Minecraft wiki entry for Survival_in_an_infinite_desert, associated text: Lack of sleep brings phantoms every night. The best way to deal with these is to build a roof garden on your house with 'potted' cacti (cacti on a one-high sand block). Once the cacti are two blocks high the phantoms attack relentlessly and die against the cacti without harming you. However, you must offer yourself as bait so that they crash into the cacti. The phantoms can then kill themselves before the sun rises, and you can go about your daytime activities in peace.