r/u_NaeTv-26

I’ve had sleep paralysis before, but this was different.
Usually, when it happens, I know exactly what’s going on. I can’t move, I can’t speak, and after a few seconds I wake up completely. This time, I wasn’t dreaming.
At least, I don’t think I was.

It happened around 3:40 in the morning. I remember checking my phone before putting it on my nightstand because I had work the next morning. I fell asleep on my back. Then I woke up. I could see my bedroom.
My ceiling fan was spinning. The streetlight outside was shining through the blinds. My phone was still sitting on the nightstand. Everything looked completely normal.
Except I couldn’t move. I tried lifting my arm. Nothing.

I tried opening my mouth. Nothing. Then I heard someone walking in the hallway. Slow footsteps. My bedroom door was open about six inches. I live alone. I immediately started telling myself it was just sleep paralysis. My brain was probably creating sounds that weren’t actually there.
Then the footsteps stopped. Right outside my door.
I stared at the opening. Nothing moved.

A few seconds passed. Then I heard a quiet whisper. “Are you awake?” I nearly lost it. The voice sounded like my sister. But my sister lives nine states away. I tried screaming her name, but nothing came out. Then the door slowly opened another inch. I couldn’t see anyone.
Just darkness in the hallway. And then something happened that still makes my stomach turn.

My phone lit up. I could see the screen from my bed.
Someone was calling me. The caller ID said ME. My own phone number. I watched it vibrate against the nightstand. Once. Twice. Three times. I couldn’t move. Then the call stopped. The bedroom went completely silent. I thought it was over. Then my phone screen lit up again. This time, it wasn’t a call. It was my camera.

The front-facing camera had opened by itself. And I could see my own face on the screen. My eyes were open.
But behind me… There was someone standing beside my bed. I couldn’t turn my head. I could only see them on my phone. They were extremely tall. Too tall. Their head was almost touching the ceiling. I couldn’t make out a face. It was just this dark shape standing completely still.

I started crying. And then the figure leaned closer to me.
Except it didn’t move on the phone screen. It moved in the actual room. I felt the mattress sink beside my leg.
Something had sat down. I could feel the weight. I could feel the mattress pressing against my body. And then I felt breathing against my ear. Slow. Wet. Almost like someone had just run a mile. I was waiting for it to say something.

Instead, it whispered: “You always wake up before I get here.” I don’t know why, but that sentence scared me more than anything else. Because it sounded like this had happened before. Like whatever was beside me had been waiting for me to notice it. Then I heard my bedroom door slam shut. The mattress suddenly lifted. I could move. I shot out of bed and grabbed my phone. The room was empty. The door was closed. I turned on every light in the apartment and checked every room. Nobody was there.

I barely slept for the rest of the night. The next morning, I told myself it was just an extremely vivid episode of sleep paralysis. Until I looked at my phone. There was a photo in my camera roll that I didn’t remember taking. It was a picture of my bedroom. Taken from the doorway. The timestamp was 3:47 AM. I was asleep in the bed. And standing beside me was a tall, dark figure.

The worst part? I live alone. And the photo had been taken from inside my apartment. I deleted it. I changed my locks. I even bought a camera for my bedroom. I haven’t had sleep paralysis since. But three nights ago, I checked the camera footage before bed. There was one video recorded at 3:47 AM. The room was empty.

For the first few minutes, nothing happened. Then the bedroom door slowly opened. Nobody walked in. But the mattress on my bed suddenly sank. Like someone had just sat down. And then, from somewhere directly beside the camera, I heard my own voice whisper: “You always wake up before I get here.” I haven’t slept in that room since. And honestly… I’m starting to wonder if the thing I saw wasn’t visiting me during sleep paralysis. Maybe sleep paralysis was the only time I was actually able to see it.

I’ve gone back and forth about posting this because I know how ridiculous it sounds, but I genuinely don’t know how else to explain what happened to me. This happened a few months ago when I was staying at my grandma’s house while she was away for a few days. It was an older house, and at night it made all kinds of noises—pipes knocking, the floor creaking, doors shifting whenever the air conditioning came on. I was used to it, so when I heard my grandma call my name from downstairs around 2:13 in the morning, I didn’t think much of it. It sounded exactly like her. Not similar. Exactly. I actually sat up in bed and said, “What?” There was a few seconds of silence, and then I heard her again. “Come downstairs for a second.” I almost got out of bed before remembering that my grandma was staying with my aunt for a few days. I grabbed my phone and checked the last message she had sent me. She had texted me earlier that night saying she was going to bed and that she’d call me the next morning. I just stared at the screen for a minute, trying to convince myself I had imagined the voice. Then I heard footsteps on the stairs. Slow footsteps. One step at a time. I locked my bedroom door and called my grandma. She answered after a few rings, sounding half asleep. I whispered, “Grandma, are you in the house?” She immediately said no and asked me why I was asking. Before I could answer, something outside my bedroom door whispered, “Why are you calling her?” I froze. I was staring at the bottom of my bedroom door because I could see a shadow underneath it. Someone—or something—was standing on the other side. My grandma kept asking me what was wrong through the phone, but I couldn't get the words out. Then the thing outside my door started knocking. Three slow knocks. My grandma suddenly said, “Don’t open that door.” I asked her how she knew what was happening. She went completely silent. Then the voice outside changed back into hers. “Sweetheart, open the door. It’s me.” I backed away from the door so fast I nearly fell off the bed. My grandma was still on the phone, and I could hear her breathing. Then the thing outside my bedroom started speaking again, but this time it sounded like me. “Grandma, I’m scared.” My blood went cold. It repeated it again, perfectly copying my voice. Then it started laughing quietly. I stayed in that room until sunrise, sitting against the wall with my phone clutched in my hand. At some point, the footsteps stopped. I never heard the door open. When the sun finally came up, I waited another hour before leaving the room. The hallway was empty. I checked every room downstairs and found nothing. The front door was still locked. Every window was locked. There was no obvious sign that anyone had been inside. I convinced myself it had been some kind of hallucination caused by exhaustion and fear. Then I went into the kitchen and noticed something that made my stomach drop. There were wet footprints on the floor. They started at the back door and led directly toward the stairs. I followed them upstairs. They stopped directly outside my bedroom door. There was one final footprint facing toward my bed. I called my grandma again and told her what I found. She was quiet for a long time before saying something that I still think about whenever I'm alone at night. She said, “I never called you from the house.” I told her I knew. Then she said, “No, honey. I mean I never said your name.” I asked her what she meant. She hesitated before telling me something she hadn't talked about in years. When she was younger, one of her sisters had died in that house. According to my grandma, before she died, her sister had a strange habit of standing outside people's bedrooms late at night and imitating their voices to scare them. My grandma said she hadn't thought about it in decades. I haven't stayed in that house since. But there's one part I didn't notice until the next morning. I had recorded the phone call with my grandma because I wanted proof that I wasn't imagining what happened. When I listened back to it, everything sounded normal at first. Then, about three minutes before the voice outside my door spoke, there was a faint whisper underneath the conversation. It was my voice. Quiet. Almost impossible to hear. It said, “Don’t let it know you can hear it.” I was asleep when the recording started. And I swear to God, I never said those words.

