Witching Hour - Mystery: the Windsor Hum, real, measured, never pinned down

Witching Hour - Mystery For years, west Windsor and LaSalle residents reported a low rumble at home. A 2014 federal study found the Windsor Hum real, likely from blast furnaces on Zug Island, Mich. Other data pointed elsewhere. No source was confirmed.

Topics: Witching Hour

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Witching Hour is our nightly local history and folklore feature. Ghost stories and legends are retold as stories people tell, not reported as fact. Sources are listed below the story.

For years, people in west and south Windsor, LaSalle and parts of Essex County described a low, rumbling sound they could feel inside their homes. It became known as the Windsor Hum.

The study

The federal government, through what was then the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, funded a study by the University of Windsor and Western University in 2013 and 2014. Each team set up its own instruments to record the sound and try to trace where it came from.

What it found

The results were released on May 23, 2014. The study concluded that the Hum is real. The University of Windsor team said the sound most likely matched blast furnace operations on Zug Island, an industrial island on the Michigan side of the Detroit River, across from west Windsor.

Western University's sensor arrays did not point the same way. Their data indicated a source well to the south of Zug Island, so the two sets of findings did not agree.

Still not pinned down

The researchers did not have access to Zug Island, which is in the United States. The Windsor Star reported that the study did not pinpoint an exact source, and no source was ever confirmed by the study.

More than a decade later, the Windsor Hum remains a sound that was measured and confirmed, but never traced to one proven source.