Is The Woman In The Yard based on a true story? Here's what we know 

Some films end when the credits roll, but The Woman in the Yard is not one of them. It just stands there. Still, watching, waiting. In the dark. In the silence. In the backyard. It's the kind of film that makes you check your windows twice and side-eye your backyard for days afterward. There are no monsters here. No blood or gore. Just a woman in a chair, sitting in the yard like she’s always been there. And that is real horror — not knowing what it is that is out there.

It’s not surprising people are asking: Is The Woman in the Yard based on a true story? Because sometimes fiction hits too close. Sometimes a film doesn’t feel like something someone imagined; it feels like something someone survived. And this one doesn’t just scare you. It creeps under your skin with how it ends and what it signifies. Here's everything you need to know about what The Woman in the Yard is about and if it is based on a true story.

Note: This article expresses the author's personal views.

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What is The Woman in the Yard about?

Released on March 28, 2025, the film revolves around Ramona, played by Danielle Deadwyler, who moves into a farmhouse for a fresh start in life. After a car crash that killed her husband and shattered her leg, she arrives there, bruised, broke, and heavy with the kind of grief that doesn’t make a sound. Her two kids, Taylor and little Annie, come with her. However, as the film progresses, it becomes clear: this house isn’t going to heal anything. It gets worse because someone else starts sharing their backyard with them.

It is a woman, veiled in black, seated in a chair in the middle of the yard. Unmoving. Unfamiliar. Ramona goes out to confront her, and the woman only says two things:

“How did I get here?”

And, chillingly, with bloody hands:

Today’s the day”

From that moment, the air shifts. The woman never enters the house, but her presence does. Lights flicker. The family dog disappears, and slowly the woman gets closer. She stays in her chair, and yet she’s everywhere. Ramona boards up the windows, tries to shut her out, but grief doesn’t need a door to seep in.

As things unravel, the truth surfaces: Ramona was driving the car when the accident with her husband happened. An argument. A moment of anger. And then death. The woman in the yard stops being a stranger and starts to look like something else. Like a manifestation of the guilt and horror Ramona carries inside herself. As the days pass, the woman creeps closer to the children, to the truth. Ramona begs her to stop and to leave. She offers herself instead, and then we meet the truth.

The woman is not just a stranger in the yard. She was grief embodied. She was the answer to a prayer Ramona had whispered when she thought no one was listening, not for strength to survive, but strength to end it. The woman was the manifestation of Ramona's depressive thoughts that urged her to end it all. Which is why even in the very beginning, the woman appears unsure of why she was here.

The woman then gives her the strength to end it all. She gives Ramona a rifle and leads her to a farm and urges her to commit suicide. Just then, the kids and the household dog return, and the woman vanishes. Later, when they ask if the woman would return, Ramona tells them that if she does, this time she will be ready. As they hug, we see the camera move to a painting inside, which shows the woman and Ramona together, and beneath it, her name, written backwards.

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So, is The Woman in the Yard based on a true story?

Although the events that take place in the film are completely fictional, it is indeed based on something real. Screenwriter Sam Stefanak didn’t pull this story from a newspaper headline or a chilling urban legend. He drew it from himself.

During his isolation from the pandemic, Stefanak was fighting suicidal depression. In the early drafts, it wasn’t a woman in the yard; it was a man. A motionless figure he imagined standing just outside his window, a shape molded from his own pain. As he told Filmmaker Magazine, writing that first scene

“gave me the strength to carry on.”

Talking about how the film came to be, Stefanak recounted:

"I sat down at my computer, sent a character out into this yard that I was imagining and had this character ask me the questions [about themself] that I was wondering: “Who are you? Why are you here? What can I do to make you go away?”...That’s when it hit me that I was seeing this image because my brain was taking my suicidal depression and giving it a character to embody as a way to deal with my depression."

As the story evolved, the woman in the yard became more than a shadow. She became guilt and despair embodied. The film’s truth is emotional, not factual. And maybe that’s why it gets under your skin, it isn’t real in the traditional sense, but it’s honest. And sometimes, that’s the scariest kind of story there is.

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Why The Woman in the Yard feels so real

In The Woman in the Yard, the horror isn’t loud but patient, waiting. At the film’s center is a woman left alone, not just in her house, but in her body, her mind, her memories. Her isolation is so thick it might as well be developed as its own character. And then there’s her: the woman in the yard. Standing there. Watching, not moving, not leaving. She might be real, but she might also be something far worse. A metaphor with eyes. Trauma and grief in human shape.

Like The Babadook (2014), the film's real horrors lie in what we keep on the inside to hide from the world and ourselves. It's how the demons inside us start taking the shape of something larger and eventually consuming us. Although the film's narrative is not rooted in reality, the themes explored in it are very much real. Perhaps that's why it feels scarier than jump scares and bloody corpses. It's about the demons inside us, rather than the ones lurking around our bedrooms.

The Woman in the Yard is now available to stream on Prime Video.