Submitted by RobertMort t3_zkjva8 in nosleep
I hope you can help me. I’m desperate. I’ve tried everything—and if I can’t find a solution soon, my entire marriage is going to fall apart.
Or worse.
A few months ago, my wife and I moved into a new house. A townhouse in a nice development. We got a really good price and the house was in great condition—the owner was an older widow with no kids or pets. We were thrilled to have our dream home for a fraction of the price.
Then my wife started complaining about the noise.
“Do you hear that?” she asked me one night, as we cooked dinner.
“Hear what?”
“That, like, really high-pitched noise.”
I stopped stirring the sauce and listened. But all I could hear was the soft bubbling of our pasta water. “Sorry. I don’t hear anything.”
“Hmm,” she said, scowling. “I don’t hear it anymore, either.”
But over the coming weeks and months, she heard it a lot more. A high-pitched whine at all hours of the day (and night.) I told her maybe it was tinnitus. But she insisted it wasn’t—she heard it through both ears, and it just “sounded” like an external noise.
“Besides,” she added. “I only hear it at home.”
I racked my brain, trying to think of what it could be. “Maybe you’re hearing some electronic device through the wall.” I remembered, as a kid in the ’90s, my parents having a TV that made the most annoying sound. Even when it was on mute, I could hear that horrible high-pitched whine from two rooms over.
“Hmm… interesting,” my wife replied, stirring her cup of coffee. “So you think… if the neighbors had some sort of device… we’d hear it through the wall?”
“Maybe? We hear their dog all the time.”
But, God, I wish I hadn’t said anything. Because that afternoon, she came to me with the most batshit-insane theory I’d ever heard.
“They’re doing it on purpose,” she whispered—as if scared that they’d hear us. “They must’ve bought some device that makes annoying sounds, and now they’re purposely pointing it at us through the wall.”
I nearly spit out my soda. “Uh, what now?”
She repeated herself, a frenzied look in her eye, and I nodded like it all made sense. But inside I was screaming, what the fuck?
“You know the Kowalskis hate us.”
Okay, that part was true. We didn’t have the best relationship with Jack and “Gigi” Kowalski. They hosted parties that went late, and we threatened to call the cops once. When their dog pooped on our lawn, I’d gotten in a near-shouting match with Jack over it.
“Does a device like that even exist?” I asked.
But it did. “Noise stingers.” A whole spread of them on NoiseMakersExpo for $49.99. I felt my gut turn as I read about them—people apparently did use them vindictively, to get back at neighbors. Sometimes they even caused ill health effects.
“Only someone totally demented would use this.”
“Like the Kowalskis.”
“Well—”
“I have half a mind to go over there right now, and tell them if they don’t turn off that thing…”
“Wait, wait. Let’s not jump to conclusions. Uh, how about this? For the next week or so, let’s just monitor it. See how often you hear it, try to figure out where exactly it’s coming from. I’ll listen for it too. And after that, if you’re really convinced it’s the Kowalskis, we’ll go over and talk to them.”
She huffed at me, but finally nodded. “Okay.”
That night, she gently woke me up at 3 AM. “I hear it,” she whispered.
I strained my ears to listen. But there was nothing—only the soft sound of our other neighbor’s windchimes through the window.
I shook my head.
“It’s really high-pitched. Maybe you’re too old to hear it.”
“I’m only three years older than you.”
She got out of bed and walked over to each of the four walls. “It’s louder on this side,” she said, gesturing to the south wall.
“Well, that is the wall that faces the Kowalskis.”
Confirmation bias.
She slowly paced out of the room. I was so tired, but I forced myself out of bed too. She walked into the hallway, then into our guest bedroom. Shook her head, and started down the stairs.
By the time I caught up with her, she was going into the basement.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
When I got to the bottom she was standing at the south wall, pressing her ear up against the cold cement.
