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Mysterious humming sound in Fort Greene driving some residents crazy

Mysterious sound in Brooklyn driving people crazy
Mysterious sound in Brooklyn driving people crazy 02:28

NEW YORK -- No one seems to know what's been causing a strange humming sound in Brooklyn

The mysterious sound emanating through parts of Fort Greene has been driving some neighbors crazy, CBS2's Kevin Rincon reported Thursday. 

"It's profoundly annoying," one woman said. "It sounds like somebody putting their finger on a glass cup and running it around the top of the cup."

"It sounds very much like a resonance, a harmonic resonance like if you can picture someone rubbing the top of a crystal glass or a tuning fork," said Mo Hussain.

Hussain took a video walking home one night. He said he's noticed the sound for over a year. 

"I liken it to like some sort of alien invasion, as you're walking around even in the middle of the night, you hear this hum off in the background and you wonder what could that be," said Hussain.

"You know, I thought about that, and they're only landing in the middle of the night," said Adrina Banks. 

Banks believes it's related to construction, but admitted it could be anything.

"It's just this consistent humming that doesn't seem to go away and goes on for hours," said Banks. "It's so piercing that it keeps you up." 

Neighbors have called 311, but they say the sound stops when the Department of Environmental Protection shows up. 

"As soon as you think OK well now I've gotten used to it, now I'm ready to live my life with this noise, then it goes away. You're like that's great, and then it comes back," said Jacob Baskin. 

"The timing of it makes me sort of believe that at times anyways, makes me sort of believe that there's some sort of equipment being run and they sort of try to turn it off and on in ways that don't disrupt people," said Hussain. 

Some residents turned to online forums to mark when the noise starts and stops. But tracking it isn't easy. 

"Like base notes they disperse easily but they're hard to pinpoint, and this sound has that quality that's really hard to locate," a resident said.

Plenty of people in the neighborhood are concerned the noise could have larger psychological impacts. They hope speaking out eventually brings peace and quiet. 

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