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Indrė Lukošiūtė

69 Times Graveyard Shift Workers Got So Scared Or Confused They Still Don’t Have Answers To This Day

United States Sue

Whether ghosts actually have a clause in their contracts to only appear when the sun goes down is up for debate. Yet, spooky stories and creepy experiences are usually born during the so-called “witching hour” — somewhere between midnight and 3 or 4 am. Or as some people like to call it: the devil’s hour.

And who better to tell such stories than the people who have to be up all night to work anyway.

Several night-shift workers have shared online some of the strangest experiences they’ve had on the job.

Some swear it was supernatural. Some eventually discovered it was just an animal or a prank. But in the moment, everybody agreed the fear was very real.

#1

So I used to do graveyard security at an E.R.. I had just started the job when this happened.

One night, I was on break and crossing the empty hospital parking lot to walk over to the 7-11.

Out of nowhere, this hatchback starts revving is engine from across the lot. Then it screeches forward, heading right for me.

I'm like trying to run serpentine and get over a curb into the street. I'm legit scared I'm going to be ran over by some wacko. I'm about 30 yards from the curb edge when the car pulls up along side me.

That's when the passenger door flies open and this dwarf woman with blonde hair hops out and starts chasing me. She's yelling, "Hey, you! What are you doing? Come here!"

This is all kinda NOPE for me and I keep running with this little person chasing me.

Then the driver side of the door opens and out pops fellow security guy, Ted, laughing his head off. He introduces the little person woman as Sue, his girlfriend, who is also now laughing.

They go on to explain that they do this to all the new guys.

Sue, if you're our there, nuthin but love for ya. Ted, I still kinda hated you.

#2

I work at a banquet hall, not really graveyard shift but I'll end up closing around 1 or 2 am sometimes. One night it took particularly long to kick the drunks out, so I hung out in back playing on my phone while the cops took care of it. At one point I felt someone walk up to me, I looked up and no one was there, shrugged it off.

Once everyone left I walked around locking doors and shutting off lights. The buildings pretty big, it takes me about 15 minutes to shut down the back then another 5 for the front. I half noticed the air seemed to get heavier as I shut the back light off, kept peeking around as I was walking. Thought I saw a flash of someone walking in blue jeans and a white t shirt, also shrugged it off since I was already tense.

To shut down the front I turn off the main lighting through the breaker box and a set of light switches. Each breaker I shut down the room got creepier and creepier. I hurried to the switches and slammed them all off, clocked out, and went to walk out the front door. Just then my SO walks in to give me a ride home. He goes "wow it's kinda creepy in here" then notices my panicked look and goes "you ok what's that face for?". "WELL IT'S KINDA CREEPY IN HERE"

So he's into all that stuff and begs me to stay for just a minute while he walks around. It's much less scary with two people, and I am clocked out, so I agree. He kinda peeks around taking a few pictures, and out of the corner of my eye I see a flash of jeans and white shirt. I don't even say anything and he runs to where it was, looks around behind the curtain and nothing. I'm still quiet about it just ask him what's up. He straight up says "I swear I saw a guy in jeans and a white t shirt."

I fill him in and we check to make sure there's really no one in the building. Couldnt find any one plus all the drunks were in formal wear for a wedding reception. Nothing in the pictures or anything but it still freaked me out. Since then I'm pretty sure blue jeans is cool with me, might have helped me find my coffee and mess with someone who annoyed me so there's that.

Edit: Sorry didn't think anyone would care about the coffee story. So I have a habit of leaving my coffee around and not finding it till it's cold. One day I had misplaced it, and mentioned out loud (yeah I talk to myself a lot at work) "where's my coffee?" I keep working (folding curtains SO MANY CURTAINS) but keep seeing a flash of something out of the corner of my eye towards the kitchen. I peek around and don't see anyone, and make sure there's no hair in my eye or anything else that could cause the flash. It happens around 10 times in a half an hour, finally I make out a flash of jeans. Eventually I'm not scared just frustrated and look up saying "I'm working blue jeans what do you want?!" When I look up I see my coffee, sitting right on the counter where I kept seeing the flashes. It was cold by then but I thanked blue jeans and apologized for yelling at him.

While I'm here, there was a dude (well call him dave) working there that was so freaking annoying. Lazy as hell, always complaining, and terrified at the thought of ghosts. After a particularly bad day of dealing with him I mention out loud while no one's around that if blue jeans wanted to scare anyone it should be that guy. Twenty minutes later Dave runs past flipping his stuff that someone grabbed him. I've seen him try to act, he's bad, so he wasn't messing with us. Lmao oops did I do that?

The night shift is often called the graveyard shift — because of the quiet, eerie atmosphere, and a kind of working-alone-in-a-cemetery vibe.

Even horror movies tap into that exact same vibe — linking darkness to mischief, spirits, and general unease.

It’s no wonder then that our brains unknowingly associate the dark with supernatural or scary activities.

Research shows that low lighting can trigger feelings of insecurity or anxiety because the brain assumes there could be danger nearby. On the other hand, brighter spaces tend to make people feel safer.

#3

So I was working at an Oil Refinery in India, doing the always fun 6 pm to 6 am shift. We would do actual work until around 9 every night then mess around and just make sure everything stays stable.

Well around 2 am the compressor tripped. What the hell? Great the whole plant is down. We check and see there was no reason it happened, no high temperature, PDI, vibration etc. Ok these things happen every so often, whatever lets get going again. Next night, same thing happens. This goes on for 4 days or so, and we're getting chewed out by Oleg, the sadistic chief who famously berated an unmarried indian man for being a virgin, and would beat people with bamboo sticks, really excellent human being. Luckily we were doing commissioning stuff so losing production wasn't a freakishly huge deal, only a moderately huge deal. If it was starbucks it would be the tall pumpkin latte of disasters, you know delicious but atleast it wasn't Viente.

So me and Piyush are talking, and we decide to take one of the security cameras and turn it onto the compressor. The compressor trips yet again... we go to the security room and get the guard to let us watch the video. Its boring, its an oil refinery in India in the middle of the night. Some lizards crawling around, a few giant flies go by, then suddenly we see a dark figure approaching. Maybe 3 feet tall and walking with a hunch. It goes up to the compressor and starts turning some dials and pressing some buttons. The compressor trips and it scats out of the area. Oh but this was no dark spirit from nosleep, it was a god darn monkey.

The solution: They hired an india boy to sit there at night with a cricket paddle thing.

#4

I am a nurse in a nursing home and I was working 10p-6a and this one particularly feisty old lady would always tell me that she hated me and was going to haunt me. Well for an entire week after she died her call light kept going off when the room was unoccupied. Freaked me the hell out. It had never done it before and had no signs of being tampered with.

#5

I worked a graveyard shift at a Chevron when I was taking a year off of college. It was around the time the first season of Orange is the New Black came out because I remember I was watching it to get through the night and one guy came in and said it's a show for girls and he doesn't get why a guy would watch it. That's not what I'm here to say though.

During that night, maybe 4 A.M, I hear that someone just walked through the door. Expecting a trucker or a teenager here for energy drinks, I look towards the door and there is an old couple bee lining it to the energy drink section.

I wave and wait for them to come to the counter. The woman comes back and asks if I have any monster coffees in the back. I tell her that we have some in the energy drink section. She says she knows, and right then the husband comes up with all our monster coffees, every flavor too, and dumps them on the counter. They both crack one open and drink it all without stopping. The woman asks again if we have any more in the back.

I go in the back and see we have three small pallets of it with 15-20 in each one. I go and tell the couple and the old guy says he will come back and help me carry them.

So we lug around 50 coffees to the counter and by the time we finish, the woman has finished another. I'm in shook and wondering if I'm hallucinating or this is a prank because I've been working since 11 A.M because someone called in sick.

I then ring up all the coffees and it's like $185 of monster coffees. The woman says "This stuff just goes so fast. We do this every 2-3 weeks."

So they got all of them paid for and start carrying them to the car. Then they start looking through the store. They both each drink another coffee while searching.

I'm standing there watching two 60 year olds who aren't extremely fat or skinny, chug these coffees like it was the first liquid they had found in the past month.

