The Bellworth Building is a nine-story office complex on the south side of the city. Built in the 1960s, renovated twice, and about 70 percent occupied by small businesses, insurance agencies, accountants, a few tech startups, that kind of thing. During the day it's a normal building full of normal people doing normal work. At night it's mine.
I took the security job in March because it checked every box I needed. Overnight shift, 10 PM to 6 AM, five nights a week. Good pay for the area. Mostly sitting at a desk monitoring cameras. Plenty of downtime to study for my paramedic certification. The posting had been up for a while, which I figured meant the pay wasn't competitive enough. I didn't ask too many questions during the interview. I should have.
The first week was uneventful. The building empties out by 7 PM most nights. The cleaning crew finishes by 9. After that, it's just me. My rounds consist of walking each floor once at midnight and once at 4 AM, checking doors, making sure nothing's out of place. The rest of the time I sit at the ground floor security desk watching sixteen camera feeds on four monitors.
The cameras are decent quality, not HD but clear enough to identify faces. There are two cameras per floor on floors one through eight, one covering the elevator lobby and one covering the main corridor. The ninth floor is mechanical, HVAC and elevator equipment, and has a single camera at the stairwell entrance. That's seventeen cameras total.
On night three, I noticed something on the third floor corridor camera during my monitor check. A brief visual distortion, like heat shimmer on asphalt. It lasted maybe two seconds and then the feed was normal. I logged it as a possible equipment issue and moved on. These things happen with older camera systems.
On night five, I saw it again. Same camera, same location, roughly the same time, around 1:30 AM. This time I was looking directly at the monitor when it happened. It wasn't a distortion. It was a shape. Translucent, dark around the edges, roughly the size and proportions of a person, moving down the corridor toward the camera. It was visible for about three seconds before it faded. My first thought was a reflection, light from a passing car hitting a window and bouncing down the hall. Except the third floor corridor has no exterior windows. It's an interior hallway.
I went up to the third floor with my flashlight. Empty. Silent. Doors locked. Nothing out of place. I stood in the corridor where I'd seen the shape on camera and felt completely normal. No cold spots, no weird feelings, nothing. I went back to my desk and replayed the footage. The shape was there on the recording. Translucent, human-sized, moving with a walking gait. I saved the clip.
Over the next week, it appeared every night. Always on the third floor corridor camera. Always between 1 and 2 AM. Always moving in the same direction, from the far end of the corridor toward the camera. And it was getting more defined. By night eight, I could make out what appeared to be arms swinging at its sides. By night ten, I thought I could see the suggestion of a head and shoulders.
I reported it to my supervisor, a day shift manager named Phil. He watched the clips I'd saved. He got quiet. Then he told me something that rearranged my understanding of the job. He said I was the seventh night security guard they'd hired in two years. The previous six had all quit. Most lasted less than a month. Two lasted less than a week. Phil had watched similar footage from each of their tenures. The shape was present in all of it.
I asked him what it was. He said he didn't know and that the building management company didn't want to pursue it. They'd had the camera system checked twice. Both times the equipment was functioning normally. They'd had the third floor inspected for anything that might cause visual anomalies. Nothing. Their position was that it was an intermittent camera artifact, and that was the official explanation for insurance and liability purposes.
I should have quit. But I needed the job and I'm stubborn. So I started my own investigation. I set up my personal camera, a GoPro, in the third floor corridor alongside the existing security camera, to see if both would capture the anomaly simultaneously. They did. Whatever it was, it wasn't a camera glitch. Two independent devices recorded the same thing.
Then I did something I regret. On night fourteen, I decided to do my midnight round of the third floor at 1:30 AM, right when the shape typically appeared. I walked the corridor slowly, flashlight in one hand, phone recording in the other. I felt nothing unusual. I saw nothing unusual. I completed the round and went back to my desk.
I checked the camera footage. The shape was there. Walking down the corridor. Right behind me. About ten feet back, matching my pace exactly. When I stopped to check a door, it stopped. When I resumed walking, it resumed. It followed me the entire length of the corridor and then continued past after I entered the stairwell. On the footage, I could see myself walking, completely oblivious, with this dark translucent figure keeping perfect pace behind me.
My phone recording showed nothing. Just me walking a hallway. But the building cameras and my GoPro both showed the figure. I watched the footage seven times. Each time, the shape was slightly more defined than I remembered from the previous viewing. By the seventh watch, I could see what appeared to be a face, dark hollows where the eyes would be, a suggestion of a mouth that might have been open.
I did not go back to the third floor at 1:30 AM after that. I did my rounds at midnight and 4 AM as required, and during the 1 to 2 AM window, I stayed at my desk and tried not to look at the third floor monitor. But I always ended up looking.
The shape appeared every night for the remaining three months I worked there. It never appeared on any other floor. It never appeared outside the 1 to 2 AM window. And after that night when I walked the corridor during its active period, it changed. It no longer walked from the far end toward the camera. It stood at the camera end of the corridor. Facing the camera. For the full hour. Like it knew I was watching. Like it was watching me back.
I left the job in June. Not because I was afraid, though I was, but because I stopped sleeping. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the third floor corridor on the monitor, and the shape standing there, and the dark hollows where eyes should have been, and I couldn't convince myself it wasn't looking through the camera directly at me.
The posting went back up the week I left. Last I checked, it's still up.