My 77-year-old MIL is hearing things in the middle of the night. Any suggestions?

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My 77-year-old MIL is hearing things in the middle of the night. Any suggestions?

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My MIL wakes up in the middle of the night saying she hears someone or something banging on her bedroom wall.

Then she says she saw the front door is open by about 4 inches. So she calls me to make sure I am not outside.

I look outside, advise her it must have been deer running by or the cats were just running around the house playing... but everything is okay.

I sit with her while she drinks her soda and assist her back into bed.

This is happening more frequently...any suggestions?

Alzheimer's & Dementia Hallucinations Sleep Issues

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Update: Dr. changed mom's medicines, and took her off two of them. We added "calm" at night. She's sleeping much better, but I still get up at 3 to check on her - makes me feel better.

Her level of dementia has progressed to moderate to severe, however the nocturnal hallucinations have ebbed for now.

AND she won't quit the caffeine... but I'm going to trying to blend it 1/2 and 1/2 in the afternoons to see if it helps.

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Look up "exploding head syndrome." This is a neurological phenomenon. She will need to be evaluated and might be treated successfully if this is the problem. It's weird, and it's real.

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I remember my FIL staying with us after his first major rehab. We brought him home with us for a week long "vacation" so we could see what we need to know before taking him home and establishing help for him there. Several nights that week he thought he heard things and would get up knocking things over and start yelling ARE YOU UP? It was a bit of a shock for us what nights looked like. That was when we got the Rehabs saying he shouldn't be alone eves and overnight in his home anymore. It was not just being in our home because it continued when I went back with him and stayed a second week at his home so he could get used to the changes and the caregivers that were downstair during the night reported much of the same. Not long after he was diagnosed officially with the Nero as having both Vascular dementia at least mid-rage and some Alzheimer's.

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Louise4: May I ask if the "soda" is a caffeinated one? If so, perhaps that could be switched out to a small drink of water since too much could cause middle of the night toileting needs and caffeine is not advisable for sleep, of course. Perhaps the medication(s) she may be taking are manifesting into visual disturbances.

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She may be having vivid dreams. Talk to her doctor about medications to help her sleep through the night. Also might be worth a check-up by her doctor. Low oxygen levels, infections, blood chemistry imbalances can also cause hallucinations.

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A white noise machine may help as suggested. I put a baby monitor and an Amazon Alexa in Mom’s room so I can hear if she is just restless or actually waking up and possibly imagining thing. I can quietly tell her all is ok and soothe her to sleep rather than going in the room and truly waking her

best of luck to you during this hard time.

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It’s just going to get worse as her Dementia does. Installing a camera is the best way to show her that it’s nothing. Try to convince her that it was just a dream. Would getting her a service dog help? It could sleep in a bed on the floor in her room. Is she on medication for dementia. My Pop had good results with Seroquel at bedtime. A month before his death he needed something stronger and it still didn’t work. Hospice came in and kept him mostly sedated because he was in so much pain and the Alzheimer’s made him very violent.

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Psychotic people are immune to reasoning.

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Has she seen a neurologist?

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I feel my mother’s aural and visual delusions occurred most often late early stage to mid mid-stage dementia.

Animals scratching their way in. People climbing in and out her windows. People having a party in her living room. People eating at her dining room table. People talking on her deck.

But she slept through our big dogs barking under her bedroom window at a coyote.

We’re rural and isolated, so it’s not as people even wander by. We only see humans when we go to town, lucky us.

She covered her windows with cardboard and trapped paper in her closed her deck door so, if the paper had fallen, she had her proof it had been opened. The paper never moved.

So many sleepless night as we patrolled the perimeter to calm her. So many days checking under the house and in the attic. Now she’s late mid-stage on the cusp of advanced and her delusions are focused more on her parents that are in the other room, just out of sight.

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My mom was having hallucinations in the first couple of years of being diagnosed with dementia. She would say that someone was shining lasers into her bedroom windows at night and keeping her up. She said kids were stealing her mail out of her mailbox. She had taped paper over anything illuminated.... like the clock on the microwave or the display on her phone. She would call me at work and tell me that a man knocked on the door and she let him in and he gave her a pill to take and she woke up later in her bed. The stories were endless and it just about drove me nuts. At first, I doubted myself and said what a horrible daughter I would be if these things were happening and I didn't investigate it. So I stayed the night several times and my daughter did the same. None of these things were happening....it was all in her head.

Once we moved mom into assisted living and she started on dementia medications, anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds, she calmed down a bit. She still has a lot of paranoia...she'll say they are going to kick me out of here, someone held me down and cut my hair off, all of my money has been stolen, etc...
It's just part of the disease and I have become numb to it to a certain degree. Abruptly changing the subject and asking her a question can derail one of her rants.

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Install outdoor cameras and a ring doorbell that pictures as to who is at the door.

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Won't stop delusions though..

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My mom of 86 swears our hallway is the alley way all the neighborhood kids take to get to school. She describes how they walk through our house to get to school. She too hears thumping and banging on her bedroom doors, walls, and closets. It is so real to her. I explain to her regularly it's just neighborhood sounds like car doors closing, trash cans being rolled out to street, or the like. She's good with that til the next day when it cycles over again. This is her world and I have to join it sometimes.

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My mom hears people walking the hall way at night. Then they stop at her door and start over again. She also hears them talking. She said it was me. I told her I’m to tired to walk and talk all night! She stayed with my oldest brother and had same thing while there.

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Its so "coincidental" that I see this post today. My 75 year old mother is really upset today because "the closet doors were rattling" in the middle of the night. I don't have a logical explanation. I thought maybe that happened as the a/c went on or off, but when I tested my theory, it didn't happen.