They finally left and I sat there wondering what I was doing with my life. I laughed to the point I reached tears. Why am I working at a gas station at 22 years old. I should be back in college.

Next week I gave my two weeks notice and am now back in college.

Recent research shows that about 14.2% of employed US adults work overnight hours — typically defined as between 1 am and 5 am. That translates to more than 21 million Americans being regularly awake and working while most of the country sleeps.

Studies say that our brain is already hyper-alert at night.

Even a flickering monitor, a squeaky hallway, or a stray raccoon in the parking lot can look like the opening scene to a horror movie.

Darkness and fatigue also heighten senses that you barely use during the day, such as your fear responses.

Small noises seem louder and shadows may seem to move. Shapes in your peripheral vision may suddenly look like some lurking figure.

#6

I swear this is true, just happened a few months ago. I was sitting out in my truck in the parking lot eating lunch around 1 am. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted some kind of creature walking along the highway service road alongside our building. Not uncommon to see coyotes, raccoons, cats, or other critters since we were near a big wooded area.

But this thing was 2-3 feet tall walking upright. Well not really walking, so much as sort of levitating along slowly. It was pretty dark out, but I could just faintly see this thing making its way on down the road. Really kind of freaking me out because I wasn't quite sure what I was seeing. Fumbled my camera out but couldn't get a good picture of it since my flash was useless. Pulled out my pocket flashlight but still couldn't quite make out what it was. Seriously, my heart was racing because I was certain this was a legit cryptozooilogical encounter!

Then I had the bright idea (heh) to turn on my headlights since I was sitting in my truck facing this thing. Lit it up and had a brief moment of confusion followed by relief it wasn't Chupacabra followed by laughter.

Turns out it was one these floaty Chucky Cheese helium balloons with arms and legs that hovered slightly along the. Darn thing had somehow lost its head, but must've gotten loose from some kid at the Chucky Cheese about a half mile down the road. I just giggled as I watched it hover on along the way into the darkness of night.

#7

I'm the overnight desk at a small hotel, and I've been doing it nearly six years. If I were a Sim, this is level two of the slacker track. Mostly a very, very boring job.

But once in a while.

So my hotel is on the waterfront, and the dumpster is on the far end of the building, near a crabbing wharf. I'm going out there one night to take out the lobby trash, it's dark as a bowel and I do things out there mostly by touch. So I go to lift the dumpster lid and a dinosaur screams in my face.

Great blue herons are terrifying, terrifying birds in the dark, when they're standing above you flapping their wings because you just upended the surface they're standing on and snapping their knife-face at you while making deep screaming noises.

This heron and I had other encounters. Once, he was inside the recycling dumpster when I opened it. Frequently, he dropped rotting fish, large fish, off the roof to explode all over our front patio. Once it was a good-sized salmon. Once he even got into an empty guest room during a storm, and I had to herd him out. Or he'd just stand outside and make horrible dinosaur noises. But he finally vanished last winter and I thought I had outlasted him. Maybe I did. But I have a new one now, and he introduced himself by standing right outside my patio door, stretching his neck to be at eye-level with me, and shrieking, holding my gaze. Herons aren't even supposed to be nocturnal.

Aside from demon birds staying up all night just to mess with me, my hotel has a few ghost things and I have had regular problems with sleepwalkers. Men who sleepwalk, why do you sleep naked?

#8

Graveyard at the gas station Sunday-Thursday night.

Typical drunks, vacationers fueling up, morning zombies for their coffees.

I think the creepiest was when a guy started to hit on me and ask for my number. He would not take no for an answer and always was there when I came in for my shift.

Mind you I am a woman alone. I was not allowed to have anything to defend myself, because it was against company policy. Though I had easy access to phone the police.

Well this one particular night he wanted to touch me. I wasn't standing it. My throat started getting hot and before I was about the verbally attack this creep, a regular walked in the door with her hand on her weapon. She is my hero and a security forces who stops by to grab lollipops before heading to the field. He left hurriedly and I have never seen him since.

If you’re sleep-deprived — which night shift workers often are — your brain’s logical reasoning takes a little nap of its own.

People who work through the night usually report higher levels of stress and anxiety, which can make their experiences feel extra eerie.

Their cortisol levels are higher and being alone, or with less people, at night can also make them see danger in totally normal things.

#9

Up until a few months ago, I spent almost two years working swing shift as a security guard for the university I attended. Great job, great benefits, awful hours (Mon: 7am-3pm, Tues-Weds: 3pm-11pm, Thurs-Fri: 11pm-7am). While this private university has a beautiful campus, it is in a pretty undesirable neighborhood--"red light district," housing projects, a few shabbily run nursing homes.

I saw my fair amount of weird/creepy stuff--naked old men, homeless people wandering around in the middle of the night, shots not far from where I was patrolling, etc. Nothing stands out in the creepy/paranormal range for me (though some co-workers claim to have seen some crazy stuff), so I'll tell my favorite funny story.

One morning at 2am on maybe my third week on the job, I am walking from my apartment (took a quick snack break) back to my office, which wasn't far. At this time of night, I would usually be in the truck, patrolling, and not being in the truck was mistake No. 1. We were not classified as "armed security guards," meaning no firearms, but we did carry extendable batons, which in my state, you need to be licensed to carry and use. I, being somewhat stupid, had mine anyway, though I was not licensed yet--my logic was I would would rather use it and get a charge than not have it and possibly get stabbed (which was very careless, I know).

As I am walking back, I see what is pretty obviously a drunk man stumbling in my direction. Shaking down the jitters (this was my first real "encounter"), I go to talk to the man, to escort him off of campus, which is generally no big deal, as 90% of the time drunk people just want to get home and aren't looking for trouble. This guy, apparently, was. He immediately gets belligerent with me, and starts screaming at me. I maintained my distance, but he began advancing on me, fists raised. On instinct, I grabbed the baton, and extended it. Luckily for me (hitting him could have gotten me fired, if not arrested), I realized I shouldn't swing at him, and for some reason I still do not exactly understand, I pointed the baton at him and yelled at the top of my lungs, "EXPELLIARMUS!!"

Belligerent drunk man stoppped in his tracks, turned around, and walked off of campus. Never saw him again.

tl;dr: Night security, successfully Disarmed an bellicose drunk man, still waiting on my Hogwarts letter.

#10

Worked at a Bulk Item Store overnight, in the cafe. I was prepping food for an early morning pick up, and went to my car on my "lunch break". Walked out to find a gaze of raccoons surrounding my car completely. I shined my phone light at them in hopes they would disperse, but all eyes went on me immediately, and then started after me as I was fumbling to hold onto the sandwich I had just made. I pounded on the entrance door, the door monitor had walked away to get a soda, and her inevitable waddle back over would have taken too long. I sacrificed my sandwich that night for my freedom.

Recent research from the EU showed that 51% of people working night shifts had at least one sleep disorder, which was strongly linked with increased stress, poor mood, and mental health problems.

“Because those working night shift will remain de-synchronized with the day-work focused environment they live in, it is unlikely to completely prevent all negative consequences of night work,” says Dr Marike Lancel, a researcher at GGZ Drenthe’s Mental Health Institute.

#11

Made a pause to drink some coffee at 3 AM. Went outside and walked a bit on the sidewalk while sipping on my hot black coffee. The building that I work at has an panoramic elevator which is visible from said sidewalk. I was alone in my thoughts, just enjoying the silence of the street at 3:07 AM when I hear a noise just like a knocking. Silence for some seconds, and then this noise again. Almost soiling myself after hours of pure silence (I work alone in my office), I looked around but saw nothing.

Knock knock again. "What the actual is this, is today the day that I'm going to be spooked by a knocking ghost?" knock knock knock.

So I took the brilliant decision to look to the elevator AND THERE WAS A PERSON INSIDE KNOCKING ON THE ELEVATOR'S GLASS AND WHO RAN AWAY WHEN I SAW HIM.

Reported it to the site security, ran to the bathroom and had the most earth-shaking fear-induced poo of my life.

#12

I work as a Customer Support representative for an Online Marketplace, i mostly work graveyard shifts but I guess what happened during the night couple of days ago counts as weird to say the least.

On this marketplace, users can setup shops and offer services to other users, these services that they offer tend to be very bizarre from time to time and some of them are scammers who offer bull at high prices.

