• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Hearing Your Name Called

I may have written about this before on another thread. My ex wife has been dead for 11 years now, although we had been separated since the 90's. Some weeks after her death, I was alone in our house (aside from our two dogs) and was leaving our ensuite bathroom passing through a walk in wardrobe when I very distinctly heard her voice coming from behind me, over my shoulder, saying ''Hi''. It startled me to the point where I actually stopped and looked behind me, so clear was her voice. It could have been no one elses.
I still think about that moment once in a while and while my name wasn't actually spoken, it unsettled me quite a bit.
 
Had this yesterday.

After a slightly fraught cat-related incident* I was backing my car off the drive, a bit miffed because the car of the neighbour opposite was in the way so it was a little tricky.

As I moved along slowly, looking all round for passing pedestrians/cyclists/pets, I distinctly heard my name called urgently from my right, like Scargy!!

Sounded like a young man or youth. I thought 'Oh no, cat's out again! and stopped and looked; nobody in sight.
Techy was upstairs so I looked at his window in case he was calling me - no sign. My passenger didn't hear it and she didn't think the song on t'car radio sounded like it. Nuts. Stress?

*Was driving a friend home and spotted my oldest cat wandering along the street past my house. This cat is is over 20 and deaf, and is also quite senile, so I don't like her going out the front. However, as she has little catty mates to visit she sneaks out when she can and is perfectly agile enough to get back over the fence without my knowing she's done one unless I spot her.

So yesterday I turned the car round, parked up, jumped out and ran after the cat, who'd eyeballed me and was already on way home smartish.
Caught her up nearly on the doorstep, grabbed her, chucked her in through the front door and went back to the car. Drove it forwards up the drive to turn round, started backing up and heard the voice.
Probably one of your cats mates bemoaning the fact that you're not letting her out to play, thinking gonna scare the pants off 'er that'll learn 'er.
 
EduCATshun, eduCATshun!
 
You may be onto something. It had certainly stopped by the time we moved house (about 12ish). Although this wouldn't explain rjmrjmrjm's experience. And recently I've had a similar experience to my childhood one whilst struggling to get to sleep (I'm practically an insomniac). This time however it tends to be a male voice and much louder, almost as if someone is speaking directly into my ear. Maybe I should book myself a bed on the local psych ward!
I know this thread is old but I've had this experience myself. I'm 43 now and very very occasionally ill hear my name said quickly without a voice that I can really recognize or remember how it sounds. It is a very rare occurrence now but as a child I'd say I heard this voice a few times a year or so. I always told myself that j must just be hearing things, but I always found myself looking around bc it was that loud.
 
I know this thread is old but I've had this experience myself. I'm 43 now and very very occasionally ill hear my name said quickly without a voice that I can really recognize or remember how it sounds. It is a very rare occurrence now but as a child I'd say I heard this voice a few times a year or so. I always told myself that j must just be hearing things, but I always found myself looking around bc it was that loud.
I'm guessing other people don't hear it, just you? That's how I've had the same experience.
 
Beccause of something I've been working on, I've been remembering back to childhood. And I remember, very clearly because of the fear, standing alone in our living room while my mum bathed my brother upstairs. I was standing looking at our old bookshelf in the corner - which means I was around three or four - when I heard a loud, man's voice say my name. Just the one syllable, and it sounded as though it was behind me.

I belted out of the living room and up the stairs to where mother and baby brother were. We weren't allowed to leave doors open (to 'keep the heat in') so it was probably winter time. But this experience was instrumental in me not minding my own troop of children following me everywhere, even when I was only going upstairs - being left alone can be traumatic for a child, even if the parent/guardian is only somewhere else in the quite small house.

It was probably the fear of being alone that triggered my hearing of the voice. The fact it only said my name I think means it was internal rather than external.
 
Interesting thread. I am sure if you ask most people, they will have had the experience of 'thinking I heard someone say my name'. I have had it often, but never really so definite that I felt spooked by it. Usually you just think 'must have been something else', and you shrug it off. That said, there was one occasion when I was completely alone late at night and I heard one word (not my name) spoken right into my ear. That DID spook me, but that is another story, for another thread.

