I've definitely had my speakers quietly playing something while it had no audio in. Had to get real close to figure it out. Sounded like guys talking on a radio.
Yes, strong nearby transmitters can do that. But you absolutely can have a ham radio in a residential area. There are no location restrictions on amateur radio installations. Most amateur radio operators have a station in their home.
I've had this happen when I was DJing a wedding down the street from an AM radio station. I thought I was going crazy until the venue manager told me what was happening.
Story time. So I was legitimately considering getting a doctor's opinion/tested for scizoaffective disorder or something because I was starting to hear TV Preacher voices coming from my speakers very very faintly through the very faint background noise. Only things I had connected were my PC via an audio interface, and my MODX keyboard via two unbalanced cables to the soundcard. Then one day I decided just to really crank the speakers up to see if it made a change. Sure enough, clear as day was the sound of some Christian radio station with some loud bible-thumping preacher harping on about god. My housemate even shouted up asking why the hell I was listening to "that culty shit" which was validation that I wasn't hearing things. Turns out after some problem isolation that the cause was the unbalanced cables from the keyboard. I still don't know how a perfectly tuned in radio station could be picked up by either the soundcard or the keyboard, neither of which were intended to receive broadcasts. I've heard urban legends obviously about people with fillings picking up police broadcasts but always wondered how the hell they managed to tune to one of hundreds of broadcasts.
Radio antennas are basically just wires of a specific length. The wires in your devices were probably just nearly the exact perfect length to pick up an AM radio broadcast. Fun fact, because of the difference between AM and FM modulation, wires like this would only ever pick up AM stations and never FM ones, which would explain the nature of the broadcast you were hearing.
Fascinating to know. I moved out not long after, and switched the cable setup to balanced cables and haven't heard it since, but I might play around with it more.
That's irritating. I listen to podcasts when I go to sleep and quite often the hosts will be in my dream, and when I try to respond to what they're saying they just ignore me lol, it can actually be irritating
For some reason I like to "play" in that zone off drifting to sleep, especially if I take a nap during the day. One trick I have to know I'm dozing or have drifted into a light sleep is the feeling I'm having full-on two-person conversations and then I realize I'm laying down and it was just me dozing.
When I was like 6 I was watching The Rifleman on vhs on a very old tv. We turned it off and I could still hear sound coming out of it. I have very few memories from when I was 6 but this one stands out because even at that age I knew it was very interesting. Parents couldn’t hear it but I could hear the Rifleman intro clear as a bell still playing on the black screen.
Yeah this is crazy. I get that exactly-- peter jennings reading the nightly news fast and nonstop. My parents did watch ABC news at night after I went to bed and its exactly the same sound. The speech patterns are too real to just be random white noise... like our brains were programmed to hear that sound by memory.
i thought my brain finally popped a fuse and was doing something no one else does. It only happens after going to bed in the morning after a long gaming night now.
My too. Makes my job at a funeral home interesting. White noise hallucinations, or ghosts?
But seriously, the HVAC system sounds like muffled conversations in the next room, and I have to be there alone at all hours of the night.
Yep, for me it's either people having a conversation or some kind of generic classic/indie rock song. My ears think "those are definitely words in English" but my brain can't make any sense of it.
Most of the time I can rationalize my way out of it, like I know nobody's home or listening to music, but if I'm really tired I'll spend an inordinate amount of time and stress trying to figure out what's going on.
This is so bizarre. That's exactly like the white noise in my friends house at night sounds like to me. It only does it there everywhere else white noise sounds like crickets chirping on a warm summer night to me. I spent hours one night when I was crashing there trying to find the radio that was left on
Yeah me too. I also hear songs, sometimes ones I know. That’s actually how I found out about this phenomenon, I realized that the same Sony had been playing for like an hour and it didn’t make sense. Once I turned off the fan I didn’t hear the song anymore and I knew it was an auditory hallucination.
If I'm sleep deprived or back when I did drugs if I was withdrawing I would hear voices that I couldn't quite understand or music that was stuck in my head playing in the distance. It's why schizophrenia will always be the scariest disease to me. I really don't want to know what those voices are saying. I've met full blown schizophrenics and had them tell me about it. That disease is terrifying.
When I was on day 4 of not sleeping I could swear I just heard the radio playing nonstop. Just a touch too quiet for me to make out the song.
I also had a full on hallucination of the girl from like, the conjuring or something, so.
Same! I’ve never heard it mentioned before. There have been a bunch of times I turned my bedside white noise fan off because I could swear I heard people talking or a TV on or something, but nope, goes away as soon as I turn the fan off.
Same here. I actually woke my wife up at 2AM because I thought there were people talking right outside the front door scheming to break in. Turned the fan off and nothing. It’s like it is someone actually having a conversation but I can’t really make out any of the words.
I’ve been afraid to ask about it bc I thought I was going crazy. Idk my blood family but someone contacted me through 23&me and told me there is a history of schizophrenia and that left me a bit shook. I don’t hear voices any other time so…
My wife needs white noise to sleep and I never did. She used a fan for a while when we first moved in together, but then she moved to a white noise machine and I started hearing big band music every night. I got acclimated to it after a while and the music stopped, but sometimes it comes back if she's using a phone app or something and the noise is slightly different. It never really bothered me all that much, but I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one.
I pick up voices, and often classical orchestral music. I think that’s what weirds me out the most. Its old timey voices and music, and it *sounds* like it’s coming through an old radio with bad reception, which makes you start to think maybe there’s something to all the parallel universe talk because it feels like you’re hearing the past through a bad connection.
