Kate Hackett
I know, I know, I know.
“Kate, SPOOKY SEASON IS OVER. Give it a rest!”
Listen, my friends: spooky season ends when I say it ends and that is N E V E R. Lucky for me, u/Ambient_voice agrees and recently posted a question on AskReddit:
“Night shift workers, what’s the creepiest thing that’s happened?”
Turn off your lights and read through these truly terrifying tales.
1. Ten story drop
I was working in a 35 story high rise. I was returning some computer tapes like I did nightly. I was exhausted and I could barely stay awake. As I approached the elevator, I noticed the door was open. I was happy that I didn’t need to wait and started walking faster until I realized there was no elevator car present and it was a ten story drop.
2. Piano music
Used to clean a church alone late at night. There was a piano upstairs, which I thought was broken, which was why it was upstairs in the attic. One night I started hearing piano music from the attic, I immediately assumed someone was up there pranking me, so I went up and there was no one. When I turned around to walk away after realizing no one was there, I heard a loud bang behind this metal door which I assume was an attic closet. Never worked the night shift again. Asked the one other person that worked night shifts, she confirmed weird shit happening was normal.
3. Spooky alarm
Used to be Exec Director of a family science museum. We once hosted a human cadaver type exhibit (similar to Body Worlds)… Three times during the exhibit run, in the middle of the night, the alarm company calls me to say motion sensors are going off in that exhibit hall- but no exterior window or door sensors are tripped. Three times I had to get out of bed, drive to the museum, and walk the exhibit floor amongst the posed cadavers and specimens with a flashlight to confirm all was well. Never found anything amiss…
4. Still hangs around
I work in a prison. When I was new, I was working overtime one night in a housing unit that has seen a lot of death. It was well after midnight, and all of the offenders were supposed to be in their cells. Since this was a medium security prison, the offenders still had access to leave their cell to use the communal bathroom at night.
Well, I was going in for the 2am count. I watched an offender walk down the stairs from the 2nd level and into the bathroom. I stood at the entrance to the bathroom and yelled in to ask them what cell they were in so I could add an extra body to that cell for my count but got no answer. I then walked into the bathroom and searched everywhere but found absolutely nobody.
I told one of my coworkers about what happened, and the first thing they asked me was, “was he tall and skinny with long dreads?” And he had been! When I answered yes, I was told, “That’s Mr. Bones. He killed himself a few years ago but he still hangs around.”
I still get goosebumps thinking about it.
5. A child ran by
I was working at a middle school as a night shift custodian. I cleaned a long U shaped wing full of classrooms every weeknight. I’d already locked up one set of doors to the wing and was about to lock the ones at the other end of the U.
I made the full lap around the wing, and I’d been cleaning there all night alone, and came to the end of the hallway where the doors to the rest of the school were. When I shut the lights off the dark silhouette of what looked like a child ran from across the end of the hallway from left to right. There were doors down there, but I’d just locked them all up and no one was around.
I was so creeped out, I locked the doors connecting the wing to the rest of the school and ran to my car. I always felt like I was seeing things out of the corner of my eye working there at night, but that was the most visible, for sure thing I saw at that place.
6. Psychiatric nurse
I switched to night shifts at the start of the pandemic because there was a lot of overtime available. I’m a psychiatric nurse. I was called to cover another nurse at a very low maintenance place – an independent living facility, most of the people there didn’t have major issues and were over 50 so they’re usually asleep all night. Easy money.
At 11pm I was doing paperwork with an eye on the CCTV when a tall man in all black came across the monitor, he was very tall but had his head down. I asked him what he needs and he told me he was convinced he wasn’t safe and needed to go to an inpatient psych ward to escape the people who were after him. The next 2 hours I was on the phone trying to find out if anywhere would take him but there were no beds, he was coherent and basically didn’t pose enough of an urgent situation to warrant being sectioned. He saw that as the hospital not caring about his suffering and not believing he was genuinely ill, he hinted that I was colluding with them to get him killed, then he turned his head slowly to look me in the eye, and said if the threat to his own life wasn’t considered an emergency, “I bet they’d care if I stabbed someone else”.
7. Lock your doors!
I worked nights driving a taxicab and occasionally I’d post up someplace and take a nap waiting for a job. Was waiting at a hospital since you get good jobs sometimes, the hospital would give patients vouchers to go to another hospital or a shelter. I woke up and someone was sitting in the back, seems I’d forgotten to lock the doors. They admitted they’d been sitting for a few seconds but didn’t know what to do since I was napping. We had a laugh and I made $75 off that ride. Better believe I started locking my doors after that though.
8. Dead bodies
I’m going to go with the “creepiest” being discovering dead bodies (the first time). Two regulars ODed while hiding in my dumpster area. I called 911 and did what little first aid I knew, but the EMT said they’d likely been dead for hours judging by how cold they were. But I swear to god I thought I could feel a pulse and I clearly remember hearing a gurgling noise.
