Hi Mary,

Welcome Aboard!

You said: Do you hear ear tones only near your home location or also when you have traveled to other areas? If you heard a tone while in the South Bay, for example, do you think it would sound the same as it does when you're at home?

I hear tones when I travel and I use the same method of detection I do at home. They sound the same no matter where the person is as the location that the tone comes from remains consistent. On my recent trip to Mexico I didn't hear any tones, but on my trip to the Sierra's in October I heard many of them, but all of them were small.

Might specific locations provide better reception for the tones, or do you think it's entirely a sensitive's ear (or brain) that senses them. Until late last summer I was one of the skeptics who suspected those tones might be tinnitus. But after hearing very clear tones twice, I understand how the differ - I heard them clearly with the ear that hears less well and has the most tinnitus.

I think most people hear the tones but think they have a ringing in their ears and never make the connection to earthquakes. Here's a really good example: One Thanksgiving a few years ago, just as everyone at my house was about to sit down to dinner I heard a very loud tone and knew it was in the Eureka to Redding area. I asked everyone if they heard the sound. Five out of six did. I checked the maps and we had two 5.0+ quakes, one at Eureka and another at Redding. At that time, Eureka and Redding were having quakes very often, so the tone was very recognizable to me.

I think a dose of skepticism is good, but in the tone research arena, at times I believe there is to much of it. In science, generally, one postulates that something is so by using whatever data they which to use. One classic example is using b-value to determine future large earthquake locations. It is determined by using earthquake catalogs and selecting data from them. Yes, it may tell you where a future, larger quake may arrive, but it does not say when, within ten days for example.

But it is not as valid as using a tone, because a tone identifies a certain area that "will" in most cases be followed by an earthquake or be having one at that moment. This a real time, real thing, not a theory. Let us use this mental picture which I think might clarify how basic the tone identification works. Suppose in ten area's each had a barrel of water which would be placed underground. When the water level in a barrel reached a point which would cause a reaction of some type, the ear tone person would hear the tone and know which barrel it came from.

But land mass is land mass and it has many compositions, so the distance factor is easy to calculate after much research, the location by the geology adds a component, but the when is not always perfect. The when factor I believe has a problem, because it remains possible that rocks breaking may solicit a tone, but the breakage may not be sufficient to cause an earthquake at that time and thus, no predicted earthquake arrives.

Petra