“There Were A Number Of Weird Things”: 42 Creepy Security Guard Stories That Might Keep You Awake Tonight

If you want real-life ghost stories, don’t look for campfires or abandoned cabins in the woods.
Look for a bored security guard working the night shift in a half-lit building at 3 a.m.

Security guards stand watch in places most of us only see during the day: quiet hospitals, empty malls,
echoing warehouses, and lonely parking garages. When the crowds go home, the humming fluorescent lights,
humming machines, and creaking pipes stay behindalong with a whole lot of “what was that?” moments.

Collections like “There Were A Number Of Weird Things”: 42 Creepy Security Guard Stories That Might Keep You Awake Tonight
have blown up online because they hit a nerve. These are everyday people doing an ordinary job, but their
stories sound like the opening scenes of horror movies. From ghostly footsteps in locked corridors to
security camera footage that doesn’t quite make sense, creepy security guard stories are the perfect mix
of relatable and terrifying.

Why Creepy Security Guard Stories Hit So Hard

There’s a reason “night shift security guard” is basically a genre of horror on its own. Real security guards
have talked about:

• Walking through empty retail stores where displays move on their own.
• Hospitals where call buttons go off in rooms that no longer have patients.
• Office buildings where elevators open onto dark, unused floors.
• Factories and construction sites where footsteps and voices echo in locked areas.

Unlike ghost hunters, security guards are not there looking for paranormal activity. They’re just trying
to finish a shift, check their rounds, and maybe scroll their phone on a quiet monitor screen. That’s what
makes these creepy encounters so compelling: they happen to people who are usually trained to stay calm,
logical, and observant.

Empty Stores After Midnight: Retail Turns Real-Life Haunted House

The Display That Wouldn’t Stay Put

One classic kind of story comes from big-box stores and malls. Picture this: the store closes at midnight,
the last employee leaves, and the security guard does a walkthrough. In the book section, a promotional copy
of a novel is propped on a plastic standnothing weird there. The guard checks other aisles, loops back, and
suddenly the book is on the floor several feet away from the stand.

They put it back. Keep walking. Come back fifteen minutes later, and the same book is face down in a different
spot, as if someone had picked it up, carried it, and dropped it mid-step. Cameras show the aisle empty.
There’s no wind, no air vent blasting, no late-night browser. Just that one stubborn book refusing to stay
where it’s supposed to be.

The Mannequins That “Shift” Positions

Mannequins are already unsettling. Now imagine you patrol a closed apparel store, and each time you circle back,
one mannequin is angled just a little differently. An arm raised, a head tilted toward the camera, a torso
turned as if it’s following you.

Plenty of guards insist there’s a rational explanationvibrations from heavy doors, an overactive imagination,
the brain filling in details in low light. Still, when you’re alone in a silent store at 3 a.m., those slight
changes feel a lot less like physics and a lot more like someone (or something) playing a slow, unnerving game
of “gotcha.”

Hospitals and Nursing Homes: Where Life and Death Overlap

Footsteps in a Closed Wing

Hospitals are one of the most common settings for creepy security guard stories. Guards describe hearing
footsteps in closed wings where no patients are supposed to be. They follow the sound down the corridor,
but the lights flick on to reveal empty hallways and locked doors.

In some accounts, ceiling motion sensors trigger automatically, turning on lights sequence by sequence as
“someone” seems to walk aheadonly nobody shows up on camera. Sometimes the sound stops right in front of
a room that used to hold a long-term patient who has recently died. Whether you believe in ghosts or not,
that’s enough to make anyone grip their flashlight a little tighter.

The Call Button That Wouldn’t Quit

Another recurring detail in night shift tales: call buttons going off in empty rooms. A security guard sees a
nurse’s station panel light up, indicating a room that’s been vacant for days. Staff assume it’s a wiring glitch,
but the alert keeps returningusually around the same time every night.

In some stories, guards say they step into the room and the air feels suddenly heavy and cold, only for the call
light to click off the moment they cross the threshold. Is it faulty equipment? Muscle memory of old routines?
Or something else refusing to let go of its nightly ritual?

Factories, Warehouses, and Lonely Industrial Sites

Voices on the Radio

Industrial security can be unnerving because the locations are often remote: dark fields, perimeter fences,
and huge buildings with long, echoing corridors. Some guards report strange interference on their radios during
roundsstatic that suddenly turns into faint voices or whispered phrases.

