These three true Walmart Halloween night shift horror stories are based on real events.
A stocker is hunted by a new kind of evil filming her attack.
A janitor witnesses a man destroy a store with an excavator and a machete.
A man is psychologically tormented by a clown.
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HORROR STORY #1: I Was Hunted in an Empty Walmart
The Unsettling Quiet
Halloween night in 2024 felt wrong inside the Indianapolis Walmart.
It was 4:00 AM, and a deep quiet had settled over everything.
Serena Vance, a stocker, had gotten there early for her shift.
She clocked in, the machine’s punchy sound echoing in the empty entrance.
She was used to the store being silent at this hour, but this was different.
This was a heavy, watching kind of quiet.
The buzzing from the overhead fluorescent lights seemed to drill right into her ears.
They cast long, sharp shadows down every aisle, making the familiar place feel alien.
Serena had been doing this job for years.
She knew the sound of the pallet jack’s wheels on the concrete, the specific groan of the freezer section’s coolers, the exact spot where a tile was loose near the dairy case.
This place was predictable.
But on this night, that predictability was gone.
A Presence in the Aisles
Her task was simple: head to the back and check on a late shipment of Halloween candy that needed to be put out.
She started her walk, her steel-toed boots making a lonely scuffing sound on the polished floor.
The journey took her through the main artery of the supercenter, a massive, cavernous space that felt more like an empty warehouse than a store.
She passed the electronics department first.
A wall of black television screens stared back at her like dead eyes.
A flicker of movement in one of them was just her own reflection, but it made her jump.
She pushed on, her pace a little faster now.
Next was the clothing section, filled with rows of faceless mannequins standing in unnatural poses.
In the strange light, they looked like a frozen crowd, all watching her pass.
It was just a feeling, but it was a strong one.
That’s when she heard it.
A low, rhythmic clicking sound, coming from the toy aisle to her left.
It wasn’t the sound of a machine.
It was smaller, sharper.
Deliberate.
Like a wind-up toy someone had left on, clicking its way across a shelf.
Serena stopped dead, listening.
The clicking continued for a few seconds, then stopped as suddenly as it began.
She stood perfectly still, waiting for it to start again.
The only sound was the loud buzz of the lights overhead.
She thought about walking down the aisle to check it out, but something held her back.
She told herself it was nothing.
Just the date, the spooky season getting into her head.
She kept moving, picking up her pace again.
The feeling of being watched was no longer just a prickle on her neck; it was a certainty.
She felt like there were eyes on her from the dark spaces between the towering shelves.
She glanced down a long aisle piled high with canned goods and thought she saw a shadow at the far end move.
It was there one second, gone the next.
She froze, staring into the darkness, but there was nothing.
She tried to reason it away.
It was just the lights playing tricks, just her tired mind.
But her gut was screaming at her that something was wrong.
She knew, with a certainty she couldn’t explain, that she was not alone in the store.
Her walk felt longer than usual.
Every little sound made her flinch.
The distant hum of a cooler kicking on, the settling groan of the building itself.
These were normal sounds she’d heard a thousand times, but tonight they sounded like threats.
This wasn’t the peaceful quiet of an empty building.
It was the tense, waiting silence of a trap.
She was almost to the seasonal section, almost to her destination.
She just wanted to get her work done and count the minutes until the other employees started showing up.
The New Kind of Evil
The true horror didn’t build from there.
It simply happened, with a speed and brutality that her mind could barely process.
Serena turned the corner into the seasonal aisle, her eyes scanning the shelves for the candy shipment.
That’s when a figure stepped out from behind a tall display of costume boxes.
He was wearing a dark, nondescript hoodie, his face completely lost in the shadow it cast.
Before she could scream, before she could even take a step back, another one appeared from behind a large bin of candy.
They had her boxed in.
A thousand questions flashed through her mind.
Who were they?
How did they get in?
The doors should have been locked and secured.
There was no way in unless you had a key.
They moved together, silently and with a chilling coordination.
They didn’t speak.
They didn’t demand money.
They weren’t there to rob the place.
A hand grabbed her hair from behind, yanking her head back with incredible force.
The other figure moved in, and the first punch landed.
The only sounds in the entire, vast store were the dull, wet thuds of the blows, Serena’s own choked gasps for air, and one other small, sharp sound.
A tiny, metallic click.
It was a sound she knew well, a sound the whole world knew.
It was the sound of a phone starting to record a video.
They were filming it.
That realization was a horror colder and deeper than the physical pain.
