As I was walking down the stair, I saw a man who wasn't there

This morning Mum thought there had been a man in her front yard last night. It was pouring rain most of the night, yet she said she heard the little boy across the road and two doors down saying "Mummy, look, there's a man in the yard." I would say it's damn impossible to hear a little boy say that from her full brick house in the middle of the night with rain pouring down.

The other day she also said there was a man 'in her driveway', but when I asked her to look out the window and show me where, she said "In Bud's yard" (the man next door). She can barely see a thing due to macular degeneration, so if there was anyone there, it was most likely the owner of the house, not an intruder.

Almost every day she says "Last night the dogs went mad - there was someone in my yard." She means the neighbours' dogs, which bark at nothing and are untrained, unlike my watch dogs who are trained not to bark or growl unless someone actually touches the gate or fence or starts to come in the yard.

So the dogs were not barking because someone was in her yard, they were just barking like they always do.

I am worried about her hearing this little boy's voice. One night she claims she heard his mother say "Go over to that old lady's yard and bounce your ball on the footpath to annoy her", and she says he did, and it was dark.

Then she said on another occasion she turned on her hall light around 10 pm and the boy called out "That light shines straight into my bedroom!" and then his mother said "Go and annoy her tomorrow." This is definitely nonsense, as the boy would be asleep by ten, and as well he has shutters on his bedroom window to keep the light out. Mum's hall light cannot be seen outside as the door is solid, not made of glass.

But try and tell her this and she says, "You are trying to make out I am stupid again."

Today, I just said, "I don't want to hear any more about these intruders. You'll have to learn to live with them." This kept her off the subject for a couple of hours.

I guess you would call these events 'auditory hallucinations'. Very worrying.