OK, weird thread title, I know, but please hear me out.

In the night from the 24th to the 25th I experienced a very strange event.
I was sitting on the couch in my living room watching netflix. At some point I noticed a strange static noise. I don't know exactly when the noise started. Maybe it had been going on for half an hour or so.
It was this situation that we've probably all experienced at some point:
There's a noise that's been there for some time until we actively notice it and go to check it out. So I paused the movie to check.
Yep, there's definitely a strange noise outside. So I went out to the garden patio to check it out.
And, oh shit, I've never heard anything like it!

First I thought that someone in one of the neighboring houses has started the vacuum cleaner or something like that and the localization of the sound from the sky would be a strange effect caused by reflections of the bay window front of my living room. So I went back into the house and then out the front door onto the street. No, that was definitely not a neighbor vacuuming shortly after 2 a.m..
It was definitely coming from the sky. Directional location not possible.
The entire sky above me is roaring and humming loudly.

In the area where I live, in northern Germany, there is regular air traffic, but usually not at this time. Exceptions are continental flights, medical transports or police helicopters. But this noise did not come from an airplane or a helicopter. It was a static noise with an irregular low frequency pulse. No aircraft that I know of, not even drones, make such sounds.
There is no heavy industry or building structures in the vicinity that could generate such noise through wind refraction, and there are no mountains here. Apart from that it was windless.
I could not see anything in the sky, because the night was quite misty.

My next thought was that there might be some strange high altitude weather conditions that could produce such noise. I know from experience that high altitude thunderstorms sometimes produce quite interesting drones. And high humidity, as with mist or fog, can distort sounds under certain conditions and make localization difficult. That would be a pretty drastic distortion in this case, but I thought, well, maybe, under special circumstances it would be possible...

So yesterday i did a little research at the german aviation weather service to see if there had been any weather events in the higher atmospheric layers that could lead to such a phenomenon. Nope. Nothing. All pretty normal and unobtrusive. And there have been no earthquakes or anything like that, which was my next line of thought.

During my net research, of course, I also came across videos and witness reports about "skyquakes" and "the hum", but after watching they quickly turned out to be the typical "we're all going to die the alien apocalypse is near" nonsense, with underlying metallic sounds and synthpads. The typical internet hoax....

The explanation of fact checkers was tinnitus. I can exclude the tinnitus. The noise came from outside, and not just outside my head, but outside my house. Although I think the military is unlikely to be the culprit, I even checked where the nearest military base is. There is a small air force NCO school nearby, but that's about it.

I am completely lost. I can't even blame this experience on drugs, because I don't take any. I've traveled to several continents, I've been to the sahara and south africa, to asia, north- and south america. I've recorded a lot of soundscapes on vacation, but I've never experienced anything like this.
I wouldn't say it scared me, but it was so out of my mind that I didn't even think about making a recording of it.

I talked to some friends about it and either they were already asleep at the time and couldn't say anything about it or they made fun of it. Only a friend who was visiting me yesterday, knew immediately what I'm talking about and said that she has recently made similar experiences.

So that you can at least roughly understand what I heard, I recreated it from my memory.
It's filtered pink noise with some resonances and a distorted modulated 53Hz sine tone drowned in some reverb. It's actually pretty close to what I heard. This noise lasted at least three quarters of an hour.

Audio file:
https://anonfiles.com/g8D4Rf9cy8


If anyone has a rough idea, or even better, an explanation of what this could have been, I would appreciate any tips. I am open to anything, but it should at least be explained by physical facts.

So please no biblical stories about the apocalypse or wild conspiracy theories about alien attacks and lizards, I'm really not up for that. I want to understand what happened.
If you still feel the urge to post your garbage here, you don't have to wait for @Olymoon or @No Avenger to randomly come by and remove it, because I will report it myself.


Thank You!

 

Last edited: Sep 26, 2022

Hallo @Sinus Well, mir ist nur das Brummton Phänomen bekannt. Ist bei Dir in der nähe ein Kohlekraftwerk?

Anbei habe ich paar ein paar Links die sich damit beschäftigen angehängt. Das meiste ist auf Deutsch, ich hoffe das anderssprachige Benutzer hier Verständnis dafür aufbringen. Es gibt mehr betroffene des Infraschalls / Brummton als man glauben mag.

Du solltest wenn es wieder auftritt, Dir die Zeit und die Richtung aus der es kam aufschreiben. Wenn es mehr wird solltest Du in deiner Gemeinde oder Stadt die Örtliche Presse benachrichtigen. Wenn die Störgeräusche häufiger werden, sollte man eine Selbsthilfegruppe von Betroffenen gründen.

In England gibt es den Akustikingenieur mit den Namen Trevor Cox, er wird manchmal gerufen wenn Brummtöne von Hochhäusern erzeugt werden, er misst dann das Brummgeräusch nach und nimmt dann bauliche Veränderung am Hochhaus vor.