This being said, we had a poor little man contact us in the middle of the night complaining about how he was "robbed" out of $400. It seemed like it could be an interesting ticket so i took it and started investigating the order that was associated with it.

Turns our that our buyer purchased a "satanic ritual" to completely change his physical appearance. This includes his height, weight, pretty much his whole face and last but not least, his private size.

The seller told him that he will require some personal info, such as his home address, pictures (no contact info) and the buyer delivered without hesitation.

The seller delivered the order and the poor buyer accepted it which means that the order was now marked as complete and the seller got his funds and deleted his account (who wouldn't).

In the end I was able to refund the buyer and got his funds back but man was it a blast reading their conversation, the seller was playing him like a fiddle and the buyer just kept on eating the nonsense this seller served him.

#13

So, I used to work as a graveyard custodian in a building by myself. Now, when I started I was told that the building was pretty weird and that I should stay on my toes. I didn't believe it but after working there for a year I was pretty much convinced something weird was happening. I'll break down what happened into a couple of stories.

1) I was riding the elevator to a different floor but instead of going to that floor it went straight into the basement. The doors open and they are open for maybe ten seconds or so and I can't see anything in this room. All of the sudden a dark figure starts walking towards the elevator and I freaked the hell out. I hit the doors to close and the figure just kept getting closer. I ended up standing outside of the building for a half hour or so while the police searched the basement. What really freaked me out is that the one entrance into the basement was locked and barred and they didn't find anyone down there after searching everywhere.

2) I was standing in a room cleaning a white board and suddenly I heard what sounded like a little girl laugh behind me (this was a university, so there shouldn't have been any kids in the building and the building was closed anyway). What really freaked me out is I could hear footsteps running down the hall towards the door for the basement but instead of sounding like kid feet it sounded like something that weighed 400 pounds was running at a full sprint.

3) The one thing that really sucked is that no matter where you were in the building you would always feel like you were being watched. It was a feeling I could never shake and I had been told by my boss that just about everyone who has worked in that building has felt the same way.

So, that's it. It was pretty weird and I ended up asking for a transfer to the sister building so I could get away from whatever was going on in that building.

Even architecture can play tricks on your mind.

Long hallways, huge buildings (think brutalist architecture), echoing rooms, staircases disappearing into the dark — all of these things can feel potentially dangerous.

And if you’ve recently watched a horror show, your brain might try to fill in the gaps with stories and shadows that aren’t really there.

Experts say these sensations aren’t superstition but the brain misreading its surroundings.

#14

Not quite a traditional graveyard shift, but I used to work in a functions center, so would usually finish at around 3 or 4 in the morning (the function would finish at 12, and we'd reset for the next one).

I was in the smallest hall at the time, so there were just two of us resetting. And to explain the hall, there's one door that leads outside (where the guests enter from), which is a big elegant glass thing, with full-length windows on either side so you've got a good view outside (nice for the guests, but more about security for the staff). The other entrance is through the adjacent ballroom, which was empty and locked up.

We're both girls and there's no security past midnight (....yeah), so we just locked up the glass door and went about our work. Anyway it gets to about 2AM and suddenly there's this HUGE banging on the glass. We turn around and there's four guests from that night, drunk off their nuts, rattling the door handle trying to get back in, and like screaming threats through the glass.

My supervisor had gone to get the kitchen phone and call the police, but I had to keep an eye on them whilst she was doing that. And like I've dealt with hundreds of drunk guests before but these guys were *furious*. Like the worst mean drunks I've ever seen. Watching four huge drunk guys trying to wrestle open the door to get to us, was the scariest minute of my life.

Anyway the police were called and we decided to move into the neighboring ballroom to be safe (we could lock the joining door). The rattling stopped soon after that, cops got the guys, but I've never been so terrified of humans in my life.

#15

Around 12 years ago I was working security at a small company's headquarters in New York City. My partner for the night had called in sick, so I had to work from 12 to 6 all by my lonesome. Now normally, this wouldn't be a problem, I just had to sit in the back room, watch some cameras and occasionally head out for a sweep, nothing to it right? Well as it turns out, one of the employees had stayed in the building after hours, and had managed to avoid my co-worker's sweep from the previous shift. I first noticed a movement in my peripheral vision on one of the screens, and then again a few minutes later. This was odd, because I was used to quiet nights in this particular building.

I was a little scared when I headed out for my sweep, but it was my job, so I grabbed my flashlight and headed out to begin. I had to start the sweep in one big hallway, and right as I entered, I saw a flash of movement at the end of it. At this point, I was sufficiently freaked out. I stood frozen for a minute or so, looking into the semi-darkness, unsure of what to do. The decision was taken out of my hands, however, as I heard a gunshot resound down the hallway. In what was the scariest moment of my life, I slowly walked down that hallway to investigate. I reached the end, and saw to my left that the President's office light was on. Slowly, I approached the door and creaked it open, scared shitless. What I saw will forever haunt me. The man had taken a seat in the president's chair, and shot himself in the head with a pistol, splattering blood and brains all over the floor and the wall. Apparently this guy was having problems at home, and because the president was supposedly a total jerk to him, he decided to off himself and scare the hell out of the president at the same time. In any case, I threw up a few times and called the police. I got the next two weeks off. I still have nightmares about it sometimes.

#16

I'm an astronomer and I get calls late at night asking about UFOs. One guy called claiming to see a "second sun" on our all-night high-sensitivity cameras. He didn't believe us when we told him it was **the moon**.

A faint smell of dampness or dust — like in old hotels, castles or even hospitals — tells the brain this isn’t a place meant for comfort.

Buildings that once stood tall but are now falling apart can also make people think about the stories behind them. Like who once lived there, or what might have happened before everything was left to decay.

“This narrative vacuum, coupled with visual uncertainty, stimulates the brain’s default mode network, the same system used for imagination and memory, giving the space an almost haunted quality. Your brain tells itself stories to make sense of the ruin, and those stories tend to skew toward danger or loss,” says Beth Tauke, associate professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo.

#17

I was training a new worker, and we got to joking about how you could make a decent horror movie set in our store during the overnight shift. We were getting really into it, coming up with all of these different concepts

And then the power went out.

#18

I work prisoner watch shifts, where basically you make sure the drunks don't throw up on themselves.
Anyways, this one girl came in at about 2:30am and blew a .21 BAC so she was out of it for most of the booking. When she was put in the cell she passed out. A couple hours later I look up from my laptop and see her just standing at the door just staring at me and softly tapping the glass. She then went into this cycle of staring at me, then crying, then laughing. I can't say I've ever been more creeped out than that night.

#19

One time I was driving home from my ex's house at about 2 or 3 AM which I did pretty often, and for which I took one of three paths back. This was in rural/suburban Illinois on a really misty night, I was the only one on the rode for the entire drive, and I was taking the path that I rarely took. When I rounded a corner of trees, I almost hit this unmarked semi truck which was just idling in the middle of the intersection, blocking any way to cross the intersection. No one was in the drivers seat.

I start slowly trying to go around it and saw a straight line of at least 30 completely identical and unmarked semi trucks, all on them with the engine running, and as I saw while driving past, all without a driver in them. Keeping in mind that this was just a normal, 3 lane road that led to like the library, a few food places, and some houses, it was really eerie.

Another major reason people feel more uneasy at night comes down to safety.

Fewer people on the streets and in workplaces, less light, and quiet surroundings can create more opportunity for crime or harassment.

A recent report from the UK said night workers may be more exposed to violence or harassment than day workers, partly due to less staff members and less supervisory support overnight.

#20

Pigeon loose in a library crushed by a dictionary it dislodged. Had to throw the book away.

#21

I worked nights in a care home for the elderly patients with dementia etc.. Found quite a few dead bodies. First one was on my 4th ever shift working there, second ever shift actually working the floor after training. And i had to help wash and dress the body. I was 18.

There were many more people who died whilst i worked as a carer. There is really no preparing you for that.

#22

Midnight in the inner city near a shantytown....

One crazed homeless woman attacked me and another woman came up and beat the hell out of woman A. Woman B tells Woman A that I am her biological brother and to never touch me. Woman B also says to Woman A that eleven years ago God came to her and made her an angel, and she should repent or face ruthless judgement as she cast the second rock.

