The unexplained buzzing is a mysterious phenomenon that has been reported by people all over the world. It is described as a low-level vibrating hum that is not heard by everyone. For this reason, it is considered a modern-day mystery that has puzzled scientists for decades.
Tom Slemen: I recently spoke to a doctor who has a practice there Wirral and told me that cases of tinnitus appear to be increasing, adding that many patients also report an auditory phenomenon that apparently waxes and wanes in certain areas of Wirral.
That’s the dreaded hum – a highly invasive low-frequency sound that has been likened to the soft droning hum of a refrigerator, a sound similar to a distant diesel engine idling, and sometimes also likened to the sound produced by a tuning fork .
Not everyone can hear the buzzing, but some people are very attentive to this annoying noise, causing those who hear it to become irritable and depressed, and at night the disturbing noise causes chronic insomnia.
It spread across the country in the 1970s and made headlines around the world, as apparently the Hum could also be heard abroad, in places ranging from the Gobi Desert to New York and the Australian outback.
Now it seems the Hum is back and can be heard in every corner of the Wirral Peninsula, in parts of Merseyside, North Wales and Cheshire.
There are hotspots in Wirral where the buzzing seems to be particularly intense – these are Bebington, Heswall, Wallasey and West Kirby.
In September 2023, a Bebington lady in her 30s called Lauren was walking her dog from her home on Kirket Lane to St Andrew’s Church cemetery and when she reached the junction at Highcroft Avenue and Church Road she began to create glittering zigzags and a kaleidoscope of colors – the beginnings of a migraine of the type she hadn’t had in years.
She considered turning back, but decided to continue walking for the sake of her dog, and that’s when she heard a loud, low buzzing sound. Lauren thought the noise was somehow related to her migraines, but then she met her sister-in-law Kate, who commented on the low noise before Lauren could even mention it.
Kate continued walking and Lauren was strolling around St. Andrew’s cemetery when she felt a strange pressure on her eardrums as the low sound turned into a painful throbbing sensation.
The dog started whining as he looked at something behind his owner, and Lauren turned to see what it was.
It was a silvery, lens-shaped vessel that hovered near the church tower.
It hung there in the air for about a minute or less and then rose steadily upward, and as it did, Lauren’s ‘migraine’ quickly disappeared, as did that buzzing sound. Lauren rushed home with the dog and later learned that the same UFO had been seen over Bromborough Road.
Could UFOs have something to do with the buzzing? Could their inhabitants (whoever or whatever they are) be able to manipulate our minds using audio frequencies for some mysterious reason?
It has been noted that these unexplained sounds sometimes seem to travel in an almost laser-like straight line, and this has led some researchers to wonder whether they might be the remains of the legendary ley lines that supposedly criss-cross Wirral, connecting ancient areas . locations such as Bidston Hill and various hills in this region.
Ley lines are said to have existed in abundance throughout this country in the past, the greatest example being the standing stones of Stonehenge and Avebury, and numerous dowsers and some scientists have said that a type of energy bordering in frequency between audio range is sent to these stones, but for what purpose is unknown.
An example of the directional ‘sound beam’ effect is the buzzing sound a woman continued to hear at her home in Salacre Lane, Upton, in 2012.
The lady and some friends only heard the noise in the kitchen and yard and a relative who lives on nearby Ford Road also heard the same low noise but only when he was in the backyard.
This sound appeared to fit in with recent reports of a buzzing noise heard by motorists passing a certain stretch of the M53, as well as a startling noise heard by staff and patients at a local care home.
When traced on a map, the locations converged on a straight line which indicated that the axis of the audio beam was in a North-East South-West alignment – and it was suggested that the line, when drawn in either direction extended, joining Bidston Hill and Thor’s Stone at Thursaston, just over four miles away.
For centuries, the spectacular sandstone Tor of Thor’s Stone was considered a place of fear and a junction in a long-forgotten ley line network, but all this is of course only an assumption, although in recent years paranormal researchers have made many recordings of the ancient stone collected electronic voice phenomena, some of which appear to be in Old English and even Old Norse.
In Heswall, at the junction of Telegraph Road and Rocky Lane, there is a pay and display car park adjacent to a block of six luxury apartments where the old Grange Villa used to stand.
In September 2022, a man got into his car in this parking lot and was about to leave when he, his wife, and two other passengers all heard a loud buzzing noise that was painful to their eardrums. The driver then noticed that when the car moved backwards a few feet, the loud noise was dead silent, but when he moved forward again, everyone in the vehicle went deaf again.
By driving around, the driver gradually established that the highly directional, low-pitched noise was traveling across the road, through a busy junction box, towards the Post Office on Downham Road South.
The driver then discovered that the sound stopped at the corner of nearby Pye Road, and he, his wife and the passengers got out, receiving a few funny looks from passers-by who saw them turning their heads to determine the origin of the sound.
It appeared to come from a point on a sandstone garden wall where someone had, perhaps accidentally, spray-painted a yellow heart symbol; there was no other graffiti on that wall.
The mystery deepened when an old man came from the direction of Milner Road and asked the driver, “Did you hear it too?”
He then talked about the sleepless nights he endured due to the persistent buzzing noise. His doctor had told him it was due to hardening of the arteries, but the older man said his 25-year-old nephew had also heard the sound when he stayed over.
The source of the sound beam remains a mystery.
Author: Tom Slemen, a Liverpool writer best known as the author of the best-selling Haunted Liverpool book series, which documents paranormal incidents and unsolved or unusual crimes. Check his books Amazon here.
