Hope this thread picks up, love a good old spooky thread on Halloween! 🎃 Mine is not particularly creepy but the best I can think of 😁
I used to work in a place where we had to do rounds of the building before and after closure, including a basement, where staff area was located. We seldom used it (preferred rooms upstairs) and it was always locked. Every morning I was opening the place, I’d get hit by a strong smell of soup or other homely-smelling meal right above the basement. The workplace was not neighbouring any cafes and floor above was also ours, so for a long time I though it was the cleaner, who’d come really early and leave before seeing us, was warming up her hearty breakfast in the staff room. Until I found out that our cleaner didn’t eat at 5 o’clock in the morning and the microwave was broken anyway, so it couldn’t have been her! I never figured out what caused those smells and it seemed that I was the only person to experience them and no other colleagues ever smelled food while doing morning rounds!
The location of the basement made it creepy as well. At the bottom of the stairs I had to turn around the corner and search for the light switch and then walk along narrow corridor with a few adjusting rooms which were used for storage and dead-ended with the staff room. Some of the storage rooms (heavily bolted from inside) lead to city catacombs from presumably Victorian times and also presumably dead-ending behind our doors.
Every time I walked down that corridor and checked the rooms for intruders or rats, I was overcome with a feeling of unease and being watched but not by a person, iyswim. Especially when I was going up the stairs to leave, I used to be overcome with feeling that someone is going to run after me and grab me by the hand and make me stay. The feeling was so strong that I flew up the stairs every time while looking over my shoulder, even though I’d just checked every room and knew there was no one there!
Weirdly it eased, when in an attempt to brave myself up, I started singing while going downstairs. Then I started saying Hello into the darkness before I could reach the light switch, in a friendly voice and chatting about the weather. If someone heard me, they’d have thought I was mad! And strangely it worked! I still felt the presence of something or someone but it was no longer oppressive. I was still overcome with feeling of “don’t leave!” when I was heading back but it wasn’t as horrible as before.
Eventually I left the place for reasons not related to the creepy basement at all and only recently bumped into an article about haunted places in that town with the street where I used to work being top of the list of most haunted places!
I’m a sceptical person, so think that I was probably just creeped out by the dark basement and talking to myself was just a psychological trick rather than me befriending a ghost 😂 but I can’t explain the homely foody smells and feeling of being watched in a place without any windows and only bolted doors!