Hearing is one of the most important senses a human or animal has. Sounds can warn of approaching danger or help members of the same species communicate with one another. They can also incite various emotions. And the weirdest noises may even haunt those who hear them forevermore.
In a horror film, for instance, the right sound can evoke a sense of dread or fear without anything terrifying happening on-screen. But spooky noises aren’t a commodity reserved for Hollywood. A twig breaking in the woods at night, a bump in the dark, an eerie old song — all of these sounds can put us on the edges of our seats.
Other noises, however, have even caused humans to experience physical symptoms. The mysterious “Hum” heard around the world, for example, has caused people to become fatigued and anxious. And the strange illness known as Havana Syndrome is thought to be brought on by a certain sound.
And yet other sounds remind us of a specific time or emotion in a way that nothing else can. Below are nine of the weirdest noises throughout history. Some are sorrowful and some are mysterious, others are disturbing or whimsical, but each of them is truly haunting.
The Last Song Of The Kauai O’o
Public DomainAn illustration depicting two Kauai O’o birds.
In 1983, conservationist John Sincock captured the mating call of the last remaining Kauai O’o, a now-extinct honey-eating songbird that was native to Hawaii’s Kauai island.
Per the British Library, the bird in the recording was the last known Kauai O’o in existence, the male of a mating pair calling out to a partner who had died a year prior during Hurricane Iwa.
The species was officially declared extinct in 2000 after years of large-scale habitat loss, the introduction of non-native species to Hawaii’s “Garden Island,” and the spread of mosquito-borne diseases.
In fact, conservationists and ornithologists have noted a substantial decline in almost all of Kauai’s honeycreeper species of birds — and they estimate that even more extinctions will come in the near future.
According to Engadget, the particularly haunting version of the Kauai O’o’s song uploaded to YouTube by Robert Davis was a version that he remixed, adding an eerie echo that created a feeling one commenter described as “lonely and mournful like it knows it’s the last of its kind.”
“This is basically the animal equivalent of the final human left screaming to God, asking why he put him through this much misery,” another wrote.
In a way, the recording has become something of a digital memorial for the lost bird, its final call echoing like a ghost across the internet.
The Bloop: One Of The Weirdest Noises From The Deep Sea
NOAAA spectogram of the Bloop.
In 1997, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) captured a recording of an incredibly loud, ultra-low frequency emanating from deep in the Pacific Ocean. It soon became one of the most debated weirdest noises in history.
Naturally, people were quick to let their minds run wild with possibilities, with many believing — perhaps fearing — that the noise was caused by a large sea monster.
The sound was also recorded at stations more than 3,000 miles apart — and only 1,000 miles from H. P. Lovecraft’s fictional sunken city of R’lyeh, in which his famous monster Cthulhu is imprisoned in his works.
However, as Wired reported, seismologists who have studied the sound determined that it actually shares many similarities with the noise made by icequakes — and it’s likely that’s what the Bloop was all along.
“What has led to a lot of the misperception of the animal origin sound of the Bloop is how the sound is played back,” said NOAA and Oregon State University seismologist Robert Dziak.
Often, the audio is played back at 16 times its normal speed in order to make it more audible for the average person. “However,” Dziak explained, “when the sound is played in real-time it has more of a ‘quake’ sound to it, similar to thunder.”
In fact, a survey conducted from 2005 to 2010 studied other “icequakes” caused by pieces of sea ice melting or splitting off of glaciers, and they all shared similar characteristics with the Bloop.
As it turns out, this isn’t uncommon. There are thousands of icequakes each year.
So while it may have been fun, and perhaps even a bit scary, to attribute the Bloop to an eldritch monster-god, it was evidently nothing more than a loud icebreaker for many conversations.
The post Listen To 9 Of The Most Haunting Sounds Ever Recorded appeared first on All That’s Interesting.
