We may think we know how this world works, but we really don’t. All it takes is one little experience to shake our view to its core. That's exactly what happened to these people when they showed up for the night shift. Instead of a regular evening on the job, they encountered the paranormal. Here are 50 spooky stories about the eerie encounters we just can't explain.
1. Facing Reality
I was out on a job with a buddy one night. We were on our way to repossess a car at about 2:30 in the morning. We were at the corner of Route 70 and 571 in Lakewood, New Jersey. We were stopped at a red light when a ‘97 or ‘98 Honda CRV pulled up beside us in the left turn lane. What we saw next was absolutely horrifying.
The driver turned her head towards her and we saw that she had no face. The front of her head was just totally blank with no eyes, nose, mouth, or other features. It was literally like some old-time cartoon character. We both practically jumped out of our seats in shock, but we are both positive that we saw this. I have no idea how to explain it to this day.
2. Hitting The Gas
I was working at a gas station at about 3 AM one night. A car pulled up to the pump. A guy got out and started pumping, and then the car and the dude just...vanished. I was looking right at them, and they just seemed to pop out of existence. I told my boss the next day and she turned white as a sheet. She had apparently seen the same thing recently. Same exact description, same car, same pump, same guy.
3. Cry Me A River
I worked at a 7/11. While on the job one night, I kept hearing what sounded like a little girl crying, but the store was completely empty. Whenever I’d go to the area where I thought it was coming from, I’d hear it coming from somewhere else. I never managed to figure out what was causing the sound. I hope somebody was messing with me, but I’m not sure…
4. Baby You Can Drive My Car
I work the front gate at a military installation. The night shift is super dull and quiet where I’m based. For a while, I noticed this dark green old Ford Bronco that would roll up. When I would stand outside the gate shack, the car would do a 180 and leave. This happened about two or three times until I finally caught the license plate before it turned.
I ran the numbers to my supervisor. He asked me if I was sure about the plate I had seen. I said I was 100% certain. His face went bone white. He tells me it couldn't be, because the numbers led to a vehicle crash report that involved THE EXACT SAME VEHICLE and plate number in which the driver had lost his life and the vehicle had been totaled. That incident alone made me want to switch to the day shift.
5. Slam Dunk
I work security at a hotel. Every night, I do rounds which include checking doors, bathrooms, and each floor. About a year ago, I was doing my walkthrough and got to the women's restroom. I knocked to make sure it was empty and then I walked in. No one was there, yet I distinctly heard a stall door open and shut while I was inside.
I called out to make sure the room was as empty as it looked. Nothing. I took a few more steps, then heard a toilet lid slam down. I peered under the stalls, but no one was there. Creeped out, I kept on walking. I heard the stall door open and shut two more times before I finally left the room. I have no idea how to explain this experience.
6. Running Interference
I work in a machine shop from 4 PM till about 3 AM every night. I constantly see these mysterious, dark figures walking around in the distance, even though it's a brand new building and has no folklore about why it should be haunted. And every time I see one of these figures, there is some kind of interference on my benchtop radio.
7. Look At Those Moves!
During my night shift as a nurse, we once had a deceased patient ready for organ harvest. It was me and one other nurse in the room. At one point, my colleague just suddenly froze and looked horrified. I asked if there was something wrong and she said, "I know that this is impossible, but he just moved." Pretty scary stuff...
8. Telephone Tag
I worked the night shift at a hotel. I always had one room on the fourth floor that would repeatedly call down all night long and not say anything. I would frequently have to send security up, who would tell me that no one was in the room. We called the phone company, but no issue was ever found. Never anyone on the other end of the call. Spooky.
9. Just Passing Through
This is a story that my wife likes to tell. She is a nurse and, for a couple of years, she was working the night shift in a Palliative Care Unit, which is the comfort care and end of life unit. Patients in that unit are expected to pass, or to be sent home or to a care facility to pass. Anyways, those rooms also had a radio in them.
According to her, it happened a few times that a radio suddenly turned on by itself, and then within an hour or so a patient would pass. One rather busy night, the radio turned on and my wife went into the room. She stared into the darkness and said "Cut that out! I don't have time for this stuff!" and the radio suddenly snapped off.
No patient passed during the rest of her shift, but one passed shortly after she clocked out.
10. The Breakfast Special
I used to work at IHOP. A cook before my time got shot and passed during a robbery. I would always hear someone in the kitchen when no one was there. There would be spatulas clanking and other utensils making noise. Once, I saw a dark figure seated in the back of the room. I figured it was the cook, and thought nothing of it.
