If you see this... Please disregard the bone apple tea link below. As a pose to is the correct way to say what you meant there. Don't let the haters steal your son's shine.
I don’t know how stuff is across the pond, but in the US this is often the case. For example, we have a vendor who clears snow, so even if it’s snowy as hell, we can’t clear the snow as we’d be acting outside of our role. Furthermore, if someone acting outside their role injured themselves while doing it, Health and Safety would be after that person’s supervisor for allowing them to act outside their role. Companies are allergic to risk.
Healthand safety forbids hoovering? What planet do you live on? And what heath and safety are you even talking about. He’s in a closed cinema. There’s likely just a holding company.
Not all night but something like X mins to reach Y location, so many rounds per hour
I get what they are saying though, my first job was movie theatre projectionist and it was a dollar theatre that had just recently reopened after being bought
Projection room was a mess, old film everywhere and dust. Also where they kept the letters for the marquee
Fixed it all up and my boss, the owner, said I could have free hotdogs for as long as I worked there once the final movie has started for the night
What’s the deal with the amount of dust that collects in the projection room? I felt like I was gonna get cancer just breathing the air in there. I wish we’d had hotdogs, it’s probably a good thing we didn’t.
The main run theatres hated the business we took and would hold onto films so long with just like 1 showing a day to prevent having to pass it on
At one point the guy who got us films slept with another dude who was in a position to basically pressure a local theatre to knock it off so we could get more movies loll
We were an offshoot of Cinemark, where one single New Mexican guy brought the brand to Canada and ended up eating everything and having to run it as a discount fourth run theatre. Every kid, teen, and cheap adult in town knew Cinema City 12 lol. What a gong show. I got reaaaaallly good at spicing on the fly because holy crap those films were fragile by the time we got them.
Interesting fact my great grandfather was a watchman for a railroad and had this heavy, leatherbound clock with a strap he wore and it used a key inserted into the clock to imprint a marking for each station he had to get to. I got that clock from my grandmother's house when she passed
I always wanted to get this sort of job when I was unemployed. Does it ever feel spooky as hell? I remember some SIA guys telling me these jobs always gave them the creeps at some point.
Was a guard in a prison back when I was early 20s. Worked nights. Most of the time I sat around playing dominoes and doing rounds. We had one whole wing or block that was shut down the majority of the time I was there. The place wasn't that old but walking through with limited lighting and not being able to see to the back of the 8 man cells was eerie. Most of us when it was time to do the rounds would team up, just kinda unspoken but whoever was doing it would wind up with a buddy.
It's interesting how most people don't believe in the supernatural, but if you talk to overnight security guards, ER and palliative care staff, there is no question that things aren't as black and white as we'd like to believe.
It's a time when humans generally aren't supposed to be awake, and if they are they should be by the fire on guard for predators just at the edge of the firelight. And these professions are required to work in similar lighting conditions but get up and go straight at the scary sounds just out of range and often without backup. Of course they get creeped out. Nevermind that ER and palliative care is high stress, whereas security is incredibly boring, both of which can contribute to occasional hallucinations, auditory or otherwise.
Looks silly, but i used to confess out loudly that I am here to cover up the shifts and have no intentions to disturb whomsoever i couldn't see. Didn't use to run across the building unless an emergency alarm broke out. Maintained patience throughout my shifts, and had to be back at the reception completing my patrols every hour
This is how I survived my 1875 childhood home. Everybody else had terrifying encounters, but mine stopped after I asked the spirits to leave me alone! We were roommates at that point😂
Makes sense to me! I work nights in an older hospital and there’s definitely some “shadow friends” that like to hang around empty or quiet rooms. Occasionally a patient will ask about them and we just tell them it’s one of us peeking in so they don’t freak out lol
As a completely rational, non superstitious adult...shit hits different when you're alone in the dark. Especially if you exclusively read horror novels.
In my childhood home, before I got into horror, we saw some weird shit. Electronics turning on without a power source. Unplugged radios, old toys that required batteries, weird answering machine messages and the such. It was only electronics. It was... Definitely a thing multiple people witnessed and it had a common denominator.
I'm a very rational adult. But part of rationality is accepting that there is knowledge out there that we don't yet understand. Like, in the dark ages people thought illness and disease were caused by demons. Eventually, after different observations and theories were explored, we discovered microorganisms.
If it was just me, I'd question the legitimacy of what I saw. But multiple people witnessing similar but separate events? I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt and consider more fringe-type or supernatural explanations. You can't prove a negative.
There's a whole universe out there, so much we don't know yet. So when I see something that modern science can't explain, and I've seen a lot, I give it the benefit of the doubt. I store it away until maybe one day science can explain it. Knowledge isn't finite.
