The Taos Hum: The Mysterious Sound in New Mexico That Nobody Can Explain

Picture this: you're lying in bed in a quiet adobe house outside Taos, New Mexico. The desert is silent. No traffic, no machinery, no neighbors running a generator. But somewhere beneath the silence, there's a sound. A low, persistent drone, like a diesel engine idling in the distance. You get up, walk outside, and it follows you. You drive ten miles down the highway, and it's still there. Your partner, sleeping peacefully beside you, hears absolutely nothing.

Welcome to the world of the Taos Hum, one of the strangest acoustic mysteries of the modern era. Since the early 1990s, roughly 2% of the population in and around Taos has reported hearing a low-frequency sound that no equipment has been able to reliably detect or trace to a source. It's been the subject of a congressional investigation, multiple scientific studies, and an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Three decades later, nobody's cracked it.

What You'll Learn

• •What Does the Taos Hum Sound Like?
• •When Did People Start Hearing It?
• •The 1993 Congressional Investigation
• •Who Can Hear the Taos Hum?
• •What Causes the Taos Hum?
• •The Industrial Noise Theory
• •Geological and Seismic Explanations
• •The Otoacoustic Emissions Theory
• •Could It Be Psychological?
• •The Hum Around the World
• •Is the Taos Hum Still Happening?
• •Frequently Asked Questions

What Does the Taos Hum Sound Like?

The descriptions are remarkably consistent. Hearers typically compare it to a diesel truck idling a few blocks away, or the low throb of a distant industrial fan. Some say it sounds like a swarm of bees filtered through a wall. Others describe it as resembling Tibetan throat singing or a single sustained note hovering around E-flat.

What makes the sound so maddening isn't its volume. It's quiet, barely above the threshold of perception. The problem is that it never stops. Hearers report it's worst at night, inside enclosed spaces, and during quiet conditions. Covering your ears doesn't help. In fact, some people say it gets louder when they try to block external noise, which is one of the details that's given researchers the most trouble.

The sound typically falls between 32 and 80 Hz, well within the range of human hearing but at the very low end. It often pulses or modulates at a rate of 0.5 to 2 Hz, giving it that rhythmic, engine-like quality that's so distinctive.

When Did People Start Hearing It?

The Taos Hum entered public awareness in 1991 and 1992, when residents began contacting local officials and media outlets. But the earliest reports may predate this by years. Some longtime Taos residents have claimed they noticed the sound as far back as the late 1980s but didn't think much of it until others started talking about it.

What changed in the early '90s was organization. Hearers found each other, compared notes, and realized their experiences were strikingly similar. They formed a loose coalition and started pushing for answers. Letters went to local representatives. Calls went to state agencies. The story picked up press coverage, first in New Mexico papers, then nationally.

By 1993, the issue had reached Congress.

The 1993 Congressional Investigation

When enough Taos residents complained to their congressional representatives, the federal government did something unusual: it actually investigated. A team of about a dozen researchers was assembled from some of the most respected scientific institutions in the Southwest, including Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Phillips Laboratory, and the University of New Mexico.

Joe Mullins of the University of New Mexico served as the team coordinator, with Horace Poteet of Sandia co-authoring the final report. The investigation was remarkably open and public, with team members visiting the homes of affected residents, deploying sensitive acoustic monitoring equipment, and conducting surveys.

The findings were simultaneously illuminating and frustrating. The team confirmed that about 2% of the population (161 out of 1,440 survey respondents) could hear the hum. Each hearer perceived it at a slightly different frequency, ranging from 32 to 80 Hz. Sensitive microphones and seismometers deployed throughout the area detected nothing unusual. No external acoustic or vibrational source could be identified.

The investigation didn't solve the mystery. But it did establish something important: the hearers weren't making it up, and whatever they were perceiving wasn't being generated by any obvious mechanical or environmental source in the Taos area.

Who Can Hear the Taos Hum?