I get paid a lot to do a job that has no work to do. I pretty much get paid to survive the night.

All this research shows that night shift workers aren’t just battling spooky vibes, their bodies are literally working against their own biology.

And maybe the real “ghost” of your graveyard shift isn’t something lurking in the hallways. Maybe it’s the fatigue, stress, and unsafe environments that are quietly haunting you.

#23

Guy came into store drunk as a skunk at 3am pukes all over the aisle he was in and night manager walks up and yells at him, drunk guy apologises says he will mop it up and goes back and eats his own vomit to clear it up.

#24

One of my duties at the mortuary I worked for was nighttime body removals. One night, my partner and I showed up around 2am to grab the paperwork for our removal. When we got inside, we both got the feeling like there was someone there, so we walked through the building, checking to make sure everything was secure, and closing all of the doors. This included the casket room. Everyone hated the casket room. It was freezing cold year round, the lights were always uncomfortably dim no matter what maintenance did to try to fix them, and there was this manniquin in the corner in full military dress that just felt wrong. The only people who weren't bothered by the room was the cemetery sales staff, and that's only because they had no souls.

So my partner and I don't find anyone, so we lock everything up and head out. We get back an hour later, get our new guest logged in, and decide to get a cup of coffee before leaving. He and I walk toward the kitchen, only to find the casket room door open about three feet. It's almost pitch black in there, and I can barely make out the red in the manniquin's uniform. It shouldn't be that close to the door. My partner and I froze for a second, then I grabbed his wrist and we backed up into the kitchen and straight out the back door. It honestly felt like if we had gotten too close to the casket room door something bad would have happened.

Neither of us would ever go near that room again, even during the day. I could spend time alone in the prep room or crematory no problem, so I'm not easily spooked, but there was something wrong with that room.

#25

Working in a hospital, quite a few weird things happen. Just two examples:

1) We had a patient on the ward which was in the passing process. She used the emergency bell (not sure what the correct english term is, but that thing patients use when they need something). So I go to her room and the patient asks me "Why is that dark guy standing over there?" - but there was no one to be seen. So I tried to tell her and she was ok with it.

An hour later she rang again, I'm going to her room and she again asks "why is that guy standing over there", pointing into the nothingness. That happened a few times but there never was anyone and noone could have entered the ward without me knowing (nor any other patient going to the room without noticing). At the end of the night I found her passed away. She was allowed to pass and everyone knew it was going to happen.

2) Had a patient in a room with 4 guys, he was pretty normal, nothing out of the ordinary. One night one of the other patients of that room walked up to me and told me that one of the guys in the room has been in the bathroom for about 15 minutes, locked himself in there and there weren't any noises coming out anymore. So I get up and was about to check on him (we can unlock all doors from the outside). But as soon as I enter the room, the guy comes out of the bathroom, walks to his bed across the window and sits down. I walk up to him and ask him if everything is ok but he just replies with "they're taking lives of all the people". So I ask him who's doing that to someone and he replies with "those guys out there" and points outside the window. Then I ask him if he can tell me what year it is and he replies with "1438" and keeps saying "they're ending them out there".

Suddenly he's all normal again and says "why are you asking me these questions, I'm not crazy" and he really was back to normal again when I kept talking to him. He was then laying down to sleep and nothing ever happened after that. Kinda creepy when dealing with that at 1 am but I'm used to it. Lots of weird stuff happening in hospitals.

#26

My production lead was Catholic and gave some rosaries away to anyone that wanted them one day. We actually worked swing shift and got off work midnight to 4am depending on overtime availability. The plant was in a pretty rough part of Fresno, California. One of the guys who took a rosary was young and had just started working so hadn't saved up money for a car. He walked home every night a couple miles through that area. After swing shift most people have gone to bed and the streets are pretty empty. It was fall, a little chilly and no moon. He was walking down a run down block with a field along one side of the street and a couple run down buildings on the other. A woman walked out from behind one of the buildings and straight up to him. She said, "I'll trade you my ring for your rosary." He was wearing a sweatshirt with a jacket. The rosary was around his neck under the sweatshirt and not at all visible so he asked, "How do you know I have a rosary?" She didn't answer the question but said again, "I'll trade you my ring for your rosary." At that point he brushed past her and walked away fast. When he stopped to look back and see where she was, she had disappeared.

#27

I work third shift in the maternity of a local dairy farm. I basically get to make sure that the cows and heifers have their calves without a problem and then feed the calves for the first time to make sure that they stay healthy.

When I started my job, just a few days in, I had to clean out the water troughs in the pens where the cows were. Its pretty simple, just some scrubbing, but there are quite a few so it takes the better part of two hours to get it done. Usually this isnt a problem to be doing something for that long without checking on the cows that are close to their due date, but today wasn't a normal day. Normally, there are only 2 or 3 calves born in a shift. This shift, after getting the waters cleaned, there were 4 calves that were calved out in the pens which isn't good. we are supposed to get the cows back to clean maternity pens so that the calves stay relatively clean.

This still wasn't a huge deal so I got all of the calves and their mothers brought in, wrote them all down on the sheet to keep track of who had whom. I get milk ready to feed the 4 calves, give the cows their calcium pills, and go back to check the cows again because it had taken about an hour to get everyone to where they needed to be. There were two more calves in the big pens.

So kinda mad at this point. usually it takes more than an hour for a cow to have a calf, but because I was rushing to get the other calves and cows in and because I was new to the job, I didnt see the cows that were about to freshen. So I brought them back, checked really really well, and fed the now 6 calves. I needed to push feed in the big barn where the milking cows were so that they could still reach it at this point so I dropped everything else that I was doing to go do that.

I get back from pushing feed, check the cows once again to make sure there aren't any more calves, and start setting up the cows that I brought in to milk them so that I have milk for calves born later. as Im moving the cows from the holding pen back into the maternity pens to be milked, I notice that one cow looks like she is pushing. I check her and wallah, she was going to have twins. After helping her have her 2nd calf, I milked the fresh cows and fed the new calf. Up to 7 calves. It is now near the end of my shift and Im exhausted.

It seemed like things had quieted down and I finally get some time to sit and eat. I have about an hour and a half left of my shift and only need to check the cows one last time before going home and sleeping. But things just got better.

Half an hour before I get to leave, I check one last time to make sure that there is none right away for the next shift. Surprise surprise, there was another 2 calfs. That is 9 calves for the night. I get one of them back along with the mother and go back for the other one. I notice that there is only one cow by the calf (usually there is a group of cows checking out what is going on) and the mother is pretty far away from where the calf is. This confused me. I got the mother back and went back for the calf.

I quickly found out why there was only one cow by the calf and the mother wasn't even by it. The one cow was viciously hellbent on letting nothing and no one get close to her or the calf. as soon as I got anywhere near, she would make sure I knew not to get any closer by getting really loud and lowering her head. Still being new to the job, I thought I could maybe just get in there and drag the calf out really quickly. bad idea. I got close enough to reach down and grab the calf, but upon lowering my head, the cow thought I was getting aggressive and charged. she had me pinned up against where they lay down. she thrashed me around a bit but I was able to get away to the other side of the lane. after that, I couldn't even look at the calf without the cow getting mad. I tried a few times to lasso the calf to the other side of the lane where I was, but it was too far away. it was now half an hour after I should have left and next shift still hasn't showed up.

I called my manager to ask what to do and he told me try moving all of the cows to one side and they might end up pushing the cow with them, otherwise I should just wait for morning shift to show up and help. I tried that and she didn't budge an inch. I tried to lasso again but that still didn't work. So now the only thing to do is wait for morning shift. Its getting close to an hour after I was supposed to leave and morning shift still hasn't showed up.

Not wanting to get yelled at by the bosses for not doing morning shift work, I started packing up because my shift was way over. The calf and cow were no longer my problem and I needed to sleep badly.

Just while I was washing off my boots, and angry short woman that I have never met came angrily stomping in. "You know there is a calf out there right??"

