I Heard That: Audio Perception and the Paranormal Universe

by Kevin Candela

Sound Reasoning. I thought about calling this one that too, since it’s how we hear things that seems to matter at least as much as why or any of the other interrogative Ws. Yesterday my wife and I were sitting downstairs together when we heard voices coming in through the back window of the basement kitchen, which opens out onto the backyard. To me, I heard them coming from the left. I immediately said they were probably coming from the neighbor on the right because—at least for me—I seem to guess the actual origin point for such sounds in the exact wrong direction.

This time I was right…because I went against what I was thinking I was hearing and instead relied on past experiences. Yes, it was the neighbor on the right. The sound of talk from there was likely bouncing off hard surfaces (the stairwell) to the left of the window and coming in as a sound reflection.

So how about that for a twist? You hear sound REFLECTIONS as often as not. You hear the reverberations of voices and such off hard surfaces. That means, at least in part, that you’re also likely to be looking for the sound source in the wrong place. Think of the sound waves bouncing around like pool balls. Trace the trajectory back as far as you can. That will give you at least some chance of spotting whatever made, say, that Bigfoot whoop you just heard. Did it bounce off trees? Open hillsides? Pool ball trajectory time.

If all this seems weird, consider how hard it is at first to find a jet airliner in the sky based on an engine howl ringing across the landscape 35,000 feet below (and thus all around you). Yes, sound is as tricky as light. Maybe more so.

Sound waves can be traced. There are instruments that don’t succumb to the illusions presented by reverberating sound the way our ears and minds do. Probably a good idea to rely on those if you can afford them.

Another odd aspect of sound is who perceives what. My wife notices sounds that completely escape my attention, and I’ve noticed that most of these tend to be mid to upper range. I can hear them if she points them out, but otherwise I simply don’t pick up on them. Of course, I’m figuring we’re not going to hear paranormal sounds, and the rest hold at best only modest interest for me, so it could be just a case of me “tuning out” stuff that doesn’t need my attention.

So the next time you “hear something”, perhaps consider that it might not be coming from where your ears are telling you. Remember that you’re in a complex environment, with multiple sound-reflecting surfaces around you (most of us are, that is, most of the time), and thus don’t limit your visual and other sensory means to just where your first instincts told you the sound originated. We must trust our senses to survive, but we should trust them knowing they can be fooled by a staggeringly intricate universe.