Havana Syndrome

In 2016, inside the US Embassy in the Cuban capital city of Havana, American diplomats and their families begin to hear a sound that cannot be explained. Some of those exposed develop symptoms that affect their senses and cognitive abilities. One by one, those exposed report what they’re experiencing to the Embassy’s medical staff — professionals trained to handle tropical illnesses, environmental hazards, even covert surveillance stress. But this was something else entirely. Their tests show injuries… but no cause. Their patients are suffering… but from what could not be identified. As the reports multiply, a pattern emerges. A pattern too consistent to ignore. Too targeted to dismiss. Too alarming to explain away. And slowly, an unimaginable truth begins to take shape. American citizens, living and working in Havana, are under attack.

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CREDITS
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/havana-syndrome-device-what-to-know/
https://www.healthline.com/health/havana-syndrome
https://www.medicinenet.com/what_is_havana_syndrome/article.htm
https://uppbeat.io/ (sounds and effects)
https://www.vice.com/en/article/havana-syndrome-podcast/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbfFmcqjQpk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SWkBCVAOog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghdLfQsztBo
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nesaINivDzA
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/u6-PafO6ZNk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kishG-Czedo
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6GWb48xdGaw

Social media: Instagram - YouTube - TikTok 

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Although every effort is made to ensure that the episode is researched and accurate we cannot guarantee the complete contents is entirely factually correct, and AI tools maybe used to enhance the dramatization of episodes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

There are moments in history when the world changes. Not with an explosion, not with a declaration of war, but with a sound. A sound that only a few people hear and leaves no trace, no evidence, just a lingering fear that the unseen is stalking the corridors of global power. In 2016, inside the US Embassy in the Cuban capital city of Havana, American diplomats and their families begin to hear a sound that cannot be explained. Some of those exposed develop symptoms that affect their senses and cognitive abilities. And one by one, those exposed report what they are experiencing to the embassy's medical staff. The professionals trained to handle tropical illnesses, environmental hazards, and even covert surveillance stress. But this was something else entirely. Their tests show injuries, but don't show a cause. Their patients are suffering, but from what could not be identified? And as the reports multiply, a pattern emerges. A pattern too consistent to ignore, too targeted to dismiss, and too alarming to explain away. And slowly, an unimaginable truth begins to take shape. American citizens living and working in Havana are under attack. Welcome to Unexplained, brought to you by Enigma from the Pod. And you are listening to Havana Syndrome.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

Good afternoon. Today, the United States of America is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba. And the most significant changes in our policy in more than 50 years, we will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests, and instead, we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries. Through these changes, we intend to create more opportunities for the American and Cuban people.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Throughout the 19th century, the US was Cuba's main trading partner, especially concerning the goods of sugar, tobacco, and coffee. The Spanish-American War in 1898 resulted in the US having rights to intervene in Cuban affairs. It secured Guantanamo Bay, and although Cuba was technically independent, it was heavily shaped by US politics and economic interests. It was in 1959 that saw the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and his supporters overthrow the US-backed Batista regime. It nationalized US-owned businesses, and when aligning itself to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, also known as the Soviet Union, saw the starts of decades of hostility. The official Cold War confrontation lasted 30 years. And in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Cuba had become a symbol of communist resistance, and the US saw Cuba as a Soviet Union outpost located only 90 miles from its own soil and imposed the longest-running embargo sanctions in its history. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, but the US kept the embargo in place and therefore political hostility remained. Under the US Obama administration, diplomatic relations moved towards normalization. Travel and remittances were expanded, and the Raul Castro met Barack Obama publicly in 2015, when both were located in Panama, where they shook hands and posed for photos. It was not a total shock that later that year the US Cuban Embassy in Havana was reopened. It had last closed its doors 54 years earlier.

SPEAKER_05 5:43

This is something that we as Cuban Americans have been looking forward to for years and years and years.

SPEAKER_07 5:48

Professor Mendoz says the embargo did what it was intended to do and ruined Cuba for the cast growth promised prosperity and couldn't deliver.

SPEAKER_05 5:56

The Cuban revolution has failed.

SPEAKER_07 5:58

The basic needs of the people really are not met now with promises of high-level officials needing re-establishing embassies and making it easier for Americans and Cubans to travel between their countries. Others are still warm to the agreement.

SPEAKER_05 6:30

Perhaps a lot of people in Iowa are not may not be aware of that, but it really is a very impressive system with very tight controls.

