131: Skyquakes, Upsweeps, Bloops and Sky Trumpets | Terrifying Sounds that Signal the End of the World
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Hey, it's your buddy AJ from the Y-Files. And Hecklefish. Right, and Hecklefish. We just wanted to tell you that if you want to start a podcast, Spotify makes it easy. It'd have to be easy for humans to understand it. Will you stop that? I'm just saying. Spotify for Podcasters lets you record and edit podcasts from your computer. I don't have a computer. Do you have a phone? Of course I have a phone. I'm not a savage. Well, with Spotify, you can record podcasts from your phone, too.

Spotify makes it easy to distribute your podcast to every platform and you can even earn money. I do need money. What do you need money for? You kidding? I'm getting killed on guppy support payments. These 3X wives are expensive. You don't want to support your kids? What are you, my wife's lawyer now? Never mind. And I don't know if you noticed, but all Y-Files episodes are video too. And there's a ton of other features, but... But we can't be here all day. Will you settle down? I need...

you to hurry up with this stupid commercial. I got a packed calendar today. I'm sorry about him. Anyway, check out Spotify for Podcasters. It's free, no catch, and you can start today. Are we done? We're done, but you need to check your attitude. Excuse me, but I don't have all day to sit here and talk about Spotify. Look, this would go a lot faster if you would just let me get through it without...

The Book of Revelation says the end of the world will be announced with the sound of seven trumpets. Each blowing of the trumpet brings a new apocalyptic event. After the seventh trumpet, Armageddon. For centuries, people have reported low-frequency hums, the crack of thunder on a clear day, and the sound of cannon fire in the middle of nowhere.

Mysterious sounds have been heard at the bottom of the ocean and in outer space, and they've been heard long before modern machines and industry. Recently, people have been recording and sharing videos of these loud, unnatural sounds, and some of them, they sound a lot like trumpets. The book of Revelation chapter 8 describes the opening of the seventh seal, which contains seven trumpets to be sounded by angels.

And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to sound them.

Ugh, seven trumpets? If these angels want to form a decent jazz band, they're also gonna need a trombone, a banjo, and a pretty good drummer. Uh, the sounding of the trumpets in Revelation signals the apocalypse, not the formation of a jazz band. Eh, you sure the Bible's not talking about a jazz band? No, I'm sure. It's about the end of the world. So, it's about Judgment Day?

Yep. Okay, hear me out. Oh, here we go. What's the city most famous for jazz? New Orleans. What's the most famous New Orleans jazz song? How am I supposed to know that? It could be anything. Okay, what's the one song in the whole world that when you're at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, you have to tip extra for them to play?

when the saints go marching in. Right. And what's that song about? Well, that song's about Judgment Day. Bingo. You just blew my mind. Yeah? Okay, assuming the angels aren't forming a jazz band on Judgment Day... But they could be. But let's assume they're not. Eh. When each of these trumpets blow, calamities unfold...

First hail, fire, and blood rain onto the earth. Seas turn to blood. Then darkness, then locusts. Then a huge army of darkness appears, and finally, the Ark of the Covenant is revealed.

Though some Christians take these doomsday predictions literally, many don't. And non-believers don't believe any of this. But whether you're a believer or not, you have to admit that it would be terrifying to hear the sound of trumpets blowing, especially when the sound seems to be coming from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Just before midnight on March 17th, 2020, the people of Houston woke up to eerie sounds that seemed to be coming from the sky. - Completely.

Even creepier, it sounded like music. There's no machinery nearby or construction, so I have no idea where it's coming from. It's fucking weird. A few months later, the same sounds were heard in Argentina. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit. shit.

This sound was heard all over the world. Denmark, Singapore, New Zealand, Ireland, California, really everywhere. In San Antonio, the sounds were less musical. And sometimes, like in the Czech Republic, it feels like a presence. A dark, angry presence. Sometimes it sounds like the roar of an animal.

Any mention of dragons in the Bible? Yep. In Revelation, the dragon represents Satan. Okay, this is terrifying.

