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Hypnagogic Voices

Female voice

Ok, so my most recent Fortean experience happened over the Festive season.

This is so vague and woolly, I wonder if it's worth posting it at all, but here we go (stay with me folks):

I was just on the edge of falling asleep, but almost caught in that 'my brain's still going nineteen-to-the-dozen' non-sleep, when I heard a female voice.
Not one I recognise, and I couldn't say if it was in the room or in my head, but there it was, a womans voice. I was so tired I can't remember what it said or if was even speaking to me.

So, my two theories on this are either I've had a spiritual contact from the other while my brain let me peep behind the curtain because I was knackered, or I'm becoming schizophrenic and I need brain drugs.

Where I sleep is very quiet - no passing traffic, everyone else already asleep and we're double glazed.

So answers on a postcard please...
 
I'm sure there's a thread around here about hearing voices on the verge of sleep. Anyone?
 
No probs ;)

TBH I've had similar encounters and I think, while I don't know your circumstances (for all I know, it could have been a ghost!!) I'd be more inclined to suggest you probably had a hypnagogic moment. I've had a number of similar experiences that have scared the hell out of me until I read up on the subject and even still, knowing it is a mundane experience doesn't always settle my fears when it happens.

I think one of the worst noises I heard was when I was a kid (about 10 or 11), reading in bed quite late at night and no doubt just about to doze off, when I experienced a very loud whistle in my ear. It sounded not unlike someone was blowing a ref's whistle. It freaked me out no end and I screamed the house down!
 
Hmm - my friends mother is a Spiritualist and suggested I talk to her about it, but my own feeling is tending toward the 'Noisy Brain' theory.

The only other occasion I can think of where I guess, with hindsight, it could have been the same thing was on holiday as a boy on Mull.
I heard the sound of a moth's (I suppose it could it have been any other large winged insect, I didn't see it after all) wings fluttering right next to/inside my ear.

Being phobic of such animals, I also proceeded to scream the house down! :lol:

This last incident didn't freak me out at all - rather I made a decision that I wasn't listening any more and more or less went to sleep.
 
Certainly a Hypnagogic event. I've had the same thing happen- drifting off and a female voice loudly calling my name. Also experienced loud "explosions" while on the verge of sleep that seemed to shake the house. The threads on hypnagogic events are full of this sort of stuff.
 
Yes these things occur each and every time you fall to sleep but I'll tell you all a secret, its something I haven't seen online anywhere. The state which the human brain is in while falling asleep is not a state of mind which keeps memorys. Therfor, we know its going on at the time, but you'll rarely ever remember it. The thoughts normally come from your own mind and are completely conjured up. Theres a phrase for these sounds, but it escapes me at the moment.
 
I used to get this same phenomena a lot, back when I was a young teen, and revising for tests & exams - so I was probably overtired late at night.

Is tinnitus hereditary? My Grandma had it, but she worked in a Cotton Mill, so it was understandable. And thinking on it, My Mum is going deaf, and my hearing's none too bright in "noisy" places - like nightclubs - I tend to withdraw into myself, to avoid the noise and so come across as miserable..
 
What's interesting is that I definitely felt it in my head (right, and to the back) rather than in my ear.
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I get that quite a lot, not just when I'm going to sleep, it's quite funny, esp. when the inside of your head almost seems to resonate with it...
 
Another helpful psychological term to explain this phenomenon is "confabulation" -- the tendency of a mind in a relaxed state to create highly elaborate details, stories, visions etc out of nothing. It is the same process that occurs in a sensory deprivation chamber. In the absence of sensory input, the mind will concoct its own sights/sounds to fill the void. Voila -- really purty visions.

Your experience has a lot of similar qualities -- a relaxed state of consciousness, a quiet and darkened room . . .

In a similar vein . . .

