Working nights

I'm 20 years old and I work at my town's local Ikea in Texas. Since I don't go to school during daytime, my boss put me on an overnight shift after the store closed at 11 pm. This means I was working from 11 to roughly about 1 am. I was basically a janitor, going around the store, mopping the floor and cleaning and tidying whatever people used to touch or sit around in the furniture and concept rooms throughout the day.

Given that Ikea was a supercenter, there would still be a number of employees working during after-hours, but for some reason that night I was one of only 2 other people going around the store to clean. It was around midnight and I was dusting off some of the shelves in one of the concept living-rooms when I heard someone's footsteps echoing in the distance behind me. This was odd as the store was closed over an hour ago and no one was supposed to still be in the store's premises. I brushed it off as it was probably my co-worker Carlos going around and doing his part. Though, it would be somewhat unusual for him to do that, given that we basically never see each other while we're cleaning, because the store is so big and we're assigned to clean our own areas of the store each time.

I brushed it off and some time passed. I'd eventually made my way to the children's bed section of the store. It wasn't my favorite part of the store because it always was badly lit from the broken lamps overhead. I was making the beds when I noticed movement in the far corner of my field of vision. It was faint... Like something ducking under one of the beds. I started to get pretty anxious by this point because I had just remembered the footsteps from earlier and connected the dots. Something was definitely off and I realized that there's a high chance I'm not alone in this part of the store. I looked around, but obviously, nothing. As much as I had my suspicions, I started to wonder if my mind just made up what I just saw. A couple minutes passed, and I was still very much on guard.

That's when I heard a plastic cup hit the floor about a block away. It came from one of the kitchen rooms in the kitchen section which was the last section I had to clean before I was done for the night. I stopped what I was doing and looked in the direction of the sound. All I saw was a cup in the middle of the alleyway. That made it real. My fight or flight started kicking in pretty intensely at this point as I tried to make sense of what was going on. I started to think someone was messing with me. Either my co-worker or some random kids were playing some sort of prank to scare me. However, my co-worker, Carlos, isn't the type to joke around, and we barely talk either way. Though, I figured, whoever was doing this was trying to lure me in towards the cup.

I decided to call out Carlos's name. Nothing. I told him if it was a prank he should stop right now. During that moment I was almost practically sure it was a joke, and walked towards the cup to pick it up. Once I was there though, I noticed that one of the cupboards underneath the sink from the concept kitchen was slightly left open. My imagination was running wild at this moment so I slowly walked towards the cupboard and opened it completely to see if anyone was inside. That's when I saw a sickly-looking man staring right at me. I immediately backed off a couple feet away and he was still staring right at me with these creepy wide eyes and a sickly smile. He wasn't saying anything, just making very creepy eye-contact with me, which was probably the scariest part. After about 5 long traumatizing seconds of this, I was creeped out enough, and ran to the nearest exit as fast as I could, leaving all my cleaning equipment behind. I went home and tried my best to forget about what just happened, but I couldn't get the image of his creepy face out of my head.

The next day I called my boss to tell him what happened last night and he was obviously taken aback and told me he was gonna check that area for signs of someone. He called me back later in the day to tell me that they found crumbs of chips and cinnamon roll boxes in that cupboard, but nothing else. Ever since, I've kept working there and we never again found traces of anyone living in the store. Even though I'm over it now and come to realize it was probably a homeless man, I still can't get that haunting image of his creepy face out of my head, nor can I make sense of that cup falling over for no reason.