15 Night Shift Workers Share Their Most Unsettling Experiences On The Job

From Redditor u/PsychedelicGoat42

I work in a prison. When I was new, I was working overtime one night in a housing unit that has seen a lot of death. It was well after midnight, and all of the offenders were supposed to be in their cells. Since this was a medium security prison, the offenders still had access to leave their cell to use the communal bathroom at night.

Well, I was going in for the 2am count. I watched an offender walk down the stairs from the 2nd level and into the bathroom. I stood at the entrance to the bathroom and yelled in to ask them what cell they were in so I could add an extra body to that cell for my count but got no answer. I then walked into the bathroom and searched everywhere but found absolutely nobody.

I told one of my coworkers about what happened, and the first thing they asked me was, "was he tall and skinny with long dreads?" And he had been! When I answered yes, I was told, "That's Mr. Bones. He killed himself a few years ago but he still hangs around."

I still get goosebumps thinking about it.

From Redditor u/Apart_Future9033:

Used to clean a church alone late at night. There was a piano upstairs, which I thought was broken, which was why it was upstairs in the attic. One night I started hearing piano music from the attic, I immediately assumed someone was up there pranking me, so I went up and there was no one. When I turned around to walk away after realizing no one was there, I heard a loud bang behind this metal door which I assume was an attic closet. Never worked the night shift again. Asked the one other person that worked night shifts, she confirmed weird s*** happening was normal.

From Redditor u/itsabloodydisgrace:

I switched to night shifts at the start of the pandemic because there was a lot of overtime available. I’m a psychiatric nurse. I was called to cover another nurse at a very low maintenance place - an independent living facility, most of the people there didn’t have major issues and were over 50 so they’re usually asleep all night. Easy money.

At 11pm I was doing paperwork with an eye on the CCTV when a tall man in all black came across the monitor, he was very tall but had his head down. I asked him what he needs and he told me he was convinced he wasn’t safe and needed to go to an inpatient psych ward to escape the people who were after him. The next 2 hours I was on the phone trying to find out if anywhere would take him but there were no beds, he was coherent and basically didn’t pose enough of an urgent situation to warrant being sectioned. He saw that as the hospital not caring about his suffering and not believing he was genuinely ill, he hinted that I was colluding with them to get him killed, then he turned his head slowly to look me in the eye, and said if the threat to his own life wasn’t considered an emergency, “I bet they’d care if I stabbed someone else”.

From Redditor u/hbombjr:

I was working in a 35 story high rise. I was returning some computer tapes like I did nightly. I was exhausted and I could barely stay awake. As I approached the elevator, I noticed the door was open. I was happy that I didn’t need to wait and started walking faster until I realized there was no elevator car present and it was a ten story drop.

From Redditor u/UcallmeNightHawk:

I was working at a middle school as a night shift custodian. I cleaned a long U shaped wing full of classrooms every weeknight. I’d already locked up one set of doors to the wing and was about to lock the ones at the other end of the U.

I made the full lap around the wing, and I’d been cleaning there all night alone, and came to the end of the hallway where the doors to the rest of the school were. When I shut the lights off the dark silhouette of what looked like a child ran from across the end of the hallway from left to right. There were doors down there, but I’d just locked them all up and no one was around.

I was so creeped out, I locked the doors connecting the wing to the rest of the school and ran to my car. I always felt like I was seeing things out of the corner of my eye working there at night, but that was the most visible, for sure thing I saw at that place.

From Redditor u/Gileotine:

I worked for a moving company restocking the trucks based on supplies they would need that morning. It's a shitty job. Never work for a moving company. Do not do it.

Anyways I'm stocking a truck pulled up to the dock when I realize my vision is getting fuzzy. I'm tired.. I rub my eyes. My forearm feels wet, but I figure it's sweat and my vision clears. It happens again, I rub my my eyes and my forearm feels wet again. I look at my arm finally to see hundreds of crushed baby spiders.

My vision wasn't fuzzy, baby spiders were crawling on my eyelashes. I was covered in baby spiders. I ran to the nearest water hose and got everything off. The next morning I had lots of tiny bites on my legs but otherwise nothing else.