As a child, I used to be able to hear the most beautiful symphonic music that simply appeared in my head as I went to sleep. I was astounded at its elaborate compexity, complete with harmony and counterpoint and multiple instruments. It was classical music, but had a kind of loose, free-forming romantic quality to it, like aRachmonninof (sp?) piece. It still happens to me as an adult, but now (sadly) only once in a verrrrrry long time.
 
Just reading through some of the posts about hypnogogic sounds -

Is it me, or is there a high proportion of men who hear female voices?
Do women hear male voices?

Anyone got any ideas?
 
Hi Professor,

Thinking back to the time when I heard them, it was a 50:50 mix. All people I knew from school. I suppose if it is just inventing signal from noise, you'd make it fit where you'd heard it.

If it is tinnitus, likely it would be the top-end of your hearing which is getting the noise anyway, so the most obvious way you'd "hear" it would be as female voices, as they would be in most people's upper registers anyway.

I say "likely" - as I'm using how my Grandmother described her tinnitus as being the "normal" state of it - she heard the ringing of the cotton looms years after she stopped working in the mills.
 
i always hear banging, usually sounding like they're coming from my front door (I live in flats, so my front door is inside the building, so only one of the other two tenants could do it, and I'd hear them coming up the stairs). Always just as i'm trying to go to sleep, and usually as i'm almost gone - it always shocks me to full wakefulness again. the other night it happened as i was fully asleep, and totally enjoying a very good Stargate Atlantis based dream. (Total Fangirl here)

Anyway, does anyone know why it happens? I read a theory (probably here) that the whole waking up with a bump cos you think you're falling sensation is to do with when we used to sleep in trees...but what reason could there be for our subconcsious waking us up with loud banging and explosions?
 
When I drank more I used to hear them quite frequently. Usually it was just my name being called, or sometimes sharply shouted, like when I was in trouble with my mom as a kid. Mostly female voices IIRC. The strangest and most complete hypnagogic message I ever heard said "you will live to be 99 years old." I remember thinking to myself, what's the point of living to be nearly 100 and then dying? Kind of like Moses not being allowed to live to see the promised land.

At any rate, I'll post to the board in 59 years if I get to 99. :p
 
I know the discussion has moved on from individual instances of hypnogogic speech, but last night I had one which I thought was quite poetic in its way. As I was dozing off, I was thinking about an old videogame (perhaps Marble Madness, although I can't be sure), and I heard a male voice say, "You control him like a private lion!"
 
Well Marble Madness will definitely mess withy your brain. :lol:
 
I often hear voices when falling asleep or waking up. When falling asleep they don't bother me but when waking they usually have the effect of jerking me into full consciousness. They are purely a natural phenomenon, I am convinced of that. When falling asleep or waking our brain is in an "in between" state, neither fully awake or fully asleep, so it's not surprising that seemingly curious things can happen at those times. It's nothing to be concerned about and there's no spooky business going on.
 
It's reassuring to hear so many other accounts of this kind of phenomenon. For a while during my early teens, I'd experience this far more often, and more vividly, than I do now. On speaking to other people about it, who denied knowing about anything of the sort, I was convinced I was going mad.

I once heard a woman book a flight to Dublin for about five minutes. That was my most vivid one, I think, but crikey knows where that came from!
 
I often 'hear' the doorbell on waking. I want to go back to sleep but end up checking the door just in case. By the time I get there I realise it's far too early for the postman and that there's no hope of getting back to sleep now.

It happened once when staying at my parents house for the night. I was the only one there in the morning, so felt obliged to get up and check, in case of missing a delivery or something. I got right to the door before remembering that they don't have, and never have had a doorbell... :roll:
 
wairddeb said:
I often 'hear' the doorbell on waking. I want to go back to sleep but end up checking the door just in case. By the time I get there I realise it's far too early for the postman and that there's no hope of getting back to sleep now.

