You couldn’t get me to work the overnight shift for all the money in the world. It’s called the graveyard shift for a reason.
Those brave folks who actually work those kinds of shifts, well, they’ve seen some sights. And heard some things.
When the night watch men and women of the world were asked what the scariest experience of their career was, they certainly had some stories to tell.
Here are some of our favorites.
1.
“I worked graveyards as a cashier at a pharmacy in college.
There was a man who would come in every single night, select a bottle of nail polish, and approach the female employee (there was only one of us at a time usually) and offer to buy it for us if we would come to his hotel room and let him watch us put it on. Management wouldn’t do anything about it. For all I know, he’s still doing it.”
2.
“I work the graveyard shift at a psychiatric facility. One night I was working with someone with the same first name as me, we were in separate rooms and we both heard someone call our name. I went to see what she wanted just as she was going to come see what I needed. All the residents were asleep and do not speak and we were the only staff on the area. We were so creeped out and we still bring it up whenever we work together!”
3.
“Was fitting fire doors in an office block on night shift and finished early
Couldn’t leave as I had to wait on the alarm being set so I decided to watch The Exorcism Of Emily Rose on my phone and earphones.
About 45 minutes into it, right at a shocking screaming moment every light in the floor I was on went out.
Needless to say I almost peed myself.
Turns out I’d been sitting still for so long that the motion sensors decided no one was in and the automatically shut down.”
4.
“I worked third shift as a security guard at an Aquarium. After a couple nights I started noticing the sound of desperate gasps for breath from one of the tanks. I kept investigating and kept finding nothing. Months this went on. I’d be doing my rounds and wheezing gasp would echo through the massive concrete building as though someone were drowning. Creeped me out the more I heard it and to make matters worse: none of the animals reacted to it. It was like I was the only one who heard it.
It was a turtle.”
5.
“I work graveyards at a jail. One night, when I was doing a floor check, I noticed an inmate standing in the middle of his cell. That wouldn’t have been too weird, except this particular inmate was wheelchair bound, because he only had one leg. And he was doing squats while holding the wheelchair over his head. I guess it wasn’t particularly creepy, but it was definitely an odd sight to see.
Then there’s the inmate who will have full conversations with an imaginary person, complete with hand gestures and laughter. Sometimes it seems like a friendly conversation, sometimes he seems very angry at whoever or whatever he’s talking to. Extra creepy because he only does this at night, and only when standing in the corner of his cell.”
6.
“I worked the Night shift at an Amazon warehouse that used to be owned by a Zappos, on slow nights management would send people home, I was stuck working a very slow night with only 2 other employees in an ENORMOUS warehouse where you’d hardly see anyone else amongst the 5 floors and hundreds and hundreds of racks on a normal day. When I started to catch glimpses of someone wearing red turning the corners as I did, I waited until lunch and checked out what my coworkers were wearing and none of them were wearing red.”
7.
“I work nights at a taxi office located in a very old office with a mechanics garage attached to the building. Some people say a man hanged himself in the garage but I’ve never seen any proof of that, but whatever. I do know for sure that the last manager died in his office here though.
Things happen all the time, the kettle and microwave turn themselves on, the clock has fallen off the wall a few times, the hand drier in the bathroom comes on when I’m on my own in the office and I can hear it.
The creepiest thing to happen was this:
Where I sit in my office, I can see out of the door, right down a corridor. The floor is tiled and the doors squeak like hell when they open. I was just sitting there watching a film/doing my work one night and hear a noise getting louder, so I look over my computer down the corridor and a single silver ball bearing is just rolling down the corridor towards me.
I picked it up and put it in my pocket.”
8.
“I think I heard a shooting as I was walking into work. I was going from the parking garage at 10pm and I heard a really loud popping noise a few times so I walked to the edge (I parked on the 5th floor) and looked over and saw three kids running down the street way below. I think about an hour later, one of my co-workers told me that the ER had gotten a shooting victim in.
But I never got anymore details so there’s no way to tell if it’s actually connected or anything. I just remember the popping being so damn loud but it didn’t sound like a gun or what I thought a gun would sound like.”
9.
“I was sitting in my patrol SUV on a dark road, listening to Anything Ghost podcast (ghost stories told by a very mellow-voiced host), when my hand accidentally activated the rear windshield wiper. The sound as it dragged against the dry window at just the right point in the story caused some lingering muscle cramps for a few hours. I got a good laugh, after ensuring no one was actually back there. That was the extent of the excitement that night.”
10.
“I work as a pizza delivery driver and one late night I delivered to this elderly community complex. I pull up and walk inside the main entrance lobby and immediately feel a sudden sense of dread. It was empty and silent and the lobby resembled that of the Overlook Hotel from the Shining. There was just that sense of eery history around.