I don't really know how to explain what happened to me without sounding completely insane, but I swear I haven't been able to sleep normally since this happened. This was about six months ago, when I was living alone in a small apartment and working pretty late shifts, so I was usually exhausted by the time I got home. One night I came home around 1:30 in the morning, locked my door, showered, and went straight to bed. Nothing unusual happened at first. I remember lying there scrolling through my phone with the lights off, and eventually I fell asleep. At some point, I woke up because I thought I heard someone whisper my name from the hallway. I was half asleep, so I just assumed it was part of a dream and rolled over. Then I heard it again. My name, very quietly, right outside my bedroom. The weird thing was that it sounded exactly like my mom. Same voice, same little way she says my name when she's trying to get my attention. I actually started to sit up before I remembered that my mom lives three hours away and obviously wasn't in my apartment. I grabbed my phone and checked the time. It was 3:17 AM. I didn't hear anything else, so I convinced myself I'd imagined it. I put my phone down and tried to sleep again, but maybe ten minutes later I heard footsteps in the hallway. Slow footsteps. Three or four of them, then silence. I was too scared to get out of bed, so I just stared at my bedroom door. After a few seconds, I heard my mom's voice again, but this time it said, "Are you awake?" I didn't answer. Something about the way it sounded was wrong. It was her voice, but it didn't sound like a person talking. It sounded like something that had heard her voice before and was trying to copy it. I pulled the blanket over myself like an idiot and stayed completely still. Then I heard my bedroom door slowly creak open. I couldn't see the hallway because my bed faced the opposite direction, so I just kept staring at the wall and listening. Nothing happened for maybe thirty seconds. Then I heard breathing. Not loud breathing, just this slow, uneven breathing from somewhere near the foot of my bed. I finally worked up the courage to look, and there was nothing there. The door was still open, but the hallway was empty. I remember feeling relieved for maybe two seconds before I noticed something in the corner of my bedroom. There was a person standing in the darkest corner, right between my dresser and the wall. At first I honestly thought it was a coat hanging there, because it was completely motionless. Then I realized it was shaped like a person. Tall, extremely thin, with its head tilted slightly to one side. I couldn't make out its face at all. It was just black against the darkness. I couldn't move. I couldn't even breathe normally. I thought maybe I was having sleep paralysis, but I could move my fingers, and I could feel the sheets under me. Then the thing slowly raised its head. That's when I noticed it was staring directly at me. I don't know how I knew because I couldn't see its eyes, but I knew it was looking at me. I closed my eyes for maybe three seconds and opened them again. It was still there. Except now it was closer. It was standing beside my dresser instead of in the corner. I grabbed my phone and turned on the flashlight, but the second the light hit that part of the room, there was nothing there. I turned the flashlight off, and it was back. I did this three or four times, thinking I was losing my mind. Then my phone suddenly played a recording by itself. It was a voice memo I'd made earlier that week. I heard myself talking, then laughing, then saying something I didn't remember recording. After a few seconds, another voice came through. My voice. It said, "Don't look at me." I threw my phone across the bed. At that point I was crying, but I still didn't want to leave the room because whatever that thing was, I felt like it wanted me to. Then I heard my own voice from the hallway say, "Come on, I'm over here." I just froze. A few seconds later, my bedroom door started closing by itself. I got out of bed and ran straight for the front door without looking behind me. I didn't even grab shoes. I spent the rest of the night sitting in my car in a 24-hour parking lot. The next morning I went back with a friend. Nothing was missing, no windows were broken, and there were no signs that anyone had been inside. My friend laughed and told me I probably had a nightmare, but then we noticed something that made my stomach drop. There were four long, dark fingerprints on the inside of my bedroom door, about six feet off the ground. They looked like someone had grabbed the top edge of the door with a hand that was way too long. I moved out two weeks later. I never told the landlord the real reason. The weirdest part happened a few months after I moved. I was at my mom's house, and she asked me why I had called her at 3:17 AM the night before. I hadn't called her. I checked my phone, and there was no outgoing call. She showed me her phone anyway. There was a voicemail from me. I pressed play. It was completely silent for about five seconds. Then I heard my own voice whisper, "Are you awake?" And underneath it, barely audible, was another voice saying my name.