My mother began hearing music in the form of Christmas carols and other songs. She insisted that she was hearing actual carols coming from a neighbor’s house. I couldn’t hear a thing, but I drove around the neighborhood trying to find a source of this [phantom] music without success. Is she losing her mind?

If you hear phantom voices, singing or music, you are not nuts. You are just hearing some of the strange auditory hallucinations many hard of hearing people experience. Learn the causes of MES, and more importantly, how to bring these phantom sounds under control.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. July 9, 2015 Don’t let the weird Greek words in the title scare you off from reading this fascinating article on one category of Musical Ear Syndrome (MES). Musical Ear Syndrome is a relatively common phenomenon where you hear non-tinnitus, phantom sounds that are not of a psychiatric nature. Typically, you […]

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. A lady wrote, For years my tinnitus has been a kind of sound of which I was rarely aware. Now, with a new, loud tenant upstairs, I recently started being able to hear his phone calls and conversations with people in his home upstairs. He speaks very loudly. I have a […]

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. A lady wrote, About a year ago I started hearing low-frequency noise. I have had tinnitus for years. This is different. I only hear it in my home, my husband doesn’t hear it at all. I hear it in every room in the house. It seems to come through the walls. […]

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. Over the past few years I have been conducting a large-scale study of people who experience Musical Ear Syndrome (MES). To date I have collected the stories of more than 1,500 people. As time permits, I have been compiling and analyzing the vast amount of information collected in order to learn […]

  by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. A lady explained, I am 38 years old. I have no hearing loss, yet I experience Musical Ear Syndrome (MES). Over the last couple of years, I began noticing that when things are very quiet, like silent almost, I hear faint music. I describe it as hearing a radio station […]

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. A concerned daughter wrote, My mother is 78. She has been very reclusive since her retirement about 15 years ago and has no contact with anyone other than me on the phone and one of my brothers. Along with her isolation, she has a bit of paranoia about sounds she says […]

I have tinnitus all the time. Sometimes I hear what sounds like music or people singing or talking. Is this some strange kind of tinnitus?

This article explains the difference between tinnitus, psychiatric auditory hallucinations and pseudo-auditory hallucinations such as Musical Ear syndrome (MES).

  by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. November 22, 2011 Back in 2004 when I coined the name “Musical Ear Syndrome” for the strange musical hallucinations many hard of hearing people secretly experience, I never dreamed that someone would actually make a movie about it. But that is what has just happened. In fact, this short movie […]

  by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.   A man wrote: My 70ish mother has just started ‘hearing’ phantom singing. She is hearing hymns sung by angels and sometimes the beating of drums. She is a church-goer and as long as i can remember has been humming hymns at home. A few months ago she became aware […]

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. A lady explained, I deal with noise complaints for a local authority. I have had some complaints that I believe are musical hallucinations, and have read and used your article about Musical Ear Syndrome (MES) to assist. We often also deal with complaints of low frequency noises, hums, washing machines, etc. […]

  by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.   A concerned daughter wrote: My mother is hearing a repetitive song and I would like to know what I can do for her. She is 99 years old, very hard of hearing, and because she does not hear people, has withdrawn and spends a lot of time alone. Even […]

  by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.   Musical Ear Syndrome (MES) is a condition where a person hears phantom, non-tinnitus sounds—typically music, singing, voices or other sounds. Although it is quite common, especially among people with hearing loss, few people openly talk about it for fear of being thought crazy. The good news is that Musical […]

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. A nurse explained: Recently an elderly friend of my neighbor suddenly began hearing “singing” auditory hallucinations at night. She has had hearing aids for some time and has had a lot of difficulty with them. She has even changed doctors because she was not happy. Could the sudden onset of the […]

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. A lady explained: I read your article on Musical Ear Syndrome with interest because although my hearing is normal, I suffer from insomnia because I hear music and singing through the night. What particularly caught my attention is that a couple of the people you quote have heard exactly the same […]

  by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. © June 6, 2009   A concerned daughter wrote: My mother, who is 83, has hearing loss and lives alone in an apartment in a quiet area. My brother lives next door. She has been hearing phantom music for some years now, and we cannot get her to accept that […]

 by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. A man wrote: My 87 year old mother has of late begun hearing music, conversations, and other noises which aren’t there. The examples you mentioned in your article describing ‘Musical Ear Syndrome‘ were exactly the situations she’s describing. I was ready to ascribe her hallucinations to her age, solitude and hearing […]

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. A lady wrote: Strange things are happening now with my eyesight. I used to get a head-size black spot in front of one eye. Recently I got a large white one. On Sunday, when I took a bath, it had changed suddenly to a real face. I opened and closed my […]