A woman has opened up about the terrifying moment she found a stranger hiding under her hotel room bed after noticing a weird smell.
Staying in a hotel is usually something of a treat and a chance to unwind away from home for a few nights.
But one woman ended up living a nightmare after she discovered the last thing anyone would want to find in their hotel room - and this intruder was far bigger than a bed bug.
Natalisi Taksisi revealed that she found a man hiding under her bed while on a solo trip to Japan - after initially having noticed an unusual smell.
Taksisi revealed that she'd booked to stay at the APA Hotel & Resort in Tokyo, believing Japan to be a "very safe country" to visit as a solo female traveler.
She explained in a TikTok video which has been viewed over 5 million times: "The place looked legit, and I had a key card which gave me access to the hotel and my room. The first day, everything was fine."
It was during her second day that things started to go wrong, as she revealed: "I came back around 7.30PM, unlocked my room like usual, took off my clothes, and lay down on the bed."
She noticed an unusual smell and had initially wondered whether it might be coming from her hair after a day of sightseeing, she jokingly even considered there may be a dead body under her bed.
Taksisi added: "At first I thought it was coming from my hair or the bed sheets, but then I realised it was coming from under the bed."
She leaned over to peek under the bed and was horrified to see "a pair of eyes" staring back at her.
"I saw a man under my bed, and I started to scream and jumped to my feet. The man climbed out from under the bed and stared at me for three seconds," she revealed, adding: "Those seconds felt like my life was over."
Upon seeing Taksisi, the man also began to scream and ran out of her room, after which she spoke to hotel staff who called the police, who discovered a power bank and USB cable under the bed where the man had been.
"I kept asking the hotel, ‘How did it happen?’ and they didn’t have any answer for me," she claimed, having revealed that her own key card had only permitted her access to the floor she'd been staying on.
Hotel staff also claimed that finding the stowaway would be difficult due to the fact there were no cameras inside the building.
Taksisi revealed that she was left feeling "scared and unsafe" so moved to another hotel and demanded a full refund, but said the hotel did not even contact her to apologize and initially only offered her a partial refund in coupons to be used at the hotel chain before granting her full refund when she continued to complain.
They did, however, refuse to grant her the $1,600 compensation she later asked for, and police have not yet been able to identify the mystery man.
Despite moving hotels, Taksisi revealed that the rest of the trip was a "nightmare", admitting: "I couldn’t sleep, and I was constantly on edge, checking every corner of my room.
"I’m left wondering how someone could get into my room, how someone knew that I was alone in my room, and how can the hotel not take responsibility for such a severe breach of safety?"
She added that she hopes that her story going viral will spur the hotel chain to "take real action" to prevent it happening to any other female solo travelers in future.