This is one of the most puzzling aspects. Only a small fraction of the population reports hearing it, roughly 2% in the Taos studies. And it's not a matter of having bad hearing or good hearing. The hearers don't share any obvious audiological profile that separates them from non-hearers.

What the research has shown is that the phenomenon skews toward middle-aged people. Men and women hear it in roughly equal numbers. Some hearers report being able to drive away from it, with one person estimating the hum's "range" at about 30 miles. Others say it follows them everywhere within the Taos area.

The selectivity is what makes the Taos Hum so difficult to study. If everyone could hear it, you could triangulate the source. If nobody could hear it, you could dismiss it as folklore. But 2% is an awkward number: too many people to ignore, too few to easily replicate in a lab.

Some researchers, including David Baguley, head of audiology at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, have suggested that hearers may have unusually sensitive low-frequency perception, essentially "super hearing" in a very narrow band. This doesn't explain where the sound comes from, but it might explain why most people can't detect it.

What Causes the Taos Hum?

This is the question that's launched dozens of theories and zero definitive answers. Let's walk through the major ones.

The Industrial Noise Theory

The most conventional explanation is that the hum comes from machinery. Low-frequency sound can travel enormous distances, especially through the ground, and industrial equipment like compressors, turbines, and gas pipelines generates exactly the kind of droning frequencies hearers describe.

In Kokomo, Indiana, investigators traced a similar hum to two specific sources: a 36 Hz tone from a cooling tower at a DaimlerChrysler plant and a 10 Hz tone from an air compressor at a Haynes International facility. The catch? After those sources were corrected, residents kept hearing the hum.

In Taos, the industrial theory runs into a bigger problem: there isn't much industry. The town sits in a high desert valley surrounded by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It's an arts colony, not a manufacturing hub. The 1993 investigation found no industrial sources that could account for the sound.

Mechanical engineer Steve Kohlhase spent years (and $30,000 of his own money) investigating hum reports across the US. In every case he studied, the affected locations sat along or near high-pressure gas pipelines. But this correlation hasn't been established for Taos specifically.

Geological and Seismic Explanations

New Mexico sits on some interesting geology. The Rio Grande Rift, a continental rift zone, runs right through the Taos area. Tectonic activity, underground water movement, and geothermal processes all generate very low-frequency vibrations that could theoretically be perceived as sound.

In 2015, researchers from the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique published a study in Geophysical Research Letters identifying a persistent microseismic hum generated by ocean waves interacting with the seafloor. This "Earth hum" vibrates at frequencies between 2.9 and 4.5 millihertz, far below human hearing. But some researchers have speculated that local geological conditions could amplify or shift these vibrations into perceptible ranges.

The geological theory is attractive because it would explain why the hum is location-specific, persistent, and undetectable by standard microphones (which measure air pressure, not ground vibration). It would also explain why the Hessdalen Lights in Norway, another location-specific anomaly, has also been tentatively linked to geological processes.

The Otoacoustic Emissions Theory

Here's where it gets really interesting. Your inner ear doesn't just receive sound; it also produces it. Otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) are faint sounds generated by the cochlea as part of its normal amplification process. Everyone's ears do this, but in some people, these internal sounds may become audible.

If a small percentage of the population has overactive OAEs in the low-frequency range, they might perceive a constant hum that has no external source at all. This would explain why microphones can't detect it, why blocking external sound makes it worse (removing masking noise), and why only certain people hear it.

The problem with this theory is that it doesn't explain the geographic specificity. If the sound is internally generated, why would it be concentrated in Taos? One possible answer: it isn't. Maybe people everywhere have this experience, but it only gets reported and studied when enough hearers in one area compare notes.

Could It Be Psychological?

David Baguley estimated that about one-third of hum cases have a physical, external cause, while the other two-thirds involve people becoming hyper-focused on normal background sounds. Once you start listening for something, your brain is remarkably good at finding it, even creating it.

