Two years ago my mum and I decided to travel to Europe together, I had just finished my first degree and wanted to travel a bit before I started my next degree. We decided to go to Poland for a few weeks (my mum is Polish and wanted to show me her heritage).

Flash forward two weeks, we reached Zakopane, a quaint mountain town bordering the Tatras mountains. My mum didn't have any family in this town so we decided to stay in a little hostel up near the base of the mountain. A beautiful old wooden chalet that still used skeleton keys for all the doors. (I should note that when we arrived we both joked about how tricky it was to open our door, it was rather finnicky and hard to be turned just right for it to open).. It was off season so we were the only guests besides one couple and the family that owned the place.

We spent the day going about our business, but at night something a little peculiar happened.. I typically sleep through the night, but that night I woke around 3am with this weird feeling. I roll over and look over to my mum's bed (which is directly across from mine) and I see this large dark figure lurching over her bed. Way too big to be a regular sized person. I think I must be crazy, I had just finished reading Frankenstein so I assumed that I had lost it. Plus the door was VERY creaky so I would have heard it open if someone came into the room. I roll back over and try and get a few more hours of sleep.

Next morning rolls around and my mum and I look pretty haggard. We ask each other how we slept etc. And then she asks me if that was me standing over her bed last night. We kind of just look at each other and our faces fall. We start packing up planning on getting the F outta dodge. We're ready to go and we reach for the door but it would literally not unlock. The key was jammed in the door so tight we had to spend another 20 minutes just trying to pry it open.

To this day I still don't know what the fuck we saw, but I don't think I'll ever be going back there..