Sure, many of us have worked late into the night—but few have pulled the graveyard shift, working straight into the witching hour. From security guards to hospital employees to gas station employees, these Redditors came together to share their experiences of the strangest things that happened on the night shift. Their stories are proof that while the rest of the world snoozes away, the weirdos come out to play.
1. Did I Do That?
I was working at 2 am some guys walks into the store. Heads to the back to grab a 12-pack of cold ones 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. The best part was when he walked out of the cooler. "Ahh frig, that's my car”. Well, nice work Sherlock—you're the only person in the parking lot.
2. The Watcher
I work in an old facility that's been around since the 50s. I was busy watching a movie in this open work center at about 2 am one of our doors unstops itself and slams shut. I walked up to the door and found the door stop still in the spot it should be holding the door. it's a hard rubber stop that can't be ridden over if the door is forced.
I go through the door and check the next area out only to find nothing. When I went back to my chair I felt like someone was angrily watching me. I could not relax the rest of the night. Finally, my partner showed back up from the other side of the room a couple of hours later. it's physically impossible to go across the room without being seen, so we both were all "What the heck”?
The thing that really scared me the most was that folks had been seeing things like that for years without explanation. Occasionally people would report hearing creaking or moaning metal sounds, but the locations couldn't be located. It still gives me chills.
3. Hungrier Than The Average Bear
I was 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, 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 afterward, we got better locks for our dumpster.
4. Clown Car Down
I drive a truck and when I hauled steel, I would often run on paper logs, drive all day and well into the night. I'd do upwards of 1,000 miles/19 hours in a day, and the tail end of those trips was always a little harrowing. When you get within 10-20 miles of your destination (and precious sleep), you get a sudden burst of energy. Just enough so that you'll know you'll make it and that the risk of falling asleep at the wheel is no longer present. It's a nice feeling of satisfaction, but it doesn't come without a price.
Hallucinations. For me, at least, that "last breath" of energy after a long run often brought with it some crazy stuff. To make matters worse, places where one might deliver sheet metal coils tend to be right directly inside the middle of frigging nowhere, and reaching them involved lots of two-lane roads through the woods. Combine narrow, twisting roads, hallucinations, paranoia about getting caught running overtime, and just enough energy to be aware of it all—and you've got what we like to call a "situation" on your hands.
One particular night stands out. The 800 or so miles had taken about 17 hours thanks to the hills and the back-roads I had taken to get there, to as close a place to "rural" as New Jersey likely gets, just across the Delaware from Philly. I was coming down from a back-to-back dose of Double Shots and was about 15 minutes away from the four hours of sleep I would be getting that night, so I was on edge and starting to see things again.
My hallucinations weren't really readily identifiable things like people, oases, or giant stacks of bacon and such, but vague flashes of movement and light. It was as if a fox wearing a suit of strobing LEDs was about to dart out of the tree line. It freaked me out just enough that I usually had one foot on the clutch at all times in case I had to jam the brakes. I knew it wasn't real, but it still bothered me.
In the midst of all of this, I was rounding a bend and saw about a quarter mile down the road a man standing in my lane. He had a green reflective vest on and was waving his arms. Too real and tangible to be a hallucination. I began to slow down, immediately wary of the situation, and the scene unfolded before me as I got closer.
A midsize SUV was on its side on the other side of the road, and a little pull-off carved out of the forest was bristling with some sort of construction activity at the lively hour of 3 am. I said, aloud, "What the heck”? Then, from out of the trees burst...a bobcat! No, not a mountain lion, but one of those little four-wheeled mini-excavator things commonly used in landscaping.
It darted about with all of the agility of its namesake, save for the moment when it turned to face the roof of the car, where it nearly tipped over. But that wasn’t the strangest part.
The Bobcat pushed the vehicle over and at least a dozen people crawled out. I stopped counting at 8. I was in a state of mental lapse and had no idea what had happened. Finally, the guy in the vest let me pass.
My last 10 minutes or so of driving were marked by a sense of calm as I saw every cop car and ambulance in southern Jersey fly past me in the opposite direction, knowing they had something better to do than check my logs. I got to my destination safely and went to sleep.
5. Playing With Fire
I am currently working as a third-shift dispatcher at a trucking company. I got a call from a newly hired driver coming down the grapevine in California—a very steep hill that's dangerous for trucks—with his jake brake on. He smoked his brakes, setting fire to his trailer. He called asking me, "What do I do? My trailer is on fire”!
He was still driving a flaming truck down the hill while he called me. Facepalm.
6. Time To Make The Donuts
I work night shift at a 711. No one is probably going to believe this, but a large homeless man marched into our store with a giant stick, took his shirt off, knocked our donuts to the ground, and then proceeded to run around the store shouting for God to protect him—that is, until a drag queen from the local club and I cornered him until the authorities arrived. The officers refused to take him in, instead forcing him just off our property…where he stood for 12 hours straight, shouting to the heavens.
Unsplash, Fernando @cferdophotography
7. Jump Scare
I used to work for the national park in Pennsylvania. My job was toll collection. My shift started at 3 AM. My duty was to assess a small fee from commercial vehicles traversing the park at that god-forsaken hour. The neat thing is the first commercial vehicles wouldn't really even start coming until like 5 or 6 AM, with a few regulars who were in before then.
It was the best job and paid very well for what you had to do. The only difficulties of 1. Staying awake and 2. Not allowing your imagination to run away with you and creeping yourself out. The booth was right next to the Delaware river. So in the early morning, the fields and the road and the woods would take on a mist that hung close and low to the ground, like ghostly white hedges.
Staying awake was hard, but the second difficulty was the worst. I would write horror stories while I was in the booth. The setting was too creepy not to channel what I was writing. One night while typing out a few paragraphs, I had this crazy feeling that I was being watched. It was a night with mist like I described. It was cold too. I think it was November. I looked around, sorta bleary-eyed. Could not shake the feeling.
The booth was a box that sat square in the middle of the road going south on Route 209. A small parking lot was off to the left. The windows allowed you to see the parking lot, the fee assessment lane up the road, and the travel lane.
Like a dunce, I sat there looking up the road and looking out into the travel lane. Couldn't see anything but the white mist and the lone street light about a quarter mile up the road. After a few moments, I looked to my left into the parking lot and the assessment lane to see if anything was there. Nothing.