Yeah, this isn't funny anymore. It's definitely something alive. These sounds are generally known as sky trumpets, and there are a lot of theories about what they actually are. Some scientists say it's a weather event, but sky trumpets can be heard in all kinds of weather, even on clear days. Some say the sounds are geological in nature, that they come from the movement of the Earth. Just have a listen to this.

So what are you hearing? Well, we don't really know. Now that could be the Earth moving, but what about when the sounds just go on and on? Some scientists think the sound has something to do with the Earth's magnetic field. And most people don't know this, but the aurora borealis and australis, they make sound.

But the truth is, nobody really knows what causes sky trumpets. They can sound like music, like machinery, or even like the roar of a dragon. But those aren't the only unexplained sounds that come from the sky. Sometimes on a perfectly sunny day without a cloud in sight, the sky sounds like it's tearing itself apart.

The Iroquois lived in upstate New York when the early Europeans made contact. One of the first things they warned the settlers about was the strange noises that came from the sky. The Iroquois believed it was the sound of the Great Spirit continuing to create the world. In Rip Van Winkle, which was published in 1819, author Washington Irving references thunder-like sounds in the Catskill Mountains.

The Catskill Mountains had always been haunted by strange beings. That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at nine pins in the hollow of the mountain. And that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls like distant peals of thunder.

The unexplained booms near Seneca Lake are so commonly heard, they've got their own name, the Guns of Seneca. They've been heard since at least 1850, and they do sound like cannons firing. The earliest record of the Guns of Seneca comes from a short story inspired by the booming sounds that was published in 1850. - It is a sound resembling the explosion of a heavy piece of artillery that can be accounted for by none of the known laws of nature.

The report is deep, hollow, distant, and imposing. No satisfactory theory has ever been broached to explain these noises. The most that can be said is that such sounds are heard, though at long intervals, and that no one as yet has succeeded in ascertaining their cause. We call these skyquakes, and these skyquakes have been reported all over the world.

Like sky trumpets, leading theories for the cause of skyquakes are the shifting of tectonic plates, or maybe something to do with the Earth's magnetic field. A geological explanation would be easy to prove, but so far, nothing. Clearly, something is going on because everybody in the area can hear sky trumpets and skyquakes. But there are sounds that only a small percentage of people can hear, and those people are not the lucky ones. ♪

In 1991, the residents of Taos, New Mexico, were shaken out of their sleep by a strange humming sound. It was described as a low-frequency rumble, like the sound of a distant engine running. Well, more like thousands of engines. The sound was maddening. People were getting headaches, intense nausea, and suffering from insomnia. But strangest of all, only about 2% of people could actually hear it. These unlucky few call themselves the hearers.

After we moved here, within the first few months, I just woke up in the middle of the night and...

heard this strong humming sound. Some people can hear it, some people can't. Some people, like, it rattles their teeth and stuff and, like, drives them insane, and some people hear it and doesn't bother them. New Mexico is home to several facilities with sophisticated equipment. They teamed up to study the hum. The Los Alamos National Lab, Sandia National Labs, Phillips Air Force Laboratory, and the University of New Mexico all participated in a study.

High-tech equipment was set up at a few locations where the hum was prevalent. Scientists collected acoustic, geodynamic, seismic, magnetic and electromagnetic measurements. But even with all this modern technology, the study was unable to find the source of the Tau's hum. But there were increased levels of electromagnetism in the area during the study. As a result, we are left with a mystery.

There are no known acoustic signals that might account for the hum, nor are there any seismic events that might explain it. There are no unusual lines at suspect frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum recorded near Taos. And then, just like that, the hum was gone. This was a welcome relief for the people of Taos, but a few years later, a new hum appeared in Windsor, Canada. It's an unsolved mystery keeping this neighborhood awake at night. Sounds like 50 trucks starting up.

During a single day, 22,000 people complained about the hum. Researchers think the sound was coming from nearby Zug Island, where there's a lot of industrial activity. But there's been industry on the island for 100 years. The hum is new.

