A car-crash victim in Belgium laid in a hospital bed for 23 years, diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. Now, in an unbelievable tale, it turns out he was aware of everything going on around him but could not communicate because he was paralyzed.

“I was shouting, but no one could hear me,” 46-year-old Rom Houben tells German magazine Der Spiegel.

A physician at Belgium’s University of Liege employed a specialized brain scan not available in 1983 to determine in 2006 that Houben was conscious.

He now communicates using one finger and a touchscreen on his wheelchair.

“Powerlessness. Utter powerlessness. At first I was angry, then I learned to live with it,” he said, punching the message into the screen during an interview with the Belgian RTBF network. He has called his rescue his “renaissance.”

“He lives from day to day,” says his 73-year-old mother, Fina. “He can be funny and happy,” but is also given to black humour.

Houben has a lot to say and has started writing a book.

As for what kept him slient and unable to move all these years? It’s a condition known as locked-in syndrome, which was popularized by the book and film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.