About 10 years ago, when I was 15, my auntie Jo, best friend Lynne and I decided on a whim to have a sleepover. We had gathered in my nan's/Jo's house and were watching films, eating pizza and snacks, and it got to around 11pm so we decided to stay over instead of going home.
We went to bed around midnight and decided to all stay in Jo's double bed, top and tail. We didn't go to sleep straight away of course, we were gossiping and messing around, as teenage girls do. It got to around 1am and we decided to try to sleep, so we turned out the lights and got into bed. We still didn't sleep right away, we were making jokes and laughing in the dark while fighting over the quilt.
Jo's room is on the 1st floor (so upstairs, which I think is 2nd floor to the US folk) and it's laid out in this way; walk in the door, the bed and window are straight ahead of you with the top end of the bed against the wall with the window on it. I was sleeping that end, so my head was at the wall end, while Jo and Lynne slept the other way around with a view of the window.
I was slowly beginning to drift off to sleep, but kept hearing this noise that sounded a bit like something scraping the wall outside. I tried to ignore it, but it kept me awake so I lay in the dark with my eyes open and waited for exhaustion to take over. All of a sudden, Jo screamed, jumped out of the bed and said "get away from the window!" Lynne then screamed, and I looked at the window to see what was happening and saw the silhouette of a person with their arms raised.
We ran downstairs screaming for my nan, who rushed out from the living room to see what all the noise was. Jo was crying at this point while Lynne and I were just in shock, and we each tried to explain what had just happened. Once we finally got it out, my nan called the police and went upstairs with a bat to see if the person was still there. They weren't.
The police turned up and took our statements, checked the area and came up with nothing, but gave us another number to call should anything suspicious happen or the guy return. We decided to sleep downstairs instead of going back up to Jo's room. We were panicked and frightened, but Jo was still in a state. Lynne and I tried to calm her down and comfort her by saying he was gone and we could call the police if he came back, but Jo looked us both in the eyes and told us something that makes my skin crawl when I think about it now.
See, Jo lives in this big Victorian style house in a quiet area, and while there is a roof right beneath her window, she always locks the window before sleeping and the lock is easily visible. This person, this guy, climbed up the roof and tried to open Jo's window. The guy had his arms raised though, which confused me until Jo told me that her window can open both ways, and she often opened it from the top instead of the bottom. The guy had clearly been watching the house for at least a day and had decided to strike that night, but luckily we had been having the sleepover and saw him. Had Jo been alone that night, she would have been lying on her bed normally and wouldn't have seen the silhouette.
So, to the guy who was watching my aunt and tried to break in to rob her or something worse, let's never meet.