But when I went outside to the front of the restaurant, the cook was sitting out there smoking. We rushed back inside, and the figure was gone…
11. Making Small Talk
I don’t inherently believe in ghosts, but if I had a paranormal story it would be this one. I work in one of the major ERs in my city. One of my many tasks is postmortem care on patients who pass in our care. One night at around 2 AM, I was called to the room of an older patient who was palliative and had just passed. The family members had finished their goodbyes.
So, I went in to start providing care. This usually means removing any tubes, wires, and monitors from the patient, giving them a bed bath, removing any valuables from the body to give to the family, putting them in a gown and shroud, etc. I like to talk to my patients even if they have passed, as it puts me at ease and shows respect to them.
While I was proceeding with the bed bath of this particular patient, out of nowhere, I felt like I was being watched and I began to feel a strange sensation. It was a hand on my shoulder, and then I heard a man's voice telling me “Thank you.” The hand remained for a moment while I stood there frozen. Then, all of the feelings stopped and the room felt empty.
There were no other nurses or staff in the area at the time, just me. I like to believe that the patient I was providing care for was thankful for my explanations and enjoyed me continuing to talk to them through their care.
12. Smoke Show
Once, I worked security for an event at the Queen Mary. I've heard the stories but I didn't believe them...until this one night. My area was empty and my shift wouldn't be over for another two hours. It was dark and cold, and there was nobody around. Everyone was busy dancing and enjoying the music in the main hall. All of a sudden, a man in a suit started walking toward me, smoking a cigar.
When he approached me, I told him this area did not allow smoking. But I didn't smell anything. When he walked past me, I suddenly felt really cold. He continued down the corridor and I just kind of shrugged. When I looked back, he was gone. He had vanished completely. There was still more than twenty feet for him to clear, and he definitely didn't sprint the rest of the way…
13. Dog Days
I was stationed in Germany some year ago and was put on night duty. At about 2 in the morning, a little dog came into the building and wandered right by me through the entrance. I followed him down the hall to try and get him out, but he just vanished into thin air when I was about six feet away. It was truly an unbelievable sight. Ten out of ten would hallucinate again.
14. Time To Face The Music
I worked at a movie theater running the booths upstairs. The projectors are upstairs in a long corridor. At night, after the last showing in each theater, you shut off the lights to that theater and the small one over the projector itself. Then, you cover the platters to protect from dust. It’s not so bad doing the first few, because at least the lights of nearby projectors are still on.
But as you shut each light off one by one, the corridor gets darker and darker and that little viewing window into each individual theater becomes pitch black. That dull, steady whirring noise you’ve tuned out all night is gone and is now replaced by absolute silence. There’s hardly any light left anymore. Just the lights at the end of each corridor where you sit in between each start time.
What I’m trying to say is that this job is spooky enough, but this one particular night was especially eerie. I’m throwing the covers over one of the platters and I casually glance up into the viewing theater window across the way. And there’s a face staring back at me. It’s a little boy's face and it’s sheet white.
I know what I saw and I did not imagine it. I’m sure there’s probably some kind of scientific or logical explanation for it and there’s nothing supernatural about it, but there was a face there and it scared the absolute heck out of me. It made an already unsettling environment that much more terrifying for the rest of the time that I worked there.
15. Ladies’ Night
I work at a grocery store and there is one part of the store that I refuse to go near past 11:00 at night. Right as we're closing, when there's nobody in the store, I always see what appears to be a woman standing behind the bars of the pharmacy area. Only the head pharmacist has the keys to that area. It's extremely creepy. That whole area has creepy vibes. And two of my managers have told me that they've also seen the same woman…
16. Holding Down The Fort
I was on night watch in the barracks at Ft. Gordon. So many things happened there in three different rooms that I could write a book. It completely changed my belief in paranormal activity. This one took place in the middle of the night. I'm sitting by the stairwell on the second floor when I suddenly hear someone shouting in a room down a hallway.
I'm on duty, so I run to the room and swing open the door expecting to see some fighting. There are several people in this room pointing up to the ceiling next to a wall and telling me, "They're doing it again!" I ask them to explain and they tell me that ever since they moved into that room, someone has been lifting up the ceiling tiles and making funny faces at them at night.
The latrine is on the other side of the wall, so I go over to see if anyone is there that shouldn't be. There isn't. So I climb onto a desk in the room to lift up the ceiling tiles and see if they're still hiding up there. When I lift up the ceiling tiles, all I see is a cinder block wall that goes all the way to the floor above.
There's only about an inch between the back of the ceiling tile and the wall. No way a face was there. No person could have been there, and they definitely could not have escaped if they somehow did manage to get in. Two of the soldiers freaked out, ran out of the room, and slept in the hallway. This was only the first of many such incidents during my time there.
