The Vibration

I. First Reports

The earliest written reference to V. appears in a 1972 letter to the editor of the Linglestown Penny Sentinel, in which a Mrs. M. Friehl complains of "a hum at the back of the teeth, particularly at supper." The complaint was dismissed at the time as dental. Mrs. Friehl was subsequently elected to the borough council, where she served three terms without ever once turning her head toward the southwest.

Subsequent reports trickled in throughout the late 1970s. By 1982, the Pennsylvania State Police had taken twelve formal statements, all of them describing the same sensation: a pressure behind the sternum, not unpleasant, not loud, and unmistakably directional. Several deponents pointed, when asked. They all pointed in the same direction. The direction was not noted in the report.

II. Acoustic Analysis

Multiple attempts have been made to record V. using conventional audio equipment. All have failed. The recordings, when played back, contain nothing but the room tone of the room in which they were recorded — though listeners frequently report afterwards that the room tone of the recording does not match the room tone of the room they are now in.

A 2014 attempt by the Penn State Acoustic Engineering Group employed a low-frequency seismometer, an infrasound microphone, and a borrowed contact pickup. All three instruments returned identical recordings of perfect silence. The instruments were then taken apart and confirmed to be functional. The recordings, when played back through high-quality headphones, have caused two of the four researchers to take up beekeeping — a coincidence the authors note without commentary, in light of the field's general pattern (cf. vol. IV).

III. The Listening Group of 1989

In the spring of 1989, twelve residents of Linglestown formed an informal society for the purpose of "listening properly" to V. They met on Tuesday evenings in the basement of the Linglestown Volunteer Fire Company, sitting in a circle and not speaking. The minutes of these meetings consist entirely of marginalia describing how the listeners felt during the silences.

The group disbanded in November 1989, after one member — Dr. P. Greb, a retired veterinarian — stood up during the third meeting of the month and walked out of the building. He has not been seen since, though his car was found, still running, in the parking lot of a Sheetz in West Hanover the following morning. Dr. Greb's family has declined repeated requests for comment, and have moved twice.

IV. What May Lie Beneath

The geological survey of the Linglestown region has been performed twice. Each survey was performed by a different team, employing different methods, and each team produced different results. The 1956 survey describes a "shallow rock shelf at approximately 14 meters." The 1991 survey describes "no shelf, no rock, and a section of the relevant chart that has been left blank for reasons that did not need to be elaborated upon at the time."

V. Conclusions

The authors conclude that V. is real; that it is local; that it is patient; and that its source has elected, for reasons of its own, not to be identified. We further note that the act of reading this paper has, in 31% of test cases, induced a brief sensation of pressure behind the reader's sternum. The reader is invited to check. We will wait.

The Department considers further inquiry inadvisable. The Department also notes that V. appears, on examination, to be the only one of our research subjects that has ever listened back.