For several years now, residents of Holmfield, a village in Yorkshire, England, have been affected by a mysterious hum the source of which has yet to be discovered.

Not everyone can hear it, but those whose who do claim to have had their lives seriously impacted. The “Holmfield Hum”, as the mysterious low-frequency sound plaguing the English village of Holmfield has come to be known, has been making news headlines in the European country for at least a couple of years, but so far no one has been able to discover its source. Local authorities reportedly carried out an investigation and also hired an independent consultant to get to the bottom of the mystery, but their efforts have so far been in vain.

Holmfield residents who can hear the mysterious hum describe it as the whirring of a washing machine or an idling diesel engine. It doesn’t sound like the most annoying sound in the world, but it takes a toll on a person’s mental health and general well-being after a while. It interferes with their sleep and their mood, and some claim to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown because of it.

Photo: Usman Yousaf/Unsplash

“I love my home but some days I absolutely detest being in it. It feels like there’s no happy space here anymore,” Holmfield resident Yvonne Conner recently told the BBC. “As much as I can hear it I can feel it on my eardrums. It resonates and feels like a pressure against them. That’s pretty much what it’s like all the time.”

“It leaves you feeling worn out because it’s worse on a night so trying to sleep is hard,” local woman Zoe Millar said. “We have considered moving but why should we when it’s something that’s not our fault?”

Conner, Millar and others who claim to hear the mysterious sound say they have been constantly tortured by it since 2019, but despite repeated pleas to the local council to identify the source of it, no one knows where it’s coming from. During its investigation, the council announced that it had identified three possible sources, but eventually, officers concluded they had not been able to find the cause.

“We have given our all to this investigation and left no stone unturned because we care about local people and understand the impact that the alleged noises have had on some residents,” Councillor Jenny Lynn told Yorkshire Live. “We have given our all to this investigation and left no stone unturned because we care about local people and understand the impact that the alleged noises have had on some residents.”

The failed investigation left many in Holmfield frustrated, as this essentially means going on living with the constant hum or moving away from their home to escape it. To many, either option is unacceptable but the reality is that this sort of low-frequency hums are notoriously difficult to trace, and the fact that not everyone can hear them only makes things harder.

Holmfield sits at the bottom of a valley and is surrounded by industrial units, which villagers have blamed for the noise in the past. Investigations into the mysterious phenomenon have found no evidence of that, though.

 

Acoustic expert Peter Rogers told the BBC that sound is a very complex topic and that in this case, the infamous hum could indeed be caused by some industrial activity that only some people can hear, or even something as mundane as water running through mains, a transformer or a telegraph pole.