If you're someone who has worked the graveyard shift — very late or overnight hours — I'm sure you have experienced some creepy (or, dare I say) horror movie-worthy situations when it's just you, maybe a co-worker, and the stillness of the night.
Redditor u/Ambient_voice asked the question, "Night shift workers, what’s the creepiest thing that’s happened?" and let me just say, I was spooked for these people just by reading the thread's responses. Here are some of them.
1. "I was working in a 35-story high-rise building. 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 10-story drop."
2. "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. 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, a 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."
3. "I used to clean a church alone late at night. There was a piano, which I thought was broken, upstairs in the attic. One night I started hearing piano music from the attic, so I immediately assumed someone was up there pranking me. But I went up and didn't see anyone."
4. "This happened when I worked in a hotel right out of high school. I did overnight shifts in the laundry room, but I would help the front desk run invoices to the rooms sometimes. I was on the third floor at 2 a.m., when I bent down to slide the invoice under a 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 co-worker if they saw anything, but they said they weren’t paying attention to the security screen. Really freaked me out."
5. "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 turned 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."
6. "I used to be an executive 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 called me to say motion sensors are going off in that exhibit hall, but no exterior window or door sensors were 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."
—u/rasurec
7. "Night shift on an ambulance...it's always weird. But the one that spooked me was Thanksgiving 2016. I got called out for a suicide. Guy found out he had cancer the day before and didn't want to be a burden to his family. Not uncommon. We run the call, do what we do, and head back to the station. As I'm pulling into the spot, the electronics in the cab go apeshit. Radio starts changing stations, dash lights dim off and on, and cab lights flicker. Me and my partner freaked out, and as we bailed, the truck shut off. We went to check the key, and it was still on."
8. "As an overnight baker in a downtown area, in the summer I would sit outside on a well-lit and busy side street. On the opposite end of the street was a federal building with nothing between us but another solid building. So this one night I’m relaxing, and I look toward the federal building and see a person completely in shadow walking my way. Even walking under the street light I couldn’t see the features of this person. I quickly went in and waited (from a somewhat hidden position) to see who passed. No one passed at all in the next 10 minutes."
9. "I was unloading a truck at this grocery store I worked at. It was around 3 a.m., I was completely alone, and I heard —clear as day — a scream. It sounded like a woman in labor. I called my boss, and she told me to go up and check. I said fuck that — we both go up to check it out; all the rooms were empty, just a few empty boxes. When we got back downstairs, we both heard a loud thump, like something fell down and hit the floor hard. We got out of there fast."
10. "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 independent living facility."
"At 11 p.m. 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 needed — 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 two hours I was on the phone trying to find out if anywhere would take him, but there were no beds, he was coherent, and he basically didn’t pose enough of an urgent situation to warrant being sectioned. He saw it 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."
11. "I worked nights driving a taxi, and occasionally I’d post up someplace and take a nap waiting for a job. I was waiting at a hospital since you get good, consistent 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 seat; seems I’d forgotten to lock the doors. They admitted they’d been sitting there for a few seconds but didn’t know what to do since I was napping. Better believe I started locking my doors after that, though."
12. "I work in a prison. When I was new, I was working overtime one night in a housing unit that had 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 2 a.m. count. I watched an offender walk down the stairs from the second 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 co-workers 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."
13. "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. As part of my routine, I had to go around and check to make sure the building was vacant."
14. "I was working remotely, it was late at night, and I was alone in my house working. Something felt strange, so I went about checking the security cameras — and saw the rocking chair of a recently passed relative rocking alone on its own in the living room."
15. "I used to work at Taco Bell. I was closing that night with other co-workers, and finally it was time to close. We turned off the outside lights and got a call on the restaurant phone as soon as we turned off the lights. My manager answered, and we heard a man speak. I vividly remember him saying, 'I know there are only girls in there; I've been watching for a while. Don't come out; I'll be waiting for you.'"
16. "I used to work in facilities on a campus while attending school. Each of us took turns doing weekend night shifts. A co-worker and myself were on the top floor of the oldest building around 11 p.m. — and we were the only ones in the building. (We had an alarm on for the exterior doors.)"
"We walked past this door that led to an outside deck that is locked and rarely used and offers no access to outside people (remember, we were on the fourth floor). As my co-worker and I walked by, we heard a loud and distinct knock coming from the outside. We stopped and looked at each other, and it knocked again. Because the door was locked and armed, we couldn't open it. We ran outside and told security, who then said they would go and check it. Then he said, 'This happens every night, knocks on the fourth floor; we look, but no one is ever there.'"
—u/Thornbelina
17. "I closed up a church one night after a fundraising event. Everyone left besides four men, who were outside. I checked under all chairs, walked through rows, turned off the lights, and closed the doors. When I walked away, I heard a woman singing from inside. It was faint but started to get louder. I was so scared, so I booked it. Thankfully, the men came with me to check inside again. They actually chuckled when I told them about what happened, saying the ghost enjoys singing and is friendly."
18. "I was working at a fast-food restaurant — it was 9 p.m., and we were closed and cleaning. The doors were locked from the outside; you couldn’t enter. When the back door opens, there’s an alarm that makes a sound to show it’s been opened (not a police alarm). Well, that one night the alarm went off. All doors were closed and we saw nobody inside besides the workers."
—u/Kool_Kid16
19. "I used to work at an overnight vet clinic, and late one night we didn’t have any patients there. Myself and my co-worker were cleaning, and we kept thinking we heard a bark — which is not uncommon, but it was 3 a.m. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a big golden retriever run down the hallway and then vanish, and I looked at my co-worker, who was sheet white."
20. "I worked at a supermarket and on Thursday nights after we closed we would put up tags for the new sales on Friday mornings. Me and one of the other supervisors stayed after closing to help out, as there was a huge change-over and we wanted to lend a hand. It was just myself, the other supervisor (female), and a couple of guys working in the back room breaking down pallets."
"At about 3 a.m. we heard a blood-curdling female scream from one of the other aisles. I immediately thought something happened to the other supervisor, but when I turned around, she was in the same aisle as me. We ran to where the sound came from but did not find anyone in the store. We asked the guys in the back room if they heard something, and they were relieved as they heard it a few times a week and thought they were going crazy. The next day we even had security look at the cameras, and there was definitely nobody else in the store."
—u/Gnonkage
21. "I encountered a naked couple standing in the middle of the street. I was going to deliver a pizza to a house nearby. They were just standing there."
22. "I worked at a big box toy store and did the graveyard shift. One night, I was stocking the board games section and straightening things to look nice. I left the section to stock another part of the store when I heard a loud crash of several board games falling to the floor. I walked back to the board game aisles and found that every single box had fallen off the shelf. All but one...a single Ouija board, standing smugly on the edge of its shelf. We peaced out early that night."
—u/Kaladrax182
23. "I’m in the Army. Every now and then, everyone gets stuck with 24-hour duty where you basically just sit at a desk, have some things you have to check every couple of hours, and answer the phone for the unit. Well, one night at 3 a.m. I was sitting there watching Netflix, and every printer in my battalion (probably like 5–10 printers) started randomly printing out a bunch of papers all at the same time. The papers all said things like, 'Help,' 'Get help,' 'Get leaders,' 'Di3,' and 'Trap.' Lots of other weird words. Some even had smiley faces on them. It was the creepiest shit ever."
24. "I'm a nightshift nurse and worked in a nursing home. This home was recently opened, so at the time only two people were living there. Both people were bed-bound. I was in the living room when I heard the automated doors open and close. When I checked, nobody was there. This would go on for some time and then stop, but every time nobody was there."
—u/Byahero95
25. "Two years ago, when I was 16, I had a job as a janitor at Chuck E. Cheese's, and I would usually work at night cleaning up messes on the floor and cleaning tables for the next day. So one night I was just doing my usual business and getting ready to lock up the place. I heard a loud bang coming from one of the rooms; now I was spooked out because there were only two of us working that night cleaning, and my partner (Noah) was next to me questioning where that sound came from."
26. "I used to work at a hotel when I was in college. I always got phantom calls to the front desk from a room no one was in — that didn’t have a phone, bed, or TV."
—u/santichrist
27. "I worked at a grocery store, and it was in a bad neighborhood. So periodically I'd go to the front and check my car. Well one night as I was up front, every register started turning on and off rapidly. And the receipt machines started going crazy, like they were trying to print but nothing was coming out. I literally said, 'Nope' — and turned around and went to the back to continue work."
28. "I worked in a chemical plant at night in the lab. The only other employee on night was a guard. One night I kept seeing something out of the corner of my eye. I could swear someone was watching me. Later that night, the guard told me that it was the ghost of a dead employee from about 20 years ago. The employee was killed when he fell off an overhead walkway. I swear I was just creeped out the rest of the time I worked there."
—u/Chattman2