Does anyone else have this? Imagining places!

[TheCatOnMorrisseysHead]

Random but had a conversation with DH and DD earlier where we were talking about how you picture things in your head that you read about. This led to me explaining that I often imagine places I'm reading about in books etc as places that I've literally been to, but which have absolutely nothing to do with the place or thing. They looked at me like I was mad and said no one else does this.

That's confusing the way I've explained it but for example, when reading a book recently about the Beatles I realised that I imagined the interior of the Abbey Road studios as being in the huge room that I was taught A Level Art in. This room was a classroom not associated with music at all, but that's how I've pictured Abbey Road studios for years. Even seeing photos of the interior of the studio hasn't stopped me picturing it this way. Another example is the room in the Tower of London where a famous prisoner was kept in a book I read recently. I'd heard the story of this historical figure's imprisonment before and I realised that the room I always picture them being kept in is a large studio-type room that was in an outhouse in my grandparents garden, despite it not fitting the time period or anything like that.

I don't think that I imagine these places due to having first heard the story/read the book or newspaper article or whatever in these particular rooms/locations. It's like my brain just does it randomly, with no rhyme or reason for the connection.

FWIW I also have synesthesia (the thing where you “see” or associate letters or words and numbers with specific colours or smells or tastes) which I wonder if could be connected.

So, does anyone else have something like this or am I as mad as DH and DD have made me feel?

You mean other people don't do this?

Weird.

It's called aphantasia - inability to visualise

Same goes for inner voice- spice in your head. Some people have it, some don't.

I have both images and voice.

*voice in your head.

I do this (and have the voice as well) with books. Lots of books are bits of random places all over the country if not the world in my imagination!
As an aside, with the voice thing, I loved being able to read aloud to DC and actually do the voices as I read them (or as close as you can without being Scottish or male etc).

Yes, I do that and I also have imaginary landscapes that might begin from a real life version of the same.
For example, there was a small hump backed bridge in the next lane, which led on to another lane, leading to a school.
My version was that the bridge was more exaggeratedly humpy and led on to a lane that went on to a large curved bay, so that you could look down on to the sea and a small fishing village.

I've found my people! I knew that I wasn't alone in this.

I don't think that have this. I can visualise and imagine things perfectly, it's just that sometimes my brain doesn't and instead throws up a weird place that I've been go before to be "it" of whatever I'm reading. Doesn't even matter if that place is described in the prose/story I'm hearing and the place my brain has latched onto doesn't resemble it in the slightest.

Yes I do this, but isn't that what all "picturing" is? Your brain can modify things or mash together lots of images but it's all based on things you've seen before and sometimes can be entirely random. When I watch adaptations of books I often think that doesn't look like it does in my head, but also what's in my head sometimes doesn't really fit the description in the book, it's just what popped into my brain while reading and it stuck!

Sort of like when you dream and you have that thing of "the evil witch, who was also somehow my high school chemistry teacher..."