No Joke: CBC Reports Some Ottawa Residents Hear ‘Phantom Honking’

Honk! Honk!

Did you just hear “Heil Hitler!” as Canadian Liberal MP Ya’ara Saks hilariously fantasized? Nope! Nope! There is an actual new disease that Ottawa’s liberal residents are dealing with called “phantom Honking.”

It has become so severe that the tax-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported on it on Saturday in a most serious manner, “The trucks have left Ottawa, but ‘phantom honking’ lingers for many downtown.” 

Reporter Nicole Williams dug into the details of this phenomenon sans any sense of the hilarious absurdity of it all:

Since then, the trucks were removed and police moved most of those protesting outside the city’s downtown core during the Family Day weekend. Even still, some downtown residents say they’re haunted by “phantom honking” — what sounds like blaring truck horns, but no actual sounds are there.

It’s almost like they’re back when you hear the noise. Are there road vehicles coming back, or? Sean Flynn lives just three kilometres away from downtown and can still hear the horns outside his home during the protests.

“It almost felt re-traumatizing to me that I kept doing double takes.

Flynn doesn’t seem to be the only one. Zakir Virani, a downtown resident, said he also hears phantom singing at night which keeps him awake.

It is difficult to explain as I believe it can be explained by any type of stress posttraumatically induced thinking. It’s not like you hear honking,” said he, adding that he feels “constant on edgeness” and “fear” whenever he walks outside.

The media-selected specialist is here: 

Ottawa-based psychologist Dr Peter Liu suggested that people hearing phantom honking could be experiencing mild trauma.

Liu stated that the sounds “become embedded in your mind” like flashbacks can happen from trauma. The brain expects to hear more honking even after it has been done.

Funny thing about getting PTSD just from listening to honking from the distance, is that it can also cause PTSD in people you aren’t even hearing.