I stood up to get a better look and as I did a head of horns and nostrils popped up in front of the window and scared the heck out of me. A deer had wandered up to the booth and had been sorta grazing at the grass that grew near the door. I screamed like a little girl when I saw him and he sorta just meandered quickly away. I had no further need for coffee that morning.
8. This Time Baby I’ll Be Bulletproof
This not-so-bright buddy of mine used to work the late shift at a fast-food place. This one night a car rolls by in the drive-thru and suddenly he's looking down the barrel of a 9mm. The guy shouts "Gimme the cash in the register"! My bold friend bends down and says "NO"! and promptly shuts the window on him. The guy drives off confused.
The next day the manager is reviewing the tapes and quickly goes up to him to ask him what happened. My friend says he just closed the window because it was bulletproof. Manager stares at him and says "No they aren't". My friend properly freaks out about how close he got to getting shot.
9. A Flash In The Dark
I’m a painter and decorator for the administration of the local council housing in the UK. One of the council admin buildings in this particular city is an old Victorian tower block converted into offices—converted badly, I should add. Most of the offices are open plan, sectioned off into departments with those ubiquitous separator panels and there's a general air of boredom.
There’s one story I’ll never forget. The contractor met me at the building and showed me the job, which needed to be completed at night after both day and evening shifts had finished. Everything, and I mean everything in this room is covered in gross yellow nicotine. My task; clean off the nicotine then paint the room. He leaves and I'm alone, in this little nook of a room at the top of an old Victorian building, in the middle of the night, with floors and floors of empty office space below me and not even the comfort of a security guard in the foyer.
I can't really convey how eerily creepy this job was. I had to replenish the water in my bleach bucket regularly, which required a hike to the toilets one floor down. I tried to change the atmosphere by putting on a radio, which was okay when I was beavering away in the room. When I had to go get more water and was approaching the peeling paint of the door it sounded too much like somebody else was in the room, murmuring away to themselves, and I had to switch it off.
It's about 3:30 in the morning. I've moved around to another side of the room where it's darker. The one bulb doesn't reach over here, so I plug in a lamp and point it into the corner. That’s when it happens. I catch movement in the periphery of my eye, above my head. Glance up and see somebody standing outside the skylight. White legs and boots. But the legs fade to nothing. Disembodied and sort of floating.
I back up, terrified, and watch as the legs walk away. It takes a few seconds before I realize all I've seen is the reflection of my own legs in the glass, illuminated up there by the lamp. I feel stupid, but jumpy as heck. I can't believe how much more I've still got to do in this room and how many hours until I can quit. The place stinks of bleach and I can feel nicotine seeping out of my pores. I just. Want. To. Go. Home.
So I do. I say, forget it. And go home. Down the empty building in the lift to the foyer which is lit, but empty. Out the door and into the cold night. The sound of sirens in the distance. The stars above. Lights are on in windows across the way. A sense of normality returns. I'm still really spooked, but feel a bit better.
So I open the security gates to the car park and go sit in my car. But my ordeal was just beginning. I turn the engine over, but it doesn't start. It's a pretty old car, prone to problems, so I'm not surprised, but my heart sinks. I turn the ignition again but now the starter labors and I can hear the battery dying. I should stop, but I don't. I keep turning the ignition until the battery doesn't even respond anymore and there's just a redundant click.
The next bus won't run until 7:00 or thereabouts. I can't afford a taxi. I don't have breakdown coverage and anyone I know who might usually help me out in a situation like this is tucked up asleep in bed and I'm not about to wake them up to come rescue me from “a spooky room”. So I go back to work, intending to catch the first bus when the service resumes.
I'm actually beating myself up a bit by the time I get to the refectory for being such an idiot. What, really, is there to be nervous about? It's just a council office building. It's only the one room. It's just the night time and everything seems weird at night. I'm mostly scaring myself here, I say to myself as I turn the corner from the refectory and into the corridor, then around the next corner...
Which is when I see movement. The door to the old toilets is one of those fire doors with the sprung cantilever in a box above the doorframe, you walk through and it closes slowly behind you on its own. The door is in the process of closing.
I freeze, because there's only one terrifying possibility—that someone else is in the building with me. I'm aware at this point that I'm potentially the victim in a real-life horror and the last thing I should do is open the door and investigate. So it's the first thing I do. Obviously.
The toilets are grim. "Helloooo”? I say in a jovial way, "anyone in here”? my voice sounds stupid and jaunty, like this kind of thing is totally routine for me. I stick the door open with a screwdriver underneath and venture in to check the cubicles. I know they're empty even as I'm checking. And they are. There's nobody here.
Back in the room, there's nobody there either. If whoever it was had come back toward the refectory I'd have passed them in the corridor. The place was, and I can only conclude still is, completely deserted. Suffice it to say I pack up my things and get the heck out of there. I wind up walking the ten miles home.
The next day I call the contractor and say the job is just too awful and I'm no good on night shifts. It's no big deal, I know, because it's a well-paid job and there are plenty of other sub-contractors on his books who will gladly do it. My dad helped me rescue the car that afternoon.
10. Reality Check
This actually happened as a result of my graveyard shift. After work, I was waiting at the campus train station for my train to go home. I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye, the shadow from a tree was rotating about 60 degrees back and forth from where the trunk went into the ground at the origin of the shadow.
I walked over amazed and paced back and forth studying it and looking for the source of the shadow's movement, it was a beautiful bright sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, no spotlights around that would cause an entire tree's shadow to move like that. I examined it for about five minutes straight before I realized how insane I must've looked to the passing students, just this bug-eyed, ragged-looking guy intensely examining the ground around a tree. I decided it was best to ignore it and go sit down out of sight.
The lady in the library confectionery at my school was always pretty nice to me, I think she knew I was a working student and running on fumes. One time she told me about a student they had detained in the library when he just kind of snapped. They discovered he'd been sleeping in the library and storing his waste in Ziploc bags.
I don't know how much of it was the sleep deprivation, but I took it as him giving me a warning to watch myself. Made me paranoid for a good year.
11. Dodged A Bullet
At one point, I had a third job washing dishes at a pizza place before my night job. I went in one night and the assistant manager met me at the door, said, "Hey you can't work tonight because you didn't go to the customer service seminar". But something was off. He was white as a sheet, clammy sweat and skin.