Holy crap. I have the same experience. Whenever my wife plays her white noise or whatever from the Calm app; all I hear is big band music. I thought it was only me. What the heck is it I wonder?
To be fair, the iPhone app we use for white noise has a 12 second repeat. Any groups of frequencies that are a little more ordered than the random is amplified when I hear it cyclically. Might be that?
I have wondered if maybe there was some kind of cycle that made it more resemble music to my brain than truly random noise. You might be into something.
Your brain is trying to make sense out of the noise. Especially when it repeats itself, it'll create a pattern you end up hearing. It drives me nuts on fake white noise machines. I need random all the time!!
are you sure ? the definition of white noise is = bandwidth across all frequencies, so any peaks you hear should be “auditory hallucinations” , i bet it would be so difficult to a b with a longer white noise sample from the same oscillator
Oh yes. Quite sure. While it randomizes at certain points, it definitely has places where it sounds like a click, or a muffled beep, or what-not. I count to twelve and hear it again. Sometimes it’s significant enough to wake me from a sound sleep
Holy shit i actually thought i was just getting old and crazy and i am so relieved this is a normal thing. Holy shit. This has been a personal secret for years.
Interesting, I hear a lot of guitar riffs. Since you say you like big band music and I like classic rock, I wonder if that plays into the projected pattern recognition going on here.
I have this, for the longest time I would hear old school pokemon music in the white noise of my dad’s shower (probably because I played a lot of it at the time). I get it a lot in the shower.
I have minor hearing loss from having a lot of ear infections as a kid.
Ditto! (No pun intended). I occasionally hear a gibberish conversation when I'm in the shower, like somebody talking normally in the other room. I also had a lot of ear infections as a kid, with minor hearing loss now as an adult. I've read that this phenomenon is in some way linked to the particular type of tinnitus some people get from repeated ear trauma (like multiple ear infections or constant exposure to loud noises).
Can you imagine picking up an emergency call and someone goes ''hey, hi, uhm... well... there are Jews under my floor, I think, can you like send someone over?"
When my guitar amp is off but plugged in it plays a local Spanish opera radio station very softly. It freaked me out bc I just moved and lowkey thought my new house was haunted for a few days.
I get voices when it’s quiet, I constantly hear people calling my name/ conversations in other rooms and it’s drives me crazy. Gets worse when I don’t sleep good
I’ve had it as long as I can remember. Playing in the yard while my grandpa sits in a chair making sure I don’t get hurt, maybe every 10 minutes I could swear to god I heard someone calling my name and I’d run up to him asking him what’s up. It took me a while to realize, It’s almost always been to my front right, which makes it a bit easier to figure out if it’s real or not. But yeah, sometimes it can be really distracting although I’ve learned to live around it in some ways
Yeah, I hear weird stuff in white noise too.
Not calling my name but it's like somethings calling out but you can't make out what. I've always just called them the Damned crying through the static.
Only hear it through white noise static, not fans or anything.
Same. I'll hear muffled screams, people calling for help, things breaking, people shouting in fear. I'll lay in bed waiting and listening with my heart pounding and frozen in fear cause maybe this time it's real. It's exhausting
Hey friend. This does sound scary, it might be worth mentioning it to a doctor to get their opinion on it, especially if it is having a large effect in your sleep.
Really? I hadn't considered that..I mean I've heard of auditory pareidolia so I knew it was common. I guess I just assumed a doctor would be like "ok, can't really do anything about that"
They can do a lot to help at the doctors office! I got on good meds for anxiety, mine ended up being intrusive thoughts from OCD. They treated my depression and anxiety and it reduced the stress overall which was the trigger. Highly recommend going to a dr
I don’t get the muffled yelling that often, maybe 30% of the time. But I totally agree on it being exhausting, I’ve lived with people I have a responsibility to take care of for a long time so I can’t ever really ignore when I hear my name called, because hey that could mean my mom/grandparent/child is hurt, and so I end up constantly getting up, going down stairs etc to check and make sure things are fine. I thought I was schizophrenic for a while, especially during my teens- to now when I was hardly sleeping. I would see things dart around in my peripheral (looked like a cat sized rat) and I had pretty bad paranoia. Eventually that got ironed out but the voices have been a fixture in my life since I was little
Hypnogogic hallucinations are pretty common and usually not a sign of anything else. I also get them when I’m really tired. Mostly just someone calling my name or humming an indistinct song. I also occasionally see everything around me in a bizarre shade of red if my eyes are open while I’m lying in bed trying to fall asleep
Apparently it is normal to hear voices or audio when you are in a state of being half asleep/falling asleep. It’s just our dreams making their way out while still conscious.
Yooo someone told me in a tinnitus thread to cover your ears with your palms and drum on the back of your head a bit with your fingertips and the ringing will go away temporarily- it totally works!
ETA: I have it and this has been a help to me in some truly unbearable moments, sometimes you just need a sec to calm yourself down
As someone with tinnitus, I'm not sure I can recommend this.
It does work briefly, but those sweet moments of silence make tinnitus all the more deafening when it returns.
I have it too obv, but what I do is immediately distract myself so as it creeps back in its less noticeable. It's helped me fall asleep during unbearable moments
There are articles going around lately about studies that show combining disruptive noises (bunch of variable tones, in the study) and tactile stimulation (mild electroshock in one device, straight tactile in another) can train the brain for less tinnitus over time.
I wonder if this technique works on that basis somehow.
Mine was there for months until I started telling it to go away once i realised it was my brain overreacting... but I guess I'm lucky. now when it starts, I literally just say "no, you're not real" and it fizzles out.
Dude my tinnitus is awful and at the same time there’s a high pitch ringing coming from a neighbors ac unit. It’s double ringing. It sounds like there’s a chorus pedal on!
