Most people get to spend their evenings in the comfort of their own homes, however, people who work the night shift don't get that lucky. These often unseen heroes clean, protect, and otherwise provide as we sleep, and sometimes stuff on the late shift gets....weird.
We went to Reddit to find some of the creepiest true stories from folks working the notorious graveyard shift. From paranormal activity, to creepy strangers emerging from the dark, you're about to gain a whole new appreciation for the night shift.
Graveyard Shift Staff Tell the Scariest Things They've Seen,
Hospital orderly sees woman who had just recently passed away
"I work at a hospital overnight. By far the creepiest thing happened while I was cleaning two rooms after the patients left. The rooms were connected, with one exit. I cleaned the first room, left for 10 minutes, got my supplies and went back to the other. I saw a little old lady in a chair, hunched over. I stared at her for a few seconds. I thought it was odd they put a patient in that room already. I begin cleaning, and look back at the other room - it's empty. She disappeared. I would have seen if she walked passed me. Creepy. No one on the floor fit the description I gave of her - except the lady who died in that room four hours before my shift."
Property guard hears woman's dire screams for help
"I used to work as a night watchman on a large property. Not just a big building, but a large surrounding property as well. Probably 50 acres.
Well, this property was not in the best of areas. It was kind of secluded, but had a subdivision nearby.
Anyways it had a really long driveway that was gated. One night I start my rounds by walking out the front door of the place which was all lit up. As soon as I lock the door behind me and take a step I hear a woman's voice scream 'OH MY GOD SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME!' up at the end of the driveway. It was somewhat faint and I took five running steps into the driveway, skidded to a stop and ran back inside to call the cops. They responded with multiple police cars and even a helicopter. They found absolutely nothing.
I still think it could have been someone trying to lure me out there."
Distraught worker sneaks past security, kills himself in company president's office
"Around 12 years ago I was working security at a small company's headquarters in New York City. My partner for the night had called in sick, so I had to work from midnight to six all by my lonesome. Now, normally, this wouldn't be a problem. I just had to sit in the back room, watch some cameras, and occasionally head out for a sweep - nothing to it right? Well as it turns out, one of the employees had stayed in the building after hours, and had managed to avoid my co-worker's sweep from the previous shift. I first noticed a movement in my peripheral vision on one of the screens, and then again a few minutes later. This was odd, because I was used to quiet nights in this particular building.
I was a little scared when I headed out for my sweep, but it was my job, so I grabbed my flashlight and headed out to begin. I had to start the sweep in one big hallway, and right as I entered, I saw a flash of movement at the end of it. At this point, I was sufficiently freaked out. I stood frozen for a minute or so, looking into the semi-darkness, unsure of what to do. The decision was taken out of my hands, however, as I heard a gunshot resound down the hallway. In what was the scariest moment of my life, I slowly walked down that hallway to investigate. I reached the end, and saw to my left that the president's office light was on. Slowly, I approached the door and creaked it open, scared shitless. What I saw will forever haunt me. The man had taken a seat in the president's chair, and shot himself in the head with a pistol, splattering blood and brains all over the floor and the wall. Apparently this guy was having problems at home, and because the president was supposedly a total asshole to him, he decided to off himself and scare the crap out of the president at the same time. In any case, I threw up a few times and called the police. I got the next two weeks off. I still have nightmares about it sometimes."
Man pulls up to gas station, appears to have a dead woman sitting in the passenger seat
"When I had just graduated high school, I started working at a truck stop a few miles outside of town. I usually worked evenings, but I had to switch shifts with the night shift guy, so there I was, at three a.m., fighting sleep. A car pulls into the parking lot and parks. There's a guy in the driver seat, crying, and a woman in the passenger seat just staring straight ahead...not moving... no emotion whatsoever. They sat there for what seemed like an hour. Then the guy gets out and comes in. He grabs a few random items and puts them on the counter. The whole time he is looking all around, checking for other people. There was no one but us... for miles. He then stares right into my very soul and says: 'It's quiet out here, isn't it? So quiet you can almost hear the angels singing.' I muttered something unmemorable and he left. She never moved."
Little girl watches her nanny as she sleeps
"Right out of college I got a job as a nanny for two elementary-aged girls. For their anniversary, the parents went on a week-long cruise and I stayed home with the kids. The first few nights, the eight-year-old would come into my room multiple times a night and wake me up. It was obvious she hadn't pre-planned what she was going to give me as a reason for waking me, so she would stumble through an excuse on the spot like 'I just wanted to make sure we are still going to the park tomorrow' or 'I think I forgot to brush my teeth and wondered if I should do it now or wait 'til the morning.'
I figured she was just missing her parents and feeling out-of-sorts, so I let it slide at first. But by the fourth or fifth time, knowing I needed sleep to keep up with two active kids, I told her that she wasn't to wake me up unless there it was an emergency.