“Jill, let’s go back to—”
She immediately shushed me. “It’s right here,” she whispered, her eyes wide. She motioned for me to come over.
I put my ear against the wall. But I couldn’t hear anything—except my own heartbeat. “I don’t hear anything."
“Are you serious?”
I shook my head.
“It’s so loud I can barely hear you.”
“Yeah, but… they wouldn’t put it in the basement. They’d put the noise stinger thing like, next to our bedroom or kitchen.”
I wrapped my arm around her and gently guided her over to the stairs. Held her close, smiled at her, reassured her it was okay.
But inside, I was starting to doubt my wife’s sanity.
***
Of course I wanted to believe my wife. But none of it made sense.
She heard a noise I couldn’t hear. She claimed it was coming from the basement, on the other side of the wall. And it was our neighbors, using some noise emitter as a weapon against us.
“But I don’t hear it,” I told her that morning, as we drank our second cups of coffee.
“Your hearing is worse than mine.”
I wasn’t convinced, but then she opened her laptop and sat it in front of me. “I was trying to match the tone I heard last night, after you fell asleep. And I think it’s around 17,000 Hz. Which is pretty hard to hear if you’re in your 30s like us.”
She typed it into the search bar and played a video for me. And, I’ll be damned, she was right. I didn’t hear a thing. Curse all that listening to Pink Floyd in my youth.
So that should’ve been the end of it. I should’ve trusted my wife, believed she was hearing some electronic pitch I couldn’t, and gone back to business as usual.
But I didn’t.
The next time she heard the sound, at 5:47 PM, I surreptitiously pulled out my phone and hit ‘record.’ And after she went to sleep that night, I downloaded an audio-editing program. I opened the file, and the proof was right there: instead of jagged blue lines showing soundwaves—
There was just a flat line.
I sat in the darkness in a cold sweat. There was no noise stinger, no vindictive plan by the Kowalskis, no noise coming through the basement wall.
It was all in her head.
***
It’s been two weeks since then, and things have gotten much worse.
Jill had been logging every time she heard the sound in her notebook, as part of our monitoring. But it’s shot up from about twice a day to more than ten. Sometimes I find her with her hands pressed against her ears, rocking back and forth. When I try to talk to her, she doesn’t even seem able to hear me.
Other times I wake up in the middle of the night, to find the bed empty. I eventually find her in the basement, banging at the concrete wall, tears streaming down her face. “Stop it,” she cries. “Please… stop it.”
I don’t know what to do. One night, after a particularly bad episode, I took her to the ER. But the doctors—including the psychiatrist—couldn’t find anything wrong with her. They insisted it was a form of tinnitus or Meniere’s disease, and gave her some medication to help.
The medication didn’t help.
I’m scared. I want to help her. But seeing her like this is driving me insane. I even went over to the Kowalskis weeks ago, when things started getting bad. They seemed as confused as I was. I’ve tried to track down the previous owner, the widow, as well. In case there was something weird about this house, like some radioactive noise-emitting substance in the walls. I eventually found her phone number, but she won’t answer my calls.
And then there was last night.
The last straw, that made me post this. I woke up around 4 AM to find my wife in the basement again—but she wasn’t crying or banging on the wall like before.
She was holding a hammer.
And she was frantically swinging it against the concrete.
“Jill!” I ran down the stairs and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Jill—stop!”
She kept mumbling something. About having to get through the wall. How she had to get to the source of the sound.
Right then and there I packed us up in the car and left for my mother’s house. Since we arrived she seems to be doing better—restless, troubled, not talking much. But at least she’s not saying she hears something, not pressing her hands to her ears, not swinging around a hammer.
I don’t know what to do. The doctors still claim she has a severe form of tinnitus and keep prescribing worthless medicine.
What is going on here?
Help us. Please.
Scottsman2237 t1_j005nsd wrote
I mean, what’s a little concrete repair compared to your wife’s sanity. By a nice sledge, some safety gear, and start chipping.