I was so exhausted from lack of sleep my only thought was "Sweet, I can go home and get a few hours of sleep before I have to go to my next job". Odd thing was, all the kitchen staff (male) was up front with the same nervous look on their faces. Front of house staff (female) was nowhere to be seen. Later, I learned the disturbing truth about that night.
They got robbed at roughly that point in time, with everyone getting locked inside the freezer afterward. They never said anything when I came in for my last check. Now I've been told I'm a very intimidating guy, so to this day I don't know if they were just scared I was gonna freak out and get violent, or if they were being robbed and I was supposed to go get help...because all I did was go home and go to sleep.
12. The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Grease
My dad’s been a nurse for 20+ years now, most of which was spent in the ER. For a while, he was working the third shift at this old hospital in Chicago. One night, a man passed on 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 cliché, 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.
13. Tommy Boy
I used to work in this building as staff for a non-profit and one night, the security guard called out and I was the only one to take his place. Why this building stayed open until 10 pm, I don't know, because everyone went home at 7 pm at the latest. Anyway, the building was big and old-fashioned, even though the company owned one side. All I had to do was sit at a desk, watch the cameras, lock up once 10 pm came around, and wait for our truck driver to pick up some artwork.
So it's almost 10, the truck driver is on his way, and the old elevator starts to move. It's on the fifth floor, and it starts coming down. I'm freaked out because no one is on the fifth floor, I saw the last person go home two hours ago. So I grab the baton and go upstairs to investigate. Since the elevator is in motion and I'm scared of it, I take the large staircase.
As I'm going straight up to the second floor/mezz, I hear a chilling sound. It sounds like footsteps that sound like high heels down in the lobby. I rush back downstairs, thinking I never locked the front door, but it's not open. The elevator door opened, and no one was inside. I thought it was maybe my boss messing with me, so I started to call out his name while walking up the stairs.
No one was on the second floor. So I continue up the stairs, and I hear the elevator move again. It is on its way to the fifth floor. When I get to the third floor, the creepiest of them all (seriously, it had those dark wood walls) the elevator stops above and I hear footsteps. I finally get to the fifth floor, and no one is there but some creepy statue at the end of the hall.
I can't believe I even had the guts to close up the floor and leave. So I get past the fourth floor and I'm back on the creepy third floor and I almost lose it at the sight of something moving in the corner of my eye. No big deal, probably a roach, keep going, the truck driver will be here soon. Nope.
I look again and the outline of a skinny kid with messy hair runs by the door of the President's office at the end of the hall. I absolutely lose it. When I get it together, I move toward the President's office and the elevator starts moving again, and there are footsteps in the staircase at the same time.
I start to break down and cry right there in the hallway, I have no idea what to do, so I run into the meeting room and cower near the window because if I see that kid or something else in the building I am ready to jump. I hear the elevator door open on my floor and my name being called out softly. I start screaming "LEAVE ME ALONE”!
The footsteps are getting closer to the meeting room. The door opens, I don't look because I have my eyes closed. I grab the baton and as soon as I swing, some force stops it. It's the truck driver. I was so relieved to see him that I collapsed into his arms and bawled for a good minute. He got me all cleaned up, helped me close up, and gave me a ride home.
Right as we got down the street from the building, he turned to me and said, "You didn't know that place was haunted? Jim (my boss) has been talking about Tommy for years”! Turns out Tommy was a boy who perished in that home in the early 1900s. When I looked at one of the historical books we had on the mansion, that skinny kid with shaggy hair was in it.
Seriously, I hate that place.
14. Goodness Gracious, Great Balls Of Fire
I work for a shipping company at an airport loading and unloading planes. One night we just finished loading a 767 and were tearing down the plane getting ready to send it out. After we moved the cones and pulled the chalks from the landing gear and hooked up the pushback.
We were giving the go-ahead to disconnect the ground power unit (gpu) from the plane.
A guy on the crew disconnects it from the plane before cutting off the circuit of electricity from the
, so when he disconnected it, it armed from the plane to plug—resulting in a huge fireball that burned his hands and part of his face.
15. The Transporter
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, I’m 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”? "Hello? Who is this"? "This is so-and-so. I'm a nurse. Is there anything I can help you with"? "Where am I"? "This is (hospital name). Are you a patient here"? "Oh. Okay". Then the line went dead.
That’s when the nurse finally looked at the screen on the phone to see where the call was coming from. She was terrified. 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. That’s 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.
But it wasn’t the only incident 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.
Things have happened since then, too. 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 wheelchair 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 height 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. That’s 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.
16. #1 Fan
I used to work in a 411 office as an escalation specialist on the night shift, meaning I talked to all the crazy night callers that were too crazy for regular reps to handle. It paid really good, but I talked to a lot of people with real issues on a regular basis. One caller sticks out in particular. This one guy from rural Eastern Kentucky used to have a few too many and call looking for the number for Jonathan Taylor Thomas. This was back in 2002.
The man called probably 100+ times a night picking random states and methodically getting numbers for any Jonathan Thomas he could find. Well, he got escalated to me a lot, especially during the early morning hours when he drank the most.
One night he said, "I got Jonathan Taylor Thomas a birthday present. Do you want to know what it is”? My mind instantly raced frantically to dark places man dares not dread. Cat skulls? Baby arms? Pillow cases full of hair? He got Jonathan Taylor Thomas an...engraved pocket knife. I think my nose bled.
We figured his monthly phone bill, based on 411 calls alone, was in excess of five thousand dollars. Eventually, he stopped calling, probably because he was horribly in debt with his phone bill. Jonathan Taylor Thomas, if you're reading this, I pray that man either got in touch with you, or didn't, whichever is best for everyone's sanity.
17. Jailbreak
I used to work at an old prison that had been repurposed as an art gallery and studio space. It was originally an actual workhouse: low-security prisoners from Washington DC who committed small stuff (drunks, petty thieves, etc) were sent there to work the farm, orchard, and abattoir. The first “shipment” of inmates actually built the original brick prison buildings.
A maximum-security complex and a juvenile detention center were later built on the land that used to be pasture and orchard, and the minimum-security section became medium-security as the number of prisoners grew and they started running out of space to house them, and then in 1998 the whole complex was shut down and emptied of prisoners due to deteriorating buildings, overcrowding, and poor management.
