My wife Kimmy and I were lounging around watching TV in our living room at around 11pm. We’d had a particularly busy day, so we decided to retire to the bedroom earlier than we normally would. Kimmy walked down the hallway to our bedroom while I brought my few dishes I’d been using to the sink and turned off the living room lights. Then, I went to make sure the front door was locked, but I first hit the light switch for the porch light to turn it on. I don’t know what made me look out the tall, thin window next to the front door, but for whatever reason, this time I did.

While simultaneously reaching over and locking the door, I peeked out onto my now-illuminated porch and jumped back a few feet at what I saw. It was a person standing there with a white sheet draped over them. It was like an adult version of the classic kid’s halloween costume, as whoever it was on the porch stood nearly six feet tall at my estimate.

I chose to look through the peephole on the door this time, so as to hopefully not be seen. I closed my right eye and looked with my left, and peered through the peephole. Standing closer to the door now was this person in the sheet. I now noticed that there were no eye holes cut out of the sheet. Just as I was about to say something loud enough to hear on the other side of my front door, the “ghost” slowly turned and walked away, down my porch steps, down the walkway leading to the porch, and then turned around again to face the house.

The person just stood there for a moment, staring back at the house (I’m guessing), before turning and heading left down the sidewalk, away from my house and eventually out of my sight. The whole strange ordeal lasted about four minutes, most of which was taken up their slow walking. After I was comfortable with the distance placed between them and my house and their continued walking, I went upstairs.

Kimmy asked what had taken so long for me to get upstairs, and against my better judgement, I told her what had just transpired downstairs.Naturally this freaked her out. She was standing next to our window that faces the direction the person had walked a few minutes prior, and she looked out the blinds.

“Oh my god.” she said in a scared tone, visibly startled.

“What, are they still there?” I asked as I walked around the bed to the window.

I looked out and saw that there were now two of them, both standing on the side of our house, looking up at us. Even under the sheets, I could tell their heads were tilted back.

“Call the cops.” I said to Kimmy, who I didn’t notice was already in the process of doing so.

I went to my bedside and grabbed the knife I keep in my drawer, then rushed back to the window. There were now three people in white sheets standing there, looking up at us. As Kimmy spoke to the police, I kept my gaze focused on them, and noticed them start to gradually sway back and forth. In unison, the “ghosts” leaned ever so slightly side to side. I opened my window a crack and yelled out to them.

“The fuck do you want?!”

They just kept swaying. Back and forth, back and forth.

“Cops are on the way.” Kimmy informed me, while still on the phone with them.

What happened next scared me the most. I looked away, at Kimmy, as she spoke to me, for no longer than a second or two. When I looked back, the three “ghosts” were gone. I let out a sigh mixed with a “what the fuck?” and told Kimmy to follow me.

“They’re gone now!” Kimmy worriedly said to the police over the phone..

The two of us ran downstairs and looked out our windows for the ghosts, but couldn’t find them anywhere. To our relief, there was a police unit about a mile away from our house that was able to get to us very quickly.

We heard his tires screech to a stop and then watched as he shined his spotlight around, looking for the people in sheets. He then got out of his car and quickly walked around our house with his gun drawn. Then we got a knock on our door. We opened it and welcomed Officer Sitwell inside, then gave him our report. He agreed to stay on our street for the rest of the night, which gave us at least a bit of relief.

My biggest worries were what exactly it was they were doing, and why to us? Officer Sitwell reasoned that it was probably just some teenagers playing a prank, and assured us that more than likely, we had nothing to worry about. Even so, we barely slept that night, and weren’t any less worried the next day. The whole thing was just so bizarre and unprecedented.

The police kept a unit parked outside out house for the next few nights, and for two of the three days the police were there, nothing happened. On the third night, I was sitting on the couch watching TV with Kimmy when she got up to get some water. I heard her open and close the cabinet and then, I heard a glass shatter.

“Oh my god!” Kimmy yelped.

I jumped off the couch and rushed to see what was going on. When I got to the kitchen, Kimmy was looking out the window that faces our backyard. I joined her gaze and saw six, maybe seven of the people in sheets standing in the backyard, doing their ever-so-subtle sway back and forth, left and right.

As soon as I saw them, I ran through the house to our front door and ran outside to get the officer sitting outside our houses’ attention. He got out of his car, drew his gun, and ran to the backyard after I told him they were there. He told me to get back inside and lock my door, which I did. I then ran back to Kimmy in the kitchen.

