily about it the other day. She
was like, do I do that? It's like, now, you
don't do that? No, you don't. I just did that,
didn't I a little bit? But you you were doing
(02:41):
a different voice, So it makes sense. Yeah, anyway, I
can't escape it now. It's like every other day since
i've heard it, I've seen something about vocal frying. And
if you notice people with vocal frymore all the time, Okay, yeah,
it's annoying. Like what you're describing now has really nothing
to do with the hump, but it actually does have
a lot in common with the hum in that kind
(03:02):
of People who hear the hum um tended to be
able to focus in on it more and more easily
the more that they're exposed to it, which is the
opposite of what should happen to a noise that really
is inconsequential in the environment. That's right. So what we're
talking about here, Chuck, is the hum with a capital H.
(03:24):
That's right, what what is it? Well, it is um.
It is a sound, a mysterious sound that is heard
in places around the world by about two per cent
of the local population. Um. It is a low frequent
and we're going to get into the frequencies and all that,
but let's just call it a low frequency rumbling right now.
(03:46):
It's a drone. It's a vibration described sometimes as it
sounds like it's coming from nowhere or inside my own head. Um.
And it is. There are places all around the world where,
like I said, a very small population of people experience
this hum. And depending on where you are, they will
(04:07):
name it that home like the Auckland hume, the wings
are hum, the Bristol hume. Yeah, the Talos hum and um.
It's been described, you know, going back to the eighteen hundreds.
People have talked about it in literature, but really in
the nineteen fifties, sixties and seventies in the modern world
is when people have started describing hearing this thing that
(04:28):
drives them batty basically, and one of the ways that
it drives them batties. They'll say do you hear that?
And everyone else in the room will say no. The
people's yeah, and they'll be like, how do you what
do you mean you don't hear that, and everybody else
in the room goes, okay, right, maybe you're a little wacky.
It is generally at night. It's worse at night, for sure,
(04:51):
and generally in more rural areas. Um, which makes sense
because it's not as much noise pollution, I think. Yeah. Um.
It also is tends to be worse indoors, so at night,
which is a little weird. Indoors means that you don't
get much sleep because this is something that you can't
not focus on. People who suffer from the hume tend
(05:13):
to say that it dominates the soundscape. It's not something
they can just tune out. It's not something that they're
getting used to. And again, the more the more they're
exposed to it, the easier they say it is to
tune into it, and I guess become cognizant of it
yet again, so imagine about it. Yeah, and imagine being
plagued by a sound that does this to you and
(05:36):
that everyone else says is not real because they don't
hear it. Yeah, and it it's been I mean, we'll
get into the reasons that it maybe or may not
be happening, but it's been uh pass off as mass
hysteria UM or mass dellusion UM from everything from that
to like government conspiracy to uh legitimate legitimate noise, whether
(06:02):
or not it's acoustic or electromagnetic. And that's part of
the problem is is there one hum? There are lots
of harms. Is there no harm? You know, your your
skeptics will say there is no harm. It's tenatus or
it's something like that UM or some other inner ear
noise like odo acoustic noise UM. So who knows, but
(06:26):
that's there. There are two ways that the hum. Okay,
so again, let's let's restate this and let's put ourselves
in the position of the outsider, because I don't experience them.
So I am anced. I don't either knock on wood
because the more I researched it some more I'm like,
oh God, I hope I never do well. We we
left out one um, one quality of it that that
is common around the world. And when we say around
(06:48):
the world, it tends to be curiously concentrated in the
West um and in the euro I didn't notice that
euro ancestry West. Yeah, I didn't really see anything about
any countries in the East. If you look at UM,
if you look at there is a guy who runs
a m Glenn McPherson. Yes, Glenn McPherson runs something called
(07:11):
the World HUM Map and Database. And we ran into
Glen mic Ferson. Before we get too far, we should
give a huge shout out to Jared Keller over at
Mike who wrote this amazing article called a mysterious sound
is driving people insane and nobody knows what's causing it.
Totally worth reading UM. And he talks about a guy
named Glenn McPherson who's a professor in UH British Columbia,
(07:35):
and he set up a website called the World HUM
Map and Database. And so anybody who hears the HUM
can go and fill out a questionnaire and then it
takes that data and puts a dot on the map,
and you can hover over the dot and get the data. Right.
If you look at it, it's just the United States,
Great Britain, your Western Europe, Canada, South Africa. It's pretty
(07:57):
it's it's unusual that there's nothing in Africa except South Africa. UM.
And it's just in these European ancestry Western countries. Right.
On the one hand, you could say, well, that's because
this is an English language database, thanks, and so of
course somebody whose native languages like Swahili isn't gonna go
(08:19):
onto this. I have no idea what I'm typing here,
but yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's one explanation. There are
other explanations too, and now we arrive at one of them.
We're going back on the outside because you don't hear
the hump. I don't hear the hump. And let's say
that we're your nose and throat guys, and somebody comes
to us and says, I'm going crazy, like I'm seriously
contemplating suicide because this hum is keeping me up at night.
(08:42):
I haven't slept at weeks. I'm irritable, I have headaches,
nose bleeds, I'm nauseated all the time. These are all
common symptoms of HUM sufferers. You're you're gonna think one
of two things as a doctor a physician. One is tonitus, yeah,
and then the other one is you're crazy that you're
(09:04):
you're driving yourself crazy. Um. Both of them can kind
of be explained away, and they are explained away by
this guy named David Demming, and he is a geoscientist
from University of Oklahoma, and he wrote what is probably
the definitive study on the harm so far back in
two thousand four. That's right, So Demming apparently if you
(09:27):
look at his research, there is another theory. Uh. And
this is where the US government comes into play, because
there's a couple of UM. There's a couple of theories
revolving around the US military and whether or not they
are causing this UM. One is with their High Frequency
Active Auroral Research Program h a a ARP in Alaska
(09:51):
and they transmit RF signals into the Hono sphere. And
very well, we should we go ahead and start talking
about the frequency ranges VLF and e l F. VLF
is very low frequency and those are waves at point
one hurts and the other one is e l F. Right,
(10:14):
is there extremely low frequencies and they're in the range
of UM the same amount of hurts, but their wavelength
is up to like a hundred thousand meters. Right, that's
an extremely long wavelength. That's right. And UM people who think,
you know, they call them HUM investigators, Uh, they believe
pretty much that it is VLF and e L f tones, UM,
(10:37):
that are driving these people crazy, and those tones can
drive you crazy. They do have adverse effects on the body. Um.
You know you you probably heard it about a lot
when it comes to like cell phone radiation that kind
of thing. Yeah. But UM, whether or not E l
F and VLF is or are the hum is what's
(10:57):
a matter of much debate. It is matter of debate
because and it's also kind of a matter of faith
because what you're talking about there with UM E l
F and vlf frequencies is uh tones. Those are radio
waves and radio is part of the electromagnetic spectrum, right,
So it has been shown at very very high frequencies,
(11:21):
humans can detect electro magnetics sound. We take it as sound,
which is weird because it's not supposed to happen like that,
but that's how we experience it. It's not like at
a high frequency we suddenly see it. We hear it.
And if you are familiar with the UM comment six
that the European Space Agency recently landed on, which is crazy,
(11:45):
that comment was found to emit a an electromagnetic clicking sound,
which is how we experience electromagnets or electromagnetic sound at
a certain frequency, and so because it's a clicking sound,
it's not a hum at all. Some people are saying, well,
that doesn't make any sense. This is a hum. It
doesn't if we can hear it, it's it's it doesn't
(12:08):
sound like an idoling diesel engine. It sounds like a
clicking sound or something like that. And then what's more,
what this guy is saying is that if it's a
very low frequency or extremely low frequency, that's the opposite
of how we hear electromagnetic radiation. We heard a very
high frequency, not a very low frequency. So which one
(12:28):
is it. So, yes, it's still a huge matter of
debate even as to whether the hum. First of all,
if it does exist, if it's a single source, single source,
and then um, if it is a single source or
any kind of source, is it electromagnetic or is it acoustic?
And we'll unpack the difference between those things right after this.
(12:58):
So as whether or not the hum exist. The Canadian
government actually part of the problem is it's hard to
get research done on this because very small number of
people experience it, and a lot of them are called crackpots. Yeah,
so it's tough to get funding for research. But Luckily,
there's a country called Canada that will fund things like this,
(13:19):
and uh Dr Colin novak Um spent a year listening
to the Windsor Home in Ontario, and what they found
was the hum is real. And they traced the source
in that case too um on the Michigan side of
the Detroit River. UM and basically a steel plant on
Zug Island. Then that sounds like an industrial plant, ily does,
(13:41):
and it supposedly generates a lot of VLF waves UM
when they're operating. So in this instance, at least the
HUM was a real thing, and they found out it
was a tone created from basically an industrial plant, right,
So they apparently took steps to cut down on whatever
energy it was emitting. Yeah, they turned off the HUM
(14:03):
machine right exactly, and all of a sudden, um. Some
people said, hey, that worked, a lot of people said
that did absolutely nothing. The home's still out there. And
then the most people said, I still don't know what
you're talking about. So that that and that wasn't actually
the first time government has looked into the hum. In Taos,
New Mexico, there's something called the Taos Home and apparently,
(14:26):
uh somebody wrote in to complain about it to a
local newspaper, and all of a sudden, like hundreds more
people said, yes, I hear the same thing. I've been
hearing the same thing for years. What is going on?
And enough of enough people said something in New Mexico
that it prompted an investigation by the University of New
Mexico and Sandy A Labs, which I think is like
(14:46):
a government affiliated kind of Um, well, it's a neat
research lab. They deal sorts of cool clandestine stuff, right, Um,
very much so. And actually the X Files mentioned the
hum and episode called Drive. Yeah. Interesting, they talk about it.
There was a couple of characters had to constantly move
westward or else they would suffer from the pressure of
(15:08):
this hum that no one else could hear. Let me guess,
Mulder believe Scully did not exactly how did you saw
that one? No? I didn't, but you know, so, Um,
they looked into the Taos hum and they could never
figure out what it was, so I think they kind
of wrote it off as either mass delusion or a
bunch of people had tenitas or what have you, which
(15:29):
is again, that's the that's the easy that's the easy answer.
Like you have tonitas. The problem is if if a
person has tenitas, they the sound is internal, like they remember.
There's like the idea that the isn't it a high
pitch ringing. Yes, usually it can. It can vary in
in um and pitch, but for the most part it's
(15:52):
you can tell it's internal with the hum. Everyone who
experiences the hum says, no, this is external, and it's
it's they're so convinced it's external that they'll go out
at night when it's worse and try to find the
source of it. They'll drive around their city or their
neighborhood or walk around and look for what it is
that's driving them crazy and they'll never find it, or
(16:13):
they'll turn off the power of their house, or I mean,
there's all sorts of extreme um, and of course it's
all like anecdotal, but people that are driven to suicide
or this one guy who intentionally deafened himself with a chainsaw,
which I'm not sure how you do. I guess I
think um and possibly even murder, which we'll get to
(16:35):
in a bit, which is pretty interesting. But the point
is that it's not just something that's just bugging people
like it. It is having the hum. There are people
all over the world that don't know each other, that
have never met that, um, are suffering from something that
they hear that other people can't hear in concentrated areas. Yeah,
(16:59):
and then and that's the affecting their quality of life.
And UM, I don't know if I ever finished the sentence,
which is weird That means I'm really interested in something.
But um, did we say or did I say that
people who suffer from the hum tend to be in
their fifties and older. Yeah, that's one of the markers
between Okay, so there's a this is something in the
(17:22):
favor of acoustic sound. Um. So, acoustic sound is a
compression wave and it's something that's carried through and propagates
through media. So um, there it's a vibration in the air.
Whereas an electromagnetics wave comes from an electrical or a
magnetic or both source. This is like the vibe vibration.
(17:45):
It's a sound wave. That's that's an acoustic wave. Right. So, UM,
as we age, say you get to around fifty years
of age, your ability to hear high frequency and mid
frequency acoustic sound diminishes. Your low frequency capabilities go undiminished,
so it's not like they increase, but comparatively speaking, you
(18:07):
get better at hearing low frequencies around age fifty. Interesting.
So what some people think is that if it is electromagnetic,
then there are some people out there who are capable
of hearing electromagnetic waves while the rest of us can't
and they're being driven crazy by some source that we
(18:28):
have yet to identify. UM, or if it's acoustic, that
there are some people out there who are superheroes of
low frequency sound, which would also kind of um do
away with another diagnosis that a lot of doctors give people,
which is hyper accusus, which to me is worth a
whole other podcast. It's another people kill themselves over this
(18:51):
heightened hyper hearing, which where like this, the rustle of
clothes is unbearable. The thing is is, if you have
hyper accute, says, it's not just gonna be some home
that you hear and everything else is normal, which is
what hum sufferers experience. You would hear everything on this
grand scale. You'd be like Spider Man exactly. So what
(19:12):
they think is that there are people who UM are
predisposed to hearing low frequency sounds way better than other
people and that it comes as their higher and mid
frequency capabilities diminished with age. But again, what are they hearing? Well,
that's right, um. I mentioned earlier the h A A
(19:32):
r P program that the US government military is doing
in Alaska. The other one that I teased um is
the TACAMO, the Take Charge and Move Out system. On
the nineteen sixties, the U. S. Navy basically adopted this
program to be able to U communicate with submarines, long
range bombers UM ballistic missiles during nuclear war. And they
(19:55):
use very low frequency radio waves to do so. And
you know, it's a real thing, but is it the
hum um? Other conspiracy theorists will say that the US
government is also using these things to target individuals UM
and of course that's you know, you want to say
that's probably bunk, but you never know. Well, you know,
(20:16):
what the cool irony is that Jared Keller points out
is that if the HUM is electromagnetic in nature, tinfoil
hat and aluminum foil hat would actually work because it
blocks out about I write, but like just a thin
layer of aluminum can block out like of electromagnetic waves.
(20:37):
So that's pretty ironic that it might actually work. Although
I don't I haven't heard whether that helps people with
the hum, if they put on a tinfoil hat, if
that would help or not, or if it has UM.
But speaking of Tacomo, uh, if you read David Demming's
UM journal article, it's called the hum and an homeless
(21:00):
sound heard around the world. And there is a journal
called the Journal of Scientific Exploration, which is a pure
viewed scientific journal that accepts articles on things on the
fringe of science, which the home most decidedly is UM.
David demon gets into Tacomo and he basically says, this
is a secret government program. So obviously we can't get
(21:21):
any real answers. We don't know how often it works
or how often they're transmitting or anything, but we do
know it is a real thing. And he correlates some
dates when there's like upgrades to the system and then
all of a sudden in this one area around the
same time there's the Kokomo Indiana home starts UM. So
he he does a good job of correlating, and I
think that's kind of what he settles on. He believes
(21:43):
that it's probably the TACAMO program that this very low
frequency transmission. Two submarines underwater from airplanes above is being
propagated around the world, and that would suggest that it's
a global so right, that it's just some people can
hear these radio waves that you're not supposed to be
(22:06):
able to hear. Yeah, or it's multiple sources combined, like
a combined effect, like if you live near an industrial
plant that has a machine that's making the sound that
maybe certain people are retuned to or not. I don't know. Well,
it's another characteristic is that it's mostly experienced in the country.
Do see. I just chalk that up to noise pollution
(22:28):
being red. Yeah. Like when I worked at a convenient
store in the midnight shift the um. When I worked
during the day, I would not notice anything, But when
I worked up there at night at three am, I
would hear the buzzing of the fluorescent lights and it
would drive me crazy. Uh you know, I would turn
them off and people would think we were closed. So
(22:48):
you the thing is you eventually stopped hearing that, right, Well,
when I left work. That's called habituation. So habituation means
that you are capable of so like you'd focus on
these things the whole time you were there. Well, yeah,
in the middle, I wouldn't focus on it, but I
would notice. I'd be reading a book and I would
(23:09):
just hear that sound, you know, But I never noticed
it during the day when the lights were on. But
so like when you didn't hear it, that's habituation where
like you're you're exposed to something, your brain says, uh,
this is totally it's not a threat. I don't have
to pay attention to it anymore. So anytime in this
context that I hear that sound, I don't have to
(23:29):
become cognizant of it. Now apparently you did. You kind
of like fell into cognizance like here or there, and
like you'd notice it again. But for a normal human being,
when you're exposed to something like that over and over again,
the less you notice it. But like we said with
the hum the more you're exposed to it, the easier
it is to tune in. And what that's called no,
(23:51):
And not only can you not escape it, you can
catch it easier and easier, Like you can become cognizant
of it easier and easier the more you're exposed to it.
It's called sensitization, where I guess another explanation for the
Thus the suffers of the HUM if they are hearing something.
One of the reasons that it drives them so baddy
is because their habituation levels are low, but they're sensitive.
(24:16):
Sensitization levels are high, so they're not able to ignore it,
and some part of their brain is focusing in on
and this creates this, I guess, a perfect storm of holaciousness.
All right, Well, right after this break, Um, I did
mention murder, So we're gonna talk about one of them
(24:38):
more interesting parts of the effects of the HUM right
after this. Alright, So I mentioned murder, like I said,
and one of the things that UM. What is the
guy's name, Steve Callaz. He's a mechanical He's a mechanical
(24:59):
and near and HUM investigator in Connecticut, and I believe
he was the one that traced UM the Windsor home
to Zug Island and he has done UM some research
that he believes the HAM and others believed the HAM
could be responsible for UM well for killing other people.
(25:20):
UH specifically in his case, he actually approached Connecticut State
police investigators after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut,
and he said the HUM from a nearby gas pipeline
might have driven Adam Lanza two well have contributed to
driving him to do something like this. And I don't
(25:41):
think he's saying this made him crazy so he did this.
I think he's saying, fragile minded people could be pushed
over the edge. It could be the last straw for somebody. Um.
And I don't know how much credence it has, but
investigators did at least include that in the documents. They
really to the public, so they thought it was worthy
(26:02):
enough to put in, you know, among the seven thousand
other documents to release to the public. And he's not
the only one. Um. Remember the Navy Yard shooting in
Aaron Alexis, he fully came out and said, um, quote,
ultra low frequency attack is what I've been a subject
to for the last three years, I'm sorry three months,
(26:25):
and to be perfectly honest, that is what has driven
me to this end. Quote. And he scrawled and scratched
e LF on the shotgun barrel that he used to
kill twelve people at the Washington Navy Yard and he yeah,
and he scratched my e l F weapon on the stock.
I think yeah, And um, basically conspiracy theorists would say, well,
(26:49):
this is clearly driving people to do things like this.
Skeptics are gonna say, no, these people are delusional and
they're the ones who believe the government is shooting them
with these U. E. F tones and driving them crazy.
But either way, it's a little startling that someone would
scratch that in their shotgun before they did something like
(27:10):
that and and blame it on that outright. But that
that raises another point, like you know, how exposed was
he to those conspiracy theories. Like a lot of people
would say, well, there, you know, there's a Yahoo group
dedicated to the HUM. There's that one world HUM map
and database, and like people who go see these things,
I mean, are they are they just suggestible and they're like,
(27:30):
oh yeah, I can hear it. Yeah. Um. David Deming
points out, like that's crazy. The idea that people are
tuning into this thing that's having a really um diminishing
effect on their well being as part of just a
a mass delusion or something like that kind of goes
against this. The typical psychology of mass delusion where people
(27:51):
join crowds to be to get some sort of positive
benefit or effect from it, and you can argue there
get they're feeling a sense of inclusion or whatever by
saying I hear the hum too, even in a very
small minority. But apparently if you are a hum sufferer,
like your life is screwed up and you're not a
(28:12):
happy person. Yeah, I will say this. One thing I've
noticed about conspiracy theorists is none of them ever believe one. Yeah.
It seems like they believe a lot of them, you know. Uh,
So that's all I have to say about that. Well,
there's one other thing. So not only is this driving
people crazy, there is evidence that if this does exist,
(28:32):
if there is something that um if there's some sort
of what's called low frequency noise that's in the environment,
it is, it's everywhere, but if people are are being
exposed to it, there's evidence that biologically speaking, it can
have an impact. And they're just happened to be this
incredible real world laboratory that's sprung up in Portugal in
(28:56):
the late seventies because a guy named Caste Obronco was
put in charge of the Portuguese Air Forces maintenance, repair
and manufacturing plant. It's called ogma um or I don't
I don't know Portuguese accent or else I do it.
We'll just call it ogma UM. And he happened to
(29:17):
just be sitting there and he watched a aircraft technician
wander around aimlessly in what apparently looked a lot like
an epileptic seizure to this doctor. And it was during
in what's called an aircraft run up procedure where they're
like going through all the systems, and this guy was
just standing there and all of a sudden, he's wandering around.
(29:37):
So he looked into it and found that ten of
the workers at this aircraft repair shop were diagnosed with
late onset epilepsy. And if you look at this population
and compared to the population of Portugal at large, not
you wouldn't expect ten percent to have it. You'd expect
(29:59):
point to sent to have it. So the fact that
there are a lot of people who are being diagnosed
with this really um led them to believe that they
were exposed to this low frequency noise or that it
was having a dangerous effect on them. And this one
guy who was a worker there got really interested in
all this and he created a living will. His name
(30:21):
was Phelippe Pedro and Phelippe Pedro was like, you cut
me open the moment I die and doing autopsy, and
they found this guy was messed up, like his his ajorda.
His heart was thicken the walls were thickened inexplicably chi
yeah pretty much. Um, but no, that would be explicable.
(30:42):
So he was a very healthy person. Then apparently what
they found doesn't jibe with his lifestyle he was. He
was diagnosed with late onset epilepsy. He died at age
fifty eight. Um. He had a thickened he had thickened
heart tissue, he had a tumor and his kidney, he
had a tumor in his liver. Um. And apparently, now
thanks to this guy and his autopsy, he kind of
(31:04):
like laid the groundwork for this investigation into low frequency
noise being dangerous for humans. Even though we don't feel anything,
but on a cellular level, being exposed to this stuff
has these effects. UM. So apparently, if you have thickening
of your heart tissue without any kind of inflammation response, um,
(31:26):
that is a classic sign of low frequency noise damage.
It's what's called uh fibro acoustic disease, which certain people
may be susceptible to and others are not. In theory, supposedly,
anyone exposed to it would be susceptible to it. The
(31:50):
way that it ties into the HUM is some people
might actually be able to hear what they're being exposed to,
while while most people might not. So we're all exposed
to it. Then. Yeah, the in this article, I can't
remember the name of it, but it was it was
basically an overview of this this um aircraft place by
some Portuguese scientists. Um. They they said, it's almost impossible
(32:13):
to get a control group to compare because everybody's exposed
to low frequency noise, just most of us aren't aware
of it. It's just everywhere, but it's not considered a
nuisance except for that two to eleven of poor people
who suffer from hearing the home and their accounts differ
wildly as well. Uh So that's it's tough to study,
(32:37):
and you can't get funding to study because it's French
science unless you're in Canada. So they say, turn a
fan on at night. Really that's what one guy does,
makes sense, Yeah, turn on a fan or like some
sort of like they need white noise to john it
out and that helps. But get that up, get the
white noise out. That's what I sleep to. Uh again,
(32:59):
go read the awesome article by Jared Keller. Yeah, Life
Science had a couple of good articles yeah. Um, and
then David Demming has the Home and Anomalous Sound Heard
round the World. Uh. And then if this kind of
stuff floats your boat, you might want to check out
some of our friends sites to Um, there's a great
podcast by our friend Roman mars Ed Invisible, who would
(33:20):
be able to explain a lot of the science behind
this kind of thing. No, but it's kind of up
his alley, like the vibro acoustic idea. I can totally
see him getting into that. And I just think if
somebody dug that, they dig n in Visible and then
damn interesting. Another great site that would definitely have probably
has something about the home on it. Yeah, and watch
(33:42):
the X Files. Yeah right yeah, our pal molder. Uh.
And of course you can um hang out at how
stuff works. You can just type the home in. I
don't think it'll bring up an article, but see what happens. Yeah,
we don't have one yet, but yeah, type home into
the search bar and see what comes up. It's just
a fun game. And since I said the search bar.
It's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call it this
(34:07):
um limousine Ranch. Hey guys, I finally have a story
for you after listening for over five years. I live
in super rural South Dakota, not just the regular rural
South Dakota. My town is only about people and it
is the largest town within a hundred miles radius. The
main business here is agriculture and ranching a big surprise.
(34:29):
After I married my plumber husband from St. Louis, we
moved back to my little hometown six years ago, where
we started a plumbing business. He started plumbing business. Shortly
after moving here, we got a call to go to
Anderson's limousin ranch, limousine ranch with no E on the end.
After driving out to the country and lots of gravel roads, later,
he came up on the ranch and failed to see
any limos He said he couldn't figure out where all
(34:51):
the limousines were, uh, and why there would be a
limousine company dealership in the middle of nowhere on an
Indian reservation, I guess. He asked the owners and they
splain that they run limousine cattle on their ranch, which
I looked up. It's a type of cattle from the
Limousine region of France. They don't look like they're wearing
cloaks or anything. Now, my brother and I teased them
(35:12):
for quite some time on this to get a mental
image of the absurdity. Imagine the vast prairie of dances
with wolves or Fargo, and then expect to see a
limousine dealership out there. Um or just a bunch of
limousines is kind of meandering around the field. That sounds
like something that would happen in Fargo. That's very Cohen
Brothers esque but not. Kevin Costner asking that he's pretty
(35:34):
self serious. Yeah, he didn't look like he has much
of us since humor Diousie, I don't know he was
in Bull Durham. It's funny. Well, yeah, back in the
day when he was Bible. I watched the preview only
for that movie Draft Day that he did recently. Yeah,
I can barely make it through the preview. The preview
built it up. They were like, I can't believe he's
(35:55):
doing it. Is he really going to do this? And
it's about the NFL Draft and he's like a GM
and they built it up to this thing, and finally
I was. It was when it was in the movie
theater the preview. I leaned over to my buddy Scotty,
who you know, and I was like, like, what does
he do? Does he like open fire on the room
and like shoot people or is it just some sort
of trade. It's a team. Yeah, but they were building
(36:16):
up like I can't believe this is happening. Did you
ever see the movie? No, what was Scott's take on it?
He just laughed and said, yeah, exactly. That sounds like
our Scott. That's he's the guy that laughs at things
like that. Um, that is from Jennifer Coleman. Oh, I
forgot we were even doing. Listen to the mail, that's right, Jennifer,
(36:37):
And Um, you should tease your husband for that. That's
pretty funny stuff. And he should stick to the plumbing business.
Yeah for real, not the limousine company finding business. Uh.
If you want to mock someone you love on our show,
you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
(36:58):
you should know. You can send us an email to
stuff podcasts at how stuff works dot com. You also
can do the most important thing you will do today
or any day. Go to Stuff you Should Know dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(37:18):
Is it How Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And I would
say it's stuff you should know, but it's not because
I haven't said Jerry, and now I did, So this
is stuffer. Yes, are people going crazy yet? I don't know.
(00:31):
There's probably some people who started going crazy in the
moment they hit play. Yeah, that's Chuck's version of the hum. Yeah,
capital T, capital H. Yeah. So the home you just
did it makes sense. It's a hum. But apparently, like
if you'd listened, I don't. I wonder if you can
hear the same thing I'm hearing because you're hearing it
in your head. But there's like a gravelly quality to it,
(00:55):
the vocal fry. Okay, if you want to call it that,
I say gravel, but it's not. It wasn't constant. The
gravelly thing gave it texture and it was kind of
broken up a little bit. That is more akin to
the hum than the unbroken part that was going throughout. Yeah.
So apparently, while this is called the hum, and we
(01:16):
should eventually explain what we're talking about, it's not the
classical definition of a hum that people here, right, It's
not it's it's it's like a diesel truck idling engine
idling is with a classic description of it. Yeah, the um.
