Voices From Nowhere: Strange Disembodied Utterances?

Voices From Nowhere: Strange Disembodied Utterances?

“Don’t move.” The sound of the woman’s voice was plain and audible, whispered quietly from directly behind him. Nick had just gotten out of bed, and standing beside the door leading into the hallway, he did the first thing that came to mind: he answered her.

“Okay,” he said, a little unnerved, expecting maybe to hear further instructions from his mysterious visitor. He had heard nothing more for several seconds, and finally jerked around to see who had been issuing early-morning orders from behind him someplace. And yet, to his surprise, there was no one there. Later that day, he asked if his roommate had perhaps been host to a visitor that Nick hadn’t been told about, but his friend denied receiving any such visit, and said he had heard no voices earlier that morning. Perplexed, Nick had to resolve that, despite clearly hearing a woman’s voice telling him not to move, there must have been no one present to have actually told him this!

On occasion, strange phenomenon such as this does tend to occur, particularly as one awakes from a sleep state, where disembodied voices can be heard so lucidly as to create the certain impression in one’s mind that they are not alone. And yet, on further inspection, more often than not there actually is no one else with you… thus, could such voices merely be products of the imagination? Or might there be something more to such odd utterances from beyond?

A few Halloweens ago, I had been invited on my friend Jeffery Pritchett’s radio program as a guest during a panel discussion of weird and creepy subjects fitting for the season. At some point, we came around to the subject of odd occurrences that happen during, prior to, or just after a deep sleep. My own experiences in this regard have been rather minimal, but I do recall another of the guests telling a particularly odd story of his own, in which similar to my friend Nick, whose story I described above, this gentleman had recalled awaking from a deep sleep and hearing a voice. As the story went, he had been completely awake and aware of his surroundings, but still lying in bed, when he heard a “witchy sounding” voice proclaim, the child is born! Needless to say, this had been a fairly unsettling occurrence for the fellow to have at 8:45 in the morning!

Of course, in a more clinical sense, the sudden appearance of disembodied voices could potentially be related to such things as psychosis just as well–namely the onset of a condition such as schizophrenia. While audible noises can often indicate the presence of mental illness in this way, in the two cases listed here, neither of the individuals seemed to have any history with mental illness, nor did the strange “visits” with odd early-morning voices continue.

Then again, reflecting on the numerous instances where people awaking from a sleep state have experienced the common phenomenon known as sleep paralysis, it may not be that unusual for audible hallucinations to occur when on the verge of waking. But again, my friend “Nick,” whose story I discuss above, involved him not only waking up, but getting out of bed and approaching the door leading out into the hallway of his apartment before a voice ordered him not to move. Are there other strange faculties of the mind that could contribute to this sort of phenomenon on occasion, and if so, why is the early morning so conducive to strange disembodied voices and other odd utterances?

TAGS: ghost, spirit, voice

http://www.facebook.com/diana.manister Diana Manister

This is not parahormal. It’s a common occurrence when waking up or falling asleep called hypnagogia. Dreaming when half-asleep – it can include only sounds. Look it up in Wikepedia.
Mitzi Reinbold

I’ve had this happen to me several times and it seems to be late at night. Twice I heard my father’s voice call to me (after his death). Once I heard my boss yell for me…which was his intercom system since our offices were next to each other. And once I awoke to such loud explosion sounds that I called my daughter who was working for a local newspaper to make sure nothing had happened in the area. Never once did I think it was an auditory hallucination. The first three times I thought there was some sort of communication attempt; the third time a premonition (nothing really happened).
Kandinsky

This has happened to me – wide awake and broad daylight.

As a teenager, I was washing and valeting my dad’s car for money. I had the boot (trunk) open and was deep in there with my waist leaning on the rim. I heard a female voice shout my name just once and stood up. As I stood, a gust of wind blew the boot shut with a slam. Needless to say, there wasn’t anyone there.

I doubt the boot would’ve cut me into two bloody sections; more likely it would have just bruised a little. Still, as experiences go, it was very mundane and pretty weird at the same time.
Steve Miller

Hypnagogic & hypnapompic sleep experiences are common in shift workers.

Having worked long overnight shifts on security, I experienced such ASM events a couple of times.

