I worked third shift for ten friggin years, that was 6 years ago. Since then, I have realized that I really don’t like the day. Day traffic, day people, ect… I think it’s because there’s so many people outside during the day that I have better chances running into ignorant, overly sensitive, inconsiderate human beings that don’t use their signals. At night, there isn’t as many people but there is more bizarre business going on. The large black woman walking outside my apartment with two ninja swords and a small white guy following behind her with a basket from a deep fryer. What could they possibly be doing with those things at 1am??

In any case, something happens at night, the strange and weird come out. I always liked being awake and night because that’s when the doors you don’t see open wide. Playing Madden at 3am in my apartment, my stereo low so I didn’t wake up my buddy and his wife, when the volumeon the stereo started getting louder, then went to MAX! I didn’t think I could levitate but I did! This was a house built in the late 1800s and there had been other paranormal instances but not enough to worry about. That was the first haunted place I lived in.

A week after I moved in, my friend called me at work, we worked at the same place but he was off. He asks me, “Do you have friends over?”. No, I responded. “Someone is walking around up there, you sure?”. Yep! I didn’t know anybody in Dubuque, I just moved here after a life of drugs, jail, and probation, this was the first attempt to straighten my life out, he went up and checked, nothing. The lights were all off and no one was up there. One night, I woke up to my deck door WIDE open in the middle of winter. It was always locked because it was winter! I’ve also been scared awake by what I can only describe as loud clapping.

When I finally made some friends, every one of them said it felt weird in my place. My future wife would turn every single light on if I wasn’t there with her. I remember being in the living room and hearing what sounded like water dripping from the sink like it was turned on just a little. Nothing when I checked. Knocks and bangs that came from every area of the house and when I was brave enough to look, nada. Sometimes, I just let it go, I felt if it wanted to do anything to me, it would have to show itself.

Conversation Starter!

• Night shift experiences.
• The strangest thing you’ve witnessed late at night.
• The people of the graveyard shift.
• Are night humans more open minded about the paranormal?