The voices

It happens a lot at this time of year.

Our house, centrally air-conditioned, is nice and cold in the basement, fine on the main floor, and kinda hot upstairs when the merciless sun bakes the roof. To keep the air moving, we use a couple of fans up there.

Sometimes, early in the crepuscular gloom of four in the yawning, I lie awake and hear the fans speaking. It's odd; it sounds like people are talking, but no radio or TV is on, and the cat is clammed up, and Peggy is asleep, so where...are...those...voices...coming...from???

In case you were wondering, no, I am not insane. I'm not hearing voices because of being a lunatic. This a phenomenon called pareidolia. It causes us to "see" or "hear" things...the face of Jesus Christ on a tortilla, a man's face in the moon, or a crowd of people reading aloud from the works of John Grisham.

You see, the brain does a lot of work that it doesn't have to. When it receives what they call nebulous stimulus, instead of throwing its hands up in the air, it imposes a seemingly meaningful interpretation of that cloudy stimulus, because a brain has no hands.

So here's the process: fan makes murmuring noises, brain says, Hey, it's the opening pages of "The Firm"! Let's listen in!

The psychologists call it "apophenia." The term was coined by Psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in 1958, one night when he had had an extra helping of strudel, and had trouble sleeping. 

You hear them talking, don't you?

Shoot me your phone number and I'll call you next time and hold the phone up so you can hear it, too!