Crazy night at The Dakota

I’ve been renting an apartment at The Dakota on the Upper West Side in New York, but after what happened yesterday, my boyfriend and I are seriously thinking about moving out.

Around 2 a.m., we were woken up by loud chanting noises. It was creepy and didn’t sound like anything I’d heard before. I wanted to check it out, but my boyfriend didn’t want me to go alone, so he came with me. The elevator wasn’t working or was stuck on a lower floor, so we had to take the emergency staircase.

When we got to the stairs, we noticed the lights weren’t working. That had never happened before. It was completely dark, and at first, we thought about just going back to bed, but we were too curious. We used our phone flashlights and started walking down. We didn’t even get one floor down before we saw something that stopped us cold.

There were about five or six people standing on the stairs below us, all wearing black cloaks. One of them yelled at us, “Go back upstairs! Get to your rooms!” It freaked us out, but I still shined my phone flashlight at them and said we just wanted to see what was going on. That’s when a woman stepped forward and said, “Go back up if you value your lives.” She had long, straight black hair, and her voice was calm but really intimidating.

The others started yelling too, all telling us to go back. One of them, a woman with a thick accent, was getting really angry and yelled at us to leave. Her face was hard to see, but I noticed she had black hair like the others. The cloaks they were wearing were super shiny, almost like silk but even shinier. It was weird how much that detail stuck with me. The woman with the long black hair was especially scary—her makeup was really dark, and her expression gave me chills.

Then, when I tried to ask more questions, another woman snapped, “Just do as you’re told!” She was older, blonde and sounded furious. At that point, we were both really scared. Their anger felt real, and their faces looked terrifying in the dim light, so we turned around and went back to our apartment.

When we got back, something clicked in my head. I realized who I had just seen. The woman with the straight black hair was definitely Demi Moore. Her face and voice were exactly like hers. The blonde woman who yelled at us was 100% Kathy Hilton. My boyfriend agreed and said he thought the woman with the accent was Adriana Lima. He even said he thought he saw Priyanka Chopra standing behind her, but she didn’t say anything.

The whole thing was so weird and scary. We have no idea what they were doing there or why they were dressed like that, but it was enough to freak us out. We’re seriously thinking about leaving this building as soon as we can.

In the morning, we talked to some of our neighbors to see if they had heard anything. They admitted they had but said they just ignore it. Our older neighbors told us they’ve heard similar things happening ever since they moved in. Apparently, it only happens occasionally, like every 15-20 years. They said it was more frequent in the ’50s and ’60s, and they would often see famous celebrities involved, even more than the ones we saw. They were told to keep quiet about it, and they just went along with it. I find it strange how calm and content they seem, especially since most of them are wealthy. Oh well.

Can anyone explain what might have been going on? Loud chanting in the middle of the night, shiny black cloaks, dark smoky eye makeup, and matching smoky dark lips. What could it all mean?