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Saturday, February 25, 2012

STRANGE SOUNDS - February 25




February 25, 2012

No Explanation for Mysterious ‘Lake Music’ Reported by Many Yellowstone Visitors (BELOW)
There are several locations around the world known for their iconic sounds. Most famous are the hums of Taos, Bristol, and Bondi. Now comes the news that America's most famous national park is haunted by ethereal bells around its namesake lake. Rarely mentioned yet known for years, the elusive source of these unique sounds has yet to be teased out by anyone. Halfway across the globe a Mysterious Night Time Noise Plagues Derry.(BELOW) Even more reports are popping up about strange noises in the night sky with no clear answers. Authorities are keeping mum and playing dumb as civilians cover their ears hoping to catch, at least, twenty out of forty winks. Could Big Brother be behind the Unexplained Sounds? (BELOW) Nick Redfern quotes Linda Howe on Coast to Coast speculating that the Defense Department may be trying to direct sound waves directly into people's minds, a topic Redfern wondered about himself in his book Final Events.
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No explanation for mysterious ‘lake music’ reported by many Yellowstone visitors



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Some Yellowstone National Park visitors have reported hearing odd sounds in the skies above Yellowstone Lake on clear days in the early mornings. (Ruffin Prevost/Yellowstone Gate - click to enlarge)
Some Yellowstone National Park visitors have reported hearing odd sounds in the skies above Yellowstone Lake on clear days in the early mornings. (Ruffin Prevost/Yellowstone Gate)

