Construction Worker

First, I would like to state that the following details are completely true, not an "urban legend" or a tale I dreamed up to entertain myself. The story comes directly from my husband, who was involved first-hand and is the most no-nonsense, down to earth guy you could meet.

My husband is a building engineer who, from 1996 to 1999, worked midnights in an office building. There was a small staff of computer clerks who had offices on the first floor. The second floor was empty and used for storage.

One important detail does sound a bit like an "urban legend" story, but is apparently true. During the construction of the building some years ago, a worker was electrocuted.

Here are the details as my husband has related them to me:

Some of the midnight clerks took "smoke breaks" on the roof of the building. Passing through the second floor on their way to the roof top, the workers began seeing a "construction" type worker, wearing a hard hat and tool belt. He was usually walking away from them, either down a hallway, turning a corner or passing by a doorway, and he never responded when the workers called out to him - just kept walking. My husband began hearing these accounts because the workers thought this man was my husband and would ask him why he didn't respond to their greetings. However, my husband's office was in the basement of the building, he didn't wear a hard hat and he rarely had work to do on the empty second floor. Some of the workers would even argue with my husband, insisting that they HAD seen him and would eventually become nervous about these sightings (apparently they knew about the death of this construction worker). Finally, many of the women refused to go up to the second floor for anything.

Another building engineer (who worked evenings) reported that while up on the roof during one shift he "felt" someone behind him as he walked along the rooftop, but kept turning to find no one there. He even described the crunching of footsteps on the asphalt surface of the roof. He was not embarrassed to tell my husband how frightened he had become and quit his job soon after talking to my husband about this.

One of the strangest things my husband heard one night was a female security guard's story. The building by this time had been sold and all the workers transferred out. The only people in the building were my husband and the security guard. One night the guard casually asked if my husband had repairs to do on the second floor. He replied that he didn't and the guard became visibly nervous. She told him that she had made her rounds in the parking lot earlier in the evening and, when looking back towards the building from the parking lot, she had seen a man walking around on the second floor. She even described to my husband how she'd seen a vertical mini blind move slightly as the figure brushed against it as he walked. My husband says the guard didn't seem the type to make up stories and really seemed shaken up by the incident.

You may be wondering how my husband was reacting to all these stories. As I've said, he is such a no-nonsense guy, he was pretty calm about all of it, since he hadn't experienced anything directly. Then, one night he did have some work on the second floor in one of the empty office cubicles. As he was working on an electrical outlet in one of the cubicles, he got the feeling someone else was around. Now, the building was completely empty by this time, except for the guard in the lobby. As he worked, he heard a soft noise in a cubicle several yards away. After a few minutes of hearing this noise intermittently and not seeing anyone, he walked into a cubicle where the sound seemed to be coming from and found a desk drawer open. He shut the drawer and went back to work on the electrical outlet. He again began hearing a sound and now, convinced someone was playing a joke, quickly walked back to the cubicle. The drawer was open AGAIN, and no one was around. This happened a THIRD time and by then, my big, macho, no-nonsense husband admitted that he was totally spooked and left the second floor immediately.

I cannot stress enough that if you knew my husband and his personality, you'd realize what a fascinating and apparently, TRUE story this is about a haunting of this building, apparently by the spirit of the dead construction worker. I've heard that when a death occurs suddenly or violently, the spirit can be confused or restless and may "wander". Maybe this is what was happening here.

The building was closed not long after this, my husband has changed jobs and a new company now owns the building. It would be interesting to know if there are still odd things occurring.