A Hair-raising Office Encounter

This story is about two of my encounters in my previous company's office.

The area, where I worked, used to be the runway of an old airport that predated WW2 - built in the '30s. By the '60s it was decommissioned as another airport was built on an adjacent island. The land sat mostly empty until it was converted to a business park. I've heard stories of how the airport was used during Japanese occupation in WW2. Parts of the airport grounds were used as mass graves where they could dump bodies of casualties of wars.

Fast forward to today and numerous buildings have sprawled up. New spooky and alarming tales would surface with each new building built. At one point, they even found WW2 vintage bombs while excavating the foundation. They had to evacuate nearby offices while they extracted them. Despite being relatively new buildings, people report sightings of little kids running in hallways late at night, apparitions showing up in sleeping rooms frightening graveyard shift employees napping during their break, and phantom touches on workers in their cubicles in an almost empty office. Our office is on the ground floor of one of the first buildings built in the area. Naturally, our office too has the usual spooks.

One of my milder office encounters happened in our office common room. During the day, this room is used for meetings and seminars but after work hours, this becomes a recreation room and a gaming room. It has a frosted glass wall that runs parallel to the hallway and can be accessed by a door at the southern end of the wall. It has a sort of classroom setup with chairs and tables facing north where the conference TV and whiteboard is.

On Fridays, my office friends and I hang out at the common room to play games. Edna and Javin, whom I've introduced from my other story, were among them. We first played some board games. The kind of board games we play require a bit of role playing so it's not uncommon we'd take hours to finish. We finished sometime before midnight, and we were the only people left in the office. To conserve electricity, we switched off the lights from other areas leaving everywhere dark except the hallway, awash with the light from the common room seeping out through the frosted glass. After board games, Javin hooked up his Nintendo switch on the conference TV and we played some more. By then it was past 2 in the morning and our activity started to tone down a bit.

We were up front near the TV. I had my back against the frosted glass wall while Edna was across me. We were watching the others play when suddenly I heard the door at the far end to my right swing open. At the same time, Edna turned her head towards the direction of the door, confusion registered on her face. "Did you see that?", she asked.

"No, but I heard the door open. Why?", I curiously replied. My view was obstructed by the moveable room divider panels to my right. I was waiting for someone to enter but no one came into view. Edna explained that she saw someone in a white skirt open the door slightly as if to take a peek and swung it close again. She couldn't see the face but noticed its skirt making a flourish as it turned about with the door closing behind it. We were the only people left in the office and no one around that night wore a white skirt. If someone else was around, we should have seen a blurred figure through the frosted glass wall as it passed through hallway. Javin and the rest must've picked up on our exchange and everyone fell silent as if regarding a change in the ambient mood. We all decided to call it a night and hurriedly packed up our things and left the office.

My second encounter was on a weeknight. I had a bit of back log and had to finish a report, so I decided to stay late and work overtime. My cubicle is in a secluded room which has its own security. It required a secondary biometric access apart from our main office entrance. I momentarily went out to grab dinner together with some officemates then went back inside to continue working. Shortly after, my officemates started to head off for home in which I frightfully came to realize I was the only person left in the office. Yikes.

In my previous company, it's not unusual to see lots of people working overtime in the office. It just so happened, at that particular night, people went home earlier than usual. I was sort of counting on the usual. You see, the area I worked in was a peculiar hotspot for unusual happenings. Years prior, we had one officemate who stayed late into the night, and some things happened which frightened him so much that he bolted out the door, through the hallway and out of the office leaving everything behind. He only returned the next day and got so much flack about not clocking out properly, switching off lights, devices, air-conditioning, etc. Other reports from officemates include phantom keyboard typing noises from our secluded room even when no one's inside. For my case, I've previously smelled a whiff of funerary flowers (which I associate with passing spirits) in that area. I check and there were no flowers.

So there I was, busily tapping away on my laptop when a chill ran down my spine and goosebumps spread out on my arms. I felt a presence behind me. In an attempt of nonchalant bravery, I said out loud "Yeah, I'm just doing overtime work here", all the while thinking ("Please don't bother me."). The next thing, I felt someone picking out my hair, one strand at a time, and raising them up. At this point, I panicked. Short burst of bravery gone. I yielded and said "OK! OK! I am going home now". I stood up and hastily stored my laptop onto my desk cabinet. Astonishingly, I had enough will and defiance left to turn off all of the air-conditioning. I clocked out. Goosebumps kept radiating on my skin. Thankfully, I didn't have to turn out the lights until I was at the exit where the switches are situated. I exited. Biometrics lock engaged and I walked out of the building breathing a sigh of relief. I vowed never to render overtime work in that office ever again, reports be damned.

The next day, I came back to a busy office, finished the rest of my delayed report and enjoyed a pleasant yet unremarkable day at the office.