For several years now, the inhabitants of Holmfield, a village in Yorkshire (England), have been suffering from a mysterious hum, the source of which has not yet been discovered, reports bbc.com.
Interestingly, not everyone can hear it, but those who have heard say that it seriously influenced their lives.
The “Holmfield hum,” as the mysterious low-pitched sound haunting the English village of Holmfield has come to be known, has made local headlines. This phenomenon has been around for at least a couple of years, but so far no one has been able to locate its source.
It is reported that local authorities have conducted an investigation and also hired independent experts to get to the bottom of the mystery, but so far their efforts have been in vain.
Residents of Holmfield who hear the mysterious hum describe it as the hum of a washing machine or a diesel engine idling.
This is not the most annoying sound in the world, but after a while it takes a toll on a person’s mental health and general well-being. It interferes with their sleep and mood, and some claim to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of it.
“I love my house, but sometimes I absolutely hate being in it. It feels like there is no happy place anymore,” Holmfield resident Yvonne Conner recently told the BBC. “I can feel it with my eardrums. It resonates and feels like pressure on them.”
“It makes you feel frazzled because it gets even worse at night, so it’s hard to sleep,” said local resident Zoe Millar. “We thought about moving, but why should we do it if it’s not our fault?”
Conner, Millar and others who claim to hear the mysterious sound say it has been torturing them continuously since 2019, but despite repeated requests to the local council to identify its source, no one knows where it comes from.
During the investigation, the council announced that they had identified three possible sources, but they ultimately concluded that no cause had been found.
“We put a lot of effort into this investigation because we care about the locals and understand the impact the alleged noises have had on some residents,” council member Jenny Lynn said in an interview with Yorkshire Live.
The failed investigation has left many of Holmfield’s residents in despair, as it essentially means continuing to live with constant noise or moving out of the house to avoid it.
For many, either option is unacceptable, but the reality is that these kinds of low-frequency beeps are notoriously hard to track, and the fact that not everyone hears them only complicates matters.
Holmfield is located at the bottom of a valley and is surrounded by industrial sites that the villagers have blamed for the noise in the past. However, investigations into the mysterious phenomenon have not found any evidence of this.
Acoustic expert Peter Rogers told the BBC that sound is a very complex topic and that in this case the infamous hum could indeed be caused by some kind of industrial activity that only some people can hear. Or it could be something mundane, like running water through a pipe, a humming transformer, or a telegraph pole.
Others suggest that their town has become a testing ground for new acoustic weapons.
“It’s like looking for the elusive needle in a haystack,” Rogers said. “If you imagine the sound environment that people live in, there are all sorts of sounds coming and going day and night, so you have to effectively turn everything off to start searching.”
Holmfield Council says it won’t happen any time soon, but locals have said they won’t stop until the source of the agonizing rumble is located.
