David Baguley, an audiologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, estimates that about a third of cases can be attributed to environmental causes, such as industrial machinery at a nearby factory. But the latest research suggests that the noise is not a hallucination and that many hummers do not suffer from impaired hearing.ĭr. For decades, doctors dismissed patients’ complaints as tinnitus, an auditory problem that affects 15 percent of people. Sufferers, known as “hummers,” have pointed fingers at sources such as electrical power lines, wireless communication devices, and low-frequency electromagnetic radiation. The phenomenon has spawned many conspiracy theories. The single through line in all reported cases Kohlhase has studied, he says, is that the locations are along high-pressure gas pipelines, or at least in close proximity to them. The quest for answers has consumed him he estimates that he has spent $30,000 on legal fees and equipment related to his independent investigation. In the film, Kohlhase lays out the extensive evidence he has collected on the unexplained noise pollution. It’s nauseating.” Kohlhase says his dog, too, seems to suffer from the noise once Kohlhase started hearing it, the canine became lethargic, and has never recovered. If it’s a bad day, it feels like your brain is being squeezed. In Garret Harkawik’s short documentary Doom Vibrations, Kohlhase describes the noise: “Your ears are ringing real bad. One of them is Steve Kohlhase, an industrial-facilities mechanical engineer living in Brookfield, Connecticut. Since it was first reported in Bristol, England, in 1970, this elusive phenomenon has plagued thousands of people across the globe, slowly eroding their sanity. But almost everyone who can hear it- 2 percent of the population, by some estimates-agrees on one thing: “ the hum,” as it has come to be called, is a persistent, maddening noise for which the scientific world has no known explanation. Others report hearing a low-frequency rumble.
Some describe it as sounding like an engine idling just outside the house.