have you smelled something that isn’t there? does it happen all the time? if your answer was yes on both, then hit me up ’cause we could be phantosmia buddies! jk.

PHANTOSMIA was the term or called for smell hallucination and I think I have it.

I can’t really pinpoint when it started. All I know is that whenever November is coming, I would usually start to smell a flower-like smell. At first, I was convincing myself that the smell comes from actual flowers that are being sold on streets for the coming legal holidays but turned out the smell stays even indoors or inside the bus or on open air tricycle ride or even when I am alone in my room. When I tell people about it, they’d think it’s spooky but I don’t believe in such things and I usually laugh about it. I won’t be scared because of smell (brave ‘to no 😏🤭). I mostly get annoyed at how pungent the flowery smell is. But after few hours, it would simply go away.

I still smell that flowery scent every now and then but it’s definitely present around November and December. Nowadays, I would smell cigarette smoke. This scent, I think, started 3 or 4 years ago. I was able to identify it right away. I was staying at my cousin’s when I first noticed it. Behind the house was a farm and next house was meters away. No one was a smoker and yet I was smelling cigarette smoke as if someone was smoking right next to me. Of course, when I told my cousin about it, she got little scared. But now I am used to it. We have neighbours that smoke outside their homes and smell would get in our house (i know, second hand smoking at its finest) so it’s pretty normal I would smell smoke. But whenever I do, I would still and always ask the people around me if they smell it too, just to know if it’s actual smoke or just my brain messing up with me. I hate cigarette now more than ever now that I smell it every other hour because of this, I guess, hallucination.

I only learned Phastosmia on Google and I have not been checked by professionals so again, this is merely a guess and not self-diagnose. But if you’re smelling something, you think, is not there, you might want to verify it with someone else. Or maybe, ghosts like you.