Speaker 1: Welcome, dear listeners to our series of short haunts. A
Speaker 1: shot of scary just for you, So grab yourself a
Speaker 1: hot chocolate, maybe a tea, maybe something stronger, and settle
Speaker 1: in because this is Haunted UK podcasts short haunts. After hours,
Speaker 1: when the working day ends and the lights begin to
Speaker 1: switch off one by one, offices take on a very
Speaker 1: different character. The chatter fades, computer screens go dark, and
Speaker 1: long corridors stretch out in silence. Most of us never
Speaker 1: see these places after hours, but for some people that's
Speaker 1: when their shift is only just beginning. Today's short haunt
Speaker 1: comes from someone who worked alone in one such building
Speaker 1: and discovered that silence doesn't always mean emptiness. I worked
Speaker 1: as a contract cleaner in an building in the Midlands
Speaker 1: for just over three years. It wasn't old, built in
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, all glass panels, steel frames, gray
Speaker 1: carpets and motion sensor lighting. There was nothing traditionally creepy
Speaker 1: about it. It was modern, clinical ordinary. I worked alone
Speaker 1: on the light shift, starting at six in the evening
Speaker 1: and finishing around half past ten. By seven o'clock, most
Speaker 1: of the staff had gone home, leaving only security downstairs
Speaker 1: monitoring the cameras. I'd grown used to the quiet, the
Speaker 1: steady hum of the air conditioning, the faint buzz of
Speaker 1: fluorescent lights, the sound of my trolley wheels echoing softly
Speaker 1: along the corridors. It was a Wednesday evening when things
Speaker 1: first happened. I'd been cleaning one of the larger boardrooms
Speaker 1: on the second floor. After vacuuming, I placed the machine
Speaker 1: neatly by the door while I wiped down the long
Speaker 1: conference table. I clearly remembered unplugging it because I always
Speaker 1: wrapped the cable straight away. It was a simple habit.
Speaker 1: As I sprayed the table, I heard the vacuum switch
Speaker 1: on behind me. It made me jump. When I turned around,
Speaker 1: the vacuum was running, with the cable trailing loosely across
Speaker 1: the carpet, plugged into the wall. I switched it off
Speaker 1: and stood there staring at it, trying to reason it out.
Speaker 1: Perhaps I hadn't unplugged it properly, and perhaps I hadn't
Speaker 1: wrapped the cord. I tested it again, plugged it in,
Speaker 1: turned it on and off, unplugged it once more. Nothing
Speaker 1: unusual happened after that, so I carried on with my
Speaker 1: shift and told myself it had been nothing, But after
Speaker 1: that night, small things began to occur. They weren't dramatic
Speaker 1: or violent, just deliberate enough to feel personal. One evening,
Speaker 1: I left a cleaning cloth folded neatly on a desk
Speaker 1: while I emptied a bin. When I turned back around,
Speaker 1: the cloth was on the floor, not crumpled as if dropped,
Speaker 1: but laid flat, as though someone had carefully placed it there.
Speaker 1: On another occasion, I was mopping the corridor outside the
Speaker 1: finance office and had positioned the yellow caution sign directly
Speaker 1: behind me, again force of habit. I heard its scrape
Speaker 1: lightly across the tiles, and when I turned around, it
Speaker 1: had moved several feet down the corridor. There were no
Speaker 1: open windows, no drafts, and no one else on that floor.
Speaker 1: Security later confirmed that no key cards had accessed the
Speaker 1: second level during my shift. The moment that unsettled me most, though,
Speaker 1: happened a couple of weeks later. It was close to
Speaker 1: ten o'clock and I was finishing up in the small
Speaker 1: staff kitchen. The building felt completely still. I was rinsing
Speaker 1: out my mop in the sink when I heard three
Speaker 1: clear knocks coming from inside one of the closed cupboards
Speaker 1: behind me. They were measured and deliberate, not the random
Speaker 1: ticking of pipes or the shifting of wood. I froze
Speaker 1: and listened. After a few seconds, the same three knocks
Speaker 1: came again. I walked over, opened the cupboard door and
Speaker 1: found only mugs stacked neatly inside. Nothing was out of place.