“They just…walked away…backwards…into the darkness.” Kimmy said. “Then they were gone.”

We watched as the officer ran into our backyard with his flashlight, shining it in every direction. We watched as he radioed for units to come and patrol the neighborhood in an effort to find them. We watched as he searched the backyards on either side of ours, and the backyards of the houses behind ours. We watched as he didn’t find anyone.

The officer walked around our house after his search efforts proved futile. We let him in our house where he told us that while he didn’t find anything, there were other units driving around the surrounding blocks looking for anyone on the streets. After sitting with us for nearly an hour, and getting multiple calls over his radio from his fellow officers who hadn’t found anything, the officer went back out to his car.

Morning came with no more sights of the people under the sheets. We went about our day as usual, but our anxiety was through the roof. Kimmy insisted we stay at a hotel for a few nights, and let the police patrol our neighborhood some more, in hopes that the people playing the “prank” would find a new target and get caught.I too thought a night or two away from the house would be good, so I set it up.

We got a second floor room at a hotel about 20 minutes away from our house. We had dinner there, spent some time in the pool and hot tub, then headed back up to our room to watch a movie and sleep. All was going well until 3:13 AM, when knocks on the door woke me up. The TV was still on, illuminating the room in a dull blueish hue. At first I thought I had dreamed the sounds, but I knew they were real when I heard three more.

Knock…knock…knock.

They weren’t especially loud, like someone pounding on the door, but rather normal, like someone I’d invited had arrived. It was the space between each knock that gave it an eeriness.

Knock…knock…knock.

I slowly got out of the bed, trying to make as little noise as possible, so as not to wake up Kimmy unless absolutely necessary. I crept over to the door, my bare feet making the slightest wisp of noise against the hotel room carpet.

Knock…knock…knock.

I reached the door and put my eye to the peephole, and my heart sank at what I saw. A group of the people with the sheets over them stood just outside our door, taking up the entire view from the peephole. There must have been at least six of them, maybe more, just swaying back and forth. I stepped back from the door, my brain rapidly trying to process what was going on and what I should do next.

Firstly, I swiftly made my way over to and woke up Kimmy and told her what was going on. She immediately got on her cell phone and called the cops while I used the hotel room phone and called down to the front desk for them to send up security. I hung up the phone and ran back to the door and peered out the peephole. No one was there.

I flung the door open and first looked left. Nothing. Then I looked right, and caught just a glimpse of what looked like a sheet dragging on the floor around the corner at the end of the hall. I told Kimmy to stay where she was and took off running down the hall before she had a chance to respond.

I bolted down the hallway as fast as I could go, without a plan of action if I did find what I wanted at the end of it. My first instinct would be to hit whoever it was, remove the sheet and find out, but with six or more of them and one of me, I knew my chances wouldn’t be good after that. I got to the end of the hall and turned in the direction I’d seen the sheet go, and there was no one there. Nearby was a stairwell that led to an exit, which I apprehensively entered. I heard the door at the bottom close, and ran down to it.

I opened the exit door and didn’t see anyone. I ran out and looked in all directions, but there was no one. It didn’t make sense to me that six people could just up and vanish the way they did. Then I thought, I only saw maybe one of them at the end of the hall, and they had moved from the peephole very quickly. What if they were in a room near ours? Where Kimmy was now alone?

The door had locked behind me, so I ran around the side of the hotel and entered through the front doors. The hotel clerk said something to me as I sprinted by, but I’m not sure what it was. I ran to the stairs and ascended them, nearly tripping over my own feet. I got to the second floor and ran down the first hall leading to our room. I turned the corner to the next hall, the one where the room was situated, and was stopped dead in my tracks by four of the people with sheets over them standing side by side across the hallway, blocking my way.

“What the FUCK do you guys want?!” I yelled, ready to get to the bottom of the situation.

It was then that they began swaying with what little room they had to their left and right.

“I swear to God I’ll fucking kill you if you did anything to her.” I warned, which I figured would do nothing. I was right.

Tired of waiting for them to respond and desperately wanting to get to Kimmy, I put all my power behind a front kick, knocking one of them to the ground. I used the gap to run, and was surprised to find that they didn’t try to stop or pursue me. The one I kicked got up off the ground and rejoined the rest of them in their swaying, only now facing me once again. I got to our room and burst through the door, which was held partially open by the metal slide lock.