9. Out of nowhere
This happened when I worked in a Hotel right out of highschool. I did overnight in the laundry room, but I would help the front desk run invoices to the rooms sometimes. I was on the third floor at like 2am I think, when I bent down to slide the invoice under the door and a pen flew past my face and hit the door. I didn’t keep pens on me and I checked around the hallway but it was silent. You know hotel doors, they’re heavy and you can hear people open and close them, I am 100% positive I heard nothing. When I got downstairs I asked my coworker if they saw anything but they said they weren’t paying attention to the security screen. Really freaked me out. That was the only thing that happened in the 8 months I was there.
10. They killed the kids
Short version. I was locking up a big warehouse I worked at one night. I turned all the lights off as I went through each section so it was pitch black behind me. I was getting a really creepy feeling I was being watched. Like the hair on my arms was standing up. I finished up and was going out the last door to the outside and looked back one more time because I felt so uneasy. Sure enough I saw a shadow peek out at me behind a wall. I called the cops. They went in the building and ended up shooting the trespassers. It was 2 14 year old kids that had snuck in before I finished locking up. One of them died.
11. Spiders!
I worked for a moving company restocking the trucks based on supplies they would need that morning. It’s a shitty job. Never work for a moving company. Do not do it.
Anyways I’m stocking a truck pulled up to the dock when I realize my vision is getting fuzzy. I’m tired.. I rub my eyes. My forearm feels wet, but I figure it’s sweat and my vision clears. It happens again, I rub my my eyes and my forearm feels wet again. I look at my arm finally to see hundreds of crushed baby spiders.
My vision wasn’t fuzzy, baby spiders were crawling on my eyelashes. I was covered in baby spiders. I ran to the nearest water hose and got everything off. The next morning I had lots of tiny bites on my legs but otherwise nothing else.
12. Bowling
I used to work at a bowling alley, i had finished closing and I had just turned off all the lights and was about to leave. Suddenly one of the lanes turns on (the only way they turn on is a switch in the back) so I turned on the lane lights and started walking back to turn it off, I was just about to go behind the lanes past the curtain when it shut off again. We didn’t have cameras there but I really wish we did because my boss didn’t believe me.
13. Texas is terrifying
used to work out in the Texas desert in midland, technically goldsmith, but anyway I worked out in a warehouse where we shipped drilling motors and collars and other drilling accessories to rigs. Usually it was me and one other dude. Just to set the science, it’s a mile and a half down a desert dirt road to get the the warehouse that’s pretty dimly lit and we’d get there at about 7 in the evening. I’d gotten there around 7 and did the usual, paint the received tools, inventory, then go play Xbox till a night truck would come and I’d either load or unload it. Other dude, James well call him, was late all the time but he was the boss and I didn’t really mind the peace n quiet but never later than 8, so around 9:45 when he didn’t show up I tried to call him he’d gotten drunk n said he’d be in when he felt like it, so I just kept playing Xbox.
About 2 AM rolls around and I hear one of the side doors open and assumed it was either James, or a driver, but it was a side door that was all the way at the end of the warehouse. I looked out the office window and there was a dude who was not James, and not a driver I recognized. I asked from across the way if he was a driver and homie didn’t say a thing so I assumed it was someone messing with me. Dude looks at me and dead ass says “do you believe in Jesus, our lord and savior?” The only thing I could think was I guess I’m about to meet him. Thankfully this dude was harmless and just wanted $20. Told me about his heroin struggles and said he just needed $20 for a bus. I think about that night all the freakin time cause it could’ve easily been my last. He could’ve dumped me in the desert and it would’ve taken days for me to he found I know this because it happens all the time. Thankfully I’ve gotten away from the absolute worst part of Texas and have a much safer job
14. Jeeeeesus
I don’t do nights any more but for years I did nights in residential care facilities. One of the spookiest was in a sole charge dementia facility. 15 D3 residents and no one but me to keep an eye on them all.
Around 3am in the morning after doing an intentional round (where you check all the residents are safe and well) I hear the door bell ring.
I get a sudden wave of goosebumps because this is a secure facility and it’s the middle of the night.
I go and look put the window, there is no one there. I blow it off as being a hallucination.
10 mins later it rings again. I’m shitting myself. I go back to the window and check again. No one there but I look across the street and a strange car is parked there. I take a photo of it just in case and then I go back to my station where I’ve been playing a game of “match the card suits” with a delightful but very demented lady.
I sit down and she looks at me and says “what did the gentleman want, deary? He looked like he had a bad night and needs a cuppa” chills go down my spine but I brush it off because hallucinations are common with dementia and this lady is particularly prone to not being orientated to time and place.
