a low pulsing /rumbling hum in the middle of the night..
its subtle but VERY disturbing and constant
just started hearing this at 3am this morning
kept me awake all night thinking i was going insane
i even turned off all the power in my apartment and i still heard it
although i could not hear it from outside
had to play music in headphones to get it out of my head
today (daytime) the sound is gone..

turns out its not too uncommon, i googled it and found this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum
just wondering if anyone else has experienced this..

Weird. Must've been a relief to read that you're not the only one/not crazy. Maybe sample with 202 mic if it happens again. Make it work for you.

Yeah it's happened to me before. I wasn't sure what it was and I started to get a little worried. After a while it went away though.

My parents were asking me this exact question last week. They told me that every night they hear this humming sound. I tried to debunct it for them, because we don't have air conditioner but we have about 10 fans that we leave on all night to keep the cool air circulating. So I told them to shut off all fans and see what happens. But the next day, they said they can still hear it. I spent the night there to hear this humming sound, and unfortunately I didn't hear it but I did spent the night listening for anything that can cause the hum, like a neighbors air conditioner, a generator, a pool pump, but my parents couldn't identify the hum with those devices that I pointed out to them.

Still haven't heard the hum yet, I come home from work at around 11pm and the only thing on my mind is something to eat, a blunt and maybe some pussy if I'm lucky. So I'm not focused into it yet. But I'm strange like that, I need noise to fall asleep, sometimes I put the vacuum on or open the window facing the busy street, so maybe its been helping me sleep and I haven't noticed.

I will end with this, my mother told me she heard the hum the other night and couldn't sleep, so she was staring at the wall thinking of thoughts or whatever. And then from the window, this red laser light came through and was scanning her dresser. She said scanning because it looked like those lights from a printer and it was like a thin line of red light passing through. I said it could've been a helicopter or a passing car but she said it was quiet and nothing passed by air or ground. 3 days later, I had to come to work at 4am to help set-up the stage. It was about 3/4 done so I went up to the roof to have a hot tea and a donut. There I am, chilling 400ft from the surface in pitch black night and this blue light appears to my right. I thought one of my co-workers were walking around with their phones on, but when I looked, I saw this thin blue light scanning over the roof, like what my mother saw. Just like a printer scanner, moving slow too. I was scared that the light will come my way and I looked up the sky and the light was coming from something that was hidden at the edge of a cloud. As soon as I saw that much, it disappeared. There were no helicopters or planes that night and our place is the biggest building in the district, so no way it came from the street level.

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A similar thing happened to me 2 weeks ago but it was a super high freq sound (like an ultra sound) . In fact , it was my broken light with the switch on interruptor ... The electricity pass in it and cause this noise.
Check your electicity instalation , it's maybe the problem... (and i think this phenomen is bad for the health)

A few years back on the radio I heard this science Q&A where the topic was background noise. Apparently cities make noise all on their own, it's down to everything going on no matter how slight it is. As sound's a vibration, all those little interactions slowly add up to one huge amount of energy constantly shifting.

So essentially at all times a city is humming softly. It's just that at night most of the obvious sounds that drown out the hum are gone, but the fundamentals to making the hum remain. If you've ever spent time in the country (proper rural, nobody for kilometres) & the city, chances are you'll be more aware of the background hum of a city.

Wish I could link the transcript but I can't find it without weeks of digging. This is the radio show, but what I'm thinking of predates the downloads. Some interesting stuff in there anyway.

Of course that's a far less extreme/loud version of what you were talking about Don, but what you describe could be similar. Reckon I've got a little bit of tinnitus & it seems to be more noticable at night when there's nothing going near my house. Even though I live on the edge of suburbia, it can get scary quiet here.

Ill- Dude that would've been scary... I've lived under a flight path & been spun out by plane's headlights before (never thought they'd have them, but it makes sense when coming into land & it's foggy). Never seen lazers though.

Lasers in the sky http://forsys.cfr.washington.edu/JFSP06 ... nology.htm

I've found other people had the same experience as you too.

I see lazers all the time. Lazers and bears. Fun fact: The word Laser is actually an acronym... it stands for "Light Amplified by Stimulated Emission of Radiance".

yo it's crazy you bring this up now don. i'm hearing a low frequency hum since a year or so at home. actually i'm hearing it right now too. sometimes it stops for like some seconds but it's almost constantly. 2 days ago i googled around and found out that there are a lot of people hearing stuff like that. i believe it's heaters, transformators, whatever in the neighbourhood. low frequencies can travel long ways as you all probably know. i found it funny that they say it could be some kind of tinnitus or stuff that people think they hear but is not actually there. i definitely hear it and it's annoying but it's not that loud that i can't sleep. but as unfolding said, there is so much going on in the city it could be anything. hard to find out. but thanks for sharing this. makes me feel more sane again

I dont hear hums (i keep something making sound on all the time...slept with music on as long as I can remember!) but now and then, I get this faint but sharp ringing in one of my ears. It goes on for about 1 minute then it fades away.

It's so random and it causes all other sounds to fade away for the time that I can hear it.

^Me too hseiken. On a somewhat related note, does anyone ever go through stretches where you hear everything out of tune? It happens to me like once every year and lasts for like 3 days to a week.

And rrr*, no idea what you mean. Never heard of it and hopefully I will never experience it. It sounds scary.

@hseiken I have that almost at least once a day. Though luckily it's not for a minute and just a few seconds but I definatly know what you're talking about. I really wonder what it is and luckily it doesn't stay forever.

And yeah, when I'm about to sleep I hear that high sound/noise aswell. At first it was bothering me but the more attention you pay to it, the annoyinger it gets.

Luckily this thread makes me feel more sane aswell.

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i asked a doctor what that occasional high pitched ring is
apparently, it's when one of the hairs/strings in your ear (that pick up sound and let your brian know what you're hearing) snaps. he told me that the very high pitched sound you hear when it snaps would be the last time you ever hear that specific frequency. i think the reason you hear only the high pitched ones snap is because they're probably much thinner than the hairs that pick up the low frequencies. like how the low strings on a guitar are much fatter than the high strings. i'm no doctor though.

on another note
as of last night and tonight i've only heard the sound twice thankfully

@unfolding- i dont think the low hum is city sound because it's only audible inside my house, and it gets louder the more stories up i am. making me think it could be a vibration in the ground possibly?

@chickadee- weird thing is that it only happens at night (11pm-4am pacific time) and is not audible to anyone who lives in my house. if it was electrical i assume it might be constant regardless of time?

thanks for the all great insight, a relief to hear i'm not alone!