The human body is something of a beautiful disaster. Most of us experience the same functions on a daily basis -- seeing, smelling, walking, passing gas, etc., but every once in a while, our bodies really throw us for a loop and give us weird sensations.
We're not talking about anything so serious as developing a deadly disease or debilitating disorder. We mean the truly random malfunctions that make even our doctors go "uhh... it's probably nothing."
Have you ever heard explosions when you're super bored? Or felt your imagination physically expand? What about feeling deja vu for more than 10 minutes? Or becoming overwhelmed with energy when you're looking at a beautiful painting? These sensations may sound extremely strange, but they are as real as they are questionable. These people shared the strangest, spookiest, and most abnormal sensations that they've ever experienced. Read on and see if you've experienced anything like...
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#30 Turn Up The Distortion
If I yawn real big while music is playing, the key of the music changes, almost like the song is suddenly "out of tune," then snaps back when I've finished yawning. I assume it has something to do with the sound passing through a smaller opening in my ear canal.
I'm sure other people have noticed this, but everyone I've mentioned it to in-person looks at me like I'm crazy.
#29 Being Pulled Toward Sound
I feel like my right ear reacts to sound by trying to move in the direction it’s coming from. It feels like a muscle or something is pulling it that way, and when I turn my head, it feels like it follows the sound.
It’s not enough that I can see it move, and it’s just the one ear. I also can’t control it. If the pulling gets annoying, I have to make a sound in front of me to “get its attention.”
#28 Creepy Sleepy-Time Infomercials
Sometimes when I'm in bed and the house is totally quiet, I feel like I can hear a muffled infomercial or something softly playing in another room. I can't make out any words, but I hear inflections and it always sounds like a man and a woman. I've asked my significant other if he can hear it, but he always says no. I've had this occur every now and then since I was a kid, but back then I always assumed it was just my dad who fell asleep with the TV on.
#26 Weird Bordeom Tic
My brain makes exploding sounds when I hit my boredom limit. It happened this morning after waiting at a walk-in eye clinic with my husband for way too long and then in a line to get lunch. I explained it to him and he stared at me in disbelief.
#25 Freaky Floaty-Sinky Feeling
Sometimes, when I'm super relaxed and sitting/laying down, I'll get a strange feeling that I'm floating, but also simultaneously sinking. It's actually pretty pleasant.
#24 Like Your Brain Can't Stop
If I'm running for a long time and then I stop, it feels like everything around me is slowly zooming in and out at the same time. Weird.
#23 Grainy, Colorful Vision
When I get up from sitting sometimes, my vision gets grainy a moment. The only way I can describe it is white noise, but every pixel is colored.
#22 Dizzying Out-Of-Body Dissociation
Sometimes I sort of zone out and feel like I don't exist. I step out of my body and I observe what I am doing rather than feeling like I am actually doing it.
#21 Alice In Wonderland Syndrome
Sometimes, even though everything looks the same, it feels like the room is huge and I am tiny.
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#20 That's Sort Of A Super Power
One time I was late to class and when I walked outside there were no people, no animals, and no noises. I was feeling very strange, so I walked to class and when I got into class it was filled with the usual people, and sounds came back. But the thing is, I was on time, but the time was the same as when I had left my home. Guess I froze time for one brief moment in my life. Strange sensation indeed.
#19 Blanking On That
When you are having a tip-of-the-tongue retrieval failure, for just a moment you remember that word but then you get all excited and forget it again and now it's totally unretrievable.
#18 Hunger-Driven Crackling Noise
When I'm really hungry there's a crackling noise in my throat. Sometimes my throat will just randomly make noise kind of like a ticking. This isn't vocal, but rather something I can feel or hear.
#17 Suddenly Realizing You're Not Alone
I think I saw a word for it once, so I'm sure other people do... I think it was called "sonder." Basically, you'll be out somewhere public enjoying your day and be struck by the sudden and intense realization that every single person around you is living a life as vivid and complex as yours. It's something you don't really think about outside of yourself and in relation to your loved ones. And it messes me up for a while whenever I'm hit with it.
#16 An Itch You Can Never Scratch
I sometimes feel like a have an itch under my skin, like I need to peel off my skin to scratch the itch. It happens very infrequently and if I ignore it, it goes away in a few seconds. But it's weird.
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#15 Invisible Ninjas
Occasionally I will literally turn my head and it feels like I randomly get a hard karate chop on my neck. I stay conscious, but my vision blacks out for a second or so before coming back...