So I would sit in my little cubicle in the marketing department and look up old news clippings about the prison. There were riots and fires and murders and escapes and substance misuse and corruption. I also made a seriously disturbing discovery. I once found an article about a murder that happened in the specific room I was sitting in and got the most intense chill down my spine. I've never felt so uneasy and on edge as I did in that prison.
Most of the buildings had been renovated on the inside and looked pretty nice, but not all of them. A couple of the cell blocks, the theater, the old coal-fired power plant, the abattoir, the mess hall, the gym, and a couple random outbuildings were all simply abandoned when the last prisoners left. I used to go on adventures with the facilities guys and explore around in the daytime, and it was still creepy as heck. We found some cool stuff, though. Letters from prisoners, old prison uniforms, a shiv or two, newspaper clippings, etc.
Everyone who worked there had their own little story of weird stuff happening when they were alone, even the people who didn't believe in the paranormal. The most common was seeing a woman in 1900s clothing or a man in a dark blue prison jumpsuit. Other people heard cats howling, footsteps, and chains rattling.
The night watch guys never stayed around for long, but they told stories about hearing cell doors open slowly and slam shut, and stifled screams from inside completely locked and secured buildings. But that’s not the weirdest part. Did I mention that this place used to have a working abattoir?
It was a few hundred yards away from the rest of the complex, and nobody ever went in there. Not even the biggest, burliest, most fearless guy on the staff. The facilities guys and I walked past it once when we were exploring, we all got simultaneous chills and decided to end our little tour as fast as we could.
But by far, the creepiest part of the whole place was the steam tunnels. Running underneath every building in the prison and forming a labyrinth-like network a few feet underground were tunnels, about 5 feet high and 3 feet wide, that used to carry pipes filled with steam to heat the buildings. When it was converted to oil or gas heat sometime in the 30s, the tunnels were abandoned, but reportedly used for smuggling and some escape attempts in the later years.
Differences in air temperatures and pressures within the buildings meant that there was a constant flow of air within the tunnels, and they would howl. I'm talking stereotypical horror movie howl. Visitors to the galleries and artists in their studios would report hearing things within the howls; screams and shouts and bangs and a couple times, even music. It was so unnerving to everybody that they sealed off the tunnels with plexiglass doors, which then proceeded to randomly fly open and slam shut.
I only went in the tunnels once—and it was seriously terrifying. It was because a contractor's backhoe collapsed a previously unknown section of tunnel. We had a very old hand-drawn schematic of the tunnels (which we found on one of our expeditions to the power plant) and the part that had collapsed wasn't on it. I went into the tunnels from the basement of our building while one of the facilities guys went through the hole the backhoe had dug.
We were using two-way radios and copies of the map to try and figure out where the heck the tunnel connected. It was the middle of a summer day, but the tunnels were dark, cold, and damp. I'm not a huge believer in the paranormal, but when you're in that kind of situation, you see things. Flickers of shadow in your peripheral vision, shapes in the half-light, reflections that look like glowing eyes. I constantly had that feeling that there was something behind me and the irresistible urge to look over my shoulder. I was only down there alone for a minute or two until I found my co-worker, but it felt like forever.
18. The Call Is Coming From…
A phone used to call me on 9-1-1 every night, make horrible screaming sounds or sometimes white noise, and then disconnect. It scared the living heck out of me. The officers we sent out every time never found a thing, and I was repeatedly assured that the sounds on the line were due to a faulty phone line or the rain, but it never stopped bothering me.
19. Convicts 1, Road Rage 0
I used to work as the overnight transport officer at a halfway house. It was, generally speaking, pretty laid back for a job involving convicts. My convicts, the working ones at least, were pretty relaxed...they were also fairly large guys. I got a lot of fun tales from those nights, here's one...
I used to work midnight ‘til eight as a driver at a halfway house, taking soon-to-be-ex-cons to work in the wee hours of the morning. One morning as I'm cruising down the highway taking a van full to work, some jerk comes blazing up the on-ramp, honking his horn, flashing his lights, the works. It being 5 am and me being fresh out of cares to give, I grudgingly yield and give him the finger.
For that, he tailgates me three miles to my exit. The entire time my load of cons is egging me on, trying to get me to tap my brakes, swerve and what have you...but I told them to calm down, and wait and see how committed this fool was to his rage. Pretty committed, as it turned out...
He followed me to my exit and when I stopped at the light, he got out of his car & started coming towards my van with a tire iron! So I rolled down my window and smiled my best customer service smile. I knew exactly what to say to put him in his place. I told him: "Sir, before you do whatever it is you THINK you're about to do with that thing, you should know that I have a dozen convicts in this van, my finger is on the lock switch and they're just aching for me to let 'em off the chain for a few minutes”.
Right on cue, my cons all immediately started howling and barking like a pack of wild hounds. Ms. Road Rage leans out of their car and starts screaming at Mr. Road Rage to get back in and he turned white as a sheet and leaps across his hood trying to flee. Looking back on it now, that guy probably would have ended up hospitalized if I'd unlocked the doors...some of my passengers were in for some pretty bad stuff, after all.
20. Reporting For Duty
I work in a shipping and receiving facility that was originally built as a military base and munitions factory and storage during WWII. 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 were 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', AKA nap.
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.
21. In A Fog
I used to work in a nursing home that was built ages ago and they still had the old part of the building at the back. One night shift—which was usually done by yourself but this night there were two of us on, thank god—we were sitting on the balcony looking over said old building, having a smoke and a chat.
Suddenly the automatic doors behind us, which need a code to open, open. If that wasn't weird enough, we hear someone call out. I go to investigate but find no one out of bed or in any pain, which is kind of common if people have a nightmare, etc. So I go back outside to my staff member and we again begin chatting not really thinking much of it.
That's when stuff gets real. The whole of the automatic door fogs over, the lights in the old building in front of us all begin to flutter on and off and the curtains are flapping like MAD on the inside of them. Both of us stood up and huddled together feeling our pants getting a bit tighter. Then we see a shadow walk through the building (as in through the windows) from the start of the building to the end.
We then heard a loud bang, which I guess was the door closing. All the lights turn off and then the door begins to clear up. But that’s not the most disturbing part. That night, we had three deaths. One of which we knew was going to happen but the other two were total shocks.
