How I Spent Two Weeks Working In A Haunted Cubicle

The sordid tale of the inquisitive ghost that plagued me for almost a fortnight at the office, and how I finally freed myself from her torment.

The story I am about to tell is a ghost story, of sorts. But unlike many of the ghost stories you hear, it is 100% the truth. This is not a story of something that happened to my friend's cousin's fiance a few years ago...it happened to me, earlier this month.

I work in a fairly old building, so I'm somewhat used to the occasional unexpected noise emanating from the office. A few times a week, the pipes will groan in protest of their continued operation, sounding like the tortured bleat of a vuvuzela. But for the most part, that was it for noise around the office. Until they moved me to the other side of the building. That's when the voices started.

At first, it didn't register. The coworkers at my new corner of the office were a boisterous bunch, so I'd spend most of my time working with headphones on, listening to Pandora. Every now and then I'd hear a woman's voice repeating something, but I just wrote it off as someone sitting nearby, or my mind playing tricks on me.

A few days later, I wasn't able to write it off any more. Towards the end of the day I got a last-minute assignment that kept me in the office late into the night, when everyone else had gone home. All of a sudden, the voice returned. And without the buzz of conversation drowning it out, I could finally make out the woman's increasingly insistent words:

"Are you there...? Are you there...?"

"Yes...?" I responded, tentatively -

"Are you there...? Are you there...?"

"Hello?" This was getting more than a little bit creepy -

"Are you there...? Are you there...?" Then, silence.

I looked around to confirm, but I was the only one there. My mind may have been playing tricks on me, but it definitely wasn't coming from a coworker. This was getting downright spooky.

Over the next few days, the woman's voice returned. But while I was able to write it off as my neighbors earlier, the late night at the office got me all too familiar with the sound of her voice, so that even with headphones on I'd hear the woman's question continue to plague me: "Are you there...? Are you there...?"

youtube.com

I managed to capture the woman's voice that haunted me all those weeks. This is the voice that I learned to dread.

Finally, the other day, I figured out the secret of my haunted cubicle - when I moved seats, someone changed my office phone's ringtone from the default tone to one of the built-in alternatives, a woman's voice repeating "are you there". Realizing the situation, I "exorcized" my spirit by switching back to an ordinary ringtone.

This whole situation could just have been an honest mistake as my personal effects were moved to their new location...but I strongly suspect it was an April Fool's prank. An important detail I neglected to mention previously in the story? My move happened on March 30th, and I didn't notice my "haunted" desk until a few days later. The co-worker responsible for the prank hasn't admitted it to me yet, but I'm more than a little impressed that they managed to infest my new desk with an inquisitive ghost for so long.

...I do feel bad about all the missed calls, though.