A WOMAN who found herself locked in a bathroom overnight managed to chisel her way out after drawing inspiration from The Shawshank Redemption.

Karen Perrin stayed late at her office in Washington DC and ducked to the toilet on the way out, at around 10pm. When she went to leave, she realized with shock that she had been locked inside, ABC News reports.

Mrs Perrin, who is claustrophobic, spent the next eight hours trapped in the toilet without her phone, fighting feelings of panic, before managing to chisel her way through the wall and open the door.

“I couldn’t believe it. I felt hopelessness. I felt like I was going to die in there because of the anxiety I was feeling,” she said.

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Mrs Perrin stuffed paper towels under the door, hoping security officers would notice the movement.

“I probably put 200 towels out,” she said. “But after nobody came to rescue me I realised I had to do something else.”

Desperate, she rammed a chair into the bathroom door, then used a chair leg try break off the lock, which she then used to chisel a hole in the bathroom wall.

Finally, Mrs Perrin was able to reach through the gap in the wall and open the door. Her hands were left bloody from the ordeal.

"I thought about Shawshank Redemption," she said. The 1994 classic film The Shawshank Redemption stars Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins as prison inmates who cling to the redeeming power of hope.

"I was crying. I felt like I was escaping a bad dream, like when you have a nightmare and you wake up and your heart is pounding and you realise ‘Oh, I was just dreaming. Did that just happen. Am I OK?”