I told her that my shift was over and I was going home and she looked like she was about to have an aneurysm. She shouted at me some more but I had already clocked out and I knew she wasn't my boss so I just started to leave. She stomped away, grabbing the cart to get the calf in and I chuckled to myself "good luck"

Morning shift never showed up that day and she wasn't able to get the calf back without a group of 6 other people.

#28

Not really that entertaining but I'll share.

There is a skunk that comes out sometimes when I go outside on breaks and hangs out with me.

One of these days he'll probably betray me and spray me, but that's OK I'll just use that as an excuse to go home early.

#29

I went to the washroom, and upon leaving my part of the lab, saw that all our computers had been stolen. Which had been there at the start of my shift. They had come in while I was working just feet away. Was so glad I didn't go to the washroom sooner.

#30

I work for a hotel. I'm actually here right now.

So the creepiest thing that has happened to me was only a few weeks ago.

I'm sitting at the front desk, I'm all alone here. No other employees, it's very late and no guests are up and about.

I kept hearing childrens voices. I couldn't make out what they were saying or anything, but it sounded like they were coming from down the hall. Every time I would go down there to check it out, they would stop. I checked *everywhere* from the pool to the gym, to putting my ear on doors. Nothing. But as soon as I'd walk away, they'd start again. Eventually I got freaked out enough to just say darn it and I went back to my desk.

After that, the voices stopped, but the shadows began.

Out of the corner of my eye I'd see figures of people peaking behind the corner at me, or running through the lobby. I carry a gun with me to work, and I had my hand on it most of the night.

It finally stopped around 5AM, but every once in a while, I'll see a shadow without an owner peaking at me.

#31

Late to the party so this probably won't be seen but I was working at a hotel doing my 2 a.m. rounds and went to the back stairwell which is indoors and started going up it. Part way up was a huge chunk of long blonde hair but not messy at all like it had been ripped out, more like it was neatly cut and gently placed, got to the top of the stairs and next to the door was a bloody handprint. Just past the door in the hallway was a bloody smear down the wall. Got the hell out of there and called my manager who lived on site and we went to check it out and the hair was gone and so was most of the blood. Talked to a couple of our guests who had stayed their for months for work and they hadn't heard anything. We never did find out what happened.

#32

Oh, I've got one!

When I was 18, I briefly worked nights as a care assistant in a nursing home. The building was a very old ex-convent and was pretty spooky at the best of times. There were three floors but I was only ever working on the ground and first floors. One day about two weeks in I was sent up to the top floor to get something. It was my first time up there and, for the first time, it occurred to me how odd it was that I'd never worked up there before, or seen any patients who lived up there.

So I'm walking along the main corridor, which is pretty narrow and twisty. Being a night shift, we keep the lights on emergency settings (very dim and on motion sensors) so that the residents can sleep. Suddenly, at the other end of the corridor I see this dark shape. It looked like the grim reaper, with the dark cowl and long robes, and was even holding what appeared to be some kind of scythe. And it was moving slowly toward me. I knew it wasn't a resident as most of our residents were not ambulatory, and I was pretty sure none of them dressed in dark robes!
So I did the logical thing; I turned without even thinking about it and sprinted back down to the first floor where I managed to convey through panicky gestures that there was some kind of terrifying monster on the top floor. After about five minutes my co-workers stopped cracking up and explained my mistake to me.

You know how I mentioned that the home used to be a convent? Well apparently part of the deal was that the remaining nuns, who were all pretty old by now, got to continue living on the top floor (without nursing care) and use the facilities of the home, like cooked meals. And not a single person had thought to mention this to me. If I'd worked days, I would have seen them up and about but the 8pm - 6am night shift at a nursing home is pretty quiet

The shape I had seen was actually an elderly nun, in robes and a headcovering (wimple?), with a crutch (NOT a scythe), heading down the corridor to their little chapel as she couldn't sleep. And not, as I had for some reason assumed, the grim reaper here to collect one of our residents. I switched off night shifts soon after that.

EDIT: We did also have residents die fairly regularly and being the one to discover them was never nice. We'd have to do regular listening checks in each room for breathing to check no one had passed away in their sleep. When we did lose someone, it was just plain sad, not weird or creepy.

Though the time the undertaker's gurney got wedged in the tiny lift with a dead body on it is probably a contender for the second creepiest shift I worked.

#33

I'm from Singapore and didn't work the night shift but the morning or afternoon shift. A typical afternoom shuft would end around 10pm-11pm. I'm a medical technologist and my lab was the main centre for all tests so it needs a huge space. As such, it was in an industrial estate located at a pretty deserted location.

I was doing the Biochemistry section and we're usually the last to leave as there is just a lot of samples to get through. We're scheduled in pairs so that night it was just two of us left. I was taking stock in the back room and I felt a really hard pull at my ponytail, my head actually jerked back. I thought it was my co worker (A) so I just laughed and told her to stop playing. I turned around and realised that there was no one there and that my co worker was actually at the other end of the lab where our machines were. When I went home that night, my crucifix I wear as a necklace was missing but the chain was still intact around my neck.

Couple of weeks pass and again I'm one of the last with my scheduled partner (B), and one last person who happened to be A. A and I were sitting at our respective computers and just chatting when I hear B call my name. I called back "YES?" with no reply. Repeated my answer and finally asked "hey B did you call me??" She said no with a bewildered look on her face. A and I look at each other and A said "l swear I heard her call you."

Sometime later, I was once again doing some work. I hear someone whisper in my ear "heyy earthwormjane". I turn and there's no one. That same night, the new crucifix I bought to replace the other one was also missing. With the chain still around my neck.

#34

I work in a specific field of work, monitoring all types of radio channels, computer systems, imaging softwares. Creepiest, is the voice and crying of a little kid coming over the radio saying "Help! Is anyone out there? *sobbing*" Then absolutely nothing after that.

#35

I used to work overnight as a Security Guard for an energy company. My site was near a beach, so I would have to patrol the outer perimeters of the site as well as some of the beach. This was when it was in the middle of Sept, so it was still pretty warm at night time in Massachusetts.

One night, I looked at my cameras around 2 am and I noticed that one of the cameras had kinda like a floating blob showing near a fence. It looks strange, kinda like a spirit of some sort, but I blew it off as I'm not the type to really believe in that type of stuff, plus, I thought it was just something in the camera lens. An hour goes by, and its still there. I do my routine check around the perimeter and the closer I got to the area where the blob was on the camera, the colder it got. Also, I couldn't see the spirit blob thing with my eyes. (Reminder, this is in Sept, its still warm out)

I kinda got freaked out and power walked through the rest of the tour. I got back, looked at the camera, and it was still there. I...didn't know why it got all of a sudden cold when I got closer to where that spirit looking thing was. Another hour goes by and it's still there. I do my routine security check again...and still was freezing where the blob was, and I couldn't see it again. I was getting goosebumps from being chilly on a warm night.

When I got back inside, I looked back at the cameras and it was just...gone. I can't explain it. I took a picture of it with my old phone at the time but that got destroyed. I wish it didn't though...this thing was creepy and I wanted to know why it got cold whenever I would approach that area. Who knows. I didn't do another routine check that night. I was too freaked to go back out there.

#36

I was graveyard security at an office building. I had just finished patrolling the upper levels of the parking garage and made it to the ground level when I suddenly felt very cold. It was a relatively warm night and there was no breeze, but I didn't think much of it until I saw what appeared to be a shadowy figure across the way near the bike cage.

I immediately ended my patrol and went inside the building called up my co-worker who provided security at the sister building across the street and we both reviewed the tape on CCTV. For the next five hours, we watched as a clear-as-day shadowy figure walked about fifteen feet away from me, paused briefly as I came into frame and noticed it, and then it simply walked away.

No more patrols were conducted that night.

#37

I work in a motel during the graveyard and someone was complaining that there was someone passed out on the elevator, so I go to see and it's a middle aged man lying half in and half out facedown and the elevator doors kept closing on his body. I shake him and no answer, he feels cold so I call 911. Turns out he had a heart attack hours before and no one noticed, he was already gone before the paramedics got to him.

