Art by Jon McCormack.
This episode was originally written & produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows.
In 2011, residents of Windsor, Ontario started experiencing a strange rumbling hum that rattled dishes and kept people awake at night. Then, after years of getting nowhere, the mystery of the Windsor Hum was finally solved... Or was it? This is a totally remixed, revoiced, and updated version of one of our oldest and most popular episodes. Featuring documentary filmmaker Adam Makarenko.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Winter Flight by William Haviland
Mysteries by Tim Morris
The Survivors by Bryan Steele
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View Transcript ▶︎
[music in]
One of our earliest episodes was about a mysterious hum that was haunting residents of Windsor Ontario and Detroit Michigan. When we first launched the episode back in early 2017, it got a big response. And over the years, people would bring it up all the time. For a long while though, there seemed to be no resolution to this story… Then recently, seemingly out of nowhere, I got a wave of emails and tweets that brought this story back to my attention in a big way.
So, what you’re about to hear is a totally updated, remixed, and revoiced version of our fourth episode… but this time, with an actual resolution.
[music out]
You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.
[SFX: hum in]
There’s a place right on the border between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario where there’s this hum…
It’s so low that it takes a long time to even notice it. And you can’t hear it everywhere. But in some places, especially on the Canadian side, the noise can get so loud that it rattles dishes.
[SFX: rattling dishes, then hum and dishes out]
No one knows for sure what the sound is, or what’s making it. But it keeps people up at night. The sound even has a Facebook group with over two thousand members, who discuss it and speculate what might be causing it.
It’s known as the Windsor Hum.
[SFX: hum in]
This is an actual recording of the hum, but we’ve applied some processing to make it more audible. Imagine if this sound was happening around you all the time.
When you woke up in the morning... [sfx: alarm clock beeping].
While watching TV... [sfx: TV chatter]
When you went to bed at night... [sfx: crickets].
Do you think you’d eventually tune it out? Or would it drive you mad?
Honestly, I don’t think I could handle it.
[SFX: hum out]
It turns out, this isn’t the only place where something like this happens. Similar hums have been reported around the world. And these noises have been blamed on everything from hearing problems, to vacuum pumps, to atmospheric winds, and even mating fish. But most of the time, their sources remain a mystery. What we do know is that they can cause health problems like headaches and nausea, difficulty sleeping, and anxiety.
[sound design out]
[music in]
Local Resident 1: We moved out from the county and we moved here and I thought, oh, this is a nice quiet neighborhood. And it was in the beginning.
Local Resident 2: It feels like it’s going through your chest.
Local Resident 3: And you get that sick feeling in your stomach.
Local Resident 4: You wake up and you’re wondering did I just have one of those dreams ‘cause you’re feeling this whomp, whomp.
Local Resident 1: And it sounds like a furnace to me that doesn't stop running.
Local Resident 2: People are talking about giving up their properties.
Local Resident 3: During the day the noise is at a certain level. But then at about 6:30 there was this ramping up that took place. It was actually louder at night than it was during the day. So that was amazing to me. When I saw that, I went ‘wow’. It’s a very dangerous place to be.
Local Resident 1: People say how do you like LaSalle? And I say, ‘Don't move here.’
Local Resident 4: There just seems to be a lot more secrecy that happens across the river.
Local Resident 1: I wish we had some answers.
[music out]
Those clips came from a documentary called Zug Island: The Story of the Windsor Hum. It was directed by a filmmaker named Adam Makarenko.
Adam: When I first discovered the story of the Windsor hum, I think it was from a YouTube clip. I was watching this story about this mysterious hum. Nobody knew where it came from. Nobody knew what caused it. It really intrigued me, so I kind of just looked into it a bit more. Then I went to Windsor, and I started to find the residents that were being affected.
When Adam first got to Windsor, he didn’t hear anything unusual.
Adam: When you get there, you don't typically experience anything. You're thinking, "Well, I don't feel the sound. I don't hear the sound. Where is the sound?"
But Adam knew there was something to it. At one point, 22 thousand people were complaining about this sound. That many people couldn’t be making it up.
Adam: You know it's real. There's no doubt about it. I learned right away that it takes a while before you actually tune in to it and you hear it. It was quite a few months into the documentary where I actually started to feel it. [sfx] The whole entire ground was vibrating, so I was actually feeling it more than hearing it. Since that time, I've definitely been able to pick it up, and I can hear it.
Some people say it sounds like a diesel truck idling outside [sfx].
Adam: People have also compared it to somebody driving by with their subwoofers cranked up [sfx], and your whole house is vibrating. That's the hearing aspect of it. Then the feeling aspect of it is that you feel vibrations in your body, and you feel vibrations in your home with objects in your home.
Scientists have pinpointed this sound to an industrial island on the Detroit River, called Zug Island. Since the early 1900s, there’s been a steel mill operating there. But the hum didn’t start until 2011.
Adam: Most of that technology of making pig iron, it's called, hasn't really changed that much in the last 100 years. So you go from an island that never made any sounds before, other than just regular industrial sounds, to an extreme sound.
When you look at satellite photos, you can see that they’ve actually stripped things down over the years.
Adam: There's actually less activity on the island than there should have been 100 years ago. Technically there should be less noise because they're not doing quite as much as they were.
[music in]
If the technique for making this type of iron hasn’t changed all that much, then what in the world is happening on Zug Island ? Since the hum began, people have come up with all kinds of bizarre explanations for it. And some people thought we’d never figure it out. But they were wrong.