17. Some Shadowy Characters
I was a custodian on the night shift in the Intensive Care Unit at a local hospital. It was just two nurses and myself on this shift and things were pretty empty and uneventful most of the time. However, one time I was cleaning some empty rooms during this shift. Every minute or so, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the shadows start to move. It was a pretty disorienting thing to witness.
18. Curtain Call
I work as a nurse on the night shift at my local hospital. The creepiest thing that I have ever experienced on this job was the time when a patient buzzed and asked me to "ask the person behind the curtain to go away." The rooms were completely dark and everyone was in their beds at this time. I have no idea who or what she could have been seeing...
19. A Game Of Hide And Ghost Seek
I'm a dedicated night shift nurse. Several years ago, the unit that I worked on was kinda off on its own in the oldest part of a 100+ year old hospital. During the basic repairs, they found some mould and, according to the rumors, asbestos in the walls. So, my unit got temporarily shut down for a couple months so they could complete the necessary repairs.
They kept the nurses assigned to wherever they could put them during that period. The result was that we were all occasionally really, really bored thanks to acting as clerks or doing random odd jobs that we were not used to. A co-worker and friend of mine at the time was really into ghost hunting, to the point where she had actually bought a decent-quality “ghost hunting kit.”
Thanks to our not exactly being needed on the job for a while, we had ample time to wander the spookier corners of the hospital overnight. We didn't find a whole lot. Just the occasional random spike or whatever that could all be easily explained away. Little did we know the direction that this little hobby was about to lead us down…
After a couple of weeks, they took down the strict construction isolation stuff for our unit and we decided to check out some of our supposedly haunted rooms. The place was extremely eerie. They had all the utilities shut off and it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Remember, this wing was separated from the rest of the hospital.
We went into one of the rooms where a lot of passings had occurred over the years, thanks to its being close to the nurse's station where we could put more critical patients. We set up a voice recorder, thermometer, and a ghost detector from my friend’s kit. Then, we started to ask "any present spirits" a series of questions.
Standard stuff like if they had passed in the room, etc. Within a few minutes of us asking random questions, the temperature in the room had noticeably dropped a couple of degrees. The thermometer confirmed this. Then, the ghost detector started going off in short little bursts. Right as I asked the question "Are you angry that you passed here?" the detector squealed like a stuck pig.
We decided to get the heck out of there. The next morning, we went to my place to play the audio recording through my computer. Everything was on it. You could hear our questions and the detector’s noises. Right as I asked my last question of the night, there was this sound that coincided with the squealing sound that we had heard in the room. I'll never forget it for the rest of my life.
It was this low, drawn out moaning sound that sounded like an enhanced version of a sick person moaning. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, along with the worst case of goosebumps I have ever experienced. I've seen a lot of weird stuff in my time as a nurse. I'm also a firm skeptic and love my peer reviewed evidence.
But I can't quite believe that the recorded noise, temperature drop, and detector readings were all just something normal that happened in an isolated unit of the hospital with all the utilities shut off.
20. They’re Heeere!
I work on a boys’ unit at a mental hospital. Recently, my patients have been complaining about seeing ghosts in their rooms at night. They claim that they’ve seen things randomly fly off the walls, including coloring pages and art they’ve taped up. They say that doors open and close by themselves, and a few patients have claimed to see full body apparitions.
Given their age and psych status, I’d usually take their stories with a grain of salt, but I actually sort of believe them. The hospital opened as an asylum in the mid-1800’s, and patients have definitely passed here. Much of the original building is still used, including my unit. And, honestly, when I walk around the halls at night, hours after the patients have fallen asleep, it legitimately does feel like someone is always watching me.
I think it's just a matter of time until I have my own ghostly encounter…
21. The Early Morning Train
My first overnight job was as a train dispatcher in Vermont. The center was in a train station that was about 100 years old. Within my first week of working there, I saw what appeared to be a person standing in front of the restrooms at like 4 AM. An average-looking guy in his 40's, dressed in semi-formal attire. By the time I tried to walk over and ask him what he was doing there, he was gone.
22. Nothing To See Here
I used to intern in a recording studio in New York City years ago where it was technically open 24/7, meaning there was always someone there whether clients were in or not. Anyway, it was on an upper floor of a building and, due to the amount of expensive equipment inside, you could not access that floor by elevator without someone letting you up.
The button for that floor was physically locked so that you couldn't press it from inside the elevator. There was a camera at the front entrance downstairs, another at the elevator entrance, and one more inside the elevator, all of which could be viewed from the front desk of the studio. So when people arrived, it was a whole ordeal in order to let them in.
