Sydney woman's flatmate horror after posting ad for house sharing

Sophia said after an initial meeting with the woman, things escalated quickly. Photo / Instagram

A woman claims she was hounded by an "obsessive" stalker who responded to her advertisement searching for a housemate in Sydney.

American expat Sophia explained that she had been contacted by a girl who claimed she was interested in the A$650 per week inner city room she had advertised, and the pair made a plan for an inspection.

One of the first red flags that Sophia claims occurred was that the woman brought "really nice" gifts for her, her housemate, and their dog — something she says in retrospect felt like "love bombing".

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A post shared by Sophia (@sophiainsydney)

After this initial meeting, she says things escalated quickly, with the woman sending her lots of messages on different platforms, and getting agitated when Sophia did not respond quickly.

She says she was "overwhelmed" by this dramatic shift from a stranger, who now was acting like her best friend.

The woman was demanding to meet for coffee, asking if she could bring food to Sophia's house, and then sharing personal traumatic stories, which she believes could have been a ploy to evoke sympathy.

"I assumed that the people who responded and were messaging me were people that didn't know me, and just like needed a place to live," she explained on a video detailing the experience.

"One of the girls DM'ed me on Instagram, then we spoke on the phone. Then we were like, 'why don't you come the next day to see the apartment?'.

"When she came, she bought gifts. She bought me a gift, my dog a gift, my flatmate a gift. I thought, wow that's so nice and thoughtful.

"But then realised, the things she got me, were things that I liked. I had posted some of the things she bought me on my TikTok before, so I think that's how she knew I'd like it."

It was after this initial meeting where Sophia says things became "too much".

"Things started to get a bit too much. She started messaging me everywhere like on Instagram, Whatsapp, TikTok," she said.

"If I didn't respond on one platform she would be messaging me on other platforms. It was so overwhelming.

"She would ask me so many personal, nosy questions from the get-go. She was always talking to me as if she already had all this information that she knew about me."

Sophia explained that despite only meeting once, the woman began telling her a lot of intimate and traumatic stories from her life.

"She started to dump a lot of trauma on me," she said.

"She was telling me how her ex-boyfriend cheated on her with her best girlfriend. Then when we met for the second time, she told me something very serious and traumatic.

"It's something you definitely would not tell a stranger.

"Although it was traumatic, the story just didn't add up. The allegation was so huge.

"Everything that she was saying was trying to evoke sympathy from me. That is a lot of trauma to dump on someone who you've only met twice.

"The first time wasn't even real, she was only here to see the apartment."

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A post shared by Sophia (@sophiainsydney)

Sophia added that it was suspicious that the woman claimed to be a med student, but never seemed busy and was always asking to hang out and posted a lot on social media.

But the biggest red flag came when the stranger suddenly joined her gym.

"The most shocking thing was that she started going to my gym," she said.

"She did not tell me she was going. She didn't say anything, and just acted like it was all a coincidence."

So far, Sophia hasn't updated with her promised "part three" which she stated was going to be "the craziest" part of the entire story.