In late 2016, dozens of staffers at the US Embassy in Cuba started experiencing strange symptoms.

They reported vertigo, headaches, ear pain and even cognitive difficulties and hearing loss, all of which they attributed to a strange high-pitched noise.

In 2017, a diplomatic fight broke out when US officials claimed that the symptoms were the result of a ‘sonic attack’ targeting government workers in Havana.

Cuba denied any involvement in or knowledge of an attack, but the US dug their heels in, blaming President Raul Castro’s government for failing to protect American personnel, reports Sky News.

They also pulled 60% of their staff out of Cuba and urged Americans not to visit the island.

Now the terror-inducing culprit responsible for the panic that ensued in 2017 has finally been unmasked.

This guy:

Researchers in the UK and US now say there is “strong evidence that an echoing cricket call, rather than a sonic attack or other technological devices”, was responsible for the sound that supposedly caused the medical symptoms.

They studied audio recorded by US staff in Cuba which was released by the Associated Press in 2017.

The sound matched “in nuanced detail” the calling song of the Indies short-tailed cricket, known as Anurogryllus celerinictus, according to researchers.

When they played the crickets’ call on a loudspeaker indoors, the sound was virtually indistinguishable from the supposed sonic attacks.

You can hear both the “sonic attack” and cricket recordings here. Warning – the sound is really high-pitched, so turn the volume down.

Unfortunately, this means that the symptoms weren’t caused by some kind of crazy sonic attack, so a lot of people might have gone untreated for something else.

It could also mean that the symptoms were psychological, which gives us some insight into the effects of paranoia on Americans, and might account for why so many of them voted for Trump.

Either way, I feel bad for Cuba.

[source:skynews]