For years I have used a white noise sound machine along with a fan at night to sleep, however recently I have noticed something strange. I seem to hear distant music, as if there is a distant radio station that is not quite tuned correctly. I hear what appears to be songs but can never make out words or specific melody’s. The “music” always seems to be up tempo, sort of light rock genre. Occasionally I hear what sounds somewhat like a disc jockey rambling but can never make out any words. Other times I hear what seems to be a very crowded room with many conversations going on.
Once I even got up to see if there was a TV or something on but as soon as I got up I could no longer hear it. This all seems to happen as I am falling asleep or if I happen to wake up during the night. There are no radios nearby and I do not have neighbors close enough to hear.
Just wondering what causes this and if others experience it. By the way, I do not drink or do drugs.
Often, just as I am falling asleep, I will “hear” voices, as if multiple people were talking far away. It’s as if one part of my brain is supplying white (or whitish) noise while another part interprets it as echoic voices from far away. Sometimes, this is sufficient to wake me up!
I have also heard other people tell of “voices in a well” as they are drifting off.
There is also an entire industry devoted to “hearing voices” in white noise. I can’t recall what it is called, but the idea supplied the plot for the 2000 movie Frequency.
I often experience it and not just when I am falling asleep. A few times I have been able to almost make out all the parts of what sounds like a pretty good piece of music. However if I try to listen closely to it the noise becomes jumbled and indistinct.
I used to have a similar experience with a hypnagogic illusion of talking voices while falling asleep. I would hear snatches of meaningless conversation, like passing people talking in the street, “So I said to him…,” “It must be broken otherwise…” I quite enjoyed them but as soon as I tried to pay attention the spell snapped and they ceased. Hasn’t happened for years I realize now.
I should add that the best conditions for the phantom music are almost total quite with any sort of repetitive noise, preferably with a beat of some kind. And your description of the music I hear is spot on - always very poppy.
I once worked at the World Scottish Convention. After 3 days of listening o bagpipes all day long in a large football stadium, every loud noise I could swear I heard bagpipes playing off in the distance behind that noise.
…oh, those poor suffering kitty cats…
I think it’s the auditory version of an optical illusion - our mind trying to “fill in the missing pieces” when we hear something without meaningful content. A similar phenomenon is hearing actual words in backward songs, etc.
This happens to me occasionally, and in fact has happened again a couple times this week. I wake up around 4 am and I swear I hear a radio or TV on in another room. Sometimes it sounds like music playing, sometimes voices talking. If I get up to investigate, it goes away. I just assume my brain is playing tricks on me.
I have heard random background noises turning into music as I am falling asleep, quite often since I was a young child. Sometimes it was a very plain primitive sounding music, but other times it was like listening to a full symphony orchestra!
If I tried listening and paying attention to the music (because it often seemed like very good music), the effect would always fade away after 10 to 15 seconds or so.
The music was almost always instrumental, without any voice parts. Occasionally there would be a voice part, but always very muffled so I could never make out any words.
On hearing fragments of phrases: I’ve had this too occasionally, but not very often.
Another thing I’ve always noticed: When I’m laying in bed, partly asleep, eyes closed, in the dark and I hear any sharp sound, I’ll always see a flash of white light with it. It doesn’t have to be a loud sound, just a sharp sound. You know how incandescent light bulbs make quiet little pinging sounds when you turn it off and it is cooling down? That’s enough to do it. Also, the knocking sounds when a house “settles” at night would do it.
So, is there a name for this condition…or phenomenon…or whatever it is?
To me, this is more of a curiosity than a problem however I would like to know more about it. I looked up pareidolia but from what could ascertain that is more visual, like seeing faces in a piece of toast. Thanks
When I was a child, on long car journeys on the motorway, I noticed I could listen to the road noise and hear music. It’s possible to choose the tune just by thinking about it.
I was told that the Finnish composer Sibelius was inspired in this way by the sounds of the Finnish landscape, and some of his compositions sought to capture the music he heard in his head as he walked through the countryside.
Beside the pareidolia explanation, two remote possibilities occur to me. One, if the wave machine is using a recording, is it possible it’s not a “clean” recording, and was made in an environment where some distant radio was picked up?
Two, if the noise generator is a fan or mechanical device, could there be mechanical noise of a very minor nature, nearly inaudible?
Both ideas would require your mind to make some pareidolia-type analysis in your brain.
I had a hearing test recently, and during part of the test, heard some very distant sounds in the “wrong” ear. The doc said she wasn’t sending any sounds to that ear, but my suspicion is the system was leaky or had some crosstalk, and I was detecting something that was actually there. The fact that she placed the talkback mic behind me made me think the system wasn’t designed all that well. Maybe that’s what’s happening here.
It’s interesting to read this discussion because I’ve also experienced exactly this on rare occasions, and never really thought about whether it was something unique or widely experienced. It only happens to me when I’m really tired and short on sleep, generally very late at night, and it does seem to be linked to various kinds of constant background white-like noise, like a furnace fan or refrigerator. It often sounds very much like a distant radio, with an announcer’s voice and music interspersed. It’s as if the pareidolia mechanism can’t decide whether it should be imagining words or music, so it blends them together into what ends up sounding like typical commercial radio! It’s usually pretty subtle and obviously not real, but it’s definitely there.
You may have something there. I had an old sound machine that finally quit working so I got a new one that was a different brand. I seem to notice this happening more since I have the newer machine. With the old machine, even though it was “white noise” I could pick up a somewhat rhythmic sound pattern. The sensation of music was there as well, but not as often and not as profound as with the new machine.
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In the presence of white noise such as running water or a central air conditioning system, I frequently hear music or voices. I hear it distinctly (and in the early days, often went searching for the radio that must have been left on in another room), but in the instance of music with lyrics or voices (which always sound like a talk radio program or something, not real conversation) I never hear it well enough to distinguish the words. I never hear these things unless they are “embedded,” so to speak, in white noise, and only if there are not other competing sounds.
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A perhaps useful analogy for this phenomenon is that of a ‘jiggle key’ used for lock picking. In it’s simplest form, a jiggle key is just something that fits in the lock and you wiggle it about randomly until, by chance, the pins in the lock eventually find themselves in the right positions to allow the cylinder to turn.
That is, in a system is tuned to expect a very precise set of inputs, it can be triggered by randomness that happens to include those inputs (or inputs that are close enough).
I have the same sensation when lying in bed, recovering from an illness-sometimes the music is quite clear. I think its a combination of imagination and being in a state of semi-sleep.
This happened to me once. I had my air conditioner on in my apartment and could’ve sworn I heard very faint rock music. When I turned it off, nothing.
There is a phenomenon called stochastic resonance where adding noise to a weak signal can make it more easily detectable. The article says this can even take place in sensory systems of some organisms.
I’d just like to point out that the white noise voice thing and the hypnagogic voice thing are two totally separate things. The white noise thing can happen whether you’re sleepy or not. One time two other people heard white noise voices through an air conditioner at the same time and actually discussed it. We all seemed to be hearing the same thing.