I got in the room and as I was locking every lock on the door, Kimmy ran up and hugged me, asking where I’d gone. I told her what had just happened, and she informed me the police were on their way. We waited around in our room until the police came, at which point we were escorted downstairs while another officer checked the security camera footage. Sure enough, seven people under sheets had exited from a room a few doors down from ours and came to fuck with us.

The hotel clerk checked the registry, where it was revealed that, of course, that room was supposed to be vacant. We were comped our night at the hotel for the disturbance and decided to head about an hour west of us to Kimmy’s mother’s house, a location we chose because of its vacancy; Kimmy’s mom was out of town on vacation for the next three weeks. Kimmy and I decided we’d stay there until the whole situation blew over, and we agreed that if nothing happened the first night, we should stay there without leaving for at least a few days, so no one could follow us if they did somehow find us.

To our immense relief, we got through the first three nights at the house uninterrupted. It was the fourth night that things began once again. Kimmy and I were sleeping in the guest room, quite comfortably given that we were under the impression that we were away from the strange people under the sheets. At about 3 AM, I woke up and went to the kitchen to get something to drink. I walked back into the guest room, and in the window next to the bed, was the silhouette, swaying back and forth ever so slightly, of a person under a sheet.

“Kimmy!” I yelled, startling her awake. She was facing the window as she slept, and let out a scream once she opened her eyes. She quickly rushed out of bed and joined me at the door. I pulled her in my direction as I turned to head down the hall, but stopped once I saw the swaying person under the sheet, inside the house at the end of the hall. I then happened to look back into the room, where both of our cell phones were, and there was now no person outside the window, but standing at the end of the bed, swaying back and forth.

We ran down the hallway in the opposite direction, making it to the entrance of the living room, where we were once again stopped at the sight of three people under sheets standing within. We turned around to go into the kitchen where there were four more. The four in the kitchen began walking towards us. We were trapped, as there was now one at the front door. The four in the kitchen backed us into the living room, where we were now surrounded.

“What do you want?!” I yelled out as Kimmy sobbed, expecting some kind of horror she’d never before encountered.

“Join us.” one of the people under the sheets said.

“Wh–what?” I asked, confused.

“Join us.” he repeated.

“Join you…in what?”

“Instilling the fear you feel right now.” he said, ominously.

“What…what if we don’t want to?” I countered, not expecting a positive response.

“Those who do not join us do not live to see us depart.” he said, with a tone that implied the utmost seriousness.

“Uh…what do we have to do?” I inquired, now knowing what the alternative was.

Just then, Kimmy gasped as two of the people in sheets draped a sheet over each of us. While it wasn’t exactly transparent, I was able to see quite well under the sheet.

“What is this?” Kimmy asked, her voice shaking in terror.

“I think they want us to go scare people with them.” I whispered back to her. “It’s either that or they kill us.”

“Oh my god.” Kimmy sobbed.

“I know….fuck it let’s just do what they want us to do.” I said.

I saw Kimmy nod her head under her sheet.

“Okay.” I said to whoever was in charge. “We’ll do it. Whatever you want us to do.”

I felt Kimmy shaking underneath her sheet.

“You come with us now.” said the leader of the group. “We will now instill your fear into others, and we will grow. And we will keep growing until we become as big as we need to be.”

“What the fuck is the purpose of this?!” I yelled, not being able to stand the crypticism.

“The purpose…will be revealed to you in time.”

“I can’t do this. Fuck this.” I said as I ripped my sheet off. “You’re really going to fucking kill us if we don’t come play ‘ghosts’ with you? Fuck you.”

I took Kimmy’s sheet off of her, and she was still sobbing. I wrapped my arms around her to comfort her.

“How the fuck did you even find us to start fucking with us?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.

“Simple. You were the first to notice our presence.” the leader said.

The leader of the group started swaying back and forth, and the rest of the group followed suit soon after. Then, one by one, each of the people under the sheets walked to the front door and left, until Kimmy and I were in her mother’s living room alone. The first thing Kimmy did was run to the guest room for her phone and call the police.

They came, we gave our report, and we haven’t seen the people under the sheets since. It was the most bizarre experience of both my own and Kimmy’s life, and we never got a reason for why it happened. All we know, is that there is a group out there, terrorizing innocent people, scaring them to their core. I don’t know what scared me more, what happened, or the fact that it happened for seemingly no reason. All I know is that if I ever see them again, I’ll be ready.