By Ruffin Prevost

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — Yellowstone Lake and the rugged backcountry that surrounds it is a place where millions go seeking solitude and silence. Yet it in a well-documented but rarely discussed phenomenon, some visitors to the Lake area have experienced remarkable celestial sounds of unknown and unexplained origin.
“They resemble the ringing of telegraph wires or the humming of a swarm of bees, beginning softly in the distance, growing rapidly plainer until directly overhead, and then fading as rapidly in the opposite direction,” wrote Hiram M. Chittenden in 1895 in his book, “The Yellowstone National Park.”
Chittenden’s description is one of several in the historical record — as well as many more from popular anecdotal accounts — of strange sounds or “lake music” coming from the skies around Yellowstone Lake and Shoshone lake.
Hiram M. Chittenden built roads and bridges in Yellowstone National Park and wrote a book for visitors called "The Yellowstone National Park." (click to enlarge)
Hiram M. Chittenden built roads and bridges in Yellowstone National Park and wrote a book for visitors called "The Yellowstone National Park."
Chittenden was an accomplished engineer with rigorous scientific discipline who built roads and bridges in the park, as well as locks in Seattle’s Lake Washington Ship Canal. He was not given to idle speculation or unsubstantiated gossip about seemingly magical events.
But he is hardly the only — or even the first — prominent Yellowstone visitor to write about the strange and unexplained lake sounds.
Edwin Linton, a professor of biology at Washington and Jefferson College and a specialist in marine parasites was working in Yellowstone in the summer of 1890 as part of a project for the U.S. Fish Commission. Linton, his colleagues and his guides heard the mysterious sounds more than once during that trip, and he drew from his own diary entries when he wrote an account of the odd experience for the Nov. 3, 1893 edition of the prestigious journal Science.
“On the following morning, we heard the sound very plainly,” Linton wrote. “It appeared to begin directly overhead and to pass off across the sky, growing fainter and fainter towards the southwest. It appeared to be a rather indefinite, reverberating sound, characterized by a slight metallic resonance.”
Linton and others have described the sounds as “harp-like” or similar to human voices or the sound of metal cables crashing against each other, but no satisfactory explanation has yet been offered for their origin.
Lee Whittlesey, historian at Yellowstone Park and a longtime resident of the region, said that the Yellowstone Lake sounds aren’t often discussed by park insiders.
“You have to have a real interest in Yellowstone history to even be familiar with it,” said Whittlesey, who has written several books and articles about Yellowstone history.
“There are a number of pieces written about it, but it’s often deeply buried in the literature,” he said.
Despite how far-fetched the phenomenon sounds, Whittlesey said he’s confident the sounds have existed and the historical accounts about them are credible.
“It has been reported by too many people for it to be any kind of Bigfoot thing or something like that,” he said.
Respected scientists and prominent park figures have reported hearing the sounds, and accounts have appeared in books, journals and newspapers, Whittlesey said, although the last new written report may have been as far back as the 1930s.
Typically, accounts of the sounds state that they take place at or near Yellowstone Lake or Shoshone Lake on a clear day when there is little or no wind and the waters are still, usually in the morning.
Frank Bradley, in tent, relaxes with his colleagues in Yellowstone National Park during an 1872 geological expedition. Bradley reported hearing strange sounds along the shore of Yellowstone Lake. (USGS photo - click to enlarge)
Frank Bradley, in tent, relaxes with his colleagues in Yellowstone National Park during an 1872 geological expedition. Bradley reported hearing strange sounds along the shore of Yellowstone Lake.
Geologist Frank H. Bradley explored and documented Yellowstone’s natural wonders as a member of the Hayden Expeditions, and wrote in 1873 about hearing odd sounds along the shore of Yellowstone Lake.
“While getting breakfast, we heard every few moments a curious sound, between a whistle and a hoarse whine, whose locality and character we could not at first determine, though we were inclined to refer it to water-fowl on the other side of the lake,” Bradley wrote in his account of the geologic survey of the area.
“I have listened for it because I found it so interesting,” said Whittlesey, who has lived and worked around Yellowstone for more than 35 years.
“I first learned of it in the early 70s, and over the years kept running into references to it here and there,” he said. “So I listened for it any time I was camped in the backcountry anywhere near Yellowstone Lake or Shoshone Lake, and I never have heard it.”
Terry Dolan, a tour guide based in Cody, Wyo, said he has not only never heard the sounds, but was not familiar with details of the historical accounts of them.
There have been various explanations proposed for the sounds, ranging from fanciful speculation to educated guesses, often centered around the park’s unique geology.
An August 1930 article in Popular Science magazine cited “mild earthquakes, their sounds possibly magnified in underground caverns like sound boxes” as one potential explanation.
The article also referenced a theory put forward by F. C. Marvin, chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau, who based his ideas on observations by Glen Jefferson, a Yellowstone meteorologist.
Marvin noted that temperature inversions are not uncommon above Yellowstone Lake, where warmer air above the lake sits atop cooler air near the water’s surface.
He posited that such inversions “may alter the normal way that the air conducts sound,” the article states. “It might produce sound mirages, in which distant noises of geysers, birds or steamboats might appear to come from near at hand.”
A frozen horizon hangs in the far distance as cloudy skies loom over frozen Yellowstone Lake. At least one scientists believes temperature inversions over the lake may explain why some Yellowstone National Park visitors hear odd sounds there.
Other theories are referenced dismissively by Stephen Forbes, of the Illinois State Natural History Survey, who wrote about hearing the lake sounds while on the same expedition as Linton.
“No scientific explanation of this really bewitching phenomenon has ever been published, although it has been several times referred to by travelers, who have ventured various crude guesses at its cause, varying from that commonest catch-all of the ignorant, ‘electricity,’ to the whistling of the wings of ducks and the noise of Steamboat Geyser,” Forbes wrote. “It seems to me to belong to the class of aerial echoes, but even on that supposition I cannot account for the origin of the sound.”
If the sounds are related to the park’s geology, they come and go along with thermal features like geysers or hot springs, which wax and wane over years or even decades depending on a complex set of natural factors.
It’s possible that some people in recent years have heard the sound but kept mum about it for fear of sounding foolish or being ridiculed, Whittlesey said, but for whatever reason, the lake sounds are not a topic most guides discuss with visitors.
“I was a tour guide and a ranger naturalist, and I don’t remember ever using it in a program,” Whittlesey said. “It’s just not something that is well known among Yellowstone interpreters or Yellowstone tour guides.”
Despite the lack of any recently documented lake sounds and the lack of a solid explanation for them, Whittlesey is sure the sounds existed as described.
“I feel quite certain these people all heard what they wrote about,” he said.
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Published on Wednesday 22 February 2012 17:35
People in Derry are being plagued by a mysterious noise coming from the air, it has been claimed.
SDLP MLA Pat Ramsey says scores of people are being kept awake by unexplained activity in the night sky - and the noise it creates.
He says if it is caused by police or military activity then the authorities must offer an explanation.
“I have received a number of calls from concerned residents who have been unsettled and whose sleeping pattern is being affected by what can only be described as a relentless and disturbing buzzing noise in the Derry sky over recent days,” he says.
“There has been an issue regarding the use of the PSNI Helicopter that has been frequently deployed which has caused annoyance, and I have been in contact with the Police Air Support Unit to ascertain some information in respect of the deployment of the helicopter.
“That having been said, the helicopter has not been visible in recent days when this noise has been reported, and is obviously operating at a high altitude.
“If the PSNI confirm they are not responsible for the noise, then it is only logical, given enquiries that I have carried out, that the British Army are responsible for the operation of whatever device is causing grief to my constituents. I intend to write to the Secretary of State to confirm if this is indeed the case, as the presence of the noise is causing considerable anxiety.”
He added:”We need answers to these important questions and I do intend to continue to pursue statutory agencies to find out who is responsible.”
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Unexplained Sounds

