Mystery of Omagh hum captures global attention

AS the origin of the Omagh hum continues to baffle local people, the mystery surrounding the mind-bending buzz also seems to have caught the attention of the wider world.

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, the county town’s nighttime noise hit national news headlines, and TV crews came to town to learn more about the strange sound.

The media storm arose after an announcement from Fermanagh and Omagh District Council (FODC) that its efforts to trace the sound had thus far been unsuccessful, and that it was considering hiring in specialist help.

In a statement to the UH, FODC said, “Officers are currently investigating the use of specialist equipment, or procurement of a specialist company, to assist in detecting the source of the noise.”

In one video posted earlier this week by ITV News – which, at the time of writing, has been viewed 639,900 times – a sound expert linked Omagh’s nocturnal noise with a global phenomenon known as ‘The hum’.

“It can be a very serious issue for people and low frequency noise annoyance isn’t something that should be dismissed,” he began.

A number of local people have claimed the noise has caused them to have lost countless nights of sleep.

He continued, “The hum (global phenomenon) is these sorts of low frequency sounds that appear at various cities around the world and around the UK at different times, and there’s a mystery about them because people don’t know where they come from or what’s causing them.

“In most cases, where we can work out what it actually is, the hum comes from some sort of industrial or farm machinery source,” he said.

“What kind of catches people out is the fact that the sound travels quite a long way at low frequencies, so it is hard to place where it’s coming from. But industrial sources are usually the most common that are identified.”

Some reports of the sound have taken on a comically glib tone, while others have posted theories, ranging from the plausible to the absurd, to account for the sound.

However, for those frustrated residents who are still struggling to sleep, little has changed. They continue to await the identification of a concrete cause, and hope that a means of reducing or silencing the sound will swiftly follow.