I was a 10th Standard student then and unfortunately an insomniac. One night, as usual, my parents and my siblings were asleep, but I was still rolling on bed, unable to get closer to the gate of dream world. Everything was calm and peaceful around. Since it was very cold, even fan was switched off and so there was a pin-drop silence in my home.
As an attempt of falling asleep, I said prayers, counted numbers and did all the silly tricks, I knew. As a result of all my tricks, I started feeling sleepy. Till this point, it was a sort of daily routine for me. Suddenly, I heard a sound (from outside my house), which I never heard before. I simply ignored it and tried to sleep. I was about to fall asleep when I heard that sound again, this time a little louder than before. My drowsiness was gone.
“Let me see if that sound repeats again. If it does, I’ll find out what it is,” I said to myself. After a minute or so, the sound was heard again, this time even louder than the previous two times, implying that ‘it’ was getting closer to my home. My imagination went to its peak. “What is it? Where is this strange sound coming from? Is it someone who is making that sound? Or is it a ghost? Or is it an alien? Or is it any supernatural power?” My heart started beating twice faster than normal. 
There is no word in dictionary to express how I felt that moment. It was a blend of curiosity, imagination, a little bit of ego and above all, fright. “If I wake up my parents or siblings and say that I hear a strange sound, they may make fun of me. So, let me go out and see what it is.” I got up from the bed and went to the door silently, expecting to hear that sound again.
I was about to open the door when fear gripped my soul. “What will happen if I see a ghost or an alien? Am I not too weak-hearted to see anything paranormal? Am I not putting my life at risk?” With these kinds of negative thoughts popping up in my mind, I came back to my bed and tried to sleep. ‘It’ was heard few more times and each time the sound was heard, my heartbeat could have been heard by anyone meters away.
After sometime, ‘it’ was gone and slowly after some more time, I was asleep. The next morning, after I woke up, I said to my parents and siblings that I had heard a strange sound the previous night. My sister laughed at me and said that I was scared. Indeed, I was scared, but I could not accept it because of my ego.
My parents said that it could have been the sound of an owl or a bat. I was neither convinced nor unconvinced. I was an adolescent then, not a small kid who cannot even recognize the sound of a bird. It was most probably not the sound of a bird or an insect. ‘It’ was something else. May be, I should have gathered all my courage and found out what it was, then itself. What I did might appear to be a cowardly act, but then, the sound was very strange that many adolescents of that age would have done similar to what I did then.
I don’t know whether to wish to hear that sound again or not. That was the only night I heard that sound; I haven’t heard it again till date. What was ‘it’? That remains to be a mystery for me.
P.S: In each of my previous posts, there was a kind of "lecture" from my end. :D Just to continue that 'tradition', here is a quote which I heard recently. 'Opportunity knocks the door only once, but misfortune keeps on knocking the door till you open it.' I missed out the (good?) opportunity of proving my courage then. :)
