I first started experiencing muscle spasms in my right ear around 1993. They only occurred occasionally, and were only triggered by higher pitched voices when those voices were directly to my left. Very strange, I know, but when someone was talking directly to the left of me I would sometimes sense this rapid “fluttering” in my right ear. At first it was only women’s voices, but soon it became more frequent and lower pitched voices also triggered the muscle spasms. As the symptoms worsened over the next couple of years, the sounds that would trigger it would not necessarily have to come directly from my left. In fact, it got to the point where the only time someone’s voice wouldn’t trigger it was if they were at least some degree to the right of me. At it’s very worst, you can imagine it like this: Thinking of the face of a clock where 12 noon is straight in front of you and 3 o’clock is directly to your right (9 o’clock to your left), the only place a person could be next to me and talking and not trigger the spasms was if they were “between 2 o’clock and 4 o’clock”.
So what did it feel like or sound like? If you’ve ever had your eyelid twitch, it feels very similar to that. The feeling in this case, though, is pretty deep inside the ear. In my case the twitching is quite rapid--maybe not unlike a little machine gun in there. The sound matches the same rapid pulsing or fluttering, and maybe could be described like as “beating”--like a very rapid little heart beat. I have created an audio file that is similar to what it sounds like for me. Not exact, but it will give you an idea.
Remember, this sound would only be in my right ear (at least in the first years I had this condition). The effect would be more like I experienced if you wear headphones or ear buds and are only listening with the right ear. Being triggered by sounds like people talking, this sound/sensation would exactly coincide the sound of the person talking: as soon as they started talking the fluttering would start, as soon as they stopped talking the fluttering would stop.
