Neighborhood terrified over 'cryptic' gang signs on houses discover hysterical truth

A neighborhood in Chicago thought they were being terrorized by a local gang - only to find they were just victims of living in a neighborhood full of Swifties.

TikTok user Olivia Roberts posted the hilarious misunderstanding to the platform, revealing some concerned neighbors posted in the local Facebook group, trying to figure out if they were being targeted. 

'Does anyone know what this symbol is?' she read out.

'We saw it on our house a couple of weeks ago in orange chalk, we wiped it off, and now it's back in the same place, same symbol in blue chalk,' she read, adding the people posted anonymously for security. 

Helpful neighborhood warriors chimed in, with where they thought the mysterious symbol could be from. 

'I was gonna say tdm which is a tagging crew in Chicago but if it is they definitely didn't do it right. I circled it in red in the picture,' one user commented.

Olivia then dramatically revealed the symbol - which was TTPD - or the symbol used for Taylor Swift's latest album, The Tortured Poets Department. 

'Be careful you guys, there's a gang of Swifties terrorizing the South Loop,' she joked.

'Nobody is safe.'

In a comment, Olivia explained the symbols were written in chalk and there’s an elementary school three blocks away, which could explain why it keeps appearing.

Taylor Swift fans loved the hilarious reveal, with over 1,000 people commenting on the misunderstanding.

'I cackled when you revealed, but for real I get that if you don’t know what it is, it’s scary for it to show up again in the same spot especially if that area has a gang problem,' one user pointed out.

'I was fully expecting this to go the "marking your house for home invasion" route, but was pleasantly surprised it went in the direction of "beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust" instead,' another laughed.

'This is a great troll. I need more ppl to do this in their neighborhood fb groups and report back plz,' said another.

Others noted the hilarity of the situation, although acknowledged it would be concerning if someone kept tagging the same symbol on their home, especially if it was to signal for someone to rob it.

'To be fair, someone tagging your building twice in the exact same spot with a symbol you don’t recognized is actually very creepy. Like yes it turned out be silly, but I would be nervous too…' a user wrote.

The 14-time Grammy winner debuted The Anthology double-album edition on April 18, with all 31 tracks occupying the top of the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously for the first time in chart history.

'The Tortured Poets Department [is] an anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time - one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure,' Swift - who boasts 551.3M social media followers - wrote in April.

'This period of the author's life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted.

'This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that's left behind is the tortured poetry.'