Creepy experiences in the backcountry

[Gutshotem]

TL,DR: I have experienced something similar, but different, and have come to suspect an underground natural gas pipeline as the culprit.

My wife and I moved to rural property two years ago. For two spring seasons now, I have been hearing rhythmic bass noises in the early morning, sometimes extending throughout the day. The closest noise comparison to what I hear is the sound of a small four-stroke motor trying to start for about one second, then stopping. Like when you are camping and someone starts up their quad on the other side of a hill, where you can just hear/feel the bass elements of the noise, with all the high-end starter/mechanical noise stripped away. The noise is more detectable by feel than my actual ears, and is quiet enough where any background noise makes it hard to pick up. It seems to come from the ground, and I definitely seem to hear it more often if I am near a geographical feature, like a deep terrace cut we made to level an area, an old outhouse, or our 4 foot utility trenches (when they were open). It can happen every 30 seconds, or it could happen once a day. I have since heard the same noise consistently on a small lake we kayak fish, when we are out on the water. Depending at where I am on the lake, the noise will sound like it comes from different compass directions. I also heard it once while hiking on a bench above a river that lies in a bit of a valley. If I plot these three points on a map, it makes a triangle with roughly 5-mile sides. At all three locations, the sound presents at the same "volume", meaning nowhere does it sound like the source is closer or further away.

My wife never hears noises that I hear, so the first year, I gave up trying to get her to hear it. This last spring, I got her to hear it at both our property and on the lake. Last year, my parents were with me when I heard it hiking by the river, and they heard it too.

I have been hearing about the so-called "worldwide hum" phenomenon for several years, so I began looking into that. What I found out is that the hum is sort of a catch-all for any environmental auditory phenomena that people experience. Most people that I read about experiencing it either hear a truck idling (kind of similar to mine) or a high-pitched whine. Unfortunately, with the decline of literacy you have a lot of people that are just incapable of describing what they hear, or even understanding what the words they use actually mean. Which is why there are people who hear what sounds like the bass rumble of a large engine idling and think of it as a "hum", kind of like people who think sour and bitter mean the same thing. I did read extensively about a college professor who has been running a study on the hum phenomenon for years. It seems like this professor come to the conclusion that the actual unidentified phenomenon is a higher-pitched hum that people hear that does not actually exist, and is possibly caused by some additive in sodas, with a huge percentage of people thinking that any unidentified noise they hear puts them in the hum club. So I ruled that out as what I was experiencing.

I also looked at industrial noise, which is the obvious answer. My area is mostly national forest, with no large quarrying or mining to speak of. This never seemed like the answer to me anyway, since the uniformity of the volume no matter where I hear it it is the same, and a sound from a pinpoint location like a quarry or mine would seem to diminish the further you get from it. Regardless, there are no operations like this within the triangle of where I hear the noise. We also have busy rail lines in the area. We can hear the train when it rolls through an area about 6 miles from us, but the mystery noise is nothing like the various noises that trains make.

What we also have in the area is a large natural gas pipeline that basically runs through the entire county from north to south. I have learned that these large gas lines need what is called a compressor station about every 50 miles because they have to constantly re-pressurize the gas to keep it moving. At this point, I think that this is the most likely source for the noise. I think because it runs the length of the county, it explains the uniform volume I hear. I don't fully understand how it can sound the same when I am 1/4 mile (the river spot) or 5 miles away (our property and the lake are both about 5 miles from the pipe), but I know that sound and vibration conducts strangely underground. The funny thing is that we lived less than a mile from one of the compressor stations, and about 100 yards from the actual pipeline for one winter and spring before we moved to this property, and I never heard the noise there.

Some of what you describe, just moving to a rural area, hearing it in the spring and sounding like a 4 stroke starting makes me think that you're hearing grouse drumming.

 

[rubio52]

Years ago my brother and I were hunting deer near the Az\Mexico border. On our third night around 2am or so, two large SUVs pulled up to our campsite. We were sleeping in a small travel trailer. 4 men step out with guns and walked into the desert and came back half hour later with 4 large bags. They got back in ther vehicles and left. My brother and i were just peeking out the windows with our handguns ,like that would of done any good if they wanted to **** with us.