I watched a scary film (40 days of night) at 3am and then had to go check all the sprinkler valves in a dimly lit parkade right after. Probably one of the worst decisions of my life lol
I work third shift security in a hospital that was built in the late 1800s. I'm usually alone and I listen to horror stories/books/podcasts all night. It does contribute to me being more paranoid sometimes lol
Yeah it doesn't even have to be in the lane of "supernatural". It's just the mind responding to/ making sense of a drastically different setting
The body is mostly used to brighter/more vibrant environments and being active in those scenarios. Of course, it's going to act up, and a lot of people think it means supernatural because it's how the brain copes or tries to understand uncertainty.
Yeah most people say unicorns dont exist but if you talked to my 4 and 6 year old nieces, there's no question that things aren't as black and white as we'd like to believe
I think it's more interesting some brains go straight to paranormal, rather than the idea our own meat computer being awake at times it's not designed to does strange things.
I've worked night shift for almost two decades across more than a dozen different hospitals. Plenty of night shift workers and even some patients have hospital ghost stories. You can tell that most of them genuinely believe in what they saw/heard/felt.
I've wandered around hospital basements and maintenance halls and empty patient units during my breaks to stay awake. I've taken naps during my breaks in the supposedly most haunted rooms that staff swear patients and other staff members frequently see/hear creepy things in. In all my years doing this, I haven't experienced anything remotely supernatural.
I've done plenty of mischief though like turning on call lights, draping patient gowns on IV poles in the far corner of dark rooms, or displaying phrases like "FORGIVE ME" on a screen in completely empty units to spook anyone who has to round on them or grab supplies and equipment from them.
As someone who worked nights for around 10 years, it's the lack of vitamin D and other things that contribute to poor health. Shit is really bad for your mind and body.
I imagine there is some danger from idiots trying to break in to steal things or homeless people looking for a vacant building to sleep in, but it can't be that common.
my first ever job was at a graveyard, and they had a little chilled area to keep coffins in before burial. well it just happened to be the main entrance to our little room with the timeclock, and naturally the only light switch is on the far wall prob 10+ meters away, and naturally the entry door is springloaded to slam shut and lock quickly, so youd have to fling the door open eide and book it to the switch otherwise youd be stuck in the dark cold body room lol. probably about 02ish, so before phones and flashlights were everywhere. was actually a tight job, diggin holes and rakin leaves haha
Luckily the most you'll probably encounter is kids looking for a place to drink, or homeless people looking for a place to stay warm. Worst case scenario is a person looking for a place to do drugs, but even they are pretty reasonable if you're reasonable and not a dick.
I'm a 115lb girl and this is absolutely my dream job. I would be more scared of the spooky stuff than actual humans.
Once a drugged guy, about at 01:30 AM, peeked through the reception window, & asked the permission to enter. Upon denial, he asked me to look at my back as for he could see what i couldn't. I gave him a shut up call, and asked to get away. After arguing about like 2 to 3 minutes he went away. Thinking about what could be behind my back, I looked back at once, & found no one lol. But the way he was looking into my eyes was horrendous.
About half an hour later I found him bangin* a gal across the road 😅
My brother was a security guard as a night gig directly after college. He had to "watch the cameras" and do a round every couple of hours. He would watch 3-4 movies a night on a little DVD player with an attached screen. This was 2009, so movie rental places/red box still existed for him to get new movies.
I did a construction gig once where literally -nothing- happened for the entire gig. I'd show up, clock in with my phone, then sit in my car for 12 hours in an empty field. Then, clock out and go home.
It was pretty cool for the first 4 months, but by months six I got kinda crazy out there. xD
I had a job like this but it was a call Center, we would take 5 calls each for a 11 hour shift, I would wheel the 65 inch screen that displayed the call center stats over to my desk and plug in my gaming laptop.
I would play online untill all my friends went to bed, than I would play a single player game for a bit, the first few hours of the shift everyone just did their own thing.
At around 3am we would put something on the TV and watch it together, than it would be nap time for most of the team me and another dude could never sleep so we just talked for the rest of night.
I recently saw one of those foldable DVD players at a thrift and realized that I’d be a lot more motivated to watch movies if I needed to hunt down the DVD before watching them instead of just streaming them online on a site I can access any time.
didn’t buy it, but I’m sure it’d go crazy to treat movies like a Gotta Catch ‘em All situation. bring a sock of quarters to a middle class town’s library and make your way out of their book/DVD sale like a bandit.
when I started typing this I’m sure I thought I was gonna find a way to tie it back to your friend but I was really just musing on the DVD player if we’re being real here
There's an old abandoned jail from the early 1900s in my town. Closed in 2001. And its got around the clock security. Place is creepy as hell. I asked one of the guards once what's the scariest thing hes ever seen. He said legally he cannot talk about if there is or isnt anything paranormal happening there, but that there is a barred window that will not stay closed even when nailed down, and he once found a carefully layed out pile of small animal bones that was NOT there 45 mins earlier. Also crackheads, lots of crackheads.
that there is a barred window that will not stay closed even when nailed down, and he once found a carefully layed out pile of small animal bones that was NOT there 45 mins earlier.
