There is a small field (maybe 40-50 yards long) between my home and the next structure, a nursing home. I’ve lived in my house for about 10 months, with my wife Kimmy and our seven-year-old daughter Katie. We live in a suburb, but I guess you could say our area is a bit more secluded than the rest of town. Until recently, nothing had ever happened that ever even reminded us were living next to a nursing home. It was a selling point for the house, but past that, we’d never had any reason to consider that it was there.

It began with a terrified scream coming from my daughter’s room in the middle of the night. Kimmy and I woke up immediately to see what the issue was and rushed into her room. Standing in the corner was an elderly woman wearing only a bra and underwear. She stood there with her eyes wide open, as if she was straining them to open even more. Her hair was white and had patches of it missing; the parts of it that were still there were thin and strewn out wildly. Her skin was loose over her bones and wrinkled, and her veins were bright blue and pronounced.

Kimmy let out a yelp when we looked into Katie’s room and immediately went back to our room to get her phone and call the police. I told Katie everything was going to be okay, and she stayed cowering on the far corner of her bed. The woman simply stood in the corner opposite the wall, and even when I spoke, she never averted her eyes, which were locked on my daughter. Katie had scooted to the very back of her bed, and tears streamed down her face.

“Ma’am?” I asked in as calm a tone as I could muster. “Ma’am, are you lost?”

I didn’t really know what to say. What does one say to an intruder in the home that one truly believes means no ill will? The woman kept her strained face on Katie, and I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head.

“Ma’am.” I said, that time a little more forcefully.

The woman snapped her head towards me and bared her teeth, like a rabid dog. Her mouth was a mangled mess; she’d clearly had dentures that hadn’t come with her from wherever she’d come from. It was only then that the fact that we lived across a field from a nursing home occurred to me. I called Kimmy back into the room and told her to bring my phone. She came back, already on her own with the police. Keeping my eyes on the seemingly feral woman in the corner of my daughter’s room, who’d since returned her sights to Katie, I Googled the number to the nursing home.

A receptionist answered the phone and I explained the situation, and was told that they were indeed missing a woman, and had locked the nursing home down after the woman was discovered to be missing. Due to the fascination the woman seemed to have with Katie, we hadn’t dared tried to move her from her bed, but as we stood there, the woman’s breathing got heavier, and more threatening. I stood between Katie and the woman, and had Kimmy move behind me and get Katie out of the room, the woman’s eyes never once breaking away from her. About 5 minutes later, there was a knock on our door.

Without saying too much due to HIPAA laws, the nursing home employees who came to retrieve the woman told us and the police that eventually showed up that the woman was never supposed to be left alone, and that a simple miscommunication had led to her getting out of the home. Katie was understandably terrified, but all things considered, the situation had ended unceremoniously.

About a month later, Katie was finally back to sleeping in her own room, and nothing had happened since that night. It was around 9pm, and Kimmy and I were in our living room watching a movie. It was during the pawn shop scene in Pulp Fiction that Kimmy suddenly turned her head towards me. I looked to her, but found found that she wasn’t looking at me, but rather past me. I looked towards where her eyes were pointed, and saw nothing but our window with the light curtains draped over it.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I…yeah.” she replied.

“What…? I wanted to know why she’d suddenly been snapped to attention.

“I thought I saw someone walking past the window.

“Great, more escapees from Geriatric State Penitentiary.” I said jokingly, luckily bringing something of a smile to Kimmy’s face as well.

From where I was sitting on the couch, I could see down a short hallway into the kitchen, and was almost directly in line with one of the windows in it. We went back to watching the movie, and just as Butch grabs the sword, I saw what Kimmy had seen moments prior. A silhouette moved past the window, slow and deliberate.

I quickly stood up, telling Kimmy to call the police and get to Katie’s room. While she did so, I grabbed one of my knives and made my way to the kitchen. As I set foot in the kitchen, I saw that the silhouette was now standing at the door that leads outside. The silhouette raised both arms, and gave a pound to the door that seemed to rattle the whole kitchen. It seemed that the silhouette saw me as I walked into the kitchen, because, and while I can’t be entirely sure, it looked as if it’s head turned to follow me as I slowly stepped my way across the room.

