 I've been working as a janitor for a middle school for about four years now. It's a nice job, honestly. I get to sweep and mop some floors while I have my headphones in listening to music. I only work there as a janitor during the summer break, so there are no students around. This summer I saw an ad for a janitor position at a different school, and it was paying more than twice as much for the same work. The only catch was that I would be the only janitor, so I would have to clean the entire school myself. This didn't really bother me, because I would have all summer to clean, that would be plenty of time. So of course I hopped right on the offer. Who wouldn't want to get paid more money to do the same work? But since I started there, there's been some strange things happening at this school, so I wanted to keep a record of it here. The hours I'm working are from 10pm to 4am. I wasn't used to working at night, so I would have to adjust my sleep schedule, but it was fine. I made the drive over to the school, and noticed right away that this school looked a lot bigger than the last one, plus it had two floors. The first night was pretty normal. I walked in and went straight for the janitor's closet, which in this school was located in the gym. On my way there, I noticed how much of a mess the students left all over the halls. They all must have been really excited to finally reach summer break, because there were papers and even some notebooks late about the halls. I just made a mental note to come back and clean all of this up later, as I continued to make my way to the closet. Once I got there, I opened the door and there was plenty of mops and brooms. Pretty much everything my other school had. There was only one thing I found a bit strange. There were some red specks and streaks across one of the mop handles. I couldn't tell what it was, I thought maybe it was paint. It wasn't anything I really cared about, but it was a bit strange to say the least. I decided to work on the hall I saw earlier that was littered with paper and books. I grabbed a broom and headed back to the hallway. A lot of the paper I was sweeping up seemed to be people's notes and equations they wrote in class. However, there was a few sheets of paper right outside of locker 317 that were definitely not just notes. As I swept them up, they flipped over, revealing a weird sketch of a thin, tall, dark figure with long arms. I'm not going to lie, it was a bit creepy, but I just figured it was some doodle a kid must have drawn in class when he got bored or something. I just picked it up and threw it in the trash, along with the rest of the loose papers. After clearing up all the paper from the floor, I left to go get the mop from the closet so I could wipe down the hall. When I made it back to the gym, the lights flickered on and off a few times. I'm not an expert on electricity, and it's technically not my job, so I might just tell them to call someone in to look at it. After I grabbed the mop and made it back to the hall, I found the trash can I was using tipped over, and there was paper everywhere again. Understandably, I was confused as to how anything could have knocked the trash can over. Plus, I didn't hear any noise coming from the hall when I went to go get the mop. I slowly started gathering the papers up again and putting them in the trash when I noticed something. There were a few papers laying all by themselves right in front of locker 317 again. I walked over and picked them up, and they were the exact same drawings with the thin, tall shadow figure from before. Now, this definitely creeped me out. What were the chances that these papers would just fly out and land in the same spot? It was just then that the hallway got much colder, like there was a chill in the air. I was starting to get nervous and freaked out. I just picked all the papers up and I threw them in the trash again. Then I pulled the bag out and tied it shut. I figured my mind was just playing tricks on me, and this was all just a creepy coincidence. I grabbed the mop and bucket and started cleaning the floor. Not much else happened on my first day. I finished mopping down that hall and did some more cleaning in some of the classrooms, and then went home. When I got home and laid in bed to get some rest, I just kept thinking about those drawings. I used to doodle too when I got bored in class, but it was always some innocent stuff. What kind of middle school kid draws something weird and creepy like that? When it was time for me to come in for my second night, I was still nervous, still thinking about what I saw last time. When I walked through the doors, I started making my way towards the janitor's closet again. When I heard a noise, it sounded like it came from the stairs to the second floor. I've heard on the news of students breaking into schools to vandalize them at night, so I was on full alert. There was no light switch at the bottom of the stairs, so it was pretty dark. I turned on the flashlight I had with me and cautiously made my way up the stairs. The stairs were made of ceramic tile, so the sound of every slow step I made faintly echoed through the halls. I felt my heart beating faster as I neared the top, just wondering what could have made that noise. Once I reached the top, I scanned with my flashlight back and forth and saw nothing. Next to me was the light switch, so I flicked it on and started to head back down the stairs. I couldn't believe I was scaring myself like this as I walked down the steps. I just started to laugh at myself. Obviously, this was all just a crazy series of events that's making me nervous, or at least that's what I thought at the time. Once I reached the bottom, I continued to make my way towards the closet like I tried to do earlier. I ended up walking through the same hallway I cleaned last night, and something made me stop dead in my tracks. There they were, lying on the ground, a few loose pieces of paper right outside locker 317. I stood there frozen. How was that even possible? I took the bag with the papers, tied it up, and threw it in the dumpster out back. There's no way these could be the same pieces of paper from before, but I needed to know for sure. I very slowly approached the paper on the ground, still in disbelief as to how they got back there. When I finally made it to them, I slowly reached down to pick them up and turn them over. Sure enough, it was the same drawings of the dark figure from the first