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.