When I was around 10 or 11 or so, occasionally as I was going to sleep, I would begin to hear a faint roaring sound in my ears, or something akin to a faraway waterfall, or a mild wind blowing. This sound would build rapidly in intensity, and in a manner of a few seconds would be quite loud. If I sat up, it would immediately go away. Upon lying down, it might or might not start again, but never so many times that it would keep me from falling asleep.
Has anyone else experienced this, or have any idea what this phenomenon might be?
Possibly sinus related? You don’t hear it when you sit up because it’s naturally draining down the back of your throat but when you lay down, it starts to pool in sinus cavities, including your ears.
I used to have a similar feeling/sound when I hadn’t properly cleared water from my ears after swimming or when I had a cold that resulted in wax buildup in my ears. Didn’t seem to do me any permanent harm.
Well, that is pretty much an exact description of my experience the first time I was given general anesthesia (for extraction of wisdom teeth). Also, very occasionally, just as I’m falling asleep I’ll have auditory hallucinations like you describe… something indistinct, like a distant banging sound… it’ll happen just as I’m dropping off, and it’ll partially wake me up, and then the process will continue until I realize it’s not real; then I wake myself up all the way and then go to sleep normally.
Actually I wouldn’t call the sounds I heard indistinct at all. They were quite distinct and a bit frightening. If you know the scene in “The Godfather” where Michael is in the restroom at Jack Dempsey’s restaurant, and the sound of the subway car gets gradually louder, that’s a good approximation of “my” sound. And I’m pretty sure I had no sinus, earwax, or water problems that might have caused it.
On one of the occasions I was traveling and staying with an acquaintance in Colorado Springs, but while I was awake I wasn’t feeling any effects of the higher altitude, and I didn’t have any ear or sinus problems at the time.
I didn’t consider it alarming or abnormal, just an interesting falling-asleep phenomenon.
So, rowrrbazzle, do you just have a good memory, do a search, or have you in fact been stalking me since the days I was known as notcynical?
I did a similar double post, separated by one year, about seeing the space station in the sky and asking what it may be. This was just a few years ago, so from a nine year span to a one year span, well, that’s just not any good…
Tinnitus.Still happens to me, but happened a lot more when I was a kid. Always intermittently though. I get roaring/rushing and high pitched ‘ringing’ noises. I had a terrible time with ear infections practically until I was a teenager, and still occasionally get water ‘stuck’ in my ears - think things must be shaped a bit funky in there, and that’s what causes it for me.
My hearing is better than average, so it doesn’t appear to be a symptom of deafness for me.
