Through the muffling, suffocating silence, I heard Madeleine coming downstairs and opening the cellar door.

It was only after a moment of deep, intense, suffocating silence that she heard the hatred Steve put into saying the name.

The screen slowly faded to black, and a suffocating silence filled the room.

Even muffled by the front door, the sounds seemed to push back the suffocating silence of the house like a cool breeze.

There was a suffocating silence.

Then she heard a new cry, this one far off to the west, a wild shriek that pierced the suffocating silence.

Thick, suffocating silence crowded in to fill the void and darkness.

Instead they walked into an atmosphere of such suffocating silence that Daystrom felt as if he could barely breathe.

In some of the most gripping sequences what you hear mostly is a suffocating silence.

Justice Douglas spoke admiringly in his unanimous opinion of "lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence."