The Sound That Screamed Over an Oregon Town — Then Simply Stopped

In February 2016, residents of Forest Grove, Oregon, began hearing a noise unlike anything they could identify. It was a piercing, high-pitched scream that seemed to come from somewhere in the neighborhood, although nobody could figure out exactly where.

Some compared it to train brakes screeching against metal. Others thought it sounded like a giant flute playing one painfully loud note.

The noise appeared without warning, sometimes lasting only a few seconds and sometimes continuing for several minutes. It was loud enough to wake sleeping residents and send people outside looking for its source.

One Woman Managed to Record It

Paula Lynch lived near Gales Creek Road on the western side of Forest Grove. After hearing the noise several times, she finally managed to capture it on her cellphone.

The recording was eerie. A shrill, sustained tone rose above the ordinary sounds of the neighborhood, held its pitch, and eventually faded away.

Lynch shared the recording online, hoping someone might recognize it. She worried that the noise could be coming from a gas line under pressure, possibly warning of something dangerous.

Other residents had their own ideas. Some wondered whether it was an emergency siren, while others suspected a piece of industrial equipment.

The strange thing was that people could hear it clearly without being able to tell which direction it came from. Even neighbors standing outside at the same time struggled to pinpoint its location.

The City Went Looking for Answers

Forest Grove’s fire department and public works crews began investigating. They checked utility equipment, water systems, and other machinery capable of producing a loud mechanical whistle.

The local gas company, NW Natural, examined its equipment and found nothing that explained the noise. The Oregon Department of Forestry also checked whether its equipment might be responsible.

Fire Marshal Dave Nemeyer considered the possibility of a malfunctioning fan or heating system. Something with a failing motor or another mechanical problem could potentially produce a sound like the one residents were hearing.

But finding a particular machine was proving difficult. The noise might begin late at night, continue briefly, and vanish before anyone could get close enough to investigate. Residents were becoming increasingly curious, and city officials needed a better way to narrow the search.

A Physics Professor Started Mapping the Sightings

Andrew Dawes, a physics professor at Pacific University, decided to approach the problem differently. Instead of trying to identify the sound immediately, he began collecting reports about where people heard it.

Dawes created an online map where residents could record their locations and the times the noise occurred. He hoped the reports would reveal a pattern pointing toward a particular neighborhood or building.

But the results were surprising. Some people heard the noise near Gales Creek Road, while others reported it closer to downtown or around the university.

The locations didn’t form a clear pattern. Instead of narrowing the investigation, each new report seemed to expand the area where the source might be hiding.

Dawes found that especially interesting because high-pitched sounds are generally easier to locate than low-frequency rumbles. Yet this particular noise was proving remarkably difficult to track.

The Whole Country Started Offering Theories

By late February, Forest Grove’s strange noise had become national news. Television stations played Lynch’s recording, newspapers covered the investigation, and people across the country began suggesting explanations.

Police Captain Mike Herb said the department received approximately 200 calls during February. Many came from people who hadn’t heard the sound themselves but had developed theories after watching the news.

Suggestions ranged from unusual animals and underground machinery to secret government experiments. Some callers blamed aliens, while others proposed religious explanations.

The police department eventually asked people to stop calling emergency lines simply to share their ideas. Officers were trying to investigate reports from residents, and the flood of outside calls wasn’t helping. Meanwhile, some of Forest Grove’s younger residents had decided to conduct their own investigation.

Teenagers began driving and riding bicycles around town at night, hoping to hear the noise and follow it to its source. One boy named Hank later recalled organizing his three brothers into a bicycle search party.

The brothers spent an evening visiting places where the sound had reportedly been heard. They listened, explored, and hoped to arrive at the right location before it disappeared again. Their search turned into a neighborhood adventure, although they never caught whatever was producing the noise.

February 27 Was the Last Report

For much of the month, the mysterious noise had appeared unpredictably around Forest Grove. Residents continued reporting it while Dawes added locations to his map.

His final recorded report came on February 27, 2016. After that, the noise disappeared. Nobody announced that a broken machine had been repaired, and no business or homeowner came forward to explain what had happened.

As the days passed without another incident, authorities suspended their active investigation. The sound had attracted national attention, inspired countless theories, and sent people searching through their own neighborhoods.

But now there was nothing left to follow.

An Audio Engineer Recognized the Noise

Around the end of February, Florida audio engineer Langston Holland contacted Dawes after hearing the recording. He believed he’d encountered something remarkably similar before.

Holland compared the sound’s frequencies with those produced by a defective air-conditioning compressor valve. The resemblance was interesting enough that he sent his analysis to Dawes.

According to Holland, a copper tube connected to a faulty compressor could vibrate and produce a ringing tone similar to the one heard in Forest Grove. He also suggested that the noise might disappear on its own if the defective component continued wearing down. That was an intriguing possibility, considering the sudden silence.

Dawes took the idea seriously and shared it with someone at the fire department. It gave investigators a specific type of equipment to consider, but they still needed to locate the source. By that point, the town had been quiet for days.

Nine Years Later, Someone Returned to Forest Grove

In April 2025, writer Colin Dickey visited Forest Grove to revisit the strange events of 2016. He had attended Pacific University years earlier and was familiar with the town.

Dickey walked through the neighborhoods where residents had reported the sound and spoke with people about what they remembered. Some recalled the experience immediately. Others had moved to town after the incident and knew little about it.

He also spoke with Dawes, who still remembered the investigation and the compressor theory proposed by Holland. The professor had kept the old map, preserving the locations residents had reported nearly a decade earlier.

Another person Dickey tracked down was Hank, the boy who had organized the bicycle search with his brothers. Hank remembered their nighttime expedition and the excitement of trying to solve something that had baffled the adults.

He had grown up since that February adventure, but the unusual experience had stayed with him.