The technology we have to communicate with each other has obviously brought very good things. But when it comes to things that are so important in our everyday lives, it is perhaps inevitable that it also brings with it one or two frightening events as well.
In this year’s halloween special, we have picked up 5 stories linked to communication, where people tell about scary things that have happened to them at work.
My boss could not work that day
One Saturday morning I got a call from my boss, where he asked me to come to work to cover for him because he himself could not go to work that day. It was okay for me and I went to the café I worked at then. A colleague who had had the opening shift was a little surprised that I came, as she was expecting to work with the boss that day. I said he could not come and there was nothing more to it. It was not until two days later that we learned that our boss had been in a tragic car accident and died on Friday night. I still do not know who may have called me that Saturday morning, but it came from his cell phone number.
– Barristagirl_28
Who called?
This was a while ago. I worked late one night, the clock began to approach 11 in the evening so for obvious reasons I was alone in the office. At that time I worked in a fairly large office, where I sat in an open office landscape but where there was also a long corridor with lots of small offices. The corridor had offices on both sides and ended in an emergency exit.
Suddenly it started ringing from inside the office at the far end of the corridor. At first I ignored it and thought that it will probably stop calling soon. But it went on and on, and in the end I got annoyed. I got up to go and answer but as soon as I entered the room the phone stopped ringing, and instead it started ringing from the office room opposite. Angry, I walked into the office opposite. Then the same thing happened again, although this time it started ringing in an office a little further down the corridor.
Now I thought it might be one of my colleagues who called to prank me but halfway into the third office the signals stopped again. It started ringing in another room. Then I heard it stop ringing, to be resumed in a new room. Then it started ringing on several phones at the same time. In the end, it sounded like it was ringing from all the office rooms, along the corridor. Then I panicked, ran out of the corridor, quickly picked up my things and ran away. It was with all my willpower that I managed to force myself to stop and set off the security alarm.
The next day I tried to find out who had called but no one admitted to prank calling the office. When I asked for the call logs, I was horrified to see that no calls had been received that evening. After that, I made sure to never be alone in the office.
– At_the_office_4lone
A long voicemail
I was on my way home from work when I saw that I had a missed call from a colleague, so I tried to call back. I did not receive a reply, so instead I left a message. I said something like, “Hi, it’s John, you called me. Call back when you have the time ”.
The next day the colleague called and asked what I was on about. Of course, I asked what he meant and then it turned out that he had received 23 voicemails from me during the evening. The first voice message had sounded like I wrote above, but then continued for about 8 minutes with a low-pitched artificial laugh. The remaining 22 voicemails were a mixture of the same strange laughter and different wording of my first message. It sounded like my voice but I’m sure I was not the one recording those messages.
– 4john_bon_jovi4
An extra participant in the video conference
It was the beginning of the pandemic and people had just started to get used to working from home. My department had a weekly meeting to distribute tasks among ourselves. One of my colleagues lives quite remote, alone in a small house in the woods. Behind her you could see her bedroom door that was closed. In the middle of the meeting, we were interrupted by someone starting to pull the handle on her bedroom door. Terrified, she turned around and the rest of us could witness the pulling of the handle via the video camera. My boss had time to say “Is anyone trying to break in” before we see the door open wide, and then slam shut again. But we could see no one behind the dorr. For obvious reasons, we are all terrified, especially the colleague, and she leaves the video while she searches the house. She never found a reasonable explanation for who or what was slamming the door that day.
– Dani-ella
The contact that could not be deleted
At my job, something very strange happened. One day an extra user had been added to our office phone system under the name “The Unknown”. The phone number was far too long to be a regular number. In addition, the contact was among everyone’s list of favorite contacts, so all colleagues could see the new contact. No one admitted to being the one to add the contact and even worse was that the contact did not seem to be removable. There were several of us who tried to remove the contact, including some managers, but after clicking on “delete”, the contact still remained.
Of course we tried to call the number and here comes the really scary part, there were new sounds every time you called. Sometimes it sounded like water dripping into a hollow room, sometimes it was a heavy breathing. A colleague claimed that someone had shouted a horrible scream, when he tested.
Everything was both reported to our supplier and the whole thing was reported to the police, as it was thought that it was a question of some form of data breach. And then suddenly, the contact was gone, as inexplicable as it was put there. We never got any answers as to who “The unknown” was….
– 4fraid-of-the-d4rk
Have you experienced anything scary at your job? Feel free to write your story in the comment.