#38

Coffee shop, 4 am, some guy comes in and my coworker is just staring at him weirdly as he walks up to me. He just comes to the counter and says "someone lit the garbage can on fire out there" and just leaves. Sure enough a few seconds later I see flames reaching out of the garbage can on the street outside our shop so I go fill a bucket and put it out. After I put it out my coworker said before the guy came in she watched him throwing lit matches into the garbage can but he walked inside before she could tell me and didn't say anything because she was weirded out.

#39

I work at this horrible local fast food joint, which I won't name. Anyways, one night me and ONE other guy have to run the whole place because the manager can't be bothered to do his job.

I don't get scared easily, but it gets spooky when it gets late. Like, I'm running to the dumpster and back. Then this jerk that I work with starts making up this fake story about some psycho, which ordinarily wouldn't bother me, but it's late. Then it goes from bad to worse. The lights on the inside reflecting off the glass doesn't let us see out very far, but we can hear a guy kinda scraping (if that word makes sense) at the door. I turn and make eye contact and his eyes are dinner plates. He kinda squeaks out a sentence. All I made out sounded something like "The Hash Slinging Slasher".

#40

I used to work nights for our state road authority, working on traffic signals. I only heard this story: apparently a truck was carrying a drum of human body parts for disposal and the drum fell off the truck on one of our freeways. Road patrol guy called in and said *there's arms and legs all over the place out here*.

#41

Working in a liquor store at 2 am some guys walks into the store. Heads to the back to grab a 12 case of beer from the cooler. Ten seconds later his car comes barreling through the front door still on and everything.

The idiot left his car in drive and the sloped parking lot let it pick up speed and barrel through the front door.

Best part when he walked out of the cooler.

"Ahh darn, that's my car."

Well no way sherlock you're the only person in the parking lot.

#42

I used to work in a hospital (in the IT department) and we did a number of overnight rollouts, as well as on call work / response when issues occured overnight. Many weird things happened, or appeared to happen.

The thing that struck me as oddest, was when I saw the coroner running at full speed down the corridor, in the opposite direction, towards the morgue. This guy, an older guy in his 50s or so, was going at full speed! I had never seen him above an amble before, but this time he was really going for it. As he got close to me he yelled "Out of the way - I got another live one!".

I am not sure what was more disturbing, the fact that he was dealing with what I could only assume was a dead body that now appeared to be alive, or the fact he said "another".

#43

I'll give you two for the price of one. As a pretext I answer phones for an answering service.

One night I took a call from some account we barely take calls for. It was dead air for a moment and suddenly this guy starts singing *Hey there little Red Riding Hood, you sure are looking good. You're everything a big bad wolf could want.* and then went quiet. Despite me trying to get a response, he just kept breathing. Eventually I hung up on him.

This one is disturbing in a different way.
Another night a year or so ago I took a call for a vets office from a woman that was in a panic because her cat was sick. She wasn't sure what was wrong, but I could hear the poor thing gargling as it meowed like it had blood in it's lungs. The woman said the cat was all she had left, so I tried my best to get all her info down so I could get the vet asap. But the cat died before I could. The only reason I even knew that was because I heard it stop making noise.

The poor woman lost it. She began bawling hysterically and screaming/begging the cat to get up, and then begged God not to take the cat because she'd have nobody left.

After I realized there was nothing I could do or say because she walked away from the phone, I quietly hung up and just kinda sat there for a minute. That call has stuck with me for a while.

#44

I collect Organs and tissues for transplant from decedents which usually entails going into morgues in the dead of night. Once a donor was tubed and "burped" at me from the release of gasses from their stomach. Nearly. Pooped. Myself.
EDIT: Please don't confuse us with live organ transplant, I should have been more specific. Mainly we do musculoskeletal tissues such as tendons, bones, corneas and skin. Organ transplantation should be performed by highly trained surgeons only on live donors.

#45

I've got a few.

I work as a transporter in a hospital. About two years ago we moved from the old city hospital into a new state of the art facility. The old hospital was built in the 1930s and was showing its age and at night was just plain creepy. Each floor had an east and west wing. The East wing of the fourth floor was the first wing to be shut down about two weeks before the move. One night at around 9:30 Im up on the floor to get a patient from the west wing. I see a small group of nurses and aids who all used to work on the, now closed, east wing. They looked visibly shaken. I walked over to see if everything was ok. They told me that they had decided to walk through their old wing for nostalgia's sake. When they were over there, the phone at the nurses station started ringing. The computers and phones had not yet been moved. Not sure what to do, one of the nurses reached over the counter and answered the phone. The nurse told me there was a woman's voice on the other end and that she sounded confused. This is the conversation as best I can remember it.
"This is ____. how can I help you?" Asked the Nurse.
"Hello? Who is this"
"This is ____. I'm a nurse. Is there anything I can help you with?"
"Where I am I?"
"This is (hospital name). Are you patient here?"
"Oh. Ok."
Then the line went dead. Thats when the nurse finally looked at the screen on the phone to see where the call was coming from. The phone gave the room number directly next to the nurses station. The rooms by this point had all been cleared out and the phones removed. They could see directly into the room and see that there was nobody in there. Thats when they bolted towards the west wing where I was getting off the elevator. I avoided that wing for the rest of my time there.

My mother started working at the hospital right out of college. It was the only job she had ever known. On moving day, she was determined to walk through every hallway before leaving for the last time. She had her camera and was taking pictures as she went. On one of the empty patient wings, she stopped and was getting ready to take a picture when the door to the room right next to her slammed shut as though someone on the other side had thrown the door as hard as they could. My mom decided she was done taking pictures.

This happened to me just last Friday. It was going on ten and I was taking my last patient back to her room. She was a little old lady who was stable enough to ride in a wheel chair but definitely needed assistance on her feet. I got her back to her room and helped her into bed. I made sure she was comfortable and set the bed alarm before turning out the lights and leaving her room. I pulled the curtain behind me so as to not let too much light in but not all the way so that I could still see her in bed from the hallway. Her nurse was in the room next door and I needed to speak with her. While I was standing there, waiting for the nurse to come out of the other room, I distinctly saw a person walk past the curtain inside the old woman's room. The person was about the same hight as the woman and had the same grey hair. At first I thought, "She shouldn't be up walking around!". Then I remembered the bed alarm was set. The room was totally silent and when I looked in, I could see her still lying there exactly where I had left her. She had not moved an inch and the bed alarm was still armed. Thats when I got the most intense full body chills of my life. The nurse came out of the other room, I gave her my message and then booked it out of there.

#46

I worked at a campground on night shift. 12a - 8a, every night. It wasn't bad. I would bring in my PS2 and game a good portion of the night, only having to deal with 1 or 2 people on busy nights. It was just me in this little 8' x 8' shack, with nothing around but dark, all night. My first week there, the other third shift guy who was quitting told me about this payphone a few feet from the shack where I worked. He said it rang every night at 4:17a, just once. It was probably just an automated test call, he guessed. He's never answered it himself. I go for a few months with the job. It was the middle of summer so most nights I had the windows closed so I couldn't hear the payphone go off.

Mid-August I started leaving the windows open during the night. Sure enough, at 4:17a every morning the phone would ring once. The ring even sounded creepy, like the payphone was submerged in water then put where it sat.

One night I got up the nerve to answer it. I set an alarm at 4:15 and would go wait at the phone until it rang. When it did, I answered it. But there was no sound. Just dead air like the someone was on the other line but wasn't answering. I said hello a few times, and hung up. I did this every night for a week with the same results. I didn't think anything of it and left it alone after that for about a month. The first week of October, I decided to answer the phone once again. I set my alarm and when the time came, I answered the phone.

"Hello? Hello?"

Then I heard what sounded like someone inhaling through clenched teeth. The voice that sounded was rough and sounded like he had gargled gravel. The best comparison I can give is Horace P. Gauge from The Suffering.

He said my name. My complete name. First, middle, and last. It was a voice I'd never heard. My voice caught in my throat and I hung up. I rattled some change into the payphone and hit *69.

The number had come from California. I live in Indiana.

#47

I have an interesting job where I ride around Chicago all night in a tanker with a pump on it. Basically a mobile gas station. One night I was fueling some school buses in the ghetto when I heard some loud pops. Immediately afterwards I was hit by bits of masonry from the wall I was standing next to. We wear bright headlights on our heads and my guess is someone was taking pot shots at me from a tenement across the street. Called the police and they didn't even show up. I did finish fueling the buses though... without my headlight while crawling around on the gravel doing some tactical rolls... For the children.

