Patricia Grisafi
Ah, the night shift. It’s the stuff of legend, the time when strange, creepy things tend to happen.
Sometimes, working the night shift can feel like a horror movie—and on Reddit, folks are gathering to share their nightmarish experiences working in the middle of the night.
Whether encountering outrageous people, hearing weird noises, or finding themselves in scary situations, people who work the night shift definitely have interesting stories to tell.
1.
“Many many years ago, I worked at a regional radio station in the middle of fucking nowhere, Australia. I was the overnight operator – keep the overnight playlist running, set up for the morning, do all the manual checks for the next day, and jump on the desk if anything funky happens. I spent a lot of time sitting in what was essentially a tin shed in the middle of a paddock, with my dog, shoes off, listening to 50s & 60s music and doing crossword puzzles. Except one night when the roo shooters came through. They spooked the kangaroos in the paddock, and one of them jumped head-first through our office window. So there’s me – barefoot and half asleep, when this 6’ tall kangaroo smashes through the glass window. Blood and glass everywhere. My dog starts chasing the kangaroo, I’m chasing my dog. And the kangaroo bounds around the office, knocking shit off desks in the dark, bleeding everywhere. I ran and opened the studio bay doors, and my dog chased it outside. Where, I’m assuming, the poor thing (the kangaroo) was shot. Then I had to call my boss. Bandit (the dog) was fine! She lived a long and healthy life, occasionally being bullied by our pet cockatiel.” — FormalMango
2.
“I was closing supervisor at a grocery store and someone managed to s**t between the bathroom and the exit doors at 8:59 (we close at 9:00). You’d think ‘Oh there’s literal s**t on the floor surely people will walk around it’ no instead they continue to plow through it so now there’s shit on multiple grocery carts, the exit is scattered with feces, there’s s**t on people’s shoes undoubtedly, and there’s s**t in the parking lot. Luckily for me my less squeamish supervisor working with me that closing night volunteered to mop up the exit and bathroom which to our surprise had also been s**t on. For the record human s**t makes me immediately gag and vomit when I get a whiff of it so I ended up puking in the trash next to the s**t exit.” — LocusAintBad
3.
“Many years ago I briefly had a job that started at 3:30am. The job itself was very boring, but the commute was wild. The world is at its weirdest in the very early morning. Road hazards haven’t been called in yet, so one day I pulled off the freeway and discovered that the off ramp was completely flooded, deep enough that I have no idea how my car didn’t stall. But the most interesting discovery was that if law enforcement has to raid a home, they do it around 3 or 4 in the morning because that’s the best chance of everyone being peacefully asleep. One day I was nearly to work when I noticed something off ahead of me. I slowed down and came up to a massive police blockade, squad cars everywhere and absolutely crawling with heavily armed officers…but all in ABSOLUTE silence. They silently waved me down a side street. Just a creepy, unsettling experience.” — QueerTree
4.
“Used to work nights at a Home Depot. There was one time where for a week or so our store stayed open 24 hours. For the most part this wasn’t really a problem–typically nobody comes shopping for home improvement items at two in the morning (except that one couple that came looking for marble countertops at 1:30 in the morning and the woman was wearing a nice dress). I guess there was also that one young lady who came looking for a toilet paper roll holder a little after midnight (I had just gotten off my first break) and she was wearing jorts and a one of those white-with-black-belt stereotypical karate outfits. She was oddly specific about which roll holder to get, too. But the real story lies within the insulation. It was nearing three in the morning and me and another guy were stocking insulation, as well as fixing the bays and some such maintenance. A bunch of big R-30s had fallen in their bay and while I was sorting through them a f**kin hand came out of the mess and grabbed my arm. I lost my mind enough for not only the guy I was working with to freak out but also for my boss, who was across the store, to come check out the commotion. Turns out a homeless drunkard had come into the store at some point, and I can only assume before the night crew showed up, and had made a nest in the insulation where he fell asleep. The dude was in bad shape, too. Like, far-gone into whatever inebriation that we had to call the police to remove him. I was always a little more cautious around the insulation after at, for at least the time the store stayed open 24 hours.” — Nice_Bake
5.
“Worked a parking garage at the airport. Cleaning the top deck and noticed about a hundred ravens all over a truck with a tarp over the bed. Took my flashlight expecting something awful. Noticed as I got closer the smell and the ravens taking turns going in a hole they had torn open and popping out covered in gunk. some guy left a broke down beater with a couple animal carcasses in the back to rot. No heads. Checked the logs and the damn truck had been there since November and it was April, so everything was just thawing and breaking down.” — greatwood
6.
“I used to work night shift as a care aide in an old folks home. It was already creepy, the home was an old hospital that was converted. Some a**hole kept walking around the courtyard after dark dressed as the grim reaper knocking on doors. It was actually really scary, he ran off and the facility got a security guard for a few weeks.” — thegamblerx
7.
“I worked in a residential treatment center for teen girls. One girl with some severe trauma (rape, abuse) came sleep walking into the room screaming to please untie her while clawing at her wrists. She was begging me to help her because ‘he’s torturing me!’ I sat her down and pulled her bracelets and watch off. She went completely limp then got up and went back to bed. It freaked me out seeing the raw emotion of her trauma since she was always smiling and relatively calm during the day.” — ChumBucket311
8.
“Was running the register at 24 hr supermarket. Stock person comes running into produce carrying mop handle screaming ‘you mother f**ker.’ Out of sight, he keeps yelling ‘f**ker!’ and smacking handle at something, for like 5 min. I am ringing up customers, and freaking out because he was losing his mind, but I am not interested in getting involved in a murder..so I ignore it. Later I find out he was chasing a rat.” — conniption_fit
9.
“Was an orderly in a hospital. Two of us were sitting in the basement office adjacent to the morgue. A guy passed our office, looking at us a little shifty, came back again and asked if we had access to the morgue. We said yes, thinking he was doing a pickup for a funeral home, but that seemed strange given it was around 12:00-12:30 a.m. Nope. He wanted to pay us to let him in, and leave him alone with the bodies for an hour. We escorted him up To security. Apparently he had tried it in the past, as security knew him.” — odd-42
10.
“I worked in an emergency room. The worst night that comes to mind involves a patient that was bitten by a baby timber rattlesnake. He was bleeding out of every single orifice by the time he got to us. More blood than I’d ever seen before outside of a motorcycle vs 75-mph-headfirst-to-asphalt. I don’t remember how many doses of Crofab we gave him, but it was the hospital’s entire supply. But trying to get him stabilized, arranging the helicopter transport to a bigger and better equipped facility, all the blood, those weren’t the worst parts. The worst part was when the patient lost control of his bowels. I will never, ever, forget that smell. I spent the entire time standing by the door with a battery-powered fan and a handful of gauze pads saturated with cinnamon oil trying to reduce some of the smell. The doctor occasionally stuck her head out just so I could waft the cinnamon oil in her face. Yes, by some miracle, the patient did end up surviving, and as far as I know he made a full recovery. But the blood, the smell, and just the shock of it all. Yeah, never underestimate a baby timber rattlesnake.” — GrandAdmiralD
