Metaphysics & Psychology

'Voices' told woman she had a brain tumor... and it turned out that she did

By T.K. Randall
April 16, 2026 ·  20 comments

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) According to reports, the 40-year-old - who hailed from the UK - had been sitting reading when a strange voice suddenly started talking to her out of nowhere.

The voice introduced itself as a former employee of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital and claimed that it wanted to help her. To prove its authenticity, the voice even provided three pieces of information that she didn't know so that she could check that it was the real deal.

Sure enough, the information provided checked out.

Believing that she was suffering from some sort of mental health crisis, the woman went to see a psychiatrist and was initially diagnosed with functional hallucinatory psychosis, with instructions to take medication and to attend counseling.

This seemed to work to begin with, but then, while she was on holiday, the voice returned - this time urging her to go to a hospital and undergo a brain scan because she had a tumor in her head.

While doctors were initially reluctant to grant this wish, the woman ultimately did undergo a scan and - to everyone's amazement - it was found that she really did have a tumor in her brain.She ended up having surgery to remove it, after which the voice in her head said that it was pleased to have helped, and bid her goodbye, never to be heard from again.

As bizarre as it may sound, this was a genuine case that occurred back in the 1980s and involved a very real patient and real doctors who were tasked with assessing her condition.

The question is - what best explains the peculiar voice she was hearing ?

Most doctors believe that the tumor itself had most likely produced the hallucinatory voice, but it was the way that the voice had provided helpful information and support that was the strangest thing about it.

The precise mechanism behind it continues to be a topic of heated debate and intrigue.

To this day, the case remains one of the strangest of its kind ever recorded.

Source: Live Science | Comments (20)

Tags: Brain, Consciousness