The Silhouette in the Hall

One day, my friend was in the bathroom getting ready to go somewhere. She was Face-Timing with her mother, and thought she was alone in the house.

Just then, she saw a tall, looming silhouette of a man in the hall. She screamed bloody murder, staring in wide-eyed horror. In her panic, she didn't realize the man was actually their roommate. Startled by this reaction and not knowing why she was screaming, he cowered in a ball against the wall. He was terrified to look behind him, thinking there was someone behind him that prompted this shriek.

Finally, her brain registered that it was their roommate, and not a random stranger who broke into the house to kill her. She then started laughing at the situation. Their roommate couldn't figure out what was funny, but she was laughing too hard to explain. In confusion, he began looking through the house for the serial killer he still feared might be in the house.

The neighbors, who heard the deafening screams, hurried over to the house to investigate. My friend tried to tell them everything was fine, but they were unconvinced, and insisted on going through the house themselves to make sure that she was telling the truth.

Meanwhile, her mother, who had been forgotten in the chaos, was freaking out. All she knew was that her daughter suddenly screamed, then vanished. She called every family member she could, telling them that something was going on. My friend's uncle, who didn't have a car, somehow managed to secure a vehicle shortly after hearing about this, and hurried to the house.

Upon discovering the panic she had created in her mother, my friend called her mother, and spent about an hour trying to calm her down and assure her that it was just a false alarm. "I've never heard you scream like that." her mother said. "I never want to hear anything like that again!" 

When my friend's father heard about the string of events her ear-splitting scream caused, he told her, "Well, at least we know if anything actually happens to you, it won't go unnoticed."