Driving Me Crazy

My name is Drew, I am 23 years old, and I work for a large telecommunications company in Northern Virginia. I basically do customer service, which, for any of you who work in that type of industry know, is a real pain. Dealing with customers everyday really gets on your nerves, and can make you lose some of your sanity.

Recently, we had layoffs at our company, and a lot of people were let go. The call center I work in is opened twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, so it is a must that we have help at all times. Due to the layoff situation, and the fact that some of our "overnighters" left to pursue other options, we became short staffed, and word went out that third shift workers were needed. I hesitantly volunteered to help out for a couple of weeks until new help arrived. The hours I would be working would be twelve am to ten am, Tuesday through Friday.

My first week on this shift wasn't bad. I was becoming adjusted to the new hours, and was surprised at myself when I was able to stay awake all night. So I continued into week two.

The next Tuesday went alright. I managed to continue my winning streak at staying awake, and finished off my shift at ten, went home, and slept. I came back Wednesday morning at twelve, and started the shift like I had every other day. I guess it was around two am when I decided to take my first smoke break.

At night, there are only two, maybe three people in our entire building. On this particular night, there were 2 of us here: myself, and a supervisor. When I want to go smoke, I am supposed to go out the front doors of our building, and smoke near the window so the other person can see me... just in case. As I was smoking my cigarette and enjoying the break of being out of that stuffy building, I heard something behind me. As I turned around towards the window to see if my supervisor was beckoning me, I saw mulch falling, as if someone had thrown it against the window. My supervisor looked out at me, and mouthed "What?" I shook my head at him, finished up my cigarette, and headed back in. I wasn't quite sure what to think about what I thought I had just seen, so I played it off as though my eyes were playing tricks on me. I came back to my desk, logged back onto the phones, and continued on with my shift. I never told my supervisor what I thought I saw.

At about five am, I decided to go smoke another cigarette. This time, however, I went out back to where I normally smoke during the day, and where nobody else sits at night. Our building is pretty secure, as we have badges we have to swipe before we can get in, so I did not think anything of it when I went out back. Normally, there is a red light on the "swiper" thing, and when you run your badge through it, the light will turn green, the door will unlock, and you can get in. As I was getting ready to swipe my badge, the light turned green and the door unlocked. Nobody came out, and the door did not swing open. I kind of stood there, not really understanding what happened. The light on the "swiper" turned red again, and the door locked. I told myself that, as had happened before with the "swiper," it was just malfunctioning, so I swiped my badge, opened the door, and walked in. I headed for the bathroom.

Our bathroom lights have a timer on them, so after so long they turn themselves off. When I opened the door to the bathroom, the lights were off. I reached to the right, found the switch, and turned them back on. I went to one of the stalls and proceeded to take care of business.

As I was standing there, the lights went out. I jumped, and looked out of the stall to see if someone was there. I called out, "Hello? Could you turn the lights back on?" No response. I did not hear the door open, and I did not hear anything outside of the usual air vents running above me. I started to get freaked out, so I zipped up, and headed towards the door, arms out in front of me as I guided myself by the little amount of light the emergency light above the sinks provided. The light switch is right beside the sink on the wall, so when I came to it, I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, something in the mirror moving behind me. As it was dark in the bathroom, I could not make whatever it was out clearly. I fumbled along the wall for the switch, found it, and turned on the lights. I looked around the empty room to find nothing. This scared me so much, I came out of the bathroom, and immediately asked my supervisor if I could leave. As I didn't know what it was I saw, I decided I could not tell my supervisor about it, and used the "I feel sick" excuse. I left for the day.

I came back Wednesday night, hoping that the long rest I had would refresh my senses, and I would stop "freaking myself out." No such luck.

As I sat at my desk, I would see things out of the corner of my eye. I was afraid to try and smoke again, so I stayed at my desk the whole time. With the rare exception of me going to the bathroom, I did not move from my seat once.

