It’s so good to you again my friends. Now, I know you all are here to stay. Are you ready for another story?

Not every story starts with some tragic event when they were young. It can happen at any point in our lives. Take this 50-year-old man, for example. He drastically experienced a change at the peak of his life. To anyone else, it would have been a blessing. For this man, it was a quick spiral downhill. Shall we begin?

His hearing has been average his whole life. At the age of 50, he has been pretty healthy. He stays active and eats healthy. However, age can cause a lot of changes to the body. He was fully aware of that and readily accepted the changes that come with old age.

“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy…”

Suddenly, he hears this loud, piercing ringing in his ears. In agony from the ringing, he covers his ears and winces in pain. The cheers of celebration turned into cries of worry. Someone quickly got him a chair to sit on. They each tried talking to him but to no avail.

After five minutes, the ringing ceases. With sweat dripping down his face, the man deeply inhaled and then exhaled. Realizing that people are surrounding him, the man turns and looks at everyone still stricken with worry. The man reassured with a brief smile, “I am fine now. I am sorry to worry you all.”

He hears the beep from someone ending a call followed by sirens. “You can tell them that I’m fine now,” the man said looking at the woman who ended the call. “You should still see a doctor,” the young woman who looked to be in her early 20s begged. She was his daughter. “We need to know that you are alright,” a young man in his late 20s added. He was his son. Their spouses rushed to get water and looked out for the ambulance. Their children looked up at their grandfather in worry. Seeing he didn’t want to cause more worry for his family, especially his grandchildren, he hesitantly answered, “If you insist.”

The ambulance arrived with the siren blazing. It was already loud when it was 15 miles away as if it was in their driveway. This time the siren was down the street. It was much louder that it nearly burst his eardrums causing it to bleed. His daughter and son saw this and grew even more worried. The ambulance silenced its siren and parked in the driveway of their house. With his son on one side and stepson on the other, they carefully carried him to the ambulance. He was placed on the stretcher and was pushed into the back of the vehicle. The ambulance rushed out of the driveway to the hospital. His children and grandchildren hurried in their cars and sped off to catch up with the ambulance.

At the hospital, he was taken to a vacant room. In mere moments, a nurse rushed in to attach his arm to an IV drip. The nurse checked his pulse and vision before leaving the room to get a doctor. The doctor came to conduct the check-ups himself by checking his heart rate, blood pressure, throat, ears, and so forth. After some time, the doctor allowed the family to come in to reveal his diagnosis.

“He is fine. We did not see anything wrong in his tests. Although the blood that came from his ears may have resulted from the loud ringing he experienced. We will give him medication to help with the healing,” the doctor announced to the family.

His family spoke with the doctor for quite some time before they released him. On the drive home, the man heard water splashing that drowned the sound of seagulls. “Do you hear that? The waves crashing?” the man asked his son. “Hear what? Waves?! Come on Dad! We are nowhere near the ocean to hear waves,” the son responded. Realizing what he said, the man paused to think about what was happening to him. They wouldn’t understand even if I tell them and if I were to talk more about it, I could get sent to a nursing home, the man thought to himself. And guess what? He never spoke a word about that incident and future incidents again.

That was the beginning of his out-of-the-ordinary days. Later, the man comes to realize that more unordinary days will follow, and how he wished the doctor had found something wrong. What started as hearing the sounds of nature in the distance quickly turned into hearing sounds of agony.

Waaa. Tires screech then end with metal clanging together.

This has been the fifth time he heard a baby wailing followed by the collision of two cars. Then the crying of the baby stops. In place of silence comes weeping of loved ones for those who have passed.

This wasn’t the worst of it. He has for multiple nights heard of women and children screaming to be set free from their captors only to be choked, slashed, stabbed, or shot to death. Each time he would toss and turn waking up his wife only to brush it off as a nightmare. Secretly, without his family knowing he would inform the police about the women and children crying out. Unfortunately, each time the police dismissed his statements due to not having further proof.

With his son working in cybersecurity and with a knack at hacking, he asked his son to look into the missing children and women. However, he soon stops to prevent raising any suspicion from his son and to prevent his son from telling his daughter, a police officer, about the missing cases. The cries have been going on for five months. Then it all stopped. For a good week, he breathed a sigh of relief and slept soundly. But the worst has yet to come.

All those who have died within those months and before have replaced the sounds of his world with sounds from the nether. Wails that never end. Curses that drift on the wind. Those who still beg for their life long past its end.

However, the screams, wails, and curses of the other world grew closer to literally knocking at his door. One night, he heard loud banging that never once stirred his wife but bothered him. Grabbing a weapon and slowly exiting his bedroom to go to the front door. He looked through his window next to the door. No one was there. He goes back to his room and lifts the cover to go back to sleep. He hears knocking again. This time it was closer.

He gets out of bed, grabbing the weapon he carried before to investigate outside his room. He hears the knocking coming from one of his children’s rooms. Not wanting the robber to roam free, he approaches the door to his son’s room. He waits and listens. The rapping on the door sounded once again. He opens it to find nothing there. He searches his room to make sure the robber is not hiding. He found no one. He walks back to his room and quickly gets under the covers to sleep. His wife turns to see what is wrong. He reassures and tells her to go back to sleep. However, just when he closed his eyes, he heard a whisper in his ear.

You will not rest. Now that we know you can hear us.

Stricken with fear, the man turns to see no one there. But the voice continues. Each night, the voices multiply, tormenting him. His wife noticed her husband was not getting any sleep and inquired about what was going on. The man finally broke down and told her everything from the moment it happened to now. Concerned, the wife called their son who was living close by to take him to the hospital.

The man saw a different doctor and told him everything that was wrong. Thinking that the man has issues with noisy places, the doctor offered for him to wear headphones to drown out the noise. The man purchased the headphones. It worked when he played music. However, it wasn’t enough to drown out the voices.

One day, he decided to turn the music up as loud as it could get. For consecutive days all day, he kept the music volume up. Unfortunately, his family could not converse with him because he kept his music on all the time. Then one day, he hears a loud ringing. It followed with a pop in his ear. He could no longer hear. Although his ears were bleeding from that, he jumped up with joy, saying “I’m finally free!” Prior to losing his hearing, his family communicated with him through writing. He was able to hear them laugh and hear the intonations in their responses. This time, he could no longer hear the laughs and cries of his family. He learned sign language to get around. Luckily, he still has his wife and his family.

Have you all been curious about how long he suffered from this experience? It has been two years. Two years of fear and pain for him to lose the one thing to hear the sweet joys of his family.

Would you all have walked around with music blasting in your ears until you lost your hearing to get rid of the voices? A curious mind needs to know.

As I have said before, this ability only goes on to the next person. I wonder who it will be. As you can see, it did not discriminate when it possessed this 50-year-old man. Let’s hope you are not next. Our ears are a special gift. Here’s another warning for you. Be careful about listening beyond what you should know or you might get more than what you bargained for.