A small village is being plagued by a strange humming noise which has been attributed to everything from aliens to tractors. Will Roberts tries to solve the mystery.

AS I enter Woodland, on a hill overlooking much of County Durham, my car radio lets out a noticeable crackle - more dodgy aerial than dodgy alien, but it still sets the scene for an investigation, into what is now an international phenomenon.

The residents of Woodland are restless. For months, or years some say, a hum has interrupted peaceful lives and deep slumber. It comes on at any time, sometimes lasting hours.

Everybody has their theories, but nobody knows what it is, where it comes from or how to stop it.

First things first - once I arrive in Woodland I get out of the car and listen. There's a fading diesel engine in the distance and the sound of a toddler laughing in a garden, but apart from that, nothing. No hum.

My enquiries start at a street called The Edge, which sounds vaguely mysterious, so I reason that if the hum is communication from extra-terrestrial visitors, there's a good chance they would have chosen this road.

I'm wrong.

"It's heard most down Middleton Road," says a woman at her door. She instantly knows what I'm talking about when I mention 'the hum', but hasn't heard it herself.

Middleton Road turns out to be a fruitful hunting ground: "We first heard it about six months ago," says Dolly Fitzgerald, in the living room of her home.

"We would hear it in the middle of the night and come downstairs, thinking it might be my fish tank or something else in the house.

"We turned things off to see if it stopped but it didn't. It was only when other people in the village started talking about it that we realised that everybody could hear it."

A few doors down and Michelle Fail's story is the same.

"I normally take sleeping pills but it has woken me up and my husband have come down to the bottom of the garden in the middle of the night to try and figure out what it is," she says.

Mrs Fail compares it to an idling tractor engine, but with a smoother sound.

"It's louder than that," she says as a lawn mower starts up in a neighbouring garden.

The noise isn't just limited to the west side of the village, says one lady, who asks not to be named. She says her family have known about it for about seven years and that it is often audible during the day. Four years ago the electricity board investigated, but couldn't find the cause.

The residents all have their theories about the cause of the noise: an electric fence, a generator in another village echoing across the dale, air trapped in the network of disused mine shafts under the village or jets from RAF Leeming.

Nobody dare mention the UFO theory, but many joke about it. "As long as it doesn't come and beam me up, I'm not bothered," smiles Mrs Fail.

At the village school, head teacher Judy Unsworth says the hum has caused excitement.

"We haven't heard anything, but the children are very excited about it. We're having a sleep over soon and we might use that to do our own investigation, but we don't want to scare the children."

Durham County Council is planning to use specialist equipment to record and investigate the sound in the near future.

Effect is heard across the world

THE noise irritating residents in Woodland is a phenomenon that baffles scientists across the world and is known as The Hum.

The sound often lasts for hours and can be loud enough to shake furniture in houses.

There are numerous conspiracy theories about the cause. It has been blamed on UFOs and government experiments and was even considered spooky enough to feature on the Nineties science fiction programme The XFiles.

It has been reported all over the world, including in New Mexico and Hawaii.

Many possible explanations have been offered, including gas pipes, power lines, traffic, factories, pylons or mobile phone masts.

But Woodland, an isolated village of only 300 people, is near nothing in that list.

In 2004, some scientists said The Hum might be caused by rough water shaking the earth’s crust, but Woodland is miles from the sea.

A more common theory in Woodland relates to the network of disused mineshafts underneath the village – often causing the ground to give way.

However, many say The Hum is a mechanical or electrical sound rather than a natural one.