You are here: Real Ghost Stories :: Haunted Places :: Weird Workplaces

Real Ghost Stories

Weird Workplaces


The building I work in is a boring, utilitarian one-story building located on a highway as you turn to leave our town. The neighborhood it is located in was once residential, with homes built in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Most are long gone.

The building, about 50 years old, just feels funny to me. I don't feel like anyone is watching me. Let me say that up front. But it just feels weird.

It may be important to note that on one side of us is the site of a tragic house fire that took the life of an older woman and on the other side is a funeral home.

The business I manage is a service-business. People use the reception area to deal with the front office and customer service staff. My office is in the back, near the back door. It's fairly quiet during the day. I often come in on weekends to get paperwork done.

When I do, I often hear typewriters in the front office. Like everyone else, we use computers, and you can barely hear the keyboards. When I leave my office to check the front, nothing is there. Certainly no typewriters!

One weekend I was working and I heard voices in the conference room, which is on the other side of the building from my office. They were low murmurs; they voices were so faint I could not understand them, standing in the front office. They subsided and then disappeared as I approached the conference room. I took photos (I won't post them because there are signs in the photos that identify the business) and there was nothing there, but I shared them with a sensitive friend who says she "felt something" there.

One Friday night I had to return after dark to handle an essential task. I was alone in the back of the building in my office. I couldn't wait to get out! I kept hearing odd noises: Creaks, taps, etc., in the front part of the building. What doesn't bother me during the day is scarier at night.

Most recently, I was alone in the front reception area when I heard noises in the workroom next to my office. It sounded like paper being crumpled. It was not the fax; I have no idea what it was. I thought perhaps it was mice, but the traps we set yielded no dead mice.

A few weeks ago, my husband came to work with me to help install a carbon monoxide detector. He brought his electric drill. While I was in my office, I heard the drill going. When I went out into the front office, he had not even plugged it in yet. Not a paranormal experience, but somehow my ears anticipated the sound I would hear when he finally got to work.

There are many many plausible explanations for the noises I hear (except the crumpled paper - I cannot figure that one out). But it just feels odd.

It's not half as scary as the old funeral home I worked in while in college. I worked for a business that was located in the former hearse garage. It was a small shop, with just two rooms. To get to the bathroom, you had to enter the employee lounge of an insurance company and walk down an L-shaped corridor. To be there alone on weekends, which I was since I did the books, and have to use the bathrooms was the scariest thing I've ever had to do.

Hauntings with similar titles

Find ghost hunters and paranormal investigators from Wisconsin

Comments about this paranormal experience

The following comments are submitted by users of this site and are not official positions by Please read our guidelines and the previous posts before posting. The author, Argette, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will read the comments and participate in the discussion.

Argette (guest)
7 years ago (2012-04-04)
Javelina, somehow I missed this post earlier this year. Hearing noises that seem to be inside my ear bothers me the most, as I wonder if it is a sign something is wrong with me.
Javelina (4 stories) (3749 posts)
8 years ago (2012-01-23)
I have a "thing" about noises/sounds. It always bothers me when I can't figure out the source. The thought will stay with me until something happens that gives me a better clue as to what it could have been. It can really be annoying sometimes too, but I will put it to back of my mind until the answer hits me. I had an experience recently that brought me back to one of the experiences Nysa had written about. I was in a shop here in town, sort of an Antique/secondhand type of shop. I was looking through some old books (I collect books and encyclopedias on horticulture), and heard this step-like sound coming from the rear of the shop. When I followed the sound, I found it was the owner giving a demonstration to another couple on how to work an old loom. That sound reminded me of the way Nysa had reported a sound she had heard almost nightly, in the old farmhouse she lived in as a child. I'm babbling here, I know, but I have to tell you that the crumpling paper sound you talked about is now the sound I have stuck in my mind. Silly, isn't it? But something about that sound has me curious.

Jav 😊

~Auditory OCD?~ 😜
Argette (guest)
8 years ago (2012-01-23)
Peter, you have my sympathies on the loss of your granny. In some ways, she will always be with you, as my grandmother is. Thank you for your kind words. I'm not all that brave - I just never really believed in ghosts or hauntings until much later in life.

Willowwhisper, my office is about a block from an intersection and some railroad tracks. I have been told this area is haunted. In recent years, in addition to the traffic death in front of my office, there was a death along the tracks. There is also a nearby cul de sac reputed to be haunted, too. At one time, this little area was the heart off the city.
Petersspirit (4 stories) (144 posts)
8 years ago (2012-01-23)
Hi Argette,

Your indeed a brave person for having worked at a funeral home! My granny passed away on friday the sixth of this month here in our house in her bed. She left us with nothing but love and was so beautiful to look at. On wednesday we went to see her fisically for the last time at the funeral home and I regreted this afterwards. This place just gave me such an uncomfortable feeling...

To zzgranny and Javelina:
Thank you both so much for welcoming me! Never been far away from here anyway...

Peter 😁
Willowwhisper (2 posts)
8 years ago (2012-01-22)
Sounds like a 'timeshare' haunting lol, where two timezones are more aware of each other becuse of something sciency related to the geography of the building (ie, the earths co-ordinates, running underground water and the type of rock in the area. I bet when it was all residential they experienced weird things all the time

G 😊 😊 😊
Argette (guest)
8 years ago (2012-01-21)
Javelina, I worked at this place from February through July on a part-time basis back in the good old days (of having a couple of part-time jobs to keep body and soul together). I had not yet experienced any unusual incidents (and when I did, I dismissed them as imagination) and nothing really scared me. Until I walked through the hallways of that empty, former funeral home, that is.