It happened once when staying at my parents house for the night. I was the only one there in the morning, so felt obliged to get up and check, in case of missing a delivery or something. I got right to the door before remembering that they don't have, and never have had a doorbell... :roll:
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I hear that bell as well sometimes and it is not real, a distict "ding-dong" in my head, so much that I sit up.
I also [more often] hear a hypnagogic "knock". I wear earplugs but I sometimes can hear a clear knock, just like knuckles on wood. At the start I used to get up and have a look, now I know they are in my head but I still have to ask my husband if he had heart something [which he hasn't, even if he is awake next door when I've already gone to bed.
 
This experience was of true divine as far as I could tell, however the voice was not of my conscious / sub conscious.

My friends and I when we hit 19 went to a local hang out called Wasaga Beach. This is a very great party place of biker gangs and teenagers looking to get wasted and laid.

On our way there, my friend took a wrong cut off, 3 hours later back on track we missed the exit, accidentally smacking his shift into reverse while going about 100 KM, surprisingly the engine didn't actually start smoking and quit on us until we were about 5 KM from the main drag of the motel where we were staying.

All of us had cell phones, none but myself had signal. No phone book or local contacts there was farm country quite aways away. My friend and I left the working cell with our friend to call his parents about their car while we searched for a toe truck company and garage to take the car to.

The first guys house was like walking into the back woods country where you expected the Manson family to live and the guy was piss drunk and not looking to help or even be social. We apologized and went even further down the road to the next farm.

I got to the house and peered in the window. Their was dust on the table like it had been there for weeks. All the china was there, the tea cuts on little plates, sugar, creme bowls, spoons and crumbs left on the plates. I knocked and got no answer, walked around back to check the barn, no one around and the barn had slaughtering tools for cattle.

At the end of their drive way they have those old style mail boxes with the red flag that when up indicates there's mail there. I was pretty disappointed and frantic on what to do at this point as the next house was at least a 20 minute walk and I was feeling quite lazy. The mailbox rod was down however inside my head in a voice I never heard before or since said for me to " Check the Mailbox ".

It was definably consciously advised like I would hear if I were running down a list of groceries in my head or a to do list, but the voice was so foreign to me I was just side walled when I opened it to discover a brand new phone book still in its wrapping.

This however absurd is an actual true account that can be backed up by an eye witness of the time, as I explained to him that the voice told me to check, he looked at me because the red thing was down indicating there's nothing in there ( maybe I have it backwards? lol wouldn't that be funny ) none the less I have never heard this voice again and felt obliged to share this interesting experience.
 
Auditory hallucinations're being discussed on R4's Woman's Hour, any minute now. 8)

That's after the domestic violence report, where a man has just described having a full kettle of boiling water poured over his groin. :shock:
 
escargot1 said:
Auditory hallucinations're being discussed on R4's Woman's Hour, any minute now. 8)

That's after the domestic violence report, where a man has just described having a full kettle of boiling water poured over his groin. :shock:
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I bet anyone in the vicinity of that would be hearing strange voices, too - ouch!

Excuse me while I cross my legs...
 
He then stayed put while she reboiled the kettle and did it again!

At this point the voice of Jenni Murray intervened and I had to turn off the radio.

I am relieved to find this really was on Radio 4 today and not a hypnagogic episode. :shock:
 
He also sat all night with lit cigarettes up his nose. :shock:
 
escargot1 said:
He also sat all night with lit cigarettes up his nose. :shock:
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Which way around, though?

One way would constitute a talent; the other, probably not.
 
