The Midnight Visitor

The first time I saw the figure, I was barely awake. It was around 3 AM, and I had that foggy, half-conscious feeling you get when you've been woken up by something you can't quite identify. My room was mostly dark, just a faint sliver of light coming in from the streetlamp outside. But in that dim light, I swear I saw a silhouette by my bedroom door. Just... standing there.

At first, I thought it was my roommate, Mike. He sometimes got up in the middle of the night to grab a drink, maybe try and prank me. I mumbled, "Not tonight, man. Go back to bed." But he didn’t move. Just stood there, unmoving, and that’s when the uneasy feeling crept over me.

I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes, but in the few seconds it took me to focus, the figure was gone. I sat up, turned on my lamp, and looked around. Nothing. My door was open, just like I always left it. I shook it off as a trick of the light and went back to bed, but sleep didn’t come easily.

The next night, I woke up at exactly the same time. This time, though, the figure was closer, standing right at the foot of my bed. I could see just enough to tell it was tall and had a strange, almost distorted shape, like something from a dream. My heart was pounding, but I couldn’t move. It felt like my body was glued to the bed.

I tried to scream, but nothing came out. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping it would be gone when I opened them. After what felt like ages, I finally dared to look again. The figure was gone, just like before. I told myself it was sleep paralysis, that my mind was playing tricks on me. Still, I was shaken, and I didn’t sleep a wink the rest of the night.

The following day, I decided to talk to Mike about it, hoping he’d laugh it off and convince me I was overreacting. But when I brought it up, his face went pale. He looked down, avoiding my eyes, and muttered, “So... you’ve seen it too?”

Turns out, he’d seen the figure a few times over the past few months, always around 3 AM, always just standing in his room, silent and still. He’d tried to ignore it, hoping it would go away, but it never did. We decided to stay up together that night, determined to catch whatever this thing was.

So, we set up in my room, armed with flashlights, snacks, and a ridiculous amount of caffeine. We waited, trying to keep each other awake with stories and jokes, but as the hours ticked by, our nerves started to fray. 2:45, 2:50… and then, right at 3:00, the room went cold.

There it was. The figure, standing by the door. This time, we could both see it, clear as day. It was tall, unnaturally so, with long, thin limbs that seemed to stretch like shadows. Its face—or what should have been its face—was a blank, dark void.

Neither of us moved. We just sat there, frozen in place. And then, in the quiet, it tilted its head ever so slightly, as if studying us. My breath hitched, and I felt an overwhelming sense of dread wash over me.

Just when I thought I couldn’t bear it any longer, the figure slowly backed out of the room, fading into the shadows. We both stayed up until dawn, unable to shake the feeling that something had come close to us, something we couldn’t understand.

The next day, we looked up the history of our building, desperate for answers. We found a news article from the early ’80s about a tenant who had gone missing under mysterious circumstances. There were rumors about strange sightings, but nothing concrete. The building had been renovated since then, and most of the old residents had moved out, leaving only fragments of the story behind.

After that night, the figure stopped appearing. I don’t know if it was satisfied, if we’d somehow acknowledged its presence enough to appease it, or if it had simply moved on. But every so often, around 3 AM, I wake up, heart racing, half-expecting to see it standing there, watching.

And I don’t think I’ll ever forget that feeling.