Up until a few months ago, I spent almost two years working swing shift as a security guard for the university I attended. Great job, great benefits, awful hours (Mon: 7am-3pm, Tues-Weds: 3pm-11pm, Thurs-Fri: 11pm-7am). While this private university has a beautiful campus, it is in a pretty undesirable neighborhood--"red light district," housing projects, a few shabbily run nursing homes.

I saw my fair amount of weird/creepy stuff--naked old men, homeless people wandering around in the middle of the night, shots not far from where I was patrolling, etc. Nothing stands out in the creepy/paranormal range for me (though some co-workers claim to have seen some crazy stuff), so I'll tell my favorite funny story.

One morning at 2am on maybe my third week on the job, I am walking from my apartment (took a quick snack break) back to my office, which wasn't far. At this time of night, I would usually be in the truck, patrolling, and not being in the truck was mistake No. 1. We were not classified as "armed security guards," meaning no firearms, but we did carry extendable batons, which in my state, you need to be licensed to carry and use. I, being somewhat stupid, had mine anyway, though I was not licensed yet--my logic was I would would rather use it and get a charge than not have it and possibly get stabbed (which was very careless, I know).

As I am walking back, I see what is pretty obviously a drunk man stumbling in my direction. Shaking down the jitters (this was my first real "encounter"), I go to talk to the man, to escort him off of campus, which is generally no big deal, as 90% of the time drunk people just want to get home and aren't looking for trouble. This guy, apparently, was. He immediately gets belligerent with me, and starts screaming at me. I maintained my distance, but he began advancing on me, fists raised. On instinct, I grabbed the baton, and extended it. Luckily for me (hitting him could have gotten me fired, if not arrested), I realized I shouldn't swing at him, and for some reason I still do not exactly understand, I pointed the baton at him and yelled at the top of my lungs, "EXPELLIARMUS!!"

Belligerent drunk man stoppped in his tracks, turned around, and walked off of campus. Never saw him again.

tl;dr: Night security, successfully Disarmed an bellicose drunk man, still waiting on my Hogwarts letter.

I work at a banquet hall, not really graveyard shift but I'll end up closing around 1 or 2 am sometimes. One night it took particularly long to kick the drunks out, so I hung out in back playing on my phone while the cops took care of it. At one point I felt someone walk up to me, I looked up and no one was there, shrugged it off.

Once everyone left I walked around locking doors and shutting off lights. The buildings pretty big, it takes me about 15 minutes to shut down the back then another 5 for the front. I half noticed the air seemed to get heavier as I shut the back light off, kept peeking around as I was walking. Thought I saw a flash of someone walking in blue jeans and a white t shirt, also shrugged it off since I was already tense.

To shut down the front I turn off the main lighting through the breaker box and a set of light switches. Each breaker I shut down the room got creepier and creepier. I hurried to the switches and slammed them all off, clocked out, and went to walk out the front door. Just then my SO walks in to give me a ride home. He goes "wow it's kinda creepy in here" then notices my panicked look and goes "you ok what's that face for?". "WELL IT'S KINDA CREEPY IN HERE"

So he's into all that stuff and begs me to stay for just a minute while he walks around. It's much less scary with two people, and I am clocked out, so I agree. He kinda peeks around taking a few pictures, and out of the corner of my eye I see a flash of jeans and white shirt. I don't even say anything and he runs to where it was, looks around behind the curtain and nothing. I'm still quiet about it just ask him what's up. He straight up says "I swear I saw a guy in jeans and a white t shirt."

I fill him in and we check to make sure there's really no one in the building. Couldnt find any one plus all the drunks were in formal wear for a wedding reception. Nothing in the pictures or anything but it still freaked me out. Since then I'm pretty sure blue jeans is cool with me, might have helped me find my coffee and mess with someone who annoyed me so there's that.

Edit: Sorry didn't think anyone would care about the coffee story. So I have a habit of leaving my coffee around and not finding it till it's cold. One day I had misplaced it, and mentioned out loud (yeah I talk to myself a lot at work) "where's my coffee?" I keep working (folding curtains SO MANY CURTAINS) but keep seeing a flash of something out of the corner of my eye towards the kitchen. I peek around and don't see anyone, and make sure there's no hair in my eye or anything else that could cause the flash. It happens around 10 times in a half an hour, finally I make out a flash of jeans. Eventually I'm not scared just frustrated and look up saying "I'm working blue jeans what do you want?!" When I look up I see my coffee, sitting right on the counter where I kept seeing the flashes. It was cold by then but I thanked blue jeans and apologized for yelling at him.

While I'm here, there was a dude (well call him dave) working there that was so freaking annoying. Lazy as hell, always complaining, and terrified at the thought of ghosts. After a particularly bad day of dealing with him I mention out loud while no one's around that if blue jeans wanted to scare anyone it should be that guy. Twenty minutes later Dave runs past flipping his stuff that someone grabbed him. I've seen him try to act, he's bad, so he wasn't messing with us. Lmao oops did I do that?

So I was working at an Oil Refinery in India, doing the always fun 6 pm to 6 am shift. We would do actual work until around 9 every night then mess around and just make sure everything stays stable.

Well around 2 am the compressor tripped. What the hell? Great the whole plant is down. We check and see there was no reason it happened, no high temperature, PDI, vibration etc. Ok these things happen every so often, whatever lets get going again. Next night, same thing happens. This goes on for 4 days or so, and we're getting chewed out by Oleg, the sadistic chief who famously berated an unmarried indian man for being a virgin, and would beat people with bamboo sticks, really excellent human being. Luckily we were doing commissioning stuff so losing production wasn't a freakishly huge deal, only a moderately huge deal. If it was starbucks it would be the tall pumpkin latte of disasters, you know delicious but atleast it wasn't Viente.

So me and Piyush are talking, and we decide to take one of the security cameras and turn it onto the compressor. The compressor trips yet again... we go to the security room and get the guard to let us watch the video. Its boring, its an oil refinery in India in the middle of the night. Some lizards crawling around, a few giant flies go by, then suddenly we see a dark figure approaching. Maybe 3 feet tall and walking with a hunch. It goes up to the compressor and starts turning some dials and pressing some buttons. The compressor trips and it scats out of the area. Oh but this was no dark spirit from nosleep, it was a god darn monkey.

The solution: They hired an india boy to sit there at night with a cricket paddle thing.

Met a guy online, we decided to meet up for a date. He lived in St.L, Id never been, so I make the drive there. I accidentally went to the wrong location, but he came to me. The man was awful at conversation, left a bad tip, and then walked me to my car, said "I think I earned this" and felt me up. He did not get my number, and got blocked shortly thereafter.