Shellzy, as far as I can tell, what I am hearing is an old IBM Selectric. Whoever is using it is one fast typist, too.
shellzy (8 stories) (218 posts)
8 years ago (2012-01-21)
Hi Argette
Your comment about hearing typewriters just jogged my memory. I used to work in an old office building and there was an old 1950's typewriter that was kept in the lunchroom. It was a bit of an office relic, one of the real chunky ones that the keys had a distinct sound made when pressed. I never heard it myself but many people in the office swore that they had heard the distinct noise of the clicking of the keys if they had come in early in the morning or worked back late. Many people raced into the lunch room to hopefully see the "haunted typewriter" in action but it always stood still!
Javelina (4 stories) (3749 posts)
8 years ago (2012-01-21)
My Uncle was a mortician, county coroner, and owned his own funeral home as well. But I didn't have to go down there to use the ladies room either. I wouldn't have liked it, that's for sure. But you are right. When nature calls... 😨

Jav 😜
Argette (guest)
8 years ago (2012-01-21)
Javelina, when you gotta go...

Thankfully, that job was a short term one.
Javelina (4 stories) (3749 posts)
8 years ago (2012-01-21)
[at] Petersspirit,
I'm so happy to see your name come up in the comments! You have been missed Peter, welcome back!

Jav ❤ 😁 ❤
Javelina (4 stories) (3749 posts)
8 years ago (2012-01-21)
It's the thought of being alone in a building past your normal working hours. That's a creepy feeling anyway. And then top it off with who the neighbors are? Yikes!
You mentioned that the property once was the scene of a tragic fire where a woman lost her life. Do you know what they use sometimes in the movies and old radio shows to simulate the sound of flames? Crumpling paper. I wonder if you were hearing the residual noises from that tragedy? Could the sound of typewriters be attributed to it as well? This is very interesting...
I'd like to think about this a little longer before I comment further.


~Going to the bathroom in an old funeral home when no one else is there? You got guts lady! 😲
Argette (guest)
8 years ago (2012-01-21)
Granny, I will try that one of these weekends and report back. I can set the tape recorder, leave and come back later for it.

I will listen to it at home though, not at the office!
Argette (guest)
8 years ago (2012-01-21)
Creepydog, we recently had a woman who was one of the craziest people I've ever met, a pathological liar with an anger problem, but she did not last too long. She bullied everyone, even me, and I'm the manager. But the murmurings and other sounds started before she got there.

Peterspirit, when I would use the restrooms at the old funeral home, I would have to walk down a long hallway and make a turn. I heard all manner of noise: Doors slamming, murmuring voices, moaning, knocking. It was I never saw anyone on weekends!
zzsgranny (18 stories) (3323 posts) mod
8 years ago (2012-01-21)
Argette: Is there any way you could leave a recorder running for a few hours while no one is there?...You may pick up some evidence, pro or con...I'm pretty sure you are the type of person to not assume every little bump is paranormal 😆, so maybe a recording could rule out neighborhood or traffic sounds... Or even better, you may get some voices and sounds that are paranormal! 😁...

Petersspirit: Welcome back! ❤...I was just thinking of you yesterday LOL
Petersspirit (4 stories) (144 posts)
8 years ago (2012-01-21)
Hello Argette,

Its the sounds, the murmer of voices plus the feeling you get when walking in your workplace that makes me belief there are ghosts hanging around there... Hope you keep us updated! Also am curious about what happened when you were working in the funeral home.

creepydog (3 stories) (71 posts)
8 years ago (2012-01-21)
Hmm sounds pretty freaky. Are you bullied in your work place? If so it could be nasty people playing tricks on you. But I doubt it.
Argette (guest)
8 years ago (2012-01-20)
Cecil, thanks for responding. I'm not knowledgable enough about hauntings to say it is one. But it just feels odd.

Here's what I know: There was a house on the site, built about 1888 and demolished about 1957. The blah 50s style building went up a year or so later, and was a solo-owner business from then until 2005. I've worked there 5 years.

I am unaware of any deaths on the property, but being that it was a house for so long, there probably were some. There was a fatal accident in front of the building about 6 years ago.

Some of the sounds are no doubt normal, and as you say, probably only noticeable when all else is quiet.

I just hate to be there alone! One night, I heard a tapping at my office window. I grabbed the keys to my car and made the alarm go off to scare whatever was out there away.
cecil04 (6 stories) (62 posts)
8 years ago (2012-01-20)
that could (but not necessarily has to) be a residual haunting.
Actually it doesn't sound like spirits actively trying to draw your attention.

Has the building you're working in always been some sort of office or such (the sounds you described let me presume that)?
How long has your business resided in that building already, and have there been any happenings in or about the building that you know of?

I think it's quite normal to hear more things ("Creaks, taps, etc.") at night, because the present noises which we don't actually percieve during daytime are just not there in a night's silence.
At night, unfamiliar sounds are the sole target of attention and therefore they might also be more scary of course!

If I were you, I'd do some research about that place in the first place!
And of course I would try not to go there at night if it frightened me.

Looking forward to your reply,
All the best ❤


Search this site: