Mystery Booms
- In January, 1999, a loud boom at 12:15 a.m. disturbed the residents of Colorado Springs and Denver. Some witnesses said the noise was accompanied by a flash of light in the sky. There was no electrical storm. Although it could have been a sonic boom, the military denied any military activity in the area.
- On January 10, 1999, dozens of people in Fairfield, Ohio reported a stunning, explosive sound. No cause was ever discovered.
- Thousands of homes were rattled by two huge, mysterious booms 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles just before 10 p.m. in May of 1998. Residents described the sounds as explosions, earthquake noises, and thuds. The two booms occurred about five minutes apart.
- Two very loud skyquakes startled hundreds of people on the beaches of Ocean City, Md. on July 30, 1998. No planes were in sight, and the sounds seemed to be coming from some miles offshore.
- A mysterious boom reverberated through Narragansett Bay, R.I. on August 1, 1998 at 9:30 p.m. Investigating officials could not find the source of the noise.
- On Sept. 16, 1997, the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was rocked by a boom that shook the ground and registered 1.1 on the Richter scale. Readings from ground-monitoring equipment showed that the energy did not come from the air, ruling out a sonic boom.
- On December 17, 1997, a huge aerial blast rattled windows and blew open storm doors in Rogersville, Mo., a town 13 miles east of Springfield. Again, the Air Force denied the possibility of a sonic boom caused by one of its aircraft.
These are just a few recent examples of a fairly common phenomenon – loud, earth-shaking booms with no apparent cause. They are often labeled as mystery booms, sky booms, or skyquakes, and although there could be quite prosaic explanations for the explosive sounds – sonic booms, small earthquakes, even exploding meteors — investigations always come up short for conclusive explanations.
The Taos Hum
The Taos Hum is a faint, low-frequency humming noise heard in and near the town of Taos, New Mexico. Not only is the hum’s source a mystery, but its peculiar qualities are as well: only about 2 percent of Taos residents – about 1,400 people – can hear it. The low hum – between 30 and 80 Hz on the frequency scale – has been described by hearers as sounding like a diesel engine idling in the distance or having a slow beat-note sound. Some people perceive it as being louder indoors than outdoors. More mysterious still, some hearers who are bothered by the sound have tried earplugs and other acoustic quieting devices to block it out – to no effect. Investigations by scientists, including some from the prestigious Sandia National Laboratories, have failed to find a source or even a plausible explanation for the phenomenon. One theory is that the source is the U.S. Navy’s ELF (extra-low frequency) communications system that is used to communicate with its submarine fleet. The Navy, of course, accepts no such responsibility.
| If you’d like to hear the Taos Hum, here are some recordings in .wav format (click icon to listen):
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Taos isn’t the only town afflicted with an annoying hum. According to The Taos Hum Homepage, “Nearly every state in the U.S. has at least one ‘hum hearer’ report, including Alaska and Hawaii. The largest number of reports come from the southwestern U.S., the Pacific Northwest, and southeastern states. Worldwide, the hum has caused such problems in the U.K. and Sweden that hum-hearer support groups have formed there. There are hum-hearer reports from Italy and from Mexico.” The Bristol Hum is the most widely reported hum in the U.K.
A long list of hum reports from around the U.S. can be read here, and you can even add your own to the list.
Underground Mechanical Sounds
An article by Greg Long for Northwest Mysteries [link no longer works] reports on strange sounds seemingly coming from underground in the south-central region of the state of Washington. Those who have heard the mysterious machine-like sounds, including loggers, liken the noise to “several large turbines” starting up and running, or a “loaded truck pulling up a long hill and never reaching the top.” The article also examines similar noises reported in England, Italy, Colorado, Texas, Puerto Rico, New Jersey, California, and other states. Among these accounts are what sounded like underground drilling and construction work, motor-like sounds, or generators. Explanations? Long wonders if the noises can be attributed to seismic activity and speculates on the correlation with sightings of UFOs sometimes reported in the same areas.
| Are they sure it wasn’t the National Enquirer or some such “newspaper” that this story came from? Do they actually believe that Hell is literally inside the bowels of the Earth? |
The Sounds of Hell?
And speaking of weird underground sounds… have scientists actually recorded the sounds of people suffering in Hell? This sound file comes from Art Bell’s Web site which was submitted by one of his listeners in response to following story, allegedly quoting a scientist as excerpted from Ammenusastia, a Finnish newspaper. It seems the researchers had drilled a nine-mile-deep hole and were astonished at what they heard down there:
“As a communist I don’t believe in heaven or the Bible, but as a scientist I now believe in hell,” said Dr. Azzacove. “Needless to say we were shocked to make such a discovery. But we know what we saw and we know what we heard. And we are absolutely convinced that we drilled through the gates of hell!” Dr. Azzacove continued, “…the drill suddenly began to rotate wildly, indicating that we had reached a large empty pocket or cavern. Temperature sensors showed a dramatic increase in heat to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. We lowered a microphone, designed to detect the sounds of plate movements down the shaft. But instead of plate movements we heard a human voice screaming in pain! At first we thought the sound was coming from our own equipment. But when we made adjustments our worst suspicions were confirmed. The screams weren’t those of a single human, they were the screams of millions of humans!”
The Paranormal Effect 