Chapter 1
I’ve gone back and forth about posting this for a while now, honestly. Not because I think anyone’s going to call me crazy. I’ve read enough of these threads to know nobody here is going to do that but because every time I try to write it down, it sounds smaller than it actually was. Like I’m exaggerating just by describing it. I’m not. If anything I’m leaving stuff out because I don’t know how to make it sound as unsettling as it felt at the time.
Quick background so this makes sense. I worked at a mortuary for a little over two years. Not embalming, not anything like that mostly paperwork, coordinating transfers between the funeral home and the hospital, occasionally helping move a body from the van to the prep room if the driver needed a second set of hands. Desk job with an occasional strong stomach requirement, basically. I’m not a doctor, I’m not a paranormal investigator, I don’t even really believe in ghosts if you asked me on a normal day. I just know what I heard that night, and two years later it’s still the reason I never picked up another overnight shift again, even when they offered extra pay for it.
This was sometime in 2021, spring I think, though I couldn’t tell you the exact month anymore. A coworker of mine, Dale, needed the night off for something family related, and since I was the newest guy who hadn’t built up enough seniority to say no to things like that, I got asked to cover. Midnight to whenever the morning staff rolled in around six. I’d done it maybe four or five times before. It was never anything special. You sit in the office, you do paperwork, you drink bad coffee, you watch something on your phone with the volume low because for some reason it always felt wrong to have it loud in a place like that. Every couple hours you do a walkthrough just to make sure everything’s where it should be. That’s the whole job at night. Boring, mostly.
So that night started exactly the same. I got there around 11:45, did the usual handoff with the afternoon guy, and by midnight I was alone in the building. The place wasn’t huge a front office, a hallway that ran the length of the building, the prep room, a storage room where we kept extra stretchers and supplies, and a back door that led out to where the vehicles parked. I want to be clear that the building was locked. I checked it myself when I came in, like I always did, because that was part of the routine.
Around two in the morning I was in the office, half paying attention to a video on my phone, when I heard a loud metallic sound come from somewhere down the hall. Not a bang exactly more like something heavy had tipped over and hit the floor at an angle. I remember pausing my video and just sitting there for a second, waiting to see if it happened again. It did, maybe five or six seconds later. Same kind of sound, slightly quieter.
Honestly my first reaction wasn’t fear, it was annoyance, because I figured something had fallen off a shelf in storage and I was going to have to go clean it up before my shift ended. I got up, walked the hallway, checked the prep room, checked storage, even stepped outside through the back door just in case someone had pulled up without me hearing the van. Nothing. Everything was exactly where it should be. Nothing tipped over, nothing out of place, no dented equipment, nothing. I stood in the hallway for a minute just kind of confused, then went back to the office and told myself it was probably the building settling or the AC unit doing something weird. Old buildings make noise, I’ve heard that a hundred times since.
Maybe ten minutes after that, the phone on the desk rang. This part I want to explain a little because if you’ve never worked somewhere like this, phone calls at odd hours aren’t actually that strange hospitals will sometimes call ahead before a transfer, families call at weird hours because grief doesn’t run on a schedule. So a call at 2 a.m. wasn’t unusual by itself. I picked it up, said the name of the place like I was supposed to, and there was nothing. Not static, not breathing, just a kind of flat silence. I said hello twice. Nothing back. Then it clicked off. I remember looking at the caller ID and it just said “unknown,” which happened sometimes with hospital switchboards, so I didn’t think much of it. Chalked it up to a wrong number or a dropped hospital line.
It’s the next part that actually got under my skin. A few minutes later I want to say five, maybe less I heard wheels. And I don’t mean a vague scraping sound I’m interpreting after the fact, I mean unmistakably, clearly, the sound of a stretcher being rolled across tile. Anyone who has spent time around hospitals or funeral homes knows exactly what that sound is. There’s a rhythm to it, a specific pitch those wheels make on that kind of flooring, and it’s not something your brain mistakes for anything else.