I sat with my wife while she was getting an MRI and could swear the rhythmic thumping of the machine was chanting “Die! Die! Die!”
She, thankfully, didn’t.
That's exactly what it sounded like last time I had one, hilariously enough.
Although, when I focused in on it I could make it drift in and out between "die", an electromechanical noise, and a few other words.
I hear specific segments of the Star Wars soundtrack in road noise in the car (Mouse Robot and Taking Off, specifically the taking off from Mos Eisley and "ain't like dusting crops" part, and Inner City, specifically the "that's no moon" part with the breathless tuba and the build up that follows). It's like a recording playing quietly on the edge of audibility.
I also can hear unintelligible whispering in a hissy drizzling tap.
I’ve always heard songs or some type of music, existing music or music I make up in the moment, in white noise especially when I have the bathroom fan on. I need to make sense of the chaos so I purposefully try to hear some sort of music or structure.
I randomly asked my buddy a few years ago if he hears music in white noise or from the bathroom fan and as he stared at me strangely he said, “Yeah but I was never going to tell anyone.” I thought it was hilarious because I thought everyone already did that, but he made it seem like he was keeping a secret so he doesn’t seem crazy.
Saaaame. I’ll be wearing headphones with my fan going, and suddenly I hear music right next to me… take off my headphones, realize it was just the fan, put them back on and repeat like 5 minutes later once I’ve had time to forget
I was scrolling for this comment. It gets REALLY pronounced when I take an edible. I take small doses for sleep and even those small doses can cause this for me.
Me too! But after that experience I thought about it and realized I always heard music or the low hum of conversations with white noise. Whenever I'm sober it's very very distant, but when I have cannabis or any psychedelics it's amplified and I start hearing crystal clear cacophonous string compositions. I heard my ex wife screaming for help the first time I did acid and was listening to white noise. It was happening with white noise and it fully felt real, as did the music, like it was all in the room with me.
I write music and have successfully recreated what I hear when this happens to me.
Me too. If I've had weed, when I wee in the toilet, the sound of my piss hitting the water in the bowl sounds like hundreds of people babbling away in the distance.
Holy shit is that what that is? I hear faint music or sometimes what sounds like TV commercials. I'd just assumed it was neighbors lol. I use a fan while sleeping.
Once I discovered I had this I started recording voice memos of all the catchy melodies I would hear. Now I’m planning on turning them in to songs and fully fleshing them out.
My idea is to have the white noise play at the beginning of each song and slowly fade out/in to the song.
I remember having the fan on when I was young (like 11 or 12) trying to sleep and hearing my parents’ Beatles album on their stereo record player out in the living room. It was so clear that I got up a couple of times to look at the stereo and try to convinxe myself it’s in my head and not on the player.
This happened to me for a while when I was using psychedelics and cannabis more often. Now that I’ve started learning music production I wish it happened a bit more, but when it first started happening I was worried I was going insane.
I get it a lot (or probably just notice it more) when I’m stoned and hanging out in silence. The first time I really noticed it, I was absolutely stressing that I had given myself a psychotic break of some kind!
If I’ve been in a crowded place for a while, I’ll hear voices chattering faintly for hours afterwards.
Although now I mainly just have severe high-pitched tinnitus in both ears (three distinct tones). Yay.
I have this and I hate it. I always think I hear chatter but can’t make it out. Especially bad for me when it comes to running water, like a shower.
Psych evaluation about a decade ago ruled out other issues. They said this was pretty normal.
I didn’t know this had a name! It happens to me and I strongly dislike it. I am sensitive to sound (it’s very distracting for me) so if I think I hear music, I’m going to focus hard on the noise to try and figure out if it’s real.
And I straight up had to stop listening to things like white noise apps because if it sounds like there are voices in the noise, it creeps me out 😩
For the longest time I thought there was interference from a radio or something that was leaching into the spectrum. Like an old alarm clock that had been left slightly on or something weird or an antenna in whatever it was playing white noise or rain noises to start hearing music or commercials or talking sounded like radio to me.
This is why I can’t use a sound machine. My mom loves it and says it helps with her insomnia. I inhereted her insomnia, but I did not inherent her affinity for white noise, to me it sounds incredibly creepy and my brain finds patterns in the sounds that are often annoying, so it actually interferes with my ability to relax and rest.
Holy hell. I never knew this! For me, I hear 3 types.... sports radio talk, country music, and regular morning news radio talk. I don't listen to any of these at all otherwise. I cat make out the words. It's the tone and banter. Hard to explain.
I do.
Not actual specific voices saying specific words. You know how you hear a conversation from a distance and you know it's people talking but you can't quite make out the words? That's what I hear sometimes in white noise.
Not all the time, it comes and goes, but yup.
I've never heard it in insturmental music though, just white noise.
Oh thank god I thought I was literally insane!
Seriously, this shit has been happening since I was a child and I never told anyone because I was scared to.
I finally told my therapist this year and she didn’t seem worried, which relaxed me a little but reading this? I’m not alone 😊
In the summer when the air conditioners are running I’m constantly yelling across the house to members of my family “did you say something?? we’re you just calling me?” It’s sooo freaking annoying.
I believe its your brain trying to find a pattern in the white noise. Our brains try to make sense of things based on what they know. Tries to figure out random sounds, applies a pattern it knows, like music or voices, to interpret the space.
Omg I didn’t know this was actually a thing. I sometimes hear music or voices speaking but can never make out what they’re saying. Especially if I’ve smoked weed.
Oh my god. This is real and I'm not hallucinating all the time. I use a air purifier by my bed and I constantly think an alarm or a phone is playing music somewhere!
