Dear Evelyn, I feel a little silly writing this, but I don’t know who else to ask. The standing stones on our family farm have hummed for as long as anyone can remember — on clear nights mostly, when the air is still. My parents always said it was just the wind finding channels in the rock, and I accepted that, though the sound has always felt more deliberate than that explanation accounts for. What’s changed is my youngest, Petra, who is nine. For the past three weeks she has been humming in her sleep. My husband recorded it on his phone because he thought I was imagining things. When I played it back-to-back with a recording of the stones, the pitch is — well. It’s the same. Petra wakes up every morning with no memory of it. She isn’t frightened, she sleeps well, and her behaviour during the day is completely ordinary. But I am her mother and I am asking: is this a doctor situation? A minister situation? Or something else entirely? We’ve farmed this land for six generations. I don’t want to be alarmist, but I also don’t want to be the mother who waited too long. Yours, Moira

Moira, the recordings you describe — played back-to-back, pitches aligning — are the detail that matters here, and I am glad your husband thought to make them. Evidence has a way of clarifying which kind of help you actually need, and in this case it does some of that work for us.

First, the practical: yes, see your GP, and do it without framing it as a paranormal matter. Tell them your daughter has been vocalising in her sleep for three weeks without any waking memory of it. This is a real and documentable thing — somnambulistic behaviour of various kinds is well within the scope of a paediatric sleep referral, and Petra deserves to have that avenue properly ruled out. Bring the recording. Doctors respond well to evidence too. A good GP will not dismiss sleep vocalisation in a nine-year-old, and ruling out the neurological and physiological gives you a much cleaner picture of what remains.

What remains, in my experience of resonance relationships between children and very old land formations, is usually not cause for alarm so much as cause for attention — which is a different thing. The stones on your farm are not new to this. Six generations of your family have worked that land, and the stones were humming long before your family arrived. Petra is not being targeted. She is, if anything, being included. The practical second step — and I say this with complete confidence — is to go out to the stones on a clear night, stand near them while they are humming, and hum back yourself, once, briefly, in the same key. Not as a ritual. Simply as an acknowledgement. In my experience, resonance relationships of this kind settle considerably once a second adult in the household has made that acknowledgement. The stones are not particular about which adult. They are particular about acknowledgement.

I should say — my herb garden has a similar, much quieter version of this. The rosemary along the east wall will sometimes hold a note after I’ve been singing near it. I don’t find it distressing. I do find it company.

Petra sleeping soundly, waking without distress, behaving ordinarily during the day: these are good signs. You are not a mother who has waited too long. You are a mother who is asking the right questions at exactly the right time.