So crackheads don't break in and burn it down by mistake. The building owner still has vested interests and preventing a fire or someone oding or squatting there is worth the cost of a overnight guard.
I live in a low COL era, and in the years before vacancies filled back up due to the pandemic, my neighborhood was dealing with several burned down homes every year due to this.
Yep, the theater I grew up going to closed down a few years ago, and quickly became a target for trespassing. Kids would go in and slash up the screens and stuff. But then a couple people went in and set the lobby and two of the auditoriums on fire, extensively damaging them. Obviously the owner was trying to find a new tenant, so it would have been good to have security to try and prevent this kind of damage (though at the same time it's good nobody got hurt). Now it'd have to be majorly overhauled to have any chance of opening again.
Imagine sitting watching a film in a creepy empty cinema building, music in the flim blasting in full glorious Dolby Atmos, then you turn around and someone is sitting behind you....
I was a projectionist for almost 8 years. Even when they aren't permanently closed those places have a creepy vibe without lights and people in them. We had arcade machines in the lobby that ran on a timer. I remember walking by in complete darkness and they turned on. That stuff will take years off your life I'm sure. In that moment I felt like I could bust through any wall like the Kool-Aid man.
I used to work security at a datacenter, early one morning around 0400 I was walking through an almost pitch black UPS room, and the head of security had snuck in and reached out and grabbed my hand in the dark.
As a slightly superstitious theatre person, I wonder if putting ghost lights in front of each screen would help. It’s something we do in theatre to keep the ghosts/spirits of the theatre company.
They used to have hdmi inputs on them, our friend ran a theater here and we used to have our son's birthday parties there.... call of duty was epic on that screen, and the sound.... oh my the sound..... the NHL games were kickass too
I've never posted here so someone please tell me if I'm not supposed to piggyback like this.
These photos brought back a memory. I used to be a custodian/security for a large church. Lots of me being there alone at night shutting down the building in the dark.
They used a mannequin to set cameras in the auditorium and would store it in an attic. To turn off one of the gym lights, I had to walk through the attic. One night, already on edge because I'd been walking through a massive dark building all by myself, I went up the attic stairs to get to that light and saw this. It was the mannequin. Almost had a heart attack.
Any chance you'd reveal what pay is like doing this? I'd imagine the building is pretty secure, it's interesting to me there security duty, but maybe that's normal.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's part of their insurance contract, and it's cheaper to hire the security officer than pay more if you don't have one.
where are you people getting the “it’s a dream” idea from lol. I’ve done similar work in the Royal Navy: when you’re at sea on night watch, you spend four hours doing rounds — following a set route through the engineering spaces, checking equipment and looking for any signs of fire or flooding. It’s grim. Time basically slows to a crawl. And that’s just a four-hour watch. Doing that sort of thing for an entire night would be absolutely unbearable.
On completely dead days I used to wish for customers, not enough to be busy but just enough to have something to do. I cant imagine how mind numbingly boring it would get to have nothing to do.
I assume night security for an abandoned cinema is less strict. Probably him all alone so he could probably just sit in a security room in his phone and play games and do a patrol every other hour.
If I was a night watchmen in the royal navy you can bet I'd be playing some James bond or spy video game background music on a loop. I'd probably throw in the occasional "hmm... Must've been the wind" at any slight noise I heard too
Pretty much. if someone get hurt in the property, they can still sue the owner of the building.
More importantly for the owner, if someone gets hurt it will remind the city that the giant building is sitting unused and in disarray and might force the owner to sell or demolish it.
Insurance typically will not cover vandalism if the building has been completely vacant for too long. This may be to keep insurance active on the building
Just switch your mindset, make others afraid of you. Sit silently in the corner of a dark theatre and if anyone breaks in just let them explore a while and then hit your remote controlled power switch you previously hooked up so a popcorn machine starts popping at the concessions counter while you roll gobstoppers down the theatre floor under the seats
Not exactly the same, but back in my university years I used to work as an L2 network engineer at a smaller local ISP (the uni offered free Cisco courses and certifications, and having a CCNP was more than enough to get the job). We had on-call night shifts there, basically we were supposed to resolve mid level issues or escalate if some serious shit hit the fan. The company rented some floors in a big office building, and during those night shifts I was pretty much alone there save for the guard on the ground floor.
Honestly I absolutely loved those shifts. There's sometimng soothing about those empty rooms and floors, and how quiet it all is. I'd just wander around drinking coffee and looking at the streets from the panoramic windows. One time I fell asleep and woke up to an insane sunrise blasting through them, legit panicked as for a second I though it was a nuke going off lol. Good times.
So, to occupy your time you ever thought of just bringing a vacuum and doing some cleaning? I know it probably isn't part of the job but, has to get a little boring sometimes.
Man, I know it's not part of the job, but I would feel compelled to clean the building I spent that much time in. I'd be vacuuming that as a bare minimum.