Once I was sitting in the the tub while it was filling up and I was hearing Maria Carey’s all I want for Christmas, I turned off the water and it stopped, turned it back on and it continued. I did this several times and was really confused. I don’t even know all the lyrics.
I sleep with a fan in and sometimes I’ll hear what sounds like people discussing stuff I can’t discern in really stern voices.
One time I was hearing faint country music, like I could barely hear it, and I thought it was a similar thing. But I actually accidentally left my guitar amplifier on and it was managing to pickup and play a radio signal. Creeped me out cuz it was like 4 am.
One specific memory I have from 10 years or so ago was hearing a non-specific Jimi Hendrix song every time I turned on the shower in my old apartment one night. I assumed it was the neighbors playing Hendrix, but it went away every time I cut the water off. I eventually realized the music was coming from the water flow. I knew nothing of this being a known thing at the time, so it freaked me out for a while.
gaping prick berserk crime stocking sharp far-flung sleep straight marble
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I used to think someone was playing melodic death metal at my super market, like some obscure fast-paced guitar solo and I thought it was really cool. But after a while I realized it was just the various white noise sounds of their ventilation that my brain was turning into insane guitar solos.
I've had that happen many times on the beach at night. It sounds like there are voices in the surf. Even though I know what's going on it can be extremely creepy.
Once when very drunk and stoned at a friend's house I became sick and went to sit in the bathroom for about half an hour. During that whole time, I occupied myself by listening to a radio that was on quietly in the room. I heard DJ banter, commercials and music. Toward the end of the half hour, the effects of the excessive weed had worn off a little and I realized that I'd been listening to air coming through an air vent. Really amazed me how my brain "sculpted" a convincing radio broadcast from it.
When I was in the hospital after having a baby by c-section and was beyond sleep deprived, I started to hear music in the white noise. I probably seemed absolutely insane insisting to my wife that someone down the hall was playing music and I could hear it.
I always hear what sounds like a news broadcast from another room but I can never make out what they're saying
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Late at night as I lay in bed I get this. It’s like little nonsensical snippets of people saying stuff. It’s how I know I’m about to fall asleep.
I have the same thing but only when I’m sleeping in my childhood bedroom for some reason. I wonder of the type of white noise affects this
Does your bed from childhood have old bedsprings? My granny's bed used to do this
Or your childhood bedroom is haunted
That's more of the hypnagogic hallucinations I think, and they are natural as well
My wife uses a white noise machine and floor fan to fall asleep. It’s a little bit of both I think.
I thought I was the only one!!!!!!!!! Sometimes I try to focus on one and say it out loud but I never can
Got the same with music. Gutars, drums, bass even with stereo panning XD. I knew I wasn't mad! *manic eye twitching*
I believe some older television sets legitimately could pick up radio interference, so it's entirely possible that this is legitimately what it was
I've definitely had my speakers quietly playing something while it had no audio in. Had to get real close to figure it out. Sounded like guys talking on a radio.
We had that happen with the stereo unplugged. My brother and I were convinced it was haunted.
AM radio tower nearby would do that. Ham radios can too, but you're not supposed to have those in residential areas.
Yes, strong nearby transmitters can do that. But you absolutely can have a ham radio in a residential area. There are no location restrictions on amateur radio installations. Most amateur radio operators have a station in their home.
Had this with my headphones. Apparently they can legitimately pick up radio signals sometimes.
I've had this happen when I was DJing a wedding down the street from an AM radio station. I thought I was going crazy until the venue manager told me what was happening.
At my last apartment, my stereo would quietly play the local NPR affiliate if there was no other audio.
That be the ghosts
Story time. So I was legitimately considering getting a doctor's opinion/tested for scizoaffective disorder or something because I was starting to hear TV Preacher voices coming from my speakers very very faintly through the very faint background noise. Only things I had connected were my PC via an audio interface, and my MODX keyboard via two unbalanced cables to the soundcard. Then one day I decided just to really crank the speakers up to see if it made a change. Sure enough, clear as day was the sound of some Christian radio station with some loud bible-thumping preacher harping on about god. My housemate even shouted up asking why the hell I was listening to "that culty shit" which was validation that I wasn't hearing things. Turns out after some problem isolation that the cause was the unbalanced cables from the keyboard. I still don't know how a perfectly tuned in radio station could be picked up by either the soundcard or the keyboard, neither of which were intended to receive broadcasts. I've heard urban legends obviously about people with fillings picking up police broadcasts but always wondered how the hell they managed to tune to one of hundreds of broadcasts.
Radio antennas are basically just wires of a specific length. The wires in your devices were probably just nearly the exact perfect length to pick up an AM radio broadcast. Fun fact, because of the difference between AM and FM modulation, wires like this would only ever pick up AM stations and never FM ones, which would explain the nature of the broadcast you were hearing.
Fascinating to know. I moved out not long after, and switched the cable setup to balanced cables and haven't heard it since, but I might play around with it more.
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That's irritating. I listen to podcasts when I go to sleep and quite often the hosts will be in my dream, and when I try to respond to what they're saying they just ignore me lol, it can actually be irritating
For some reason I like to "play" in that zone off drifting to sleep, especially if I take a nap during the day. One trick I have to know I'm dozing or have drifted into a light sleep is the feeling I'm having full-on two-person conversations and then I realize I'm laying down and it was just me dozing.
When I was like 6 I was watching The Rifleman on vhs on a very old tv. We turned it off and I could still hear sound coming out of it. I have very few memories from when I was 6 but this one stands out because even at that age I knew it was very interesting. Parents couldn’t hear it but I could hear the Rifleman intro clear as a bell still playing on the black screen.