I kept my eyes locked on the silhouette, and my plan was to run outside and confront whoever it was. A foolish plan, I know, but in the heat of the moment, there isn’t much time for strategic consideration.As I reached the door, I was only able to see a sliver of the person in the window due to the angle. I took a deep breath and swung the door open, stepping outside as I did. Somehow, in the split second that I didn’t have my eyes fixed on the silhouette, it vanished.

I was more confused than frightened at this point. Realistically, who would presume something ghostly before presuming it to be something that had an explanation, albeit one that isn’t known at the time? I looked around and didn’t see anyone, so I assumed that whoever it was must have gone down the side of the house. I took a few cautious steps towards that direction, my knife out in front of me. With another deep breath, I stuck my head around the corner of my house, and saw someone standing there, still just a silhouette under the moon.

“Hey!” I yelled with a lot less force than I’d planned to.

The silhouette just stood still. As I slowly walked closer, I took my phone out of my pocket and turned on the flashlight, and pointed it in its direction. What I found was a man in his late 80’s at the youngest. He had stringy white hair down to his shoulders, and was wearing nothing but a thin bathrobe that was blowing in the light wind. His skin was grossly pale and hung loose from his face, and drool was streaming from his mouth to the grass, and he was just staring up at the second floor window on the side of the house, the window that led to Katie’s room. As I got closer, I tried communicating with the man, in as calm a voice as I could manage, but he just continued staring at the ground.

When I was no more than a few feet away from him, I shined the light next to his face, and saw that he had deep, deep purple bags under his eyes, so pronounced it almost looked like he’d been punched. His nose was bright red and had a river of mucus pouring from it, and his lips, besides where the runoff from his nose had crossed, were cracked and caked with dried blood. His eyes were a very pale blue, almost white.

Just then, I heard something in the distance, a shout. My ears perked up and I listened in case whatever it was made a sound again. I kept hearing unintelligible shouts, but they were getting closer and closer. Finally, I was able to make them out. They were yelling “Dad”. Soon after, I saw the bouncing of flashlights on the street in front of my house. It was then that I yelled out to the people who were yelling.

A man and woman came running up with flashlights in hand, visibly relieved. The married couple explained that they lived down the street, and that her father had wandered out of the house a short while prior. They apologized profusely and began walking her dad back to their house. I went back inside to tell Kimmy everything was okay, but as I was walking up the stairs, there was a banging on our front door that sounded like it was going to break it down.

Under the bangs I could hear the man and woman pleading, “Stop! Stop!” and after a few seconds, it stopped, and I heard footsteps leading away from our door. I looked through the peephole and saw the man, woman, and her father once again walking away from our house. The police came again, but I explained the situation and we chose not to press any charges, since by all accounts, the situation had just been a confused old man not knowing where he was. I did mention to the cops the situation that had happened a month earlier, but none of us could explain it as anything more than an odd coincidence.

A month later, it was about 3:30am. I was awakened by a frantic Kimmy on the phone with who I quickly surmised was the police. I sprung up from bed, trying to figure out what was happening. Kimmy pointed out our bedroom window, the window that faces the nursing home, and my heart sank to my stomach. Under the moon, I saw a number of silhouettes moving through the cornfield between our house and the nursing home. The stalks of corn were only waist high at their tallest, and there must have been close to 40 silhouettes brushing their way past them.

Kimmy begged the police to hurry as she raced to Katie’s room, while I moved downstairs just as quickly to make sure all the doors and windows were locked. As I secured the last two windows, I looked out and saw that the people at the head of the group of silhouettes had made it past the cornfield and were now within the maybe 15 yards that sat between it and our house. I noticed that they weren’t moving quickly, by any means, and I (finally) put two and two together: they must all be residents of the nursing home.

I’d installed a flood light on the side of our house that was motion activated, and a few short moments later, the side of our house was draped in yellow light. It was at that point that I got a good look at the group that approached our house.

Some of them were clothed in normal, everyday clothes, some wore only gowns, while others were completely naked. The ones that had emerged from the cornfield all had the same look on their faces as the woman that had been in Katie’s room two months earlier, eyes bulging out of their heads. I ran back up stairs to Katie’s room and got her and Kimmy, then led them to the basement, where I had them lock the door behind me, with instructions not to open it at all; I would return with the key to the door and open it myself when all was safe.

