Did I have a hallucination?

[Dilbertian]

At work today I distinctly heard a male colleague behind me call me by my first name. I turned around to respond, but there was nobody there. The female colleague I had been talking to looked at me in a puzzled way - she hadn't seen or heard anything. And anyway the male colleague would have called me Mrs Dilbertian. I'm not sure he even knows my first name.

What happened? I'm slightly weirded out!

You heard something, you were distracted and your brain filled in the gaps.

Auditory hallucinations are not that rare and can be linked to stress, certain medications and more recently to Covid. Also. We are so attuned to listening out for our own names that if there was a noise that had the same resonance as your name your brain may have registered it as your name. If it’s a one off I wouldn’t worry about it.

I know about that automatic filling the gap, because I do it visually. This was different. It felt so real. What got me was not that I thought I heard my name, but that I knew exactly who had spoken and where he was standing.

Interesting experience.