But, to my point.... On one occasion my mother did have the experience of hearing her name said three times, loud and clear, according to her account. She is sadly no longer with us, so I can't check any of the details. She told me about it on at least a couple of occasions, and I wish I had asked her to write it down, but as far as I remember the details were as follows....

She lived in County Mayo, Ireland. She was about 4 years old, and it was very early one morning in the kitchen of the family home. The family were up early on a cold morning to go and visit her grandmother (maternal grandmother, I think). My mum admitted to me she was still a bit sleepy, but said her recollection of what occurred was still pin-sharp after the many years that had passed. As she was being helped into her overcoat by her mother, my mum heard her name spoken loud and clear, close by, by a female voice. She remembers her mother getting a bit irritated at her because she was trying to turn around to see who it was that was calling to her while her mother was trying to button up her coat for her. Obviously there was no 'woman' there. I'm sure my mum told me she said something about it to her mother, but who takes much notice of a sleepy four year old?

The family (my mum, her younger brother and their parents) then set off to the railway station to make the journey to granny, which required a change of train at some point (sorry I don't know the details of that). When they were changing trains, someone (a woman) who was acquainted with the family approached my mum's mother and said "I'm sorry for your loss". The lady in question had left granny's town early that morning, and having seen my mum's family she had assumed that they were making the journey to granny's town because they had heard the sad news that granny had died in the night! Obviously, my mum's parents hadn't heard the news and it came as a something of a shock. It's possible that her parents knew that granny was ill, hence the early set-off to visit her, but I can't recall if my mum told me whether that was the case or not.

Now, apologies for this being not actually 'It Happened To Me' but 'It Happened To My Mum', but she was very clear and adamant about it all, and her interpretation was that she had heard the voice of her recently departed grandmother calling her name to say goodbye to her. She was an Irish Catholic, and with that comes a certain willingness to believe in the soul and the spirit etc, but the clarity and conviction with which she told me this story has always stayed with me. When it comes down to it, the voice calling her name could just have been the product of the overactive imagination of a sleepy child. I guess I will never know now.
 
I used to experience something like this around 10-15 years ago. It happened when I was falling asleep in bed so in that weird state between wake and sleep. I'd sometimes hear someone very close by say my name, sometimes a male voice, sometimes female. But more often I'd hear a multitude of voices speaking all at once, mixed together with the odd very clear word or phrase coming through very clearly. Never made any sense, just nonsense as if I were tuning into the middle of someone's conversation. I used to call it "the babble" because it was such a regular thing at the time. It's gradually faded away over time and I rarely hear it now. It was never disturbing, just odd (at first) and then normalised
 
I used to experience something like this around 10-15 years ago. It happened when I was falling asleep in bed so in that weird state between wake and sleep. I'd sometimes hear someone very close by say my name, sometimes a male voice, sometimes female. But more often I'd hear a multitude of voices speaking all at once, mixed together with the odd very clear word or phrase coming through very clearly. Never made any sense, just nonsense as if I were tuning into the middle of someone's conversation. I used to call it "the babble" because it was such a regular thing at the time. It's gradually faded away over time and I rarely hear it now. It was never disturbing, just odd (at first) and then normalised
Hypnopompic hallucinations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnopompic
 
Thanks for that although it used to happen when I was falling asleep so would have been hypnagogic? They were never scary or unsettling, just a part of my life for a while.
Couldn't remember if it was gogic or pompic I was after, but figured the link covered both.
 
Couldn't remember if it was gogic or pompic I was after, but figured the link covered both.
The way I remember my gogics from my pompics, Catseye, is : GOgics is when you are GOing to sleep, and Pompics is when you are waking up and need a P.
 
Last edited:
The way I remember my gogics from my pompics, Catseye is : GOgics is when you are GOing to sleep, and Pompics is when you are waking up and need a P.
What do we do about that tricky moment when you are just dropping off to sleep and realise that you really really need a wee...?
 
Weird one the other day.

I was walking out of a shopping centre. Walking towards me was a woman who I thought I recognised. As she passed I realised it wasn't the person who I thought it was. I kept walking.

I then heard a quite insistent "James! James!" from behind me. I turned. I then saw the lady turning to look at me. I thought maybe I was wrong, maybe it was who I had originally thought and she was calling my name. Another "James! James!", still looking at her...it wasn't her calling my name. Her mouth wasn't moving. But our eyes met...she looked oddly anguished.