The theater near where I grew up closed down when I was like 16, myself and a friend broke in one night during a region wide power outage. I found a massive box filled with like 50 movie posters and even some of the giant vinyl ones they would hang up on the side of the building. I plastered my bed room walls with them and gave a bunch to friends. I kept some of the large vinyl ones for a long time through college. Eventually they all disappeared...if it had them today im sure it would be worth while to put them on ebay...I was too young and without a vehicle at the time to think about taking old popcorn machines and whatnot. The projectors were not there i recall.
45 Nights At Freddy's. Stay safe man.
That is exactly where my brain went!
In my mind I was like “I hear a bear laughing.”
In a world with so many fnaf guards, be a natm Larry
"Hey, Dum Dum! You bring gum gum?"
You better run run.
Better than 5 nights at diddy's
I think if I was bored I would just slowly clean up bit by bit. Looks so gross down there
One I'd like op to comment on, if he's allowed to do anything like that. Probably health and safety say no
With the best will in the world nobody's going to be checking up on whether or not OP has tidied.
The bigger issue may well be that there may no longer be arrangements in place to collect commercial waste from the premises.
Better in a bin than on the floor. At least the rubbish would be in one place as a pose to… everywhere.
Edit: Glad I could give everyone a smile lmao. Leaving comment (despite having incorrect grammar) as is.
r/boneappletea ?
OP posing while cleaning the floor
I chuckled lol thanks!
If you see this... Please disregard the bone apple tea link below. As a pose to is the correct way to say what you meant there. Don't let the haters steal your son's shine.
You fucking had me in the thirst half
there a reel joke stir
I don't get it why are you all being so up twos?
as opposed to
I don’t know how stuff is across the pond, but in the US this is often the case. For example, we have a vendor who clears snow, so even if it’s snowy as hell, we can’t clear the snow as we’d be acting outside of our role. Furthermore, if someone acting outside their role injured themselves while doing it, Health and Safety would be after that person’s supervisor for allowing them to act outside their role. Companies are allergic to risk.
It's born from insurance and a suing culture.
It's born from people being maimed and killed because their bosses forced them to do things they weren't trained to do.
Little bit of column A, little bit of column B.
Every OSHA rule is born out of blood they say
I think OP could push a vacuum cleaner around and gather bit of cardboard into a trash bag without losing both legs. Probably.
Health and safety wouldnt like those fire exits being blocked a whole lot. Makes me think they aren't visiting much
Healthand safety forbids hoovering? What planet do you live on? And what heath and safety are you even talking about. He’s in a closed cinema. There’s likely just a holding company.
Could be he has to hit checkpoints using a fob so keeps circulating
Its unlikely he has to keep walking all night.
Not all night but something like X mins to reach Y location, so many rounds per hour
I get what they are saying though, my first job was movie theatre projectionist and it was a dollar theatre that had just recently reopened after being bought
Projection room was a mess, old film everywhere and dust. Also where they kept the letters for the marquee
Fixed it all up and my boss, the owner, said I could have free hotdogs for as long as I worked there once the final movie has started for the night
What’s the deal with the amount of dust that collects in the projection room? I felt like I was gonna get cancer just breathing the air in there. I wish we’d had hotdogs, it’s probably a good thing we didn’t.
Another perk that everyone had was all the popcorn you can eat and free soda with your own cup
Used to get a large coke, popcorn, toss nacho cheese on the popcorn, and a hotdog and watch a movie for my lunch break
To be young with a high metabolism
I've never encountered another dollar cinema projectionist outside of my old job. I love reddit.
It was a trip
The main run theatres hated the business we took and would hold onto films so long with just like 1 showing a day to prevent having to pass it on
At one point the guy who got us films slept with another dude who was in a position to basically pressure a local theatre to knock it off so we could get more movies loll
We were an offshoot of Cinemark, where one single New Mexican guy brought the brand to Canada and ended up eating everything and having to run it as a discount fourth run theatre. Every kid, teen, and cheap adult in town knew Cinema City 12 lol. What a gong show. I got reaaaaallly good at spicing on the fly because holy crap those films were fragile by the time we got them.
Interesting fact my great grandfather was a watchman for a railroad and had this heavy, leatherbound clock with a strap he wore and it used a key inserted into the clock to imprint a marking for each station he had to get to. I got that clock from my grandmother's house when she passed
I would be figuring g out how to make the projector work again and watching a film
Hook your pc up to it.
I have a dream of hooking my N64 up to a big screen some day.
Cinema in my hometown used to offer console sessions on the big screen, always wanted to go to one of those
How do we know OP didn't cause this through raiding the abandoned popcorn machine every night?
You bring a laptop and binge TV shows and play games all nights. They ain't paying you to clean.
Seriously. Figure out where the vaccuum cleaner is and how about the bugs?
I always wanted to get this sort of job when I was unemployed. Does it ever feel spooky as hell? I remember some SIA guys telling me these jobs always gave them the creeps at some point.
Balls of steel from 02:00 - 06:00 are generally required to cover more than half a dozen screens, & that too with a dim light corridors 🫠
Was that in the requirements? How to get balls of steel degree?