The door bell rings again, less than 5 mins later and this time I am freaking the fuck out. Another of my residents is up and walking the hallway “painting” with a clean paintbrush to keep him occupied. I pass him on the way to the front window and he turns to me and says “don’t answer the door alone, he might hurt you” before carrying on painting.
I’m fucking shitting myself. I’m trying not to cry, I don’t know what to do. I’m a single 23 year old female in charge of 15 people with varying stages of dementia and the fucking doorbell keeps ringing in the middle of the night and it’s a weekend so my on-call won’t answer the phone, she never does on the weekends.
I look out the window and see the same car as before and as I’m looking around, I see a shadow move in front of the door and a person walks around the corner and then looks straight in the fucking window next to me. We make eye contact and I scream. My residents start freaking out, I’m freaking out and the guy just fucking bolts.
I call the police, they turn up. It’s chaos because I have 15 residents who have all been woken by the commotion and now have two police officers in their space, my on call isn’t answering her phone and I’m struggling to deal with the whole situation.
Eventually, after many cups of tea and milo and two lots of PRN meds for the more challenging residents, we’re mostly settled. It’s now 7 am and the handover shift arrives of a nurse and a caregiver.
I tell them what happens and they tell me they there was a woman down the road who’s house was broken into and she was attacked in her bed by a drugseeker who ransacked her house looking for drugs.
I have an internal meltdown because we have drugs in the cupboard in the med room. Good drugs too. Morphine, methadone, fentanyl etc. I can’t help but wonder if he was intentionally looking for us and just took the next best option.
For reference the facility was an old converted boarding house in a gentrified area so lots of old doctors houses in the area. Easy to mistake the home I worked at for a regular house.
I left that job not long after because they refused to hire a second person to work the nights despite it being under staffed according to best practice guidelines.
15. Rifle guy
Worked at a gas station and a customer came in and said “There’s a guy walking around outside with a rifle”. That was a tense evening, but dude never came inside, so it’s all good.
16. Spooky sounds
I work in water treatment and one of our smaller plants is a bit isolated and run by a single operator. It gets densely foggy and once I was near the door and 2 coyotes came out of the fog and stared through the glass and scared the shit out of me.
The MCC hums and chatters so it sounds like people are talking all night.
I once noticed out of the corner of my eye that the floor was moving and realized the plant had been invaded by small frogs(related note, frogs make a gross popping noise if you accidentally step on them). I went out to the chem feed room and found a wolf spider eating a frog.
In winter fog rises up off the basins and is just creepy.
17. Robbed
Not I but a friend of mine, worked at a water treatment plant on graveyard shift. From what I understand, he was there to check levels, adjust stuff, make sure nothing blew up, y’know? Just him. Access doors are unlocked, but he’s inside an 8 foot tall, locked barbed wire fence. This place is next to a highway connecting two cities an hr away from each other, with not much in between.
About 2:30-3am, he’s killing time, playing his Nintendo DS, when he hears a voice from behind him go “GET ON THE GROUND!” My friend goes cold, complies; he’s held at gunpoint.
This guy ties him up with duct tape, all while saying he’s sorry he had to do this, and steals the keys to his truck, his wallet, cards etc.
He hears him drive off, waits a while longer, and finally calls the police. The guy was arrested later that day. Turns out he had escaped from inmate custody in the next town over, and was desperate. He’d probably been walking forever. My friend honestly had PTSD of sorts from it for a while… still works there, though.
18. Robbery while pregnant
One and ONLY time, I worked graveyards at a local Subway within a gas station. I was 7 months pregnant, and we got robbed. Buddy had a knife, and it all happened pretty fast
19. 1920s tune
I was working as campus security and I had to close down the main law school building. The building was downtown in a major city and was old enough that the tunnels underneath it were used in the underground railroad. Think dirt floors, and wooden crossbeams (like you would imagine a mine). There was work going on in the tunnels, not sure what it was but I think they were reinforcing the supports.
Anyways as part of my routine I had to go around and check to make sure the build was vacant. I climb down the ladder into the tunnels, all the contractor lights are off, I say a few “hello, anyone here?” and shine my flashlight around silence for a moment. Then I hear what sounds like a radio tune from the 1920s coming from the tunnel. I immediately climb the ladder and paddlock the trap door, arm the motion sensors and leave. Fuck that.
20. Dog ghost
I used to work at an overnight vet clinic and late one night we didn’t have any patients in the clinic .. and myself and my co worker were cleaning and we kept thinking we heard a bark .. but that’s not uncommon in the village.. but it was like 3am .. and then out of the corner of my eye I saw a big golden run down the hallway and then vanish .. and I looked at my co worker who was sheet white .. we had euthanized a large golden that same night and the dog was running toward the room that has the freezer in it .. happened again the next night .. oddly enough .. the next night the owners called back and asked for more paw prints and they wanted the collar they had forgotten to take off .. I’m convinced the dog was sticking around for them .. my co worker was terrified ..