#14 Probably Just Eye Fatigue, Dude
Whenever I used to work late in college (and currently at my job), I'll get really into the work and will be kind of staring at the screen while analyzing what I'm trying to do. Whatever I'm staring at almost goes out of focus for less than half a second. It's like a really tiny spasm my eyes get and I can feel them vibrating subtly, then it's back to normal.
#13 Disconcerting Deja Vu
I get deja vu a lot, and it's really vivid. I know other people get it, but I'm not sure if they do as often as I do (about once every few weeks normally, but it lasts for 10 minutes or so at a time).
#12 You Can Feel It In Your Teeth!
That weird shiver up my spine when I touch certain rough materials, usually fabrics. Like scratching my polo shirt with my finger nails. Simply rubbing shirts together would do it. I mostly get the feeling when scratching my hairy chest through a polo with an undershirt, or using microfiber cloths.
#11 Wary Of Wandering Heartbeat
Sometimes I can feel my heart pulsing in my stomach, shoulders, legs... just a wandering heartbeat.
#10 That Would Freak Me Out
I used to see these like static/white noise things on an old TV/crescent-shaped things in the corner of my eye sometimes. I could never directly look at it, and it never caused any pain or anything, just annoying for a while. I learned many years later that this is what's called an "aura" that people see when a migraine is about to happen. Apparently, some people get the aura, but not the migraine (i.e., me). Haven't seen one in many years. Its technical name is "scintillating scotoma."
#9 Itching In The Cold
When I go from hot to cold environments I sometimes get super itchy. It feels like prickles all over. Also sometimes I like... "flex" my eyes and can make things go super blurry. I assume that's normal, but nobody ever talks about it.
#8 Supernaturally Charged Artistic Interactions
Sometimes I'll listen to a particularly moving piece of music or read a really good quote or enjoy a fantastic movie scene. It goes beyond that, though. It's like my energy levels are almost on a supernatural level when it happens. It's more than just excitement or high motivation, too. I'm talking a primal, amazing sensation. It doesn't last very long, but for a few seconds, it's like I'm one with the world (as corny as that sounds).
#7 These Symptoms Have A Deadly Cause
For 5 years, my feet sometimes felt like warm water was flowing over them. One year, I would have small, tinkling, burning sensations on my arm and upper back. Like electricity was burning through wood. For 1 month, my entire diaphragm would have ticklish sensations. Starting from the middle to the outside of my body.
I don’t have these sensations anymore. Apparently, these were all symptoms of chronic myeloid leukemia. The month before discovering the CML, these symptoms became worse and worse.
#6 Freaky Flexing Of Imagination
When I'm stressed, the space inside my head (kind of like the stage where my imagination plays out) gets smaller and more cramped, and it gets bigger than usual when I'm especially relaxed. I have no idea whether other people have such a "physical" experience of imagination.
#5 Spooky Spontaneous Heat Flashes
I overheat. And I don't think it's the same for the average person. I can be in a relatively cold room but still feel really really hot. Sometimes I get so hot that my girlfriend says she can literally feel the heat radiating off me if I get too close. Especially if we're in bed together or If I hover my hand or something over her skin. I'm really scared that I'm going to be the next human to spontaneously combust.
#4 Wacky Wind Chime Hearing Loss
I sometimes lose all hearing in one of my ears and all I can hear is ringing, like when you hit a wind chime.
#3 Reflection-Induced Identity Scare
Once in a really great while, maybe like twice a year it happens.
Normally when I look in the mirror, I'm just looking at my reflection and think nothing of it. Every so often I'll just get a super odd feeling that's a bit hard to describe, but it feels like I'm looking at another person and that person in the mirror is someone else. I still know 100% full well that it's me in the mirror, it just doesn't feel like it.
I don't have any identity disorders and this doesn't manifest itself in any other way other than that couple times a year in the mirror. Lasts a minute or so.
#2 Daunting Black-Hole Vision
Whenever I'm looking at something from a distance, like in a theatre, if I focus on a faraway object long enough, everything around the object begins to blur and turn into black and white static.
It's fun to do when I'm bored during school assemblies, but it's hard to not move my eyes at all from that specific spot after a while. And I feel like if I stare long enough, my entire vision will turn into a black void.
#1 Disturbing Noise From Bright Light
I had to ask my doctor about this because until I was 17 I thought it was normal and everyone else did it, but it turns out most people don't hear a sound when they look at a really bright light. It's like a quivering deep in my ear. My doc said he had heard of it but had never met anyone with it before. It has something to do with how overstimulating my optic nerves get and it can “jump” to my auditory nerves and make me hear the quiver.