When they check with the other guards, nobody has spoken. The control room hasn’t keyed the mic. Replay the
audio later, and it’s just static. Maybe it’s signal bleed from a nearby source, maybe it’s nothing. But in the
moment, alone in a stairwell with a flickering light, that whisper feels very personal.

Something Waiting on the Stairwell Landing

Stairwells show up constantly in creepy security guard stories. One guard describes walking down a stairwell in
a half-renovated building, hearing the echo of another set of footsteps matching their pace just one flight above.
When they stop, the sound stops. When they start again, so do the phantom steps.

They finally spin around mid-flight to “catch” whoever’s following themand there’s no one there. The air feels
still, almost charged. They finish the rest of their rounds by elevator and make a mental note: no more stairs tonight.

Parking Garages, Lots, and the Fear of Open Space

The Car With the Vanishing Driver

Empty parking garages are practically designed for horror. Echoes ricochet off concrete, lights hum and buzz,
and cars sit like sleeping animals. One popular type of story describes a car that keeps showing up on the top
levellights on, inside empty, engine off. The next round, the car is gone; cameras show no one entering, exiting,
or driving away.

Sometimes guards explain it later: two cars of the same model, a glitch in the cameras, or simple memory mistakes
during a long, boring shift. But in the moment, walking up to a car you know wasn’t there twenty minutes ago, it
doesn’t feel like a clerical error. It feels like a trap.

Predators That Aren’t Paranormal at All

Not every scary security story involves ghosts. A lot of them feature something far more real: people and animals.
Guards recount being stalked by packs of coyotes on dark mountain roads after their shifts, or by intoxicated
strangers hiding in stairwells and storage rooms.

One of the truly terrifying stories involves a guard noticing a figure on camera lurking around a children’s area,
or a stranger who keeps showing up on multiple cameras but never seems to use any door. Eventually they’re caught
hiding in an access area or maintenance tunnel. In these cases, the horror isn’t supernaturalit’s the realization
that someone very real has been quietly sharing the space with you for who knows how long.

Are These Stories Really Paranormal? Or Just the Night Shift Messing With You?

Creepy security guard stories exist right at the intersection of psychology and environment. Several factors
crank up the fear factor:

• Fatigue: Late-night shifts mess with circadian rhythms and can cause micro-dreams, misperceptions, and heightened anxiety.
• Low light and silence: Our brains are wired to detect threats in the dark; strange noises stand out more in quiet spaces.
• Repetition: Making the same rounds again and again means you instantly notice the one thing that’s “off.”
• Expectations: If you’ve heard other guards’ ghost stories, your mind will interpret ambiguous events in the creepiest possible way.

On the other hand, there are stories that defy easy explanation: locked doors that open, elevators that stop on
abandoned floors, figures on camera that don’t correspond to any physical person, and multiple staff members
reporting the same details independently.

Most security guards sit in a pragmatic middle ground. They’ll joke about ghosts, but they also check every door,
document every incident, and file the kind of report that starts with “Probably nothing, but…” Those are the reports
that keep readers coming back for more.

How Security Guards Stay Sane on the Creepy Night Shift

Behind every frightening story is a professional trying to do their job. Many guards develop practical habits to
deal with the fear factor:

• Structured rounds: Keeping a tight schedule and logging each checkpoint helps anchor reality when your imagination runs wild.
• Using tech wisely: Cameras, body cams, radios, and motion sensors provide extra sets of “eyes” and a record of what really happened.
• Buddy systems when possible: Two guards walking together turn a horror-movie vibe into an annoying walk with your coworker.
• Dark humor: Joking about ghosts and “hallway goblins” is a common coping strategy. If you can laugh at it, it’s less scary.
• Training and protocols: Clear procedures for checking alarms, calling law enforcement, and de-escalating confrontations keep real-world fear under control.

In other words, the best way to survive creepy security guard stories is to be a good security guard first and a
paranormal investigator second.

Why We Can’t Stop Reading Creepy Security Guard Stories

Collections like “There Were A Number Of Weird Things” resonate because they tap into a deep, shared fear: what
happens when the familiar world gets just slightly off-kilter. A hospital corridor, a department store, a parking
garagethese are regular places. When something inexplicable happens there, it feels closer to home than a haunted
castle or an old graveyard.

