CW: death of a kitchen worker described briefly and non-graphically.

A hotel restaurant kitchen. Service ends at ten. The cooks go home in fifteen minutes.

Then there's just Noel.

In this episode we hear from Noel — a closing dishwasher who spent three years as the last person in a 1940s hotel kitchen every night. He knew every sound that kitchen made. The refrigeration cycling. The ventilation winding down in stages.

So when a new sound started coming from dry storage — soft, deliberate, on a schedule — he noticed.

Always between 1 and 2AM. Always the same. The sound of something being set down carefully on a metal shelf.

When he finally asked the prep cook who'd worked that kitchen for twenty two years — she didn't even flinch.

She just said — is it a thunking sound? Like something being set down?

Then she told him about the night cook from 1949.

Third Shift Tales collects stories from people who work while the rest of the world sleeps. Names and some details have been changed at the request of contributors.

CW: death of a security guard described briefly and non-graphically.

Three buildings. Four hundred thousand square feet. Twenty two checkpoints. One guard.

In this episode we hear from Garrett — a private security officer who worked the overnight at a corporate office complex in the mid-Atlantic for two years. Ninety minute rounds. Four times a night. Eleven months of finding exactly what he expected.

The twelfth month the monitors changed.

A figure. Standing at the end of a corridor. Still. Gone by the time he got there. And when he pulled the footage back —

the corridor had been empty the whole time.

It happened eleven more times over six weeks. Different buildings. Different floors. Never on camera. Always gone.

Then one night he took a slightly different route.

And it was facing him.

Third Shift Tales collects stories from people who work while the rest of the world sleeps. Names and some details have been changed at the request of contributors.

A two lane highway. Forty seven miles of dark. One patrol car running slow through the brush section at 2AM.

In this episode we hear from Trooper Ellis — an eleven year night patrol veteran on a stretch of rural state highway in the plains. Eight years of knowing every mile, every curve, every car that belonged on that road.

Then one night his headlights caught something standing dead center in the road.

Person shaped. Fully still. Gone the moment he got close.

He started pulling incident records for that stretch. Mile marker 44 to 46. The accidents. The breakdowns. The confused motorists who couldn't explain how they got there.

They all clustered in the same two miles.

Then he found the retired trooper who'd worked the route before him. She'd seen it too. Four times in six years.

She had one question for him.

You got out of the car, didn't you.

Third Shift Tales collects stories from people who work while the rest of the world sleeps. Names and some details have been changed at the request of contributors.