Have you ever heard a phantom sound that everyone else in the room, animals included, seems to have heard?
A bunch of us, me my brothers, and some friends, were down in the rec room playing cards. We were laughing and having a good ol' time, and granted we were pretty noisy, but it was card-game noisy. All of a sudden my parents come bursting through the door with worried looks on their faces asking if everyone's all right. They had heard something that sounded, they said, like a piano being knocked over. They swore they heard a crash accompanied by breaking wood and snapping stirngs. Well, there was a piano in the room, and one up in the front room, but neither one had been touched. The lids were closed and we hadn't heard a thing except for our own noise. We figured that they were probably half-asleep while watching TV and heard something either on TV or outside, and they just played off of each other's reactions.
Several years later, my husband and I were in our own front room talking about what we were planning for the weekend. The TV was off, it was just us and our two cats, who were sitting on the window sill. Suddenly there was this huge crashing sound from the bedroom. It sounded like the closet had exploded. The house sounded, but didn't feel, like it had been shaken to its foundation. There was breaking glass and the sound of a lot of stuff falling. We jumped out of our chairs at the same time, and the cats freaked out royally. They dove for the kitchen and hid behind the garbage can while we headed for the bedroom, fully expecting to see a car crashed through the wall. Nothing was out of place. Our next step was to look outside, but all we saw was the neighborhood in its evening colors. An inspection of the back and side yards revealed nothing unusual.
One more unusual sound related thing involved the front door opening. I was doing the dishes one weeknight. My husband gets home around 7:00, so I was surprised to hear the front door open at around 5:30 and his voice calling out 'hello'. The cat, who was sitting by the sink and swatting at the bubbles, hopped off the counter to go for the front door (he always greets my husband when he comes home). I turned around and said "You're home early", but all I saw was the cat staring at a closed and still-locked door. The cat was in a defensive stance, ears folded back and tail down.
The presence of witnesses, even if it was just the cat, precludes it from being a hallucination. Is there any credibility to the idea of mass hallucinations, or has anybody experienced anything like this?
I've also had similar experiences, with witnesses, involving shadows. I was inside a building in a windowless conference room talking with a co-worker when a shadow passed between us. There was nobody else in the area and I thought it had just been me, but then he asked "What the hell was that?" In another incident, I was in the warehouse with the boss going over the inventory when this small shadow started darting around the warehouse at incredible speed. We both saw it and thought it was an animal that had gotten in, but although we gave chase, we never saw more than a blurry, silent shadow. Something similar disrupted a card game in the rec room (seperate incident from the falling piano).
:shrug:
A bunch of us, me my brothers, and some friends, were down in the rec room playing cards. We were laughing and having a good ol' time, and granted we were pretty noisy, but it was card-game noisy. All of a sudden my parents come bursting through the door with worried looks on their faces asking if everyone's all right. They had heard something that sounded, they said, like a piano being knocked over. They swore they heard a crash accompanied by breaking wood and snapping stirngs. Well, there was a piano in the room, and one up in the front room, but neither one had been touched. The lids were closed and we hadn't heard a thing except for our own noise. We figured that they were probably half-asleep while watching TV and heard something either on TV or outside, and they just played off of each other's reactions.
Several years later, my husband and I were in our own front room talking about what we were planning for the weekend. The TV was off, it was just us and our two cats, who were sitting on the window sill. Suddenly there was this huge crashing sound from the bedroom. It sounded like the closet had exploded. The house sounded, but didn't feel, like it had been shaken to its foundation. There was breaking glass and the sound of a lot of stuff falling. We jumped out of our chairs at the same time, and the cats freaked out royally. They dove for the kitchen and hid behind the garbage can while we headed for the bedroom, fully expecting to see a car crashed through the wall. Nothing was out of place. Our next step was to look outside, but all we saw was the neighborhood in its evening colors. An inspection of the back and side yards revealed nothing unusual.
One more unusual sound related thing involved the front door opening. I was doing the dishes one weeknight. My husband gets home around 7:00, so I was surprised to hear the front door open at around 5:30 and his voice calling out 'hello'. The cat, who was sitting by the sink and swatting at the bubbles, hopped off the counter to go for the front door (he always greets my husband when he comes home). I turned around and said "You're home early", but all I saw was the cat staring at a closed and still-locked door. The cat was in a defensive stance, ears folded back and tail down.
The presence of witnesses, even if it was just the cat, precludes it from being a hallucination. Is there any credibility to the idea of mass hallucinations, or has anybody experienced anything like this?
I've also had similar experiences, with witnesses, involving shadows. I was inside a building in a windowless conference room talking with a co-worker when a shadow passed between us. There was nobody else in the area and I thought it had just been me, but then he asked "What the hell was that?" In another incident, I was in the warehouse with the boss going over the inventory when this small shadow started darting around the warehouse at incredible speed. We both saw it and thought it was an animal that had gotten in, but although we gave chase, we never saw more than a blurry, silent shadow. Something similar disrupted a card game in the rec room (seperate incident from the falling piano).
:shrug: