Phantom smells?

It could be a real smell such as cannabis users nearby, both outside or inside the same building, the smell coming through the walls.

A few times I had phantom tastes.  Everything tasted like sh*t including my own saliva.   The doctor diagnosed an infection of the taste glands.

I’ve never got Covid during Covid but after 2021, I’ve started to smell really nasty smells everywhere now 

I live in a council flat that was built in the 1950’s and aside from the wind directions with the west facing kitchens blowing smells down the hallways or the flats below, late at night in my bedroom there is always a smell of stale cooking, even though I never bring food into my bedroom - I know that if I approached the council with this, they would try to convince me that it is all a figment of my imagination (which I suspect has probably happened with other posters on here) as due to our autism, our perceptions are deemed by others to be wrong in some way and everything we say “is not to be taken seriously” in the “infinite wisdom” of certain council officals - what seems to be happening is that over time, stale food smells seep into the walls and are released late at night during a certain level of temperature, wind direction and humidity 

I got phantom smells in 2021. I suspected I had covid but tested negative. Nonetheless, it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I've always been hyper-sensitive to smells and this was non-stop. Everything smelt bad, including the air around me. I went for walks trying to get away from it, but it was everywhere. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the entire world didn't smell terrible, it was something wrong with my nose.

Thankfully it did go away and hasn't happened since. It probably was caused by some kind of virus in the naval cavity.

With autism I do smell things others can't and smell them before others because I'm hyper-sensitive. So sometimes it's possible you really are smelling something.

Smelling things that don't exist is also a sign of brain injuries, tumours, schizophrenia, but I wouldn't want to worry you. If you are hyper-sensitive to smells already then your brain might be inventing things when you are on edge. Give it a few weeks and see if it goes away by itself and you readjust. If it's still happening in a few months then it could warrant further investigation.

I am not sure whether phantom smells but recently my strong sense of smell has got stronger. I notice every slight smell that I don't recognise and can't settle until I know what it is. 

I do notice sometimes that nasty smells I smell somewhere appear to get stuck up my nostril for a while.

I am now wondering if some might be phantom. Thinking about it now I can sometimes go into a room and try to trace a nasty smell and suddenly realise it has vanished. 

I also notice stale smells in rooms that others might miss. I even notice a smell if I have eaten a dairy product.

I'm sort of used to it now, it started to come on a few years ago and it was a bit scary at first, I started wondering if I'd got some kind of brain tumour or something, but then I realised I didn't have any other symptoms like headaches or visual problems and just learnt to accept it as part of my slightly muddled sensory world.

That's cool. My experience was on the more unpleasant end of the scale.

If I watch something like a cooking program I often get whiffs of cooking smells, or flowers when watching a gardening program.

This started to happen to me after a concussion . It was very unsettling and was mostly burning smells . Then after I got Covid it could be any smell at all and I will actually taste what I’m smelling too. Luckily the post-Covid smells only last for a short amount of time . They could be pleasant or highly unpleasant. 

There's something called phantosmia. It can have different causes.