SPEAKER_07 6:37

Eldorado says people who feel betrayed by the move just aren't seeing the big picture.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

This opens a beautiful opportunity to expand our exports to be not and also explore or explore other business opportunities.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Whilst in his private residence, he began to hear high-pitched buzzing sounds. Described the sensation as a sonic beam aimed directly at his head. He reported a sudden onset of dizziness, pressure headaches, and hearing loss. His symptoms became the first officially documented case and triggered the initial internal investigation. Because he was working undercover, his identity has never been released publicly, but he is widely referred to as Patient Zero. It was soon after Patient Zero suffered symptoms that American diplomats and their families also started reporting strange incidents. A sudden overwhelming sensation of pressure in the skull, a vibration, a piercing localized sound that seemed to come from nowhere and anywhere. Some described it as a beam, a directed force hitting one side of their head. Then came the symptoms: vertigo, visual disturbances, difficulty concentrating, memory problems and persistent headaches. When those affected displayed alarming declines in their health, medical evaluations found objective changes in the brain structure, cognitive deficits, and vestibular injuries similar to concussion, but without any physical trauma. These weren't vague complaints, they were documented injuries. The embassy went into crisis mode. Diplomats were evacuated and families were flown home. The first public release of the Havana Syndrome Sound recorded by the United States occurred in October 2017 when the Associated Press published an audio sample provided by US officials.

SPEAKER_08 10:16

But I've met some of these people, I've interacted with them for years, and I can't explain every case, but I think there are most definitely cases where there is no logical explanation other than the fact that some external mechanism caused them to suffer brain injuries that in many cases look like they were hit over the head with a baseball bat or assaulted somewhere. We can't ignore that.

SPEAKER_02 10:52

But Cuba denied the accusations. Even their foreign minister accused the U.S. of lying, insisting that they were not involved, had no knowledge, and no explanation as to how this could be occurring on their soil. The world was left with a question. The physician most directly associated with the early formal medical assessment of the Havana Syndrome Diplomats was Dr. Michael Hofer from the University of Miami. He was one of the first US specialists tasked to evaluate the affected embassy personnel, particularly focusing on vestibular, balance, and auditory injuries. His team conducted clinical examinations on the initial group of patients evacuated from Havana. He expected ear infections, maybe environmental toxins, but instead he found something he has never seen before. Patients who couldn't walk straight. Patients whose eyes flickered involuntary when they tried to focus. Patients whose inner ear systems looked as though they had been rattled by a force that no one could identify. Dr. Hofer runs test after test. The results are consistent. The injuries are real, and they resemble the aftermath of mild traumatic brain injury. His findings are sent back to Washington, where intelligence officials, medical experts, and national security advisors begin to realize the scale of what they're dealing with. Something or someone has the ability to target American personnel inside their own homes, their hotel rooms, even while they sleep. And whatever it is, it's unknown, but a question now shifts from what's happening to who is doing this, and more urgently, how do we stop it.

SPEAKER_06 13:21

It wasn't somebody's story, it was evidence that was repeatable.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

Early speculation focused on sonic devices, but experts in the field of acoustics quickly pointed out the obvious flaws. Sound at the intensity required to invoke such a response would have been audible to everyone nearby, and not just the victims. Exposure to toxins or pesticides was one of the earliest theories, but investigators ruled it out because the symptoms didn't match any known pattern of chemical poisoning. Toxic exposure typically affects large groups in the same environment, yet Havana syndrome cases appeared individually and suddenly, often in people who had no shared food, water or air source. Environmental testing of the embassy residences and offices found no elevated levels of pesticides, heavy metals or industrial chemicals, and blood tests from the affected personnel showed no biomarkers of toxin exposure. The abrupt directional onset reported by many of the victims also did not align with how chemical agents behave, leading researchers to conclude that the toxins were highly unlikely to be the cause. Cuba conducted its own investigation into the reports and rejected the idea of a hostile attack, instead, pointing to a far more mundane explanation. Cuban scientists argued that the strange high-pitched sounds described by US personnel closely match the calls of the Indies short-tailed cricket, a species common in Havana. Their analysts claimed that the acoustic patterns in some recordings released by the US were nearly identical to the insect's mating call, and that no medical, environmental, or technical evidence supported the presence of a weapon or direct energy source. As a result, Cuban officials maintained that the phenomenon was biological, not technological, and posed no threat. A controversial theory, but a well-documented phenomenon, is mass psychogenic illness. This occurs where stress, uncertainty, and social contagion trigger real physical symptoms in groups of people without an underlying physical cause. Researchers point out that the earliest cases occurred in a high-pressure diplomatic environment, then spread rapidly through word of mouth, producing symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, and nausea, all common in psychogenetic outbreaks. Crucially, no environmental toxin, device, or agent was ever identified, and the pattern of cases followed its awareness and not its geography. But this theory struggles to explain the documented physical injuries sustained by those who display brain imaging, abnormalities, and vestibular damage. One of the most debated explanations is directed pulsed radio frequency energy, essentially a form of microwave radiation capable of disrupting the nervous system. The National Academies of Sciences reviewed the evidence in 2020 and concluded that this was the most plausible among all proposed causes. Their assessment drew heavily on the Frey effect, a documented phenomenon in which pulsed microwaves can make a person perceive clicking, buzzing, or chirping sounds inside their own head without any external noise source. It's a strange, almost sci-fi concept, but it's been demonstrated in laboratory conditions since the 1960s. If this mechanism were involved, it would require a device capable of generating high-intensity, tightly focused microwave pulses. And while no such device has ever been publicly recovered, several categories of technology could theoretically produce the effect. In fact, a device similar already exists. They're called compact directional microwave emitters. These are devices that use a parabolic or waveguide antenna to focus energy into a narrow beam. Military research programs have explored similar systems for communication disruption and crowd control concepts. Larger emitters could be concealed in vans, trucks, or service vehicles, offering the required power supply and cooling needed for stronger, longer-range pulses. While portable, smaller emitters could fit into a suitcase or backpack, though their effective range is likely to be limited.

