Please, I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried to tell my wife about this, but she’s a science teacher and thanks to my history of practical jokes, she thinks I’m just kidding.

There is something stalking me. I don’t know what it wants, but almost every night since I started seeing it, it has terrorized me. It doesn’t touch me, it doesn’t communicate in any sort of way, it just fills me with horror. If what I seem to ramble, please forgive me… I haven’t slept in several days.

We live in the second floor of a duplex with stairs down the back of the house to the basement where the laundry machines are. There’s a door at the bottom of the stairs before the door to the basement that looks out onto our back porch and into the back yard. Six days ago, I was going down to the basement to bring up some laundry and I glanced out the door as I passed. There was a figure standing at the far edge of our yard. Her back was to me, and she was just standing there, looking into the woods beyond our yard. She was dressed in nothing but a light gown. It had lots of flowing material coming off of it that was whipping around in the air slowly. The whole scene creeped me out instantly, but I thought she might be a friend of our downstairs neighbor, so I continued to the basement. When I came back up, she wasn’t there.

The next night, I went down again, and as I passed the back door, I looked outside. The woman was back. She was exactly like she was the night before, facing away, not moving. The hair on my arms and neck stood up straight when I saw her. I was even more creeped out when I realized she was in the same clothes as the night before. That’s when I did something I shouldn’t have… I opened the back door. Leaning out, I called to her to see if she was okay. She didn’t respond. She didn’t make any sort of indcation that she’d heard me. It was freezing cold, so I shut the door and locked it. Coming back upstairs afterward, I looked out the window and she was gone again.

Later that same night, I was in the bedroom, getting ready to go to sleep. Everything was dark, because my wife had gone to bed before me. Our bedroom looks out over the backyard, and my side of the bed faces the windows, so I have to go past them to get in. As I was doing so, I suddenly got that same deep dread feeling in my stomach that I had gotten the first time I saw the figure in the backyard. Something compelled me to hesitate by the windows. My hands were shaking as I pulled the curtain back a bit and peeked through the shades into the backyard. It was a clear night, so the backyard wasn’t shrouded in darkness. The woman was standing in the middle of the backyard, no longer at the edge of the woods, facing the house with her head tilted up to look directly at the window I was peeking from. I jerked away instantly, afraid she had seen me. Her face was covered in shadow and hair, but I saw her chin and nose. A sharp nose and a thin chin. Gray. Her skin looks gray, I think. Her hair is black and long. I was so scared, I jumped into bed and covered myself with the covers.

The next day, I played outside in the snow with my four year old daughter. She wanted me to pull her on her sled in the backyard, but just the thought of going back there made me scared again, so I talked her into digging holes in the snow in the front yard. That night, things went from bad to worse. Somehow, I had managed to forget about the woman. Then, in the middle of the night, my daughter started crying. Our bedroom is just across the hall from hers. I thought she might need to use the bathroom or just be having a bad dream, so I went into her room to see if she was okay. She was uncovered, curled into a ball on her mattress. I pulled her covers over her and that’s when she whispered to me.

“Daddy, there’s someone in my closet.”

Instant goosebumps. I turned my head slowly toward the closet door at the end of her bed. Normally, the closet is shut, but now it was open. The woman was standing in my daughter’s closet. Not even when it was clear that I saw her did she move or make a sound, just stood there and looked at me through the cracked-open door. My blood ran cold when I saw her.

“Get up,” I told my daughter, “Get in my arms, quickly. QUICKLY.” she scrambled up and hugged me tightly and I walked backward out of the room, watching the closet the entire time. In my mind I imagined her throwing the closet door open and running at us, arms outstretched. I just hugged my daughter and walked backward into my room. The woman never appeared in the doorway. I heard no movement from my daughter’s room. I tucked her into my bed and stood there watching the doorway to her bedroom. I did not go back in, I just stood there and watched and listened. When I finally got the courage to climb into bed, I didn’t sleep.

Sunday, I told my wife everything. I told her about the first time I saw this woman, I told her about calling out to her and seeing her from the window. I told her that she had appeared in our daughter’s closet. She told me it wasn’t funny, that it was my fault for our daughter’s bad dreams and that I shouldn’t encourage her to be afraid of her closet.

Sunday night, my daughter called to me from her room again. Call me a coward, but I couldn’t go back into that room. I called her quietly to come get in our bed, but she cried and said she was scared. I wanted to go and get her, but I was scared too. I told her to pull her blankets up and cover herself. Just cover yourself, honey, and you’ll be okay. I prayed that it was true. I lay there, peeking over the sleeping form of my wife and out into the hallway at the closed door of my daughter’s room and just kept praying. I heard her cry a while longer, then she went quiet and I hoped that she was asleep.

Monday, I piled toys in front of the door to her closet. By that time, there was no doubt in my mind that this was some sort of ghost or apparition, but I piled things in front of the closet anyway. Like a pile of toys could stop a ghost.

Monday night, my daughter did not cry, but I didn’t sleep. I lay there, looking at the ceiling, tense. Around 2:00, I heard her bedroom door creak open and I knew something was wrong. She must be scared, I thought, so I called to her like before, “Just come to me and you can sleep in our bed, Sweety.” But she didn’t come. I peeked over my wife.

The woman was standing there in the doorway to my daughter’s room. Her arms hung at her sides, her shoulders slouched down. Her gown was dirty, like it hadn’t been washed in years, and hung off her likes torn rags. I wasn’t breathing, I wasn’t blinking, I just looked at her and she looked at me and I thought this is it, I’m going to die. She never moved, never made a sound. I whispered, “Please, go away. Please, leave me alone. Please, I’m sorry.” I couldn’t look away. If I look away, she will get closer. I was sure of it. If I close my eyes, when I open them, she’ll be standing over me, looking at me. At some point, she was gone. It’s like I fell asleep with my eyes open. I don’t remember her disappearing, just that I was looking at the doorway, and she wasn’t there anymore.

Last night, I lay awake, waiting. I asked my wife to shut our bedroom door because the night light in the hallway was keeping me awake. It was stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking. Like clockwork, I heard my daughter’s bedroom door creak open. I held my breath. Then I heard the floorboards in the hallway creaking and I started shaking uncontrollably. I heard our bedroom door open, and I knew she was standing there, in the doorway, not moving, just looking at me. I didn’t look. I couldn’t. I did what had I told my daughter to do and pulled the covers over my head.

I am a complete mess. A zombie at work. I don’t want to go home anymore. I think I see the woman in other places. A glance while driving and I think she’s sitting in the passenger seat of the truck behind me, or standing down the street as I drive off. Just sitting here at my desk, someone passes by behind me and I jump. I’m afraid that if I turn around, she’ll be there, waiting for me to look at her. And what if I saw her face? I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to see her anymore, but I don’t know what to do. The only hope I feel is that, for unrelated reasons, my wife is talking about moving. But our lease isn’t up until May. I don’t know if I can hold out that long.