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.”