Instructions unclear, I now have a tow hitch in my ass and steel nuts.
Truck nuts? Damn, people are going to point and laugh at you behind your back
Statement unclear, are you a Dodge Ram?
"Randy! Jesus! Randy! Your balls?!"
Ive got a diploma in “Keeping it mother fucking real” so it just depends on your courses.
As an old guard, 2-6 can get thick...
Was a guard in a prison back when I was early 20s. Worked nights. Most of the time I sat around playing dominoes and doing rounds. We had one whole wing or block that was shut down the majority of the time I was there. The place wasn't that old but walking through with limited lighting and not being able to see to the back of the 8 man cells was eerie. Most of us when it was time to do the rounds would team up, just kinda unspoken but whoever was doing it would wind up with a buddy.
Was holding hands on the table or would that be frowned upon?
Funnily enough there was a Sargent and a female employee that were caught doing a whole lot more than that.
Holding hands and saying encouraging things to each other? Sounds like good friends.
Oh yeah, from what I know of her she said very encouraging things loudly. She said them to most of the staff at one time or another.
Can you be more specific?
Things "move" differently after 2am..
Exactly
It's interesting how most people don't believe in the supernatural, but if you talk to overnight security guards, ER and palliative care staff, there is no question that things aren't as black and white as we'd like to believe.
It's a time when humans generally aren't supposed to be awake, and if they are they should be by the fire on guard for predators just at the edge of the firelight. And these professions are required to work in similar lighting conditions but get up and go straight at the scary sounds just out of range and often without backup. Of course they get creeped out. Nevermind that ER and palliative care is high stress, whereas security is incredibly boring, both of which can contribute to occasional hallucinations, auditory or otherwise.
Looks silly, but i used to confess out loudly that I am here to cover up the shifts and have no intentions to disturb whomsoever i couldn't see. Didn't use to run across the building unless an emergency alarm broke out. Maintained patience throughout my shifts, and had to be back at the reception completing my patrols every hour
This is how I survived my 1875 childhood home. Everybody else had terrifying encounters, but mine stopped after I asked the spirits to leave me alone! We were roommates at that point😂
If you grew up in 1875, I have some news for you.
Folks laugh, but i feel ya...
Makes sense to me! I work nights in an older hospital and there’s definitely some “shadow friends” that like to hang around empty or quiet rooms. Occasionally a patient will ask about them and we just tell them it’s one of us peeking in so they don’t freak out lol
Tell us about these terrifying encounters!
As a completely rational, non superstitious adult...shit hits different when you're alone in the dark. Especially if you exclusively read horror novels.
In my childhood home, before I got into horror, we saw some weird shit. Electronics turning on without a power source. Unplugged radios, old toys that required batteries, weird answering machine messages and the such. It was only electronics. It was... Definitely a thing multiple people witnessed and it had a common denominator.
I'm a very rational adult. But part of rationality is accepting that there is knowledge out there that we don't yet understand. Like, in the dark ages people thought illness and disease were caused by demons. Eventually, after different observations and theories were explored, we discovered microorganisms.
If it was just me, I'd question the legitimacy of what I saw. But multiple people witnessing similar but separate events? I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt and consider more fringe-type or supernatural explanations. You can't prove a negative.
There's a whole universe out there, so much we don't know yet. So when I see something that modern science can't explain, and I've seen a lot, I give it the benefit of the doubt. I store it away until maybe one day science can explain it. Knowledge isn't finite.
I watched a scary film (40 days of night) at 3am and then had to go check all the sprinkler valves in a dimly lit parkade right after. Probably one of the worst decisions of my life lol
I work third shift security in a hospital that was built in the late 1800s. I'm usually alone and I listen to horror stories/books/podcasts all night. It does contribute to me being more paranoid sometimes lol
Yeah it doesn't even have to be in the lane of "supernatural". It's just the mind responding to/ making sense of a drastically different setting
The body is mostly used to brighter/more vibrant environments and being active in those scenarios. Of course, it's going to act up, and a lot of people think it means supernatural because it's how the brain copes or tries to understand uncertainty.
Cats don't mind that time of day. It's when mice and other small things think it's safe.
Yeah most people say unicorns dont exist but if you talked to my 4 and 6 year old nieces, there's no question that things aren't as black and white as we'd like to believe
I think it's more interesting some brains go straight to paranormal, rather than the idea our own meat computer being awake at times it's not designed to does strange things.
Meat computer.
I've worked night shift for almost two decades across more than a dozen different hospitals. Plenty of night shift workers and even some patients have hospital ghost stories. You can tell that most of them genuinely believe in what they saw/heard/felt.
I've wandered around hospital basements and maintenance halls and empty patient units during my breaks to stay awake. I've taken naps during my breaks in the supposedly most haunted rooms that staff swear patients and other staff members frequently see/hear creepy things in. In all my years doing this, I haven't experienced anything remotely supernatural.
I've done plenty of mischief though like turning on call lights, draping patient gowns on IV poles in the far corner of dark rooms, or displaying phrases like "FORGIVE ME" on a screen in completely empty units to spook anyone who has to round on them or grab supplies and equipment from them.
Tfw sleep deprivation
As someone who worked nights for around 10 years, it's the lack of vitamin D and other things that contribute to poor health. Shit is really bad for your mind and body.
Witching hour
Is it just the creepiness factor, or is there a real danger? Because I'd say most of the shifts were very uneventful
It went okay 👍
I imagine there is some danger from idiots trying to break in to steal things or homeless people looking for a vacant building to sleep in, but it can't be that common.
I worked security overnights at a university that had a mortuary science program. Having to go to the morgue at 3am every night was definitely rough
Nope. fuck that.
my first ever job was at a graveyard, and they had a little chilled area to keep coffins in before burial. well it just happened to be the main entrance to our little room with the timeclock, and naturally the only light switch is on the far wall prob 10+ meters away, and naturally the entry door is springloaded to slam shut and lock quickly, so youd have to fling the door open eide and book it to the switch otherwise youd be stuck in the dark cold body room lol. probably about 02ish, so before phones and flashlights were everywhere. was actually a tight job, diggin holes and rakin leaves haha
Did you at least have a cosy small break room or office you could retreat to and lock the door?
Closing the doors costs power, you only have so much power to get through the night! Not until you see the whites in their eyes!
No
Luckily the most you'll probably encounter is kids looking for a place to drink, or homeless people looking for a place to stay warm. Worst case scenario is a person looking for a place to do drugs, but even they are pretty reasonable if you're reasonable and not a dick.
I'm a 115lb girl and this is absolutely my dream job. I would be more scared of the spooky stuff than actual humans.
Once a drugged guy, about at 01:30 AM, peeked through the reception window, & asked the permission to enter. Upon denial, he asked me to look at my back as for he could see what i couldn't. I gave him a shut up call, and asked to get away. After arguing about like 2 to 3 minutes he went away. Thinking about what could be behind my back, I looked back at once, & found no one lol. But the way he was looking into my eyes was horrendous.
About half an hour later I found him bangin* a gal across the road 😅
Well i didn't plan to sleep anyway.
might have been seeing things. though if you llet him him in mabye you could have got the banging, missed oppurtunity there!
Man, reminds me of the opening to Oddity
Can they be steel plated or do you have to have like full steel?
My brother was a security guard as a night gig directly after college. He had to "watch the cameras" and do a round every couple of hours. He would watch 3-4 movies a night on a little DVD player with an attached screen. This was 2009, so movie rental places/red box still existed for him to get new movies.
Sounds about right. I used to do construction site security. Same deal. Lotsa cellular data chewed through that's for damn sure.
I did a construction gig once where literally -nothing- happened for the entire gig. I'd show up, clock in with my phone, then sit in my car for 12 hours in an empty field. Then, clock out and go home.
It was pretty cool for the first 4 months, but by months six I got kinda crazy out there. xD
I had a job like this but it was a call Center, we would take 5 calls each for a 11 hour shift, I would wheel the 65 inch screen that displayed the call center stats over to my desk and plug in my gaming laptop.
I would play online untill all my friends went to bed, than I would play a single player game for a bit, the first few hours of the shift everyone just did their own thing.
At around 3am we would put something on the TV and watch it together, than it would be nap time for most of the team me and another dude could never sleep so we just talked for the rest of night.
I recently saw one of those foldable DVD players at a thrift and realized that I’d be a lot more motivated to watch movies if I needed to hunt down the DVD before watching them instead of just streaming them online on a site I can access any time.
didn’t buy it, but I’m sure it’d go crazy to treat movies like a Gotta Catch ‘em All situation. bring a sock of quarters to a middle class town’s library and make your way out of their book/DVD sale like a bandit.
when I started typing this I’m sure I thought I was gonna find a way to tie it back to your friend but I was really just musing on the DVD player if we’re being real here
There's an old abandoned jail from the early 1900s in my town. Closed in 2001. And its got around the clock security. Place is creepy as hell. I asked one of the guards once what's the scariest thing hes ever seen. He said legally he cannot talk about if there is or isnt anything paranormal happening there, but that there is a barred window that will not stay closed even when nailed down, and he once found a carefully layed out pile of small animal bones that was NOT there 45 mins earlier. Also crackheads, lots of crackheads.
I feel these are related
Yes, I think I see the connection.
Never would have guessed ghosts sold crack.
>He said legally he cannot talk about if there is or isnt anything paranormal happening there
Come on dude
https://preview.redd.it/medvjvw5vu6g1.png?width=318&format=png&auto=webp&s=c4c56aaf60d513db802c2f80d928a0740862ccc5
Sorry man I signed this ghost nda
Yeah, little corny but 100% what he said
Idk if anyone else gets this way but I get freaked out when I’m alone in places that are big enough for multiple people. The later the creepier.