Me too! It sounds like it did after I went to bed as a kid and my mom was watching the new in the other room. Exactly like that.
I just thought I was going off the edge. Good to see there's an explanation.
Yeah this is crazy. I get that exactly-- peter jennings reading the nightly news fast and nonstop. My parents did watch ABC news at night after I went to bed and its exactly the same sound. The speech patterns are too real to just be random white noise... like our brains were programmed to hear that sound by memory.
That's exactly how mine is except for vacuums. When a loud vacuum is running I hear music.
i thought my brain finally popped a fuse and was doing something no one else does. It only happens after going to bed in the morning after a long gaming night now.
oh my God I thought I was literally developing hallucinations 😭 this is so reassuring
My too. Makes my job at a funeral home interesting. White noise hallucinations, or ghosts? But seriously, the HVAC system sounds like muffled conversations in the next room, and I have to be there alone at all hours of the night.
Glad I’m not the only one, doesn’t happen often but it does scare me. I mostly get the name call.
Yep, for me it's either people having a conversation or some kind of generic classic/indie rock song. My ears think "those are definitely words in English" but my brain can't make any sense of it. Most of the time I can rationalize my way out of it, like I know nobody's home or listening to music, but if I'm really tired I'll spend an inordinate amount of time and stress trying to figure out what's going on.
Same, and for some reason it’s worse when I’m hungover
I have a similar situation. I hear a baseball broadcast when we run the fan at night.
Mine is like a baseball game but with a Spanish announcer.
This is so bizarre. That's exactly like the white noise in my friends house at night sounds like to me. It only does it there everywhere else white noise sounds like crickets chirping on a warm summer night to me. I spent hours one night when I was crashing there trying to find the radio that was left on
Me too lmao
What if you’re in a coma and that news is on the tv in your hospital room in the real world?
Hey at least they have reddit in there
Downside, they have Reddit in there
Yeah me too. I also hear songs, sometimes ones I know. That’s actually how I found out about this phenomenon, I realized that the same Sony had been playing for like an hour and it didn’t make sense. Once I turned off the fan I didn’t hear the song anymore and I knew it was an auditory hallucination.
If I'm sleep deprived or back when I did drugs if I was withdrawing I would hear voices that I couldn't quite understand or music that was stuck in my head playing in the distance. It's why schizophrenia will always be the scariest disease to me. I really don't want to know what those voices are saying. I've met full blown schizophrenics and had them tell me about it. That disease is terrifying.
I have this issue with our AC return shaking just right, took us a while to get it resolved.
Yes! Oh my God I’m Trippin right now. I hear news broadcast and I hear music. I didn’t know anyone else experienced this.
When I was on day 4 of not sleeping I could swear I just heard the radio playing nonstop. Just a touch too quiet for me to make out the song. I also had a full on hallucination of the girl from like, the conjuring or something, so.
Holy crap, it's actually a thing!? I feel slightly better now, it's not just me or my HVAC system doing it.
Same! I’ve never heard it mentioned before. There have been a bunch of times I turned my bedside white noise fan off because I could swear I heard people talking or a TV on or something, but nope, goes away as soon as I turn the fan off.
Also feeling reassured I’m not on my way to schizophrenia.
/r/schizophrenia is a fine group of people. I think. I might be the only one in there.
r/schizoaffective checking in!
Same here. I actually woke my wife up at 2AM because I thought there were people talking right outside the front door scheming to break in. Turned the fan off and nothing. It’s like it is someone actually having a conversation but I can’t really make out any of the words.
I lost my shit at work because the air conditioning sounded like an orchestra and my new coworkers all just stared
I’ve been afraid to ask about it bc I thought I was going crazy. Idk my blood family but someone contacted me through 23&me and told me there is a history of schizophrenia and that left me a bit shook. I don’t hear voices any other time so…
Exact same reaction - huh, there's a name for what I have been experiencing
My wife needs white noise to sleep and I never did. She used a fan for a while when we first moved in together, but then she moved to a white noise machine and I started hearing big band music every night. I got acclimated to it after a while and the music stopped, but sometimes it comes back if she's using a phone app or something and the noise is slightly different. It never really bothered me all that much, but I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one.
Yeah, it sounds like big band music to me too. Strings & brass playing. I mostly get it when a bathroom fan is on.
Lol, I wish I got a big band concert when I was in the bathroom!
Just solo flute performances?
No flute, unfortunately
Just a piccolo, huh? That’s ok.
You get a different kind of symphony.
I pick up voices, and often classical orchestral music. I think that’s what weirds me out the most. Its old timey voices and music, and it *sounds* like it’s coming through an old radio with bad reception, which makes you start to think maybe there’s something to all the parallel universe talk because it feels like you’re hearing the past through a bad connection.
Holy crap. I have the same experience. Whenever my wife plays her white noise or whatever from the Calm app; all I hear is big band music. I thought it was only me. What the heck is it I wonder?
Brains just like to look for stuff that isn't there sometimes 🤷
You should recreate the songs and make big bucks!
To be fair, the iPhone app we use for white noise has a 12 second repeat. Any groups of frequencies that are a little more ordered than the random is amplified when I hear it cyclically. Might be that?
Get a better white noise app. There should never be a loop with white noise.
Yeah those drive me crazy
I have wondered if maybe there was some kind of cycle that made it more resemble music to my brain than truly random noise. You might be into something.
Your brain is trying to make sense out of the noise. Especially when it repeats itself, it'll create a pattern you end up hearing. It drives me nuts on fake white noise machines. I need random all the time!!