These stories also offer something else: a peek behind the scenes. We get to imagine what happens after closing time,
when the lights dim and the background hum of a building becomes the soundtrack of the night. The security guard,
just trying to make it to sunrise, becomes our stand-inthe brave soul who goes to check that noise so we don’t have to.

Extra: Lived-Through (and Lived-Through-Again) Experiences From the Graveyard Shift

To really understand why creepy security guard stories stick with people, it helps to “walk a shift” in their shoes.
Here are some composite experiences, drawn from the kinds of accounts guards share again and again, that show how
the ordinary can twist into something unforgettable.

When the Building Remembers a Former Routine

Imagine working security in an office tower where an entire floor has been vacated after a company moved out.
Every night at 2:15 a.m., the elevators stop on that floor even though nobody has pressed the button. You log the
event, check the floor, and find the same thing: dark hallways, empty desks, unplugged computers, and a faint hint
of someone’s old air freshener.

Eventually, an older employee mentions that in the days when that company still occupied the space, a night-owl
manager always took the elevator up at 2:15 a.m. after a smoke break. Is it a glitch in the system? A weird timer
in outdated software? Or just muscle memory baked into a building that refuses to forget its schedule? For the guard
riding that elevator every night, it doesn’t really matterit still feels like sharing a routine with a ghost.

The Room That Never Feels Empty

In some healthcare facilities, there’s “that room.” The one staff quietly avoid when they don’t have to go in.
Security guards talk about entering a particular room on their rounds and feeling as if someone is standing inches
behind them, watching. The air is colder. Sounds from the hallway seem muffled at the door.

One guard might shake it off as suggestionthey’ve heard rumors from nurses and orderlies, after all. Another guard,
coming in fresh with no backstory, reports the same feeling. They start doing quick, almost comically fast walkthroughs
of that room: in, scan, out. Nothing on camera, nothing in the logs, but if you ask them, “Would you sleep in there
alone for a hundred bucks?” the answer will be a very firm no.

Real People, Real Danger

Then there are experiences security guards never want to relive because they involve real danger. A late-night
patrol through a parking structure reveals a car with the engine running and someone inside who doesn’t respond
to knocks. A warehouse door that should be locked is cracked open, and a flashlight beam reveals movement in the
shadows that turns out to be a desperate trespasser with a weapon.

For many guards, the truly terrifying stories aren’t about ghosts, but about situations where their training,
instincts, and split-second decisions keep them and other people safe. It’s one thing to hear phantom footsteps.
It’s another to see someone sprinting toward you in a dark hallway and not know whether they’re scared, dangerous,
or both.

The Fear You Take Home

Long after a shift ends, some moments won’t leave. A glimpse of a figure on a camera that disappears between frames.
The sound of someone calling a name in an empty lobby. The memory of being sure you were alone, right up until the
second you weren’t.

Security guards often talk about needing a decompression ritual when they get home from the night shift: a shower,
a snack, a mindless TV show, maybe a podcast that replaces eerie silence with laughter. Yet even then, a lot of them
still end up listening to other people’s creepy stories online. There’s a strange comfort in knowing you weren’t the
only one who heard the elevator ding on a floor that should have been abandoned.

That’s the secret behind collections like “There Were A Number Of Weird Things.” They don’t just entertain us; they
validate the uneasy feeling that sometimes, in the middle of the night, the world isn’t quite as empty as it looks.

Conclusion: The Night Shift Never Really Sleeps

Creepy security guard stories are more than quick scares. They reveal how thin the line can be between routine and
terror, between a normal workday and a moment that sticks with you for years. Whether you believe these tales are
proof of the paranormal, side effects of fatigue, or simply the result of hyper-vigilant night shift minds, one
thing is clear: when the lights go down and the last customer leaves, the real show is just beginning.

So the next time you walk through a mall at closing or drive past a hospital glowing in the dark, spare a thought for
the security guard making the rounds. They’re the ones opening the doors, checking the corridors, and pressing play on
a hundred little horror stories you’ll never readexcept when a few of those stories make it online and keep you
awake just a little longer than you planned.