Is The Listeners based on a true story? The real inspiration behind the BBC series

The Listeners on BBC One has a very intriguing plot - if you're wondering whether it has basis in a true story, there's actually a very unsettling backstory to the tale.

Intriguing four-part BBC drama The Listeners, follows popular English teacher Claire (Rebecca Hall), whose life is altered beyond recognition when she begins hearing a low humming sound that no one else around her can hear. Taking over her life, the noise causes tension between Claire and her husband, Paul (Prasanna Puwanarajah), and daughter, Ashley (Mia Tharia). Frustrated when tests reveal no obvious cause for the ailment, Claire finds an unlikely solace in one of her students, Kyle (Ollie West), who can also hear the noise.

Thrown into an unlikely friendship, the pair become increasingly isolated from their families and friends, eventually falling in with another group of even more unlikely comrades. A number of their neighbours who are also able to hear the noise form a group and name the sound "The Hum." However, rather than want to clear themselves of the mysterious hum, the group believe it's been sent to them as a gift, and they're a "chosen few." In other TV drama, viewers have been wondering if The Day of The Jackal and Say Nothing are based on true stories - both have roots in historical events. Read on to find out the incredible inspiration behind The Listeners.

Is The Listeners based on a true story?

The Listeners is based on the 2021 novel of the same name by Jordan Tannahill. However, the novel is inspired by Tannahill reading about events surrounding the Windsor Hum. In 2011, residents in the Canadian city of Windsor began complaining of hearing a mysterious hum. For some, the noise rattled windows and caused wall hangings to move around.

A number of residents felt it as noise, while others felt it as a vibration - the sound would come and go randomly, until it eventually became permanent and some found it unbearable. There were reports that the hum elicited a constant feeling of nausea, and there was concern it might affect unborn babies.

The Listeners by Jordan Tannahill, £12.19 (was £14.99) at Amazon

Jordan Tannahill's novel that inspired the BBC series is available to buy on Amazon at a discounted price now.

The Listeners | Official Trailer - BBC - YouTube

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Of course, it wasn't long before conspiracy theories over the potential source of the hum erupted, and similar themes are covered in the TV series. Everyone from UFOs to the Canadian military undergoing secret operations were held responsible for the unknown sound.

However, The mysterious, low-frequency noise petered out when a steel factory just outside neighbouring Detroit slowed operations during the pandemic. When the Zug Island steel facility ceased to operate altogether, the sound disappeared and it's now widely thought to be the cause of the hum.

Speaking to CBC about finding inspiration for his novel, Jordan Tannahill said, "It really began with me initially reading about the hum in Windsor and then kind of beginning to extrapolate from there. I imagined a character of a mother and a wife named Claire Devon, who's a teacher and who begins to hear the hum and her family can't hear this hum. Her colleagues at work can't. Her friends can't. How incredibly isolating this is for her."

However, the Windsor hum isn't an isolated incident, and similar hums have been reported around the world at various intervals, many with a still unknown primary cause. Other high profile hums have been reported in Taos in the 90s, and Auckland in 2006. More recently, hums were reported in Frankfurt and Darmstadt, in Germany in 2021, and one was reported in Omagh, Ireland, in 2023.

A plethora of different sources and theories have been cited and theorised as causing the hums, some that can be substantiated while others remain just concepts. Jordan Tannahill also shared his thoughts on these other hums, saying, "This phenomenon of the hum was something that had been widely reported for several decades, at least since the early 1970s. And it was something that there was a lot of lingering mystery about, which intrigued me. The natural explanations for what this could be were sublime and interesting."

He adds, "There was a team of French scientists who believed that possibly the hum was being created by ocean waves rolling against the ocean floor or concussing against the continental shelf and causing vibrations. There were theories about the possibility that it was the windstream shearing against a low pressure system that caused the sound, or possibly it was human made — a technological sort of noise pollution, like the sound of the electric grid or radio waves or submarine pings that were causing these sounds."