A Simple Explanation
My mother lived in an adjoined flat in a nice old wooden place when I was in my 20s. We both worked odd shifts and often it was easier to go to her place after finishing at 3 am than heading all the way home. A number of times I was there on my own overnight because she was at work. Every so often I would wake up hearing shuffling in the hallway, on the carpet.
It sounded like slippers or socks. I just attributed it to my neighbor moving around and assumed I could hear them through the shared wall. When I eventually mentioned this to my mother she said “Yes, I hear that too. I seem to wake up paralyzed later in the night when I hear it. It feels like there’s something on the bed with me.”
Thinking back, she obviously was experiencing sleep paralysis and didn’t know what it was. The kicker is there was no neighbor, he’d died about two years before I first heard it. So, all this time I was alone lying in the dark listening to someone walking along the hallway without the good sense to be scared!