#48

Working as a pastry chef for a resort in the mountains, pulling a graveyard shift. Because we were in a kinda remote location it was very dark outdoors. I was taking the trash out to the dumpster which was a short walk away. As I got near the dumpster I heard rustling and scraping, shined my flashlight at the noise and saw two glowing white eyes. At this point I nearly lost it it then as the creature turned its head I saw that it was a black bear, raiding our trash. Following the only advice I knew, I threw my arms up and made myself look as big as possible. The bear ran off, and afterwards we got better locks for our dumpster.

#49

I work overnights at a gym (I'm here right now) and I always hear weird stuff in the middle of the night. Last month at 3:25 in the morning, the cash register opened on its own and two receipts printed out with staff members names on them. My boss got in at 7am and I told her about it and she said she woke up from a scary dream at 3:25. Messed.

#50

Train Conductor here, I work all sorts of hours.

My first interesting graveyard experience was working in the rail yards of Los Angeles. For those of you who are familiar with the area I was working on the tracks that run parallel to the LA river, just east of downtown. The tracks have a road passing over them every quarter to a half mile and under every road is a junky or ten and they all come and ask for money or food or something when you walk by. Now mind you, I had a job to do so I wasn't thinking about people being around the area and so when the first junky walks up to me I nearly poo my pants and most likely let out a girlish scream. After this first encounter it dons on me where I am and the rest of the night goes on without much incident. Well, there was a party going on in an adjacent abandoned warehouse and for most of the night I would hear noises from the party and couldn't quite figure out what they were until I finally got close to the warehouse and could see the origin of these noises.

My other notable experience occurred in the middle of winter in southern Wyoming. It was a cold clear night with a nearly full moon and I had spent most of the trip reading some Lovecraft. About halfway to our destination we had a mechanical failure somewhere in our train which requires me to walk the length of the train to identify and possibly fix the problem. I believe I was reading "The music of Erich Zann" before I left and this had a strong influence upon my psyche. The moon cast a hideous blue light upon the snow and I feared that around every curve I may encounter an unknown line between worlds and stumble upon some cyclopean horror. Needless to say I hurried back to the locomotive as soon as I was able.

tl;dr I'm not a brave man.

#51

I work in a sleep lab. Just a regular night until my first patient arrived. He was a young, black male approx. 18y/o. The first words out of his mouth were,
"Do you have any lotion?"
"Uh, maybe. I'll check for you."

I took him to his room and did a quick search for lotion. "He must be a bit ashy," I thought.
(Quick background info: most sleep lab rooms have microphones and cameras to confirm rare sleep disorders.)

No lotion except for a coworker's really feminine variety. So, I flick the mic on and tell him that we're all out.
"Is there a camera in here?"
"Yes sir," I said.

Before I go further, there is time allocated before sleep studies for patients to get settled, do paperwork, eat, etc. Right before I go in to begin the test, I turn the cameras on...
And there he was, on his back in the center of the bed, completely naked. He had commandeered our liquid hand soap and was lubing and stroking with the efficiency and coordination of an Olympic athlete.

That jerk KNEW we had cameras. To top it off, he didn't clean up. He left the liquid soap covered in its own, and his own, ejaculate on the night stand right next to the bed.

Where ever you are, you jerk, I know what you did and now, so does Reddit.

#52

I work in a shipping and receivings facility that was originally built as a military base and munitions factory and storage during World War II. One night my partner and I were alone in the facility, just the two of us. He had a habit of sneaking off to sleep, I didn't care, there was only two of us and if I really needed him I could radio him and he'd come back. So one night he goes off to 'do rounds'(nap).

Here's where I should describe our office a little bit, the main doors and entryway connect to the electro-magnet secured inner doors, and in between the two sits our office. There are windows on all four sides so we can see the employee parking lot, and then into the main corridor of the facility. Now, on these shifts we would sometimes watch tv on the computers, so that's what I did while my partner was out. Sitting there, minding my own business, I turned around to watch the show on the computer behind me, and then turned around and looked out to the main corridor and saw what looked like a person standing in front of the window, but all I could see was the shoulder seam of a jacket and some kind of patch. I jumped, but thought it was my partner, except he never came through the doors. So after a minute I convinced myself that I was just tired and went back to watching tv. after a few more minutes I turned back around and there was the jacket in front of the window again. The patch faded away as I sat staring, and my partner didn't come back for another 30 minutes.

There's also what we refer to as 'ghost traffic,'. There are cameras all over the inner and outer perimeters of the facility, so we can always see-and usually hear-if there are semi trucks entering or leaving the facility. Sometimes we can hear a truck drive by our office, but we never see one, they never pull up to the guard shack outside by the gate, and nothing is ever seen on camera.

#53

1.Christmas night last year or the year before. I'm sitting at my desk and see smoke outside the window. (2nd floor office building) I stand up and there is a car engulfed in flames. Coworker dials 911, I head down to make sure there isn't some one sitting in the car or anything. Couldn't find anyone which I thought was odd and headed back in. Turns out the car was stolen, used in a robbery and torched in our parking lot.

2.Security does nightly rounds. 1:30 am and 5:15 am. 2:15 am, no one has come by... Call down to make sure everything is ok. No answer. Walk down. Guard is on the floor, Had a stroke. Ended up living but has serious mental problems and was never able to come back to work.

I'm sure there is more I'll think of. Night shift is great.

#54

I am currently working as a 3rd shift dispatcher at a trucking company. Got a call from a newly hired driver coming down the grapevine in California ( very steep hill that's dangerous for trucks) with his jake brake on and smoked his brakes, setting fire to his trailer. He called asking me, " what do? My trailer is on fire!"... he was still driving a flaming truck down the hill while he called me *facepalm*

About 4 years ago i was closing a grocery store and my coworker forgot to lock the front door. As i was doing a final walk of the aisles a homeless man wearing a halloween NASA helmet and his pants tucked into his socks jumped out of nowhere and handed me a menu from a fuddruckers. It had numbers and letters circled and weird notes written on it, like some thing from the movie A Beautiful Mind. He then flipped me off and sprinted out the door.

#55

I used to work at a living center for mentally handicapped/physically disabled. worked the night shift for a while, and we would do bed checks hourly. the patients had dorm style rooms, 2 to a room and one shared bathroom for 2 rooms.

occasionaly youd find a male patient awake standing over another male patients bed spanking their monkey, im sure worse has happened as well, but thats the worst i ever saw.

#56

Not my story, but my dad's. He's been a nurse for 20+ years now, most of which was spent in the ER. For a while, he was working 3rd shift at this old hospital in Chicago. One night, a man died and my dad was left with the lovely task of pushing the guy on the gurney to the hospital's morgue.

This next part sounds so cliche because it's something straight out of a B horror film. Poorly lit hall, tile walls and floors, complete silence except for a squeaky wheel on the gurney. To top off a creepy old hospital at night, the body had gone stiff at this point, and the man's arm kept sliding out from under the sheet and hanging down. Put the arm back up, falls back down. Nothing supernatural, but my dad still has nightmares about it where the body will pull the sheet down and smile up at my dad.

He has so many awful stories of things he's seen. Poor guy has PTSD.

#57

I saw a live guy's brain.

So, working the night shift at a hotel front desk is an interesting job. You get your drunks, your methheads, and your all around nutbags. One night, our hotel was hosting a college baseball team. The team came back around 11pm and went up to their rooms and to bed. No big deal. Then, around 1am, the coaches came back absolutely HAMMERED. They went up to their rooms, and that was the last I heard from them for about an hour.

While I was setting up for breakfast, I heard the elevator ding around 2/3am (daylight savings night in the spring). Out of the elevator bursts one of the coaches, and he runs straight out the front door. Odd, but okay, whatever. He comes running back inside shouting, "He fell! He fell!" I run outside while pulling out my phone and dialing 911 to see one of the coaches who had come back, face down on the ground in a HUGE puddle of blood. I have had a bit of rescue training, so I knew to put him in the rescue position so he wouldn't choke on his own blood.

