Here's something strange involving sounds

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:

 

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We had a similiar experience, however we later heard a plaza had blown up a mile away, and the explosion killed 7 and shook our home. Sonic booms? Do you live near an airport? I would like to offer paranormal explanations, however sound can carry great distances. As for when you husband came home, it could be expectation and imagination working together. Our office has some noisy equipment that when going you can hear almost any song that's in your head playing on the radio, but when the machines shut down, it is something totally different.

Who knows? maybe googling the subject will find you some similiar stories.

 

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Well, nothing in town blew up, and the airport we live near can't handle anything larger than a learjet. Now that you mention it, we do have warbirds fly overhead quite frequently, moreso since the war started. We're realtively close to an Army depot and an ammunition plant, but wouldn't that have tripped the car alarms in the neighborhood if anything blew up there? Nothing in the news, but I know the government doesn't like to admit when they've screwed up. Also, nobody else seemed to have heard it. Maybe they just weren't paying attention? (Some amazing things get by these people, I swear...)

For my husband's voice, I'm still wondering about the cat's reaction. He responded as though he'd heard it, too. He had run for the door before I turned around and spoke.

I still have no clue about the falling piano, although once when I was young we were having dinner when the strings on my dad's guitar suddenly sounded. Not all of them, just a couple. That drove us up the walls for a long time until I saw it happen again. A fly had bounced off the strings!

 

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Events or rather aspects of events do sometimes seem to jump around in time occasionally, i believe positrons are known to move backwards/forwards in time. Id speculate that macro events can achieve this also, although its relatively rare and unpredictible in comparison.
In any case ive seen and heard enough multiple witness reports to pretty accurately conclude that its not just people being weird.
Ive also heard these types of events are most likely to happen in areas with high electro-magnetic fields.
Seems to be the only common link there is with these sorts of events, live anywhere near a fault line? :shrug:

 

The cat proberly sighted a other cat and went defensivly to the front door (I asume it has a window near to it). You saw the cat leaving and asociated it with former behavior.

 

orcot- Feasible, although that's not his normal behavior for spotting a strange cat, plus the window wasn't visible from the kitchen. Maybe he heard something else.

heliocentric- In the piano dropping episode, we lived in downtown San Jose, so the San Andreas Fault would be the culprit. I'm pretty sure Modesto has a faultline nearby, too. Can't think of the name. Calaveras? And with the piano incident, although we were being fairly rowdy, surely we would have heard something? The rec room was almost right below the front room. Can nature focus soundwaves like that? (I know technology can.)

 

I was visiting my mother's house in New Jersey when I was living in North Carolina with my girlfriend at the time.
It was the night before halloween (mischief night, goosey night, whatever you call it where you are).
We were both asleep in the living room in the middle of the night.
We were woken up by a very loud crash (it sounded like a large pane of glass being shattered) and it sounded very close (I thought someone broke the storm door or broke something on the porch).
We both looked at each other, wondering if the other heard it.
The cat came running down the stairs.
It also woke up my sister, on the second floor and my mother in her bedroom they both came into the living room, wondering what the sound was.
I grabbed a bat, flipped on the porch light, and ran outside.
No one was there.
No windows were broken.
No glass was anywhere.
I walked the perimeter of the house checking every window.
Nothing.
I checked my car, my mother's car, the streetlight, the neighbor's car.
Nothing.
My mother, sister and girlfriend searched the inside of the house, and there was nothing broken or fallen down anywhere.

I've never seen a ghost (though people claim my mother's house is haunted by the little boy who died in it 50 years ago).
I don't claim to be a psychic.
I haven't been abducted by a UFO.
I'm not one of "those people".
This was just an extraordinarily odd situation, and I've never been able to figure it out.

 

Yep been there done that

Not only have I had that phantom sound experience (my dad and I specifically) I have heard entire conversations - at night, while laying in my bed, between two men that not only were not in the room - but did not even speak English.

I have had this experience dozens of times but for some reason it has periods of slacking off - then picking up again and occurring every night for weeks in a row.
:shrug:

 

Im not sure to be honest, its possible that the sounds could be contained within a small area - if they are phantom sounds. Actually my head hurts just trying to think about it! lol
In any case its interesting that you do live near a fault line, i had a feeling you might since these instances of visual and audiable apparitions always seem to be most prevalent in areas of geological stress - which in turn creates a strong electro-magnetic field.
Noone as far as im aware has any idea why, just seems to be an oddity of nature. Although given that time is ultimatley relative and is believed to exist as whole rather than a linear gradient (as well percieve it) then i guess it isnt all *that* strange that there should be a bleed through effect from the past now and again.

 

Moving this to Pseudoscience where I think it'll fit in better. Parapsychology isn't really the realm of phantom sounds. Peace. :m:

 

Athelwulf- That's cool. I wasn't sure which one to put it in.

D1v1ne- Have you ever tried to record those conversations?

heliocentric Sorry for the headache!

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perhaps there was a "moist absorber" inside the piano and it slipt of from unknown reason. So in stead of a falling a piano, something fell inside your piano?

 

Although I hadn't thought about that, I can safely say there was nothing inside the piano that would have done that. I had bought the piano as a piece of junk and had taken apart a few times during the process of rebuilding it. However, now that you mention it, I have had guitars where the tuning keys would slip suddenly and make a popping noise that would cause the strings to resonate quite loudly. I don't recall if I had to retune the piano or not. I might have. I was always tinkering with it the way guys tend to tinker with cars. Maybe the tuning pegs slipped. If my parents hadn't been ready for it, it could have sounded much louder than it actually was, especially if the resonance caused multiple strings to vibrate. Hadn't thought about that!

 

medication anyone?

 

No.
Me, my girlfriend, my mother, my sister and my sister's cat were not all on medication.
Nice try, though.

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One_raven,
Usually logic would suggest that if a cat zips past you after a crashing sound that it might of had a little more of something to do with it than it should have.

Of course there is one easy way to rule the cat out, Do all the men of your household return the toilet seat to the neutralised position? If not, then all it takes is for one to come crashing down to make the loudest din you have heard and no trace of what caused it.

 

I've lived in perhaps 20 different houses and apartments with all kinds of toilet seats and bathroom and house acoustics. I think it is very strange that you think this makes ´the loudest din you have ever heard´ not does it fit the descriptions of the sounds.

 

Cats run from sounds regardless of whether or not they were involved inmaking the sound.
Plus, as I said, yhe whole house was searched, and nothing was broken, or fallen.

I was the only man there, and I grew up with my mother, grandmother and two sisters.
Trust me, the seat was ALWAYS down.

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I was well trained.

Besides, I have NEVER heard a closing toilet seat sound like a breaking pane of glass.

 

Well my upstairs neighbours toilet seat occasionally falls down and it echo's through the floor and into my own toilet. It actually sounds as if my toilet seat falls, so it obviously is pretty loud by that definition, although you could conclude that there is the "down-force transition of kinetic energy into a scalar soliton waveform reverberation from my toilet ceiling" however this is where it becomes nitpicking.

 

I apologise I missed you're mention of "glass breaking" and was looking more to the rationalisation of "crash".

Good to hear they've got you trained well though

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