A Wigan mum shrieked as she was left terrified by a 'clawed Freddy Krueger' figure lurking in her bathroom. Lyndsay Cash looked up from her back garden to discover the spooky silhouette of two spiked hands and a face pressed up against her bathroom window.
The horrified 42-year-old ended her phone call, took a quick snap and rushed back into her home. Lyndsay raced up to her bathroom as she geared up to confront the sinister-looking brute.
But mum-of-two Lyndsay ended up in stitches when she realised there was nothing evil lurking in her bathroom at all. Instead, she found the Freddy Krueger-like claws were simply caused by shadows from her two spikey aloe vera plants.
Lyndsay said: "I was in the back garden on the phone for about 15 minutes. Towards the end of the call I spotted the creepy figure. I yelped 'oh my god there's something in my bathroom, I need to go'.
"I ended the call so I could go and investigate, it definitely gave me a fright. It looked like Freddy Krueger. I was in a rush to get up the stairs and find out what it was but petrified at the same time."
The spooky illusion was even more convincing as her son's 17-year-old girlfriend Rebecca Maiden had popped into the bathroom to remove her make-up - giving the creature a clearly-defined head. Aesthetics practitioner Lyndsay, who'd watched the film Malignant alone the night before, said when she told her friends they laughed at her over-active imagination.
"I was an idiot and didn't take anything to arm myself - I didn't think that far ahead," she said. "I had no idea what was in there.
"The night before I'd watched a scary film called Malignant - the bloke in it had spiky fingers like that. I thought there would be an explanation for it but because I'd watched the film the previous night it put doubt in me that there was a monster in my bathroom."
After racing upstairs and bursting through the bathroom door, Lyndsay started laughing with relief when she realised there was no-one there. The relieved horror movie fan plodded downstairs to let son Devon Brogan, 19, and Rebecca know, with the pair rolling their eyes and chuckling at her.
Lyndsay said: "I was a nervous wreck, but then I laughed at myself when I got in the bathroom because I knew the aloe vera plants were the spikes that looked like hands. I put the plants on the window sill to break up the white and grey [from the bathroom tiles] with a bit of colour.
"It turned out my son's girlfriend had gone into the bathroom to take her make-up off so it was her head that I could see. Devon, Rebecca and my friend were all laughing at me when I told them what happened. They just rolled their eyes, because that's typical me."
But it seems it hasn't put Lyndsay off watching scary films in future. Lyndsay said: "I love horror films - the adrenaline rush makes you feel alive and excited. I've got some other spooky films lined up ahead of Halloween. Now I know what it is, it'll just make me chuckle - there's no need to move the plants."
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