22. Eli’s Escape
I worked in a residential facility for troubled youth (basically a juvenile detention center) on the night shift. It has been in existence for almost 100 years, originally an orphanage run by nuns, and there are plenty of "spooky" events that have taken place over the years—missing kids and staff, fires, etc. Lots of "ghosts" supposedly inhabit the building. I'm an atheist, don't believe in that nonsense...but I saw something I cannot explain.
About a year ago, I saw a kid down a hallway wearing an orange shirt at around 2 AM. Assuming I had a runner, I turned, grabbed my radio, and told others to check their residents. When I turned back, the kid was gone. All kids were accounted for, which was a bit surprising. When I described the kid to others that night, ones who had worked in that place longer than I, they said it was just "Eli," a boy who perished back in the 70s during a barn fire.
They never found his body, so, maybe he used the fire as a means of covering his escape. Of course, this was a tall tale, I was just tired, or whatever. A few weeks later, I was cleaning out a room that was going to be used as a new classroom and found some old pictures. One portrait, in particular, looked familiar. Sounds like it was out of a horror movie, but, I flipped the picture over...Eli Jameson.
23. Don’t Fear The Reaper
I used to deliver for Papa John's during the late closing shift. The people were actually pretty fun to work with and the tips were surprisingly not bad. One night, around 1 am, I made a delivery to a nursing home. A few of the nurses working the graveyard shift ordered a pizza. When I got there, I called the nurses' station and they buzzed me in, but the station was way in the back of the nursing home, so I had to walk all the way through the length of the place.
It really freaked me out. I passed up the rooms where people were sleeping. Some were watching TV, some were just dozing. There was one old lady who I caught a glimpse of in her room. She was tiny; she looked almost minuscule and withered in her bed. To me, it looked like she was in some kind of cocoon.
At that point, I felt some kind of force or presence or something like that. I know it sounds batshit insane, but I think I felt the presence of death itself in that nursing home. I never really bothered to check up, and I'm not sure how I'd confirm it now, but I think that lady had passed on that night and I was witnessing it.
I think I passed Death in the halls of that nursing home while delivering pizzas. Not as some kind of bony Grim Reaper personification, but an impersonal force. The air felt heavy in some way, and old and musty. People sometimes say that when they sense it they feel some kind of cold...I didn't feel cold, but it just felt like sorta like being in a room full of old clocks and each clock was winding down. It felt like everything was winding down and slowing down and nearing its end. That's what it felt like to me in the hall of that nursing home that night—like everything was winding down.
24. The Witching Hour
I work overnights at a gym 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 7 am and I told her about it and she said she woke up from a scary dream at 3:25. Messed.
25. Brings A New Meaning To The Name Tinky Winky
I was working the late shift at my college back in the day as an intern, on a Friday night. I'm on a Segway going past Greek housing and I see 30+ Teletubbies (all the colors too) in a single file line outside a dorm entrance. They told me they were pulling a prank on a frat brother by trying to fit as many Teletubbies as they could in one room, turning on the light, and blowing an air horn. Since I thought the prank could have been worse I let them be.
I learned the next day the line was for taking turns peeing on his bed while he was out of town, and the costumes were from a party earlier that night.
26. I Was Here First
I used to be a nurse on a cardiac floor. We had a corner room on the unit which was bigger than any other room. This is usually where we placed the patients who were on their way out, as it had a nicer view, it was quieter, and much more room for the family during the last hours.
We had an 89-year-old congestive heart failure patient, nothing out of the ordinary. Came in for chest pain, was on hospice, and the family expected her to pass within a week or so.
She had difficulty breathing, but used what breath she had left to talk to us. She had three Pomeranians, and always wore a bright fuchsia robe, even when she was in bed. She had bright blue nail polish on, too. So one evening, when I came in for a 7 PM to 7 AM shift, I'm getting report, and she's not doing so well. The family's there, and she'd been floating in and out of consciousness all day. We expected her to pass that night, and took extra care to check on her, to make her comfortable.
Around 12:30 AM, she passed. The floor knew her as a regular patient, so many of us were sad; I went in to do her post-mortem care after the family leaves—about 1:30 AM or so. I took extra special care, removing her PICC line and dressings very carefully, cleaned her up very nicely, and the morgue staff comes to take her down.
We got an admission around 2:00 AM, normal chest pain with a cardiac history. Bearded man in his mid-50s, looked kind of rough, but pleasant, and was admitted to the big room, where the previous patient passed. He didn't offer much during his history and EKG—until I noticed something strange.
He kept looking over my shoulder, near the seat by the window. He did this a few times until I asked what was wrong, and he asked me why an old woman was sitting on the cushion. I turned around and saw no one. He kept interrupting me during his admission history to assert there was someone there, with a hot pink robe on, short, with curly hair. When he said hot pink robe, the hair on my arms immediately raised up.
He started laughing, thinking it was a side effect of some meds he got in the ER, saying she had three dogs with her, they were small and "poofy". I showed him a picture of a few small dogs on my phone, and he immediately pointed out a picture of a Pomeranian.
Our rooms are monitored with camera and sound, so at this point, the charge nurse came in and sat next to me, just watching him. He told us the woman was smiling, stood up, walked over to us, placed her hands on our shoulders, and kept smiling. I didn't feel anything, and at this point, the patient was becoming very nervous.
There was no way he could have known—the family had taken her pink robe in a dark bag with them when they left, and they left the exit on the other side of the building from the ER. She finally "left" around 6 AM, and he requested to move to another room because she was just sitting there with her dogs.
We've had a few incidents like that, and the night manager refused to go near that side of our unit, unless there was an emergency.
27. Going Down With The Ship
I was hired on as a senior watchkeeper on an 80-year-old tall ship that had been converted into a private yacht. Not one of those fancy ones, this was definitely at the budget end of the scale. Like the crew still slept in the original fo'c'sle, which was a deep, dark pit with bunks, which we shared with the bosun's locker and chain locker.
Anyway, second night on board and I woke up unable to breathe. My throat was constricted, couldn't get any air down it. I imagine that must be what asthma feels like, except I'd never had asthma in my life. After maybe 30 seconds I was starting to panic when suddenly my throat released completely and I could breathe normally again. Still half asleep I drifted off to sleep and forgot about it.
