Early Morning Wails

Ghost story or not (although I think it is), this was a rather eerie experience. I'm not quite sure what this was, but it certainly scared the living hell out of me.

This actually happened just two nights ago, while I was staying over at a friend's house. Her apartment is located in a complex on a busy highway, and there are -always- cars or trains to wake you up in the middle of the night.

We went to bed rather early, as we'd both been at school all day and were extremely tired. I believe that I was tired even more so than her, as I'd been dozing off in the middle of our conversation the whole night.

After turning in at 11 or 12 PM, I was awakened after what seemed like minutes, by a long, low wailing noise. I dismissed it for a train at first and looked at the clock to see that it was actually 4:45 in the AM. I thought that it was kind of strange for a train to be traveling through town at such an hour, my friend and I had stayed up past this point many, many times and never heard anything of a sort.

I sat there for a moment, listening to this noise, which was now repeating itself 5 or 6 times, stopping for a minute or two, and then starting up again, and suddenly noticed that I could not hear any cars, nor could I hear any of the other customary "train noises":bells, gears clicking on the tracks, etc. I was now starting to get a bit weirded out. I sat up in bed and went over to the window, which had been left open. Sitting on the sill, I looked out and was surprised to find that cars were still going past on the highway below, in fact, there was a considerable amount of traffic, I just was unable to hear any of it.

I redirected my attention towards this wailing noise, which was now getting longer and a bit more high-pitched. Now that I sat there and listened, the noise sounded more like someone wailing in anguish than it did a train. It was a very sad and forlorn, sorrowful if you will, crying noise. The more I sat and listened, the more I felt as if my heart were breaking, almost, and I began to cry myself, violent sobs. Now sad and frightened out of my wits, I stumbled back over to the bed and laid back down, finally crying myself to sleep.

I didn't wake up again until 10 or 10:30, at which time my friend woke up also. Noting that my eyes were red and puffy, she asked what was wrong, and I proceeded to tell her of the noise. She, who is a lighter sleeper than I am (and especially on that night), said that she had not woken up once during the night. I asked if she had ever heard anything like the noise before, as she always leaves her window open at night when she's asleep, and she answered no, that she'd never heard anything like that.

So there's my story. Ghost? I don't know, that's what I spent all of yesterday pondering.