The night shift horror stories in this category come from people who work while the rest of the world sleeps. Hotel night auditors who get calls from rooms nobody checked into. Overnight stockers who find the shelves faced before they touch them. Dispatchers, security guards, nurses, bakers, and radio hosts on the graveyard shift, alone with a building that makes too many sounds.These graveyard shift stories are about ordinary jobs and the rules nobody writes down: which door to leave locked, which call not to answer, which regular never needs to be served. If you work nights, you may recognize a few of them. For more, see our best horror stories to read at night or pick a short horror story for your break.
I’ve worked nights as a security guard at a few places, and the self storage horror story I’m about to tell is the only one that made me quit. Self storage is supposed to be the easiest gig there is. Rows of metal doors, a gate code, a golf cart. You drive around and make … Read more
This funeral home horror story is about a van that drove itself. Every night for four nights, the removal van at the funeral home where I worked in Savannah, Georgia, came back with fourteen more miles on it, and every morning the passenger seat was wet. Tour guides make a living off ghost stories of … Read more
This 911 dispatcher horror story is about one call. It came in three nights in a row at 3:02 a.m., always the same whisper, always from inside the building I was sitting in. Dispatchers collect terrifying tales to tell at night. This is the one I don’t tell new hires. I was a 911 dispatcher … Read more
If you’ve ever worked the overnight at a gas station, you have gas station horror stories. Drunks, drive-offs, a guy who tried to pay with a live crawfish. Mine is about the phone calls from “corporate” that kept asking me to step outside. I’ve swapped gas station night shift stories with a lot of clerks … Read more
Every night nurse has haunted hospital stories. Call lights from empty rooms. Elevators that open on the wrong floor. Mine is about the whiteboard in Room 612, which kept writing my name on it in someone else’s handwriting. I’ve heard my share of hospital night shift horror stories in the break room. This is the … Read more
Everyone who works in stores has retail horror stories about customers. Mine is about the Halloween pop-up where I worked overnight restock in 2023, and the motion-sensor props that kept going off after we locked the doors. I’ve heard a lot of scary night time stories from people who work closing shifts. This is mine. … Read more
This night shift hotel horror story starts with a wake-up call for a room nobody could be in. Room 214 was out of order and locked in the system, and every night at 3:10 a.m., something in that room still picked up the phone. I worked the night audit at a highway hotel for almost … Read more
This late night radio horror story begins with a sweet little song dedication for the woman in the blue Corolla. Then the caller kept phoning back to tell me exactly where she was driving, and I kept reading it on the air. I hosted overnights at a small radio station in south Georgia for three … Read more
This haunted hayride story comes from the fall I spent jumping out of the dark for twelve dollars an hour. We had nine actors on the roster that night, and on the last run I counted ten. I worked one season at a haunted hayride outside of Lancaster. It was a farm that did pumpkins … Read more
These night shift horror stories come from people who work alone while the world sleeps. There’s something about the graveyard shift — the world goes quiet, the lights hum, and you start to notice things you’d never notice in daylight. Some nights, you’re not as alone as you think. Here are three true stories, sent … Read more