Was this ‘the hum’? Or what else was this noise in London last night?

[UAintMyMuvva]

Not strictly an AIBU but didn’t know where else to post. I’m sorry if this is long, but I want to explain this clearly.

I live in a north London suburb - quiet residential street about 5 mins from a small high street and 10 mins from the North Circular Road.

Woke up about 4am thinking I heard a plane going overhead. Not unusual in normal times as we live under a flight path, but for the last few weeks I’ve not heard any planes, so it seemed strange. Thought maybe a military plane or something?

Lay awake listening for about 20 mins and it sounded like a plane circling, but not directly overhead, maybe somewhere in the distance. Then started to think I’d been mistaken, as the noise sounded more like the rumbling of a busy motorway or maybe a train in the distance. It was a humming, buzzing, rumbling sound.

Eventually got up and opened my windows to look/listen out. Street was dead. Sky was clear. The noise was louder and seemed to be coming from ‘out there’ somewhere in the city, not actually overhead, and wasn’t really coming from any clear direction - just all around. It wasn’t coming from the high street (this has been silent at night since lockdown, but I recognise the sound of the odd car from such a close distance, and this wasn’t it).

The noise was also getting louder and then quietening again and so on, but not in any particularly rhythmic way (like how a circling helicopter would sound).

Woke DH up and asked if he could hear it. He could. Decided to check the TFL jam cams online to see if there were any military trucks or delivery trucks on any of the main roads nearby, including the North Circ. Nothing. The roads were completely dead on all the cams in north London (bar the odd ambulance, which was eerie).

Started googling what it could be and the thing that kept coming up was The Hum, an unexplained humming/rumbling sound that is probably best known in the UK for being noticed in Bristol (I’d never actually heard of it before).

Anyway, the noise was still going at about 6am when I fell asleep. Woke again at 8am and it had gone, just silence and birdsong on my street.

I know nobody can give me a definitive answer, but was this ‘the hum’, do you think? What else could it have been? It freaked me out quite badly as it just so strange and persistent and a bit ominous in these coronavirus times!

I would wake my DH up too if I could hear a hum or anything else unusual, and he’s hard to wake. I would want him to hear it and I would want his opinion.

Wouldn’t want to have that train passing the bottom of my garden though.

@Sparklingplasters .

She’s 80 years old, so if that’s the truth I have a new level of respect for her!

Hums can arise for a variety of reasons. I have read they have been attributable to a) changing water currents on the continental shelf and b) grain drying silos working at full pelt for long periods getting up to a certain frequency and being heard significant distances away. There are other apparent reasons. HRTFT.

I understand that these ‘hums’ have been heard around the world. Quite a number reported in the West Country in recent years. Most can be explained but some can’t. Google and YouTube have many examples.

OP, everyone needs a bit of me time 😀

If you are near a railway, it's probably track maintenance. It sounds exactly like that and lasts ages as the train moves very slowly.

Hi,

Long time lurker but just saw this thread - sorry to quash theories, but it's overnight railway maintenance. I live right next to Bowes Park station - they are replacing the railway track and some other bits overnight - we all got a letter about it months ago saying there might be some overnight noise disturbance over easter weekend, forgot about it and were then woken up at some ungodly hour with all kind of drills and machinery noise - the whole street work up and our street WhatApp has been abuzz this morning! Hope that helps you!

@OohThatCat

Thank you! Makes perfect sense as that’s not too far from me.

I shall let my DH know (promise not to wake him up in the middle of the night to tell him, though)

@UAintMyMuvva Happy to put your mind at rest! The letters came so long ago we totally forgot about the works - my other half this morning said he thought some bomb was going off somewhere in the night! Sadly I think we are in for two more nights of it at least :(

I would certainly wake DH under these circumstances! Telling him in the morning wouldn't cut it, he would have needed to listen himself. He wouldn't have minded.

Re: the waking up of spouses

I think people who hate being woken up (my DM was like this) will find it difficult to understand people who don't really care/mind.

My DH and I would wake each other up for something like this - partly because a) we sleep light and usually wake spontaneously if the other does anyway, b) we enjoy sharing random experiences like this with each other.

But perhaps most of all, neither he or I mind being woken up. It would be different if we did.

That’s a creepy sound!

The first time I heard it I was at the Manchester Christmas markets. Everyone else was ignoring it because they hear it it all the time, while I was frantically looking around to see if the mothership was about to beam me up!

@patriciabateman Agree. I wake my husband up and he doesn't care because he falls asleep really easily. He can sit down on a bus or train and be asleep within 10 seconds. Sometimes we have challenges where I tell him to try to stay awake for five minutes in bed and he can't do it (it's all fun and games round here.)

I, on the other hand, find it hard to drop off even if I have an hour or more to do so. So if he woke me up, I'd be pretty pissed off.

OP I think I live near you near Alexandra Park. I was looking out of the window at around 1am and could see changes in the light. Like strong lights we're switching on or off or moving. It sounds like it was the Bowes Park railway works.

I agree with overnight railway maintenance. I hear it here but it's more pronounced with no usual sounds of traffic and airplanes.

A swarm of zombies ?

It's not rhubarb growing is it ?

@Kitchendoctor I'm in the north east and often hear a really creepy sounding plane, almost like a WW2 plane sound - it drones on and on and suddenly disappears.

I heard the hum once. Strangest thing ever. It went on for ages and then just stopped. I decided with dh that it was aliens

We had an ongoing hum in our house once, many years ago. We lived in a house on top of a pump storage power station (well, my parents still do) and they spent weeks with fancy recording equipment in the house overnight, and eventually decided it was the hum of the turbines inside the power station at night, echoing through a fault in the rock. It affected us and a couple of other houses in the area. I still notice it sometimes at night when I visit, but my parents say they never hear it any more. It's been decades, so I suppose they're used to it.

I just saw this post and flight map on twitter and it made me think of this thread.

Wtf is going on?

twitter.com/donnantwich/status/1248924495705972737?s=21

Writing this camping out with son in back garden (supposed to be on a canoe camping trip this weekend but Covid said no).

I hear a low constant hum, sounds like a generator or railway sidings noises. But I’m in ... well my username probably gives that away ! I hear it every night, but obv in a tent in back garden tonight it’s very clearly noisy and keeping me awake, so I’m iPadding instead. I need absolute dark and silence to sleep.

It could be freight trains. They’re noisy and run at night. They’re very long and sometimes sit with their engines idling.

I get woken by that at times of stress. No one else hears anything. There’s a name for it, as a particular sleep phenomenon.

That's interesting. It hasn't happened to me for years, but I used to wake up after hearing a very loud noise, but no-one else ever heard it, so maybe that's what it was - although I don't remember any stress.

Gosh didn’t realise I had so many MN neighbours. I’m in Ally Pally.

Didn’t hear the noise though!