That's very possible indeed. I remember when I was a kid my grandparent's tube TV was making a high-pitched sound that was figuratively driving me insane (maybe generated from the HSYNC frequency, now that I think about it). I couldn't understand how they could bear it but of course when I told them they didn't get it because it was probably way outside of their hearing range. I'm fairly sure that now that I'm in my 30s I couldn't hear it either.
> The Mosquito or Mosquito alarm is a hand wound machine used to deter loitering by young people by emitting sound at high frequency, in some versions so it can be heard mostly by younger people.
> The sound was made into a mobile phone ringtone, which could not be heard by teachers if the phone rang during a class.
At 35, I'm still deeply bothered by that sound. Slightly related but in a lot of parts of Ginza in Tokyo, they use a similar sound for repelling rats that I find extremely uncomfortable...
Typically a high-pitched whine from a CRT is from the flyback transformer. I found, when I was a kid, that sometimes a well-placed whack on the CRT's cabinet could temporarily fix the problem.
Nowadays, I have no idea if I can hear that whine anymore or not, as CRTs are quite uncommon. Probably not. Much for the better, as it used to give me headaches.
15Khz colorburst whine. Its amusing how many audio recordings even today show a notch filter used at that frequency, years after there were no CRTs anywhere in the recording process.
I was quite surprised as a young adult when one of my ears couldn't hear cricket chirps anymore. If I laid with one ear against the pillow I could hear them, but if I turned over it was silent. A hearing test confirmed that one ear was deficient.