And it doesn't explain why only 2% of people could hear it. And that's something interesting. 2% of all people can hear the hum, whether they can hear or not. Even 2% of deaf people can hear the hum. Hums have begun popping up all over the world on every continent. The UK, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa all report hums. Sunday it was at its peak and it was vibrating. You could feel it through your body.

And then it starts to die down again, and then you feel it building up again. It's like the village has been cut in half. This end doesn't seem to experience anything. But from midway downwards, further down the village you go, it seems to be more and more. Some are extra low frequency hums like in Taos, New Mexico. Other hums are higher pitched and sound like running your finger around the rim of a glass. It's profoundly annoying. As you hear the noise, it's hard to make out what it is.

What was that sound? Moe Hussein, he took video walking home one night. He's noticed the sound for over a year. I liken it to like some sort of alien invasion. An interesting side note, there was one way the hearers of The Hum could find relief, and you're not going to believe what worked. What? Tinfoil hats. Yes!

Yep, even just a thin layer of foil was enough to disrupt the sound. Now regardless of the frequency, there's still no solid explanation for the hums. But you can't help but link these sounds to the HAARP array in Alaska. HAARP is an array of antennas that are used to study the properties of the ionosphere. But it's rumored that HAARP has been used for creating weather events and for creating earthquakes. Now that's considered a fringe theory.

But even the HAARP project website acknowledged that experiments were conducted which used electromagnetic frequencies to fire pulsed, directed beams of energy in order to, quote, "temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere." These are just a few of the mysterious sounds reported on land and in the air. Things get really weird when we start listening underwater.

For over 70 years, we've had networks of microphones listening to the sounds of the sea. They're called hydrophones, and they were initially planted to search for enemy submarines. In 1991, scientists discovered an unexplained recurring sound known as the upsweep.

Oh, that's an underwater alien vessel. That is one of the theories. The source of the sound is somewhere between New Zealand and South America, but the sound is loud enough to travel across the entire Pacific Ocean. Alien engines got big pipes. But what's odd is the sound is seasonal. It's heard mostly during spring and fall. Aliens probably take off for the holiday. In 1997, scientists picked up a strange sound coming from the South Pacific Ocean. This one they called the bloop.

That's it? I make that sound every time one of my guppies pulls my finger. No, no, no. That was sped up 16 times. At normal speed, it sounds very different. Okay, that was weird. Yeah, the sound lasted almost a full minute and was loud enough to be picked up by microphones 3,000 miles apart. Now, no animal on Earth is this loud. And then in 2016, a hydrophone was sent to the deepest spot on Earth, the trough in the Mariana Trench called Challenger Deep.

It's 36,000 feet below the surface. That's almost seven miles down. The Mariana Trench is one of the most mysterious places on Earth. And due to the high pressure at those depths, very few people have ever seen it. So scientists thought they would listen to it instead. And when they did, they heard moaning. Mysterious sounds coming from the ocean tend to have geological explanations, but that sounds like something alive.

And it's not even the strangest sound recorded in the Mariana Trench. A few years earlier, researchers captured a sound that doesn't sound like an animal, and it doesn't sound geological. It sounds mechanical. We are the sheep. We are the sheep.

A short 2-4 second complex sound was recorded that features a 38 Hz moan with both harmonics and amplitude modulation, followed by broad frequency metallic sounding sweeps up to 7.5 kHz. This sound was recorded regularly during both fall and spring surveys.

They call it the Western Pacific Bio-Twang. Bio-Twang? Sounds like something I used to grow in my dorm room closet. Hey, come on, pal. We got kids watching. Tomato plants, kids! I was growing tomato plants! Thank you. Most relaxing tomatoes you ever had. Again, there's no clear explanation for these sounds. But maybe the strangest sound ever recorded didn't come from the air or land or the sea. It came from outer space.

It was the evening of August 15th, 1977. The sky over Ohio was clear as astronomer Jerry Amon sat in his basement office scanning radio signals from deep space. He was volunteering with Ohio State University's Big Ear Radio Telescope, working with SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. In other words, Jerry was listening for signs of alien life. Jerry was looking at a printout of sounds recorded a few days earlier.

