The word Clairaudience comes from the French clair, meaning clear and audience meaning hearing and is a psychic sense of hearing things not audible to others. If you are standing in a lift surrounded by a huddle of silent strangers all trying to look like they are not looking at each other, and a voice suddenly intones to you ‘You do look really fat in that skirt,’ then smile, it’s either a message, a fashion diktat from the spirit world, known arbiters of style to the psychic - you are hearing clairaudiently - or time to glare daggers at the man standing beside you. Clairaudience is a type of extra-sensory perception.
Those gifted with clairaudience, may not actually be hearing real sound but be picking up on messages to the ‘mental ear’ just as we ‘hear’ out thoughts sometimes. On the other hand clairaudience may actually be picking up on sound, such as voices or noises totally inaudible to others, perhaps on another frequency. So if you thought Aunt Matilda was dead, and then you hear her disembodied voice complaining that your new lover will never amount to much, hope that pills can cure this and that you’re just having a small breakdown, but perhaps the truth maybe you are clairaudient and will have to put up with Aunt Matilda’s rebukes for decades after you thought you’d buried the problem.