That term vocal fry is one of those you ever
hear or learn of a new expression or a thing
and they've never heard of and then you see it
(01:36):
everywhere that is called the bottom mine huff phenomenon. And
that's happening to me with vocal fry. Where did you
hear that? I can't remember where I initially heard it,
But it's a thing now that they say um, like
Kim Kardashian is who they always blame. It's a vocal
affectation that's supposedly young women are using now where they
(01:56):
go into a that lower tone um, that grably tone
on certain like the ends of sentences. You I know you.
I heard that too, and it supposedly keeps them from
being promoted at work or something. Yeah. Yeah, And it's
the female equivalent of the guys who speak up yeah,
or all the valley girl thing, which is up speak,
like the valley girls talking like that. But now it's um.
(02:20):
You know, he was a nice guy. But I really
wasn't sure what his motivation was. Oh, okay, yeah, that's
a great interesting that's because it was dead on. Yeah,
I totally got that you had pigtails just now. Yeah.
I was talking Emily about it the other day. She
was like, do I do that? It's like, now, you
don't do that? No, you don't. I just did that,
didn't I a little bit? But you you were doing
(02:41):
a different voice, So it makes sense. Yeah, anyway, I
can't escape it now. It's like every other day since
i've heard it, I've seen something about vocal frying. And
if you notice people with vocal frymore all the time, Okay, yeah,
it's annoying. Like what you're describing now has really nothing
to do with the hump, but it actually does have
a lot in common with the hum in that kind
(03:02):
of People who hear the hum um tended to be
able to focus in on it more and more easily
the more that they're exposed to it, which is the
opposite of what should happen to a noise that really
is inconsequential in the environment. That's right. So what we're
talking about here, Chuck, is the hum with a capital H.
(03:24):
That's right, what what is it? Well, it is um.
It is a sound, a mysterious sound that is heard
in places around the world by about two per cent
of the local population. Um. It is a low frequent
and we're going to get into the frequencies and all that,
but let's just call it a low frequency rumbling right now.
(03:46):
It's a drone. It's a vibration described sometimes as it
sounds like it's coming from nowhere or inside my own head. Um.
And it is. There are places all around the world where,
like I said, a very small population of people experience
this hum. And depending on where you are, they will
(04:07):
name it that home like the Auckland hume, the wings
are hum, the Bristol hume. Yeah, the Talos hum and um.
It's been described, you know, going back to the eighteen hundreds.
People have talked about it in literature, but really in
the nineteen fifties, sixties and seventies in the modern world
is when people have started describing hearing this thing that
(04:28):
drives them batty basically, and one of the ways that
it drives them batties. They'll say do you hear that?
And everyone else in the room will say no. The
people's yeah, and they'll be like, how do you what
do you mean you don't hear that, and everybody else
in the room goes, okay, right, maybe you're a little wacky.
It is generally at night. It's worse at night, for sure,
(04:51):
and generally in more rural areas. Um, which makes sense
because it's not as much noise pollution, I think. Yeah. Um.
It also is tends to be worse indoors, so at night,
which is a little weird. Indoors means that you don't
get much sleep because this is something that you can't
not focus on. People who suffer from the hume tend
(05:13):
to say that it dominates the soundscape. It's not something
they can just tune out. It's not something that they're
getting used to. And again, the more the more they're
exposed to it, the easier they say it is to
tune into it, and I guess become cognizant of it
yet again, so imagine about it. Yeah, and imagine being
plagued by a sound that does this to you and
(05:36):
that everyone else says is not real because they don't
hear it. Yeah, and it it's been I mean, we'll
get into the reasons that it maybe or may not
be happening, but it's been uh pass off as mass
hysteria UM or mass dellusion UM from everything from that
to like government conspiracy to uh legitimate legitimate noise, whether
(06:02):
or not it's acoustic or electromagnetic. And that's part of
the problem is is there one hum? There are lots
of harms. Is there no harm? You know, your your
skeptics will say there is no harm. It's tenatus or
it's something like that UM or some other inner ear
noise like odo acoustic noise UM. So who knows, but
(06:26):
that's there. There are two ways that the hum. Okay,
so again, let's let's restate this and let's put ourselves
in the position of the outsider, because I don't experience them.
So I am anced. I don't either knock on wood
because the more I researched it some more I'm like,
oh God, I hope I never do well. We we
left out one um, one quality of it that that
is common around the world. And when we say around
(06:48):
the world, it tends to be curiously concentrated in the
West um and in the euro I didn't notice that
euro ancestry West. Yeah, I didn't really see anything about
any countries in the East. If you look at UM,
if you look at there is a guy who runs
a m Glenn McPherson. Yes, Glenn McPherson runs something called
(07:11):
the World HUM Map and Database. And we ran into
Glen mic Ferson. Before we get too far, we should
give a huge shout out to Jared Keller over at
Mike who wrote this amazing article called a mysterious sound
is driving people insane and nobody knows what's causing it.
Totally worth reading UM. And he talks about a guy
named Glenn McPherson who's a professor in UH British Columbia,
(07:35):
and he set up a website called the World HUM
Map and Database. And so anybody who hears the HUM
can go and fill out a questionnaire and then it
takes that data and puts a dot on the map,
and you can hover over the dot and get the data. Right.
If you look at it, it's just the United States,
Great Britain, your Western Europe, Canada, South Africa. It's pretty
(07:57):
it's it's unusual that there's nothing in Africa except South Africa. UM.
And it's just in these European ancestry Western countries. Right.
On the one hand, you could say, well, that's because
this is an English language database, thanks, and so of
course somebody whose native languages like Swahili isn't gonna go
(08:19):
onto this. I have no idea what I'm typing here,
but yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's one explanation. There are
other explanations too, and now we arrive at one of them.
We're going back on the outside because you don't hear
the hump. I don't hear the hump. And let's say
that we're your nose and throat guys, and somebody comes
to us and says, I'm going crazy, like I'm seriously
contemplating suicide because this hum is keeping me up at night.
(08:42):
I haven't slept at weeks. I'm irritable, I have headaches,
nose bleeds, I'm nauseated all the time. These are all
common symptoms of HUM sufferers. You're you're gonna think one
of two things as a doctor a physician. One is tonitus, yeah,
and then the other one is you're crazy that you're
(09:04):
you're driving yourself crazy. Um. Both of them can kind
of be explained away, and they are explained away by
this guy named David Demming, and he is a geoscientist
from University of Oklahoma, and he wrote what is probably
the definitive study on the harm so far back in
two thousand four. That's right, So Demming apparently if you
(09:27):
look at his research, there is another theory. Uh. And
this is where the US government comes into play, because
there's a couple of UM. There's a couple of theories
revolving around the US military and whether or not they
are causing this UM. One is with their High Frequency
Active Auroral Research Program h a a ARP in Alaska
(09:51):
and they transmit RF signals into the Hono sphere. And
very well, we should we go ahead and start talking
about the frequency ranges VLF and e l F. VLF
is very low frequency and those are waves at point
one hurts and the other one is e l F. Right,
(10:14):
is there extremely low frequencies and they're in the range
of UM the same amount of hurts, but their wavelength
is up to like a hundred thousand meters. Right, that's
an extremely long wavelength. That's right. And UM people who think,
you know, they call them HUM investigators, Uh, they believe
pretty much that it is VLF and e L f tones, UM,
(10:37):
that are driving these people crazy, and those tones can
drive you crazy. They do have adverse effects on the body. Um.