Date: 02-23-12
Host: George Noory
Guests: Linda Moulton Howe, Stephen Bassett
In three half-hour segments, investigative reporter Linda Moulton Howe discussed the large number of strange and unexplained horn-like sounds filling the air since March 2011 and possible causes. The phenomenon surfaced after a number of videos were uploaded on YouTube from such divergent places as Norway, Costa Rica, Tennessee and Kiev, Ukraine (BELOW). Recently, Linda interviewed two witnesses in Tennessee, who in separate locations, heard the Kiev-like horn sounds on January 18-19, 2012. One of the witnesses, retired real estate agent Cindy Smith was packing her car for a trip when the air was filled with the Kiev horn sounds coming from every direction. The strange sounds lasted about 30 seconds and left Cindy frightened, wanting to know what happened.
A woman in Topeka, Kansas (BELOW) told Linda she was awakened on September 3, 2011 at her Perry Lake vacation home by the sound of "a television turned on in the distance with voices we could not make out." Yet, as she and her husband discovered, no television was on in their home when the sounds were heard. (BELOW). In January 2012, an Azerbaijan geophysicist named Elchin Khalilov released an article in which he suggested the strange sounds people are hearing are related to "acoustic-gravity waves caused by powerful solar flares and plasma emissions from the sun." However, when Linda interviewed NASA solar physicist David Hathaway he doubted that solar activity could be connected with the sounds. Read her full interview with him.
Linda raised an interesting hypothesis-- "what if some of the strange sounds heard around the world...were part of an American government test of what some have called 'voice of God' weapons?" Around the time of 9-11, there were rumors that the Defense Dept. wanted to try sending directed sound waves into the minds of Middle East terrorists, she noted. Linda also presented a report on the increased number of dolphins stranded and dying in Cape Cod & the New Jersey shore since January 2012. She spoke with marine biologist Trevor Spradlin who found the incidents to be unprecedented and perplexing. 
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 http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1939&category=Environment
 
“Like An Old TV Playing in the Distance,”
September 3, 2011, 3 AM Central,
Lake Perry, Kansas

Perry Lake is about 30 miles northeast of downtown Topeka, Kansas.
Topeka, Kansas, is upper left red circle. Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee,
are lower right red circles.
One Kansas couple picked out the Norway video as the closest they  could come to what sounded to them like a “muffled TV set in the distance.” The sound woke them up on September 3rd, 2011. Maura Dingman, the wife, sent me an email about their strange experience.
Maura is 54-years-old and has lived in the Topeka, Kansas, region all her life. Her husband, Bud, is 64, and the couple have made a living selling properties and restoring houses. At the end of 2010, they purchased a summer house at Perry Lake that is about 30 miles northeast of their Topeka home. That’s where they were Labor Day weekend on September 3rd, 2011, when Maura was the first awakened around 3 AM by a very strange sound that went on for at least fifteen minutes.

Maura Dingman, 54, Topeka, Kansas about Labor Day weekend strange sound at Perry Lake vacation home:  

“What I first was hearing I thought was the television on upstairs - and not just on, but loud. But it wasn't the TV.
Typically when I'm downstairs, I don't hear the television at all actually - just never usually that loud and so that was kind of weird, but I thought, ‘Did it come on on its own?’ I thought, ‘Well, I've got to get up and let the dogs out, but first I'm going to go up and see why the television is on! (laughs)’
So I go upstairs and I get up there and it's not that at all (TV is off). And I'm baffled. After I discovered it wasn't TV, I went back downstairs because we have sliding doors out of the bedroom into a little fenced area for the dogs. And when I got outside, I heard the noise in a clearer way and I could not tell where it was coming from. It was just strange - echoey - and when I say echoey - it just had a kind of everywhere quality to it. It made me think of  the echo of a muffled television.
I kept trying to tell myself, ‘Someone has a window open and there's a TV on, but gosh, it's loud!’ You know, in this setting we all have at least a half acre of ground the way the houses are situated, so my closest neighbor is up the hill a bit and all their lights were out. I don't know what the sound was except to say that it was strange!
So I sat there for a good ten or fifteen minutes trying to - it just really affected me because it was an odd sound. (laughs) It was an echoey somewhat mechanical sound, which television is. You just hear that quality, that electronic waaaa waaa  type of a sound.
THIS WAS A SOUND THAT WAS CHANGING THE WAY VOICES WOULD CHANGE IF YOU WERE HEARING A TV IN A BACKGROUND?
I couldn't make anything out, you know? But yet I kept trying to think that it was voices. (Maura mimics again). You know, it sounded like television and I know this is going to sound strange, but at the time I kept thinking like old television - like childhood television sounds. It haunted me because it was such a strange event.