A week went by. I was chatting with the engineer on the foredeck. What he told me made my blood run cold. He mentioned this Jamaican guy who'd been a member of the crew before me, and how the guy had freaked out one night. He claimed a ghost was trying to get him. For a couple of days he refused to sleep in the fo'c'sle and after that would only sleep there with a blade under his pillow.
The engineer told me the vessel was supposed to have a ghost on board. The ship had gone down in a storm years ago, taking one of the crew who was asleep in his bunk down with it. Later it was raised and repaired and put back into service. The engineer said the drowned sailor didn't like anyone sleeping in his bunk.
Curious, I asked the engineer which bunk the Jamaican guy had slept in. Of course, it was the one I was in. Nothing ever happened to me again and several months later I moved to an airier bunk. A new guy took my old bunk. A couple of days later he mentioned he'd had trouble sleeping the previous night, and woke up unable to breathe.
As a rule I don't believe in ghosts but that was some mighty interesting circumstantial evidence.
28. The Off-White Stripes
Well, I once worked at a local grocery store and was running the late shift, which normally goes from about midnight to 4-5 AM. At around three, an older woman of about 50-60 comes to my checkout line and proceeds to buy her things.
Near the end of my counter, there were a few people that looked to be stoners talking to each other, but they had already checked out, so I was just keeping an eye on them to make sure they didn't take anything else. After granny pays for her things, she moves on, and I begin helping the next person in line. I notice her talking to the stoners, but think nothing of it.
Fast-forward to about an hour later, I notice granny walk back into the store, but it's late, so I am a little spacey. Then I hear something falling off the shelf, so I go to the aisle to see what had happened. To my horror, there was granny hooking up one of the stoners in the middle of the floor surrounded by fallen bags of Doritos and bottles of Pepsi.
Feeling a mix of surprise and confusion, I walked back to my register and gave them the message that they had 5 minutes to clean up before I had to make them leave. They actually were nice about it, and cleaned and mopped the whole aisle under my supervision. When they finally explained what happened to me, it turns out the stoner had convinced granny that he was Jack White from the White Stripes.
She said she couldn't pass up the opportunity.
29. A Story In Three Acts
It's roughly 2 AM, and a burly guy comes into the hotel. It's the middle of winter, and he definitely isn't dressed very appropriately. We run the least expensive hotel in town, so weird people are a common occurrence. About 20 to 30 minutes later, several law enforcement officers enter the building, asking if I have seen “this man,” pointing to a picture of the guy I had last checked in.
I tell them yes, ask why they're asking, and they respond that he's wanted for murder. I give them the room number, a master key, and they’re dragging him out moments later.
30. It’s Not The Same Without The Flame
I worked overnights at Walmart stocking toys for a mod reset one week. This guy, we called him Hot Wheel guy, would stand at the pallets of freight on the floor and wait for us to unpack the Hot Wheels. EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT. One night I guess he got one that he really, really wanted and he lunged at it while still in the worker's hand and screamed “YOU HAVE FINALLY COME TO ME”! Then he rubbed it on himself.
31. A Lactose-Intolerant Poltergeist
I used to work at Starbucks and one night me and my co-worker are shutting everything down for closing, shift manager is taking the trash out so it's just the two of us, we're shutting down, and he looks over at me to ask me something, I see his face go white.
I hear one of the milk pitchers go flying. I turn around and there's milk on the counter surface, the ceiling, the floor, and the wall opposite the counter about 7 feet away. I ask what the heck just happened and he tells me the pitcher flew off the counter and spun in a circle before hitting the floor. I have no clue to this day what happened, I only heard it, but I do know that the pitcher was a good 4-6 inches back from the counter edge.
32. That’s Not The Taxi Stand
Working graveyard at a boutique hotel on the west coast has always been a strange job. I've had a cab crash into a room and almost take out someone. The driver suffered a diabetic seizure and couldn't control the speed of the cab as her foot locked onto the accelerator while seizing.
My managers had to run to the room and the new entryway made from said cab and pull the car off the man while the wheels were still turning.
33. Most People Beg To Get Out, Not In
I used to work graveyard at a correctional facility. It was more a work-release program than anything else, but whatever. One night, around 3 am this man who’d obviously had a few too many came in asking to use the phone. I told him the building was a secure building, and the phone was not for public use. He immediately started slamming his fists on the glass, screaming at me. Now, this is an inch of bulletproof glass, he wasn't getting in.
So he turns around and grabs a snow shovel that the janitorial staff had left in the lobby earlier in the day (in case the graveyard shift needed to shovel snow around their vehicles). He then starts using the snow shovel to smash out the entire drop ceiling in the lobby. I had already called the authorities at this point, but despite the sheriff’s office being literally 100 feet away from my facility, they hadn't shown up.
After this guy had completely demolished the lobby, he went next door to the county lock-up. That’s when things got worse. He started yelling that they needed to let him in or he would smash out all of the windows of the front lobby. By this point, I had gone outside to the yard area to watch this crazy jerk. When nobody let him into the building, he walked to a small drainage ditch near the facility and picked up a bunch of rocks. He proceeded to smash out every last window in the lobby.
He came back over to my facility, smashed some of the outer office windows, and then just laid down in the middle of the parking lot. About one minute later, the sheriff finally showed up. That was a fun night.
34. Surprise!
In college, I had to run experiments all night that required sampling at about two-hour intervals. Not really enough time to run home so I'd cat-nap in the lab. They were installing some new lab benches in an adjacent room so there were big slabs of the laminated-wood/epoxy tops that they'd use laid out on top of the cabinets. Nap time.
I'd set a timer and stretch out on those. I'm 6'4" tall and am laid out in a white lab coat with my hands across my chest and...the night cleaning crew woman comes in, flips on the light in a supposedly unused room and the big guy in a lab coat lying stretched out on a slab wakes up and sits up like a zombie. She didn't quit, but she ran screaming out and left for the night.
35. Biding His Time
I used to work as a morning news producer in a major market. One night, around midnight, the phone rings. It was a call I’ll remember until the day I die. The guy on the other end says, "Hello, I'm going to take my own life, and I want you to film it for the news”. I don't have time to react before he hangs up, and of course I answered on the only phone without caller ID. I tell my boss and he says there's nothing we can do with some sort of info.
About an hour later, the guy calls back. I try to get him to call a crisis hotline and flag down my boss. The guy insists that he's going to do it and that he's already standing on the bridge. This freaks me out, but I come up with a plan. I tell him: "Well, I really would like someone to film that. Can you wait an hour or so, we just put all our equipment away and we need to drive there”.