Hearng your name called

This used to always happen to me as a child. and no, it was not at night, usually, and I was not tired. I do not have schizophrenia (and btw, there are many more symptoms that would go along with that one).
I always thought it was my parents calling me from downstairs (my room was upstairs) and frequenly I would answer them only to find out they did not call me.
One of my daughters has this same experince regularly.
Funny someone mentioned tinnitus because I have that on a regular daily basis. Recently, I experienced some all of the sudden hearing loss after taking an ototoxic antibiotic (Keflex). I self treated with cortisone and some got better. I also had simultaneous laryngitis, no fluid in the ears, which we do seem to have ocassionally, but this was different; I could not pop my ears. Two different audiologists had a differing opinion. One said sensorineural heaing loss from the antibiotic and the other said otosclerosis due to familail inheritance. I think both are correct. I probably have a mixed hearing loss.
I do know that when one has a hearing loss, sounds do build up in your head because they are improperly transmitted (or lack of transmission) in the brain and the sounds have to go somewhere. When all is quiet, the sounds start firing in the brain.
My tinnitus occurs so regular that I started keeping a daily log and it occurs several times a day. I have no loud noise related hearing loss, no loud music, no heavy machinery, but just plain mixed hearing loss that appears to be in my genes. Even the antibiotic thing, it appears that the tendency to react to such things are in my genes.
Does anyone know if PHANTOM DOORBELLS at 3 am are related to tinnitus? Usually, but not always, I am awoke from a deep sleep to a doorbell ringing No one is at the door, and I gave up checking long ago. And, hmmm,the ring is usually different, but sometimes the same. Sometimes ding, ding, ding for instance, and sometimes ding dong. Not meaning to be funny or anything, but I do hear this and I started documenting the times and dates. The last two occurred on August 19th, which just happened to be the birthdate of my dead best friend. Then the next day or so (I would have to look at the log), I heard a doorbell, but at a strange time since they are usually during the wee morning hours. The time read 715am. At first, I just looked at my phone clock and wrote the time down in my notebook I had near my bed. Then I took a second look. Reading it in a dyslexic sort of way backwards, it read LISAM. My best friend's name was Lisa M. I was freaked a little, but not really much. Moreso, I was just surprised. I have not heard the bell since, but I am sure I will hear it again. Oh and one more thing, I never heard phantom doorbells until I moved to this house (been here a year). Coincidence? Maybe. Progressive hearing loss? Maybe.
A lot of strange things have happened to me in the last 6 years. Huge Lightening balls in my living room (different house), for one.
I used to think I was nuts too, but now I just chalk it up to strange phenomena. :D
Susan
 
I definitely have the 3 o'clock bell and I used to fall for it, however now I know it is not our bell because it is out of order. Mine is usually a long shrill ring, not a ding-dong.
I also hear "knocking".
 
I had quite a lot to drink last night, passed out on the divan thing in the living room, came round at around 4am and went to bed. Nothing particularly unusual in that, I'm afraid. Slightly less common is the fact that it was raining very heavily when I woke up - there's been no rain here since November when we had the cyclone, but you could feel it coming over the last few days.

Anyway, so I went to bed. No one else was in the house.

I was awoken sometime later by the sound of knocking. It wasn't loud, it stopped the moment I opened my eyes. I'm guessing it was around 6am, it was starting to get light. No one is going to be knocking gently at my house at six in the morning, they're going to be beating the door down, screaming 'fire!' or something, or leaving me well alone, but it was still 'real' enough that I got up and opened the door. Nothing and no one, of course. So I went back to bed and back to sleep. And was awoken a further THREE times by the sound of someone saying my name, the one I introduce myself as (it's not my full name) in a strangely androgenous, calm but firm voice just by my right ear.

It definitely seemed to be coming from outside my head, a real voice, not a thought, and the intonation was exactly the sort you would use if you were trying to wake someone up quickly but without scaring them half to death. It didn't sound like my voice, either as I hear it or on recordings, nor the voice of anyone I know, in fact it was peculiarly characterless, almost like a synthetically generated 'average' voice, neither male nor female, young nor old etc etc.

Anyway, there you go. Hypnopompic, if not hypnogogic noises and voices.

In the end I gave in and got up and made a brew. There does not yet seem to be any reason why I needed to get up early or anything.

Oddly, I have heard the sound of someone breathing as if they were asleep, while I have been alone in this house (and wide awake), loud and real enough that I actually went to investigate, and it seemed loudest in the spare room, but that room has no glass in the windows, only mosquito netting, so I put it down to maybe some loud sleeper in the next house.
 
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