You know you you probably heard it about a lot
when it comes to like cell phone radiation that kind
of thing. Yeah. But UM, whether or not E l
F and VLF is or are the hum is what's
(10:57):
a matter of much debate. It is matter of debate
because and it's also kind of a matter of faith
because what you're talking about there with UM E l
F and vlf frequencies is uh tones. Those are radio
waves and radio is part of the electromagnetic spectrum, right,
So it has been shown at very very high frequencies,
(11:21):
humans can detect electro magnetics sound. We take it as sound,
which is weird because it's not supposed to happen like that,
but that's how we experience it. It's not like at
a high frequency we suddenly see it. We hear it.
And if you are familiar with the UM comment six
that the European Space Agency recently landed on, which is crazy,
(11:45):
that comment was found to emit a an electromagnetic clicking sound,
which is how we experience electromagnets or electromagnetic sound at
a certain frequency, and so because it's a clicking sound,
it's not a hum at all. Some people are saying, well,
that doesn't make any sense. This is a hum. It
doesn't if we can hear it, it's it's it doesn't
(12:08):
sound like an idoling diesel engine. It sounds like a
clicking sound or something like that. And then what's more,
what this guy is saying is that if it's a
very low frequency or extremely low frequency, that's the opposite
of how we hear electromagnetic radiation. We heard a very
high frequency, not a very low frequency. So which one
(12:28):
is it. So, yes, it's still a huge matter of
debate even as to whether the hum. First of all,
if it does exist, if it's a single source, single source,
and then um, if it is a single source or
any kind of source, is it electromagnetic or is it acoustic?
And we'll unpack the difference between those things right after this.
(12:58):
So as whether or not the hum exist. The Canadian
government actually part of the problem is it's hard to
get research done on this because very small number of
people experience it, and a lot of them are called crackpots. Yeah,
so it's tough to get funding for research. But Luckily,
there's a country called Canada that will fund things like this,
(13:19):
and uh Dr Colin novak Um spent a year listening
to the Windsor Home in Ontario, and what they found
was the hum is real. And they traced the source
in that case too um on the Michigan side of
the Detroit River. UM and basically a steel plant on
Zug Island. Then that sounds like an industrial plant, ily does,
(13:41):
and it supposedly generates a lot of VLF waves UM
when they're operating. So in this instance, at least the
HUM was a real thing, and they found out it
was a tone created from basically an industrial plant, right,
So they apparently took steps to cut down on whatever
energy it was emitting. Yeah, they turned off the HUM
(14:03):
machine right exactly, and all of a sudden, um. Some
people said, hey, that worked, a lot of people said
that did absolutely nothing. The home's still out there. And
then the most people said, I still don't know what
you're talking about. So that that and that wasn't actually
the first time government has looked into the hum. In Taos,
New Mexico, there's something called the Taos Home and apparently,
(14:26):
uh somebody wrote in to complain about it to a
local newspaper, and all of a sudden, like hundreds more
people said, yes, I hear the same thing. I've been
hearing the same thing for years. What is going on?
And enough of enough people said something in New Mexico
that it prompted an investigation by the University of New
Mexico and Sandy A Labs, which I think is like
(14:46):
a government affiliated kind of Um, well, it's a neat
research lab. They deal sorts of cool clandestine stuff, right, Um,
very much so. And actually the X Files mentioned the
hum and episode called Drive. Yeah. Interesting, they talk about it.
There was a couple of characters had to constantly move
westward or else they would suffer from the pressure of
(15:08):
this hum that no one else could hear. Let me guess,
Mulder believe Scully did not exactly how did you saw
that one? No? I didn't, but you know, so, Um,
they looked into the Taos hum and they could never
figure out what it was, so I think they kind
of wrote it off as either mass delusion or a
bunch of people had tenitas or what have you, which
(15:29):
is again, that's the that's the easy that's the easy answer.
Like you have tonitas. The problem is if if a
person has tenitas, they the sound is internal, like they remember.
There's like the idea that the isn't it a high
pitch ringing. Yes, usually it can. It can vary in
in um and pitch, but for the most part it's
(15:52):
you can tell it's internal with the hum. Everyone who
experiences the hum says, no, this is external, and it's
it's they're so convinced it's external that they'll go out
at night when it's worse and try to find the
source of it. They'll drive around their city or their
neighborhood or walk around and look for what it is
that's driving them crazy and they'll never find it, or
(16:13):
they'll turn off the power of their house, or I mean,
there's all sorts of extreme um, and of course it's
all like anecdotal, but people that are driven to suicide
or this one guy who intentionally deafened himself with a chainsaw,
which I'm not sure how you do. I guess I
think um and possibly even murder, which we'll get to
(16:35):
in a bit, which is pretty interesting. But the point
is that it's not just something that's just bugging people
like it. It is having the hum. There are people
all over the world that don't know each other, that
have never met that, um, are suffering from something that
they hear that other people can't hear in concentrated areas. Yeah,
(16:59):
and then and that's the affecting their quality of life.
And UM, I don't know if I ever finished the sentence,
which is weird That means I'm really interested in something.
But um, did we say or did I say that
people who suffer from the hum tend to be in
their fifties and older. Yeah, that's one of the markers
between Okay, so there's a this is something in the
(17:22):
favor of acoustic sound. Um. So, acoustic sound is a
compression wave and it's something that's carried through and propagates
through media. So um, there it's a vibration in the air.
Whereas an electromagnetics wave comes from an electrical or a
magnetic or both source. This is like the vibe vibration.
(17:45):
It's a sound wave. That's that's an acoustic wave. Right. So, UM,
as we age, say you get to around fifty years
of age, your ability to hear high frequency and mid
frequency acoustic sound diminishes. Your low frequency capabilities go undiminished,
so it's not like they increase, but comparatively speaking, you
(18:07):
get better at hearing low frequencies around age fifty. Interesting.
So what some people think is that if it is electromagnetic,
then there are some people out there who are capable
of hearing electromagnetic waves while the rest of us can't
and they're being driven crazy by some source that we
(18:28):
have yet to identify. UM, or if it's acoustic, that
there are some people out there who are superheroes of
low frequency sound, which would also kind of um do
away with another diagnosis that a lot of doctors give people,
which is hyper accusus, which to me is worth a
whole other podcast. It's another people kill themselves over this
(18:51):
heightened hyper hearing, which where like this, the rustle of
clothes is unbearable. The thing is is, if you have
hyper accute, says, it's not just gonna be some home
that you hear and everything else is normal, which is
what hum sufferers experience. You would hear everything on this
grand scale. You'd be like Spider Man exactly. So what
(19:12):
they think is that there are people who UM are
predisposed to hearing low frequency sounds way better than other
people and that it comes as their higher and mid
frequency capabilities diminished with age. But again, what are they hearing? Well,
that's right, um. I mentioned earlier the h A A
(19:32):
r P program that the US government military is doing
in Alaska. The other one that I teased um is
the TACAMO, the Take Charge and Move Out system. On
the nineteen sixties, the U. S. Navy basically adopted this
program to be able to U communicate with submarines, long
range bombers UM ballistic missiles during nuclear war. And they
(19:55):
use very low frequency radio waves to do so. And
you know, it's a real thing, but is it the
hum um? Other conspiracy theorists will say that the US
government is also using these things to target individuals UM
and of course that's you know, you want to say
that's probably bunk, but you never know. Well, you know,
(20:16):
what the cool irony is that Jared Keller points out
is that if the HUM is electromagnetic in nature, tinfoil
hat and aluminum foil hat would actually work because it
blocks out about I write, but like just a thin
layer of aluminum can block out like of electromagnetic waves.
