22 SUPER-Creepy Real-Life Stories From Working The Night Shift
“It was a very cold night so I went and checked on him, thinking he was homeless. Nope—dead body!"
1. ‘I’M GONNA KILL ALL OF YOU’
“Working in a restaurant at 2:30 AM some dude shows up and is just watching us through the front window…seemed drunk at first, ignored him for a few minutes, turned back around and he had a HUGE fucking rock in his hands and lifts it above his head and slams it against the window, shattering the outside layer. He then looks directly at us and says ‘I’m gonna kill all of you.’ We dialed the police immediately and armed ourselves with kitchen knives. He wandered back to his car and sped off. The cops got there maybe 8 minutes later (seemed like 30 at the time) and couldn’t find the guy. We were robbed at gunpoint a few nights later….I just walked out and never went back.”
2. GORILLA MIND GAMES
I work nights as a zookeeper. Sometimes we have to check on the gorillas in their indoor holding. You walk down a dark hallway, maybe six feet from their enclosure. All you have is a flashlight and it’s sometime after midnight. Your goal is to check on each gorilla to make sure they are okay. The gorilla’s goal is to scare the ever-loving shit out of you. It’s a game for them to get you to scream. They love hiding behind walls, sneaking up on you, and then bellowing as loud as they can right next to you. It’s a fun game for them.
Haunted houses have nothing on gorilla jump scares.”
3. DEAD BODY
“Did two weeks overnight as a favor to my store manager. Went outside to let a member of staff in and saw a body on the floor by the ATM. It was a very cold night so I went and checked on him, thinking he was homeless. Nope—dead body!
Turned out he had a heart attack while he went to the ATM to draw cash out for a taxi. Watched the CCTV to gain some understanding for my own sanity and it happened so quickly. Coroner said there would of been nothing I could of done if I was there when he had the attack.
Safe to say I never did an overnight again.”
4. STANDING FOR EIGHT HOURS, STARING
“Worked overnights in a lab. One night there was a guy at the bus stop at the end of the drive leading to our building.
It was exceptionally weird because no busses were running until morning. He had a backpack on and the whole 8 hours he just stood there, with his back to the road, staring at our building.”
5. A DEMON GOPHER FROM HELL
“Was working really late one night doing emergency IT stuff. Walking around the office building, most of the lights were off and it’s dead silent. As I’m walking by, this guy suddenly rises out of his cubicle like a demon gopher from Hell and stares at me with what seemed like unnaturally wide eyes. It turns out he was just working late, and we had scared the shit out of each other.”
6. IT CUT MY GODDAMN FINGER OFF!!
“Used to work at an ice cream factory from 6pm-6am. Second day on the job, this tenured line leader was trying to unclog compacted cookie dough from the machine. Used her fucking finger. It chopped off the end when it unclogged and started again because no one stopped it.
I’m still fresh and new as in helping her out and learning. She jumps off the ladder and yells ‘IT CUT MY GODDAMN FINGER OFF!!’
I froze in fear, she pushed me aside, grabbed ALL the paper towels and booked it to the ER.
We found her finger tip in the ice cream catch a few minutes later and had to trash the entire batch and start fresh…just before my days off and I had to come back in the next day shorthanded.
Obligatory edit: yes, we found the bit of her finger, cleaned it and put it on ice. Took it to the ER. She got it reattached.
And I get it, ‘shorthanded.’”
7. MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT BREAK-IN ATTEMPT
“I worked for a taxi company doing quiet night shifts, one time a customer phoned in to say her hire was late and I had to tell her that I didn’t have any bookings at her address for then. She swore me out and cut off the call. 10 minutes later she phoned back to say she found out where my office was and was coming down with her boyfriend and her brother, this was about 0230. At 0310 a car pulled up in front of the office and two men got out and tried to force their way into the office building, I phoned the police but the people left before the police got there. That was pretty scary.”
8. PROTESTERS WITH BOMBS
“I work in a sleep lab, and I smoke. Before participants come into the lab I have to set up things, as the labs are used for other activities during the day (it’s at a university). So I’m there, making beds, setting up the polysomnograph and whatnot alone. I take a break for a cigarette. It’s about 10pm, normally fully dark. But it isn’t.