You would first buzz them in, then wait until you saw them enter the elevator, and then you would have to push the button on their behalf for the studio floor to bring the elevator up. One of the nights I was working the overnight shift, it was just me and another dude there doing some cleaning and maintenance. Suddenly, things took a very weird twist.
At about 3 in the morning, we hear the elevator start running. The whole building is all offices, so really there is nobody in the building past 5 or 6 PM besides us. We thought this was a bit strange. The other guy looks at the cameras and there's nothing at all to be seen. No one appeared to be inside the elevator either.
So, although it's weird, we just figure that someone must still be in the building and must have called it from a different floor. It made sense until, all of a sudden, we see it stop at our floor and we hear the door ding. We're both in the lobby about fifteen feet away from the elevator, and we give each other the hardest confused stare ever.
I can't explain how much I didn't want those doors to open. Completely motionless, we stare like deer in headlights at the doors as they open. Nobody is there when they open. As far as we can tell, no one had pushed the button. Nothing. We both keep staring completely still and silent, and it becomes really freaking creepy as time goes on and the doors don't shut.
Normally, these doors shut after just a few seconds, as they operate on a motion sensor. It was as if something was standing in the doorway and blocking the sensor. We stared at it for a good twenty to thirty seconds or so before they finally closed and the elevator returned back to the lobby. We stared for a bit longer before simultaneously looking at each other and saying "What the heck dude!?"
The next day, we asked a couple of the other guys about it and one of the guys said the same thing had recently happened to him in the middle of the night when he was by himself. He said he almost pooped himself. Maybe there's a logical explanation for it, but it was really darn freaky since the place was generally kinda creepy at night and there had been some other weird things going on too.
23. The Hot Seat
A patient in one of our hospital rooms kept talking about spirits and demons. She was discharged a week later. Then, the next guy who was admitted to that same bed told me he was seeing spirits, including a big black dog that was lying next to the bed. It just so happens that my dog looked exactly like that before it passed a few years ago. That freaked me out beyond words…
24. What The Cluck?
I used to work the early shift making bagels at three in the morning. I would sometimes see things in the reflection of my oven that appeared to be running around behind me. They looked like chickens. I told a coworker about it and he gasped. He took me in the back where we stored the flour, and he pointed up at the ceiling.
It was completely crusted with some dark-brown fuzzy-looking substance. He told me that the building we were in was once a chicken processing plant. Many years ago, thousands of chickens had been slaughtered right in that exact spot. The stuff on the ceiling was old blood and feathers. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
25. There’s No Place Like Home
I don't believe in paranormal activity as I’ve personally never witnessed anything that I can't explain through other more likely events. However, in the house I grew up in, my sister always said there was a ghost. She usually described him as an elderly old man in a flat cap who was never frightening or aggressive. He was apparently just a friendly old man.
When we moved out, the person who we sold the house to was a personal friend of my mother’s who planned to renovate the house and sell it. We found out that one of the younger apprentices who was working on the house claimed to have passed an elderly old man on the stairs a couple of times while he was doing his work.
One time, as he passed the guy, he realized that he had never spoken to him and didn’t know who he was. He had always just assumed that he was part of the renovation team. He was so, so wrong. The guy turned around to start a conversation with the fellow, only to discover that he had completely vanished. When he asked one of the senior work men about it, he was told that no one on the team fit that description.
The apprentice ran out of the house as fast as he could and refused to ever enter it again. We found out when he gave a proper description of the man that he was exactly the same as my sister used to describe. Very strange indeed and not something that I can easily explain away. Who knows what the true explanation could be...
26. The Name Game
This happened when I was still an intern in a public hospital. It was around 2 or 3 AM. My two groupmates and I had just finished our duties and were getting ready to leave for the night. We were going down the ramp, passing the surgery ward, when suddenly someone shouted out my name. I looked around but there was no one in sight.
My two friends also heard it, but didn't see anyone either. The creepiest part is that I was never close to anyone in the hospital outside of the laboratory, so nobody in that whole area should have even known my name. We spent the rest of the night talking about what had just happened and whether or not we imagined it. The consensus was that it really happened.
27. The Long And Winding Road
I once had a new job at a kitchen in the next county over. It was kind of a long drive. I heard the crew discussing routes and, one night, I decided to take what I thought was the road they were all talking about taking. Big mistake. I ended up getting chased around by some weird-looking mountain man who came out of nowhere and followed me down the entire way until I got back onto the main road.
28. Out To Lunch
I used to work at a 24 hour Subway sandwich shop. I know, great start to a paranormal experience story, huh? Well, one day, I was doing the dishes and my coworker was cleaning the toaster oven and bread oven. Out of nowhere, around 3:30 AM, I heard our door chime go off. Out of habit, I say "Welcome to Subway" as I turn the corner.
