The Hum

It's a menace that drives thousands to distraction and has been blamed on everything from UFOs to nuclear submarines. A scientist claims he's found the cause. Our man (who's heard it) listens in...

To the unaffected, it sounds suspiciously like a case of mass hysteria. It is the stuff of dark conspiracies, cover-ups and general spookiness. But to 'sufferers', if that is the right word, this mysterious throbbing noise, which never goes away and exists right on the brink of perception, is real and concrete enough to ruin lives.

I have only experienced 'The Hum' - at least, I assume it was The Hum - once. I was about eight or nine years old, and I remember becoming aware of a rumbling noise, half-way between a distant pneumatic drill and a badly tuned diesel engine. It happened in the dead of night, and kept me awake for hours.

I opened my window and turned my head this way and that in a futile attempt to locate the origin of the sound, which seemed to be emanating from the end of our quiet street.

'The Hum' has been blamed on many things, but one thing is sure: It is maddening for those who hear it

In desperation, I woke up the rest of my family to see if they could hear it - they couldn't - and I even got dressed and went out in search of the noise, accompanied by the dog.

It was all to no avail. No one could hear what I was hearing (not even the dog), and I never got to the bottom of the mystery of the noise. It returned on a couple of subsequent evenings and then vanished, never to be heard again - by me at least.

For the noise wasn't, it turns out, just a figment of my imagination. Indeed, The Hum - as it is now known - is a mysterious phenomenon which has been reported by thousands of people around the world.