There’s a bit of a weird orange glow in the sky. Strange smell on the air. No idea what it is, but work is work, I shrug and go inside.
While I’m inside, I hear some weird noise from the outside world. Now…these are sleep labs. they are meant to be soundproofed. But some doors are open, and soundproofing isn’t perfect. So I send some messages to my friends who know university vibes a bit better than I do (I’m not the 18-22 of that sorta scene). Don’t hear anything for a while. Then get a message. There have been protests, they are letting off explosives at the University, the police are there but can’t engage.
I call participants, tell them not to come in. I find out apparently roads are blocked to and from the university. So, being a reasonable person…I turn off the lights and close all the doors, get in one of the beds and go to sleep. Roads out of the university were still lined with protesters when I left in the morning, but after about half an hour of convincing them that I was nice and they should let me leave, out all in one piece. Found out some of the explosives were about 200 meters from my lab.
Good times.”
9. THE THREE MONTANA COWBOYS
“I used to work for a sub shop as a delivery driver. Weirdest thing was the Montana Cowboy. I am located in Milwaukee, WI, so we have a diverse crowd of homeless. One night around 1 AM a cowboy-lookin’ dude walks into the shop. He seems just off on something. Can’t form any sentences whatsoever. All I could get out of him was his name, Ben. Ben seemed like he was very drunk (smelled like it, too) and had something else in his system. He kept kind of saying the same gurgled mess over and over. No idea what he was saying. Me and the manager I was working with are pretty chill guys, so we offered him some soup and a sandwich for free. He was so happy and thankful (I think). While he’s eating, I went out on a delivery and stopped the car at an apartment. As I’m walking up, a cowboy walks out. Not the same cowboy but a different one. I said hello or whatever, but he responded with the gurgled mess the guy in the shop said to me. Like same cadence and tone, everything. Even kinda looked like him. I thought that was weird. So I got back to the shop and cowboy is still there. He’s eating and saying nonsense. My manager found out he was from Montana. So I go on another delivery. Walk up to the apartment building, but wait a fuckin’ second, there’s a ma fucker with a ma fuckin’ cowboy hat sitting on the stoop and asks me for a dollar. I told him all the cash I have is for my work. He said a gurgled mess like the last two guys and I left. Now here’s a fuckin’ kicker. I go back to the shop and Ben is gone. So I go on my last delivery around 3 AM and pull up to a house. It’s lit up inside and I can see people are moving around with the shadows on the window. I knock on the door…who answers?? FUCKIN BEN! And who’s in the fuckin house with him?? THE OTHER TWO FUCKING COWBOYS! Ben says, ‘sup’ hands me a $100 bill and slams the door. I was dumbfounded.”
10. MURDER AND RAPE CONFESSIONS
“I used to work third shift security in a neighborhood near a university. We often encountered some weird stuff, but mostly we just dealt with drunk college bros and the like.
One night it’s nearly 4 AM so we’re ending our shift and heading in when this old homeless-looking man stops me and asks me to call an ambulance for him. I ask what’s wrong and he’s telling me he’s having heart palpitations and suicidal ideation. I flag down a coworker who informs our boss and calls for the ambulance.
I sit down next to the guy as he’s laying on the sidewalk and let him talk to me. At first he’s saying what you’d expect from someone who wants to commit suicide then it gets dark as hell. He starts telling me about a woman he stabbed because he asked her for $20 but she only gave him a few bucks so he murdered her.
OK, pretty creepy, but then it gets worse. He just starts going on about how he’s raped people and committed arson and other horrifying stuff and I’m sitting almost alone with him while my coworker is several buildings down on the phone with dispatch. He starts telling me about how his mother used to have sex with her father and brother and that he saw that? And about how he’s a crackhead.
When the ambulance arrived he started cussing and yelling but at least I was free to go at that point. I understand it was probably at least partially the ramblings of a mentally ill crackhead but it was still unnerving. It’s not every day a stranger confesses to you about murder and rapes he’s committed.
Also, I’m a young woman, so I would occasionally get the super fucking creepy guys who would try to corner me on dark roads or follow me around. So that would get pretty terrifying.”
11. HE EITHER WAS DECAPITATED OR HIS NECK WAS BROKEN
“I worked overnight at a pasta plant during my teens. One night my dad showed up out of nowhere (he worked there, he was the quality control manager) and told me we were going home. No explanation or anything at the time. He just said they were shutting down production immediately and there wasn’t going to be work for probably a few more days.
Turned out some guy fucking killed one of his kids in the plant, probably by accident. It took a long time for the rumors to get back to me, but apparently one of the forklift guys was joyriding around the place, went under one of the overhangs, but had his kid in the thing with him, and that kid was standing up with his head out the top.
Apparently he either was decapitated or his neck was broken, but either way he was killed.
It was creepy how it happened in the place, and it couldn’t have been far from me, but I had no idea. Also really terrible and horrific just thinking about how it could have happened. As a parent now it makes me sick.”
12. COVERED FROM HEAD TO TOE IN BLOOD
“I used to be a bouncer at several different locations in the Toronto downtown area. I enjoyed working on the patio when I could despite not being a smoker because talking to people made time go by faster and hey, easier to get phone numbers.
There was this one place I worked at that always had crazy shit happen. The ‘patio’ was also a weak chain link fence with some tarp thrown over it. The club was cheap, so the fence didn’t cover the entire area so I had to be watchful of people trying to sneak in.
One night, I felt lazy so I stood in the opening with my back to the street. I was talking to some people trying to kill the time. I felt some guy stand behind (coming in from the street). This wasn’t too unusal, some people get turned away and when they see me, try to bribe their way through the patio ‘entrance’.
I was having none of it so I puffed myself up, determined to ignore him until he gave up on me noticing him. After about 10 mins of this, I started getting a bit creeped out cause the guy was just standing behind me without saying or doing anything.
I turned around to tell him to fuck off, but stopped mid-sentence.
This guy was a bit taller than me (I’m 6’2), kinda lanky, very well dressed. He was also covered from head to toe in blood. Like completely drenched. I thought he’d been in an accident so I dropped my tough-guy act and starting asking him if he was okay, needed an ambulance, etc.
He calmly responded, nah he’s good. He just wants to find his brothers. I was like “umm, are you sure your brothers are here?”
He insists that they are here as they told him they’d be in X city (not anywhere near Toronto where the club is located).
After his complete obliviousness to what city he’s in, the fact that he’s soaked in blood, and his intense stare (dude wasn’t blinking), I called my boss up.
When my boss appeared, I gave a quick rundown of what happened. He talked to the guy very briefly, then told him he’d assist. He went and got some patrolling cops.
When the cops appeared, one of them lightly touched the bloody guy on the shoulder. That’s when he started screaming incoherently and tried slashing at him with a small knife that had been concealed in his pocket.
The cops, my boss and I subdued the guy until he could be cuffed and placed inside a cop car. The guy was screaming loudly and struggling to hulk out of the cuffs (as the cuffs cut deeply into his wrists) the entire time.
To this day, I still have to clue what the hell that was about.”
13. SHE’D HUNG HERSELF FROM EXPOSED WATER PIPES
“I did my basic military training at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. Our barracks were old, dating to around the 1950s or 1960s. Every night, a number of recruits were assigned ‘fire guard’ duty, which was essentially trying to stay awake for an hour and mopping the floor (or buffing it) until the next soldier came on duty.
The fire guard post for my platoon was at one end of a long hallway, directly under a set of speakers suspended from the ceiling. Whenever the drill sergeants made an announcement, you’d hear them through the speakers. This is how they communicated reveille (wakeup) and other instructions where they had to talk to the whole building at once. Usually these were communicated in blistering shouts, rendered staticky and nearly unintelligible as they blared through the ancient sound system.
One night, about halfway through basic (so sleep deprivation really hitting hard by this point), I was sitting in a chair under the speakers, trying to stay awake. The speakers crackled to life, and I immediately perked up. Unusual for an announcement this time of night, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.
The voice was soft, barely above a whisper. A woman’s voice: ‘Private, get everyone outside. Right now.’ The comm line remained open, a low hum hissing through. The voice again: ‘Right now, Private. Everyone outside.’ Weird. Not that it was a woman’s voice—-it was a coed basic training and we had a couple female drills. But for it to come across so softly was very strange. When the brown rounds used the intercom, it was at full, shouting voice.