In the time it took to get my family safely downstairs, the elderly people had reached the house. As I was moving away from the basement door after locking it, I heard glass break in the living room. Again, in a foolish move, I made my way towards the sound. I found an old woman with what looked to be fresh blood around her mouth climbing through the broken window. I still remember the sound of the glass crunching underneath her bare feet. More old people followed through, with more windows getting broken around the house.

The woman who’d first crawled in through the window bared her teeth, which were few and far between, and let out a growl, which soon turned into a shriek. Behind her and all around me, the rest of the group let out similar screams. It was deafening. I figured that all I had to do was bide my time until the police showed up, and do everything I could to keep them away from Kimmy and Katie, so I decided to run upstairs. Normally, this would be a foolish move, and nothing more than a horror movie cliche, but from our guest room window, there is a low roof from which I could jump if a quick exit was needed. The old people slowly followed me away from the basement door and up the stairs.

I was about halfway down the upstairs hall, walking backwards, when I heard something from behind me. I spun around and looked into our bedroom, only to find an old man walking towards the hall, and another old man climbing through the window behind him. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I resolved to simply attempt to run as fast as I could and barrel through the old people, when there was a single scream from what I guessed was an old woman on the first floor. At the sound of that scream, all motion around me stopped.

The old people stood there for what seemed like an eternity, and none of them were looking at me. The ones in our bedroom were looking straight down at the floor, the ones in the guest room across the hall were looking from that room into our bedroom, also at the floor, and the ones blocking my way back to the stairs were seemingly looking through the walls at the same spot in our bedroom everyone else was looking at. It occurred to me later that our room was above the basement door.

And with that, they all began heading downstairs. As if I wasn’t even there, the ones in the bedroom brushed past me at their slow place, all heading downstairs. Assuming that for whatever reason they were headed to the basement, I went through with the my most recent plan and pushed my way past the probably 15 old people that were in my way and found myself on the first floor once again.

I ran through the living room and saw a group of even more of them pounding on the basement door, all growling, all with some purpose in mind. I was frozen in a state of fear and helplessness. I had no idea what to do, but just then, my living room lit up in a flash of red and blue light. I stayed where I was, but began yelling out to the police. “Help us! We’re in here!”. I realized the front door was locked, so I moved faster than I ever had and unlocked it, swung it open, and returned to where the horde of the rabid elderly were in my line of sight.

A moment later, a policeman and policewoman rushed in with their guns drawn. They immediately called for backup after seeing the group of old people pounding at clawing at our basement door and told me to stand to the side. The woman moved in first, and using her nightstick began pushing the elderly away from the basement door and towards the living room, where the other officer attempted to push them outside. What happened next was admittedly all a blur.

The old people all let out another scream in unison. At that moment, I saw one of the old men scratch at the male officer, and a woman behind him attempted to bite him. The sound of a gunshot from by the basement door rang out, and then one from right in front of me made my ears ring. The sound of guns firing rapidly filled the whole house, what seemed like the whole world, it was so loud. The male officer ordered me to get outside, and while I hesitated leaving my wife and daughter in the house without me, I ultimately obliged. I stood there for again, what seemed like an eternity, but couldn’t have been more than maybe 30 seconds, when finally, I saw Kimmy and Katie being escorted out by the blood-covered female officer.

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We were taken to the police station where we gave our statements, and explained the two incidents that preceded this major one. We learned that the entire staff of the nursing home had been killed, save for four employees that were severely injured. 27 of the 41 elderly people that attacked our home had been shot, with 19 of them dying. The rest had been subdued and arrested by both the officers that first responded and the backup that arrived only a few minutes after Kimmy and Katie had been brought safely outside.

They informed us that after the female officer had brought my wife and daughter outside, the old people that were still standing after the gunfire and the officers attempting to drop them through blows to the knees with their nightsticks, focused their attention on getting outside the house. That fact, along with the fact that the first woman who’d shown up in our house had gone to Katie’s room, and the fact that the man from down the street had stopped on the side of our house and stared up at Katie’s window, led the police to believe that our daughter was the target.

They have no idea why.

We’ve since rented an apartment.

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For those interested, the dates of the incidents took place on December 3rd, January 2nd, and January 31st. I don’t know if there’s any significance to these dates that pertain to why those in particular are when these old people seemed to take an interest in my daughter, but any help would be appreciated. I only ask because it seems to be about a month in between each incident, and “about a month” since the last one is quickly approaching.