I get a couple more hours of undisturbed sleep, but wake up with a weird feeling around five in the morning. I turn over and nearly piss myself - the girl had brought a chair right next to the bed and was staring down at me. It didn't help that she had long, dark hair and this happened a few months after The Ring came out.
Her explanation? 'I just thought it would be fun to watch you sleep. I didn't wake you!' Touche, kiddo."
Spirit of abused child haunts child welfare center; wakes children up to play in the middle of the night
"I work at a crisis nursery, which is a childcare facility that provides emergency and respite care for children under the age of seven. I used to work graveyards all the time. I have to say first that I am absolutely a non-believer in paranormal stuff. That being said, at two in the morning in a dark room when you and two or three other girls in their twenties are the only adults in the building, sh*t gets creepy sometimes.
The facility I work in was named for a child who was beaten to death by one of their parents. The nursery was started in their name as a way to hopefully prevent another child dying a violent death at the hands of a stressed-out caregiver.
So the story that goes around is that this kid's spirit haunts the nursery and is mostly active at night. They tell me that one of the reasons that everyone thinks this place is haunted is that many different people have reported different children asking about 'that kid' as in, 'why doesn't that kid have to go to bed?' while pointing at nothing. I brush it off, basically forget about it.
A few weeks later, I was in the sleep room (the bedroom where all the kids sleep. There must always be an adult in the room with the children) by myself. I'm just chilling, reading a book with a booklight. The rest of the room is pitch black and silent.
All of a sudden, this kid (probably four or five) sits bolt upright in bed and says, 'Hey, how come they aren't asleep? Why do they get to play? I want to play too!' all while pointing at a wall with no kids anywhere in the vicinity.
Instant crazy shivers all over me. I was so scared I almost screamed. I refused to be alone in there from that moment on."
College baseball coach falls out of fifth floor window of hotel after drunken night out
"I saw a live guy's brain working the night shift at a hotel front desk. One night, our hotel was hosting a college baseball team. The team came back around 11 and went up to their rooms to bed. No big deal. Then, around one, the coaches came back absolutely HAMMERED. They went up to their rooms, and that was the last I heard from them for about an hour.
While I was setting up for breakfast, I heard the elevator ding. Out of the elevator bursts one of the coaches. He runs straight out the front door. Odd, but okay, whatever. He comes running back inside shouting, 'He fell! He fell!' I run outside while pulling out my phone and dialing 9-1-1 to see one of the coaches who had come back earlier, face down on the ground in a HUGE puddle of blood.
The paramedics got there and as they were loading him up, one of them wiped off his forehead, and there it was. The guy had fallen out of a third story window straight on his forehead and split it open so wide and deep that you could see his brain. He was life-flighted to the bigger hospital up north. He lived. I got a raise the next day."
"Insidious" starts playing by itself as movie theatre closes down
"I was a shutting down projectors and closing down the movie theater around two in the morning. I shut off the one projector and turn around to see one theater starting to play Insidious from the beginning without previews. It was extremely out of place considering the projectors are programmed for the movies to start automatically with the 20-minute previews built in. No show was scheduled in the computer and I still don't know how it started. But I locked myself in the office for the rest of the night."
9-1-1 operator receives nightly calls from land line of unoccupied house
"A phone used to call me on 9-1-1 every night, make horrible screaming sounds or sometimes white noise, and then disconnect. It scared the living sh*t out of me. The number was as a landline for a vacant residence. The officers we sent out every time never found a thing, and I was repeatedly assured that the sounds on the line were due to a faulty phone line or the rain, but it never stopped bothering me."
Night nurses get phantom call from empty room with no phone
"I work as a transporter in a hospital. About two years ago we moved from the old city hospital into a new state of the art facility. The old hospital was built in the 1930s and was showing its age. At night was just plain creepy. Each floor had an east and west wing. The east wing of the fourth floor was the first wing to be shut down about two weeks before the move. One night at around 9:30, I'm up on the floor to get a patient from the west wing. I see a small group of nurses and aids who all used to work on the now closed east wing. They looked visibly shaken. I walked over to see if everything was OK. They told me that they had decided to walk through their old wing for nostalgia's sake. When they were over there, the phone at the nurses station started ringing. The computers and phones had not yet been moved. Not sure what to do, one of the nurses reached over the counter and answered the phone. The nurse told me there was a woman's voice on the other end and that she sounded confused. This is the conversation as best I can remember it.
'This is ______. How can I help you?' asked the nurse.
'Hello? Who is this?'
'I'm a nurse. Is there anything I can help you with?'
'Where I am I?'
'This is (hospital name). Are you patient here?'
'Oh. OK.'
Then the line went dead. That's when the nurse finally looked at the screen on the phone to see where the call was coming from. The phone gave the room number directly next to the nurses station. The rooms by this point had all been cleared out and the phones removed. They could see directly into the room and see that there was nobody in there. That's when they bolted towards the west wing where I was getting off the elevator. I avoided that wing for the rest of my time there."