 

[PablitoPescador]

TL,DR: I have experienced something similar, but different, and have come to suspect an underground natural gas pipeline as the culprit.

My wife and I moved to rural property two years ago. For two spring seasons now, I have been hearing rhythmic bass noises in the early morning, sometimes extending throughout the day. The closest noise comparison to what I hear is the sound of a small four-stroke motor trying to start for about one second, then stopping. Like when you are camping and someone starts up their quad on the other side of a hill, where you can just hear/feel the bass elements of the noise, with all the high-end starter/mechanical noise stripped away. The noise is more detectable by feel than my actual ears, and is quiet enough where any background noise makes it hard to pick up. It seems to come from the ground, and I definitely seem to hear it more often if I am near a geographical feature, like a deep terrace cut we made to level an area, an old outhouse, or our 4 foot utility trenches (when they were open). It can happen every 30 seconds, or it could happen once a day. I have since heard the same noise consistently on a small lake we kayak fish, when we are out on the water. Depending at where I am on the lake, the noise will sound like it comes from different compass directions. I also heard it once while hiking on a bench above a river that lies in a bit of a valley. If I plot these three points on a map, it makes a triangle with roughly 5-mile sides. At all three locations, the sound presents at the same "volume", meaning nowhere does it sound like the source is closer or further away.

My wife never hears noises that I hear, so the first year, I gave up trying to get her to hear it. This last spring, I got her to hear it at both our property and on the lake. Last year, my parents were with me when I heard it hiking by the river, and they heard it too.

I have been hearing about the so-called "worldwide hum" phenomenon for several years, so I began looking into that. What I found out is that the hum is sort of a catch-all for any environmental auditory phenomena that people experience. Most people that I read about experiencing it either hear a truck idling (kind of similar to mine) or a high-pitched whine. Unfortunately, with the decline of literacy you have a lot of people that are just incapable of describing what they hear, or even understanding what the words they use actually mean. Which is why there are people who hear what sounds like the bass rumble of a large engine idling and think of it as a "hum", kind of like people who think sour and bitter mean the same thing. I did read extensively about a college professor who has been running a study on the hum phenomenon for years. It seems like this professor come to the conclusion that the actual unidentified phenomenon is a higher-pitched hum that people hear that does not actually exist, and is possibly caused by some additive in sodas, with a huge percentage of people thinking that any unidentified noise they hear puts them in the hum club. So I ruled that out as what I was experiencing.

I also looked at industrial noise, which is the obvious answer. My area is mostly national forest, with no large quarrying or mining to speak of. This never seemed like the answer to me anyway, since the uniformity of the volume no matter where I hear it it is the same, and a sound from a pinpoint location like a quarry or mine would seem to diminish the further you get from it. Regardless, there are no operations like this within the triangle of where I hear the noise. We also have busy rail lines in the area. We can hear the train when it rolls through an area about 6 miles from us, but the mystery noise is nothing like the various noises that trains make.

What we also have in the area is a large natural gas pipeline that basically runs through the entire county from north to south. I have learned that these large gas lines need what is called a compressor station about every 50 miles because they have to constantly re-pressurize the gas to keep it moving. At this point, I think that this is the most likely source for the noise. I think because it runs the length of the county, it explains the uniform volume I hear. I don't fully understand how it can sound the same when I am 1/4 mile (the river spot) or 5 miles away (our property and the lake are both about 5 miles from the pipe), but I know that sound and vibration conducts strangely underground. The funny thing is that we lived less than a mile from one of the compressor stations, and about 100 yards from the actual pipeline for one winter and spring before we moved to this property, and I never heard the noise there.

It’s hard to say what this is, but my theory is that you’re experiencing “the sound of the universe.” A mystical phenomenon that the east has known about for millennia. The mantra “om” or “aum” that is used in meditation to connect to higher consciousness is derived from this sound that was experienced by the ancients.

 

[mxgsfmdpx]

Years ago my brother and I were hunting deer near the Az\Mexico border. On our third night around 2am or so, two large SUVs pulled up to our campsite. We were sleeping in a small travel trailer. 4 men step out with guns and walked into the desert and came back half hour later with 4 large bags. They got back in ther vehicles and left. My brother and i were just peeking out the windows with our handguns ,like that would have done any good if they wanted to **** with us.

