4 different people, all hearing the same creepy thing.

[applemousey]

Sorry, I did post this in health but got very little response. I'm wondering if anyone has experienced this, or has any idea what it could be? (Spoken to neighbours, no church/shops close by)

My grandmother has been declining with what seems the beginning of dementia for a couple of years. She's now in palliative at home, (cancer) with my DF staying there.

She complained of 'church music' a few years ago every night, keeping her awake. Also the neighbours were 'having parties' playing 1920s music. It was assumed by family (and drs) it was the onset of dementia.

A year ago my aunt and uncle stayed there (they live overseas) and my uncle complained of the music keeping him awake.

My DF stayed a few months back and heard it himself. He looked everywhere and couldn't find it, it had woken him up.

The care nurse who has been staying overnight, unprompted said she had heard the music, she said it's quite common, she's heard it before in other dying patients homes as well as other nurses reporting similar experiences. Just wondering if anyone has had this before? All I can find online is audible hallucinations, but surely this can't happen with 4 separate people? And is there a logical explanation?

When staying in a hotel room once I was sure I could hear a dog barking in the distance. Turned out the noise was coming from the mini bar. And no there was no dog in there!

The brain can't bear silence and fills it with inner noise.

See the experiments held in a sound proof chamber, where people reported hearing all kinds of music, from brass bands to pop songs. Just as they brain fills in most details for the eye (you aren't really seeing what you think you are seeing), it does the same for the ear.

If someone has said that they've thought they heard a particular type of noise, then that's what everyone will hear. Suggestion is also a powerful influence on the brain.

About 2 years before stepdad diagnosed with lung cancer he swore blind that he heard a child in the cupboard under the stairs shouting for help and saying don't leave me.... They lived in a flat for 10 years! And he said people were coming to get him, mother even took him to the police station because he was terrified. Happened twice and then nothing. He had all sorts of tests and they found nothing. I still think it was the very start of the cancer.

People have heard radio broadcasts through their dentures.

I wonder whether there is something in the house that is similarly acting as a receiver?

@BlackAmericanoNoSugar

Also noise works weirdly depending on the direction of the wind and atmospheric conditions. There could be music playing quite a long distance away, like choir or church organ practise, but it's only audible in the care home occasionally. I live a reasonable distance from a tram line, about 10% of the time I can hear the sound of wheels on track when I'm in bed really clearly, the rest of the time I can't hear it at all or it's so faint that it's barely noticeable.

Interesting you say this, I've noticed a similar thing. I am 1 mile from my local church and 3 miles from local rail station (rural yorkshire). I cn't hear it usually but if the wind is right I'll hear them practising bell ringing on a Tuesday when they have their practice or the occasional train whistle - but can't hear them unless the conditions/wind is right. It's interesting how sound can carry sometimes.

@ConquestEmpireHungerPlague

I had no idea! I’m pretty sure it was the priest who lives in the attached house, I know he plays. The church itself was locked up except for a few funerals. A church, bending the rules... who’d have thought it... 😁🤪

Lack of oxygen can cause stuff like this to happen.

Is there a carbon monoxide detector in the house?

I have had tinnitus since January. I can sometimes hear music but weirdly I can hear my own heartbeat very loudly in my ears. GP said it was a physical symptom of the stress I am going through at the moment. BF is a nurse and she has experienced it too and has also been under a lot of stress with family health problems. It could be that. I wouldn’t worry unless it upsets her. Then you could get a priest to the house. I was sceptical until our priest had been to a house and said it was the worst he had been to and it happened I knew the family through work. They had loud music but scarily objects moving like they were thrown. It was in the local papers. It stopped after he had been a couple of times.

Some churches have been allowed to stream Mass and some have had music. Just the priest and an organist or occasionally no organist and a reader who might sing one hymn at the end.

I expect it's music being played a few houses away as sound travels differently when it's night and there's less ambient noise to drown it out.

Maybe it’s a hotspot for people to pick up Radio 3 in their amalgam fillings.

Is there a fan in the house? This can pick up radio waves

@ArriettyJones

People have heard radio broadcasts through their dentures.

I wonder whether there is something in the house that is similarly acting as a receiver?

Woah really? How?

I'd wonder about things like baby monitors or old-fashioned radios picking up unintended frequencies (like when we could tune our baby monitor into taxi-drivers' radio calls).

You wont be able to do that anymore as most all Taxi companies use smartfones to track jobs and use the phone bit of the smartfone to talk to base when needed!..

Radio waves are even weirder, people have heard radio stations from irons and fans, unplugged fans.

