Every Unexplained Thing, Part 2: The Phantom Car Door

When I am falling asleep, I hear my car door slam shut.

It does not happen every night nor even most nights, but I hear it often enough that it no longer alarms me. My car isn’t being broken into, I should point out. I’ve only had my car broken into once, during college, and I don’t remember hearing it on that particular night. I feel like it’s unlikely that I did hear it that night and then forgot about it, however, because after years of hearing phantom car doors slam in the moments before I fall asleep, I would have been gratified to finally connect the noise with a real-life incident. Nope. In fact, the person who broke into my car then actually left the door open.

modified image via flickr user starmist, under creative commons license

I don’t think I began hearing the phantom car door until I turned sixteen and became associated with a vehicle enough that I recognized the distinctive noise of its door slamming shut as the noise of my vehicle door slamming shut. In the house I grew up in, I lived on the second story, above the garage, with my inherited blue Blazer parked on the driveway immediately outside that garage. If someone was in my car, I would have heard it, and yes, more than once, I’d venture out late at night to see if anyone had been in my car. It was always locked, with no sign of an intruder. Before too long, I stopped checking.

My senior year of high school, I got my second car, a silver Mustang. Being a different vehicle, it made a different noise when its door slammed shut. Whatever I heard in my head when I was falling asleep updated from the noise of the Blazer to the noise of the Mustang. I am not sure if this means that I was hearing a different noise so much as I was hearing the same noise and my association with it changed. 

My first year of college, I scored a parking spot off-campus. (My school was weirdly discouraging of freshman having cars, and to this day I don’t know why, although this is not a mystery I imagine I will investigate in this series.) I don’t remember hearing the phantom car door slam in the dorms or at all in my college experience until my last year, when I lived off-campus and I had a parking space right outside my apartment. The next period of my life when I can remember hearing the noise was years later, in my second apartment in Los Angeles, where I again lived (and slept) very close to my parking space, and I hear it in my current home here in L.A.

Sometimes I hear different noises. On occasion, as I’m falling asleep I’ll hear a mechanical-sounding hum or whine that sounds like an electric saw or vacuum or something. As soon as I have the presence of mind to wonder what’s making that noise, it stops. Sometimes I can hear what sounds like people talking in another room or maybe someone whispering to me, but as soon as I strain to hear the words being spoken, it stops. The noise of the car door slamming works differently in that it always jolts me awake, in the same way as when I’m falling asleep and suddenly sense that I’m tripping and falling — the thing we call the hypnagogic jerk, and yes, I am amused by that name. With both, I’m only alarmed for however long it takes to realize that I’m in no real danger and then I start the process of falling asleep from the top again.

The things I’m experiencing most resemble a psychological phenomenon called exploding head syndrome — and yes, I’m also amused by this term, but no, I don’t think it’s the best name for this particular thing, because it refers not to any actual heads exploding but just people hearing loud, sudden, short noises when they’re falling asleep or waking up. Sufferers hear different noises, and while it’s normal for people to hear doors slamming in general, in my reading I didn’t find anyone who hears specifically the noise of their own car door uniquely.

I talked to a friend about this recently and he suggested that maybe hearing that particular noise results from some sense of ownership over personal space that I don’t want violated. That may be true, but the weird thing about that explanation is that I’m not a car person and I’m not all that precious about my means of transportation. My car is dirty. I hate driving it and I’ve felt that way about every car I have ever owned. I don’t want anyone to steal my car, but I also don’t have any sentimental attachment to cars in general, no more than I would my electric toothbrush or my power drill. (I do have a sentimental attachment to my immersion blender, however. We’ve been through a lot together.) Given that the noise of my front door — of my house now but also the front door of any home I’ve lived in, really — would be just as recognizable to me and also even more indicative of intrusion into a space I do care about, you’d think I’d hear that noise when I’m falling asleep. But I don’t. I just hear my stupid car. 

However, there is one thing I still can’t explain.

Once, about twelve years ago, I was hiking solo in Milford Sound, in the fjordlands on New Zealand’s South Island. I was not near any other people that I could see and certainly not near where any cars could be. I was just dreamily hiking, taking in the scenery and not particularly focused on anything and also sober, I should point out, when I heard my car door slam. I stopped in my tracks. I assumed I was just hearing things. I waited a second and started walking again, when I heard it a second time. My reaction was the instantaneous recognition of something familiar: My brain told me that it was my car door slamming. Later, when I got back to the plane that had flown me out there for the day, I asked the pilot if, based on where I was on the map, I would have been near a parking lot. She said no, not really, even if I hadn’t hiked all that far out. She guessed it was possible there could have been a vehicle out there, even if the terrain wouldn’t have made driving easy. Maybe I was hearing an echo from a car far away, she said. I didn’t tell her that I’d heard my own car door out there, for obvious reasons, but to this day, I’ve never been out in the world, heard a car door slam and had that reaction: That is my car door I just heard. It only happened that one time, in Milford Sound, not near any parking lots and certainly not near my Mustang, which was parked in California.

This is part of a series, “Every Unexplained Thing,” in which I try to make sense of the little mysteries I’ve encountered in my life. I have never seen anything I’d categorize as even remotely paranormal, and I’m willing to bet there is an explanation for most things, but I just haven’t found those explanations yet.

You can subscribe to this blog’s feed here.