My name is Samantha. I'm 20 years old, and I work at a Walmart by a small town called Jackson in Alabama. Since I don't go to school full-time, my boss would oftentimes put me on an overnight shift back when the store was open 24 hours a day.
Given that it was a supercenter, there would still be a number of employees working my shift. This one particular night was 10 PM to 7 AM; I was one of only a couple of employees doing stock work. There was one or two employees at registers up front.
Given that our store sits in the countryside of Alabama, we didn't really get much business at these insane hours of the night. However, it was a prime restocking period. I didn't personally know the other employees working that night, but it's not like we'd run into each other in the giant store anyway.
I started my night folding pants in the men's department and generally tidying up. I kept headphones in at night because usually there would be no one to tell me to take them out. A customer came to the jeans section, and at that time it was around 11:30 PM, so it wasn't really that weird.
People would still come in and close shop till usually around midnight. The customer came up to me and asked if we had any more of the specific pants he found in a different waist size. I apologized and told him only whatever was on the rack.
He thanked me and walked away. I made accidental eye contact with him as soon as he stood by the rack putting the jeans back. It was kind of awkward.
He walked away, and I continued with my work. Some time passed, and the store started to look like a ghost town—no one to be seen as far as the eye could see. I think it was like 1 AM.
I had made my way over to the appliances section; I was doing a lot of back-and-forth work with boxes from the back section where we kept all the items that were yet to go out. I brought a wagon full of boxes to one of the aisles and started stocking the shelves because the shelves were empty. Though I was able to see someone through the next aisle over, and they were watching me—well, only up until he noticed me notice him; then he looked away.
But his eyes looked really familiar. I stepped closer to get a better view, and I realized it was the same customer from like two hours earlier. How in the world could he still be in the store without making it obvious?
I took the wagon with me and passed the next aisle over just to get a look and see if the man had any items in his hands. His hands were completely empty. No way could he be shopping for two hours and not pick up a single thing; something wasn't right.
I quickly finished up stocking the shelf with coffee machines and other appliances, then brought the empty wagon to the back area. I chilled out in there for a while because, quite frankly, I felt like that guy might have been following or watching me longer than I realized. I played on my phone for a little while in the employee lounge, then when I figured it was time to get back to work, I decided I would do grocery work instead just to be in a different part of the store.
I went into the dairy cooler and filled a bunch of crates with dairy products like milk and yogurts. This took a lot of time to do because I had to check the dates on the products and such. Over the loud sound of the giant refrigerators keeping the cooler cold, I heard the door to the dairy cooler burst open.
There was conveniently a gap in the boxes sitting on one of the pallets that allowed me to peek through it to the door of the cooler. And I kid you not, it was that same customer! I ran to cover under one of the shelves and pushed a big box full of eggs in front of me.
I didn't have to worry about making noise because the refrigerators were so loud. For anyone wondering why I decided to hide, well, I already assumed this guy was hanging around the store watching me. Seeing him in the employees-only section, never mind that—coming into the dairy cooler—seemingly something bad was definitely about to go down.
I hid behind that box with my head down for the longest time, expecting to hear the doors to the cooler open and close. Eventually, after a while of hiding and not looking, I assumed maybe he left after looking for me. I lifted my head from my arms for the first time and looked up in front of the box and screamed!
He was right there, smiling at me, standing over the box, but his smile vanished as soon as I started to scream. He tried putting his hand on my lips to muffle my scream, but I didn't allow that to go any further. I pushed the box of eggs over right into him, and the eggs falling to the floor made him step back, looking down at his shoes.
I ran right past him, but he didn't grab me, so I continued to run until I found another stock worker and told him to help me. The employee's name was Bob; I remember from his name tag. Suddenly, the man from the dairy cooler came up to the two of us and apologized, explaining that he was from corporate and was coming to make sure everything was running smoothly.
He said he didn't mean to scare me and was simply checking up on me. Dairy cooler to make sure I wasn't slacking off. This Bob guy seemed to believe it all, but then again, he didn't seem very smart at all.
