Feeling around infrasound..

We’ve seen two interviews from people who thought that they had experienced infrasound. Are we on the track of an infrasound discovery at last? We don’t have enough data to make pronouncements at this point, yet I can’t help but notice the similarities in many accounts of purported infrasound exposure. And to set this up a bit, I’d like to point to some helpful information I’ve found in Healy and Cropper’s priceless tome, The Yowie. First, something I remember hearing about some time ago but which I had forgotten: the discovery that a certain frequency standing wave is associated with what people call haunting phenomena:

Since the mid-1980s, British engineer Vic Tandy has made interesting discoveries at two apparently haunted locations in Coventry. In both places people felt distinctly uneasy, hair rose on the backs of necks and some sensed “presences”. Some fled and refused to return. Tandy found that parts of both buildings produced standing waves of 18.9Hz infrasound. Anything below 20Hz is inaudible to humans. In one building an extractor fan was responsible; in the other, a 14th century pub, it was air funneling through a long, crooked corridor.

These “distinctly uneasy” feelings, which do appear to be related to infrasound, are identical to the feelings people report in some bigfoot encounters. Healy and Cropper make the identification plain:

When considering whether infrasound might have anything to do with the yowie phenomenon, it is worth noting that sounds in the range of 18.9Hz can cause, in addition to fear and anxiety, blurred vision, hyperventilation, headaches, imagined drops in air temperature, gagging sensations, nausea and post-exposure fatigue. As we have seen, extreme fear is a feature of many yowie reports. Gagging sensations, nausea, icy sensations in the spine, headaches and post-sighting fatigue have also been mentioned by a small number of witnesses.

I think it’s worth pointing out, as an aside, that the very fact both the yowie and bigfoot are suspected of using infrasound, or being at least somehow associated with infrasound phenomena, is another indication that the two creatures are related, and probably that neither is the product of imagination or misidentification.

Now, to the business at hand. I’ve identified five correspondences in the infrasound accounts I have. Several of these are unpublished, and I don’t have permission to publish them, but I bring this up to alert the reader that we aren’t proceeding on the basis of two interviews alone. And I also have some further correspondences with Sally that I will include here, because she believes she has experienced infrasound again since our interview, when she made a visit to a habituation project. Her experiences there do conform to the infrasound hypothesis, as you will see.

Each account includes feelings of confusion, fear, even nausea.

As Dennis reported in both of his experiences, there were intense feelings of fear and confusion associated with the events. Here’s what he said about his first encounter:

I think I stood there for a second or two, because I was like, uh, it was pretty surprising, and I think I was like a little dazed and confused for a second . . . the only other feelings that went with it was fear. The confusion seemed a little more than just normal because I was, I remember like pausing after it ended, instead of walking right away like “what the hell was that, let’s get out of here,” I remember pausing right away and looking into the woods, you know, I think it was more than just wondering what it was because I could have been wondering and leaving at the same time, because it was obvious to me that the thing, you know whatever was making that noise, at least it seems as obvious as it can, that whatever was making that noise didn’t want me there.

During his second encounter, Dennis experienced even more fear:

And then I felt like, and this was more of a feeling than a thought, that there was one right behind this large pine tree where I walked up to and saw that pile of crap there.. I mean, this feeling was an intense feeling of just intense fear.

and confusion:

I’m scanning around and I just got this, like.. the best way I could describe it was I got dizzy, and, I didn’t stumble or anything like that, but I got dizzy like “what the hell happened?” I took a couple of steps back.. for a brief moment, I didn’t know really where I was . . . I lost where I was for no real reason that I can explain.

Sally experienced something similar during her encounter with infrasound at the waterfall:

At first it felt like it was all around me, but then it very quickly became focused from one area to my left. And I was afraid to look over there. I kind of tried to glance up at the underbrush, but it was like I was afraid to lift my eyes but so high. It was a *weird* sensation. And of course - I’m a very logical person, and I’m trying to do a lot of self talk, “There’s no reason to be scared, there’s nobody around here, just take your pictures, enjoy the waterfall,” and I couldn’t do it. I took the pictures and I started leaving. I just couldn’t hang around. If it hadn’t happened, I would have sat down on a rock and looked at those waterfalls for fifteen or twenty minutes, because they were beautiful. But I kept telling myself, “Stay calm, there’s no reason to get upset, there’s nothing going on here.” I snapped a few pictures. I stood there maybe five minutes max. And then I turned around, and I was making a conscious effort not to leave like I was afraid. And I don’t know why I felt like I had to do that. But I didn’t want to run. I mean, I wanted to run, but I knew it would be a stupid thing. I don’t know, I can’t explain it. It was totally emotional.

Interestingly enough, not long ago Sally made a visit to a possible habituation area and had something very peculiar happen, much like the confusion that Dennis mentioned:

According to MY memory, I had walked up to the barn with the video camera running. After I shut off the video function, I remember looking down at the ground and telling [the witness] I felt something electrical, thinking to myself that I couldn't believe what I was feeling, and that I needed to back off and then I stepped back. In my memory, I looked at the ground and absorbed the feeling for about two seconds before I stepped back. I do NOT remember looking up at the barn/table area again.