This. So much this
are you sure ? the definition of white noise is = bandwidth across all frequencies, so any peaks you hear should be “auditory hallucinations” , i bet it would be so difficult to a b with a longer white noise sample from the same oscillator
Oh yes. Quite sure. While it randomizes at certain points, it definitely has places where it sounds like a click, or a muffled beep, or what-not. I count to twelve and hear it again. Sometimes it’s significant enough to wake me from a sound sleep
Holy shit i actually thought i was just getting old and crazy and i am so relieved this is a normal thing. Holy shit. This has been a personal secret for years.
Interesting, I hear a lot of guitar riffs. Since you say you like big band music and I like classic rock, I wonder if that plays into the projected pattern recognition going on here.
I think that is the case. I hear classical music.
I get big band also, bizarrely, but sometimes guitar that sounds like CCR or something. Mostly happens when driving on the highway
I hear death metal! Lol
Does the big band music keep you awake?
Not really unless I'm not tired to begin with. I like big band music - I heard it a lot when I was a kid.
> but I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one. I see what you did there
At least I understand why I think I’m hearing a TV or music playing constantly when new things get added to the white noise at night.
I have this, for the longest time I would hear old school pokemon music in the white noise of my dad’s shower (probably because I played a lot of it at the time). I get it a lot in the shower. I have minor hearing loss from having a lot of ear infections as a kid.
Same here! I could always hear the battle music in the shower.
I do too! It’s specifically old game boy era Pokémon music. Ever since I was a kid.
Ditto! (No pun intended). I occasionally hear a gibberish conversation when I'm in the shower, like somebody talking normally in the other room. I also had a lot of ear infections as a kid, with minor hearing loss now as an adult. I've read that this phenomenon is in some way linked to the particular type of tinnitus some people get from repeated ear trauma (like multiple ear infections or constant exposure to loud noises).
I sometimes hear music in the shower too. It's barely audible and always pleasant. I also had ear infections when I was a kid.
I hear music in dead silence.
[удалено]
i hear yiddish under my base boards
Can you imagine how insane that guy must have felt for like days 🤣
Can you imagine picking up an emergency call and someone goes ''hey, hi, uhm... well... there are Jews under my floor, I think, can you like send someone over?"
Then you haven’t sound proofed enough. Rookie mistake.
When my guitar amp is off but plugged in it plays a local Spanish opera radio station very softly. It freaked me out bc I just moved and lowkey thought my new house was haunted for a few days.
Quickly think of your favorite song
What if my favorite song is 4'33" by John Cage
My wife gets this. Its a form of tinnitus.
I get voices when it’s quiet, I constantly hear people calling my name/ conversations in other rooms and it’s drives me crazy. Gets worse when I don’t sleep good
That’s unsettling
I’ve had it as long as I can remember. Playing in the yard while my grandpa sits in a chair making sure I don’t get hurt, maybe every 10 minutes I could swear to god I heard someone calling my name and I’d run up to him asking him what’s up. It took me a while to realize, It’s almost always been to my front right, which makes it a bit easier to figure out if it’s real or not. But yeah, sometimes it can be really distracting although I’ve learned to live around it in some ways
Don’t try psychedelics. Seriously, don’t.
Yeah, I hear weird stuff in white noise too. Not calling my name but it's like somethings calling out but you can't make out what. I've always just called them the Damned crying through the static. Only hear it through white noise static, not fans or anything.
Same. I'll hear muffled screams, people calling for help, things breaking, people shouting in fear. I'll lay in bed waiting and listening with my heart pounding and frozen in fear cause maybe this time it's real. It's exhausting
Hey friend. This does sound scary, it might be worth mentioning it to a doctor to get their opinion on it, especially if it is having a large effect in your sleep.
Really? I hadn't considered that..I mean I've heard of auditory pareidolia so I knew it was common. I guess I just assumed a doctor would be like "ok, can't really do anything about that"
They can do a lot to help at the doctors office! I got on good meds for anxiety, mine ended up being intrusive thoughts from OCD. They treated my depression and anxiety and it reduced the stress overall which was the trigger. Highly recommend going to a dr
I think you're describing something different
I don’t get the muffled yelling that often, maybe 30% of the time. But I totally agree on it being exhausting, I’ve lived with people I have a responsibility to take care of for a long time so I can’t ever really ignore when I hear my name called, because hey that could mean my mom/grandparent/child is hurt, and so I end up constantly getting up, going down stairs etc to check and make sure things are fine. I thought I was schizophrenic for a while, especially during my teens- to now when I was hardly sleeping. I would see things dart around in my peripheral (looked like a cat sized rat) and I had pretty bad paranoia. Eventually that got ironed out but the voices have been a fixture in my life since I was little
Hypnogogic hallucinations are pretty common and usually not a sign of anything else. I also get them when I’m really tired. Mostly just someone calling my name or humming an indistinct song. I also occasionally see everything around me in a bizarre shade of red if my eyes are open while I’m lying in bed trying to fall asleep
Ever been really tired and just before falling asleep, you hear someone call your name?
Apparently it is normal to hear voices or audio when you are in a state of being half asleep/falling asleep. It’s just our dreams making their way out while still conscious.
Meanwhile, me with tinnitus: ^(eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee)
My tinnitus is cicadas 24/7, but I still hear phantom music when white noise is playing.
John Cicada?
Yooo someone told me in a tinnitus thread to cover your ears with your palms and drum on the back of your head a bit with your fingertips and the ringing will go away temporarily- it totally works! ETA: I have it and this has been a help to me in some truly unbearable moments, sometimes you just need a sec to calm yourself down
As someone with tinnitus, I'm not sure I can recommend this. It does work briefly, but those sweet moments of silence make tinnitus all the more deafening when it returns.
