Source of mystery hum discovered

ELGIN, Ill. -- The buzz in Elgin these days is more like a hum.

For weeks, residents have been trying to figure out where that humming sound they heard was coming from. It bothered some of them so much they called the police, who investigated.

For a while, the hum had the police stumped.

"I can hear something that seems to be coming from downtown," said Lt. Paul McCurtain. "It's coming out of the east today."

But McCurtain knew that this was a crafty hum that seems to come out of different directions, depending on the direction of the wind.

One theory was that the low hum might have been coming from one of the community's several weather alert sirens that had somehow malfunctioned.

That made sense to resident Danielle Hensen, who said the hum was high-pitched like the sirens. Except for the high-pitched part. "It's low," she said.

Police did go to the sirens to see if any had malfunctioned and were humming. None of them had or were.

It took Pete Almeda to solve the mystery. On Thursday afternoon, Almeda and other members of Elgin's Resident Officer program went on hum hunt.

Using their police radios, they told each other when they heard the hum and when they didn't. They started to close in on the hum, narrowing their search to the south side of town. It could hum, but it couldn't hide.

The officers narrowed their search further to Central Blacktop, a company off Illinois 31 in South Elgin. At about 6:15 p.m. they came upon the source of the humming: a generator that powers a machine that dries wet sand.

Now Elgin residents know where the humming is coming from. And they know when it is going to stop. After talking to a representative for the company, an officer radioed his colleagues that the job should be completed in a few weeks.