This is a weird one and this is the best board I could think of for it. So my mom hears music coming from her fan when it's on, like it's picking up radio signals which I know is possible, but my question is: is it possible that only she can hear it somehow?
I can't hear fucking anything but she is convinced she can. Even naming the songs that come on, and telling me she can hear someone talking in between them. Is there any way she could hear it and I couldn't?
Does she have any metal fillings or caps?
I'm sorry your mother has alzheimer OP
She does have fillings, and i don't. I thought about mentioning this but I wasn't sure where I heard the fillings/radio meme and if it was real or not.
Nah
Early onset dementia. Enjoy what time you have left with her OP
It's tinnitus.
tinnitus.org.uk
how would you know if it's early or not? i never mentioned her age. could be right-on-time dementia.
judging from this explanation, i don't think so. she is hearing full songs very quietly, with a radio style dj talking between between them. she mentioned it a couple times a year ago but said in the last week it has gotten a bit more annoying. one of the songs she heard today she said she didn't even know, and had to google the lyrics to find out what song it was.
I can't hear a fucking thing though, told her to try to listen for any identifying words used by the voice so I could match it up. it's definitely possible she's losing it but from googling it, it seems like it's a somewhat common thing for fans (or other items) to pick up AM frequencies
it's pretty common to hear things in white noise. coupled with hearing loss fro m old age the brain starts interpreting what should be meaningless sounds for her into distinguishable music.
buy a new fan faggot. also, your mother is an attention whore.
You sure you're mother isn't just hallucinating? Has she been behaving strangely in any other ways?
>how would you know if it's early or not? i never mentioned her age. could be right-on-time dementia.
The symptoms are early onset of dementia. Learn 2 English.
google for your closest AM radio station, or just local ones in general, and then tune in when she identifies it.
>like it's picking up radio signals
>which i know is possible
nigger, how the fuck do you think radio works? Especially if she says she hears music, that means the broadcast is most likely on a frequency modulated channel, and FM signals require complicated demodulation circuits.
If you're going to bait post, either make it provocative or funny. You don't get anywhere by just being retarded on the internet.
anything is possible, but no she hasn't been acting strangely. i have seen dementia from start to finish so i know what to expect from something like that. she did say it was bothering her when she was trying to sleep this morning but that's about it. figured i'd get involved and look around to see what i could find out about it.
it has happened with 2 different fans now, but only ones with metal housings, her plastic fan doesn't seem to do it. first was a shitty box fan about a year ago and it broke and i bought her this new one about 4 months ago and she's hearing it again now.
i told her this also, she doesn't have what i would consider "hearing loss" but she has had an issue for 20+ years now where the signal from her ears to her brain is slightly slow so she's one of those people that will say "what? oh." because it takes an extra half-second to translate. her actual ability to hear sounds seems fine though.
never said FM. there's stories of fans, pots and pans, and all sorts of objects picking up AM frequencies
>durr i hear music it must be fm
welcome to the whole other side of the radio you don't use where they play music literally all the time. kindly refrain from being a derailing dipshit for a few minutes so i can try to get an actual answer and help my mother out
Your mom's imagining it. I've had an issue for years where I could swear people are calling out my name when I listen to music, yet when I take off the headphones everything's quiet. Doesn't matter what type of music either, often it even happens with random noise like when I'm vacuuming, if I think there's someone around who might be trying to grab my attention I hear their voices calling out my name.
it doesn't seem like she's imagining it. she can tap along to the beat, can tell me the name of the song most of the time, can tell me when the song stops and someone starts talking. it has only ever happened in that spot in her bedroom (second floor by a window if that means anything), she sleeps in her guest room sometimes when her back is bothering her and uses the same fan and doesn't hear anything even though it's on the same side of the house, but on the first floor.
going to bring a friend over next time and see if they can hear it, it sounds insane but i am actually starting to think the reason i can't hear it is that i don't have any dental work. either that or she's actually losing her mind. whatever.
Bring a radio in the room and flip through the channels to see if you can find the one that she can hear via the fan. Won't solve the problem but I bet it'd be a fun experiment to find out which frequency the fan is tuned to.
Its possible that she's hallucinating, or it could be some strong radio signals the fan's motor is picking up and the vibration is being heard.
Does she take medical drugs? Maybe they make her weird. Or maybe she has an ear infection? I would go to a doctor with her.
