CAMANO
ISLAND - For the past several years, some people who live on Camano Island and
near Stanwood have been hearing strange noises in the night. The mystery has fueled speculation as wild as Navy sonar and Russian submarines to as mundane as buried power lines. But nobody seems to know.
The noise is so strange, said Kathy Ostrander, "I've found myself thinking, 'Am I the subject of a scientific experiment?'"
Pat Timko first noticed it on Dec. 1, 2003. A bizarre low hum woke her from a sound sleep about 1 a.m.
Describing the sound is difficult, she said. It reminded her of a small plane approaching or a diesel truck idling. But she couldn't pinpoint the source. Upon investigation, there was no plane or truck.
"This was omnipresent," said Timko, who lives alone on the east side of Camano Island. "It was almost like something I was not only hearing but feeling as well." The hum was in every room of the house, coming up through her bed. The noise returned many other nights. Walking outside, it seemed to emanate from the ground. Driving to the island's shore, she could feel the sound coming from the water.
Others related eerily similar descriptions.
Ostrander said she's been losing sleep because of the off-and-on hum for the past six years, since moving into their current house in a rural area north of Stanwood. "It's like my central nervous system is resonating with something," Ostrander said.
One night she took her sleeping bag out in the yard to try to escape the noise. "The hum was in the earth," she said. "You could almost hear it better." Her husband has heard the noise but does not hear it as often as she does.
Theresa Metzger first heard the noise after she and her husband moved to the north end of Camano Island in 1997. "It's almost like I feel the vibrations in my inner ear," she said. Her husband has never heard it.
The three women do not know each other. Metzger and Ostrander were unaware that others also were hearing the sound.
Timko tried to play sleuth, documenting times and dates when the noise returned. She called Snohomish County PUD, but the electric utility could find nothing out of the ordinary to explain the noise. She called Twin City Foods nearby in Stanwood, but their food processing doesn't occur at night. She called the Navy and was told that no maneuvers had been done nearby, although one official told her some Russian submarines might have been in the area. She even found a "Taos hum" Web site where people describe similar sounds in Taos, N.M., and elsewhere.
Some inquiries about the hum made by The Herald on Thursday ran into similar dead ends.
Jim Creek Naval Radio Station east of Arlington has a powerful "very low frequency" radio transmitter that communicates with the submarine fleet in the Pacific Ocean. But the station's commander, Chief Warrant Officer Jay Lorenz, said the long, slow radio waves from Jim Creek are well below the human range of hearing. Lorenz said a more likely source would be a communications tower, power line or transformer.
If so, the PUD is willing to work with customers to resolve the problem, spokesman Neil Neroutsos said. "Occasionally, we do get calls about noises that may be underground," he said. "In some cases, it's an issue related to a transformer that may require maintenance."
He encouraged people in that area to call the PUD's Stanwood office at 360-629-5700 if the noise recurs.
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