The Devilish Print

I'm a Malay guy so English is my second language, so sorry for my English.

This incident occurred around 12 years back. At that time I just started working in an insurance company here in Kuala Lumpur. I live in a 2 stories terrace house with my parents. My siblings all are married and have children so they live in a different house. So, normally it's just the 3 of us. Although occasionally my eldest brother and elder sister do pay us a visit & sleepover at our house.

Back to my job in the insurance company, I got a position as an accounts clerk and although I despise the subject accounting, my close friend back from our school days has already worked there a few years prior to me joining the company, so I said, what the heck. At least it won't suck because he's there. He joined early because he got the job straight after finishing primary school while I continued my studies. I dropped out later due to health issues.

So the first day when I got to work, I was fortunate enough to be placed in the same department with my close friend. So I was assigned to my supervisor and he brought me on a tour of the entire department, introducing me to other coworkers. So, after all the introductions, my supervisor briefed me a bit about my duties, etc, and later I was shown to my cubicle. There were about 10 rows of 3 cubicles and I was placed at the right end cubicle. My neighbor was a girl around my age and she was very pleasant to me, often helping me out if I was unable to do something.

As usual, there was a lot of work to be done in the accounts department and people normally stayed up to do overtime to finish up their work. My supervisor offered me to do overtime and I instantly replied in a heartbeat and said, "No problem." Well, you know, I had just started working and I was enthusiastic LOL. Office hours finishes at 5:00 pm (if I'm not mistaken) and usually we will have like 30 minutes of break before we start our overtime.

So, it was fun. I have already started a few days of overtime. So normally, we finish up around 9:30 pm or 10:00. After that me and my friends will go have a drink at local mamak store.

Then came a day when my friends did overtime for only a few hours, meaning to say they had to go back early because of some other things. So, at around 7:00 all my overtime friends had gone back and I was left alone in the office. I said to myself, "It's okay, I'll be fine, I just need to finish up on some work." So, I worked alone.

So I continued my work alone. Then suddenly... I was shocked as I heard the office printer at the side of my manager's room, suddenly printing. It was loud because back then they used the dot matrix printer, the one that used the ribbon for ink, "Hmmm..." I thought to myself. "Maybe the printer is connected to some other departments and maybe some reports are being printed out by someone else in some other department and printed here for our viewing." I try to dismiss any thoughts of supernatural. Because, I thought, it was normal. But then I remembered, the few days back that I have stayed in the office, I don't remember the printer printing at this time of the day.

So, I paused my work and decided to have a look at what the printer was printing. "It could be some accounts report," I thought to myself. So when I finally went over to the printer and looked at the printing on the paper, I was confused because the printer is printing out words that I do not understand. It's not even in a form of a report. It's just letters, words that makes no sense. It's like as if someone were to type gibberish on the paper.

It's something like this: Asrfsoe rtw$#&ptjw rweortweot dsmrffn mtwet dyer eri%&^tiohyiowo Asdasr etoerto$^%geh grtyeitnasrt eyoyoeoy Rtiertyeryj eryprtypert operterZ&^* rtrtert

All of the thing that was printed were pages of pages of gibberish. You get what I mean.

I was thinking to myself, "What the hell is this?" and the printer kept on printing gibberish. Suddenly it dawned on me that something was not right, and so I quickly got out of the office. The printer kept printing even while I was on my way out. I went straight home and slept. I didn't want to ponder about it anymore. "There has to be an explanation to this. Tomorrow, I'm going to ask my friend."

The next day, first thing in the morning, I asked my colleague. "Is it possible if someone else from other department to print using our printer?" and he said "No, it's not possible. Our printer in this department is only for this department's use. No one else from outside of this department can access it." I was shocked when I heard my friend said that. "But last night, all of a sudden, the printer started printing on it's own. I was alone at that time and it printed out gibberish! Words that you can't understand." I told my friend.

He was shocked to hear my reply and he asked "Are you sure?" and I replied, "Of course I'm sure." Then he said, "Let's go and check out the printer now." So we hurried to the printer located at the side of our manager's room. When we reached there, to my dismay, the printed gibberish is nowhere to be found and we went to the printer early in the morning before anyone can even use the printer. It's not possible that anyone could have removed the printed gibberish as we were the first ones to reach the printer. Where did the printed material go?

The questions that still linger in my mind until today is:

1. How the hell did the printer started printing all of a sudden? Because my friend told me, only people in this department can access the printer, but at the time, I was alone in my department.

And the more puzzling question is...

2. What did it print? I'm sure no sane human being can interpret what was printed. Is it some devilish words? But now it's only in my mind because the printed paper is nowhere to be found.

That was the only time the weird thing happened and I no longer do overtime if I'm alone. Lesson learned.