Hello @Sinus Well, I am only familiar with the humming sound phenomenon.

I have attached a few links that deal with it. Most of them are in German, I hope that users of other languages will understand them. There are more people affected by infrasound / hum than you might think.

You should write down the time and direction it came from when it reoccurs. If it becomes more frequent, you should notify the local press in your community or town. If the noise becomes more frequent, you should form a support group of people affected.

In England there is an acoustics engineer called Trevor Cox, who is sometimes called in when humming noises are produced by high-rise buildings, he then measures the humming noise and makes structural changes to the high-rise building.


Places with Hum
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1P8PS5osJ7s5WdwnD8OYLXRYwP70&ie=UTF&msa=0&ll=21.703369282518494,12.65625&z=2
Brummton-Phänomen
https://dewiki.de/Lexikon/Brummton-Phänomen
Zum aktuellen Erkenntnisstand des Brummton-Phänomens
www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/407246/a7c46e8ab241894bf29c3c85c0ee96f5/WF-VIII-G-053-02-pdf-data.pdf
Akustisches Phänomen - Das Brummen im Schwarzwald
www.sueddeutsche.de/gesundheit/akustisches-phaenomen-das-brummen-im-schwarzwald-1.2286219
Erzeugen Infraschallquellen den Brummton?
www.bgr.bund.de/DE/Themen/Erdbeben-Gefaehrdungsanalysen/Seismologie/Kernwaffenteststopp/Verifikation/Infraschall/Quellen_Phaenomene/Feldmessungen/brummton.html
Orte, an denen es brummt - Deutschlandkarte
www.brummtonheilung.de/ursachen-des-brummtons/orte-an-denen-es-brummt/
Der unbekannte Brummton in der Nacht
www.swp.de/lokales/der-unbekannte-brummton-in-der-nacht-28380074.html
50 Hz Brummton in der Wohnung - was kann es sein?
www.mikrocontroller.net/topic/503806
Rätselhafter Brummton nervt im Hamburger Westen
www.welt.de/regionales/hamburg/article4212173/Raetselhafter-Brummton-nervt-im-Hamburger-Westen.html

 

Last edited: Sep 26, 2022

Thanks for the links.
I just had a little look. I will take a closer look later.

For now, I can say that at least the first 4 pages of the German Bundestag elaboration sound similar to what I experienced during the night. However, there is nothing about the static noise.

The interesting thing is that only the static noise alerted me that there was something outside. Outside in the garden and on the street, of course, the noise was much louder than in my living room. I would estimate it at 60-70 dB, maybe 75 dB SPL. So not comparable to wind. Not in terms of volume and not in terms of sound, because wind is never static. Wind comes in gusts. Wind brings movement to leaves, which then rustle, and it creates resonances when it hits objects. And, as I said, there was no wind at all. Not a single leaf moved on the trees.

The sound direction was upward. I couldn't tell if it was north, south, west or east. It was as if someone was playing a loud static noise through all the ceiling speakers of a Dolby Atmos speaker system. Or as if the whole sky was hung with very powerful line arrays. Only from inside the building I could locate the noise. It was coming from outside.

This is so weird

 

Check Google Earth to see if there is a cell tower or similar near you.

Mobilfunk als Brummton-Ursache?
http://brummton-region-stuttgart.de/2016/09/20/mobilfunk-als-brummton-ursache/

Auch diagnose:funk ist dem rätselhaften Brummton-Phänomen auf der Spur. Fakt ist, dass laut dem UBA (Umweltbundesamt) die häufigsten Quellen für tieffrequenten Lärm Anlagen der Energieerzeugung und des Energietransports sind, wie Wärmepumpen und Biogasanlagen, sowie raumlufttechnische Anlagen, wie Klimaanlagen [1,2]. Und die besonders tiefen Frequenzen des Infraschalls (unterhalb von 20 Hz) gewinnen im Zusammenhang mit dem verstärkten Ausbau von Windkraftanlagen zunehmend an Bedeutung, wie aus dem UBA-Positionspapier zu Windenergie und Gesundheit hervorgeht

An alle Betroffenen
Nehmen auch Sie ein permanentes, tiefes Brummen wahr und bringen es mit Funknetzen (Mobilfunk, Richtfunk, WLAN u.a.) bzw. mit dem Stromnetz in Verbindung? Und haben Sie "Ihren" Brummton bereits erfolgreich aufzeichnen bzw. messtechnisch nachweisen können? Oder haben Sie andere, z.B. technische Informationen, die zur Aufklärung beitragen könnten?

www.diagnose-funk.org/aktuelles/artikel-archiv/detail&newsid=1189

 

Last edited: Sep 27, 2022