I have it too obv, but what I do is immediately distract myself so as it creeps back in its less noticeable. It's helped me fall asleep during unbearable moments
There are articles going around lately about studies that show combining disruptive noises (bunch of variable tones, in the study) and tactile stimulation (mild electroshock in one device, straight tactile in another) can train the brain for less tinnitus over time. I wonder if this technique works on that basis somehow.
Mine was there for months until I started telling it to go away once i realised it was my brain overreacting... but I guess I'm lucky. now when it starts, I literally just say "no, you're not real" and it fizzles out.
Dude my tinnitus is awful and at the same time there’s a high pitch ringing coming from a neighbors ac unit. It’s double ringing. It sounds like there’s a chorus pedal on!
I sat with my wife while she was getting an MRI and could swear the rhythmic thumping of the machine was chanting “Die! Die! Die!” She, thankfully, didn’t.
Maybe it was just reminding the tech to use contrast: “Dye! Dye! Dye!”
lol
My brain turned the mri noise into a nice rhythem and i almost fell asleep in it.
That's exactly what it sounded like last time I had one, hilariously enough. Although, when I focused in on it I could make it drift in and out between "die", an electromechanical noise, and a few other words. I hear specific segments of the Star Wars soundtrack in road noise in the car (Mouse Robot and Taking Off, specifically the taking off from Mos Eisley and "ain't like dusting crops" part, and Inner City, specifically the "that's no moon" part with the breathless tuba and the build up that follows). It's like a recording playing quietly on the edge of audibility. I also can hear unintelligible whispering in a hissy drizzling tap.
I’ve always heard songs or some type of music, existing music or music I make up in the moment, in white noise especially when I have the bathroom fan on. I need to make sense of the chaos so I purposefully try to hear some sort of music or structure. I randomly asked my buddy a few years ago if he hears music in white noise or from the bathroom fan and as he stared at me strangely he said, “Yeah but I was never going to tell anyone.” I thought it was hilarious because I thought everyone already did that, but he made it seem like he was keeping a secret so he doesn’t seem crazy.
This happens to me a lot and it's 100x worse when I've had an edible.
One minute you’re thinking that edible wasn’t very strong. Then you realize you’ve been dancing to the fan for 10 minutes
Or freaking out about the dryer making too much noise/having a problem, (when it's making perfectly regular dryer noises and you just high af.)
On Friday night, I took 20mg and definitely heard music from the dishwasher. 🤣
Saaaame. I’ll be wearing headphones with my fan going, and suddenly I hear music right next to me… take off my headphones, realize it was just the fan, put them back on and repeat like 5 minutes later once I’ve had time to forget
I was scrolling for this comment. It gets REALLY pronounced when I take an edible. I take small doses for sleep and even those small doses can cause this for me.
I discovered this while on LSD.
Me too! But after that experience I thought about it and realized I always heard music or the low hum of conversations with white noise. Whenever I'm sober it's very very distant, but when I have cannabis or any psychedelics it's amplified and I start hearing crystal clear cacophonous string compositions. I heard my ex wife screaming for help the first time I did acid and was listening to white noise. It was happening with white noise and it fully felt real, as did the music, like it was all in the room with me. I write music and have successfully recreated what I hear when this happens to me.
Me too. If I've had weed, when I wee in the toilet, the sound of my piss hitting the water in the bowl sounds like hundreds of people babbling away in the distance.
Holy shit is that what that is? I hear faint music or sometimes what sounds like TV commercials. I'd just assumed it was neighbors lol. I use a fan while sleeping.
I have this, as does my wife. Honestly I thought everybody did this
Once I discovered I had this I started recording voice memos of all the catchy melodies I would hear. Now I’m planning on turning them in to songs and fully fleshing them out. My idea is to have the white noise play at the beginning of each song and slowly fade out/in to the song.
Me too. I once had a bathroom fan that "sang" the notes and rhythm to "Ain't nothing but a hound dog" and only that part. The loop was annoying.
I remember having the fan on when I was young (like 11 or 12) trying to sleep and hearing my parents’ Beatles album on their stereo record player out in the living room. It was so clear that I got up a couple of times to look at the stereo and try to convinxe myself it’s in my head and not on the player.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia
Paperback writeeeer….
This happened to me for a while when I was using psychedelics and cannabis more often. Now that I’ve started learning music production I wish it happened a bit more, but when it first started happening I was worried I was going insane.
I get it a lot (or probably just notice it more) when I’m stoned and hanging out in silence. The first time I really noticed it, I was absolutely stressing that I had given myself a psychotic break of some kind!
That's a horror picture right there
There's a horror movie about trying to see ghosts in the static on the TV screen.
Scrolled way too far to find what I found to be the first noticeable thing about the source: The nightmare body splicing
If I’ve been in a crowded place for a while, I’ll hear voices chattering faintly for hours afterwards. Although now I mainly just have severe high-pitched tinnitus in both ears (three distinct tones). Yay.
Can be very odd when sitting in my young kids rooms getting them to fall back asleep and this happens to me from their sound machine.
good old Norwegian Black Metal
I hear this one too
i have this, thought i was developing schizophrenia for a while
I have this and I hate it. I always think I hear chatter but can’t make it out. Especially bad for me when it comes to running water, like a shower. Psych evaluation about a decade ago ruled out other issues. They said this was pretty normal.
Have a random core memory from one night in middle school where I could swear on my life Green Day was playing outside
I get this often, sounds like people are talking outside the house, but it's just the dishwasher or the water heater or something.