But here's the thing: Nobody was there. And my coworker was gone. I thought, "Okay, maybe he hopped the counter and went for a smoke outside," as he did from time to time. Heading back to the sink to finish the dishes, I hear the door chime again. Nobody. I checked the bathrooms. Nobody. What the heck!! I ignore the dishes and stand at the front counter, eyeing the doors.
A couple minutes later, my coworker comes through the back door where we get our deliveries. "Where'd you go?" I ask him, turning towards the back door area. "To take out the trash," he replies. Just then, the door chime goes again. He does the same thing as me: "Welcome to Subway!" He then turns the corner and we both start to freak out.
This time, the door was wide open. Our doors are weighted so that they'll close on their own right away if you let go of them. Nevertheless, the door stayed open for a couple minutes as we just stood there, dumbfounded, and stared at it in amazement and bewilderment. Then, at a certain point, it just suddenly slammed shut.
This was not a windy night, and our doors wouldn't even stay open like that on the windiest of days. I have no idea what caused this, or why it happened on that particular night, but eventually I got a different job and I was told that it never happened again. I told my boss about the incident and we all looked at the security camera footage. Nobody could explain it.
Wikimedia Commons, Corey Coyle
29. Right On Time
While working at a psych ward, every morning at about 2 AM there would be the sound of someone running down the main service hallway, followed by the sound of a door slamming. One time, I purposely kept a close eye on the area to get to the bottom of what was really going on. The moment I got distracted for a brief few seconds, the footsteps immediately began.
I searched all over the area to find the source of the noises, but there was nothing to be found. According to one of the managers, this had been going on for several years. Always at the exact same time every morning. Most employees believed it was the ghost of one of the deceased clients. Another time, all the battery powered wall clocks in the unit spun around a few times simultaneously.
That was super freaky and everyone in the area screamed.
30. Weird Science
A lab building where I once worked was the site of a murder-suicide which happened while I was there. It was awful and sad. We didn’t have “shifts” per se, but I had to work late one night autoclaving equipment for the next day’s experiment. The autoclave room is right next to the lab where the event took place. I hadn’t seen anyone else in the building...yet.
After I started the load, I was about to leave the room when I heard a crash outside. I immediately opened the door and saw that all the contents of a table in the hallway had been pushed to the floor. Water bottles, a packet of paper, pens, etc. Since I was right by the door at the time, I would have seen or heard someone running away.
It was against protocol to leave things in the autoclave machine overnight, so I was required to stay there for another hour and a half to wait until I could take them all out. But nothing else happened during that time. I left the stuff on the floor, though. Didn’t want a repeat of that! Definitely the spookiest thing that happened to me on that job…
31. The Voice Of Reason
I work at a Walmart. When I started working apparel on the night shift, the others in that department started trying to spook me with tales about it being haunted and yadda yadda yadda. I didn't really care. I grew up in a haunted house, so ghost stories didn't bother me. And then we actually experienced something. I was like "Huh, neat."
But one of the ones who'd been trying to spook me freaked right the heck out. It was hilarious. She and I had been standing about five or six feet apart, talking to each other. The store had closed at midnight and we were the only ones in apparel. Right between us, both of us heard a female voice as clear as day. I only heard the voice, but no words.
My coworker said she heard words, but she was so freaked out she never told me what she heard exactly.
32. Statue Of Limitations
I work the night shift in a hotel. It's a pretty old building, so lots of weird stuff happens from time to time. What stands out in particular is that there is a very creepy statue, which one night was gone. I asked the morning receptionist why they had removed it, and she seemed confused. We checked and it was there again. I swear it was gone during the night. It's a very creepy statue to begin with, too…
33. Open Sesame
My friend used to work the night shift in a mystery house. He told me that one night while they were closing down, his coworker was locking up and closing all the doors down this long hallway. Well, after they both finished, they turned around and all the doors were suddenly open again. He told me his coworker straight up started screaming at the top of her lungs and freaking out. She quit the next day.
34. Elementary, My Dear Watson
A friend used to work as a night custodian for an elementary school. The school building was rather old. I think it was built in the 40s. He was the third shift guy, so he took over from the second shift guy at like 9 PM. He was basically there to mop the floors and make sure that no one broke in. If he got all of his stuff done, he was pretty much free to do whatever he wanted.
Often, after he finished doing his work, he'd go hang out in an office because it had a small TV to watch. He said things started off innocently enough. Lights turning on in classrooms where he knew they had been off previously, cabinets and doors opening and closing on their own. He didn't pay much attention to it at first. But over time, things became stranger and stranger.
