Every night I felt that someone was in my house, so I installed a camera in my room — and when I reviewed the footage in the morning, I was horrified. For weeks it started slowly at first, barely noticeable at all, like a soft whisper of sound that could be easily dismissed as imagination or simply the house settling. In the quietest hours of the night, I would lie in bed and listen intently as faint creaks echoed through the darkness, a sound too purposeful to ignore but too subtle to clearly identify.
It was as if someone moved through the rooms with hesitant care, someone familiar with the layout, someone who walked so softly that their presence was only hinted at by tiny noises — footsteps, perhaps, or the rustling of fabric against wood. Some nights I heard something that sounded like a door closing ever so slightly, other nights it was like furniture shifting a small fraction of an inch. It was never loud, never abrupt — just noticeable enough to make my stomach tighten and keep me half-awake, half-suspended in a state between dream and reality. Every time I told myself it was nothing, that the sounds were just signs my house was old or that my mind was overactive, trying to make sense of harmless night-time noises.
As the nights passed, I began to notice changes in the morning that unsettled me even more. Things in my room were not where I remembered leaving them. My phone, which I always placed on the desk before bed, was found on the bed in the early hours. Clothes that had been neatly folded were now strewn over the chair or lying on the floor. Small items I kept on the dresser would end up in different positions, sometimes closer to the edge, other times turned slightly in a direction that suggested movement. After one particularly startling morning, I remember standing in the doorway of my room, scanning the room in disbelief, convinced that someone had been inside during the night, rifling through my belongings. I spent several minutes retracing my steps of the previous day, trying to recall if I had been careless or mistaken, hoping that perhaps I had simply forgotten where I placed things. I even blamed myself, chalking it up to forgetfulness or exhaustion, convincing myself that the fear was nothing more than my imagination running wild.
Then came the nights where the feeling became too intense to brush aside. I would lie awake, bracing myself against the fear that someone was watching me from the shadows, waiting just out of sight. I couldn’t shake the sensation that someone was inside my home while I tried to sleep, quietly observing or moving around without disturbing the peace. Those nights were the worst, because it wasn’t just the sounds that kept me on edge, it was the feeling of being watched — as if there was an unseen presence staring at me in the dark. I would lie motionless, staring into the blackness, afraid to open my eyes for fear of confirming the worst. My heart raced, my breath became shallow, and every muscle in my body felt tense with anxiety.
Eventually I realized that I could not continue living with this fear without knowing the truth. I reached a point where the unknown was worse than whatever reality might be revealed. Determined to find answers, I bought a small camera and set it up in my room, pointed directly at the bed where I slept each night. I asked myself if someone was really in the house, then surely the camera would capture evidence of it. I told myself that if the footage came back clear, that it would prove there was no intruder at all, and I could put my fears to rest once and for all. So, one night, I left it recording before going to sleep, certain that I would finally uncover the truth.
In the morning, I sat down early with a cup of coffee and clicked play on the screen, my eyes glued to the video feed from the night before. At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The footage began with me lying peacefully in bed, motionless, eyes closed, breathing steadily as I slept. I watched for several minutes, certain that something would appear soon. Then, as the night continued, something unexpected happened — something that instantly made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I watched as the figure on the screen slowly sat up, as if pulled by an unseen impulse. The body moved gently, almost in a trance-like state, yet with a purpose that was unmistakable. The figure stood up, walked with calm, deliberate steps, and began to move around the room.
It was me.
I watched myself on the screen as I opened the closet, removed clothes, and tossed them across the floor. My phone was picked up and placed onto the bed before being moved again. The camera captured every moment with chilling clarity — every gesture, every step, and every object handled by this version of myself. I stared at the screen unable to breathe, struck by a wave of shock mixed with disbelief. There was no intruder in my house at all. No stranger had wandered through the shadows. The person who moved in the night was me — an unknown version of me that remained hidden in the waking world.
The more I watched, the more I realized the terrifying truth: I was sleepwalking, and I had been doing so for weeks without any memory of it. Every strange noise I heard, every misplaced item in the morning, every subtle disruption in my home had been caused by my own nighttime movements. My body had been active while my conscious mind was completely unaware, roaming the room while I remained lost in sleep. I had been frightening myself with the belief of an intruder, when all along it was my own actions that created the fear.
The realization was deeply unsettling. It wasn’t just the shock of discovering that I had been sleepwalking — it was the discovery that I had lived nights without any awareness of my actions, moving through my own space in ways I could not recall. The scariest part wasn’t that someone had been in my house — it was that it had been me, all along, and I had never known it. Now, faced with the reality captured on the camera, I understand that what I experienced was not a haunting or an external threat, but a hidden aspect of my own behavior that demands attention, reflection, and professional care.