I got up so fast I knocked my coffee over. Walked straight into the hallway expecting to see one of the drivers, or maybe Dale had come back for something, I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was expecting someone. Nobody. And the second I stepped into the hallway, the sound just stopped. Not faded out, not trailed off stopped, like someone had lifted a needle off a record. I stood there in that hallway for what felt like a long time. I checked my phone. It was 2:43 a.m. I remember that specifically because I looked at it twice, like I didn’t trust myself the first time.
I walked the whole hallway again. Storage, prep room, front entrance, back door. Every stretcher was exactly where it should’ve been, lined up against the wall the way we always left them. Nothing moved. I stood in the prep room a minute longer than I needed to, just looking around, feeling stupid for even doing it, and then went back to the office. Told myself I was tired, that overnight shifts mess with your head, that I was probably half dreaming on my feet.
Around 3:15 I got up to make more coffee since I’d spilled the last one. While I was standing at the machine I heard three knocks on the office door. Not loud, not urgent, just three even knocks, spaced out like someone doing it politely. My first thought, genuinely, was that one of the drivers had come in early for some reason. I called out, said I’d be right there, walked over and opened the door.
Nobody. I stepped fully outside into the parking lot, which at that hour was completely empty except for the company van. No headlights approaching, no sound of a car pulling away, nothing. I stood out there for probably a full minute in the cold, feeling more unsettled than I wanted to admit to myself.
I actually called a coworker at that point, not for any real reason, just because I didn’t want to be alone in that quiet anymore. He picked up groggy, I told him what was going on, and he laughed it off, said I was freaking myself out on a slow shift and that it happened to everyone eventually. I wanted to believe him. I stayed on the phone with him a lot longer than the conversation actually needed, just to have a voice in the room that wasn’t mine.
By four I’d gone back to paperwork, mostly to keep my hands busy. That’s when I heard the wheels again. Closer this time. Slower. Not a rush, not erratic, just that same steady rolling sound moving somewhere down the hallway, like whoever whatever was pushing it wasn’t in any hurry at all. I sat completely still and listened until it stopped on its own. I didn’t get up right away this time. I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to.
When I finally did walk out there, one of the stretchers that had been pushed flush against the wall earlier was no longer flush. It had come out, maybe six inches, angled slightly like someone had started to pull it away and then stopped. I stood there staring at it, trying to talk myself into believing I’d misremembered how it was parked earlier. Maybe I had. I’ve turned that thought over so many times since then I honestly can’t tell anymore what’s memory and what’s me trying to explain it away.
Morning staff showed up right around six like always. I didn’t say anything to anyone that day. I felt ridiculous even thinking about explaining a stretcher being six inches out of place, or a phone call with no one on it, or knocking with no one behind the door. It all sounded so small out loud.
It was a few days later that I finally mentioned it to one of the older guys who’d worked there for years, mostly just as a passing comment, not expecting anything back. He didn’t laugh. He just looked at me for a second and asked, pretty plainly, “Was it around three in the morning?” I said yeah, close to that. He nodded slowly, like I’d confirmed something he already suspected, and told me not to worry about it, that old buildings make strange noises and I shouldn’t read into it too much.
But right before he walked off, he said one more thing that’s stuck with me longer than anything else from that night. He said, “You’re not the first person who’s mentioned hearing the wheels.”
I asked him what he meant by that. He just shook his head and said it wasn’t worth getting into, and went back to what he was doing. I never brought it up again, and neither did he.
I worked there another six months after that. Nothing like it ever happened again, not once, no matter how many overnight shifts I ended up covering after that guy left. But I never volunteered for another one myself, not for the rest of the time I was there. And even now, years later, whenever I’m in a hospital hallway and I hear that specific sound of stretcher wheels on tile, I go completely still for a second. I think about that hallway, that stretcher pulled six inches from the wall, and 2:43 in the morning, standing there wondering who or what I’d actually been listening to.