I eventually told our scheduler that I could not work the graveyard shift as it was messing me up, and I could not draw the line between what was real, and what lack of sleep was doing to me. We agreed to come up with a schedule that would allow me to work one week a month on the overnight shift, and then work my normal shift the rest of the time, which was ten am through eight pm.

I never saw anything else when I went back to the day shift, and the events of that week seemed to disappear from my mind. A few weeks went by, and our scheduler informed me that they needed me to work the graveyard shift for a week. I agreed, not even remembering the things I had seen before.

Tuesday morning went ok. Wednesday morning was fine. Thursday morning terrified me.

It is extremely boring at night here, as very few people call in for problems. I decided that I needed some supplies (paper, pens, highlighters, etc), as well as a little break, so I headed down the hall to the supply closet.

The supply closet is always left open for employees, so you can imagine my confusion when I turned the knob on the closet door, and it would not open. Fortunately, I knew where a key was kept, so I headed towards that desk. I got the key, closed the drawer to the desk, and headed back to the closet. Not even thinking about it, I grabbed for the closet door handle, and it turned. I stood in shock for a moment, looking back and forth at the keys in my hand and the large, open door in front of me. I shook the strange feeling off, and told myself I just had not turned the handle enough, and that it had been opened the whole time. Unfortunately, no matter how much I kept telling myself that, I just did not believe it.

I walked into the closet to get my supplies. As I reached on one of the top shelves for a notebook, the closet door closed behind me. I knocked over a cup full of pencils as I turned around towards the door. It was pitch black, and I could see nothing. I moved toward the door and found the handle. I put my hand on the knob, and tried to push open the door as I tried to turn the handle. It was locked!

At this point, I was really starting to freak out. I had the keys in my pocket, but the handle did not have a lock on my side, only on the outer portion. I started shaking, and before I knew it, tears were filling my eyes. I screamed for help, but stopped when I realized the only two people in the building were on the other side of the complex, and they could not hear me from where they were. I banged and kicked on the door, hoping the noise would bring someone to my aid. Nobody came.

It must have been about 15 minutes I had been in the closet, and I was just standing against the shelves, trying to calm and reassure myself that I would get out of the confined space. For whatever reason, and unfortunately I cannot tell you why, I reached for the door handle again, and started to turn it. It opened! As I swung the door open, a large shadow on the opposite wall from the closet door darted down the hallway, and I could hear some type of noise that resembled some type of hurt animal, almost like a cat in heat would make, but worse.

I wasted no time in getting out of there, and going back to my desk.

My supervisor came up to me, as I was visibly upset by what had happened, and asked if I was alright. I told him I wasn't, and explained what had been happening. He stood at my desk, listening to what I told him as if it rang a bell. When I was done, he told me this:

"You are not the only one who sees things like that or who has had things happen to them. Most of the night crew has seen that. That is why most of us sit at our desks all night and don't move."

I tried probing him for more information, but he didn't know anymore than I did other than that whatever "it" was scared the hell out of everyone. He also told me that almost everyone that works here knows about it, but does not bring it up often for fear talk of it will bring "it" out, even during the day.

I ended up staying at work that night, finished out Friday as well, and went back to the day shift the next week.

My mother also works here, and while out at lunch with her one day, I told her about my troubles, and asked her if anyone had come to her with similar problems before. Her face sort of froze when I brought up the issue and asked for her input. She told me some people had mentioned some things about noises and shadows, but nothing as bad as what I experienced. Even though she is skeptical on supernatural issues, she did tell me that she thinks "it" is actually some type of entity stemming from a man that was killed during the construction of our building years back.

The story is he had been eating lunch when a crane carrying metal posts accidentally lost control, and let the posts fall. As the crane operator struggled to maintain composure, the crane started to swing, "spraying" the metal posts everywhere. Three posts landed on top of the man, while one post went through him, practically splitting him in half lengthwise, and ramming him into the ground.

Whether or not the story of that guy is true has yet to be proven, but thankfully I have not been asked to work overnight again in several weeks nor have I had any other encounters with "it." It's also a relief to know that I was not the only one experiencing strange things in our building, because for a while there, I thought my work was driving me crazy.