According to HER memory, I stood there and stared straight ahead at the barn for 20-30 seconds. She said she had time to walk toward me from where she had been standing farther away. She walked it through in her head and came up with the estimate. She said I was frozen during this time and she was concerned. She thought I was seeing something.

According to the RECORDER, a full five seconds passed from the time you can hear the beep-beep signaling that I had turned off the video function on the camera to the time I announced to [the witness] that, "I'm feeling it!" Another 11 - 12 seconds (the recorder doesn't do fractions of seconds) passed and then I told her that it felt electrical, and then another 18 - 19 seconds passed before I stepped backwards (my steps in the leaves are clearly audible - in fact, most of my recording for most of the time I was there is obscured by leaf crunching).

Physical sensations are reported occurring inside the body

This is how Dennis described it during his first encounter:

It was like nothing that I’ve ever heard or felt since then, and I’ve been right next to helicopters because we used to have to fly people out if there was a bad accident, and if they could still make it we would have to load them into a state police chopper, right next to it, you know, it’s landing and taking off. I’ve never heard or felt anything like it, and it was just a pure, it was like pure bass, like just, it’s the best way I can describe it.

During his second encounter, Dennis had more opportunity to experience the phenomenon:

And along with that along with that came this new feeling that wasn’t just in my stomach, it was like, in my internal organs, just this horrible feeling, like sickness feeling. Like I was really ill with something, not just a stomach ache.

During our interview, I asked Sally if she had experienced anything like this.

I felt heavy inside. I felt full maybe, sick. It was weird, I felt it at the core of my being. And I don’t remember my heart racing. I don’t remember anything like he described for that first time, like that thumping or anything, but then again I’m sitting there in front of a waterfall that’s making a lot of noise. And there’s this constant roaring vibration in the ground. So I don’t know how much the waterfall may have interfered with some of those feelings. But that feeling of “I’m not welcome, and I need to be scared, I need to go away,” and all that, when I started feeling it, it was accompanied by this very strange feeling deep in my body. And it was just like this heavy, uncomfortable feeling.

The message “You are not welcome” is somehow received

During his first encounter, Dennis told me that he felt he wasn’t welcome in that place:

I was just like hit with this very unwelcome, like I shouldn’t have been there, like we stopped at a place where, we picked the wrong place to stop and it was telling me to get lost, it was like a warning that I had walked up to the wrong spot and it was telling me to leave.

Dennis told me that the same feeling hit him during the second experience as well. Interestingly, the same phrase was more powerfully suggested to Sally during her experience:

And as soon as I lifted up my camera, I was just overcome with this feeling of fear, and dread, and I need to leave, I’m not welcome there.. And it was really strange, because you don’t often associate words with feelings, but the feeling was, “I’m not welcome here, I have to go away.”

There is a limit to the area of effect

At a certain physical distance, the feelings would disappear, but reappear when the witness returned (which Dennis did four times):

I went [out] and that fear, you know the fear went away -- you know I still had like this anxiety -- not anxiety but like an anxious feeling like “Holy smokes,” you know.. “Look what I walked up on.” And my reasoning came back and I’m like, “I’m going to see one of these things, and I’m seeing it now.” You know what I mean? Like.. I got a shot at this and I’m going to do it. And when I went back, . . . it was like walking into this area that.. basically, when I entered that area again, here came this fear again. . .

This also happened to Sally:

So, I walked on back down through that short underbrush. And the entire time I still felt it, then when I got about half way across the yard it went away. And it went away in an obvious way . . . it was like a switch flipped. . . . as I left, when the fear went away, so did that feeling [inside the body]. I remember the feeling was fading as I walked away, and then it stopped completely when the fear went away. And I mean, when the fear went away, it went away big time, then all of a sudden I was thinking, “Oh well wasn’t that silly, wonder what was wrong with me? I was just being stupid, maybe it was just because I was out here alone and I was overreacting to being by myself, and that was stupid.” And “Oh Look at these plants, I think I’ll take some pictures before I get back in the car.” It was like it didn’t matter anymore. Because it was such a weird psychological experience, and I guess that’s just how I dealt with it.

Sickness, headache, are often reported occurring the following day

Dennis told me that his feelings of sickness and headache persisted after the experience, even into the next day:

[O]n the way home I got it. And I say on the way home, it was like not far on the way home. I was still on that road, leaving the area, and I got a bad migraine, and I felt that, you know, that ill feeling stuck with me for a couple hours, and the headache lasted ‘till the next day. Not as bad, but I still felt that it was pretty bad when it first started.

Sally suffers from migraines, so as she said, “As far as headache goes, I have a lot of migraines, so if I’d had a headache at that time, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it.” But I’ve heard this tale of illness the next day from other researchers.

Where do we go from here?

I’ve also heard everything else on this list from other researchers. So the natural question is -- is there something here? Are we gathering the outlines of what an infrasound experience is like? Or is this just one bizarre coincidence?

One way to check against this is to look in the accounts already written up prior to these accounts being made public. I’ll go through my collection of bigfoot books, but if any of you are looking for some way to become involved, you can do it too. Reading the books is great fun anyway, so all you are really doing is trying to look for these features of infrasound in the descriptions of encounters. But we should acknowledge going into it that we aren’t likely to find much, especially in the older accounts. The writers tended to focus just on the physical facts, and did not take much notice of the feelings of the witness at the time. Still, there may be some hidden gems in the old books yet.