What Is This Mystery Sound People Are Hearing?

A video posted to YouTube this week from Malaysia features loud, strange sounds emanating from seemingly nowhere. It is only the latest video documenting a phenomenon that has people all over the world reporting that they hear mysterious trumpet sounds coming from the sky. Videos from such disparate places as Australia, Germany, Malaysia, western Canada, and Texas show confounded residents listening to sounds that resemble, at times, those of a trumpet, and, at others, whale songs. The people filming the videos seem unable to identify a source, and a common refrain in a number of them sums up their general feeling of bewilderment: “What the hell is that?”

Here are my theories about what’s going on, based on no expertise whatsoever:

• Aliens. (Either friendly ones trying to make contact or evil ones who are currently en route to strip the planet of its resources and enslave the human race.)
• The early stirrings of the apocalypse.
• Dinosaurs that have been living in caverns at the center of the Earth for millions of years are now breaking through the planet’s surface to usher in a new dinosaur age.
• It’s a global government conspiracy to convince us all that we’re going crazy so that some as-yet-unidentified villain can take over.
• There’s another Earth in a parallel universe, and someone over there is trying to talk to us. If we can figure out the code, we can save the world. (I know, somewhere along the way, this turned into Interstellar.)

Sadly (for my sci-fi dreams, at least), NASA insists that the eerie sounds are nothing to worry about. According to the New York Post, a NASA spokesperson explained,

If humans had radio antennas instead of ears, we would hear a remarkable symphony of strange noises coming from our own planet. … They sound like background music from a flamboyant science fiction film, but this is not science fiction. … Earth’s natural radio emissions are real and, although we’re mostly unaware of them, they are around us all the time.

Although the sounds may not signal the arrival of the End of Days, there’s no denying that the weird, shifting tones are creepy. A video filmed in Germany in early April shows a child standing stock-still in the middle of the street as the sounds roll over the neighborhood.

Someone in the background asks was sounds like “Was ist das?” (“What is that?”)

Similar sounds can be heard in videos from around the world:

Sabah, Malaysia, June 2015

British Columbia, Canada, August, 2013

Queensland, Australia, January 2012

Melbourne, Australia, January 2012

Although all of these videos emerged in the last few years, The Daily Mail reports that people have been reporting these sounds since 2008 at least, when someone recorded them in Belarus.

Images: YouTube(2)