The paramedics got there and as they were loading him up, one of them wiped off his forehead, and there it was. The guy had fallen out of a 3rd story window straight on his forehead and split it open so wide and deep, you could see his brain. He was lifeflighted up to the bigger hospital up north. He lived. I got a raise the next day.

#58

Saw a guy with brain coming out of his ear and out of his eye socket at about 4am. It made a couple people in the room almost vomit.

#59

Long, long ago I worked grave at a gas station, we would use chopped paper and solvent to clean
Oil off the drive up bays. One night the wind was gusting from every direction at once. Tried to clean but the paper kept blowing in my eyes so I quit and went to sit in the office. About 3:00 A. M. I get the feeling of being watched, turn to look out the wall sized window in time to see the swirling paper forming a female-shaped whorl-wind centered between two hand prints on the window. It stood there for about twenty seconds or so then seemed to turn and run with the wind into the night. I went out to see if I could see any greasy hand prints outside on the glass that would explain why the paper would stick there but the glass was clean.

#60

Used to work night shifts at a remote gas station. Entire night shift I'd see maybe 15-30 people, on a busy night. Where I sat behind the counter, I could see the well-lit forecourt, but the darkness around it was impossible to see through. It was like being on an island in an ocean of black.

One night, about 2am, I'm reading and waiting for someone to show up, and suddenly I feel like I'm being watched. It was like someone flipped a switch -- boom, eyes on me. I look outside, but nothing. No cars, no movement. I wonder if someone might be lurking just outside the light, but no. It really does feel like the "presence" is very close to the large glass windows. I try and ignore it, but in my mind's eye I cannot shake the image of someone standing right against the door, staring in.

I try to be logical about it. Not only is the door locked (customers have to be served at the hatch at this time) but because some people are incapable of reading signs, the *incredibly* heavy metal newspaper stand is pushed right up against the door, brakes locked. There's barely a few inches of space between it and the door. Even if, theoretically, someone invented invisibility and is using it to spy on the world's most boring night shift, there would be no room for a person to stand there. *It's fine,* I think. *No need to worry. The door's locked anyway.*

But what if... it isn't? The feeling of being watched is still there, and despite myself I get up and go double-check the door is locked. Lo and behold, it is. I'm about to relax when I see the footprints. The big, wet footprints, just one single pair, angled with the toes pressing right against the door. Nobody crossed the well-lit forecourt; the newspaper stand had not moved. The night was completely dry.

#61

About 10 years ago, I worked the graveyard shift at a gas station in Phoenix, AZ. It was quiet, maybe around 2-3 am. It's just me, standing outside the entrance door smoking, when a small truck rips into the parking lot, on the other side of the pump island.

The truck comes to a screeching halt at the air machine, you know, the ones that take 75 cents to operate. Two guys jump out of the back of the truck, and loop a large chain around the entire machine. They hop back in the truck, and the driver floors it - ripping the entire machine out of the concrete. They drive off, dragging the machine, spewing sparks, about a quarter mile to the next traffic light before disappearing from view. It probably took 10-15 seconds, tops.

Presumably, this was to empty the machine of quarters.

Which is something I did every night at the beginning of my shift.

#62

I went to the second floor of the building to have a nap at like 3 AM. As I was closing my eyes I had this weird uneasy feeling like somebody else was in the room. But I closed my eyes tight and just ignored it. As I kept sleeping I felt something else moving in the room. But I refused to give in to it.

Finally I decided I'd take a quick glance to see what it was....when I opened my eyes, in the reflection of one of the glass walls I saw a bearded man smiling and it freaked me the hell out so I jolted up.

So it turns out, it was a electric waving Santa Claus display that somebody had plugged in and it was pretty realistic at 3 AM.

#63

While on my paper route I was in a not-so-great are and was delivering to a trailer park. I saw a man walking funny, he fell flat on his, face got back up without using his hands and kept walking like nothing even happened.

I think he was on crack.

#64

I used to work in a building with a woman I thought was a little weird if she ever had to go up or down stairs she would wait till someone could go with her, said the stairs gave her the creeps.

One night i had to work late on my own and as she left she said to me, you really don't want to be here late on your own. But i wasn't worried, the building was closed and nobody could get in.

Anyway I went upstairs to get something, having to go through electronic doors at various stages, whch all shut behind me as they should do, as I stepped onto the staircase to go down again, all the doors in the upstairs corridor spontaneously opened and shut again.

When I saw the woman again she asked me if I had any problems with the doors.

#65

One of the buildings I worked in had a metal sheet roof. Sometimes, when the wind blew just right, it sounded like a mob of people crying and screaming. Scared the living hell out of me one night when the wind picked up and suddenly I sounded like I was in hell. Because of the rust, if a storm was especially bad, it would look like there was blood running down the sides of the walls as well.

It was mildly horrific.

#66

I work nights in a bakery. there were rumors that the place was haunted by 2 ghosts: one little old lady who liked to play pranks around the place when she was alive and one who still thinks he has to work the next night.

on one of the nights, there were 4 of us working. one guy thought it’d be funny to “mess with the ghosts” or whatever and put a glove by the window that connects the diner part to the dishwashing area. we come back to it a couple hours later and the glove was repositioned so it was flipping us off. i thought it was funny that one of us snuck up to the window to prank us like that and i guess the guy who put the glove thought the same. he added another glove by the window and all 4 of us went into the break room.

me and the 3 dudes were having mini meeting about schedules and not even 5 minutes in, i realized i left my pen near the window and i went to go get it. when i got there, i found both gloves pointed at me, both of them flipping me off.

nowadays, it’s seeing shadows passing halls or rattling walls when someone’s arguing. i still work there.

#67

Oh I have one!

I work overnight in a hospital. A patient died, and they covered her body out of respect but had yet to do any ritual bathing of the body (she was jewish, so the typical hospital protocol of washing a dead body doesnt apply here.)

Anyway, we have to clean/sanitize some of the equipment in the room so the family doesnt come in and see a bunch of iv pumps and tube feeds and heart monitors and blood pressure cuff and etc etc hooked up to her. We do this with the body in the room obviously.

as me and a friend of mine are cleaning, I guess shes showing that shes trying to be edgy by just callously referring to the person that had just passed as a body and whatnot. It's actually starting to annoy me because

1) she just died. I felt like she should have shown some respect, I could still feel her in the room with us

2) youre not cool just because youre comfortable around a person that passed peacefully. youre not edgy. youre dumb as f**k right now

3) She has no clue about other cultures, which annoys me to no end after moving to the south, but considering the lady was supposed to be hearing the torah and not some doofus's ill mannered, ill timed jokes, the situation was liek her mornoic ignorance was a huge taboo to everyone in the room except her, and she was completely, utterly oblivious to it

4) the jokes werent even good

Anyway, we are on one side of the room cleaning, and the body is on the other.

Right when I'm about to say something out of anger, stuff starts moving.

IV poles on wheels start rolling around. Wires start swaying really fast like someone is knocking them forward with each swing. Again, no one is NEAR this stuff, theres only 2 people in the room- me and her- and the force with which is was moving was wayyy too much to be like swaying from a/c kicking on

apparently to her, the energy in the room got very ominous and she left. But I never felt anything at all.

In fact, I kind of felt a warmness coming from the room that sort of reminded me of my cousins house or something.

She never brought that up. But good though cuz I'm clearly still upset about her giant, out of no where faux pas. Like, jesus christ, use your f****n head.

#68

I'm on a graveyard shift right now, I'd say easily the creepiest part of my job is loading the wagons. It's a large factory built pretty much in the middle of nowhere which is surrounded by open fields and some woodland.

The yard on which the wagons are located is fairly big, big enough that the cameras can't cover all of it and there are many blind spots for me to be seized, touched, eaten... the options are endless in this 6 fingered county I work in! (Think Deliverance with less banjos and more benefit cheats)

Also coming from inside the factory where ear protection is needed at all times due to high noise levels to a perfectly silent yard is always unsettling. Birds often aren't awake at that time so my work is accompanied by the sounds of gravel crunching under my forklift and my heart hammering inside my chest.

#69

Nothing creepy or weird. But I operate machinery and there's a fox that comes up to my door every time I stop and waits for food. He's been doing this for 4 months now, pretty darn cute.

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