As I walked in the elevator, I began to wonder how many people must have died in the rooms throughout the years. And as I’m thinking this, the elevator door stops midway from closing and stays slightly open for a solid 7 seconds. All the while I’m just standing there in the elevator expecting to be snatched by Bagul or something.
The elevator door finally closed and I delivered the pizza to the customer but that one delivery had me feeling pretty creeped out for the rest of the night.”
11.
“My brother is a late night janitor at an elementary school. He said he was alone watching YouTube videos with headphones on, in a dark office toward the end of his shift, when suddenly a kid loudly asked him to “clean my bench”.
Startled, my brother searched for the kid, replayed the video he was watching and was stumped when he didn’t come up with anything or anyone.
He remembered that there was a memorial bench for a boy who was hit by a car and killed a year or so prior, and so he went outside and made sure it was tidy. He felt better but was still obviously shaken.
The deceased kid’s sister goes to school there to this day, and my brother knows his family and sees the boy’s mom often. I asked him if he ever told the mom about it, and he said no, he just makes sure the bench is spotless.”
12.
“Worked the overnight shift at an inner city fast food place.
I don’t know whether it was the kid, not even twelve, that came in around 2am on a Sunday morning asking for jobs to do to keep himself entertained as he had nowhere to go.
Or the guy that had a knife.
Or the fight that happened right outside the drive through window that resulted in one guys glasses being smashed and cutting his face.”
13.
“I work nights as a nurse in a couple different places. The oldest building I work at is 100% haunted to the max. Usually nurses will go lay down on their breaks and shut their eyes, I refuse. Too many times we have seen cold shadows walk passed, doors opening/closing on their own, call lights going off in empty rooms. Theres one room specifically were we had a patient code (start to die) that we were trying to resuscitate, it was a particularly messy code. Every time I walk passed that room on nights, my hair stands up and I get this really scary gut feeling, often I will see the hall light outside of that room flicker.
After this patient passed away, a couple nights later, a large container HURLED off of this very stable/high up shelf out of no where onto my coworker, who then screamed ‘Its Ms. XXXXXX!!!!!’
100% haunted.”
14.
“I used to work night shift at a psych hospital. The floor above mine was an autism/developmental disabilities unit. Sometimes you could hear stuff going on up there through the floor. One night not long after I started, I hear this ungodly, drawn out shriek and loud, hard pounding across the ceiling. It sounded like someone was being murdered, it really scared me. I had a coworker with me that night who happened to take shifts up there a lot, saw the look on my face and casually said, “oh that’s just [name]. She does that sometimes when she wakes up. All that happened was she came out of her room and ran down the hall.” Still made my hair stand on end when out of the dark and silence I’d hear screaming or slams out of nowhere above me.
I currently work at what used to be, and I guess still is, a convent. The mother house where I work is more of an assisted living facility for elderly nuns currently, with the more independent women living in separate housing down the valley from us. The building has been around since the late 19th Century and most of the women here are in their 80s and 90s. This is where most of them pass away. More than once I’ve seen lights on in a room I never went into, radios in empty rooms are on and playing something, etc. It’s weird and creepy.”
15.
“My very first job – working in a nightclub. The nightclub was above some clothes shop and right next to a multi-storey car park. My job was running the cloakroom at the entrance of the club, and from my seat I could see the empty car park.
About a week into the job, around 1am when no one was coming or going, I was staring blankly into the distance, and I noticed a body fall from the top of the multi-storey car park and out of my vision below the nightclub. I got up and ran outside, to the edge and looked over, but there wasn’t a body on the floor.
This happened at least once a week, always around 1am, a body would just fall limply from the top of the car park and disappear before it hit the floor. It happened so much that I can remember what the body looked like, what the body was wearing, but whenever I mentioned it to the staff they said they have never seen or heard anything about it.
I watched the CCTV but the cameras didn’t reach that far. I looked up information to see if anyone had died there, but couldn’t find anything. It could have just been my imagination but it was just too clear.”
16.
“I work midnights at a hotel and have experienced a few weird things, and others that have had the shift have experienced unexplained things as well.
We lock all the doors after a certain time and these experiences have all happened after we have had the doors locked.
I have had cabinet drawers open by themselves (when I’m not around), I have heard footsteps, and frequently get the feeling I’m being watched.
The craziest experience I’ve had occurred just a couple of weeks ago. There is an automatic paper towel dispenser in the restroom on the opposite side of the restroom, visible in the mirror. I was washing my hands and heard the paper towel dispenser activate, so I quickly turned around to see it dispensing a paper towel on its own. After it finished dispensing the paper towel, as I was watching, the paper towel lifted up from the bottom and stayed upwards for a few seconds then dropped limp. There were no air vents on that side of the restroom near the paper towel dispenser. It gave me the chills, but was interesting to experience.”
17.
