Written by This is the beginning map for navigating Sound Torture in the 21st century. Sound and frequency abuse are becoming more prevalent and more easy to propagate as technology and organizational AI advances. At the same time no new laws are being made to protect civilians from these weapons – not even information that these weapons exist, leaving everyone completely exposed.
These are some links from other sources related to sound torture/abuse in some form or another. This information is harder to come by than we expected. We are glad others have started discussions about this to raise awareness, and will be glad to share their findings or perceptions and add to the pot from our own collected experience.
Bleed A Little Louder – Sound, Silence, and Music Torture
The Sound of Fear: Room40 boss Lawrence English on the history of noise as a weapon
Torture Methods with Sound – How Pure Noise Can Be Used To Break You Psychologically
Noise Pollution and Sound Trauma Becomes Psychological Torture
When Sound Becomes a Weapon: Noise in Torture and Fear
Why Noise Torture Hurts – Vice
The Forever Prison: Abu Zubaydah
The guide we’ll be writing and detailing here is focused on if/when these techniques and technology is to be used on civilians in non-combat situations. Whether this is ultimately from an invading force or a rogue authoritarian government makes no difference, as they amount to the exact same thing when it comes to the victims and the ultimate effect on the target or targeted individuals.
We’ll be focusing specifically on how an organization or collection of people with ill intent towards someone could effectively invade their personal environment and life without others knowing. Part of this torture technique is isolation, and experiencing a sound following you around that only your ears have the range to hear, based on their tests with frequency guns and natural sounds, is part of the psychological pressure this process is intended to put on someone.
The very basic goal of torturing someone with sound in this manner is to make other environmental sounds become triggers – effectively causing other, mundane noises to become painful themselves because of overuse of the ear. This is an actual condition known as Hyperacusis which can be caused and developed through repetitive or constant loud or high pitched sounds.
Hyperacusis is an increased sensitivity to sound and a low tolerance for environmental noise. Definitions of hyperacusis can vary significantly; it often revolves around damage to or dysfunction of the stapes bone, stapedius muscle or tensor tympani. It is often categorized into four subtypes: loudness, pain (also called noxacusis), annoyance, and fear.[1][2] It can be a highly debilitating hearing disorder.[3]
There are a variety of causes and risk factors, with the most common being exposure to loud noise.[1] It is often coincident with tinnitus.[1] Proposed mechanisms in the literature involve dysfunction in the brain, inner ear, or middle ear.
-Wikipedia page on Hyperacusis
This condition is extremely debilitating. Noise is one thing that can’t be completely blocked from the senses, there’s sound happening around all of us all the time, in crowded places or not. In populated areas and un-populated areas there is always going to be sound. People tend to have exaggerated forms of communication as well as machines that end up contributing far more to noise pollution when compared to nature but it’s never truly quiet anywhere on earth. In addition to this, certain frequencies of sound and volume can go through any kind of ear plugs or barriers. Infrasound is so low that it vibrates your entire body and many people can’t handle loud bass or music festivals as a result. On the other end of the spectrum, there are high pitched frequencies that can create pressure in the ears by the same mechanism a high note can crack glass. Both of these are essentially inescapable unless one physically moves away from the source.
Up until more recently, it’s always traditionally been very difficult to locate sources of sound or read frequencies. Not until the 1930’s were frequencies even really discovered and measured. Our technology has caught up somewhat, but reading spectrum analyzers and using professional audio equipment are not something everyone does. It’s also difficult to see physical evidence of abuse like this unless one directly examines the ear and is able to find scarring or inflammation. It’s easy to tell if someone is being beat up or starved, it’s not so easy trying to explain to someone who doesn’t have the appropriate hearing range to even hear what you’re hearing that there’s an extremely traumatizing sound happening in front of them. To then have to try to explain that you believe it’s someone intentionally aiming it in your direction becomes almost impossible.
Luckily we live in 2025 and there are readily available instruments as well as professional audio investigators that can track and analyze noise while it’s on. The issue in this case is not being able to locate the source or record it and display it accurately, it’s the fact that a device that creates a frequency, or even affecting one’s environment, to create abrasive sounds isn’t difficult to facilitate or even that expensive. One (who is knowingly violating human rights) can keep making things louder around a person. If they have access to the person’s home they can continue tampering with things that make sound such as utilities – heating/cooling, plumbing, electricity. They can place sound outside their home. Most people have neighboring houses/apartments that also produce sound or can host devices to produce sound. Cars can easily be tampered with to make noise or have small frequency generators planted in them. Many people live under commercial flight paths. Birds and other animals are constantly outside.
The primary purpose of surrounding someone with noise is first to remove their control of their own sound space and auditory environment. They no longer have the pause button to their own hearing and senses, this is supposed to install a feeling of helplessness as well as create the constant, repetitive digs that comprises torture of almost any kind. These frequency attacks would also ideally be combined with some of these other torture techniques in order to get whatever desired result the group targeting someone would want.