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Are there sound activated recorders of some type that you could leave in the room?
There may be some actual noises, raccoons in the attic in my parents' case. You might hear what she is saying or when she is waking in the night. I don't know if this might apply, but I wonder if she wakes around the same time.? With young children night terrors would occur around the same time. It was helpful to wake them and let them go to sleep to disrupt the cycle.

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I went through this with my 93 y/o mother. Mom is profoundly hard of hearing and has macular degeneration, so her senses are not very keen. She insisted that she heard people breaking into the house at night (even without her hearing aids). She had a very vivid recollection of these events, and even though she said she had locked herself in a bathroom, she repeated things the "intruders" said, although there is no way she could have heard a bomb going off, much less conversations in another room. We had security come in and investigate (she and my Dad lived in a gated community at the time) - there was no sign of forced entry - and my mother never failed to lock the doors - nothing was disturbed or taken from the house.

We took this as a "one-off" - maybe a very realistic nightmare. As it turns out, this was the start of dementia manifesting itself via auditory and visual hallucinations. There were other similar events, (she convinced my father that people stole the registration out of his locked truck, she heard non-existent rats in the attic) then security would call me after they got reports. It was a downward spiral as time went on. My Dad passed away last November and Mom is now in a Memory Care Unit with fairly advanced dementia.

Maybe you can set up some video surveillance (at least outside) so YOU can know for sure that these things are not happening. The suggestion to install a white noise machine is also a good one.

Good luck and God bless.

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i'm not sure why everyone is suggesting there is actually banging the wall that your MIL hears but you don't...dementia commonly causes hallucinations, both auditory and visual. my mom sometimes sees things that aren't there, even when i'm sitting right next to her. the other day she said something about a dog that just ran across the room, which did not happen, there is no dog in the house and i was right there next to her. and she often hears things and grossly misinterprets them. a carer was coming down the stairs and she got alarmed and said someone was banging on the door. it was just the sound of the footsteps on the stairs. there are medications than can help if you're able to see a geriatric psychiatrist, but it's not likely to completely go away.

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Hi! ‘Everyone’ isn’t suggesting that there is actual banging, not a hallucination. It has been just me, in the middle of a ‘rat in the roof’ problem, who has suggested that it’s worth checking reality as well as hallucinations.

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Louise please check for rats before you decide that mother is losing it. I have just heard our next batch of rats rolling the warfarin balls down the ceiling as I speak!

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Why are you doing all of this? Why isn't your H doing the middle of the night duties, since it's his mother?

From a previous post: "What bothers me the most about caregiving are cleaning up after animals and no time to care for me.

We live in the country, so the floor is hard to keep clean...so sweeping and mopping is an everyday MUST. But I end up mopping and picking dog poop all day long. I hate it when I go to do something and step in pet pee or poop.

We have pet pads, but it doesn't matter.
They just go where they want.

I dislike changing and washing all of mom's bedding frequently because the dogs had an "accident". (Fortunately, I have a waterproof mattress protector for her new mattress, otherwise it would be ruined already.) I also keep 2 thick mattress pads on her bed at all times.
I change the bedding once a week no matter what anyway, but getting up at 2:30 in the am to strip and make a bed because of animals, does get pretty hard.

So, I spend all the next day washing her oversized comforters, mattress pads, sheets, pillows, etc. -- If I get behind because I have to take her to the Dr., It takes days to get caught up.

I know her dogs mean a lot to her but
I just found a good paying work from home job. Training starts next month. There is set schedule though, which will be very hard to follow, while caring for mom... But I need to work...the cost of living has increased so much its necessary. -- I just won't have time to clean up after them anymore."

Are you still getting up in the middle of the night because of her dogs? How is training for your new job going?

Have you set any boundaries at all?

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Thank you for caring enough to reply.

This post was about my MIL hearing things at night.

I do wish to make one point clear... I don't view my MIL as H's mother. Married 35+ years, she is OUR mother. I will care for her for her with all my heart.

If anything happened to H prior to her passing, I will continue to care for her.

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Denial, denial and wishful thinking! It's absolutely abnormal to have hallucinations and delusions at night. Sometimes, this is how Alzheimer's begins. An isolated incident of this type could be the result of a bad dream. However, when the incidents are becoming more frequent, it's no longer a an isolated accident. Watch for other signs of dementia. They can be very subtle at the beginning and hard to grasp. A neuropsychological evaluation may bring out more information. Alzheimer's begins in many ways, frequently with a mild psychotic episode or paranoia.

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Actually, I am not in denial. I know what is happening and I believe to some degree she knows it too.

What she sometimes hears is a pounding sound on her walls. It is not an every night occurrence but does happen.

These sounds are very real to her. I try to alleviate her fear by telling her things are alright, that it is probably just an animal. (We live in the country, bears, deer, opposums, foxes, owls, eagles, cats, etc are common.) This helps her to relax and go back to sleep.

Im contacting her physician tomorrow. I am hoping he can assist in a positive way.

I just didn't realize this was a symptom of dementia or alzheimers.

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Perhaps play ‘white sound’ to blank out other noises. Or music on softly.

Or perhaps spend a night on a mattress on the floor next to her. There may be actual noises. We have now had rats in the ceiling space twice in 20 years, including when we got back to Alice Springs 4 weeks ago. They made quite a lot of noise. Baits up through the ceiling hatch sorted it out in a couple of nights.

Possum can do the same in Australia, it’s like they’re having a noisy party. Possums are protected so you have to search for the gap in the eaves where they get in and block it off.

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It doesn't even have to be anything that big, I grew up in a old farmhouse that often had mice; it's surprising how much noise a tiny creature can make when it scampers through the walls (especially in the middle of the night)!

My 77-year-old MIL is hearing things in the middle of the night. Any suggestions?

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