Then I start asking him his name, location, phone number etc. I've never had more adrenaline. While I'm writing all this down, my boss is on the other line with the authorities. I'm just trying to buy time for them time to find him. If I have to agree with him, that's what I would do. Eventually, the guy decides I've asked too many questions and basically tells me that time is ticking and hangs up.
Around 4 am, there's a knock at the door. It’s a cop who tells me that they found the guy, and he was safe in the hospital. It was the biggest relief.
36. Did You Hear That Too?
I've seen plenty of shadows and figures moving around in the shop I work at. We've had cranes start swaying and hear things shift and bang together. The craziest was when there were only two of us left for the night, I was at my desk and the other person was at their toolbox about 50 feet away, I then heard something walk through the tank behind me.
It was five footsteps and the tank started bouncing up and down. When I looked over at the other guy who was still at his toolbox and heard it too, we realized that no one was there. That's when we decided it was time to get out of there.
37. Cracking Up
Roughly five years ago, I was working janitorial in a mall in British Columbia. The task I was assigned was to clean all the main entrances to the mall. It was pretty basic: mop floors, clean windows, and vacuum rugs. It was weird to see people walking around the exterior of the mall for a few reasons. There was a large parking lot, and it's really late at night.
One night, this random dude who’d clearly had a few too many wandered up to the main doors, waves at me, and asks how I'm doing. I wave back and say "fine". He then whips it out and starts trying to pee on me through the small crack in the door. Luckily, the crack isn't that big, and I’m quick enough to get out of the way of the stream that makes it through the door. He started laughing and as I stood in shock, staring at him.
At that moment, a law enforcement officer who was driving by flashes his lights, and the guy starts to run. He didn't make it very far. Apparently, security was watching me on camera almost getting peed on, so he called the authorities. I watched the video with him. We were laughing so hard we could barely breathe.
38. The President’s Office
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? Wrong.
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 shot 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 out of my gourd. What I saw will forever haunt me.
The man had taken a seat in the president's chair...and shot himself. 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 heck out of the president at the same time. In any case, I threw up a few times and called the authorities.
I got the next two weeks off. I still have nightmares about it sometimes.
39. Grey Matter
So, working the night shift at a hotel front desk is an interesting job. You get your drunks, your high people, 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.
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 9-1-1 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 third-story window straight on his forehead and split it open so wide and deep, you could see his brain.
He was life-flighted up to the bigger hospital up north. He lived. I got a raise the next day.
40. One By One
This happened when I was in the army and doing guard duty over the weekends during the night. The guard room where the men rest during their off shift is rectangular and has six beds on each side with a total of 12 beds. I sleep on the last bed. It was about 2-3 AM in the night and I was in the guard room taking a nap when I woke up to the sound of the switch flipping on and off.
I looked towards the first bed where the switches of the lights and fans are the closest—and froze in fear. I saw a long lean dark figure flipping the switches on and off. It continued for about a minute or so before the dark figure when to the first bed and start shaking it. I thought I was dreaming, but I could hear the sound of the bed shaking and everything was so real.
After shaking the first bed for a while, it moves to the next bed and my eyes followed. This continued from bed to bed. I tried closing my eyes but I could still hear the sound of the thing shaking the bed. I counted...bed 5...bed 6...bed 7.
Not long after, I could hear bed 11 shaking and after a while there was silence. I dreadfully waited for my turn and then it began, my bed was shaking and I was paralyzed. I closed my eyes and prayed for it to end. It did and I dozed off. The next morning when I asked if anyone felt it, none of them did.
41. The Naked Truth
I was lifeguarding at my local YMCA, it was getting close to closing time. My closing partner and I were switching off cleaning and watching the last three people who were in the pool. I went to go check the locker rooms to grab any garbage and dirty towels. There were two men in the locker room (not that unusual) but these two men were standing without a stitch of clothing on, totally in the buff, talking to each other.
They appeared to be having a heated discussion, as I was cleaning their conversation got even more heated, they ended up coming to blows, and I had to call the building supervisor to break them up.
42. A Captive Audience
I used to work the late shift as classroom IT support for a college. We didn't get a lot of high-priority calls from night classes so, among other duties, we'd get a lot of repairs and maintenance done that couldn't be done when the classrooms were in use during the day. I don't mind the dark so I wasn't in the habit of turning lights in classrooms on if I was just going to do something real quick on the computer.
Well, I had a ticket to install something on the instructor PC in a classroom I had never been to before. It's about 10PM when I get around to this ticket and I head into the room. I get about halfway across the room and suddenly freeze. The hair on the back of my neck is standing up and I feel 100% that I'm being watched. No, I'm surrounded!
Then as my eyes start to adjust I see them. This entire classroom is encircled by hospital beds sticking out from the walls. And in every bed there's a person sitting up, looking right at me! "I’m so sorry", I blurt out...before finally realizing that they're all just plastic dummies and I was in a nursing classroom.
43. Rejected And Dejected
I used to work as a sleep tech. During a shift, a woman came in to get a diagnostic study done. No big deal, because that's very normal. I went through my normal routine, explaining what would be happening during the study. I then asked her to change into her pajamas and get ready for bed.
After about 20 minutes, I asked if she was ready for me to set up the diagnostic equipment. With an affirmative from her, I walked into her room, finding her sitting on the bed. She stood up and gave me a very lazy, "trying to be hot" grin. Her pajamas consisted of a see-through nightgown. "I'm ready," she exclaimed, almost in a whisper.
I looked at her, explained that it would be unprofessional for me to continue further, and that she should change into something a bit more modest. Her reaction was brutal. Her face warped into a scowl reserved only for the most egregious of actions. "This is all I brought with me, and I'm not canceling my study," she said. I smiled and explained that I would have a female tech work on her study.
I closed the door and quickly explained the situation to my female co-worker. Female co-worker didn't believe me, but shrugged and took over my patient. I took one of her patients and the rest of the night went smoothly. The next morning I saw my not-to-be Mrs. Robinson as she was leaving. I gave her a friendly smile, but that quickly disappeared as she walked by in a set of cotton pajamas, featuring Winnie the Pooh characters.
She gave me a glowering look and left the clinic. I never saw her again.
