Scary Experience:
I let myself in late at night, after going to a Mets baseball game, according to instructions of the host. The host later clamed I’d been in the wrong room for this one night stay. I would have had no way of knowing this when I entered because the room fit the basic description. The living room I had to maneuver through, which connected to a couple bedrooms, had been left pitch dark. So even if it had been the wrong room, this was primarily the fault of the host. The directions should have been more clear if it was going to be completely dark. I couldn’t find a light in the apartment. The host knew I was going to be coming in late.
It was totally quiet in the house and I fell asleep. Much later, however, I was woken up by loud banging, yelling and someone trying to enter my room. I had earlier tried to lock the door to the bedroom both with handle lock and the door chain, but apparently the handle lock didn’t work and it was only the door chain that was preventing the person from coming in my room, without warning and without asking for permission in the middle of the night! They were slamming the door open back and forth, as far as the little chain connected to the wall would allow it to go!
Startled and confused, but still groggy from having just been woken up, I stumbled over towards the door. I hadn’t met the host, so I didn’t know who this person trying to push open my door was or if they were just some random intruder. In fact, I still don’t know who the person was, and I don’t think it was the host. The person didn’t even identify themselves, and I could hardly understand what they were trying to tell me in the broken English being spoken, other than that they wanted me to open the door.
Obviously, for safety reasons, I wasn’t going to open the door for some unknown person who seemed agitated and was acting like a maniac. This place was not in the best neighborhood anyways. I didn’t even turn the light on in the bedroom. They returned a short time later with another brief period of banging and yelling. I still couldn’t make out what they were saying, but was determined to wait silently until morning when it was light outside and seemed safe to quickly leave.
Of course, even if I’d been at fault and accidentally gone into the wrong room, the response should not have been to angrily take some retaliatory action towards the guest. It’s not as if someone was politely knocking on the door and trying to inform me there might be a problem. The actions taken, whether it was by the host themselves or just directed by the host, seemed as though they were intended to terrify a guest staying in a private room.