night. I was absolutely shocked, but equally terrified. There were no other papers on the floor besides these drawings. I folded them up, put them in my bag, immediately took them out to the dumpster, and threw them out again. When I went back inside, I took a deep breath, calming myself down. I walked over to one of the water fountains in the school, and I got a sip of water. After about 10 minutes, I went to the closet again to grab the mop and bucket. I planned on cleaning some of the bathrooms on the first floor. On my way out, as I was crossing the gym, the lights flickered on and off again. When it happened on the first night, I didn't think much of it, but when it happened now, it freaked me out. I was already on edge about what I just saw, so pretty much anything was making me jump. The school was pretty big, so even I was getting lost, and it took me a little while to find the bathrooms. I started mopping down the bathroom floor like normal, but when I was finished, I decided to do the stall walls. Middle school kids like to screw around and right on the walls sometimes, so I could see lots of dumb drawings and phrases like I hate school or math sucks. They were all written in permanent marker, so it took a lot of scrubbing to get them off. In the corner stall, I saw the numbers 317 written on the wall. I grabbed my sponge and I scrubbed the numbers off the wall. The rest of my shift that night was fairly normal. I only had about another hour of cleaning before it was time for me to leave. When I drove up to the school at 10pm to start my shift for the third night, I just sat in the parking lot for a few minutes. I took a few deep breaths, preparing myself for whatever may happen when I finally set foot inside. The past two nights left me extremely uneasy about this school. I didn't know if I wanted to continue working here, but I didn't want to quit after just two nights. I got out of my car and began making my way towards the entrance. I looked up at one of the windows on the second floor and noticed that someone wrote something on the glass. I couldn't tell what it was from where I was standing, but I knew I had to get rid of it. When I opened the front door to the school this time, I immediately got hit with the same cold chill I'd felt on my first night. We're in the middle of summer right now, so the air definitely shouldn't be that cold in here. However, what really concerned me was that I would have to pass by Locker 317 again to get to the janitor's closet. When I approached the hallway, I peered around the corner. And there it was yet again, papers laying in front of Locker 317. I wanted to walk out of there and quit that second. But I mustered my courage and walked over. I stared down at the papers, and then I looked left and right down the hall. And I called out, Hello? Is anyone there? Who keeps putting these drawings back here? I stood there in silence for a few minutes. No response came. This time I decided to leave the drawings on the floor because clearly someone or some thing didn't like me moving them. For a while, nothing strange happened after that. I just cleaned up some of the other hallways for a few hours. Then I decided to take care of that writing I saw earlier. I made my way to the janitor's closet, grabbed a few sponges, and went to the stairs. When I got to the top, the door to the second floor hallway was open. I never opened that door on my second night, so why was it open now? I walked through the door and tried flipping the light switch, but it didn't work. I grabbed my flashlight and made my way to the writing on the glass. As I got closer, I saw that it read penance in some type of red ink. I didn't really know what this meant, but I soaked up my sponge and started scrubbing it off. When I finished, I heard a noise from the other end of the hall. I turned around and shined my flashlight down the hallway. And for a split second, I saw a tall shadowy silhouette dart into one of the rooms. I grabbed my stuff and ran down the stairs. When I made it to the bottom, I ran to the front door and I could hear what sounded like footsteps coming down the stairs. I bolted out the main entrance and turned around looking through the glass doors. Nothing ever came out. I took a second to catch my breath. What the hell was it that I saw run into one of those rooms? What the hell was chasing me? I only had an hour left before I had to leave, but I decided to just end my shift early that night. I was too freaked out to even go back in there. When I drove into the school parking lot on the fourth night, I didn't know what to think. I was still scared of whatever it was that chased me that last night. I decided I wouldn't even go to the second floor, fearing the same thing would happen again. I walked through the front door and just stood there for a few minutes, listening, wondering if maybe I could hear something. Then I called out. Is anyone there? Hello? Again, I stood there in silence, waiting for a response, but it never came. I cautiously walked through the halls towards the closet, yet again passing by the papers laying in front of locker 317. I grabbed my mop and went to work on the floors of the cafeteria. Due to its size, the cafeteria took a lot more work than I was used to. It took me about three hours just to mop the entire floor down and that even didn't include the kitchen. Surprisingly, nothing really strange happened during this time. I almost forgot where I was. Everything finally seemed normal. I left my mop and bucket in there and opened the door to the kitchen to see what kind of work needed to be done in there. When I went back to the mop, however, I noticed that there were wet shoe prints leading away from it. At first, I thought these were my own, but then I realized the shoe prints were much bigger than my shoes. I wear a size 10 shoe, but these prints looked like a size 14 or bigger. The wet shoe prints led towards the cafeteria doors. I started to follow them through the doors and noticed they continued down one of the halls. I slowly followed the wet prints, cautiously looking behind me every so often. I felt like something was watching me, like it was peering at me from the ends of the hallway. As I followed the tracks, I started to hear a banging noise coming from where the shoe prints were leading me. It was pretty loud and it sounded metallic. The sound got louder until I made it to the end of one of the hallways. I looked around the corner to find the