9 Scary Workplace True Stories for Halloween

It’s the spookiest day of the year, and often a nightmare for HR professionals who have to handle people who show up to work costumed as terrorists, wearing blackface, or dressed as Adolf Hitler.

But it’s not only costumes that can be spooky. Sometimes the scary thing isn’t a bad choice by an employee but something that seems genuinely unexplainable. Here are nine true stories from spooky workplaces.

The grabby ghost

People and work strategist Robin Schooling shared:

One of my favorite no-call, no-show resignation stories:

 Manager: “What happened? We haven’t seen you in four days.”

 Employee: “I was working Thursday night and saw a ghost in the kitchen. It grabbed my ankle. I can’t come back.”

(And thus… he left and never returned….)

The old hospital ghosts

An anonymous HR professional shared:

Our office is on the grounds of and built with recycled brick from an old hospital. Many times, while in the bathroom, you hear footsteps in front of the stalls that lead to the sink, and then the motion sensor paper towel dispenser goes off.

Many CCTV still shots of ghostly figures in the halls.

The cursed desk

HR consultant Stacy Dennis shared:

We had a desk that whoever sat at it would be fired. 🫣It was a cursed desk.

The Halloween prank that went south

Career adviser Chris Hogg shared:

I worked in an aerospace company (think engineers, think Dilbert) where every Halloween, people, if they so chose, dressed up in costumes. It was a long-standing tradition, and many, but not everybody, dressed up.

One year, an engineer dressed up as a gorilla, head to toe.

So there were about five of us standing around a coffee station, when the gorilla-guy, with only the costume head on, came up behind a secretary (in her 40s) and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around… and screamed… loud enough to be heard in the next county… grabbed her chest… threw her coffee in the air… and backed/crashed into a nearby filing cabinet.

Needless to say, the engineer ripped off the gorilla head, apologized profusely, while I imagine visions of him being hauled away and charged with manslaughter danced around in his head.

Later that day, he and I were talking, and he told me he would never, never, never-ever again put on a Halloween costume.

I’m pretty sure he never did.

The puppy ghost

HR consultant Katie Tanner shared: 

Been in skilled nursing for a while.

Lots of stories of “people surrounding patients” during their final breaths, or patients “talking to walls” and then saying it was a loved one.

In one of the nursing homes, there is a “puppy” ghost that roams the halls barking and “licking the hands” of the patients. (I swear I heard it a few times when I was there.)

The movie theater ghost

Senior HR professional Tim Baker shared:

Years ago, before my HR days, I was the general manager of a large Cineplex Movie Theatre in the Greater Toronto Area. This is back in the day of “film projectors.” We had 14 cinemas in the building, so the projection booth was huge and divided into two sides—east and west. Needless to say, at 2 a.m. while closing down the projection booths, it was quite spooky—a long dark corridor with several projectors. And typically, only two of us were left in the building. Ghost stories were aplenty.

One night, I went up alone to close the west booth. I was shutting down a projector, and someone called me from the end of the corridor. I distinctly heard my name. It could only have been the other manager. When I walked in that direction, nobody was there. And then the other manager came walking toward me from the other direction. There is no way he could have run down the stairs, across half the building, and back up the other stairs in that time frame. 

I felt the blood run from my face, and I felt cold. He asked what was wrong. I just said, “Let’s get out of here.” He knew what I meant, and we left. I didn’t tell him about it until the next day.

The laughing ghost

HR professional Stacie Racho-Ortiz shared:

My Tribe’s casino is built right next to the cemetery, and the guard shack is at the bottom of the hill. When the graveyard security would work in the guard shack, they would experience sounds, laughing, hearing steps next to the shack.

The stocking-stealing ghost

An anonymous HR professional shared:

I worked in a psychiatric hospital, and the HR offices were in the building that was the female ward. There was talk of if you were in the basement alone, one female would tug on your hair. I was watching security footage around Christmas time, and there were stockings that had been hung up on the wall for about three weeks. Twice, we saw those stockings, one by one, slide off the wall and halfway down the hallway 😬. People also saw a female figure in the attic window.

And for some people, perhaps the scariest chair of all (and for others, the best chair of all)

HR consultant Michelle Vernon shared:

We once had a pregnancy chair—whoever had it as their designated chair fell pregnant. 😊 Does that count as spooky?

Happy Halloween, everyone!