My roommate and I saw the same shadow figure weeks apart without telling each other

(Please note that English isn’t my first language)

I’ve had sleep paralysis before.

For a while, I’d see a shadow figure standing behind my bedroom door, staring at me. Sometimes it walked toward my bed, and I’d wake up the moment it reached the frame. Other times, I’d have those strange dreams within dreams.

Eventually, it stopped.

About a year and a half later, I moved to London for four months and lived in a two-bedroom flat with two roommates. I had one bedroom; they shared the other.

At one point, they both went to Scotland for a few days. After they returned, something strange happened.

One night around 2 a.m., I heard whispering from their bedroom. Normally, I wouldn’t have thought much of it, but they usually went to sleep around 10. I wondered “why are they up?” and forgot about it.

After a few weeks, I rolled over in bed in my sleep and saw something standing near my curtains.

A shadow.

It was incredibly tall, looked like he had a trench coat on, and a hat. He was just standing still by the curtains. It must’ve been somewhere around 4.** **

I froze. I genuinely thought I was going to die. I was terrified to look away. What if it moves? I thought about my parents.

The scariest realisation was “this isn’t a dream”. I could move. I was awake.

My lamp sat beside me on the nightstand. Eventually, I thought, Fuck it. I reached over and switched it on. I looked back and it was gone. I didn’t tell my roommates. I only told my parents and grandmother. My grandmother suggested sleeping with a knife under my pillow. So, I did. I also kept my lamps on.

About a week later, I was in the kitchen making a snack. One of my roommates was there, so we started talking.

She seemed anxious.

Then she looked at me and said, “I want to say something, but promise me you won’t freak out.”

I said I wouldn’t.

“I feel like there’s something in the house.” My heart stopped.

I asked what she meant.

“I think I bought something here with me. Remember when I went to Scotland for a few days? I went on a haunted tour. I saw something in my room the other day, around 2”.

Like I said, she shared the room with another person but when she woke her up, she said there’s nothing.

Suddenly, the whispering made sense. That was the night I’d heard them awake. I still didn’t tell her what I’d seen. She already seemed terrified, and I didn’t wanna make it worse.

A few weeks later, we were sitting together with some friends. I finally told everyone about the figure and described it. My roommate went pale.

I asked her what’s wrong and she told me “I never told you what I saw.” Then she described it.
It was the same figure, standing by her curtains.

Neither of us had described our experiences to the other. I’d deliberately kept mine secret because I didn’t want to scare her. Yet weeks apart, in separate bedrooms, we’d both seen the same figure standing in the same place.

Soon, my family visited me, and we took a trip to Scotland as well. I ended up going for a haunted tour as well.

P.S. I will never judge anyone in a horror movie for not running immediately. I get it now. 😭