44. Priming The Pump
My dad works the graveyard shift at a gas station. One night, 2:00 AM, no one’s in the lot and no one’s in the store, but he hears that one of the pumps has been picked up. A small noise starts inside where he is when someone picks up a nozzle, and it’s his job to look at the person and judge if he will allow them to fill up first and pay, or if he tells them to prepay.
Anyway, no one is there, and he's surprised. He goes outside to see who it is, and the nozzle is just lying there on the floor. Not a windy night, no reason the nozzle just flew up and out of the thing. But there it is, and no one's around.
Now it’s mandated that you're supposed to let someone use the thing within five seconds of them picking up the nozzle, so my dad was looking at the pump within that time, and out of the door within 10 seconds. His station is close to a highway, so it’s situated apart from all other buildings by a bit. No way someone could have been playing tricks and running away and hiding.
Next morning he talks with whoever is coming in to start the next shift, and the guy says he knows there’s something up at this place, because the next building up the road is a funeral home, and weird stuff always keeps happening at the store, especially at night...
45. Someone’s Knockin’ At The Door
I work a graveyard at a data center that requires 24/7 support. Every night at a random time, there is loud banging in the ceilings. I mean LOUD. It's like the scene in Aliens where they are in the vents above them. It's always at different times and in different spots. It used to startle me but now it's just a part of my shift. Every time a co-worker fills in for me, I see them later and they ask "WHAT THE HECK LIVES IN THE CEILING"
But one night was so much worse than the others. The banging was exceptionally loud. I figured whatever. But then it got violently loud, as if something was going to break. I actually stood up and started checking the walls when all of a sudden there was a loud knocking at the door that leads outside. This is a high-security data center and I am to never let people in, however, there are times when a person leaves their badge behind...but they usually call.
The knocking got louder and harder and by the time I got to the door, it stopped. I was scared. I waited a minute to see if it would happen again. Then I opened the door and there was nothing but the cold outside. But then the knocking started again, at the OTHER door inside the data center. It was violently loud, like somebody was trying to break in. I said forget this and just sat in my cubicle as the ceiling and the doors continued to knock like crazy until the early morning.
46. A Guiding Light
My younger sister goes to the hospital with our mother so she'll have someone to talk to, to take notes from the doctors since our mother won't remember half of it, and just be supportive. So while our mother is getting tests done, my sister walks around out of boredom.
This last hospital visit, she decided to take the stairs because the elevator had been groaning and shaking earlier. She gets in and the door slams shut heavily behind her with an automatic lock. She looks around at the un-railed stairs as the dim lights flickered and worked her way up to another floor. Locked. The doors are all locked.
It's at this time she hears something rattle. What she saw was seriously terrifying. There’s a ladder on the opposite wall going up to a crawl space just sitting quietly while the crawl space door slowly opens a bit further than where it already was. She hurried down all the stairs until she reached the basement, despite my warnings to avoid it because it's the morgue and I know she has problems with seeing things like that.
The door is locked and she hears the ladder rattling sound again, and continues to violently shake the handle until the door opens and a woman looks in at her and asks if she is okay. My sister described her as being pale, tired-looking, with shadowed eyes, and skinny to the point of anorexia. But friendly enough that she was glad to follow her through the morgue to a hallway that would lead her back to where she could find her way around again.
As she exited into the hall, a man, probably a mortician, nearly ran into her and asked how she got in there. She told him the woman had let her in from the stairs. His reaction was so chilling, it’s unforgettable. He tilted his head, asked, "What woman”? and hurried in to look.
My sister says she will stay in the hospital room by the bed to wait now.
47. Paid In Full
I work in a hotel and I’ve seen some messed up stuff—but this was the craziest. An older gentleman walks to the front desk at midnight asking for a room. I give him the details and check him in. He seemed normal and quite cordial. The gentleman goes to his room and a few hours later comes down to the front desk and asks me if I knew where to score some X.
I tell him no and he storms off out of the hotel mumbling to himself saying he wants to hurt me. Now I don't feel endangered by this guy as I have a weight/height advantage on him and know how to handle myself in a fight thanks to training by my ex-Marine brother. Unfortunately, that was just the start of my nightmare.
This guy comes back to the hotel a few hours later in a much better mood. He comes strolling in wearing a thick sheriff's officer jacket and a sheriff's hat. He asks me if I had a girlfriend and I reply yes. He tells me to dump her because women are evil. He then tells me his story of heartbreak and his revelation.
This guy went to prison for beating his ex in a rage of finding out she cheated on him. He had a revelation while behind bars. To him, the best experience was making love to a man and that women were the devil. The guy then warns me to dump women and to consider men. I apologize to him for how I am straight and thank him for the story. He then walks away saying to reconsider and not to knock it til I try it.
Once he left, I call 9-1-1 and ask if anyone is missing a jacket and a hat. They say that they will check the on-duty officers and will call back. They call back and ask me if the person was staying at the hotel. I confirm with them his details and description. They inform me to keep away from him that he took a brick to a window of a cruiser when the officer was on his lunch at a nearby diner just doing paperwork at a table. He took a taser, jacket, hat, and club.
A few minutes later the hotel is surrounded, and officers ask for his room number and an override key. I provide them with all the information and the officers race to his room. There they find him watching adult movies. They come out with the guy cuffed, he yells to me on the way out to reconsider his beliefs about women. Surprisingly, his credit card went through for the charges.
48. Hanging On The Telephone
I worked at a campground on the night shift. Midnight to 8 AM, 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 one or two 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 4:17 am, 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 4:17 am every morning the phone would ring once. The ring even sounded creepy, like the payphone was submerged in water and 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 that white noise like 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. What happened next still freaks me out when I think about it.
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.
49. The Weather Outside Is Frightful, But The Fire Is So Delightful
Christmas night last year or the year before. I'm sitting at my desk and see smoke outside the window. We’re on the second floor of an office building. I stand up and there is a car engulfed in flames. My co-worker dials 9-1-1, I head down to make sure there isn't someone sitting in the car or anything. I couldn't find anyone which I thought was odd and headed back in. Later, we found out the disturbing truth.
It turns out the car was stolen, used in a holdup, and torched in our parking lot.
50. Back From The Dead
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 occurred 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. I’ll never forgot what he yelled as he got close to me: "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".
Sources: Reddit,
