I have had trouble sleeping since a couple moved to the apartment next door and their baby wakes me up at random hours of the night, sadly for me I’m the kind of person that once awakened can go to sleep again, and it became an issue at my job so I had to do something about it, of course I couldn’t go and tell the neighbors to keep their child quiet at night, I’m pretty sure they were already stressed because of it so I bought a pair of noice cancelling earplugs hoping that it will help.
And it did for sometime, but one night between sleep and wakefulness I notice a weird sound coming from my left ear, a subtle patter that immediately made me think there is a bug in the earplug so I waked up and went to the bathroom to check but it was totally clean, so I thought maybe what I was hearing was my blood flowing in my ear or something and since it wasn’t strong enough to be annoying I didn’t give it much attention, until one night.
I noticed that there was a recognizable pattern in the sound while I was more asleep than awake, it sounded like a voice underwater and at first I thought that maybe the blood flow and the ear plug were making a resonance of some sort and soon I found it very interesting, as a common man this kind of things become an obsession after a monotonous day at work.
Every night I went to sleep trying to decipher what the voice could be saying, and soon I started to had dreams of the voice talking to me, dreams that at one point became weird nightmares that I don’t fully remember but always in the morning left me feeling like I just stepped into reality after a long long dream.
At this point more than freaked out I was amused by the experience, I was totally convinced that the weird sounds coming from the blood flow of my ear doing a resonance with the earplug shape was suggesting my brain into this weird nightmares, I even enjoyed them as the feeling of dread vanishing into relief made mornings easier sometimes.
Until one night; that day went as always, and that disturbes me, I feel like I should have known something was off, it wasn’t until I went to bed that I notice the first weird thing, now both earplugs had that weird sound, I didn’t give it much attention since I was already tired and in my sleepy state of mind I even thought that It will be a more interesting experience.
The second weird thing I notice was when I was just about to fall asleep, the sound was clearly a voice, it sounded far, and like if it was underwater and I would have thought that it was part of the dream the next morning if it hadn’t been for the third weird thing.
I don’t know how much time passed but I remember that at some point, the voice started to be less faded, and as it became stronger, it also became clearer, at that point I was trying really hard to wake up because I felt like something was rapidly coming closer, it was that kind of nightmare.
Soon I started to understand the voice, it talked in a unrecognizable way, slowly, it was closer, and closer, until I felt it right by my side, then it stopped, and in that silent I tried to open my eyes, the fear and anxiety were unbearable, but I couldn’t, I was paralyzed, suddenly the voice talked again, like if it were right in my left ear it said “help….”
And in that point a really loud noise waked me up, I took my earplugs out and the hear of rapid footsteps almost gave me a heart attack but I realized it was at the neighbors as the loud scream of the woman made me jump out of bed to go and see what was happening.
I knocked their door without success, asking almost in screams if everything was okay, another neighbors showed up, someone called the police and eventually they went inside braking the door, they took us all out of the place, and I was at the limit of my nerves so I went to my apartment, turned on all the lights and waited to be more calmed or the dawn, whatever comes first.
I left behind the incident as days passed by, trow the earplugs and slept with the lights on for a while, didn’t hear anything again. The police report of what happened and the news came days after, the man tried several times to kill the baby at night asphyxiating him, and that night he succeeded