Hearing things that apparently aren't there can be a sign of
mental illness. But history has also recorded cases of otherwise
"normal" people hearing voices or unexplained sounds. In the study
of the paranormal, "hallucinatory" sounds are categorised as
"clairaudience".
Clairaudience is a feature of shamanism and other belief system in
which priests claim to obtain guidance from otherworldly beings.
Auditory phenomena have played an important part in the Christian
tradition too, from the prophets, through the apostles to medieval
saints such as Joan of Arc.
Louisa E. Rhine, a prominent US researcher in psychic phenomena,
reported the baffling case of a man in Alabama City whose encounter
with clairaudience came not from a demon or angel but through a
modern invention. On the afternoon of 7 December 1941, a man was
dozing by the radio. Suddenly he jumped up and exclaimed to his
wife "Did you hear that?" The president announced that the Japanese
are bombing Pearl Harbour!" His wife, who had noticed her husband
asleep only moments before, told him he had been dreaming. The man
repeated adamantly that he had heard the news. His wife was just as
certain that he had not, for she had been sitting by the radio and
heard nothing. As they argued they were interrupted by a newsflash
-- the president had just announced that the Japanese were bombing
Pearl Harbour.
On 3 June 1964 Lady Rhys Williams, a former governor of the British
Broadcasting Corporation, also experienced clairaudience involving
the radio. At breakfast, she told her daughter she had heard the
results of the California primary vote on the radio -- Barry
Goldwater had defeated Nelson Rockefeller. This was quite true. The
extraordinary thing was that the first radio reports of Goldwater's
election triumph were not broadcast until seven hours after Lady
Rhys Williams had "heard" the news.
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