That’s coming up, after the break.
[music out]
MIDROLL
[music in]
The Windsor Hum is a mysterious, low frequency rumbling that was first heard in 2011, near Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It seems to be coming from an industrial island called Zug Island that sits between Windsor and Detroit. The island is home to a steel mill, which some people have blamed for the noise. But other people say that the machinery at the mill can’t account for this unceasing hum.
Adam: The equipment's been there, the mill's been there for 90 years. They'll retrofit certain things, but that's not going to change the sound so much that it's going to be that much louder that people's houses are shaking where they never shook before. That's the trick. That's the thing about the whole story.
[music out]
Unfortunately, no one can get over there to check things out. The two bridges are heavily guarded, and nobody’s allowed onto the island who doesn’t work there. That means no scientists, no documentarians, no reporters, and definitely no podcasters.
Adam: The thing about that area is that it's governed by Homeland Security and who knows who else.
[music in]
That’s right. Homeland Security. Remember, this island is at the border of the United States and Canada.
Adam: The one thing in a logical explanation, Homeland Security's there because it's one of the busiest international border crossings for North America, the Windsor/Detroit corridor, so you're going to get a lot of security.
But Zug Island isn’t a port of entry into the United States. It’s a private industrial island.
Also, there are lots of other islands on the Detroit River that aren’t locked down the way this one is. For instance, there’s Belle Isle Park, where you can find an aquarium, a zoo, a racetrack, and a yacht club. There’s also Elizabeth Park which has a marina, a baseball field and a river walk. If people can visit these places freely, then why is Zug Island totally off limits? More importantly, why won’t anyone just come out and explain what this sound really is?
Adam: For me, the real mystery behind it is why is it such a secret that you can't talk about what this sound is? I mean give me a break. Why is it such a big secret? Why can't no one talk about the sound and figure out how to fix it? It wasn't there before. Now it's there, so obviously something's happened. You should be able to fix it. Unless, maybe the problem's so big that it can't be fixed. Who knows? That's where the mystery is.
[music out]
I did take a look at the aerial view on Google Maps and it kinda looks like a dingy old train station… I was hoping to find some military vehicles, or lots of weird structures, or even for it to be blacked out altogether on the map. I didn’t and it wasn’t.
[music in]
Realistically, the Windsor Hum probably IS just some sort of new iron-making process. Maybe it’s proprietary and that’s why they won’t let people on the island, who knows.
Or, maybe it’s an underground military intelligence site, where they’re testing some new kind of sonic weapon. Or even more mysterious, it could be ghosts. That area’s been inhabited for thousands of years. Maybe something happened in 2011 to disturb the local spirits? Like a steel worker found an ancient relic and stuck it in their pocket, and now the ghosts won’t rest until the item is put back. Or, who knows, maybe it’s aliens beaming telepathic waves at unsuspecting Canadians.
Hey, if they won’t let us onto the island, we can speculate however we want.
[music out]
That’s where we left things when the original episode aired almost five years ago. Over the next few years, the Windsor Hum got more and more attention. This is from a local NBC station in Detroit.
[SFX Clip: News Clip: It’s an unsolved mystery keeping this neighborhood awake at night.
What is it? There are a lot of theories.
Spaceships from outer space to American military installations.
Tonight, the defenders on the case of the mysterious Windsor Hum.] A VICE documentary about the Windsor Hum explained how the Canadian government actually commissioned a report to investigate it.
[SFX Clip: VICE: Researchers set up microphones around Windsor, but due to some cross-border politics, they weren’t allowed to investigate on Zug Island itself. The report concludes that the sound is most likely coming from Zug Island. But, they can’t be sure.]
Then came the headline: Mystery of Windsor Hum is Solved.
[SFX: windsor hum in]
In late 2019, U.S. Steel announced that they were ramping down their operations on Zug Island. Part of that involved shutting down the site’s blast furnaces, which are these huge industrial furnaces that are used for smelting. Soon after, the furnaces were turned off for good. And once they were shut down, the hum…stopped.
So apparently, that was it. And the experts seem to agree. A researcher who worked on that report for the Canadian government said that he’s quote, “not aware of any reports showing the continued existence of the hum,” end quote.
To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about how things turned out. On the one hand, it is satisfying to get a conclusive end to this story. And of course, I’m happy for all the people who had to live with this sound, day in and day out.
But on the other hand, I can’t help but feel a little let down. Once a mystery is solved, it’s no longer a mystery. And wouldn’t it be cooler if it was aliens?
[music in]
The good news is, there are still plenty of other mystery sounds out there that haven’t been solved yet. In MIlton Keynes, England, people have been hearing what sounds like an air raid siren [sfx], but no one knows where it’s coming from. In 2014, this eerie sound was recorded in the Marianas Trench, which is the deepest place in the ocean [sfx]. And in February of 2016, a strange shrieking sound [sfx] was repeatedly heard in the woods around Forest Grove, Oregon [sfx].
Most of these sounds are probably caused by a machine, or some kind of natural process. But who knows? Maybe one of them WILL be aliens, or a secret underground party house where old man Elvis is hiding out with old man Jim Morrison. I guess we’ll just have to keep listening.
[music out]
[music in]
Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by me, Dallas Taylor, and produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. For a little ear candy, follow Defacto Sound on Instagram.
Special thanks to Adam Makarenko for speaking with us, and for letting us use a portion of his documentary. His film is called Zug Island, The Story of the Windsor Hum. Learn more at zug island documentary dot com.
Thanks for listening.
[music out]
