Strange noise?

[Bill]

Did anyone else hear that strange whistling sound just after 11pm last night?

It sounded very distant, fading up and down like it was being carried on the wind. Definitely not someone’s alarm or anything I could identify.

It seemed to be comming from the direction of town and lasted for over an hour before very gradually fading away.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

can't say i did bill.

mind you i hear whistling noises all the time with my tinnitus, especially late on when it is quieter.

added to that, i am on the main approach for Liverpool airport so planes over at all hours of day and night, so any noise other than desperate screaming tends to get ignored.

can't have been anything serious as it would be on the front page by now.

[Bill]

I asked the same question on the local Facebook page and quite a few others heard it but of course we all live in the same area. I got the distinct feeling it was a long way off, sort of like when you hear distant thunder and can sense it’s not local. It wasn’t that unlike the whistle I can get in my ears sometimes, a constant pure sounding oscillation of about 1Khz that slowly and randomly faded up and down.

Coincidentally, I’d been messing with my solar battery setup earlier in the day, significantly increasing the discharge limits which in turn caused the cooling fan to run harder. The PWM control for the fan also runs at 1Khz so my initial thoughts were that it was this. Thinking the neighbour were going to start complaining, I got up only to find it was coming from the direction of town.

Maybe it was some kind of natural phenomena and unless I can find something online it’ll remain like my UFO thing just another mystery.

 

Bill 😊

[ninearches]

I had hearing aids fitted yesterday & am now receiving some very strange & long forgotten noises. I am hoping to be able to eavesdrop on the competitors at the pub quiz tonight.

[Confused52]

1 hour ago, ninearches said:

I had hearing aids fitted yesterday & am now receiving some very strange & long forgotten noises. I am hoping to be able to eavesdrop on the competitors at the pub quiz tonight.

Good luck!

[Confused52]

I asked my lad if he heard anything, neither he nor I heard anything over on the other side of town Bill.

[Bill]

Well, I’ve trawled the internet and can’t really find any other local reports on this. If it was just a local whistling noise it’d be no big deal, but this sounded so strange and sort of spooky I’m intrigued to know what was causing it.

It’s a known fact that under certain atmospheric conditions, sound can become trapped between dense layers of air which then forms a conduit allowing sound to travel huge distances. A similar thing happens quite often with high frequency radio signals and is commonly known as atmospheric ducting. Such signals often exhibit a characteristic fluttering, fading together with a slight echo, similar to that of Tuesday night’s whistle.

I did manage find this clip Similar Sound which has similarities but lacks some of the spookiness.  

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

the only time i heard a similar sound was when  a singer at the local pub got feedback on the mike.

my thoughts when you first posted was maybe something venting pressure but the tone seems too low for that.

[Bill]

I do know what you mean about escaping pressure sounds Sid. Years back, I was walking past some kind of manhole cover near Grey Mist when it started making a sound like a jet engine ramping up. It was accompanied by a huge stink, which I later found out came from the nearby sewage treatment plant that use something like a jet engine to force passage through the pipe network.

The problem is that unless you heard this particular sound, it’s hard to imagine. It certainly didn’t sound “hissy” or mechanical, it was a very smooth oscillation like you’d get from a tuning fork, but its intensity varied randomly fading from loud down to almost nothing over the space of several seconds. Ghost-like is probably an accurate description. 💀

 

Bill 😊