SPEAKER_04 18:52

In the last couple of years, dozens of American diplomats and spies have fallen free to what is described as the Havana syndrome. A sudden fit of nausea, headache, and dizziness until now. There's been no explanation for this, but a new government report is hinting at a directed radio frequencies. As a possible explanation. The report was published by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and it says that the symptoms are consistent with directed past radio frequencies. Not some random exposure through devices like a mobile phone, but even this report is still pretty inconclusive.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

The US has significantly reduced its diplomatic presence in Havana. And in Washington, the phenomenon has been rebranded to anomalous health incidents. The term acknowledges the symptoms, but without committing to a cause. Behind closed doors, intelligence agencies debated what was occurring. Some believed it was a foreign attack, while others argued the evidence was still inconclusive. But one thing was clear, the victims were real. The injuries were real, and the threat, whatever it was, had not been contained. If this were just Havana, maybe the world could have written it off. A bizarre cluster, a strange coincidence. But it didn't stop. Reports began surfacing in the US Consulate in China where personnel described the same symptoms, the same sudden onset caused by the same invisible force. Then came cases in Russia, Austria, Colombia, India, and even within the United States, including incidents near to the White House. This was no longer a Cuban mystery, it was now global. And it was targeting people with sensitive roles, diplomats, intelligence officers, military personnel, and people whose work shapes geopolitics. Someone was reaching into the heart and minds of US national security. And due to the secrecy of work carried out by those affected, there has always been barriers to public records and investigative journalism. The nature of activities conducted within governmental embassies can have serious consequences if not handled correctly. But the matter is perceived so concerning by some of those affected that some have gone public to bring awareness of what was and potentially is still occurring.

SPEAKER_09 21:59

There has been significant evidence over the years that has uh made its way under the cutting room floor, especially the CIA uh under the last administration. So, you know, we we've known there's been evidence, there's been all sorts of information pointing to this being real, who they, you know, who the actors are, what was used, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, it feels like it's hopefully about time that this, you know, the truth comes out. And we're hoping this administration can uh can bring some clarity and some transparency to that. I mean, we know the Chinese have a direction energy weapons program, an anti-personnel weapons program. Um, we know the Russians have been working on this since the 1950s. So we are many, many decades and many billions of dollars behind on the research from the human aspect of this. Um, you know, Havana proved uh we were kind of a best test case scenario in which you can clear out an embassy out of your country.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

Imagine waking up one morning in a foreign country, representing your nation, doing your job, and suddenly feeling a pressure in your skull as if somebody was squeezing your brain. Imagine losing your balance, your vision blurring, and your thoughts slipping away like water through your fingers. Reports suggest that some victims can no longer work, many suffer poor memory and concentration, and others now live with chronic pain. These are not abstract symptoms, they are life-changing injuries. And they happened without warning, without a visible attacker, without a trace. In 2021, the US government passed legislation titled the Havana Act, which provides financial support for government employees and dependents who suffered neurological injuries linked to anomalous health incidents. Havana syndrome currently sits in a strange place between science and espionage, between medicine and geopolitics, between the known and unknown. If someone out there has developed a weapon that can reach into your mind without leaving a mark, what else might they be capable of? It is a reminder that the world's most powerful nations are still vulnerable to forces they cannot see and yet fully understand and remains unexplained. This has been unexplained, brought to you by Enigma from the Pod. And you have been listening to Havana Syndrome. As a startup podcast, we greatly appreciate your support. Please follow us on social media and leave us a review.