Those guys usually leave hunters alone. They are far more likely to try and go through your stuff in the middle of the day while you’re away from camp. Most of them want confrontation with you as much as you want it with them (not at all).

 

[Karlburns]

Interesting stories in here. During scouting this week while flying I came across a pile of rocks. Now that might not sound unusual except they were in the middle of a swamp that was at least two miles wide and long. No trees, no other rocks to speak of. It was like someone with a dump truck emptied a load in the middle of this swamp 20 miles from the nearest road and nowhere close to a natural explanation. Circled it trying to get a photo but I couldn’t catch it. My theory..bigfoots water bath. Ground water from the swamp slips in when he lays on it. My real thought. How’d these get here? I’ll try and get a photo during next fly over.

 

[AndrewD]

Some of what you describe, just moving to a rural area, hearing it in the spring and sounding like a 4 stroke starting makes me think that you're hearing grouse drumming.

Interesting. My instinct is that it is not this because of how uniform the volume is no matter where I am, and how it seems to come out of the ground, but we do have grouse on our property, but I did not grow up around grouse so I am not too familiar with them. I will have to listen to some clips and compare.

 

[AndrewD]

Some of what you describe, just moving to a rural area, hearing it in the spring and sounding like a 4 stroke starting makes me think that you're hearing grouse drumming.

Well listened to some HD clips on headphones and I'll be damned if that's not really close to the sound. Like I said, I have little experience with grouse (been living in grouse country for 3 years). When I have heard it out on the little lake, I have been as much as 150 yards offshore. Would the sound travel that far?

 

[idahomuleys]

Well listened to some HD clips on headphones and I'll be damned if that's not really close to the sound. Like I said, I have little experience with grouse (been living in grouse country for 3 years). When I have heard it out on the little lake, I have been as much as 150 yards offshore. Would the sound travel that far?

Easily. The sound travels a long way. Especially if they are in a tree. The first few times I had heard it i thoughts somebody was trying to start their generator that wouldn't run.

Sent from my SM-G981V using Tapatalk

 

[Pdzoller]

Well listened to some HD clips on headphones and I'll be damned if that's not really close to the sound. Like I said, I have little experience with grouse (been living in grouse country for 3 years). When I have heard it out on the little lake, I have been as much as 150 yards offshore. Would the sound travel that far?

That sound can travel a very long way.

 

[The_Squatting_Coon]

My wife left a pair of panties in the Colorado mountains, if y’all find them, nothing weird she just sharted in them.

 

[Bighunt531]

My wife left a pair of panties in the Colorado mountains, if y’all find them, nothing weird she just sharted in them.

Pretty sick coon, I'm willing to bet you had some on your nose

 

[The_Squatting_Coon]

Pretty sick coon, I'm willing to bet you had some on your nose

Not that time no sir

 

[2531usmc]

No matter what the topic, it always comes back to the same thing…..

 

[Rokbar]

Interesting. My instinct is that it is not this because of how uniform the volume is no matter where I am, and how it seems to come out of the ground, but we do have grouse on our property, but I did not grow up around grouse so I am not too familiar with them. I will have to listen to some clips and compare.

Hence the grouse drumming sound?

 

[loganwayne]

Interesting. My instinct is that it is not this because of how uniform the volume is no matter where I am, and how it seems to come out of the ground, but we do have grouse on our property, but I did not grow up around grouse so I am not too familiar with them. I will have to listen to some clips and compare.

They drum on the ground. It is also weird a grouse drumming from a long ways off and one close up sound almost the same volume.

 

[AndrewD]

Well thanks to everyone who

They drum on the ground. It is also weird a grouse drumming from a long ways off and one close up sound almost the same volume.

Yeah, thanks to everyone who directed me to Ruffed Grouse drumming. Showed some clips to my wife and we both think that is what we have been hearing. Strange the way such a small critter can project that sound in such a big way.

