You may have once seen a giant face in the clouds. Perhaps it took you aback, amused you, or maybe it prompted an “uncanny valley” kind of sensation — realness, but with a lingering unease.
One commenter writes: “I thought I was going crazy. When my air conditioner is on, I wake up and hear light conversations. I would go to the window to see if anyone was outside, or I would turn the air conditioner off [and] it would stop. Sometimes it sounds like a radio.”
Another, more at-ease commenter, writes about her similar experience of hearing voices from the sound of central air control: “I would hear faint voices-whispering, conversing, singing, or chanting! It sounded like a crowded room, full of people at a party in a distant room somewhere in the building. After a while I came to enjoy the sound, as they seemed to be enjoying themselves at the ‘party,’ and it helped lull me to sleep at night.”
“Since our past experience, and the most complex auditory analysis we do, is mostly concerned with listening to other people, I suspect this is why the patterns we perceive in noise are mostly speech,” he said.
The difference between what normal people and patients hear, Remez explained, is that normal people realize a strange sound is a hallucination, while patients perceive it as real and intended.
If you hear a symphony in Manhattan traffic, thank your auditory pareidolia for relieving your stress.
Originally published at Cogly.