I headed down the length of the hall to where 2nd platoon had a fire guard on duty similarly situated. Asked him if he heard anything, got a negative response. I made a decision: I’d chalk it up to my imagination and tiredness and not risk having the entire barracks furious at me for disturbing their sleep in error. If it was one of the drill sergeants messing with me, and I got in trouble for not waking everyone up, at least I’d be the only one getting smoked.
Nothing happened the rest of the night, and I put it out of my mind until the very end of basic, when we had our three-day field training exercise. We made it through, and the drills started treating us like real humans (almost) again. As we completed the last day of the exercise, which was a near-live fire night march-to-attack scenario, we all gathered around the fire.
The drills got to talking, then got to telling stories, then got to telling ghost stories about the base. My drill (Pereda, a male), told the story of the first female drill sergeant on Fort Leonard Wood. Can’t remember when it was (70s, 80s), but it was decades ago. Apparently she faced a lot of pressure and harassment, as you can imagine. It was unrelenting and harsh, and apparently she couldn’t take it. She’d hung herself from some exposed water pipes, using her belt. A few years later, they’d plastered over the exposed pipes.
So they could mount speakers there.”
14. CHASED BY A BEAR
“I used to work as a security guard at a shipping depot where semi trucks came in and out all times of the day. Due to bad management and favoritism I got moved to the night shift that is 9 PM to 6 AM. The depot is out in the middle of nowhere with a large woods near it where deer and other animals were often spotted.
One night I was doing my patrol around the building it takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes with proper door checking on foot. Normally We take the squad car to do our patrols but I refuse as it’s disgusting as hell thanks to the fat slobs who worked there always eating in it and whatever else they did to make it smell like shit.
Well I about 40 minutes into my patrol on foot, it was around 1 AM at night and for some reason the lights on the part of the depot I was patrolling were not working. I’m walking by semi truck trailers that are backed into the building doors for loading in the morning when I hear some weird noises. I assume its just a trucker who has wondered from the parking area to do some exploring or to try and steal some stuff.
I shine with my phone light to see who is out there only to see a large black bear eating what I think is a rabbit or something. The bear immediately stops what its doing and starts walking toward me. At this point I don’t know what to do; I am an unarmed guard and it is nothing but open ground and a completely locked building that I have no keys to. So I frantically start to run, I bolt to the closest door on the building which is up a small set of metal stairs which is at the same level the truck unloading bays are at. I climb up on the arm railing to gain some height and try to reach for the top of a semi trailer to get on top but it is to far by about two feet. Meanwhile the bear has started to make noises and is running toward me. I frantically jump in attempt to get on top of the trailer and grab one of the open trailer doors. The bear at this point is where I was 10 seconds ago and reaching its paws out at me. I manage to pull myself up on top of the trailer out of reach of the bear.
I searched my pockets for my phone to call for help only to realize it was on the ground under the stairs I jumped from light still shining. The bear attempted to climb the trailer in multiple spots as I sat in the darkness fearing for my life. There was no point of screaming for help as the closest human being was well over 20 minuets of walking to get to me.
I was stuck up there for at least 1 hour before the bear decided I was not worth its time and head back into the woods. Too afraid to come down and head back to the guard shack in case the bear was still around I Waited on top of the trailer until the other guard came down in the squad car 2 hours later trying to figure out where I went. I shortly quit that job 2 months later due to many other problems but that encounter really pushed me to quit.”
15. MAN WITH A STRAIGHT RAZOR
“When I was a young teenager, I had a commercial cleaning gig with my parents as the night shift guys. You know. The ones who come in to your friendly neighborhood Chili’s after the other guys close and really clean the place, kitchen, bathrooms and all.
The restaurant was located in a fairly busy area of town in a mini strip mall so we weren’t really concerned about security since there was always a patrolling night guard riding around the strips parking lot to make sure that there was no trouble. Well, this particular night, it was just myself and my mother cleaning one of our nightly buildings by ourselves while my Pop and sister were doing the other one across town.
Everything was going smoothly until my mum realized she left our new box of Tide (we used it for the kitchen floors) outside in the truck. Me being unfazed by the aspect of being alone outside at 1 a.m in the morning chose to go get it and right when I was locking the door to the truck and inching my way back inside, I noticed a guy standing across the parking lot just staring at me. He wasn’t moving or anything like that, just staring. It was creepy as hell, so I merely walked back inside and made sure that the door was locked before continuing to do my business. When I moved out of the kitchen into the front dining area to begin mopping, that’s when I noticed that creeper dude was now standing beneath the front door awning outside, staring in the glass, looking at me.
