A mysterious humming sound, similar to the one reported in
Taos, New Mexico 9 years ago, has recently turned up in
Kokomo, Indiana, where dozens of people say it?s making
them ill. Like the Taos hum, the Kokomo one has affected a
group of people who say they are bothered by the
unexplained low-frequency vibrations.
In June, the Kokomo Tribune ran a five-part series plus an
editorial based on interviews with about 40 locals who say
they began hearing or feeling ?a low-pitched droning? about
two years ago. Steve Kozarovich, a Tribune assistant editor
whose wife wrote the series, says that since publication,
others have called to say they too hear a low-pitched sound.
?Almost immediately after the noise began, nearly every
resident reported having chronic and severe headaches, were
awakened several times at night and were fatigued,? wrote
Lisa Hurt Kozarovich. ?About 30 residents said they were also
nauseated and had other symptoms - the most common being
pressure or ringing in their ears, chronic joint pain, dizziness,
depression and diarrhea.?
One of those interviewed for the article was Kathie Sickles of
Greentown, Ind., a city of 45,000 located 10 miles east of
Kokomo, who says she began feeling a low vibration in late
1999. ?When the paperwork [documenting the vibration] was
first brought to me and I read it, I knew immediately what
had plagued my house,? she says. ?You can feel it here. We
have bedrooms that vibrate. We have people with patios that
vibrate by the back door.?
Sickles has formed a group called Our Environment to
investigate what she believes is an environmental condition
from heavy industrialization in north-central Indiana. ?Some
people think [we] are crazy,? she says. The Kokomo hum,
which Sickles says has been measured at 10 to 30 hertz
(cycles per second), appears to cause worse problems than
the sleep deprivation and irritability reported in New Mexico
almost a decade ago.
In the summer of 1992, a half dozen residents of Taos said a
low-pitched buzz was keeping them awake at night. Bob and
Catanya Saltzman, who lived south of Taos, hired an
acoustical engineer who reported a tone of 17 hertz with a
harmonic rising to 70 hertz near the area. The low range of
human hearing is 20 to 30 hertz.
Bill Richardson, a Democratic U.S. congressman for Northern
New Mexico at the time, stirred up speculation in early 1993
when he said the hum could be defense related. Two months
later, Republican Senator Pete Domenici said the Pentagon
had assured him there was no defense involvement.
Scientists and engineers organized by the University of New
Mexico set up acoustical, seismic and electro-magnetic
instruments near the Saltzmans? home in May 1993. But the
report issued that August failed to pinpoint any source or
isolate the exact vibration, which was said to be between 30
and 80 hertz. The study estimated that two percent of Taos
County?s population heard the vibration.
The Taos hum became an major news story, and was
reported on in the Wall Street Journal and on the cable TV
show Sightings. A California rock band called itself The Taos
Hum and the Range Cafe in Bernalillo named a dessert after
the sound.
Taos residents who first complained of a hum have left the
area or simply stopped trying to solve the mystery. Bob
Saltzman and his wife moved the next year to Baja California
where, they say, they do not hear a hum. Another couple,
Paul Loumena and Alexandra Lorraine, sold their Laughing
Horse Inn in Taos and also moved away.
Hum hearer Sara Allen, an engineer with KTAO radio in Taos,
says she continues to hear it but suffers no severe symptoms
and no longer tries to do anything about it. ?We didn?t get
any real satisfaction or any real interest,? she says. ?I have
my own theories about it that I?ve expounded on many times,
and I still believe them. I think it affects people who don?t
sense it, too. They?re just lucky.? She believes the hum is
from military-communication signals.
Shatzie Hubbell, who lived on Canyon Road in Santa Fe,
where she was bothered by the vibration, moved to a ranch
near Fort Worth, Texas, where she no longer senses the
noise. Hubbell has posted a map on a Seattle-based Web site
(eskimo.com) showing the locations of 368 hum hearers,
grouped generally on the East and West Coasts, the Rocky
Mountains and upper Midwest.
Low-frequency sounds also have been reported in other parts
of the world, including one case in the early 1960s and again
in the late 1980s in southern England, as well as in Sweden,
South Africa and Australia.
?Yesterday, it had me completely knocked out,? says Winona
Whitted of Santa Fe. ?All I could do is just [lie] there in a
microwave coma.? Like many other hum hearers, Whitted
participates in Internet discussions where theories about the
source of such hums range from UFOs, military-industrial
plots, secret experiments, electric-power plants and cellular
telephones to natural phenomena, hysterical paranoia, drug
use, hypochondria and differences in how we perceive sound.
?It?s horrible. It?s killing me,? says Whitted. ?I went to see my
doctor about a year ago, and I told him that I just couldn?t
make it any longer. I?m just in so much pain. And he gave me
a prescription for an antidepressant, not for its
antidepressant qualities, but because it helps with what they
call undefined pain and a lack of sleep.?
David Deming, an associate professor of geology at the
University of Oklahoma, says he believes the hum is caused
by ELF, or extra-low-frequency radio signals, used for
communications between submarines and aircraft. The signals
use antennae buried in the upper peninsula of Michigan and in
Wisconsin, though Deming says its headquarters are at Tinker
Air Force Base near Oklahoma City, about 20 miles from
Norman.
When he began sensing the low-frequency vibrations in 1994,
he thought it was something in his neighborhood. But after he
and his wife moved to a new house a few miles from Norman,
both of them began hearing it. He says it often is at its worst
late at night, just before he hears the engine sounds of an
airplane overhead.
After the Norman Transcript published an article about their
experiences, Deming says, they heard from dozens of other
people bothered by the same thing. ?I?m normally not a
person who is worried about that sort of thing,? he says. ?I
live underneath power lines. I use a cell phone all the time.
But at times when it?s most intense and painful, what scares
me is the ignorance. We don?t know what causes it and what
the effects are.?
But Deming says he has stopped participating in the internet
discussion groups because ?it attracts the misinformation
people - the kooks.?
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