This isn't the same as saying it's "all in their heads." The distress is real. The perception is real. In the UK, at least three suicides have been attributed to the psychological toll of living with an inescapable, unexplained sound. Baguley's research has shown that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help some hearers by changing their relationship to the sound, which suggests a significant psychological component in at least some cases.

But psychology alone doesn't account for the consistency of descriptions across cultures, continents, and decades. People in Taos, Windsor (Ontario), Bristol (England), and Auckland (New Zealand) all describe essentially the same thing, without any way to have coordinated their stories.

The Hum Around the World

Taos gets the most attention, but it's far from the only place where people report unexplained hums. The phenomenon is genuinely global.

Bristol, England (1970s): One of the earliest well-documented cases. Hundreds of residents in Bristol reported a persistent low hum that was never traced to a source.

Windsor, Ontario (2011-2020): A droning vibration loud enough to generate 22,000 complaints in a single evening. Investigators suspected Zug Island, a heavily industrialized area across the Detroit River. When US Steel's blast furnaces were shut down in April 2020, the hum disappeared.

Auckland, New Zealand (2006): Researcher Tom Moir at Massey University managed to record what appeared to be the Auckland Hum and estimated its frequency at around 56 Hz.

Kokomo, Indiana (1999): Traced to industrial sources, but the hum persisted after those sources were addressed.

Darmstadt, Germany (2021-2022): Successfully traced to faulty air conditioners, a heat pump, and inadequate noise shielding on energy plants. One of the rare cases with a definitive resolution.

The pattern is consistent: a low-frequency drone, perceived by a minority, often worse at night and indoors, and almost never fully explained. For more on unexplained location-specific phenomena, see our coverage of the Marfa Lights in Texas and the strange events at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah.

Is the Taos Hum Still Happening?

Yes. Reports haven't stopped, though they've quieted somewhat since the media frenzy of the 1990s. Some researchers think the hum may be intermittent, stronger in some years than others. Some hearers report that it's faded over time, while others say it's as persistent as ever.

A local hot sauce brand has adopted the name as a piece of Taos culture. Visitors occasionally make pilgrimages to the area hoping to hear it for themselves. Most don't.

The scientific community hasn't abandoned the mystery, but active investigation has slowed. No major study has been conducted since the 1990s, partly because the phenomenon is so difficult to measure. You can't study what your instruments can't detect.

What's clear is that the Taos Hum sits at a fascinating intersection of acoustics, neurology, geology, and psychology. It might be one thing. It might be several things overlapping. It might be something we don't have the tools to understand yet.

And for the 2% who hear it, the sound goes on.

Frequently Asked Questions

What frequency is the Taos Hum?

Hearers perceive it at different frequencies, typically between 32 and 80 Hz. The sound often pulses at a slow rhythm of 0.5 to 2 Hz. It falls in the very low range of human hearing, which is why standard recording equipment has trouble capturing it.

Can you hear the Taos Hum if you visit Taos?

Probably not. Only about 2% of the local population reports hearing it, and there's no evidence that visitors are more likely to perceive it. The phenomenon seems tied to individual hearing sensitivity rather than location alone.

Has anyone recorded the Taos Hum?

No verified recording of the Taos Hum exists. In Auckland, researcher Tom Moir captured what appeared to be that city's version at around 56 Hz, but the Taos variant has eluded recording equipment. This is one of the central puzzles: sensitive microphones deployed in the area during the 1993 investigation detected nothing unusual.

Is the Taos Hum dangerous?

The sound itself isn't physically harmful, but the psychological effects can be serious. Hearers report sleep disruption, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and chronic stress. In the UK, persistent hum phenomena have been linked to at least three suicides. CBT and relaxation techniques have shown some effectiveness in reducing distress.

Is the Taos Hum related to tinnitus?

They share some features (both involve perceiving a sound others can't hear), but they're likely different phenomena. Tinnitus is usually a high-pitched ringing caused by inner ear damage, while the Taos Hum is a low-frequency drone. Some researchers think otoacoustic emissions, sounds naturally produced by the ear, could play a role in both conditions.