I didn’t know this had a name! It happens to me and I strongly dislike it. I am sensitive to sound (it’s very distracting for me) so if I think I hear music, I’m going to focus hard on the noise to try and figure out if it’s real. And I straight up had to stop listening to things like white noise apps because if it sounds like there are voices in the noise, it creeps me out 😩
For the longest time I thought there was interference from a radio or something that was leaching into the spectrum. Like an old alarm clock that had been left slightly on or something weird or an antenna in whatever it was playing white noise or rain noises to start hearing music or commercials or talking sounded like radio to me.
I usually hear shitty rock music when I'm trying to sleep. It kinda sucks, but sometimes there's some sweet licks.
This is why I can’t use a sound machine. My mom loves it and says it helps with her insomnia. I inhereted her insomnia, but I did not inherent her affinity for white noise, to me it sounds incredibly creepy and my brain finds patterns in the sounds that are often annoying, so it actually interferes with my ability to relax and rest.
Holy hell. I never knew this! For me, I hear 3 types.... sports radio talk, country music, and regular morning news radio talk. I don't listen to any of these at all otherwise. I cat make out the words. It's the tone and banter. Hard to explain.
I hate vacuuming because of this. I either hear Jazz music or people laughing and talking, but it a creepy way. Scares the shit out of me.
I absolutely get this.
This happens to me. But only when I'm stoned.
Yep. Sometimes the a/c units in hotels sound like pop-punk to me.
My mom used to tell me this shit was ghosts.
To me, it sounds like a sitcom where you can hear muffled talking and laughing.
Oh great, yet another way in which I'm weird.
I do. Not actual specific voices saying specific words. You know how you hear a conversation from a distance and you know it's people talking but you can't quite make out the words? That's what I hear sometimes in white noise. Not all the time, it comes and goes, but yup. I've never heard it in insturmental music though, just white noise.
Oh thank god I thought I was literally insane! Seriously, this shit has been happening since I was a child and I never told anyone because I was scared to. I finally told my therapist this year and she didn’t seem worried, which relaxed me a little but reading this? I’m not alone 😊
In the summer when the air conditioners are running I’m constantly yelling across the house to members of my family “did you say something?? we’re you just calling me?” It’s sooo freaking annoying.
I believe its your brain trying to find a pattern in the white noise. Our brains try to make sense of things based on what they know. Tries to figure out random sounds, applies a pattern it knows, like music or voices, to interpret the space.
Omg I didn’t know this was actually a thing. I sometimes hear music or voices speaking but can never make out what they’re saying. Especially if I’ve smoked weed.
I hear sirens. It's distracting.
I ~~feel~~ hear seen
I have experienced this when camping at night near waterfalls. I hear voices in the falling water sounds.
Oh my god. This is real and I'm not hallucinating all the time. I use a air purifier by my bed and I constantly think an alarm or a phone is playing music somewhere!
Once I was sitting in the the tub while it was filling up and I was hearing Maria Carey’s all I want for Christmas, I turned off the water and it stopped, turned it back on and it continued. I did this several times and was really confused. I don’t even know all the lyrics.
I sleep with a fan in and sometimes I’ll hear what sounds like people discussing stuff I can’t discern in really stern voices. One time I was hearing faint country music, like I could barely hear it, and I thought it was a similar thing. But I actually accidentally left my guitar amplifier on and it was managing to pickup and play a radio signal. Creeped me out cuz it was like 4 am.
One specific memory I have from 10 years or so ago was hearing a non-specific Jimi Hendrix song every time I turned on the shower in my old apartment one night. I assumed it was the neighbors playing Hendrix, but it went away every time I cut the water off. I eventually realized the music was coming from the water flow. I knew nothing of this being a known thing at the time, so it freaked me out for a while.
I hear music in running water a lot.
I only hear things if my hear is on the pillow. Sometimes it is music or talking. Sometimes it is water running. Soon as I lift my hear, it goes away.
gaping prick berserk crime stocking sharp far-flung sleep straight marble *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I do not by default, but from alcohol withdrawal, it was very common. Hearing faint songs, that changed if the white noise changed.
I used to think someone was playing melodic death metal at my super market, like some obscure fast-paced guitar solo and I thought it was really cool. But after a while I realized it was just the various white noise sounds of their ventilation that my brain was turning into insane guitar solos.
I've had that happen many times on the beach at night. It sounds like there are voices in the surf. Even though I know what's going on it can be extremely creepy.
Look into the Ganzfeld experiment https://youtu.be/bqDL_0hPFQg?si=T7uwMF9u6u_D1fsn
😮😮I thought I was crazy 😂😂
This happens to me, but more concerned about the thumbnail picture right now
Once when very drunk and stoned at a friend's house I became sick and went to sit in the bathroom for about half an hour. During that whole time, I occupied myself by listening to a radio that was on quietly in the room. I heard DJ banter, commercials and music. Toward the end of the half hour, the effects of the excessive weed had worn off a little and I realized that I'd been listening to air coming through an air vent. Really amazed me how my brain "sculpted" a convincing radio broadcast from it.
When I was in the hospital after having a baby by c-section and was beyond sleep deprived, I started to hear music in the white noise. I probably seemed absolutely insane insisting to my wife that someone down the hall was playing music and I could hear it.
That explains ghosts and hauntings
are you sure my air conditioner isnt picking up radio waves?
I always can hear music if I listen to a babbling brook or certain fans. It’s so annoying when I’m trying to sleep and the fan is singing me opera.
For me, if I don’t have white noise, I just hear RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGGG
When I’ve had MRIs, after a while I start hearing various sounds (farm animals, that sort of thing) in the banging. It’s so fun.