I never thought I would do it, but in 2002 I bought a house. Since
moving in, I sometimes notice a subtle but persistent throbbing sound,
which cycles about every one and one-half seconds. It is a low
frequency sound, almost more of a vibration than a recognizable pitch.
Most often, I notice this phenomenon late at night when it is quiet, especially if I
happen to wake up in the middle of the night. I don’t hear it all the
time. Also, it seems to be more of a cold-weather phenomenon than a
warm-weather phenomenon. It doesn’t seem to happen at all in
mid-summer.
I have gone so far as to shut off the electricity in my house, just to
make sure that this throbbing phenomenon is not related to an
appliance, such as a refrigerator pump. The throbbing continues even
with the electricity off. It can be heard from almost any place in my
house (even in the basement), but in some areas it seems to be louder
than others.
I have checked outside to determine whether or not the throbbing is
somehow related to the city (I live in a metropolitan area, near the
central business district). I cannot detect any such sound or
vibration outside my house, but perhaps this is because my house
filters out a lot of ambient noise. I have taken my pulse, to be
certain that I’m not just hearing my own circulation. The rhythms of
my pulse and the throbbing sound don’t match.
Other than passing this off as an auditory hallucination, can anyone
account for this odd throbbing/vibrating of my house?
Just a WAG but it might be the vibration from some building’s HVAC system if you’re near enough to any large commercial sites. The vibration from the pumps in our building is similar to what you describe…
Not saying this is what your’s is but we had an ocassional “throbbing” vibration of our house. Discovered it to be helicopters passing in the distance.
Sound from external sources transmitted through the air or ground or plumbing are all suspects.
Next you have vibrations from wind on the structure of your house or the wiring to your house resonating in the wind and transferring to the house.
A neighbor could hate you and be aiming a directional speaker or ultra-directional speaker at your house so only you experience the sound. A person could be trying to make you seem crazy because they want you put away and be messing with you for control of your fortune.
you could be receiving radio transmissions from your dental work.
You can stop investigating where you draw the line.
You didn’t get the house cheap because the previous owner was in a desperate hurry to get rid of it, did you? He didn’t leave abruptly, offering to let everything the basement “convey,” did he?
My house used to have an electronic beeping that was very faint. It stopped a while ago… I remain at least partly convinced that someone left an alarm clock in the wall while remodeling. My only other theory is that it was one of the neighbors and being transmitted through plumbing or wires so that it was only audible in parts of my house and not outside.
I don’t know if any definitive answer could be given, but sound travels in strange ways. You can hear a train from miles away by listening through the rails, but not through air. Then there’s resonance, where one object might start vibrating because of something else at the same frequency, and there’s the possibility for sound to be reflected or concentrated as it bounces off walls and you have a lot of ways for phantom noises.
Or it could be a disembodied heart beating in the basement. Poe had a good story about that.
Probably won’t help, but it’s an amusing (at least to me) anecdote. My MIL had been complaining about this mysterious beeping/whining noise in her house. Sometimes it would persist for days, sometimes she’d go days without hearing it. She had told my wife about it over the phone, but we are 200 miles away and couldn’t do anything to help investigate. My FIL has hearing issues due to manning 20" guns on the Destroyer he was stationed on in the Navy.
So, she was left to endure the beeping every night and no one could help her find the source. She had friends come over - but no one could find it.
Now, enter the intrepid son in law (me). I could hear the sound, but had one hell of a time determining it’s origin. The sound was intermittent and sounded like it was coming from inside the wall. I finally started checking things more closely. I found a box and put my ear to it. haHA! I open the box to find my FIL’s hearing aids.
The two were working together to form a feed back loop. They would only do this if they were put in the box close to each other with the mic of one next to the speaker of the other - and vice versa. The hearing aids had some type of protection circuitry that would shut off the sound if it got to a high enough level. So, you’d hear the high pitch sound getting louder and louder over the course of about a sec - then it would shut off for about 2 secs. Repeat until the batteries died, or they were moved.
I don’t know how that woman kept her sanity through that!
Does not happen during summer? More of a cold weather phenomenon? Sound travels farther through cold, dense air. I guess you are hearing something from far away, like HKFooey says…
You know what, it’s a long shot, but anecdotally this has been suggested as an option - check your sump pump level and see if times when the noise is louder correspond to a certain water level.
He already said he tried this with the electricity turned off.
Are there pylons being driven in a nearby construction site?
A neighbor of mine used to have a pneumatic can crusher that was in his basement with a self feeding mechanism. I’d hear the thumping when I was in my basement. The can crusher was mounted on the block wall in his basement and the sound transferred easily across his yard (through the compact soil) to my basement. Took months to figure out where the sound was coming from.
Hi wgwilson - Did you ever figure out this sound issue? I just moved into a new home and I am hearing the exact same thing - same description, frequency, etc. It is very quiet - my husband can barely hear it, and only when I point it out to him. To me, it is really loud and is driving me crazy. Please tell me if you figured anything out about what this sound is. Thanks.
does it give you a creepy feeling? infra-sound is like that. it gives rise to beliefs that ghosts are up and about. there are many ways infra-sound is generated and transmitted.