(20:37):
So that's pretty ironic that it might actually work. Although
I don't I haven't heard whether that helps people with
the hum, if they put on a tinfoil hat, if
that would help or not, or if it has UM.
But speaking of Tacomo, uh, if you read David Demming's
UM journal article, it's called the hum and an homeless
(21:00):
sound heard around the world. And there is a journal
called the Journal of Scientific Exploration, which is a pure
viewed scientific journal that accepts articles on things on the
fringe of science, which the home most decidedly is UM.
David demon gets into Tacomo and he basically says, this
is a secret government program. So obviously we can't get
(21:21):
any real answers. We don't know how often it works
or how often they're transmitting or anything, but we do
know it is a real thing. And he correlates some
dates when there's like upgrades to the system and then
all of a sudden in this one area around the
same time there's the Kokomo Indiana home starts UM. So
he he does a good job of correlating, and I
think that's kind of what he settles on. He believes
(21:43):
that it's probably the TACAMO program that this very low
frequency transmission. Two submarines underwater from airplanes above is being
propagated around the world, and that would suggest that it's
a global so right, that it's just some people can
hear these radio waves that you're not supposed to be
(22:06):
able to hear. Yeah, or it's multiple sources combined, like
a combined effect, like if you live near an industrial
plant that has a machine that's making the sound that
maybe certain people are retuned to or not. I don't know. Well,
it's another characteristic is that it's mostly experienced in the country.
Do see. I just chalk that up to noise pollution
(22:28):
being red. Yeah. Like when I worked at a convenient
store in the midnight shift the um. When I worked
during the day, I would not notice anything, But when
I worked up there at night at three am, I
would hear the buzzing of the fluorescent lights and it
would drive me crazy. Uh you know, I would turn
them off and people would think we were closed. So
(22:48):
you the thing is you eventually stopped hearing that, right, Well,
when I left work. That's called habituation. So habituation means
that you are capable of so like you'd focus on
these things the whole time you were there. Well, yeah,
in the middle, I wouldn't focus on it, but I
would notice. I'd be reading a book and I would
(23:09):
just hear that sound, you know, But I never noticed
it during the day when the lights were on. But
so like when you didn't hear it, that's habituation where
like you're you're exposed to something, your brain says, uh,
this is totally it's not a threat. I don't have
to pay attention to it anymore. So anytime in this
context that I hear that sound, I don't have to
(23:29):
become cognizant of it. Now apparently you did. You kind
of like fell into cognizance like here or there, and
like you'd notice it again. But for a normal human being,
when you're exposed to something like that over and over again,
the less you notice it. But like we said with
the hum the more you're exposed to it, the easier
it is to tune in. And what that's called no,
(23:51):
And not only can you not escape it, you can
catch it easier and easier, Like you can become cognizant
of it easier and easier the more you're exposed to it.
It's called sensitization, where I guess another explanation for the
Thus the suffers of the HUM if they are hearing something.
One of the reasons that it drives them so baddy
is because their habituation levels are low, but they're sensitive.
(24:16):
Sensitization levels are high, so they're not able to ignore it,
and some part of their brain is focusing in on
and this creates this, I guess, a perfect storm of holaciousness.
All right, Well, right after this break, Um, I did
mention murder, So we're gonna talk about one of them
(24:38):
more interesting parts of the effects of the HUM right
after this. Alright, So I mentioned murder, like I said,
and one of the things that UM. What is the
guy's name, Steve Callaz. He's a mechanical He's a mechanical
(24:59):
and near and HUM investigator in Connecticut, and I believe
he was the one that traced UM the Windsor home
to Zug Island and he has done UM some research
that he believes the HAM and others believed the HAM
could be responsible for UM well for killing other people.
(25:20):
UH specifically in his case, he actually approached Connecticut State
police investigators after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut,
and he said the HUM from a nearby gas pipeline
might have driven Adam Lanza two well have contributed to
driving him to do something like this. And I don't
(25:41):
think he's saying this made him crazy so he did this.
I think he's saying, fragile minded people could be pushed
over the edge. It could be the last straw for somebody. Um.
And I don't know how much credence it has, but
investigators did at least include that in the documents. They
really to the public, so they thought it was worthy
(26:02):
enough to put in, you know, among the seven thousand
other documents to release to the public. And he's not
the only one. Um. Remember the Navy Yard shooting in
Aaron Alexis, he fully came out and said, um, quote,
ultra low frequency attack is what I've been a subject
to for the last three years, I'm sorry three months,
(26:25):
and to be perfectly honest, that is what has driven
me to this end. Quote. And he scrawled and scratched
e LF on the shotgun barrel that he used to
kill twelve people at the Washington Navy Yard and he yeah,
and he scratched my e l F weapon on the stock.
I think yeah, And um, basically conspiracy theorists would say, well,
(26:49):
this is clearly driving people to do things like this.
Skeptics are gonna say, no, these people are delusional and
they're the ones who believe the government is shooting them
with these U. E. F tones and driving them crazy.
But either way, it's a little startling that someone would
scratch that in their shotgun before they did something like
(27:10):
that and and blame it on that outright. But that
that raises another point, like you know, how exposed was
he to those conspiracy theories. Like a lot of people
would say, well, there, you know, there's a Yahoo group
dedicated to the HUM. There's that one world HUM map
and database, and like people who go see these things,
I mean, are they are they just suggestible and they're like,
(27:30):
oh yeah, I can hear it. Yeah. Um. David Deming
points out, like that's crazy. The idea that people are
tuning into this thing that's having a really um diminishing
effect on their well being as part of just a
a mass delusion or something like that kind of goes
against this. The typical psychology of mass delusion where people
(27:51):
join crowds to be to get some sort of positive
benefit or effect from it, and you can argue there
get they're feeling a sense of inclusion or whatever by
saying I hear the hum too, even in a very
small minority. But apparently if you are a hum sufferer,
like your life is screwed up and you're not a
(28:12):
happy person. Yeah, I will say this. One thing I've
noticed about conspiracy theorists is none of them ever believe one. Yeah.
