No matter what age you are, being home alone can be a scary experience.
Whether it's the creak of a floorboard or the twitch of a curtain in the wind, the smallest of things can send your mind into overdrive, even if you know there's no one else in the house.
We run around turning on all the lights, wrapping ourselves in a blanket for protection and FaceTiming friends for moral support.
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Maybe that's just me, but you get the idea.
One person who knows exactly what I'm talking about is TikToker Reu, known as @reubix_cube on the app, who experienced something similar first hand after posting a video of him dancing to Doja Cat's 'Say So'.
Sounds innocent enough, right?
Reu said he was left feeling ‘stomach sick’ when he uploaded the ‘spooky’ video alongside the caption: "lmao i’m home alone so i learned a tiktok dance. lov u doja but what has my life come to?"
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But it wasn’t his dance moves that caught the attention of his followers. Instead, at around the four second mark, they noticed a shadowy figure lurking in the background on his stairs.
As the Canadian TikToker shifts position and starts swinging his arms around, the figure appears to pop its head around the corner, albeit only for a second.
His followers noticed right away, with one person commenting: "The AMOUNT OF ANXIETY I have from his video. That’s someone literally poking their head TO LOOK AT YOU."
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Another asked: "DID Y’ALL SEE THAT?? IN THE BACKGROUND???" While one more wrote: "It’s 3am I did not need this right now."
Another said: ‘When I tell you my heart DROPPED."
Others were more wary though, suggesting Reu had planned the whole thing just to go viral – particularly because his body seemed to move in a way to draw attention to the figure and the fact he mentioned he was home alone in the video’s caption.
One person wrote: "The fact he said he’s home alone kinda makes me feel it’s staged tho," while another said: "Look man I MIGHT OF [sic] believed you if you didn’t specifically say you were home alone."
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Reu later posted a number of videos updating his followers on the situation, initially thanking them all for their concern and saying: "I’m kinda stomach sick right now and I was in and out of sleep all last night."
I mean, can you really blame him? I would moved countries.
The TikTok star later told UNILAD that while he was initially worried that the figure ‘could have been a person’, he soon ruled that out because he and his family ‘checked the entire house'.
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"There’s really nowhere for anyone to hide," he said in a follow-up interview.
The then-22-year-old did say he ‘isn’t worried’ about the prospect of something supernatural living in his house, adding: "The idea of this being something supernatural doesn’t scare me as I’ve had many experiences with the paranormal while living here (which is my whole life)."
He continued, adding: "Nothing has presented itself as harmful or malicious, so I’m not worried about it."
Reu also responded to claims he made the whole thing up for attention, telling UNILAD: "If I were to manufacture a video just to go viral, I would have perfected the dance or at least made myself look a bit more presentable."
Niamh Shackleton