Maura's Husband Woke Up, Too,
and Thought TV Was On 

And to go on, I stayed out and listened and then finally went back in and my husband was asleep. As it turned out the next morning, I'm telling him about this and he says, ‘'Well, I heard that, too, and I went upstairs.’ And this is a man who is deaf in his left ear and was sleeping on his good ear. Typically when that is happening, if the phone rings by his bed or even if the alarm goes off in the morning, he never hears it. I have to wake him up. So, that was strange.
SO HOW DID HE HEAR THE SOUND?
I know! (laughs) With him, once he can turn that good ear, he said he heard the sound and thought also that it was television and so he went upstairs to find that our television was not on. It was a strange experience at 3 AM in the morning!
 
Maura's Nephew in Los Angeles
Heard Kiev-Type Sound

And I didn't know anything about all this sound stuff around the world at the time until December 2011 when my nephew from California, who I had just hooked up with Facebook like a week before. He posted after - I think it was December 1, 2011, a little after 1 AM. And he woke up to high winds and went outside and heard these strange sounds, trumpet sounds, in the night.

November 30 to December 3, 2011, powerful Santa Ana winds gusting
near 100 mph knocked over trees in the Los Angeles, California region, including
this Redlands home on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. IPhone image by Brian Weed.
He did not record and he posted on Facebook the next morning. A bunch of his friends said, 'Oh, I heard that, too!' He's young, like 23-years-old. He linked it to this Kiev video, so that really caught my attention - the trumpet sounds that people have been experiencing in different places. He linked it to this Kiev video that so many people have seen.
And that was my first time to see that. And in that process as YouTube does, it made other suggestions including this video from Norway (September 23, 2011) and that's when I found something that really was very similar to what I experienced that night. And my husband agreed that  it sounded a lot like what he thought he heard as well. But the point that it reminded me was about 34 seconds into the video and it kind of almost sounds like muffled voices. And I would love an explanation as I'm sure everybody would!
LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING, MAURA. WHEN I HEAR THAT YOU AND YOUR HUSBAND BOTH WENT UPSTAIRS THINKING THAT THE TV WAS LEFT ON - OR HAD COME ON - WHAT COMES INTO MY MIND IS A SOUND OF VOICES TALKING, BUT THAT NEITHER YOU NOR YOUR HUSBAND COULD MAKE WORDS OUT OF WHAT SOUNDED LIKE TELEVISION PEOPLE TALKING.
Yeah, I would say that is definitely true because that night when I did go outside, I kept trying to figure it out. And it did have that quality, but yet we never heard any particular words - kind of an old television sound.
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT - WHATEVER THESE SOUNDS ARE - IS COMING TO US FROM SOMETHING THAT IS DIRECTING OLD TELEVISION PROGRAMS AT US, BUT IN A GARBLED FASHION? OR ARE TRYING TO GET OUR ATTENTION WITH VARIOUS SOUNDS THAT MIGHT MAKE HUMANS PAY ATTENTION FOR REASONS THAT ARE UNKNOWN?
That's an interesting thought I hadn't really thought of - that's like projecting things back at us they think might make some sense - or at least have people react.
And then I listened to some of the other videos from other places and that Norway one really - that's when I went to my husband and said, ‘Listen to this. Does this remind you at all of that night?’ And he agreed that it somewhat did for him.”

“Voice of God” Weapon?
What if some of the strange sounds around the world were part of an American government test of what some have called “Voice of God weapons”? Around the time of 9/11, there were rumors that the Defense  Department wanted to try directing sound waves into the minds of Middle East terrorists as the voice of Allah that would order terrorists to put down their suicide belts.
Wired.com published a July 6, 2008, article entitled “The Microwave Scream Inside Your Skull,” which described the U. S. Army's effort to develop a non-lethal microwave weapon that would  create sounds inside human heads. That project was called MEDUSA - an acronym for Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio. A beam of microwaves would be  turned into sound as the waves interacted with the target’s head. Nobody else can hear the microwave sound unless they are in the beam as well. But the shock to the target's skull was more likely to make MEDUSA a death ray and allegedly that project was dropped.
However, last week Wired.com writer Noah Shachtman described a brand new DARPA “Magic Plan: ‘Battlefield Illusions’ to Mess with Enemy Minds.” DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the U. S. Department of Defense responsible for the development of new military technology. Schachtman reported that on February 13, “DARPA introduced a new $4 million investigation into technologies that will manage the adversary's sensory perception in order to confuse, delay, inhibit or misdirect his actions.”
The goal of “Battlefield Illusion” electro-optical warfare is to find ways to “jam laser-based communications and sensor systems - just like today's radio frequency jammers mess with cell phones and radars.” 
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THE KIEV SOUNDS


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