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What's that noise' Hmm By SANNE SPECHT,for the Mail Tribune Sep 05, 2002 12:00 AM A A Something that doesn't know the words is troubling the sleep of some Wimerites WIMER ' They call it the Wimer hum. — The atonal, incessant sound plagues some Wimerites at night and defies identification. Most become aware of the hum during one of those restless nights when sleep just seems to elude. Something drives them bonkers, but they can't put their finger on it. Then they realize there's a noise ' a droning that won't go away. No one knows what it is or what causes it, but they almost always can tell you when they first heard it. Rogue River City Administrator Mark Reagles and Financial Officer Hope Warren have both suffered insomnia by hum. You can't get away from it, says Warren. You put your head on the pillow and it's still there. Even under the pillow, it's still there! Reagles says he recently spent several nights with the hum as his nocturnal partner. Reagles, who is newly moved to the Starvation Flats area between Rogue River and Wimer, says the noise usually starts around midnight and can continue until 5 a.m. At first, I thought it was somebody warming up their car, says Reagles. But it didn't stop, and nobody runs their car for all those hours night after night. While everyone who hears the sound uses the same general description, not everyone hears it. And there are almost as many theories on what could be generating the sound as there are people who have heard it. Warren's husband, Craig, says he's been hearing the hum for 18 years. He says he decided to do some amateur investigating to try to determine the source of the noise. He says when he first began hearing the sound in the mid-'80s, it would go on and off. Craig Warren says he and others believe the Wimer sound has to be mechanically or electrically generated. A ham radio aficionado, Warren says the hum tests out at around 900 cycles per second and can be heard year round and in many locations around the northern end of the Rogue Valley. I'd drive up old logging roads and still hear it. Old people said it was the (log) peeler at the mill echoing up the valley, Warren says. The mill burned down and the sound did seem less until they rebuilt and installed a laser-controlled peeler. Then the hum became steady. But now they're not peeling any logs and it's still there. Local Wimer hum sleuths say the sound might not have a local point of origin. They maintain the sound could be coming from far away but it is definitely finite in its range. I go to other cities and I don't hear it, says Craig Warren. It's definitely something that I can only hear around this area. Apparently, mystery sounds are not unique to Wimer. The source of the U.P. hum in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is still undetermined. Bill Jenkins of Flint, Mich., became interested in the U.P. hum when he ran across news articles from 1920 and 1930 while doing genealogy research. Jenkins says he had relatives who'd been declared mad because they heard sounds. Determined to find out what he could about local sound phenomena, Jenkins started his research. Not everybody hears it. And some people feel the vibration and perceive that as sound, says Jenkins. He says the most interesting theory he's found supposes that the U.P. hum is being generated by extremely low-frequency radio waves from Navy submarines attempting to attract whales. I don't know why they wanted to attract the whales, says Jenkins. But the theory is that because Lake Superior is so deep and there are so many old abandoned iron and copper mine shafts in the U.P., the sound was traveling from the Atlantic, Pacific and even the Polar ice caps all the way to the U.P. Craig Warren says he'd like to see some serious research done on the Wimer hum. Did it exist before World War II? Are we the end point of some transmission line'some grid network that is received or generated at this point? What is the pattern of location? Is it coastal, central or random? asks Warren. Warren says the wildest theory he's heard claims the sound is coming from underground generators clicking on at night to provide light to underground facilities built out at Camp White during WWII. Camp White Museum volunteer Roy Erickson was a military police officer at Camp White and patrolled the whole camp. Erickson says he'd know if the troop training camp had also doubled as a secret underground city. We went all over the grounds during our patrols, says Erickson. One week we did a count of all the soldiers. There were 43,000 soldiers in that camp. I think I can say there wasn't anything happening there but getting soldiers ready for action in the war. . Craig Warren has heard the Wimer hum for 18 years. He and other residents have theories about where it might be coming from, but nothing definitive has surfaced that would pin down its cause. Click the photo to see a larger (28k) version. Mail Tribune / Jim Craven - Mail Tribune Jim Craven