Doors no longer just quietly creaked closed on their own, they now slammed shut. He heard noises like children playing, and sometimes screaming. He'd find trash cans turned upside down. He'd have things thrown at him, but he would be clearly alone in the room, with nowhere for someone to hide or throw things from.
He contemplated quitting but he was making good money for being nearly fresh out of high school, and he needed the money for family stuff. So, he stuck with it. He'd come in, rush through his duties for the night as quickly as he could, and then go and sit in the office where he'd watch TV as loudly as he could while pretending that nothing was out of the ordinary.
He'd sit there until the morning crew came in at 6 AM. He didn't want to admit that he was scared of being inside that school by himself at night, so he tried to tough it out and made a lot of excuses to try and explain what was going on. But the last straw finally came. One night, he was sitting in the office watching TV and felt someone grab the chair from behind and flip him over backward.
There was clearly no one in the room and no way for anyone to get into the room without him seeing them. He picked up the office phone and called his boss at home in the middle of the night. He said he was quitting and that he'd come back in the morning to turn his keys in. He was definitely a believer in the paranormal after that experience.
He said that it wasn't until many years later that he found out from someone who had researched the history of the school that there used to be a pool inside the building. A number of kids had drowned in that pool back in the early years of the school’s existence. Decades later, the administration decided to finally expand the building and fill the pool with concrete to expand over top of it.
35. What’s Cooking?
My aunt was cooking for an event in a friend’s kitchen late one evening. All of a sudden, she passed out. When she came back awake, she claimed that she had seen two shadows on the ground talking to each other and that it had terrified her. She did not understand what they were saying, but she was baffled as to how they could have been talking.
36. Think Of The Children
I was working at an assisted living facility on the dementia unit. The place was originally a mansion that had burnt down many years ago. When it burnt down, two children and their mother had perished. When I was working there, the elderly patients were all towards the end of the road between our world and the spirit world.
During my night shift, one resident came out of her room freaking out. I'll never forget the terror in her eyes. She said there were two young children that were looking for their mother. I fully believed her and told her I would try to help them. I got her tucked in and calmed down. When I got back to my office, another resident came by and told me that some strange lady was walking around calling for her children.
I was extremely creeped out, and I spent the rest of the night staying as close to my coworker as possible.
37. Putting On Quite The Show
I used to be a manager at a local movie theater and we had some spookery afoot. The theater was relatively new, as was the road it was on. The area was developed in the late nineties but, before the area was developed, it had been farmland. The street that held the theater and a bunch of other buildings was exactly where an old farmhouse had once stood.
Sadly, that old farmhouse had been very much like something out of a horror movie. The farm had been home to a very brutal man. He had taken the lives of his whole family and then his own. So I started working at the theater in 2007 and, immediately, every single employee affirmed that 1. The theater was haunted, 2. There were multiple ghosts living on site, and 3. They were so prevalent that you would get used to them very quickly. I soon found out that all the stories were true.
Theater 12 was the most haunted place in the building. It was a benevolent haunting. It never seemed malicious, but it was certainly there. A girl lost her life there during the second year of the theater being open. She fell from the row of seats above the ramp all the way down into the theater and landed right on her head.
She was playful and, once you accepted that there was a ghost in the room, it didn’t really bother you. She would knock armchairs down. Ushers had to always walk through the aisles and put them all back up. She would also open and close doors randomly. The first time I really accepted she was there involved those darn armchairs.
I had just gone and put them all up when one fell. I put it back up and the armchair next to it immediately fell. And then the whole row fell. Scary stuff. But once you figured it was just a kid playing, it was somehow less scary. She’d also listen. If you told her that you were scared, she would stop. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced.
The upstairs was haunted by a man. Nobody knew who he was, but everyone thought it might be the dad who had done away with his family. All I know is that this one was angry. The girl was playful and you never felt scared when her things were happening. But the one upstairs slammed doors, held doors closed when you were trying to leave, and constantly turned lights on and off.
The lights were the worst part. The upstairs booth was one long room with all of the projectors, and the light switches were on opposite ends of the room. So, when they went out, you had a 30ish second walk to turn them back on. You could just feel someone there with you and it was the feeling of being in a room with someone that is very angry with you but not saying anything.
People said they saw things fly across the room or off of desks from time to time. I never saw that, but the lights and the doors were enough for me!
38. Into The Woods
I was visiting a supposed murder site in some woods in Colorado with a friend of mine. We were there for all of five minutes before my friend stopped me short and said a loud voice: "There are four shadow people moving towards us." I looked to the right of us, the only side that had any sort of light. I then watched as a shadow jumped across the light into a bush.