I asked the man why he put his hand on my mouth, and he said he was trying to avoid making a scene. Then, shockingly, he gave me the order to finish up the appliance section, and he disappeared as he was speed walking away down the aisle. I called out, "What's your name?
" and he called back, "Tom. " Just like that, he was gone. The next day, I called one of the managers and asked if there was supposed to be a visit from corporate the night before and if a creepy man named Tom sounded familiar.
My manager, Margaret, said it sounded like complete [__]. There was no record of anyone from corporate named Tom who was supposed to come visit, nor would anyone from corporate ever be in the store at 2 AM. They then went ahead and checked the camera footage, and a police report was filed when they realized this was a random man.
The cameras proved this man had been stalking me between the aisles for the better part of the first few hours of my shift. I told Margaret I couldn't do night shifts anymore after that, and she understood. I still work there, but more so as a day stock person or a cashier.
[Music] What's one place you can go to and find the weirdest, freakiest creatures in our society? I swear I've never been to a single Walmart where I didn't see at least one eye-catchingly strange human being. Strange does not even cut it for what I'm about to tell you.
It was the Thursday before Black Friday; my Walmart was open extra late. I was in there around 11 o'clock looking for a new laptop, and by chance, I picked up off the shelf the last one that was being promoted for a really good Black Friday deal. As I grabbed it, though, some big, revolting, dirty-looking guy came up to me and insisted he needed a laptop very badly.
I nervously said, "I'm sorry, it's the last one. " Then he got angry at me and started making a bit of a scene. The man clearly wasn't normal, and my heart started racing simply because I don't get put on guard in these kinds of situations a lot.
As others looked on at the commotion this big guy was making, I walked away with the laptop box quickly and went straight to a line. He kept yelling at me as I walked away; it was unbelievable. Some other customers in line even tried to laugh with me and make me feel better, saying the guy was a nut.
So, I get home; my family is all asleep already. I go outside to sit in the yard by the pool and set up my new laptop. Then, the light on the side of the house turned on, the one that turns on due to movement.
I went to check the side of the house to make sure no one was there. Would that thing go off once in a while? Yeah, but there's a small patch of woods right next to the house, so animals would often run on the property, triggering it.
Either way, I'm kind of a big [__], so I went inside, locked the door, and finished setting up my laptop in the living room. A car alarm suddenly started going off outside. I recognized it to be my Cadillac; I looked out the window to confirm this.
I ran to get my keys upstairs, then tried pressing the panic button to turn off the alarm. It didn't work from the inside, so I stepped out to the porch and clicked it off, but then I noticed a car parked in front of our house that wasn't there earlier when I got home. Any cars parked in the street on our block was suspicious enough; we live in a closed-off community, and everyone has huge driveways.
I stepped down from the stoop and realized there was someone sitting in that car. I went back inside and locked the door. I went to my mom's room and told her I thought someone outside meant us harm.
My mom and dad have a complicated situation, so my dad doesn't always stay with us. It would have been a different story having my dad there to tell about this. My mom came downstairs with me, noticeably worried based on what I told her.
My mom took a look through the peephole in the front door, then gasped and put her hands over her mouth. I looked through it as well and felt ready to throw up when I saw a huge man standing on the other side of the door on our stoop. I whispered to my mom, "I think that man followed me from Walmart.
" Suddenly, the doorknob started to turn as the man tried opening the door. When it didn't work, he started pounding on the door. That's when my mom let out a gasp and cry, and my younger sister came out from her room, who also started to panic upon becoming wise to the situation.
The pounding stopped, then there was a silence for a while, other than my mom's voice on the phone with the police. A few minutes went by, my mom still on the line with 9-1-1, with police en route, and there was a loud bang and crash downstairs in the den; a window was shattered. My mom and sister both screamed and cried.
I told them to run upstairs while I locked the door to the den. I waited down there, expecting an attempt at the door or a bang. Surprisingly, I heard a police car briefly wail its siren outside my house.
It was the quickest. . .
"Response time I’d ever heard of! I ran outside to lead them to the den where the broken glass was. There, they found the huge, dirty, crazy-looking man hiding behind one of our couches.