I turned back, feeling unsettled...kept walking. Another "James! James!".

I kept walking.
 
Last edited:
Wasn't sure which thread to put this one in as it's not a "voice" actually calling my name but definitely communication.

This happened mid 90's. I was driving home from London to where I lived on the south coast (Portsmouth). It was a Friday afternoon in September and the weather had stayed very hot. I was stuck in a traffic jam on the A3 road through Guildford (sorry international readers, this is a bit UK centric). I had the windows up and the AC on because of the heat and the air on recirculation because of the fumes. My fraternal grandmother had died a few years before. She's been a heavy smoker all her life until she had a heart attack in her 70's and gave up overnight. Instead, she took to eating cherry menthol flavoured cough sweets called "Tunes". She'd get through a couple of packs a day and consequently always reeked of the things. So I was sat in slow moving traffic when all of a sudden the car was absolutely full of the smell of these cherry cough sweets. It wasn't a vague smell, it was completely overpowering, like being in a bath of the things. I freaked out because I was in no doubt that my dead grandmother was sat in the car with me. I opened the door and basically threw myself out into the road. Looked back and, of course, no granny. No-one and nothing else in the car with me. The traffic started to move but I couldn't get back in the car. Traffic was trying to get round me and tooting. Eventually, I steeled myself and got back in the car. The smell had gone so I drove on, nervously glancing in the rear mirror every few seconds but saw or smelt nothing more.

I decided to drive to my parents and tell my dad what had happened. He'd been close to my grandmother (and I was her favourite grandchild) so thought it would bring him some comfort. But when I got back my parents were both sat in their living room looking shocked and ashen. My dad, who'd been pretty healthy had been feeling ill for a few weeks without telling anyone but had gone to the doctors the week before, been for tests and had that morning been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. So, I didn't tell him there and then about the experience and he died within six weeks but I did tell him before he died. It's the single, weirdest thing that's ever happened to me and I can't think of any other explanation other than my gran came back to tell me not to worry and show there's something beyond death.
 
What do we do about that tricky moment when you are just dropping off to sleep and realise that you really really need a wee...?
toilet-bed_o_2307919.jpg
 
Wasn't sure which thread to put this one in as it's not a "voice" actually calling my name but definitely communication.

This happened mid 90's. I was driving home from London to where I lived on the south coast (Portsmouth). It was a Friday afternoon in September and the weather had stayed very hot. I was stuck in a traffic jam on the A3 road through Guildford (sorry international readers, this is a bit UK centric). I had the windows up and the AC on because of the heat and the air on recirculation because of the fumes. My fraternal grandmother had died a few years before. She's been a heavy smoker all her life until she had a heart attack in her 70's and gave up overnight. Instead, she took to eating cherry menthol flavoured cough sweets called "Tunes". She'd get through a couple of packs a day and consequently always reeked of the things. So I was sat in slow moving traffic when all of a sudden the car was absolutely full of the smell of these cherry cough sweets. It wasn't a vague smell, it was completely overpowering, like being in a bath of the things. I freaked out because I was in no doubt that my dead grandmother was sat in the car with me. I opened the door and basically threw myself out into the road. Looked back and, of course, no granny. No-one and nothing else in the car with me. The traffic started to move but I couldn't get back in the car. Traffic was trying to get round me and tooting. Eventually, I steeled myself and got back in the car. The smell had gone so I drove on, nervously glancing in the rear mirror every few seconds but saw or smelt nothing more.

I decided to drive to my parents and tell my dad what had happened. He'd been close to my grandmother (and I was her favourite grandchild) so thought it would bring him some comfort. But when I got back my parents were both sat in their living room looking shocked and ashen. My dad, who'd been pretty healthy had been feeling ill for a few weeks without telling anyone but had gone to the doctors the week before, been for tests and had that morning been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. So, I didn't tell him there and then about the experience and he died within six weeks but I did tell him before he died. It's the single, weirdest thing that's ever happened to me and I can't think of any other explanation other than my gran came back to tell me not to worry and show there's something beyond death.
How very weird.
I'm sorry you lost your Dad.

We have threads on Signs from Beyond, possibly even 'smells' ones!

Someone close to me who loved to eat toast died. I'd often know he was home by the smell of toast.

