Does anyone else picture random places in their heads when reading, that has nothing to do with the story??

[Ethelfleda]

I don’t know if it is a form of synesthesia??

This will make probably very little sense for anyone who doesn’t also experience this but I will try and explain it.

For a good long while now, I have noticed that when I read certain text - such as a book or a thread on MN - I have a very real sense of imagining a place connected to it. It’s always a place I know, and always in my home town and always very specific.

For example, when I was reading a specific book recently, in my head I was vividly picturing a place around the corner from me, under a railway bridge as though I was in the middle of the road. Had nothing to do with the book.

I’ve just been researching a bit of software all day and in my head, I am involuntarily imagining standing outside a shop in the town centre, with my back to the shop, looking up the street at the church - again absolutely nothing to do with what I am reading??

Sometimes, I have read threads on MN and I have been up the far corner of the B&Q car park.

Can anyone relate to this at all or do I sound batshit??

No you don’t sound batshit. I’m wondering if something you’re reading say On MN is reminding you of something you were doing or thinking of back when you were, say, in that B&Q carpark - does that make sense??

Memory can be triggered by many things.

Also, I quite liked your post because when you described being in your home town under a bridge, I could picture exactly that. But it was a place from my hometown instead. Interesting!

Yes, I understand just what you mean. I have synaesthesia too ( colours/ names/ days of the week/ numbers) Also see numbers/dates in lines stretching forward and back in space.
I also see landscapes when I look at corners of rooms ( sounds totally batshit) sometimes see them when I meet new people, like seeing them in a scene

Oh my GOSH I do this! I had no idea anyone else did! Would love it if anyone could shed any light on it.

OP mine are often corner-of-B&Q-carpark-type places too, I dread to think what that might say about me if I had to explain it to a psychologist.!

Yes! First noticed this years ago reading the Sue Grafton novels (A for Alibi etc...) as a teenager. I used to image my classroom from infant school. No idea why, a classroom in an English village school had no bearing whatsoever on a Californian based crime novel. Years later, like 20 years, picked up one of the books from the series, I'd not read but same characters, and there I was back in that classrom. Od totally forgotten the association until then. Just why? Happened quite a bit but that's the strongest example.

Also see days, numbers letters as colours etc.

I’m so glad I am not the only one!
The seeing numbers and dates thing - how do you see them?? In your mind’s eye or physically in front of you?
I see days of the week/months of the year/years of the past 20 years or so in my minds eye as a sort of linear structure. It’s hard to explain but it’s in my mind’s eye and I don’t think it aids my memory of dates or anything - thought it was just normal!

Me! I thought I was uniquely weird! Eg for a book set in the Californian redwoods, my mind set the “stage” as Bracknell railway station booking office/concourse pre-regeneration... a weird hybrid of forest wilderness and concrete jungle

The thing is, the place I see isn’t connected to the reading of the story if that makes sense. Imagining the story as the author intended happens simultaneously. So the place I imagine isn’t the stage for the book - it is just ‘there’ in my head

I get this too! You've articulated it so well. The place has no relation to what I'm reading either and the same text will always be "set" in the same place no matter how long ago I first read it.
I also see time as a structure- in a forest I used to visit as a child.
I bet loads of people have really weird mental perceptions of things but don't share them because they feel like they sound bonkers!

BahHumbygge that sounds the same type of thing I have. I have a strange hybrid of Californian Private Eye and an infant's classroom.

God, I’m going to regret posting this.

I think I get something similar but when DTD It’s not all the time - probably 50-75%? But out of apparently nowhere, random places from my memories will suddenly come into my mind’s eye. It’s not fleeting but very pronounced and my mind goes back to the same place repeatedly during sex. It’s not a ‘floaty’ reminiscence / conscious type of thing - it’s very distinct and definite and I guess would be described as intrusive, though the places don’t bother me - it’s just really strange.

I see dates and years as a linear stepping structure in my minds eye. I am terrible at maths (can’t do mental arithmetic because I can’t hold double digits in my mind) and calendars really confuse me. You would think it would be the other way round?
Terrible with faces too, but that’s as I’ve got older weirdly.
The weird landscapes around a person or object is a sort of projection of my minds eye on to the them. I did wonder When I was younger if it was a sort of Psychic sense but that seems a bit far fetched Oh and when I have to address envelopes for work, I can see what the house and surroundings are like (Have no idea if I’m accurate however) . Not romantically, like a seaside cliff top cottage but in a more prosaic sense. Very badly explained, sorry.

Gosh we sound a right bunch of weirdos.

I see days, months, years as shades of grey. And when I read I do picture places I've been, often! Not just you OP

Gosh we sound a right bunch of weirdos

All the best people are