door to locker 317 opening and slamming shut over and over again. The wet shoe prints on the ground were leading right up to the locker. I very slowly approached it, still feeling like something was watching me from the darkness. When I was about 15 feet from it, the door stopped moving. The hallway grew dead silent as I stood there, just staring at the locker. I reached over and cautiously opened the door and peered inside. Inside the locker, I found a notebook, but not the kind you write notes with and class. This looked more like a diary. Both covers were pitch black leather and looked pretty old. I opened the diary to the first page and I found more drawings of the familiar, thin, dark figure. As I flipped through the pages, I saw more drawings. This time, of what appeared to be a janitor. The janitor looked like he was cleaning and picking up things off the ground, but there was the dark figure in the background staring at him from around the corner. I kept flipping through pages to find more drawings of the janitor doing all sorts of tasks. All the dark figure just spied on them from afar. Eventually, after going through about 20 pages or so, I flipped another page and it was blank. The whole rest of the book was blank. It was now around the time I had to leave, so I decided to put the book back in the locker. Whoever or whatever is here probably wouldn't want me to take it. After my fourth night on the job, I finally decided to speak with my boss about some of the strange things that have been happening. I remembered what I saw inside that weird diary, those drawings of a janitor and the dark figure. So I called up my boss and I asked him if there was a janitor that cleaned the school last year. He sort of danced around the subject, saying that there was no janitor job available last year. That couldn't be right, I thought to myself. The tools in the closet looked used and that mop handle had some sort of red marking all over it. And then I told him about the papers, the locker, the thing I saw in the hall. He just thought I was crazy. He asked if I was getting enough sleep. But my boss sounded like he was trying to hide something. And soon after that, he hung up. When I walked through the main entrance of the school on the fifth night, I was scared to say the least. When I passed locker 317 on the way to the janitor's closet, I noticed it was open. Inside was the pitch black diary I read before I wanted to take another look at it. So I slowly approached the locker and grab the diary. I opened the book and I saw all the same drawings I had last night. However, there were now more. There were new pages towards the back. They showed what appeared to be a mop lying on the floor while the shadow figure was standing over it. The mop handle was covered and what I can only assume was blood. I wondered if these drawings were of the last janitor that worked here. As these questions went through my head, I heard a noise come from the gym. I closed the book and put it back in the locker. I started making my way to the gym and when I got there, I slowly opened the door. I turned on the lights and I didn't see anything that could have made that noise. I walked into the middle of the gym floor, just looking for the source of it, when suddenly there was a loud boom and crash followed by me falling backwards onto the hardwood floor. My ears were ringing from the crash and I slowly opened my eyes. Looking up, I saw that it was one of the giant lights from the ceiling of the gym. It fell down and almost crushed me to death. I felt something warm on my arms and I noticed I was bleeding. The glass on the front of the lights shattered and must have flew out and cut my arms open. I think that whatever the hell is haunting this school just tried to kill me. I ran to the front entrance and tried opening the door, but it was locked shut. I tried my keys, but nothing worked. I kicked the door with all my might, but it wouldn't budge. And then I heard the footsteps coming from the other end of the hallway. I quickly turned on my flashlight, turned around, and I saw the thin tall figure from the drawings. It was standing there, just looking at me. I screamed and I ran down another one of the hallways. I found a classroom ran inside and I shut the door. The room was pitch black, but I stood there with my back against the door being completely quiet, hoping whatever it was wouldn't find me. I could hear heavy footsteps approaching, getting closer to where I was until eventually they were right outside the door. I heard what sounded like a claw slowly being dragged across it. The creature started banging and pounding on the door. I held it shut with all my strength until eventually it stopped. Everything grew silent, no footsteps, no more noises from the door. My heart was still beating a mile a minute terrified of whatever the hell that thing was. I stood there for a few more minutes, just listening, starting to wonder if it was gone. It was so dark inside the classroom, I turned on my flashlight and looked around. When my light scanned over the blackboard, I saw the numbers 317 written all over it. I began to panic again and I scanned the rest of the room, but there was nothing. I slowly opened the door and peered through the crack. I couldn't see anything. I knew I needed to get out of this place as quickly as possible. I grabbed one of the chairs from the classroom and I ran to the front entrance again. As soon as I took off running, I could hear heavy footsteps coming from the hall behind me. I made it to the front door and I swung the chair as hard as I could into it. The glass door shattered. I could hear footsteps growing louder behind me and my legs were pretty cut up, but I managed to run to my car and I took off as fast as I could. When I got home, I was still bleeding, so I got some gauze and covered up the cuts. I couldn't sleep at all that night. I was worried that maybe that crazy thing had followed me home. Needless to say, I quit the job the next day, but I decided to do some research into that school. I found an old news report about a janitor that went missing there last year. The police said that all they found was a bloody mop lying on the floor. No trace of the janitor anywhere. I'm lucky I was able to get out of there with my life. I was able to get the janitor job at my old school back, but let this serve as a warning. Never go wandering a school in the middle of the night. You never know what could be in there.