The data reflected the intensity of the sounds recorded across a number of different frequencies. The relative intensity was represented by a number, 1 through 9, and after 9 would move on to letters from A to Z. The typical sounds picked up by Big Ear were usually relatively low, represented by a 1 or a 2, basically just background noise. But on August 15th, Big Ear picked up a signal that registered 6EQUJ5. That is an unbelievably intense reading.

It lasted for 72 seconds and peaked at an intensity 30 standard deviations above the sound setting normally captured. Now, 10 deviations are rare. 30 deviations, that's borderline impossible. This was so amazing that Jerry circled the string of data in red and wrote WOW next to it. It's been known as the WOW signal ever since. For over 50 years, Big Ear listened for radio emissions at a frequency near 1420 MHz.

This is the frequency that hydrogen naturally emits. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, so this is a logical way to search for alien life. When Jerry Amon spotted a sharp spike at that frequency, he knew there was only a small chance that it was background noise. Whatever it was, the signal had to be artificial. The signal was also very concentrated, which is how a deliberate radio signal from another world would most likely look.

a natural event would have been heard across multiple frequencies. The WOW signal was only picked up on this one. The signal was at precisely 1420.356 MHz. Now that's too perfect. No known astrophysical source matches the intensity of the WOW signal. But the signal shows no trace of modulation or data encoded, which you'd expect from an intentional broadcast. Unless there's information there that we just can't understand.

SETI tried for years to pick up the signal again, but it never returned. But if aliens were trying to make contact, you'd expect the message to repeat. Follow-up studies at Big Ear and other telescopes have turned up nothing.

But in 2012, Earth sent a response. 35 years after the Wow signal was recorded, the Arecibo telescope beamed a message toward the constellation Sagittarius, the source of the original Wow signal. The message included 10,000 tweets and videos from celebrities, including Stephen Colbert and the 2011 Miss Universe. Tweets from Colbert and Miss Universe? Great, now the aliens are going to think we're stupid. Don't take a cheap shot at a beauty queen. I was talking about Colbert.

It's hard to identify the sources of many of these mysterious sounds, because they can be far away, like the drone of a machine in a distant factory, or sounds generated by events that we can't see, like something deep in the ocean, high in the clouds, or even in deep space. But there are explanations for a lot of these mysterious sounds.

According to a 2011 report from the US Geological Survey, skyquakes the rumbles heard on a clear day could be caused by shallow earthquakes, or spontaneous rock bursts triggered by mining, or from giant waves breaking offshore, or loosely packed sand dunes reshaped by strong winds. Yeah, scientists don't really know what causes skyquakes. And the thunder-like sounds might just be thunder.

Sometimes when the ground is stable, the sound of thunder can reflect off the earth and travel a long distance, and this is a process called ducting. This means the sounds of thunder can be heard without any visible storm activity. Some skyquakes might just be noisy fish sex. - I'm sorry, what now? - Well, male midshipman fish produce incredibly loud mating calls. During mating season, the sound can go on for hours. - For hours? What a show off.

And when a group of males are competing for mates, they'll try to be the loudest. Worst roommate ever. Well, sometimes these mating sounds can bounce off buildings and boats. In fact, a group of houseboat owners in Sausalito, California once complained about a strange sound that was loud enough to wake them up at night. They thought it might be submarines. Turns out it was just fish... getting down. If this fish balls are rockin', don't come a-knockin'!

The hums usually have industrial explanations. Building air vents, high pressure gas lines, high tension power lines, heavy machinery, even sonic booms and oil derricks. But these don't explain all of them, but they do explain most. There's even a theory that a small percentage of people can actually hear the resonant sound of the earth. This is called the world hum, though there's no proof that that exists.

The bloop and upsweep sounds picked up by hydrophones could be caused by underwater volcanoes or the collapse of underwater caves, or glaciers cracking, or icebergs scraping the ocean floor. Or alien vessels. I can't prove you wrong. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

The bio twang recorded in the Mariana Trench is now believed to be a previously undiscovered whale call. The complex sound has a lot in common with other calls attributed to the dwarf mink whale. And this is a mink whale. There is a problem with this theory, though. The mink whale only makes this sound during mating season. The bio twang has been heard all year long. So again, just a theory.