Dude practically screamed homeless with his disheveled clothes, long, stringy hair and thick, wild beard but honestly it was his eyes that really freaked me out. I can only describe them as utterly soulless….
Beginning to get a bit freaked out, but not wanting to be rude, I gave him a quick glance before going back to do my work but before I could really do it, he started slowly and almost rhythmically pounding on the glass with his fists, still staring intently at me.
At that point, I was pretty much done with trying to be patient with him and promptly yelled at him to piss off. My mum heard me yelling from the kitchen and came out to see just what all of the commotion was and I told her while pointing at the man. The moment that I did though, I saw my mum blanch and then slowly begin to back away.
She grabbed my wrist and urged me to do the same but wouldn’t let me turn around to see what the hell was up.
We reached the back stockroom of the restaurant and stayed there while mum called the strip security guard to let him know what was up. Later that evening after the security guard came and checked the place, he said there was no sign of the guy, but there, at the front door of the restaurant, he found a discarded straight razor laying in the middle of the pavement and another in the bushes at the place that he had been pounding on the glass. My mum said that when I had called her over and looked away, he had grinned at her and I both and held up the knife to tap it against the glass.
We no longer work nights but still, whenever we do get the occasional call for a deep clean, I always have my own weapons with me just in case.”
16. THE KNIVES STARTED MOVING
“I was never, ever afraid of ghosts….But when I worked night shift alone in a kitchen, I truly knew terror when I was washing the dishes and the knives, that were stored suspended above the stove, started lightly clashing against one another. I have no idea why, but the light sound of steel against steel is truly terrifying, more so when there’s no apparent cause for said knives to be moving.”
17. WOMAN IN A NIGHT GOWN
“I watch security cameras for a transport company in Detroit. It was roughly 2:00 AM. I’m watching the cameras and notice a woman in a night gown standing (also barefoot) at the end of the driveway (the facility is fenced and gated). I kept an eye on her, and she hovered there for about five minutes; not really moving, just swaying back and forth. There weren’t too many people working that late, but I let everyone at the facility know there was a woman standing outside of the gate. One driver decided that he didn’t care, he needed to hit the road. When he exited the gate, the woman walked in front of the truck, blocking him. i immediately phoned the police. He blared his horn. She then rushed to the side of the truck and attempted to open his door aggressively. He sped away, leaving her standing there. She continued to stand there, in one place, not really moving for maybe ten minutes. She eventually walked away, never to be seen by us again. The police never showed up.”
18. SEIZURE AND BLACKOUT
“Night shift in a dormitory for sick and autistic children. Reading Night Shift by Stephen King and thinking this is actually not a good idea, the stories made me nervous in a half lit corridor full of dark rooms and strange noises. And suddenly. Some strange rattling noise from one of the rooms. I put the book down, there is this 9years old young boy tangled in his sheets and shaking like hell, eyes inward and mouth wide open and…Bang! Blackout in the whole building. I hear alarms in the distance, that means electricity went out in the district too not just the building. And the fear comes in, I reach for my pocket light, get it in my mouth but I feel my teeth making clinging little noises on the metal Im shaking so much. So that is how I handled my first epilepsy situation around 2 o’clock. After the kid got calm, I run down the dark stairs, speeding trough a 70meters long hall with a lamp in my mouth and half screaming for a nurse. I really thought the boy gonna die it was a grand mal (bigger seizure), but I handled the situation well.”
