In late 2016, a group of American diplomats in Cuba fell mysteriously ill, experiencing symptoms that ranged from headaches, hearing and memory loss, nausea, fatigue, and even brain damage. This mysterious collection of symptoms is referred to as “Havana Syndrome,” and there are a lot of theories as to possible causes—including neurotoxins from insecticides, and even a sonic attack.
The sonic attack theory emerged because multiple diplomats recorded an eerie, high-pitched sound the night their symptoms appeared, and they assumed they were hearing a sonic weapon. But last year, UC Berkeley graduate student Alexander Stubbs, along with Fernando Montealegre-Z of University of Lincoln, listened to the diplomats’ sound recordings—and after thorough investigation, discovered that the sounds actually matched the chirp of Anurogryllus celerinictus, the Indies short-tailed cricket.
“The call of this cricket does not cause people to have adverse physical reactions,” Stubbs said in a phone interview last year. “I don’t want anyone to potentially hear that species of insect and think they or their family could be at risk due to that sound.”
Knowing that the sounds the diplomats heard were crickets, Stubbs says another explanation worth considering is that Havana Syndrome may be a case of mass hysteria, where the diplomats’ ailments are psychosomatic and they imagined themselves sick after hearing the crickets’ call.
“In my opinion, the sonic attack story seems to be a media and government narrative, not informed by rational science,” Stubbs says. “Once you break the link between the sound and the symptoms, it starts to seem less likely that the diplomats were victims of a nefarious attack.”