It then pulled itself out of the bush and began to jerkily stagger towards us. It straight up looked like something out of a cheesy music video. It was dark, stooped over, and solid black with zero discernible features aside from a kind of lumpy humanesque shape. All it did was jump around erratically for a few minutes before disappearing.
39. Sounding The Alarm
I did security on night shift for three months. One of the accounts was an old building that got renovated into an assisted living facility after being vacant for so many years. Everyone in town swore it was haunted, but no one could actually say yes or no. The doors were also alarmed, so it would call out over the radio which ground floor door was being opened.
One night, I had just finished calling in to base that my rounds were good, when suddenly the alarm for one of the doors went off. The nurse and myself got to the door within 30 seconds and it was not opened. It was still locked. No one was outside. We shut the alarm off and I called it in. Both of us were extremely confused.
We did a full top to bottom sweep and room count. All residents and staff were fully accounted for. Base called in to make sure we were clear. We said we were, since the door was closed and locked as it should have been. But we still had no way to explain what had happened. You literally had to unlock the door and open it at least a full foot to even trigger the alarm…
40. Blast From The Past
I used to work as a night shift security guard at a hospital in Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada. This particular hospital was split into two halves. There was the “old hospital,” built in the late 1800’s, and the “new hospital,” built more recently. One night, I was doing my rounds when I decided to walk down this long corridor next to the main entrance of the old hospital.
As I rounded the corner to walk down the corridor, I saw a woman standing at the end of the hallway. She was wearing a long blue button up coat, black shoes, and some kind of winged bowler hat. She honestly scared the heck out of me, so I closed my eyes and looked away for a moment. When I turned back, she was gone.
A few days later, I was walking down the entrance hallway of the new hospital and stopped to look at some old photos hanging on the wall. Immediately, I felt my blood run cold. I see a picture from the opening of the original wing and notice the same woman from the night before standing in the middle of all the nurses dressed in white. She was a head nurse or something like that back in the 19th century.
The whole experience definitely sent a big shiver down my spine.
41. You Meddling Kids!
A patient once asked me to hide her cinnamon roll because “the kids” kept taking her things and keeping her up all night. I had no idea what kids she meant. Then, a month later, I spot a group of kids running around near her room. When I go to chase after them, they suddenly disappear. I left that job terrified and believing that the building was haunted.
42. Quit Stalling
I was a manager at a warehouse that opened very early in the morning. No one else was there yet when I arrived each day, and it was always still dark out. We had a motion sensitive alarm that I had to disable when I opened up in the morning. I always locked the door behind me. Well, this one time I went to use the washroom right after arriving.
While I'm in the stall, I suddenly hear the front door open. I then hear footsteps coming straight towards the bathroom. I then hear the stall next to me open and close. I see no feet present in the stall next to me. When I finished, I looked around and didn’t see anyone else in the building. I stayed in the break room with the door locked until my employees finally arrived for work.
43. Couch Potato
I work in a building with multiple offices and we're the only ones in at night. Sometimes, I'll go and sit in a hall outside of my office just to get away from the place. Sensor lights always turn on and I always hear footsteps on the stairs in front of the couch in the hallway. I always feel like I'm being watched in the place.
I don't believe in ghosts and all that, but it's still kinda creepy to experience firsthand.
44. When A Bill Becomes A Law
I was firmly against the idea of paranormal activity prior to working in an old folks home. But working there at night, you always felt watched. Always. Even when you're not in view of the camera. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Several times while I was working, things would fly off the walls completely unprovoked. I have so many examples.
I’m talking hand sanitizer containers that flew fifteen feet from the walls they were on, cups that were stationary on the counter and all of a sudden flew across the room, and clipboards that just happened to all fall off the walls at once, even though they were across the room from each other. No one has ever been able to explain this stuff.
But nothing is as unsettling as the story of “Bill” in 209. While someone was visiting, they stayed in Room 209. The visitor came downstairs, complained that a man named Bill had come into his room while he was in the shower, and said “Don’t worry, it’s just Bill!” He demanded to know who Bill was. We explained that there was no one who lived or worked there named Bill.
A couple days later, the same visitor was cleaning out records for the care center. As they were doing so, they found that a resident named Bill had lived in Room 209. As they were telling us about this, we suddenly heard a knock on the window and turned back to look at it. As we did so, clipboards and bulletin boards flew off the wall on the opposite wall.
We’ve decided that Bill is friendly, but likes attention. He’s cool.
PxHere
45. Chair Of The Bored
A few years ago, I was working the night shift at a casino. At 4:00 in the morning, when the casino was already closed, we found one of the slot chairs lying on the ground. These chairs are quite stable and heavy to accommodate so many people sitting in them all day. When we looked at the surveillance videos, we saw that the chair had just slowly leaned back on its own and then fell to the ground.
