'The Knocker' Strikes Fear in N.C. Widows

March 18, 2010— -- It sounds like a scene from a horror movie: It's late at night, you can't get to sleep and, suddenly, there's a knock at the door.

But it's not a movie.

Women just outside of the small town of Rutherfordton, N.C., told ABC News it's really happening to them -- and has been for years.

The women are all widows over the age of 60, and they all live in the same rural neighborhood.

The women asked not to have their names reported for fear of repercussions from the person they call "the knocker."

"You never know when it's going to happen," one woman in her late 60s said. "You try to forget it. You try to put it out of your mind, but you know it's gonna happen."

Bobbie Condrey said her 83-year-old mother is a victim of the knocking, one of five widows in total who are experiencing the late-night nuisance.

"From six to 16 years, these five women have been bothered by the one we call the knocker," Condrey said.

One woman said it started happening to her soon after her husband passed away about 10 years ago.

"I live alone and I began hearing, it sounded like in the beginning, a few small pebbles being thrown on my back window in the den where I stay at night," she said. "When I first heard it, I would go look and I wouldn't see anything."

Another woman, 62, said it started happening to her more recently.

"It started six years ago, just prior to my husband being diagnosed with a brain tumor," she said.

The woman now lives alone and said the problem has gotten worse.

Condrey said her mother started hearing knocking 16 years ago. Now, she said, her mother is getting phone calls at all times of the night, too.

She added that her mother's situation has one thing in common with some of the other women: It happened around the time she became a widow.

"My mother has been bothered, it started right after my father died," Condrey said. "He's been dead about 18 years and it started a couple years after he died."