I have a night shift where I watch people with disabilities sleep. Not the same thing, but I really like the quiet
why do they need a security officer?
So crackheads don't break in and burn it down by mistake. The building owner still has vested interests and preventing a fire or someone oding or squatting there is worth the cost of a overnight guard.
I live in a low COL era, and in the years before vacancies filled back up due to the pandemic, my neighborhood was dealing with several burned down homes every year due to this.
All of Detroit was like this after 2008
Yep, the theater I grew up going to closed down a few years ago, and quickly became a target for trespassing. Kids would go in and slash up the screens and stuff. But then a couple people went in and set the lobby and two of the auditoriums on fire, extensively damaging them. Obviously the owner was trying to find a new tenant, so it would have been good to have security to try and prevent this kind of damage (though at the same time it's good nobody got hurt). Now it'd have to be majorly overhauled to have any chance of opening again.
I'd be so quick to message the owner and try to set up some kind of deal where I could guard the place.
For experimental purpose 😅
We’ll send him cheesy movies…
the worst we can find
He'll have to sit and watch them all
I would absolutely waste way too many hours trying to get a screen up and running again
Been there but couldn't done that. One of the dracula's poster got in my way while peeking through a projector's area 😅
Do you ever bring like a strong ass flashlight to see better?
Nah
/r/Flashlight would hook you up for cheap. Even a Wurkkos FC11C would do wonders on a budget for like...not getting jump scared lol
Buy a projector, plug in a ps5, play it on one of the big screens.
Imagine sitting watching a film in a creepy empty cinema building, music in the flim blasting in full glorious Dolby Atmos, then you turn around and someone is sitting behind you....
or you just hear someone laugh out loud at one of the jokes
Or crunching on popcorn!
….it’s Shia LeBeouf!
Actual cannibal Shia LeBeouf?
I was a projectionist for almost 8 years. Even when they aren't permanently closed those places have a creepy vibe without lights and people in them. We had arcade machines in the lobby that ran on a timer. I remember walking by in complete darkness and they turned on. That stuff will take years off your life I'm sure. In that moment I felt like I could bust through any wall like the Kool-Aid man.
Actually yeah. Cortisol used to be at pinnacle that time
I used to work security at a datacenter, early one morning around 0400 I was walking through an almost pitch black UPS room, and the head of security had snuck in and reached out and grabbed my hand in the dark.
Im pretty sure I died right there.
Dude that would scare the absolute fuck out of me lmao probably felt the blood literally move in your body
As a slightly superstitious theatre person, I wonder if putting ghost lights in front of each screen would help. It’s something we do in theatre to keep the ghosts/spirits of the theatre company.
i would absolutely love this gig
my google history if i had this gig:
“how to hook up nintendo switch to movie theater projector”
“shelf life of movie theater butter”
“why do i feel like im being watched”
i would smuggle in stuffed animals one at a time and try to fill up a screenroom with them.
“bulk 3d glasses”
“movie theater squatters rights”
“effective boobytraps with household items”
They used to have hdmi inputs on them, our friend ran a theater here and we used to have our son's birthday parties there.... call of duty was epic on that screen, and the sound.... oh my the sound..... the NHL games were kickass too
imagine playing Silent Hill 2 or Alien Isolation in there by yourself with the sound
Now why, why would you do that?
You're a monster.
(That's a no from me, dawg. I've seen how this ends.)
This fucking gif kills me every time
That actually looks like a blast
For like an hour. After that? Probably not. Easy money at least.
Every gig as a guard is easy except for the moment it isn't. You're being paid for those moments.
Bring games, books, caffeine, other remote work. You basically have to swear off scary movies though. Can't give your imagination too much ammunition
Looks like a person in the far back, photo 11. Fuck that.
Lol, I still remember for a night or two when i felt quite eerie 🫠
https://imgur.com/gallery/seriously-creepy-pic-of-ghost-scary-fucker-with-axe-must-read-AEPTUof
I don’t see it…
https://preview.redd.it/y91bqi6ttu6g1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de333b1f62a86bd458c6f880d2c22b6686d0ca12
Probably not a person, but person shaped and in this setting, I'm out lol.
That is in no way person shaped. It goes to a point in the actual photo without your edit and there's no top circle
I've never posted here so someone please tell me if I'm not supposed to piggyback like this.
These photos brought back a memory. I used to be a custodian/security for a large church. Lots of me being there alone at night shutting down the building in the dark.
They used a mannequin to set cameras in the auditorium and would store it in an attic. To turn off one of the gym lights, I had to walk through the attic. One night, already on edge because I'd been walking through a massive dark building all by myself, I went up the attic stairs to get to that light and saw this. It was the mannequin. Almost had a heart attack.
https://preview.redd.it/u8og76yxwu6g1.jpeg?width=920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fcf9374266f468797a27c90adcde099e9107a221
The mannequin wears TRAINERS?