He was arrested at once, and we pressed charges. All the while, he was screaming profanities and threats at me, not helping his case. Both cops told me the guy seemed unstable and on some kind of drugs, but told us to get a good night's rest because he wouldn't be bothering us again.
So while it may be fun to people-watch at Walmart and laugh at some of the goofy things you see, realize you may also find some of the more dangerous people in our society in your local Walmart. [Music] Working the night shift at Walmart as a night stock person on the weekends was my second job when I was finishing up college. I needed to pay off my loans, so I had to make money however possible.
I didn't deal with customers or anything; I would just sign for night deliveries, do warehouse work, and stock shelves in the store during after hours. The typical shift would usually be either 11 to 7 or 12 to 7. On July 9, 2015, a Thursday night, I still haven't locked it into my brain.
I was midway through my shift in the electronics department when I saw, in the corner of my eye, someone walk past the aisle I was working in. This wouldn't usually catch my attention if it weren't for the fact that there were only two other workers in the building with me that night, Alvin and Bako. They were both wearing the same staff shirts I was wearing; I would know because we all clocked in at the same time.
The person I saw in the corner of my eye was wearing all black, so I naturally walked to the end of the aisle and did a little peep around the shelf. No one was there. I yelled both Alvin and Bako's names, so when they didn't answer, it made it even stranger.
But regardless, I went back to work. I had been holding in a pee for a while, and I told myself I'd go when I finished work in that aisle. Seconds later, there was a huge crash a few aisles down; it actually startled me.
I ran over to see what it was, and a bicycle was somehow knocked off its hook. The hook was still fine and in place—it seemed like someone would have had to put effort into knocking this down. I hung it back up and started walking around the aisles, suspicious as hell.
I got to the last aisle towards the back of the store, which was the paper and cleaning aisle. Then, there was this freaky-ass sound that I could best describe as a laugh. It sounded like it came from literally the next aisle over, so once again, I did a short run back to that aisle and felt my heart drop when I saw a man dressed in all black standing by the end of the aisle with his back facing me, but his head turned so that all I saw was only half his face.
Then he suddenly ran—not towards me, but down some other aisle. I heard his footsteps running around. I was faced with a choice of chasing after him or going to find my two co-workers, and I chose the latter.
All the while, I heard these freakish laughing sounds and footsteps that I honestly felt like were circling me. I found Alvin in the women's department and told him to be on the lookout for someone who wasn't meant to be in the building, dressed in all black. We didn't have walkie-talkies, so I asked him to tell Bako if he ran into him.
I excused myself because I couldn't hold it any longer; I had to go to the bathroom. I ran to the employees-only bathroom, which was in the warehouse section. I put a nest of toilet paper on the seat in one of the stalls and sat down.
And yes, I’m the kind of person to sit when I pee. The door to the bathroom opened and closed. Naturally, with three to four people in the building, I said, ‘Who is that?
’ and, with no answer, I assumed the worst. I heard that horrific laughing again, and someone stepped into view from between the crack in the door, looking right in. They stepped closer until the crack was completely covered, and all I saw of their face was an eye.
Then the whispering began—unintelligible whispering—but the echo from the bathroom just made it more unsettling. I just remembered I had Alvin's phone number saved on my phone, so I got it out and called him at once. I was very loud with what I was saying, telling Alvin to get to the bathroom at once and help me.
I stayed on the line with him and watched as the man on the other side of the stall left one more time, then ran out of the bathroom. I told Alvin to hurry, and 20 to 30 seconds later, Alvin entered the bathroom. He said he didn’t see anyone on his way there.
We didn't have any security guys working when the store was closed, so we couldn't even go look at the cameras. I stayed by Alvin the rest of the night, helping in whatever sections he was working in because safety in numbers. I texted my boss that night, and when I woke up at 3 PM the next day, I read his response.
He said all the camera screens returned static footage from the night before; nobody went and turned them off as far as he knew. I got chills reading his texts. He believed my story and assumed it was related.
" To the cameras, but with no video proof of the breaking and entering or trespassing, I don't think there was anything he could do. It was all above my pay grade. Though, that was the only night shift I've ever had where something truly unexplainable happened to you.
