For more than a century, visitors to America’s beloved Yellowstone National Park have reported odd, fleeting sounds that seem to center on the famous park’s largest lakes.
With descriptions that range from a noise resembling the steady humming of bees to distant “music” or bells, or even the vibration of metal cables, the park has a surprisingly deep history involving these odd sounds—one that extends all the way back to before the massive tract of land officially became America’s first national park.
Over time, several natural explanations have been proposed for the phenomenon, although the exact cause behind Yellowstone’s ethereal lake music has never been established.
Strange Sounds Over Yellowstone’s Lakes
Historical accounts describing this sonic mystery generally focus on reports from near Yellowstone Lake and Shoshone Lake. According to Lee Whittlesey, now a retired Professional Historian who worked at Yellowstone National Park for 16 years, written descriptions of the park’s strange sounds extend back at least to the late 19th century.
Among the earliest and most detailed accounts appeared in engineer Hiram M. Chittenden’s 1895 book The Yellowstone National Park: Historical and Descriptive. “A most singular and interesting acoustic phenomenon of this region, although rarely noticed by tourists, is the occurrence of strange and indefinable overhead sounds,” Chittenden wrote at the time. “They have long been noted by explorers, but only in the vicinity of Shoshone and Yellowstone Lakes.”
Often occurring most often in the mornings, Chittenden noted that the sounds were usually fleeting, and compared them to “the ringing of telegraph wires or the humming of a swarm of bees.”
An even earlier account was documented in 1892 by Edwin Linton, who reportedly heard a combination of sounds resembling wind moving through treetops, distant bells, and the buzzing of insects. A description provided by one member of his party described the phenomenon as “a twisting sort of yow-yow vibration,” while Elwood Hofer, the party’s guide on this occasion, reportedly called it “the most mysterious sound heard among the mountains.”
The following year, a similar account was logged by scientist S.A. Forbes, who described hearing a vibrating, harp-like “clang” that, not unlike Linton’s account, seemed to originate from around the nearby treetops. At times, the sound also seemed to resemble the murmuring of “faintly heard voices answering each other overhead.”
“It begins softly in the remote distance,” Forbes wrote, adding that the sound increased gradually as it drew nearer, producing increasingly pronounced pulses as it approached, then gradually faded away just as it appeared.
Chittenden was sufficiently impressed by the reports to speculate that in another place and era, such sounds might have inspired “superstitious reverence or dread.”
“No rational explanation has ever been advanced for this remarkable phenomenon,” he wrote.
A Mystery Older Than Yellowstone National Park
One of the oldest known accounts of unusual sounds in the area predates Yellowstone’s formal establishment as a U.S. national park.
In 1871, Geologist Frank H. Bradley participated in the Hayden Geological Survey, a federally funded expedition which played a crucial role in the park’s history, as its findings helped persuade Congress to formally decide on protecting Yellowstone the following year.
While conducting fieldwork with the expedition, Bradley recalled hearing “a curious sound” that he characterized as being “between a whistle and a horse whine” one morning as his party prepared breakfast.
“The sound increased in force,” Bradley wrote, “and it now became evident that gusts of wind were passing through the air above us, though the pines did not as yet indicate the least motion in the lower atmosphere.”
What Causes Yellowstone’s Mysterious Sounds?
By the early decades of the 20th century, potential explanations for the phenomenon were being put forward by researchers.
In 1930, one brief account that appeared in Popular Science entertained the possibility that seismic activity could be the driving force behind the noises. In 1937, Yellowstone Ranger and Naturalist Neil Miner offered a different theory: an atmospheric explanation, which resulted from “horizontally moving whirlpools of air” that he said descended from some of the park’s nearby mountain peaks.
The unusual sounds long associated with Yellowstone may not be entirely unique to the park, however. For at least as long as visitors to the park have reported strange sonic experiences, reports of mysterious booming, rumblings, unusual humming or buzzing, whistling, and sounds compared to music have been reported at locations around the world, sometimes inspiring colorful names such as New York’s “Seneca Guns” and other similar variants.
While Yellowstone’s own brand of peculiar sounds seems to belong somewhere in this broader family of natural acoustic phenomena, their specific cause remains elusive, even more than 150 years after Bradley first recorded them.
In a landscape already famous for geysers, earthquakes, hot springs, and a vast volcanic system that may someday erupt again, it is easy to see how the unexplained, music-like sounds associated with Yellowstone’s lakes add a unique and mysterious footnote to the natural history of America’s oldest national park.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.