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MYSTERY SOUND HAS BEEN BOTHERING ENGLISH VILLAGE FOR YEARS
For several years, residents of Holmfield, a village in Yorkshire, England, have been affected by an annoying hum whose cause has yet to be discovered.
Not everyone can hear it, but those who can claim that it has seriously impacted their lives. The “Holmfield Hum,” as the mysterious, low-frequency sound has come to be known, has been making news headlines for at least a couple of years, but so far, no one has been able to discover its source. Local authorities carried out investigations and also hired an independent consultant to get to the bottom of the mystery, but their efforts have, to this point, been in vain.
Holmfield residents who can hear the mysterious hum describe it as the whirring sound of a washing machine or an idling truck engine. It obviously is not the most annoying sound in the world, but it takes a toll on a person’s mental health and general well-being after a while. It interferes with their sleep and their mood, and some claim to be near a nervous breakdown because of it.
“I love my home, but some days I absolutely detest being in it. It feels like there is no happy space here, anymore,” village resident Yvonne Conner recently said. “I can feel it on my eardrums. It vibrates and feels like a pressure against them. That is pretty much what it is like all the time.”
“It leaves you feeling worn out because it is worse at night, so trying to sleep is hard,” another local woman Zoe Millar said. “We have considered moving, but why should we move when it is something that is not our fault?”
Conner, Millar, and others who claim to hear the mysterious sound say they have been constantly tortured by it since 2019, but despite repeated pleas to the local council to identify the source of it, no one yet knows where it is coming from.
During its investigations, the council announced that it had identified three possible sources, but eventually, officers concluded they had not been able to find the cause.
“We have given our all to this investigation and left no stone unturned because we care about local people and understand the impact that the noise has had on some residents,” Councillor Jenny Lynn said.
The failed investigations have left many in Holmfield frustrated, since this essentially means going on living with the constant hum or moving away from their home to escape it. To many, both options are unacceptable, but the reality is that this sort of low-frequency hum is notoriously difficult to trace. The fact, too, that not everyone can hear it only makes things harder.
Holmfield sits at the bottom of a valley and is surrounded by industrial factories, which villagers have blamed for the noise in the past. Investigations into the mysterious noise, however, have found no evidence of that connection.
Acoustic expert Peter Rogers says that sound is a very complex topic and that, in this case, the infamous hum could indeed be caused by some industrial activity that only certain people can hear. It could even be something as mundane as water running through pipes or electricity flowing through overhead cables.
“The problem is trying to find where it is coming from, and that is a bit like searching for that elusive needle in a haystack,” Rogers says. “There are all sorts of noises coming and going day and night, so you really would have to turn everything off to start the job of finding it.”
The
Holmfield council says that approach is not happening anytime soon,
but residents like Yvonne Conner answer that they will not stop
until the source of the torturous
hum has been identified.
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