ROCKINGHAM COUNTY, Va. (WHSV) – People living in the Pleasant Valley area of ​​Rockingham County are facing a strange but serious problem: A local veteran said he and his neighbors are dealing with a constant pulsating noise that is causing them great distress.

Eric Page is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who lives in the Pleasant Valley area. For the past few months, he and his neighbors have been dealing with constant low-frequency pulsing noise, which they say is causing them anxiety and other health problems. Now they are looking for the answer to the question of what can be done about this issue.

“It was causing me to have a panic attack, my hands were sweating. “I’m a disabled veteran, I have post-traumatic stress disorder, and when my skin started crawling like that and it started vibrating through my body, it really drove me to run,” Page said. “I had to get in the car and leave my house for hours until the sound calmed down and came back to my house.”

Page said he and his wife started hearing the noise about a year ago.

“My wife was the first to complain about this. He said it made him sick, nauseous and dizzy. “That forced him to lie down for probably a week and a half where he couldn’t get out of bed and move around the house,” Page said. “He complained about it for probably six months and then it suddenly stopped. Then about three months ago the noise started again.”

Page and his wife aren’t the only ones affected by the noise. He said that one of his neighbors also experienced dizziness and his heart pounded when he heard the sound. Another neighbor had an even more extreme experience.

“One day he said the situation at his house was so bad for him that the pumping work was done in his garage. This forced him to kneel, he felt dizzy and suffered heart palpitations to the point that he contacted a cardiologist. In addition, he was having problems with his ears popping, dizziness and lightheadedness,” Page said. “He was going to the ear doctor and the cardiologist to figure out what the problem was. When I called him and told him about the infrasound that was clicking for him and he said it should be like that, the timing is the same, more “It’s a feeling I’ve never felt before and it really affects me.”

Low frequencies below 20 Hertz can be harmful to the human body, and those between 20 and 80 Hertz can cause anxiety and other problems.

“This frequency is also used by the military to create anxiety and stress and to get people to fight. Another side effect we experience is genuine anxiety. Married people here complain that they never argue as hard as they do, and that’s not an exaggeration, myself included,” he said. Page. “It gives you a sense of fear, doom and anxiety.”

Page said the sound is usually faint and almost imperceptible, but at certain times it becomes very intense. On a scale of 1 to 10, the voice sometimes reaches an 8, at which point you “get physically sick,” Page said.

Some neighbors believe the sound is coming from the silo, while Page believes the sound is coming from some type of engine at a nearby processing plant. He said he contacted multiple agencies regarding the issue, including the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, the Virginia Department of Health and the Town of Mount Crawford.

“The question is: Who manages all this infrasound that is pumped into society and harms people’s health? If this is a gray area that no one owns, what should we, the residents, do?” Page said.

Page contacted Rockingham County Zoning Administrator Kelly Getz about the noise. Getz said he is looking into the issue to see what can be done.

“I visited the property last week and unfortunately he couldn’t be home,” Getz said. “I could hear a noise in the background, but I don’t know if that was the noise Mr. Page was talking about.”

Getz said one potential solution would be to adopt a noise ordinance that does not currently exist in the district.

“There have been discussions in the past about whether the county would want to adopt a noise ordinance. I’ve heard that these can be very difficult to implement, but I think that’s part of the conversation; Does the district need to enact some kind of ordinance to address the problems that arise?” Getz said.

As neighbors continue to search for answers, Page said he hopes the county can hire a company to conduct a robust study to determine where the noise is coming from.

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