Don't blame you one bit, empty churches creep me tf out anyways
Any chance you'd reveal what pay is like doing this? I'd imagine the building is pretty secure, it's interesting to me there security duty, but maybe that's normal.
A normal wage, with not so secure area to cover, & patrollings are a bonus 🫠
is this your only building or does the security firm cover multiple buildings where you have to drive to a one, walk around, drive to another, etc
Only one
Did you/have you ever had to encounter or chase off someone as part of this?
Yeah
What happened? You can't leave us hanging like this!
I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's part of their insurance contract, and it's cheaper to hire the security officer than pay more if you don't have one.
where do you even look for this kind of job. Walking around an empty building with no customers, at night, sounds like a dream
where are you people getting the “it’s a dream” idea from lol. I’ve done similar work in the Royal Navy: when you’re at sea on night watch, you spend four hours doing rounds — following a set route through the engineering spaces, checking equipment and looking for any signs of fire or flooding. It’s grim. Time basically slows to a crawl. And that’s just a four-hour watch. Doing that sort of thing for an entire night would be absolutely unbearable.
Better than dealing with customers and coworkers.
Treat yourself man. To each their own
On completely dead days I used to wish for customers, not enough to be busy but just enough to have something to do. I cant imagine how mind numbingly boring it would get to have nothing to do.
I assume night security for an abandoned cinema is less strict. Probably him all alone so he could probably just sit in a security room in his phone and play games and do a patrol every other hour.
If I was a night watchmen in the royal navy you can bet I'd be playing some James bond or spy video game background music on a loop. I'd probably throw in the occasional "hmm... Must've been the wind" at any slight noise I heard too
Looks like it could be the Picturehouse that was in Fulham. Always wanted to explore that building.
But honestly, seems like it could be a fun but spooky job.
Ssshhhh
You forgot to put your melty face on this one.
🫠
So what exactly are you security for? Just in case some teenagers try to get in to smoke weed or something?
Pretty much. if someone get hurt in the property, they can still sue the owner of the building.
More importantly for the owner, if someone gets hurt it will remind the city that the giant building is sitting unused and in disarray and might force the owner to sell or demolish it.
Insurance typically will not cover vandalism if the building has been completely vacant for too long. This may be to keep insurance active on the building
I’m so dumb. I was looking at the first picture like “he has to sit up there while he’s guarding?”
no wonder it closed some jabroni put all the chairs on the door! how are you supposed to watch a movie from there?
“What’s that word you just used.. jabroni?”
Just switch your mindset, make others afraid of you. Sit silently in the corner of a dark theatre and if anyone breaks in just let them explore a while and then hit your remote controlled power switch you previously hooked up so a popcorn machine starts popping at the concessions counter while you roll gobstoppers down the theatre floor under the seats
You're gonna see this alone at night my guy
Lol
That could be the most epic trap house ever if they just let nature happen
clearly, you should have a rave
Not exactly the same, but back in my university years I used to work as an L2 network engineer at a smaller local ISP (the uni offered free Cisco courses and certifications, and having a CCNP was more than enough to get the job). We had on-call night shifts there, basically we were supposed to resolve mid level issues or escalate if some serious shit hit the fan. The company rented some floors in a big office building, and during those night shifts I was pretty much alone there save for the guard on the ground floor.
Honestly I absolutely loved those shifts. There's sometimng soothing about those empty rooms and floors, and how quiet it all is. I'd just wander around drinking coffee and looking at the streets from the panoramic windows. One time I fell asleep and woke up to an insane sunrise blasting through them, legit panicked as for a second I though it was a nuke going off lol. Good times.
So, to occupy your time you ever thought of just bringing a vacuum and doing some cleaning? I know it probably isn't part of the job but, has to get a little boring sometimes.
Man, I know it's not part of the job, but I would feel compelled to clean the building I spent that much time in. I'd be vacuuming that as a bare minimum.
Man im not gonna lie....i was here thinking chairs were levitating in a couple of these photos for a second.
Imagine walking down the opposite side of the building and a movie starts playing
Just makes me think there's vermin everywhere
Ironically, I’d watch this movie.
😅
This is giving major shining vibes for some reason
The theater near where I grew up closed down when I was like 16, myself and a friend broke in one night during a region wide power outage. I found a massive box filled with like 50 movie posters and even some of the giant vinyl ones they would hang up on the side of the building. I plastered my bed room walls with them and gave a bunch to friends. I kept some of the large vinyl ones for a long time through college. Eventually they all disappeared...if it had them today im sure it would be worth while to put them on ebay...I was too young and without a vehicle at the time to think about taking old popcorn machines and whatnot. The projectors were not there i recall.
I’d be in there barricading everything making it like it’s a fortress to defend from the zombie apocalypse 🤣 if I’m alone ain’t no one breaking in
Pic 11/17 totally looks like a ghost photo bomb low key. 😄
Post to r/abandoned it fits, they’ll love it too
Cinema is dead isn’t it. We are witnessing the end
What do you do to stay entertained and engaged?