World Mysteries - The Taos Hum - World's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries

World Mysteries - The Taos Hum - World's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries

      In the small town of Taos, New Mexico, there is a certain buzz often heard on the horizon that can be compared to the sound of a distant diesel engine. Although it can be heard by the naked ear, various sound detection devices are not able to pick it up. This is known as the Taos Hum and up to this day, no one still knows how this sound is being created.

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What is the Taos Hum?

World Mysteries - The Taos Hum - World's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries

The town of Taos, in north-central New Mexico, has been home to many famous residents including Julia Roberts, Dennis Hopper, D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley and Donald Rumsfeld. It's a small, laid-back artsy community that is also home to an unusual mystery: a resident hum of unknown origin, the so-called "Taos Hum."

A variety of theories have been offered as an explanation, ranging from the mundane to the fantastic, the psychological to the paranormal. Stoned hippies, secret government mind control experiments, underground UFO bases and everything in between have been blamed.

The hum seems to have first been reported in the early 1990s. Joe Mullins, a professor emeritus of engineering at the University of New Mexico, conducted research into the Taos Hum. Based on a survey of residents, about 2 percent of the general population was believed to be "hearers," those who claimed to detect the hum. Sensitive equipment was set up in the homes of several of the "hearers," measuring sounds and vibrations but after extensive testing nothing unusual was detected.

Physical and psychological explanations.

Humans live in a constant sea of background noise, most of it unnoticed until we start paying attention to all the sounds and focusing on them. While many people may assume that locating the source of a sound should be easy, in practice it can be very difficult. There are hundreds of potential sources of noises including traffic, boats, planes, insects, large machines, wind, freight trains, mining and other industries. It's not as simple as listening for a sound and walking toward it until you find its source.

World Mysteries - The Taos Hum - World's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries

Many researchers suggest that the answer to the Taos Hum mystery may be found in the inner world of personal experience instead of the outer world of factories and heavy equipment. What does your tongue taste like? What does your nose smell like? What does your ear sound like? These are not silly, simple questions but instead may hold part of the answer.

Citizens in Britain and portions of the Southwestern U.S. have been complaining about a maddening hum that just won’t go away. And researchers have been unable to pinpoint its source. Not everyone can hear the low-pitched hum, and those who do say that it seems artificial in nature – and is driving them crazy. In 1977, a British newspaper received nearly 800 letters from people complaining of loss of sleep, dizziness, shortness of breath, headaches, anxiety, irritability, deteriorating health, inability to read or study because of the incessant hum.
Most famous in the U.S. is the “Taos Hum“. There the annoyance was so acute for the “hearers” in Taos, New Mexico that they banded together in 1993 and petitioned Congress to investigate and help them find the source of the noise. Scientists from the state’s national laboratories and several universities descended on Taos to measure everything from seismic and electro-magnetic vibrations to the sensitivity of the human ear. No conclusive causes were discovered. One prevailing theory holds that the hum is created by a military communications system used to contact submarines.


No one could figure out the source or the origin of the hum and people who could hear the sound reported of side effects which included:

• Loss of libido or sex drive.
• Increased pressure in ears.
• Abrupt nosebleeds.
• Disorientation.
• Sleep disturbances to complete insomnia.
• Dizziness and headaches.
• Apart from the physical side effects, people even reported of psychological disequilibrium. Some reported that they felt completely singled out.

World Mysteries - The Taos Hum - World's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries

These mysterious sound became popular as the Taos Hum. Interestingly, Taos is not the only place where people reported of low-frequency sounds. People all over the world have reported of hearing unexplained sounds which included squeals of high pitch all the way down to faint rumble. Interestingly, sources of some of these reported sounds were identified, some turned out to be hoax while others still remain unexplained till this day. Taos Hum is one that has no explanation and neither can anyone prove it as hoax.

Several explanations pop up to explain these acoustic phenomena such as aliens, meteors, secret projects by governments and even insects but no explanation sounds satisfactory. As far as Taos Hum is concerned, some of the popular theories that have been put forward to explain the phenomenon include:

• It is the communication among living rocks. Living rocks? Really?
• It is the sound made by lost spirits attempting to cross over to the other side.
• It is the sunspots' inter-solar echo.
• It is the sound generated by planetary alignment.
• It is the sound of alien communication attempts.

The report could not draw any conclusion. The report stated that the hum almost always began abruptly, was barely audible and had pulse fluctuations as reported by the hum hearers. Several tests were conducted in open and controlled conditions to isolate the source of the hum the investigators could not find any known acoustic signals or seismic activities that could possibly cause the hum. The report further stated that the hum was not just pent up in Taos and that it was a known phenomena all over the world North America, Europe and United Kingdom reporting most of the events. According to the report, some of the hum hearers can hear the hum in different places while others fail to hear it in different locations.

Some of the possible sources for the hum as per the report were:

Audible magnetism of earth releasing the low-frequency signals.
Molten core of earth emitting ultra low frequency RF signal.
Possibly the military communication technology ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) has some connection with the hum.
The hum may be caused by infrasound which has been tested as a weapon system and is known for causing remarkably similar side effects as reported by hum hearers.
Today some experts simply blow about the hum by referring it as some kind of auditory hallucination or some kind of auditory disorder that is yet to be discovered (note that the hum is not the same as tinnitus or constant ringing of ears).

We really don't know whether the Taos Hum is real or not. Probably it is real and we are yet to understand the mystery. Many things that we know of today were once mysteries such as the lightning but science eventually managed to unravel those mysteries. We may have to wait a little longer.