Masked Paper Bag Person surveils my husband and I

My husband and I were walking home after having a drink. We were chatting and paying little attention to the houses we passed.

At an intersection, I noticed a cat sitting on a fence. I made a small sound at it, and the cat responded. It began stalking a bird, so we kept watching the house while we walked past.

A person wearing a brown paper bag over their head suddenly stumbled out of the front door into the yard. The person's movements were extremely strange, but did not look like ordinary drunkenness. The house itself seemed silent and empty.

The masked person turned toward us. The eye holes of the paper bag appeared to stare directly at us. The person slowly backed toward the alcove beside the front door and disappeared from view.

We continued walking, but I felt an intense sense of dread. As we passed the house, the paper bag slowly emerged from the alcove again, watching us, then disappeared. We kept moving and repeatedly looked back. Each time, the same thing happened. The masked face would gradually appear, remain fixed on us, and retreat again.

This continued until we reached the end of the street and turned out of sight. My husband laughed and suggested that it might have been a child playing a prank or preparing a costume. He was probably right, but the explanation did not make the encounter feel less disturbing.

I kept looking over my shoulder for the rest of the walk home. Even now, the image of that paper bag face slowly emerging from the shadows makes my skin crawl. The person never said a word or came after us, yet the deliberate way they watched us made the encounter feel far more threatening than an ordinary prank.