Torture is often described as occurring when the victim is powerless and under the control of the perpetrator, which can help distinguish it from legitimate use of force.
Psychological torture includes methods that involve no physical element as well as forcing a person to do something and physical attacks that ultimately target the mind.[160] Death threats, mock execution, or being forced to witness the torture of another person are often reported to be subjectively worse than being physically tortured and are associated with severe sequelae.[179] Other torture techniques include sleep deprivation, overcrowding or solitary confinement, withholding of food or water, sensory deprivation (such as hooding), exposure to extremes of light or noise (e.g., musical torture),[180] humiliation (which can be based on sexuality or the victim’s religious or national identity),[181] and the use of animals such as dogs to frighten or injure a prisoner.[182][183] Positional torture works by forcing the person to adopt a stance, putting their weight on a few muscles, causing pain without leaving marks, for example standing or squatting for extended periods.[184] Rape and sexual assault are universal torture methods and frequently instill a permanent sense of shame in the victim and in some cultures, humiliate their family and society.[185][186] Cultural and individual differences affect how the victim perceives different torture methods.
We won’t look at the reasoning why a group of people would want to do this to someone, but we will proceed with the assumption that a group of people with motivation would be malicious/brazen enough to do this to someone in public and have the access to essentially get away with it.
After removing an individuals control of their own surroundings to create a base foundation in the same way a psychologist creates a base personality profile to begin working with, they would have to test your hearing range. For this to work in any way they would also have to be able to monitor or surveil the target directly or remotely for visual physical responses or bio-metric feedback as well as some form of control over their environment, however extreme or slight. They would start testing their targets ears to see what they could and couldn’t hear, they’d run through different sounds from different sources. They would see if they were already bothered by any noise in particular and how sensitive their ears already are.
The sounds would start occurring in coincidental timing by now, in a further attempt to remove one’s control of their own environment and begin to annoy them. If someone follows you around and every time you take a step they scream at you, eventually your going to correlate taking a step with a loud scream. This idea would be extrapolated to the entire environment. Suddenly everything your doing is being followed by sound against your will. Every time you stand up, a car horn beeps. Every time you open a door in your house, a bird chirps. You begin walking on eggshells, almost literally. Even in this stage, normal environmental sound starts becoming unwelcome, mostly just through the fact that something is clearly controlling the situation and you are not.
Example A
As they gain a hearing and psychological profile on their target remotely over the course of a couple of weeks, they wait for them to leave your living space and a couple of guys in a plumbing van show up and walk in, in what appears to be an appointment. They have people watching the neighborhood/facilities and aren’t worried about their cover being blown and enter the targets living space. They have some basic knowledge of electrical appliances and a layout of the space ahead of time. They begin by going into general appliances and start with removing cable insulators to the condenser in the refrigerator. They hit every appliance that has a fan, spraying semi-corrosive chemicals on the ball bearings, now the fans (microwave, bathroom vent, fridge circulation, air conditioner, overhead fans) all make a slight high pitched squeal. One of them goes into the breaker box, pulls off the main panel, and scratches off some of the wiring so now the breaker’s connection to the meter can be overcharged without the breaker flipping. They then both go into the sinks plumbing and purposefully loosen the hot water piping so a slight air leak occurs every time the hot water comes on, which mimics the sound of a tea kettle, or train whistle. They put everything back where they found it, make sure they didn’t leave anything out of place, leave, lock the door, and drive away. The target’s neighbor waves to them as they go and they join their cohorts in the surveillance room down the street.
The target gets back, walks in the door, goes to take a shower and hears the slightest ringing in their ear. They think nothing of it and go about their day watching tv, playing video games, making dinner. As they lay down for the night a small hum starts kicking on in the background, but they don’t even notice it and drift off to sleep as they were busy earlier. They wake up and start going about their day. They turn on the faucet in the bathroom and hear a slight hissing noise. Noticing it, the target turns off the faucet and turns it back on with it still hissing. They shrug and having no understanding of plumbing, think there’s something off with the top of the sink faucet, but they have another busy day ahead of them so they ignore that as well. On their way out the door, they notice a faint ringing in their ears as they walk through the living space but have to leave.
Later that day, the target is out in public and notices the same ringing sound is now coming out of their cars air conditioning system. They turn off the air conditioner and the sound dies down. They turn it back on and it’s quiet. Thinking it’s weird and maybe something got stuck in the vent they go about their day. Upon arriving home there’s now a random construction project happening right next to the driveway that nobody left a notice for, a jackhammer is now sitting next to a “Construction Zone” sign about 20 feet away from their front door.
~…Writing In Progress…~