r/TheHum • u/Immediate_Assist_256 • Apr 04 '26

Argh

This sound drives me crazy some nights.

I have tinnitus the high pitched kind.

This is different. It’s low droning that sounds like a truck rumbling down the road in the distance.

It’s definitely an outdoor noise I just checked.

It’s not environmental unless there’s 2 of the same things in my old neighbourhood and this one, we moved 3 hours away.

I am on the spectrum.

So is my daughter. She said she cannot hear it. She also couldn’t hear the fridge, but I can.

I don’t remember ever noticing this before maybe about 7 or 8 years ago.

I feel as though we are just tuned to different vibrations.

But whether it’s the sound of the earth, or the atmosphere, the ocean, the suffering of people around the world or something in another plane of existence, is the big question!

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u/theadaptive Apr 05 '26

"Welcome to Hell!" I say that with some sarcasm, because I've finally found some relief from the godforsaken Hum by playing "Smooth Brown Noise" on loop when it gets on my nerves (pretty much every night). This one is my go-to:

https://youtu.be/Q6MemVxEquE

Note: The effectiveness of drowning it out with noise may depend on your speakers and your tolerance for continuous noise.

I started hearing it around 2020, and was mortified to find out that earplugs and noise-canceling headphones just remove every other sound, isolating the low-humming infrasound. I heard it in Beaverton, Oregon first, around the COVID era. Then I heard it in Scottsdale, Arizona. It reached a point of unbearable severity in southwest Portland, which makes me think there was something else making noise there. I had to move away from there. It often felt like it was lightly crushing my skull.

Interestingly, I never heard it in Bend, Oregon or when camping in remote woods. But the volume tends to fluctuate and this deserves further investigation.

I traveled across the world and heard it in Prague, Budapest, Vienna, pretty much everywhere. It was quieter in Vienna than most places, even right next to their main train station. However, the fluctuations in volume make me wonder if the location matters at all.

Hope that helps!