Speaker 1: I closed the door and stepped back, and immediately there
Speaker 1: was a loud bang from inside the cupboard. I didn't
Speaker 1: open it again. I turned the lights off, packed up
Speaker 1: my things, and went straight downstairs. When I told the
Speaker 1: security guard what had happened, he didn't laugh or dismiss it.
Speaker 1: He admitted that other cleaners had mentioned objects being slightly
Speaker 1: out of place on that same floor. Bins tipped over
Speaker 1: for no reason, chairs subtly repositioned in empty meeting rooms,
Speaker 1: Taps found running when no one had been upstairs. Nothing
Speaker 1: extreme that would make headlines, but enough to leave you
Speaker 1: uneasy and constantly looking over your shoulder. I continued to
Speaker 1: work there, though I stopped wearing headphones. I wanted to
Speaker 1: hear everything around me. Sometimes when I walked down the
Speaker 1: corridor pushing my trolley, I heard footsteps behind me that
Speaker 1: kept perfect pace with my own. When I stopped. They stopped.
Speaker 1: At first, I convinced myself it was simply the echo
Speaker 1: of my steps traveling along the glass and tiled surfaces.
Speaker 1: But one night I stopped abruptly and held my breath,
Speaker 1: and the footsteps carried on for two soft steps more
Speaker 1: before falling silent. I didn't turn around. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to confirm what I already felt in that moment. I
Speaker 1: handed in a request to work in a different part
Speaker 1: of the building, and on my final shift, as I
Speaker 1: walked out of the second floor corridor for the very
Speaker 1: last time, I felt strangely calm. I reached the lift,
Speaker 1: pressed the button, and stood waiting. That was when I
Speaker 1: heard it, the faint rolling sound of trolley wheels moving
Speaker 1: across the carpet behind me, slow steady approaching. I hadn't
Speaker 1: brought my trolley with me, and I had left it
Speaker 1: locked in the cleaning cupboard at the far end of
Speaker 1: the floor. The lift doors opened, I stepped inside without
Speaker 1: looking back. As the doors slid closed, I heard the
Speaker 1: trolley stop just outside, as if whoever or whatever had
Speaker 1: been pushing it had decided not to follow me any further.
Speaker 1: I never went back to the second floor. When I
Speaker 1: finished that shift, and that brings us to the end
Speaker 1: of this short haunt. Office buildings or places we associate
Speaker 1: with routine deadlines, meetings, spreadsheets, and coffee breaks, their environments
Speaker 1: built for productivity, structure, and order. But once the light's
Speaker 1: dim and the last member of staff heads home, those
Speaker 1: same familiar places can take on a very different atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Long corridors, empty boardrooms, kitchens standing still in artificial light,
Speaker 1: and in places like that, the smallest disturbance can feel amplified.
Speaker 1: A vacuum cleaner that switches itself on, a morning sign
Speaker 1: that shifts across the floor. Three deliberate knocks from inside
Speaker 1: a cupboard where no one stands, Nothing violent, nothing dramatic,
Speaker 1: just enough to unsettle, just enough to make you question
Speaker 1: what you thought you heard or saw. Poltergeist activity is
Speaker 1: often imagined as chaos and destruction, but sometimes it's far
Speaker 1: quieter than that. Sometimes it's subtle movements, minor disrupt the
Speaker 1: feeling that something unseen is sharing your space, keeping pace, observing.
Speaker 1: So the next time you find yourself working late, perhaps
Speaker 1: alone in an office long after everyone else has gone home,
Speaker 1: and you hear the faint echo of footsteps in a
Speaker 1: corridor that should be empty, or the gentle roll of
Speaker 1: wheels across carpet. When you're certain you locked everything away,
Speaker 1: just take a moment listen carefully, because in buildings that
Speaker 1: never truly sleep, it may not just be the heating
Speaker 1: system settling or the pipes cooling down. And if something
Speaker 1: seems to linger behind you, just out of sight, you
Speaker 1: might want to ask yourself whether you were ever the
Speaker 1: only one there in the first place, because the next
Speaker 1: person who could be the subject of a short haunt
Speaker 1: could be you and step