 

[browning2480]

Another super natural occurrence solved by WKRs

 

[49ereric]

They drum on the ground. It is also weird a grouse drumming from a long ways off and one close up sound almost the same volume.

Hard to mistake drumming for humming with the distinctive pattern but even I was once new to drumming.

 

[MuleDeerMike]

Well thanks to everyone who

Yeah, thanks to everyone who directed me to Ruffed Grouse drumming. Showed some clips to my wife and we both think that is what we have been hearing. Strange the way such a small critter can project that sound in such a big way.

I was gonna ask if you hear it in the Spring and then I re-read your post and noticed you said it's been two springs in a row now. Definitely a grouse drumming. Very odd noise tho if you've never heard it before.

 

[Lionhound1975]

I had a strange experience a few months ago. I am currently posted in Kyrgyzstan and in May-June I took a few weeks off to just explore the backcountry and get into some of those far away mountain ranges to the south and east of Bishkek and the Lake Isu Kul region. We loaded up our 4Runner with our dog, an SO 8 man tipi, stove, vehicle recovery gear, etc. and headed south and east down towards the Chinese and Tajik borders.

We went to Tash Rabat, an old stone fortress that was used by traveling caravans for protection in the 1400s on the Silk Road, in May there were no tourists there, so we had the place to ourselves except a herd of yaks and the elderly woman that lives next to the ruins in a little house. Against the snowy peaks it looked like something out of the Lord of the Rings movies. We tried to drive over the Fergana range on some old Soviet dirt roads to Jalabad but finally reached a river that was icy and too swift to ford. We also went to the big mountain country south and east of Enilchek, a Soviet mining ghost town at the base of the glaciers and several 7000-meter peaks.

On one trip we headed down to a lake called Kol Su down on the Chinese border. It is in the frontier zone, so you need to get a permit from the Kyryz border patrol to go past their last outpost and into the unpatrolled region. The lake is about 45 miles south of the Kyrgyz border patrol station. There are no towns for at least 40-miles on the Chinese side so the KG southeast border is a 300+ mile long belt of wild unpopulated country with no roads, towns, or settlements except for some nomadic families that winter in the valleys and run their stock in the mountain pastures during the spring and summer.

We were about 20 miles south of the border patrol check point and it was getting dark and raining fairly hard. I found a rocky bench to drive off of the dirt road and we parked the truck about 100 yards off the side of the road. Since we were just going to continue driving the next day i didn't want to set up camp in the rain to just break it down again, so we slept in the 4Runner. About midnight my dog started snarling at something, waking my wife up who then woke me up. Copper is a Redbone Coonhound who does not like strange men (he loves women and children) and is a good watch dog. When he alerts to something, there is something out there. I turned the ignition and lights on and standing about 20 yards in front of me was a man wearing a blanket and some type of hood. The rain was coming sideways but the person just stood there staring at us. I lowered the window and called out to him in Russian to ask what he wanted of if needed help but he didn't respond, he just stared at us. I watched him for about 30 seconds and then put the truck in drive and drove off. I had just woken up and to see some hooded figure staring at us when i knew there were no settlements around kind of unnerved me. We drove for another 30 min and then parked again figuring he would never cach up to us if he was on foot.

The weird thing was that no one in that country travels on foot. Everyone we came across outside of some valleys was on horseback. So why the person on foot approached in the darkness without calling out or anything is beyond me. Maybe he was going to see if we were OK. The people of that region are generally very reserved but friendly. We helped pull out a few stuck vehicles during our travels and one night we got 2 feet of wet snow dumped overnight (bent the pole of the SO 8 man tipi which SO replaced, great customer service!) when we were camping up around 11,500. After we got unstuck a few times, we got to a lower elevation and found a family with yaks living in some valley in a yurt and a wood shack. We asked if we could wait the storm out and set up camp a little ways from their homestead. They insisted we come in and eat with their family during the storm. I offered a sizable amount of money several times to pay for the food each time, but they refused the money each time since hospitality is an important part of the Kyrgyz nomadic culture. So all of the people we met during those 4 weeks were very hospitable. But waking up to see a figure looking at us in the darkness where there was no village within 40 miles and any cowboys would have been tucked away in their yurts during that storm was pretty unnerving.