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Inside a controlled room at MacEwan University<\/a>, a public university in Edmonton, Alberta, a low rumble hidden beneath music changed how people felt.<\/p>\n By tracking those reactions, Rodney M. Schmaltz, Ph.D., a psychology professor at MacEwan University, helped show that unnoticed infrasound could still influence emotional reactions. These low-frequency sound waves fall below the usual human hearing limit.<\/p>\n People exposed to the hidden vibration reported more irritability, less interest, and a sadder impression of the same music than people who heard music alone.<\/p>\n The result does not prove that every eerie room is vibrating, but it makes building noise a serious suspect before the story turns supernatural.<\/p>\n Why older buildings hum<\/p>\n Old buildings keep making low sounds, even when they seem still.<\/p>\n Ventilation fans, elevator motors, pumps, and pipes can send slow pressure waves through floors and walls. These sources<\/a> overlap with natural ones such as storms, volcanoes, and meteors.<\/p>\n Because low-frequency waves can travel long distances and pass around barriers, a basement can hold vibration that never sounds like an ordinary noise.<\/p>\n At very high volume, the boundary<\/a> near 20 hertz \u2013 20 vibrations per second \u2013 becomes fuzzy because very low tones can become audible.<\/p>\n Stress without awareness<\/p>\n The body can react to hidden stressors even when attention never catches them.<\/p>\n For the body, cortisol<\/a> \u2013 a stress hormone \u2013 helps release energy and adjust immune activity when the brain flags strain.<\/p>\n Short bursts can help someone stay alert, but repeated elevation can wear on sleep, mood, blood pressure, and metabolism.<\/p>\n \u201cThis study suggests that the body can respond to infrasound even when we can\u2019t consciously hear it,\u201d said Schmaltz.<\/p>\n Measuring stress responses<\/p>\n Thirty-six adult students took part, with nine assigned to each of four listening conditions.<\/p>\n Half heard calming music or horror-like ambient sound with hidden infrasound near 18 hertz; the rest heard the same music without it.<\/p>\n Hidden bass speakers produced the tone at 75 to 78 decibels without creating obvious rattles.<\/p>\n Saliva samples taken before and 20 minutes after the music gave the team a biological readout, while surveys captured mood right after exposure.<\/p>\n Infrasound altered mood<\/p>\n Emotional ratings moved in one clear direction after the low tone entered the room.<\/p>\n Participants exposed to infrasound reported more irritability during the music and less interest afterward.<\/p>\n They also judged the same music<\/a> as sadder, even though the audible clips were either calming or unsettling by design.<\/p>\n Crucially, their guesses about whether infrasound was present did not explain the effect, so expectation was not driving the result.<\/p>\n Stress hormone response<\/p>\n Biology backed up the mood reports. Salivary cortisol rose in the infrasound condition, and one poor saliva sample left 35 usable hormone measurements.<\/p>\n The rise remained linked to infrasound even after the researchers accounted for irritation, fear, and feeling bad during exposure.<\/p>\n \u201cIncreased cortisol levels help the body respond to immediate stressors by inducing a state of vigilance,\u201d said Trevor J. Hamilton, Ph.D., a MacEwan University corresponding author.<\/p>\n Not quite anxiety<\/p>\n Fear did not dominate the pattern, despite the haunted-building hook. Irritability and disinterest stood out more than anxiety, which keeps the findings from becoming a broad claim about panic.<\/p>\n That distinction suggests an irritant can make a room feel unpleasant without making someone feel openly afraid.<\/p>\n In practical terms, the study points less toward ghost stories and more toward unnoticed building conditions that may impact mood<\/a>.<\/p>\n Questions still remain<\/p>\n Small experiments can reveal a signal without settling the whole case.<\/p>\n With such a small group \u2013 most of them young women \u2013 the results need larger tests across ages, health conditions, building types, and longer exposure times.<\/p>\n Researchers also tested only one clean tone, while real rooms often mix several low frequencies with vibration, airflow, and audible noise.<\/p>\n Engineering quieter spaces<\/p>\n Building design already treats noise as a comfort issue, but low-frequency vibration often escapes everyday attention.<\/p>\n Better measurements could help engineers find problem spots near large ventilation fans, heavy motors, boiler rooms, and long pipe runs.<\/p>\n Clearer evidence would also help regulators decide whether short-term laboratory effects translate into real-world exposure limits.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first priority would be testing a wider range of frequencies and exposure durations,\u201d added Schmaltz.<\/p>\n What this changes<\/p>\n Evidence from mood ratings, saliva samples, and failed detection guesses now gives the old-building unease story a physical explanation rather than a purely psychological one.<\/p>\n Useful next steps will test real-world rooms, longer exposures, and mixed frequencies, while keeping the main warning modest: a strange feeling can have a physical source.<\/p>\n The study is published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read?\u00a0Subscribe to our newsletter\u00a0<\/a>for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on\u00a0EarthSnap\u00a0<\/a>, a free app brought to you by\u00a0Eric Ralls\u00a0<\/a>and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new study has found that a sound too low for most people to hear can make listeners…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[85,46,370,141],"class_list":["post-432565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}