> > That reminds me of a program I saw some time ago >which spoke of a similar anomoly in an old >English pub. Essentially, if the pub was quiet >and one were to sit next to a certain wall, one >could then hear voices. There was nothing on the >other side of the wall to make the noise, >investigators found the sounds to be eminating >from the wall itself. As it turns out, the >construction of the wall was directly >responsible. The materials used, proportions, >and other technical stuff turned out to be >similar enough to a cassette tape that the wall >actually recorded room sounds at some point in >the past, and is now replaying them.

Yeah, the wall "playing back recorded sounds" is similar to an amusing archeological article I once saw, in "Science" magazine. The author noted that sound waves at certain frequencies record diffraction-grating-like patterns (of micron precision) on the surfaces of suitable substrates (like certain colloidal gels or metal crystals). I believe that part is true. But then he went on and claimed that, knowing this, he could retrieve "soundscapes" from ancient times, as recorded in the -- get this -- the wet clay of drying terra cotta pots created 2000 yrs ago. Supposedly, by drawing a special stylus across the pottery pieces, and playing them the way an LP player does, we'd be able to hear market sounds... and children playing... and what human voices sounded like, back then. Never mind that clay doesn't have enough material resolution or durability to preserve any diffraction patterns... It sounds like a good project, so why not?!

A little knowledge etc, you know...


> > I know, it sounds terribly weird, but is it any >weirder than both Gilligan and Julie Partridge >picking up radio waves from their dental work?
> >
> > Tra "Come on, get happy" nio

Heh. I look at this and think you're reposting an April Fool's joke, except you posted this 4 days ago. No, it's not possible for anyone to pick up radio waves in their dental work, unless 1) the dentist happened to have implanted some kind of transceiver in the fillings, which moreover 2) had a working energy source, and 3) a tuner that could convert radio frequencies to the exact range of frequencies which conducts sound through teeth and bone. Unlikely. Instead it's far more plausible that the people who report "hearing radio stations from their fillings" are actually unfortunate, undiagnosed schizophrenics, or drug-users having psychotic symptoms, where they're hallucinating voices inside their heads.


> Are you sure about that verdict? Both your story and Howard's remind me of a more-common-than-it-sounds phenomenon called the "whispering corridor" or something like that. Basically, in certain places, the acoustics are set up just right so that you can hear things that are being said many feet or even miles away.

Howard mentioned he heard Church bells ringing that "occured only in the evening, in summer". That's consistent with audible sounds travelling much further through cooler, undisturbed dry air, with no snow blanket to absorb sound -- and which happens only *after* the sun has gone down. The sun is like a blast-furnace creating churning air-mass in the earth's immediate atmosphere, and it's a shrieking blast of static over many radio frequencies. When that burning orb disappears below the horizon, it greatly decreases the amount of energetic disturbance in the air molecules, which normally masks distant sounds. My high-school Chemistry teacher, Mr. Ranelucci, had some favorite country-rock stations in Vermont that he liked to listen to -- but he could only receive them in Montreal in the evenings, when the air was calm.


> If I wasn't so lazy, I'd go look up the reference to some famous building that I think is in Washington DC that exhibits an effect like this--someone standing at one end of the room can hear others at the other end whispering if both parties stand in the correct place--over a distance that normally you could never hear a whisper over.

There's your "whispering corridor" of acoustics travelling through building material, just so. There's also the discovery that air being vibrated at a certain frequency -- such as by the pounding fan/compressor of a faulty air-conditioning system -- can create a standing harmonic wave in the air of a room. People standing at mid-nodal points of this wave get intense chills, anxiety attacks, and strong creepy sensations all over their skin. It's a possible explanation for houses that feel "haunted".


> Actually, now that I think about it, Howard's sounds more like the "being way up on the side of a mountain" phenomenon I noticed in my not-so-long-ago youth back in NH. I used to live right next to the largest mountain in New England, and sometimes I'd wander really far up the side of said mountain. After going just a few hundred feet from my house, I could no longer hear the cars passing on the road nearby. The farther I walked, the quieter the world got--until I got to these big huge ledges that were probably a mile or more into the woods. Climb to the top of the ledges, and lo-and-behold, there was the faint but distinct noise of cars out on the road again. Pretty cool.
>
> -- Dave

Probably just simple sound-absorbant baffling. Moss, and ground leaves, and deep pine-needle beds on forest floors are great at scattering directional sound and absorbing it...

And I didn't know you were allowed walking off the road path going up Mt. Washington. Trample their rare-alpine ecological preserve. :-)

Wolfspirit