None of its legs or parts were broken, and we couldn't find any damage. That was the talk of the casino for a while!
46. Hold The Door!
In college, I worked a night shift from 12 AM to 8 AM. In the middle of it, I would often take a break to run home and eat. I lived on the top floor of an eleven story high rise at that time. The building was built in the early 1920's and had a reputation for being haunted. Whenever I had ghostly run-ins during my break, they were always the same.
I would leave my apartment on the eleventh floor and hit the lobby floor button. Along the way, the elevator would stop at the seventh floor. When the doors opened on the seventh floor, no one would be there. Once the doors closed, instead of opening at the lobby, the elevator would drop down to the basement level which required key access.
When the doors opened in the basement, they would reveal a long dark hallway with dim green lights at the other end of the hall. The energy would feel completely off and I would clench my eyes shut until the doors closed and the elevator took me back up to the lobby. After looking into the history of the building I found several accounts of similar hauntings. They all stemmed from one terrifying event.
Apparently, in the early history of the building, several workers were found deceased in the basement one night and no one knows who they were or how they got there. This made me start to think that perhaps there actually was someone or something entering the elevator on floor seven and traveling down to the basement late at night.
47. The Lady In White
My parents are nurses who work night shifts at their hospitals. Apparently, people can sometimes see dark shadows just sitting in empty chairs in empty rooms. Back when they lived in Singapore, there was apparently this lady dressed in full white who would always be spotted wandering the hospital corridors at the place they used to work.
48. Whistling Dixie
I used to work as a nighttime security guard. One night, I was getting ready to do the rounds. It was roughly around 3:15 AM. I was whistling the Arthur theme song since it was stuck in my head. It was totally quiet except for some crickets. As I open the door to the patrol car, still whistling, I hear a whistle coming from off in the bushes.
It was the same tune that I had been humming. In the same type of distinctive, quiet whistle that I do. I immediately stopped in my tracks. I assumed it was just an echo, so I stopped whistling. But the whistling from the bush kept going on. I jumped into the car and booked it. I came back about twenty minutes later to try and get to the bottom of what had just happened.
I was super careful, nervous, and paranoid when I got back. I searched everywhere around that bush but I never saw anyone or anything. I never heard the whistling sound again. I have no idea what could have caused it and when I was unable to find any logical explanation, I became even more spooked out than I was before…
49. History Repeats Itself
I worked in a mine in northern Ontario. Someone lost their life on the 4200 level a couple years prior to my incident. It was a normal day underground like any other. We were rehabbing an old working tunnel that had collapsed. 4200 level was big. The drifts were 6×6 feet, but they go on for many kilometers in every direction.
It was about midnight when we saw the mine rescue team with security rushing down the drift. Naturally, we dropped what we were doing and followed to see if we could help. We arrived to see a guy who was as pale as a ghost. He didn't look hurt, but he was shaking uncontrollably. Our rescue team approached him and he wouldn't have it.
He would scream when they tried to get near him. And this wasn't a normal scream. It was terrifying hearing these screams. It sounded like a person totally consumed with fear. It had a tone to it that you wouldn't imagine could have come from a person. Eventually, he stopped screaming and just sat there silently, awake but unresponsive to anything we were saying.
By now, it was 3:30 AM and our shift was coming to an end. But we couldn't just leave him down there. We managed to get him on a stretcher that we could carry out. On our way out, he kept saying "the devil is on 42." Over and over again. About two years later, another incident report was read to us. It described the exact same thing taking place in exactly the same spot, but with a different person.
I don't believe they saw the devil, but it is always in the back of my mind when I'm on 42.
50. Quite The Sight To Wake Up To...
I worked the night shift at a hotel back in the day. I also had a day job and the manager was cool. He said I could sleep on the job as long as I woke up if someone needed something. One night, I woke up and saw a silhouette of a man staring at me through the windows of the door to the courtyard. He was really tall and was wearing a black trench coat and hat.
I jumped up from the couch, put down the remote I had fallen asleep with in my hand, and rushed to the door to see what he needed. He was gone. And there was no sign of him anywhere in the courtyard. There were only two long, straight paths that led away from the door. He couldn't even have ran away that fast. I forget about it and continue my night.
But I'll never forget what happened three weeks later. My co-worker was telling me about an "evil spirit" that lives in one of the rooms. He started describing a tall, shadowy guy. I cut him off and say "Like 6 or 7 feet tall? Black coat and hat?" He turns white and stares at me. "You've seen it too?!" I tell him what happened. And that innocent incident all of a sudden got super creepy.
Sources: Reddit,
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