Slumped in a chair in a office reception area, the only person in the building I would often struggle to stay awake (especially in the early hours when a coffee an hour, splashing water on face and an hourly patrol can only hope to keep you awake).

I would be convinced I was involved in a conversation with several other people, would hear their responses and accept their presence. I would be unable to identify them when starting upright in my chair fully awake, but would recall snippets of conversation and find it hard to shake off the feeling of a presence.

I would put it down to exhaustion, too much coffee, and nodding off whilst reading – all invoking an ASM experience.

Similar would be feverish thought proceses I could not shake at times I simply could not sleep when home and abed after a shift. Paranoid, freaky thoughts of a dream-like quality whilst tossing and turning.

Again, I just put it down to exhaustion and being too strung out.

Is very weird, though and the closest I can compare it to is the Oz Factor described in much encounter/experience reports.
xicota

This has happened to me several times, both auditory and visual hallucinations. I never attributed it to anything but a clinical cause (see Diana’s post). The only occasion that I have had to “put on the back burner”, for lack of a satisfactory explanation, is when I was going through testing for the cause of a goiter. I can say that not at any time did any of the MDs or technicians involved mention what the diagnosis might be. In the early morning of the day that I was to learn the test results, I was in the process of awakening, when I heard the words “It will not be malignant.” I sat up and tried to figure out where the message came from. It had sounded like multiple voices (2-3), in a normal tone. Needless to say, the MD told me later that day that there was a tumor present, but that it was non-malignant. I’d welcome any explanations.
bill stanley

In my experience, that near-state of sleep can distort and “misinterpret” sounds. I collect old mechanical mantle clocks, and on the half hour some of them give off a distinctive “BONG” sound. Several times when lying down for an afternoon nap, I slip below consciousness but not deep into REM sleep, and am awakened by some bizarre sort of “GRINDING RIPPING METAL GEAR” noise, or sometimes like an old fashioned electric door buzzer (which I don’t have) …only to realize that it was one of my clocks BONGING on the half hour…my semi-sleep state had allowed or caused the normal BONG sound to register on my brain as something completely alien.
Jason Destiny

I have also heard disembodied sounds, but not voices. Most typically for me, it is just before I fall asleep, and I clearly hear a mechanical noise of various kinds. For instance, a beep is most common, or some kind of sound that convinced me one of my many electrical devices is communicating some kind of interruption in service. I have often gotten out of bed and listened for these noises to see where they came from, but never hear them again. I am a very deep sleeper, yet cannot sleep solidly for many hours. I wake up frequently, until I started using a CPAP machine. A test for sleep apnea is probably not uncalled for if you have these problems. I also sometimes hear individual beeps while I’m awake, even thought there is nothing beeping around me. On another note, I have been known to talk in my sleep, and sleep walk, however infrequently. So, I have decided theses sounds are all a part of hypnogogia/hypnopompia (and once experienced a Hag-Ridden episode). The latter was during a period of recuperation from an operation, while I had been taking Percoset. Many of these experiences could be drug related. I stopped taking the pain pills after that.
IronSandPalm

This is what’s know in arabic as ‘was-wi-so’, a whisper like voice. From where? From the Jinn. What are jinn? A creation like man that we cannot see except in some circumstances (some call them ghosts, but they are the jinn). They are male and female and they have free will as we do. Now of course some may say how do you know, how can you be sure etc, etc. To start with, Allah in the Quran says ‘La ikra fi deen’ there is no compulsion in religion. The last Prophet (Muhammad SAW) was a messenger, he came to pass on a message. He explained many things to us, so this is something well known to a Muslim.

A few weeks ago I had one such experience. I was laying down about to get up and a whisper in my ear said ‘your mum is outside’. I smiled to myself and said ‘Subhanallah’ – All glory is due to Allah! Because I realized that many people sell their souls to the jinn, thinking that they are gods to be worshiped, but the jinn do not work for free, and to get something from them you have to do something for them. Usually something against what The Creator wants. They mix one truth with ninety nine lies, and it would be wrong to assume they know they unseen, they do not.

A few days later, my mum did visit, she didn’t bring her key, and she was waiting outside. Of course there are good jinn and bad jinn, and some live very long lives.

Mysterious Universe