You can’t just hear a pin drop in the Anechoic Chamber at London’s South Bank University – you can discern even the slightest sound your body makes.
We’re not just talking about being about to listen to your belly rumbling in hunger or your joints clicking when you move, either.
Those who are brave enough to enter one of the world’s quietest rooms can literally hear their blood travelling around their bodies, as it is so deafeningly silent.
As you can imagine, this unusual experience can have quite the effect on humans, as most of us are used to constant hustle and bustle rather than sheer silence in an Anechoic Chamber.
YouTuber Callum McGinley, better known as ‘Callux’ online, decided to take one for the team and head inside the specialist facility in the UK capital back in 2019.
And after spending a whopping one hour and 26 minutes inside, he had just one sentence to sum up what he thought of it: “That was f***ing weird.”
It didn’t take long before the YouTuber began experiencing some strange effects (YouTube/Callux)
The 32-year-old wanted to beat the previous Guinness World Record set for the longest time spent in the Anechoic Chamber, which was 67 minutes.
To do so, he had to remain conscious and awake throughout the tough challenge, while he was also only allowed to speak for 60 seconds every five minutes.
This was to keep the sound levels inside the chamber below 25 decibels, which is a similar level to the sound made when we breathe.
Despite heading inside with serious determination, Callum quickly began to succumb to the disorientating effects of the ridiculously quiet room.
He began to feel spaced out within five minutes of being in there, and reported experiencing an intense burst of tinnitus in both of his ears.
Callum then complained of feeling ‘pressure in his head’, while he claimed to see lights dancing around him in the room at the 15-minute mark.
After half an hour, the weird effects really began to impact the content creator, as he was left pretty unnerved by the sound of his own blood moving through his veins.
The Anechoic Chamber at South Bank University is made up of heavy concrete walls, long foam wedges and sound-proof doors (YouTube/Callux)
“The sound I thought was the London Underground earlier, that’s my blood travelling around my ear,” he said.
“It sounds like someone’s dragging a trolley across my ear, and now it feels like the seconds are going slower while I’m talking.”
Callum then told the camera that ‘things started getting a bit weird’ – so much so, that he considered jacking the challenge in as he became disturbed by hallucinations he was having.
He explained: “I was trying to track this thing I was imagining around the room. It was freaking me out and brought tears to my eyes, but I knew I only had a few minutes left to beat the world record.
“All I had to do was hang in there for a couple more minutes.”
Which is exactly what he did, even if it proved to be the ‘hardest’ part of the challenge – and this meant that he dethroned the former world record holder and took the title for himself.
He set an impressive new benchmark of one hour and 26 minutes…even though the bloke who designed the Anechoic Chamber doesn’t recommend spending more than three quarters of an hour in there.
Steven Orfield said of the eerily quiet room: “We challenge people to sit in the chamber in the dark.
“When it’s quiet, ears will adapt. The quieter the room, the more things you hear.
“You’ll hear your heart beating, sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly. In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.”
The Anechoic Chamber was built ‘to achieve almost perfect quiet conditions’, according to South Bank University.
This is achieved as ‘external sound is not allowed to break in and sound reflections off internal room boundaries cannot occur’.
But it’s not the only mind-bendingly quiet room on the block – as there’s another one at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
So whichever side of the pond your on, you can have a crack at beating Callum’s incredible record…if you dare.