“Last year, the hotel I work at got hit hard by hurricane Matthew causing us to close down for 3 months. However, they let me work my normal night shift there during that time doing various tasks. Now this hotel is medium sized. 8 floors, 104 rooms right by the ocean. I had a couple weird experiences while working in an empty hotel of that size but there’s only one I can’t really explain.
I had to do a security walk (aka check and make sure all doors are locked) and I normally listen to music on my phone as I do the walk. I had to take the stairs and almost at the top floor I pause my music for whatever reason. Right after I do I hear a woman’s voice singing opera. Just like a mid tone held out note. It lasted 1 to 2 seconds or so but there was no way it was the echo from me pausing my music in the stairwell. Way way way too different. I just stood in the stairs for a minute in dead silence to see if I heard it again but I didn’t. Have no idea what it was. I’m not one for believing in ghosts, but this definitely made a bit uneasy.
Now with hurricane Irma coming I hope I don’t have to go through that again, nor do I hope that my hotel takes any damage. Only positive thing is it’s super hurricane proofed after last year.”
18.
“My mom worked nightshifts at the hospital when I was younger.
The floor above her was haunted. Like really haunted. It was an old psych unit that wasn’t really being used as much. That being said, someone OK’d ghost hunters and some news crews to do tv shows / segments. Ghost hunters caught some doors closing by its self, wheelchairs moving on its own or one chair in one room..then a couple minutes later being in a totally different room.
My mom worked on post-op surgery floor. Mainly old folks and because the drugs and stuff they were on, they were kinda loopy. My mom is doing her rounds and hears one of her patients talking, saying no to whiskey. My mom laughs and asks who he’s talking to because “No one is in the room!” then he said “Nah, not you. The lady behind the door!”my mom ran super quick.
Or the one time one her patients asked if the guy in the bed beside her is ok because “he states he feels fine” and really wants to leave. No one else was in that shared room. Literally just that one lady.”
19.
“I have worked night shift for 15 of my 18 years in medicine. I’ve worked in all kinds of facilities. There’s quite a few stories from all of these years but this one happened a few years ago.
We had a patient who was dying. She was Native American and her family asked if we could open the window so her spirit could exit. My charge nurse and I apologized profusely and explained that it was not possible as the windows don’t open at all. The lady passed away a few hours later.
A few days later I was sitting at the desk across from the room and I was expecting a patient so I had the room set up and ready to go. We had a slide board on the bed. It’s a long plastic board used to help slide patients from one bed to another. Anyway, as I’m sitting there, I see the slide board fly off the bed and hit the wall. No one was in the room and I was the only person near the room but I was still easily 20+ feet away from the door to the room. I went in and picked up the board and said ‘April, you’re dead. You have to move on.’ We had a few more things happen like the heart monitor showing the heart rhythm of a dying patient when no one is in there. Every time, I just go in there and tell her she’s dead.
Eventually it stopped happening so I hope she finally found her way out.”
20.
“I was a Martime Officer aboard a containership many years ago, sailing in the Indian Ocean. During a night shift an object showed on the radar on collision course. We tried to get a visual confirmation but there was nothing to be seen (it was a clear night with an almost full moon and a calm sea). After waiting for almost an hour, where the radar indicated the object stayed on collision course with the same speed, and no visual confirmation, the captain was called. The 5 man on the bridge at that moment — of which 2 well seasoned officers and a captain — couldn’t figure out what was going on. The captain decided to perform an evasive maneuver, the other ship ‘changed course’ together with us staying on collision course. Both radars gave an equal reading and ECDIS showed a ship with a name and call sign. We tried to reach the ship via VHF but couldn’t get a response. When the ships got closer it became very clear there was nothing above the water. Though it was most likely a malfunction the captain decided to muster in the lifeboats (while he waited on the bridge with the CEO) and be ready to deploy on impact. When the dot on the radar ‘collided’ with us it disappeared and nothing happened. In the next harbour the radars were thoroughly checked by experts flown in but there was found to be nothing wrong. It was pretty scary.”
21.
“I was a care aid working graveyards at a nursing home.
One night was really busy. It’s 3 am and I’m walking quickly to my next 2 call bells with a diaper in one hand, cloths in the other.
Suddenly, I hear a young woman’s voice very loud. The floor is shaped like a long hall with 2 pods of rooms at each end. I’m almost onto the next floor, the voice comes from the opposite end of the unit.
I whirl around. I can’t hear anything on the floor now; the woman’s voice sounded like a TV turned on full blast then turned-off. It made no sense.
I realized I was too tired to know what I heard, but I knew there were no young women on the unit. I stood still for a few seconds, straining to hear anything to justify my attention.
Nothing. I turned around and left for the call bells. Nothing good comes from checking impossible sounds in the middle of the night in a building where people go to die.”
David Hall - Freelance Writer 