Also to add, weird shit happens with electronics when they're shielded or unprotected. Back in the old days, wireless phones would stop working when you turn on the microwave. Wifi signals gets disrupted as well. Few years ago, I had a mouse that would randomly start moving just before my cellphone rings. Noise can cause weird reaction.
youtube.com
wtf??????
yeah I got in the car and was trying to flip through the stations both am and fm and couldn't find a match. I didn't think to bring a radio from my house because I think the only thing i have that has radio is an old alarm clock but i'll bring it next time and see. would be a relief to her to at least know it wasn't her imagination.
my dad used to have a really old tv back in the 90s (even old for then) where when you push the buttons they make a loud SNAP noise. the frequencies his much newer pc would put out would turn his tv on and off or change channels sometimes. i guess the earliest tv remotes used sound/radio frequencies.
nah nothing except blood pressure and iron tablets and she's taken those for awhile now.
i don't know enough about it to argue the legitimacy of that, but i read a story today about a guy who heard music coming from a jar of olives once he put a spoon in it, but he couldn't replicate it once he moved it. possibly because of the salty liquid in the jar with the spoon as an antenna? not sure, i don't know enough about radio frequencies.
You mother is schizophrenic OP
>i don't know anything about how schizophrenia works but she definitely has it OP
It's because you live next to a rather powerful high frequency Radio Tower.
For example, in the middle of flyover country in the US, people can hear faint radio signals in their pots and pans if they live next to a radio tower.
Radio is some truly interesting stuff.
It's an early sign of it hearing random noises mixed in with other ones
i was looking for stations nearby but didn't see any too close, the nearest was 9 miles away. it was google maps though so i don't know if they would show every tower. is it possible one of our neighbors is transmitting with a civilian antenna? i don't know how powerful it would have to be to pick up, i looked around at her neighbors rooftops for an antenna but there are too many trees to see all of them clearly. i'll have to see if i can find a better search for towers themselves,
the noises aren't random, and are localized to one spot in her bedroom. it doesn't happen anywhere else. it also doesn't happen when her fan is off or unplugged, but she needs one to sleep (and so do i). she's not hearing people talking to her specifically, just what sounds like normal radio chatter between songs, and if she moves away from the fan more than a few feet she can't hear it anymore.
Depends on the power of the transmitter.
This article should explain to you more in-depth than I can.
google.com
This is the most likely explanation, The people calling out schizophrenia are overreacting.
yeah the mental illness thing is what i'm attempting to rule out right now. my concern isn't that she's hearing music (since it doesn't seem to be that uncommon), but that i can't hear it myself. like i said i need to bring someone else over and see if they can hear it. i'm more concerned about it than she is really, it's just a little annoying to her but for me it is interesting and i'd like to get it figured out.
People's hearing differs wildly, It's most likely that your mother has a more sensitive hearing range than you do. Radio signals aren't amplified much at all in household appliances, so it'd be understandable if you couldn't hear it.
My landline phone used to pick up a local station. It was like having Muzak for free. Shitty, Country and Western Muzak.
>t. someone who's never listened to the /other/ broadcast band
I kinda expected to see this one as I scrolled, a little surprised it was at the bottom.
RF radiation is indeed incredibly interesting and this is entirely plausible.
However, it's quite unusual that she would hear it and not you.
It's incredibly easy to make a super simple transmitter.
>yeah I got in the car and was trying to flip through the stations both am and fm and couldn't find a match.
Odd.
my concern isn't that she's hearing music (since it doesn't seem to be that uncommon), but that i can't hear it myself.
as it should be. I'm really hoping it's not some form of mental illness, user.
What's your hearing like? When's the last time you got your hearing checked? I would think you'd have better hearing than your mother...
>People's hearing differs wildly
true
> It's most likely that your mother has a more sensitive hearing range than you do.
hard to say without knowing their ages. Younger people generally have much more sensitive hearing, especially to higher frequencies.
(me)
>super simple transmitter
FFFFUCK, i meant to type receiver, my bad.
i actually have really good hearing as far as i'm aware. if someone on my street closes their car door i can hear it inside even if it's a few houses down nd i have my air conditioner/whatever on. i think i have a sensitivity to bass? i also used to be very sensitive to older tube tvs that were on mute, the frequency would be a low buzz but it would irritate me enough that i had to ask my parents to stop muting their tvs whenever possible.
my immediate thought was that she has fillings and i don't, but i don't know how realistic that is. other than that i don't know why i can't hear it, but i really tried for awhile and heard nothing.
she is 56 and i am 32. she got smacked in the head with something a couple decades ago and it does the thing i mentioned earlier where her ears take a second to process what you said, she also needs a sound bar to take the bass out of the tv so she can hear it from further away. not sure if that fully counts as a hearing impairment, but i guess it could. at the time, the doctor she saw said it wasn't a problem with her ears/hearing, but that her wiring between ear and brain was just a fraction of a second slower now, if that makes any sense. still it was a long time ago and this is somewhat recent.