Sometimes I can smell toast in my bedroom, at the front of the house away from the kitchen and nowhere near any neighbours' kitchens.
It makes me think of him.
 
How very weird.
I'm sorry you lost your Dad.

We have threads on Signs from Beyond, possibly even 'smells' ones!

Someone close to me who loved to eat toast died. I'd often know he was home by the smell of toast.

Sometimes I can smell toast in my bedroom, at the front of the house away from the kitchen and nowhere near any neighbours' kitchens.
It makes me think of him.
I must have missed the Signs from Beyond thread - Mods, feel free to move if more appropriate.

Thanks for that Escargot, although it was nearly thirty years ago now. Still miss him though.

Funnily enough, at my dad's funeral I told his brother's wife about the experience and she looked a bit stunned and said she'd had something similar happen. When her father had died she was going to bed one night and smelt her dad's hat which apparently had a very distinct smell. She said she shouted to my uncle "Quick, my dad's in the room" which unnerved him a bit but as he was walking from the bathroom to the bedroom wondering what the hell was going on she said she clearly sensed the smell drift across the room and float out of the open window

I also had an amazingly vivid dream about my dad after he died but will drop that in one of the dreams threads
 
I used to share a bedroom with my sister in the house we still live in. I can't remember how old I was but I think pre 13 years.
One night, I distinctly heard my name being called, repeatedly.. I was very upset with my sister who I thought was trying to scare me. I told her, tearfully to stop. She was sound asleep
 
micnocnac,

I has been suggested young children can sense spirits and ghosts, and can even project their own subconscious thoughts.

But just as a wild guess, this could have been a playful poltergeist.
 
It sounds like you were really scared, Nicnocnac. I hope there was someone there who could comfort you. (I assume if you succeeded in waking your sister, she was crabby and not likely to be very understanding.)

I'm wondering if your brain was going through some kind of normal development phase which manifested like that, or if there was a level of anxiety or stress in the household that affected you, or maybe both combined to create that experince. When I was about 11 I went through a phase of hearing my mother call my name as I was falling asleep, but it wasn't her. IIRC, there are significant milestones reached in brain development around the ages of 7 and 12, so I believe the maturing of my brain was a factor. But my family had just gone through a major, stressful change, too, and that had lingering effects on all of us.
 
I don't know why I haven't noticed this thread before, but I'm please others have had the same childhood experiences I had. This doesn't add anything to what's been said, really. But, as a child, I often heard my name spoken while I was in a room alone, lost in play. A few times, i 'knew' that a door (i wasn't looking at) had been opened and someone had looked around the door and spoken my name. When i looked, of course, nobody was there. I think i realised quite early that this was in my head and just happened every now and then, with only the slightest suspicion that it might be a ghost or sign of insanity. That 'knowing', being able to see in the 'mind's eye', something I'm not actually able to see reminds me of the couple of sleep paralysis experiences I've had. Especially the one where I woke under the bed sheet one summer and 'knew' I was being held down by grey aliens, and when I woke unable to move in the back of a truck and 'knew' Darth Vader was at the other end of the truck. My instinct is that, as a child, that state of intently being lost in a game could bring about the same kind of hypnogogic experience we often have on the brink of sleep.

Of course, I've often been woken by someone saying my name just as I was falling asleep.

In a noisier situation, i often think I hear my name spoken, but it's a single syllable, sort of formless name anyway, and I think my brain just picks it out from random background noise.
 
When I was a child playing outside I would often hear someone call my name. It was not a voice I recognized. When I was older I would sometimes hear a man call my name. But there was never anyone there so I just shrugged it off. It would be nice to know why this happens.
 
I had this a few weeks back while I was waiting for the car to go through it’s MOT. I was sitting in the Citroen showroom reading a newspaper, when I heard a voice nearby very clearly say “okay Dick, let’s get this sorted and you can be on your way”

I looked up expecting to see one of the Citroen reps addressing me, but no there was no one there. The Citroen reps were sitting a good 50 foot away at their desks, behind screens and wearing masks so it couldn’t have been them.

It must have been my imagination.
 
OTOH someone recently accosted me to ask why I hadn't responded when he and his girlfriend had shouted and waved at me as I cycled past in the street. They'd made quite a racket but I was in the zone and didn't hear a thing.
 
Back
Top