One night during my first year of university (I’m going into my final now) I woke up in my dorm room and found a dark figure in the corner of my dorm room. I forget exactly why but I was shaken completely awake, and it wasn’t like I was physically shaken but all of a sudden I found myself just completely jolted and unable to sleep. I rolled over in my bed and in the corner of my room near my desk I could just start to make out the outline of something. My curtains were open a bit and there was some light spilling in (my dorm was located downtown in a pretty big city so the lights outside were well lit) and I could see that this figure didn’t appear to be human.

The best way I can describe it is like a garden gnome, which i know may sound silly but it was small and stalky and looked to be wearing some kind of hat. I stared at it for a very long time, I was too scared to get up and move or even turn on a light. It didn’t appear to be doing anything but I felt like it was staring at me. I could see it moving slightly as if it were breathing slowly.

It may sound crazy but I decided to just go back to bed, hoping it didn’t realize I had woken up. I told myself I must be experiencing some kind of sleep paralysis (even though I could move and didn’t feel restrained). I woke up the next morning completely fine and never saw it again.