It seems like they believe a lot of them, you know. Uh,
So that's all I have to say about that. Well,
there's one other thing. So not only is this driving
people crazy, there is evidence that if this does exist,
(28:32):
if there is something that um if there's some sort
of what's called low frequency noise that's in the environment,
it is, it's everywhere, but if people are are being
exposed to it, there's evidence that biologically speaking, it can
have an impact. And they're just happened to be this
incredible real world laboratory that's sprung up in Portugal in
(28:56):
the late seventies because a guy named Caste Obronco was
put in charge of the Portuguese Air Forces maintenance, repair
and manufacturing plant. It's called ogma um or I don't
I don't know Portuguese accent or else I do it.
We'll just call it ogma UM. And he happened to
(29:17):
just be sitting there and he watched a aircraft technician
wander around aimlessly in what apparently looked a lot like
an epileptic seizure to this doctor. And it was during
in what's called an aircraft run up procedure where they're
like going through all the systems, and this guy was
just standing there and all of a sudden, he's wandering around.
(29:37):
So he looked into it and found that ten of
the workers at this aircraft repair shop were diagnosed with
late onset epilepsy. And if you look at this population
and compared to the population of Portugal at large, not
you wouldn't expect ten percent to have it. You'd expect
(29:59):
point to sent to have it. So the fact that
there are a lot of people who are being diagnosed
with this really um led them to believe that they
were exposed to this low frequency noise or that it
was having a dangerous effect on them. And this one
guy who was a worker there got really interested in
all this and he created a living will. His name
(30:21):
was Phelippe Pedro and Phelippe Pedro was like, you cut
me open the moment I die and doing autopsy, and
they found this guy was messed up, like his his ajorda.
His heart was thicken the walls were thickened inexplicably chi
yeah pretty much. Um, but no, that would be explicable.
(30:42):
So he was a very healthy person. Then apparently what
they found doesn't jibe with his lifestyle he was. He
was diagnosed with late onset epilepsy. He died at age
fifty eight. Um. He had a thickened he had thickened
heart tissue, he had a tumor and his kidney, he
had a tumor in his liver. Um. And apparently, now
thanks to this guy and his autopsy, he kind of
(31:04):
like laid the groundwork for this investigation into low frequency
noise being dangerous for humans. Even though we don't feel anything,
but on a cellular level, being exposed to this stuff
has these effects. UM. So apparently, if you have thickening
of your heart tissue without any kind of inflammation response, um,
(31:26):
that is a classic sign of low frequency noise damage.
It's what's called uh fibro acoustic disease, which certain people
may be susceptible to and others are not. In theory, supposedly,
anyone exposed to it would be susceptible to it. The
(31:50):
way that it ties into the HUM is some people
might actually be able to hear what they're being exposed to,
while while most people might not. So we're all exposed
to it. Then. Yeah, the in this article, I can't
remember the name of it, but it was it was
basically an overview of this this um aircraft place by
some Portuguese scientists. Um. They they said, it's almost impossible
(32:13):
to get a control group to compare because everybody's exposed
to low frequency noise, just most of us aren't aware
of it. It's just everywhere, but it's not considered a
nuisance except for that two to eleven of poor people
who suffer from hearing the home and their accounts differ
wildly as well. Uh So that's it's tough to study,
(32:37):
and you can't get funding to study because it's French
science unless you're in Canada. So they say, turn a
fan on at night. Really that's what one guy does,
makes sense, Yeah, turn on a fan or like some
sort of like they need white noise to john it
out and that helps. But get that up, get the
white noise out. That's what I sleep to. Uh again,
(32:59):
go read the awesome article by Jared Keller. Yeah, Life
Science had a couple of good articles yeah. Um, and
then David Demming has the Home and Anomalous Sound Heard
round the World. Uh. And then if this kind of
stuff floats your boat, you might want to check out
some of our friends sites to Um, there's a great
podcast by our friend Roman mars Ed Invisible, who would
(33:20):
be able to explain a lot of the science behind
this kind of thing. No, but it's kind of up
his alley, like the vibro acoustic idea. I can totally
see him getting into that. And I just think if
somebody dug that, they dig n in Visible and then
damn interesting. Another great site that would definitely have probably
has something about the home on it. Yeah, and watch
(33:42):
the X Files. Yeah right yeah, our pal molder. Uh.
And of course you can um hang out at how
stuff works. You can just type the home in. I
don't think it'll bring up an article, but see what happens. Yeah,
we don't have one yet, but yeah, type home into
the search bar and see what comes up. It's just
a fun game. And since I said the search bar.
It's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call it this
(34:07):
um limousine Ranch. Hey guys, I finally have a story
for you after listening for over five years. I live
in super rural South Dakota, not just the regular rural
South Dakota. My town is only about people and it
is the largest town within a hundred miles radius. The
main business here is agriculture and ranching a big surprise.
(34:29):
After I married my plumber husband from St. Louis, we
moved back to my little hometown six years ago, where
we started a plumbing business. He started plumbing business. Shortly
after moving here, we got a call to go to
Anderson's limousin ranch, limousine ranch with no E on the end.
After driving out to the country and lots of gravel roads, later,
he came up on the ranch and failed to see
any limos He said he couldn't figure out where all
(34:51):
the limousines were, uh, and why there would be a
limousine company dealership in the middle of nowhere on an
Indian reservation, I guess. He asked the owners and they
splain that they run limousine cattle on their ranch, which
I looked up. It's a type of cattle from the
Limousine region of France. They don't look like they're wearing
cloaks or anything. Now, my brother and I teased them
(35:12):
for quite some time on this to get a mental
image of the absurdity. Imagine the vast prairie of dances
with wolves or Fargo, and then expect to see a
limousine dealership out there. Um or just a bunch of
limousines is kind of meandering around the field. That sounds
like something that would happen in Fargo. That's very Cohen
Brothers esque but not. Kevin Costner asking that he's pretty
(35:34):
self serious. Yeah, he didn't look like he has much
of us since humor Diousie, I don't know he was
in Bull Durham. It's funny. Well, yeah, back in the
day when he was Bible. I watched the preview only
for that movie Draft Day that he did recently. Yeah,
I can barely make it through the preview. The preview
built it up. They were like, I can't believe he's
(35:55):
doing it. Is he really going to do this? And
it's about the NFL Draft and he's like a GM
and they built it up to this thing, and finally
I was. It was when it was in the movie
theater the preview. I leaned over to my buddy Scotty,
who you know, and I was like, like, what does
he do? Does he like open fire on the room
and like shoot people or is it just some sort
of trade. It's a team. Yeah, but they were building
(36:16):
up like I can't believe this is happening. Did you
ever see the movie? No, what was Scott's take on it?
He just laughed and said, yeah, exactly. That sounds like
our Scott. That's he's the guy that laughs at things
like that. Um, that is from Jennifer Coleman. Oh, I
forgot we were even doing. Listen to the mail, that's right, Jennifer,
(36:37):
And Um, you should tease your husband for that. That's
pretty funny stuff. And he should stick to the plumbing business.
Yeah for real, not the limousine company finding business. Uh.
If you want to mock someone you love on our show,
you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
(36:58):
you should know. You can send us an email to
stuff podcasts at how stuff works dot com. You also
can do the most important thing you will do today
or any day. Go to Stuff you Should Know dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(37:18):
Is it How Stuff Works dot com
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.