By Harold Egeln
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BAY RIDGE -- Here’s a humdinger, Brooklyn: a haunting, constant low-pitch humming noise, heard loudest at night, called “the Bay Ridge Hum.�

The annoying low-frequency sound has plagued sleepers and terrorized children, been the butt of jokes, and even the source of a Cornell University investigation. But this summer it has fallen silent, at last and least for now.

“We used to get a lot of calls complaining about it, with some 15 or so people on a regular basis, mostly south of the Brooklyn Army Terminal. But this year there’s been no calls,� said District Manager Josephine Beckmann of Community Board 10.

“There were various investigations and explanations, but nothing conclusive, although it might have been connected to construction work at the Brooklyn Army Terminal (BAT) that is now completed,� she said. The BAT is in Sunset Park, just north of the 65th Street Rail Yards.

The complaints to the community board and Councilman Vincent Gentile’s office began in April 2005. One of those complaining was Dr. Concetta Butera, a chiropractor. Another was a mother whose children woke up around 3 a.m. screaming about the sound, as well as a hairdresser, said published reports.

By 2006 and 2007, the Bay Ridge Hum got the ear of the major media in the city, with a front-page story in The New York Sun, stories in the Daily News, and features on Fox News and 1010 WINS, among others.

“Most of our complaints came from people in two- and three-family houses on Wakeman Place, near the BAT, and along Colonial Road and other streets into the 80s blocks,� noted Beckmann. “We even got calls from people in high-rise buildings, on the top floors.�

Investigations Go Fishing for Hum Source

Two potential hum culprits were investigated. The Owls Head Water Pollution Treatment Plant on the waterfront between 65th and 69th streets was checked by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection. The DEP inspectors found nothing there that could cause the hum.

Councilman Gentile asked a Staten Island marine biologist, and then a Cornell University neurobiology and behavior professor, Andrew Bass, to investigate the possibility of noise-making fish in the Narrows. Neither found any unusual fish noises.

Their investigation was prompted by the results of investigations into the Sausalito, Calif. hum near the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1980s. Marine biologists discovered mating male oyster toadfish during their spawning season from April to October made the sound there.

That finding, prompted by Gentile’s official investigation into the Bay Ridge Hum by scientists in response to his constituents’ complaints, led to a comic photo posting on a blog. It shows state Sen. Marty Golden dancing with four people on the pedestrian and bike path along the Narrows, with the other peoples’ heads superimposed with the bug-eyed oyster toadfish.

How About UFOs?

The Bay Ridge Hum, also reported by people near the Verrazano Bridge, has spawned speculation about bridge vibrations -- also ruled out -- and low-flying UFOs that have been reported seen over Bay Ridge through the years.

Similar “hum� sounds have been reported for decades around the world, the most famous being the Taos Hum in New Mexico (at a steady 76 hertz) from the 1970s into the 1990s. It has been the subject of “Unsolved Mysteries� and “X-Files� episodes, a LiveScience web site story, and a New York Times feature article. Even a West Coast rock group was named after it.

Other hums have been reported in Europe, particularly in England in the 1970s and 1980s, and in Auckland, New Zealand, where it was the subject of a serious scientific study but to no avail. Other explanations have been pulsed microwaves, electromagnetic waves and extremely low-frequency systems.

“Nobody has never, ever found a conclusive explanation for the Bay Ridge Hum,� said Beckmann Thursday. “We do know that when construction was finished at the Brooklyn Army Terminal this year, we got no more complaints. But who really knows?�

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