Try putting the fan in a faraday cage
>i actually have really good hearing as far as i'm aware.
Alright...
>my immediate thought was that she has fillings and i don't, but i don't know how realistic that is.
If what she's hearing is indeed real, it's most likely going to be something off your local AM stations, and might be possible. VERY rare, but plausible. Any idea how close you are to a tx station?
In theory, pretty much anything conductive can act as an antenna, something else in the mouth rectifying the already weak signal? Even if a local station has a transmitter nearby, i don't think it'd have enough power to do that.
>she is 56 and i am 32.
With those numbers, I'd actually expect it to be the opposite - You hearing it and perhaps wondering if you're going full TAD, with your mother hearing nothing. /unless/ it's somehow the fillings, which like i said - theoretically possible, but unlikely unless near quite a strong source, far stronger than your typical broadcast stations.
>she is 56 and i am 32. she got smacked in the head with something a couple decades ago and it does the thing i mentioned earlier where her ears take a second to process what you said, she also needs a sound bar to take the bass out of the tv so she can hear it from further away. not sure if that fully counts as a hearing impairment, but i guess it could. at the time, the doctor she saw said it wasn't a problem with her ears/hearing, but that her wiring between ear and brain was just a fraction of a second slower now, if that makes any sense. still it was a long time ago and this is somewhat recent.
I don't have any medical background so I can't comment on this. I wouldn't rule anything out at this point, except maybe the fillings.
I would take her to a doctor
This would actually be interesting. Don't tell her until afterwards, but construct a faraday cage around the fan and ask her what she hears. If it's nothing, you're experiencing some unusual, but not absurd interference.
Because she can't be older than 60 if you're her 14 year old kid.
>can't read
HOLY FUCK. Earlier today I was just watching a MythBusters episode about a woman that could hear radio transmissions near broadcast antennas. They did a bunch of experiments with skulls and fillings, trying to replicate the phenomenon.
This is at MythBusters S2003E07 (S01E07). It's worth a watch. The verdict was BUSTED.
I don't have time to watch the whole thing. Did they mention the wattage on the tx?
Yes. 50.000 W.
I had the same problem with the humming coming from my fridge for about a week but I was also going through legitimate alcohol withdrawal at the time. She's imagining it
Right, so not the fillings.
I still wouldn't rule out hearing things or the fan acting as a crude receiver.
OP, try the faraday cage idea, but like I said don't tell her what it's for until after you ask what she can hear.
Actually, they found that for NEW fillings—up to 2 weeks old, if I recall correctly—made out of specific alloys CAN intercept and transmit crude pulses (like morse code transmissions) to the person's head. They also said it would be painful for the person if such event happened. But I think the conditions and limitations were specific or unrealistic enough that they still deemed the myth busted, as far as hearing music because of the fillings.
This is what I figured. CW is even easier to receive. Equally unlikely.
>They also said it would be painful for the person if such event happened.
>But I think the conditions and limitations were specific or unrealistic enough that they still deemed the myth busted, as far as hearing music because of the fillings.
Makes sense.
Did we lose OP?
...
>It's an early sign of it hearing random noises mixed in with other ones
I sometimes hear my name called at a loud volume, I hear music when I am sleep deprived or sick.
How do I know if I am schizo?
Family has a predisposition to mental illness (dementia/alzheimers).
>mythbusters
MYTH BUSTED LMAO.
They do shoddy work and appeal to the notion that anything against the government is false.
>trusting the walrus and the ginger jew with real facts
They are not very scientific, but it's entertaining as fuck. Timeless classic.
Infrasound has been linked to auditory and visual hallucinations, maybe the fan is spinning at such a frequency, and that is what your mom is experiencing?
See a doctor and ask better to catch it now then after you have strangled the neighbors cat
I was afraid to talk to my doctor because of my anxiety because I don't want to be chemically castrated (not meaning my glans specifically) just afraid of what those chemicals actually do.
I don't want to end up in a padded room when I'm still lucid because I told someone I might have heard something occassionally.
Sorry user, your mum is schizo.