“I have never, before this moment, felt true terror and fear,” the man shared of the “horrifying experience” in a detailed Reddit post
A man says he heard a bump in the night, but never could have predicted what he found under his bed.
“I heard a noise under my bed. It was movement," he recalls of the “horrifying experience” in a lengthy Reddit post. "At first I thought I was imagining things. But then I heard it again. I thought, 'Oh god, is it a mouse or a rat or some s—?' This was like 3:00 AM. So I got out of bed and looked under with my phone flashlight.”
What happened next ended up being “the most startling moment of my life,” the user writes.
“I guess I am lucky because I have never, before this moment, felt true terror and fear as a physical sensation, but I was completely jolted,” the man recalls. “There under my bed was my roommate staring wide eyed at me, and he SCREECHED when I looked under the bed.”
The poster recounts that his roommate, who he says is the same age as him but he is not close friends with, just kept repeating "sorry, sorry, sorry" as he crawled out from under the bed.
Despite his roommate’s continuous apologies, the Reddit user says he was “so creeped out and afraid” that he immediately “ran out” of his apartment in his pajamas and ended up taking refuge at a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts.
“I just sat in there with a decaf and a breakfast sandwich with my heart thundering away,” he writes. “My roommate kept texting me asking to talk. I ignored it.”
When he finally did look at the texts, he discovered something even more bizarre. This was not a one time incident, but a regular routine.
“He confessed he had been sleeping under my bed a few nights a week for ‘three or four months’ and that he was doing it to get closer to me."
The man says he was so alarmed by the intrusive behavior that he only went back to the apartment after his roommate had left for work, grabbed a few “essentials” and has been crashing at a friend’s place ever since.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
The user posted his story on the "Am I the A--hole" subreddit, and recounted to the community why he was having second thoughts about if his actions in the days following the incident were appropriate.
He writes that afterwards, he received some messages from his friends and friends of his roommate that implied he was being insensitive for his reaction. His roommate, he says, may have expressed some romantic interest in him, which he had brushed off. "A few times over the last year he has asked me if I had ever considered 'experimenting' with other men," he recounts. "I said nope."
After the 3AM run-in, he alleges the roommate was "going around telling people I shamed him and that I am rejecting his apologies,” he says. “Some people are claiming I am overreacting and invalidating his feelings.”
Despite his friends’ opinions, many users in the comments were on the poster's side.
“I would have died if I looked under my bed and saw a person. My heart would give up. This is not ok and that dude is not ok,” one person wrote.
Another added, People are saying he's in the wrong. Man, those people have lost their minds. Sleeping under someone's bed. That's out there.”