19. THE EMBALMED CORPSE IN THE DARK
“As an undergraduate at a state university, I got a job on campus as a custodian assistant. The shift was 6p – 2a. They were good about letting you get your max 20 hours/week just about any time in between those hours. In theory we were helping out the full time state employee custodians, but in practice once you knew what to do, you were responsible for a area by yourself. Some of the buildings I worked in were kind of old, early 20th century classroom buildings with faculty offices in between. One building had a nice little movie theater dedicated to silent film legend Lillian Gish, who was born nearby. I think film classes would meet there. In the lobby were stills and posters from Lillian Gish’s movies. I had to go on there, pick up, and vacuum one night a week. In the quiet dark theatre, at midnight, with no one else in the building, the old-timey movie stills and posters of the actors wearing the ghoulish Carnival of Souls pancake make p kind of creeped me out. No big deal just feel a little unnerved with the freaky eyes of the now-dead actors looking on. I graduated and a year later returned for graduate school. During the summer semester I got my old job back and one night got assigned to clean the building with the theater. Later in the evening I go to clean the theater. I unlocked the door and saw some of the posters and stills on one wall in the light streaming in through the opened door way. No big deal. Just a little creepy. I flipped the switch for the lobby lights and just about had a heart attack when I saw Lillian fucking Gish standing a few feet away! It turns out they added a new exhibit while I was away: an incredibly realistic life size wax statue of 90-year-old Lillian Gish. For half a second I didn’t know who was there in the dark, or whose embalmed corpse was in there with me.”
20. PULLED THROUGH THE DRIVE-THRU WINDOW
“I was a closer at a Wendy’s. Someone pulled through the drive thru after we had closed (around 2am or so) I opened the window to tell them we were closed. They rolled the window down in their car and said ‘What? We can’t hear you.’ So I leaned out a little bit to repeat myself. The driver in the car grabbed me and tried to pull me through the drive thru window. Got free, locked the window as they sped the fuck away.”
21. A TAP ON THE CAR WINDOW
“My work has me walking/running around the whole plant all shift, we usually cover around 12-16km on a good day. Combine this with Ontario’s -30 Celsius winters and a deadly crosswind caused by open shipping doors makes for a pretty rough shift. I was close to death 4 hours into my shift so my coworker told me she’d cover me while I went and took a quick nap in my car.
I parked in the CAT assembly plants parking lot across the street from ours so the supervisor couldn’t see me, like my coworker told me to. No more than 15 mins into my 3am nap I was startled awake by someone tapping on my window. Looking around, the parking lot was deserted. Whoever woke me must have either ran away in the seconds it took me to open my eyes or evaporated.
I decided to head back to work and told my coworker about what happened. Her response, ‘Oh yeah, that happens all the time with everyone working night shift, we don’t know who or what it is.’
I haven’t take a parking lot nap since.”
22. THE CREATURE IN THE LINEN CLOSET
“Nearly 15 years ago I worked nights at a group home for disturbed youth. I would sit in the hallway all night next to the bedroom in between doing bed checks.
I would sit and squirm all night because I would have the very intense feeling of being watched. All night, for the duration of my shift. It wasn’t the kids. I didn’t know where it was coming from, only that it was there, and very strong. It was almost a physical sensation, like a pressure, and it made my already stressful job even worse.
One night I cleaned out the linen closet in the same hallway, and left the door open when I was done. The hallway was so narrow that the door blocked it completely. To my surprise the being watched feeling disappeared immediately, like a switched had been flipped. I was relieved, and grateful, and didn’t question it. I planned to leave the door open during my shift from then on. Problem solved, right?
No.
Maybe 2 nights passed peacefully before it happened. I was sitting, in between doing bed checks, directly in front of bedroom 3. My head was turned, looking into bedroom 2, when movement from the hallway caught my eye. I slowly turned my head to look down the hallway and froze.
I’m shocked to this day that I managed not to scream or piss myself. The linen closet door was now halfway open. There was a tall, elongated person shaped thing hunched over the back of the door, gripping it, with its head peering at me over it.
It didn’t have a face, or clothing, and was flesh colored with elongated arms and legs. It was taller than the door, easily seven feet. It didn’t have a face, but there was no question that it was staring at me.
I was frozen in shock, gurgling. I then ran into the staff office and locked myself in the bathroom, shaking, only to immediately run back out because of the kids. In my head I was screaming, the kids are out there with It!
Everything was quiet. Kids were still asleep. Closet door was still halfway shut, my stuff all over the floor where I dropped it. I was completely panicked and called my sister. I was crying, babbling. She thought I’d been attacked, and wanted me to come home. I was in such a state of shock I couldn’t even think of an excuse to go. Like a jackass I sat huddled in the staff office until the scheduled relief staff came in some six hours later. I didn’t tell anyone but my family.
I always left the door open after that, reasoning that whatever it was, it could look all it wanted, but please Jesus, don’t come near me again.”