But there is no working theory that can explain the wow signal that Jerry Amon discovered in 1977. In 2017, a scientist claimed it was caused by one of two comets that were known to be moving through the area at the time. This theory was eventually dismissed because the timeline and location just didn't line up. And almost 50 years later, the wow signal is considered by many to be the strongest evidence we have that there's intelligent alien life.

As for the trumpets, it's probably a weather phenomenon or a geological event and not a signal that we're approaching judgment day. But witnesses to these sounds do feel a range of emotions from confusion to absolute dread. I have no idea where it's coming from. It's fucking weird. Is this stereo?

and even non-religious people who hear the trumpets start thinking about the apocalypse. I once heard a quote that really hit me. It's from Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. He said, "Everyone deep in their hearts is waiting for the end of the world." People in all cultures, regardless of faith, have a fascination with apocalyptic scenarios, and we always have. There are many reasons for this: religion, the media, and just natural curiosity.

But I think we're obsessed with the end of the world because of a single primal reason: control. Thinking about the apocalypse allows us to prepare mentally for the possibility. When you watch a movie about zombies or the aftermath of nuclear war, don't you wonder how you'd react or if you'd survive? Well, this is a coping mechanism to help us manage our emotions. Now, here's a more practical example. When someone dies, have you noticed there are two kinds of people? One person might be overcome with grief.

But in someone else, the grief just doesn't seem to hit as hard. I'm the second type of person. It's because I spend a lot of time in my own mind stressing and preparing for the inevitable. Now, my dad passed away a little over a year ago, and we were close, and I miss him, and I think about him every day. But when he finally died, I wasn't overcome with emotion. To some, my reaction seemed like I didn't care, but that's not it.

He was sick for a long time. And during that time when he was alive, I thought about his death all the time. I grieved as much as anyone, but my grief was spread out over a couple of years. So when the day finally arrived, I was ready for it. Now, other kinds of people prefer not to think about death until the moment is right upon them. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. Those kinds of people are able to enjoy their time with a sick family member without dwelling on dark thoughts. It's a more positive way to live.

But the grief has to come out. If not over time, then all at once. So when we think about the end of the world, we're spreading those emotions out a little at a time. We're preparing. So if the day finally arrives, we won't be paralyzed. The people that think the end of the world will never come, well, those people will be... Right, they're not going to make it.

But those of us who do like disaster movies or have a garage full of prepper gear, we're thinking about the end. We're not just preparing physically, we're preparing mentally a little bit at a time. And I bet this is something hardwired in our DNA by our creator, by God, the simulation, or whatever you want to call it. It's some kind of survivor's gene. Now, don't panic. People have been predicting the end of the world for thousands of years, and they've always been wrong.

But, although we don't know when, someday they're going to be right. That's 100% a fact. And when they are, I hope you're ready. Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. My name is AJ. You know Hecklefish. Verily I say unto thee, greetings and abundant blessings be upon thy path this day. This has been the Y-Files. If you learned anything, had fun, do him a favor, subscribe, like, comment, share. That stuff...

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That's going to do it. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.

No, it never ends.

I fear the crab cat and I got stuck inside Mel's home with MKUltra being only two of a wear. Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing alone on a film set or were the shadow people there? The Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man, I'm told.

And his name was Code. And I can't believe I'm dancing with the fishes. And we'll fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And the werewolves have many eyes. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So the werewolves... The Mothman sightings and the solar stones still come to have got the secret city underground.

Mysterious number stations, planets are both two Project Stargate and what the Dark Watchers found In a simulation, don't you worry though The Black Knight said a lot, he told me so I can't believe this! Hippofish on Thursday nights, Wednesday, J.T. When the weapons are made all through the night

All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So the wild, wild summer beat all through the night. And the fish on Thursday nights when they chase you. And the wild, wild summer beat all night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So the wild, wild summer beat all through the night.

Because she is a camel.

♪♪♪