Well if you live in the nice little village of Wychbold thats near Droitwich spa ( 198 Khz radio 4) or Brookmans park (Radio 5 live 909 Khz) and a few other choice places you'll know all about un intentional radio break through! This is where radio signals are de modulated by devices that won't normally do that like the bur - bur - bur you'll get if a mobile phone is near to computer speakers and the like.

However quite what old near death demented people may or may not hear .. another matter!

Using my TV fantasy brain, I would suspect the care nurse. She claims she's heard it in other homes, nobody can find the source of the music and she seems to be creating the most 'woo' about it, so based on my vast knowledge of television shows, she is an unsettled person who likes to make people think there are ghosts in care homes

Honestly though, I know some people might roll their eyes reading things like this but I know strange stuff does happen. I'm very keen for you to find out where the noise is coming from, because it doesn't sound nice at all for your DGM.

People have heard radio broadcasts through their dentures

Usually a metal paste almagram (chek spulling) this isnt that far off from what old Marconi used to receive broadcasts on back when radio was being devloped, it was sometimes refered to as a cats wisker!

Given the right sort of metals and a strong enough radio signal it can and does happen!.

Either to the amusement or annoyance of those thus affected!

We sleep with open windows and often I hear music which turns out to be distant motorway noise, trains shunting or some agricultural noises

Does your gran have an analogue phone attached to her landlines rather than a digital one?

Years ago, when I moved house, I woke up the night after my housewarming party to hear voices. Scared the crap out of me! Later discovered that it was coming through the phone. Next door neighbour was a CB radio fan and analogue phone was picking up the signal.

He gave me a widget to loop the phone wire round that blocked the signal.

If it is that replacing the analogue phone with a DECT one would work.

Am also completely on board with the woo element fwiw!

@JudyGemstone @Justaboy

I first read about it 25 years or more ago but I just googled &!it seems it’s been discussed all over the internet, and, yes, amalgam fillings do seem to feature a lot too justa.

www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/brace-yourself-for-some-news-on-the-radio/article6122691/

mythbusters.fandom.com/wiki/Tooth_Fillings_Radio_Myth

www.quora.com/Are-there-actually-any-confirmed-cases-of-people-picking-up-radio-signals-in-their-dental-fillings-and-what-are-they

I've told this tale on here before....

Years ago DH and I were convinced our house was haunted. Most evenings, just before midnight we could hear a disjointed piano. Like a child hitting keys and not letting go. It was the weirdest thing.
Not being especially woo we stripped the bedroom completely to find the source of the noise, emptied every wardrobe and found nothing.

We spoke to the lady next door, older, single lady, zero pianos. We were beaten. The noise was clearly in our bedroom but the source unknown.

About a week later I had cause to go in the loft, it was only part boarded and on moving about in a certain area I heard that familiar note of a key being pressed down. Looked down and there, wedged under the joist, was a character piano that had belonged to DD as a baby. Turned out, as the heat was rising and cooling in the house there was just enough movement at the end of the day to press down on a sensitive keyboard key. I'd never have believed it had I not seen it myself.

To this day we joked of how we spent a month, haunted by Winnie the Pooh!

I think the problem with 'woo acceptance' is not the acceptance itself, that there could be more in heaven and earth than we shall ever know, it is the tendency towards lazy incuriosity that it can engender.

So do we explore every possible means of discovering an explanation; then, if none is forthcoming, keep an open mind and admint we don't know? Or do we shrug and say 'might be woo, don't be so closedminded'?

The latter position is actually the closed-minded one, as the mind is neither open, nor curious.

AriettyJones fascinating!

@lottiegarbanzo

I think the problem with 'woo acceptance' is not the acceptance itself, that there could be more in heaven and earth than we shall ever know, it is the tendency towards lazy incuriosity that it can engender.

So do we explore every possible means of discovering an explanation; then, if none is forthcoming, keep an open mind and admint we don't know? Or do we shrug and say 'might be woo, don't be so closedminded'?

The latter position is actually the closed-minded one, as the mind is neither open, nor curious.

I don't agree. I'm into woo (have been involved in paranormal investigations) but in many cases, an earthly explanation is there. Keeping your mind open isn't about keeping it closed to earthly explanations. It's about keeping your mind open to all possibilities.

That's great that you do investigate.

What I'd read upthread though was, to paraphrase, people saying 'why don't you just accept it might be woo?'

The implication being, cease investigation, stop believing that there's probably a physical explanation, embrace woo.

Bit like Aliens, never see 'em traipsing up Watford high St on a Saturday afternoon do you?

I mean if they were here what'd stop them doing that?..