Patronizing The Hum Hearers

The latest thinking on the Taos Hum? That it's in your head (to read it on-line, try trial premium pass).

Yet my sister heard the Taos Hum when she was up in the Rio Grande Gorge.

There must be a rational explanation....

Whatever the source, the low-pitch "Taos hum" is still in town, keeping folks awake at night and taking a solid place among unexplained phenomena like mutilated cattle and jet contrails.

First attracting serious attention in the early '90s through the efforts of then-congressmen Bill Richardson and Steve Schiff, the hum has been poked and prodded with the best scientific equipment New Mexico's federal labs have to offer with no answers and no relief.

...Boyer, a native of Taos, says most of the people who have heard the hum live on the west side of town near the Gorge.

"Maybe it's the wind and the electrical charges," said Boyer, who has never heard anything until recently, when she moved into a new house closer to the Gorge. "I think you can hear the electricity run through the house."

...The story makes perfect sense to Joe Mullins, the retired University of New Mexico physicist who in the 1990s headed up a task force of scientists from the national laboratories at Sandia and Los Alamos and from Phillips Air Force Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base to interview "hum hearers" and examine every possible sound surrounding them.

"I don't think it's Taos at all," says Mullins, who lives on Albuquerque's West Side.

"It's a worldwide thing" that's been reported everywhere from China and Japan to Kokomo, Ind.

The Internet has numerous site and chat rooms, including the "hum forum" on Yahoo, where hearers from around the world gauge relief methods and discuss hum locations.

...Mullins says the task force conclusion was that the hum stems from some kind of ear condition that probably affects about 2 percent of the population.

"It's generated from the inside," he said, comparing it to tinnitus, which is a high-pitch sound.

But the hum can't be categorized as tinnitus because what hum-hearers describe is a low-pitch noise.

The task force considered further research on the ear condition, but Mullins said it was difficult to get funding.

"This is not life-threatening," he said.