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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?

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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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Louise4 May 2022
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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cwillie May 2022
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)!
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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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MargaretMcKen May 2022
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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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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TChamp May 2022
Psychotic people are immune to reasoning.
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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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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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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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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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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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Install outdoor cameras and a ring doorbell that pictures as to who is at the door.
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Beatty May 2022
Won't stop delusions though..
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