Jim glum about Levin hum

Jim glum about Levin hum

Levin has reported yet another case of the mysterious worldwide phenomenon known as “The Hum”.

Few people can hear it, but for those that can it’s source of frustration and can keep them awake at night.

Jim Larsen and wife Gail live near Levin town centre and both can hear what they describe as a low humming sound.

“It has now become a serious source of discomfort for my wife and I,” Jim says.

He put a message about it on social media, where other people reported also hearing it:

“A woman living nearby says it drives her up the wall,” he says. “It’s like a low hum. I hear it, though not everyone can.”

Wikipedia describes The Hum as a persistent and invasive low-frequency humming or droning noise, with reports it has been heard in the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain and Germany. 

Jim says it’s more obvious inside the house or a car, but it’s faint when he goes outside, although he can even hear when walking through bush at the foot of the Tararua Ranges near town.

“I’ve asked other Trig walkers if they have heard it, and to date none have,” he says.

He contacted Horowhenua Mayor Bernie Wanden, and while council environmental health officers who visited admitted they could hear a hum inside the house, nothing out of the ordinary registered on measuring equipment.

“They came during the day and both could hear it from inside the house, although they conducted their own investigation and came up blank,” Jiim says. “To describe it? It’s a low-pitched constant drone which doesn’t pulsate and never changes pitch.

“It’s just always there. Christmas Day, New Year’s Day . . . pretty much 24/7.

“It’s loudest at night, and right through til we get up at 5am, then all day. Sometimes it will ease in intensity during the afternoon, even disappear for perhaps half an hour, then returns”.

Jim and Gail should find comfort that The Hum is a global phenomenon that has prompted scientific investigations and research worldwide.

There have been several reports from Levin people frustrated by the noise over the years.

In 2019, one man claimed the noise had almost driven him to madness, causing the walls and windows in his home to vibrate, and created ripples in his coffee cup.

He had taken comfort in the fact that several other people had come forward with reports of being irritated by hearing the same sound.

Mysterious low frequency noises were reported in Tauranga in 2018, while in 2012 residents of Mt Victoria, Mt Cook and Newtown in Wellington complained of a low humming noise.

In 2006, there were reports that Auckland residents kept hearing a mysterious “low-rumbling hum,” and one was so badly affected they considered moving.

It prompted Tom Moir of Massey University in Auckland to make several recordings of what appeared to be the Auckland Hum.

His previous research using simulated sounds had indicated that the hum was about 56 hertz.

A study into the Taos Hum in the early 1990s in Taos, New Mexico indicated that at least two percent could hear it, each hearer at a different frequency between 32 and 80Hz, modulated from 0.5 to 2Hz.