They were making content.
They held their phones up, angling them to get the right shot, turning her terror and her pain into a show for some unseen, online audience.
It was casual.
It was dehumanizing.
It was over as fast as it started.
They lowered their phones, turned, and simply jogged away, their footsteps quickly fading into the store’s deep silence.
They left Serena crumpled on the cold floor.
For a few long moments, all she could hear was the ringing in her ears and the same, steady buzzing of the indifferent fluorescent lights.
Eventually, the silence was shattered by the flashing of red and blue lights against the front windows and the loud, jarring crackle of police radios.
The officers’ voices echoed strangely in the huge space as they walked the aisles.
Their questions seemed pointless, absurd.
Did she recognize them?
Did they say anything?
Did they take anything?
She just shook her head, unable to explain the one thing she knew for sure: they weren’t there for any of the normal reasons.
The only thing the attackers left behind was the video.
It showed up online, a short, brutal clip that local news stations reported on.
An anonymous assault on a stocker in an empty store.
But the reports offered no answers.
The attackers were ghosts, shadows who had appeared from nowhere and vanished just as completely, leaving only digital proof of their cruelty.
And that’s the part that never leaves.
The bruises healed, but the questions are permanent.
The attackers were never identified.
Their reasons were never known.
They weren’t criminals looking for money or revenge.
They were a new kind of evil, one that hunts for clicks and views.
They turned a boring, everyday job into a horror story.
The real, lasting fear from that night wasn’t just the memory of the attack.
It was the knowledge that some people do terrible things for no reason at all, and that safety is never guaranteed, not even in the places you know best.
HORROR STORY #2: It Wasn’t a Delivery Truck
A Monster in the Parking Lot
The job was simple: keep the floors of the Walmart Superstore in Florida looking new.
For Garrett, working the overnight shift on Halloween was usually a bonus—holiday pay and zero trick-or-treaters.
The last manager, wearing a cheap vampire cape over his polo shirt, had locked the doors around eleven.
After that, the whole massive place was his.
The air inside was cool and smelled like floor wax, mixed with the sugary scent of candy corn and cheap chocolate from the decimated seasonal aisle.
It was quiet, but never completely silent.
There was always the low, steady drone from the wall of coolers and freezers, a constant background noise you learned to ignore.
He started his shift like any other, working his way from the back stockrooms toward the front entrance with the industrial floor buffer.
It was heavy work, guiding the machine back and forth, turning the dull, scuffed tiles into a reflective shine.
He had his headphones on, listening to a podcast, completely in his own world.
The only things moving in the store were him, the machine, and the long, dancing shadows cast by the aisle displays.
Plastic skeletons and grinning jack-o’-lanterns, left over from the day’s chaos, seemed to watch him as he worked.
He was in the main grocery aisle when he first felt it, a deep rumble that came up through the concrete floor, strong enough to feel through the soles of his boots.
He stopped the buffer and pulled off his headphones.
The drone of the coolers was all he heard for a second.
Then the rumble came again, louder this time.
It sounded like a big diesel truck, the kind that makes the windows shake when it passes your house.
But this wasn’t the road; this was the store’s parking lot.
And the sound was getting closer, not farther away.
He figured it was just a late delivery truck.
He shook his head and was about to put his headphones back on when the sound changed.
It became a high-pitched, grinding roar.
It was the sound of heavy machinery being pushed way too hard, and it was aimed directly at the front of the store.
The Ruined Halloween Night
Then came the crash.
It wasn’t just breaking glass.
It was a full-throated, violent explosion of sound that shook the entire building.
The metal security gate over the entrance screamed as it was torn from its moorings.
A tidal wave of shattering plate glass and twisting metal followed, a sound so loud it felt like a physical blow.
Garrett stood there, frozen, two hundred feet away in the canned vegetable aisle.
A cloud of dust and debris billowed down the main thoroughfare.
The air filled with the smell of destruction—concrete dust, hot metal, and something like ozone.
For a few seconds, there was just the sound of things settling.
A final piece of the ceiling clattered to the floor.
Then, the grinding, mechanical roar started up again.
He saw it then, moving slowly through the haze.
A huge, orange excavator, the kind you see on highway construction sites, was inside the store.
It looked like some grotesque Halloween prop brought to life.
Its massive steel bucket was raised high, and as Garrett watched, the operator swung the arm and smashed it sideways into the checkout counters.
Registers, conveyor belts, and candy racks were flattened into a heap of scrap metal.
His training, the little videos they make you watch when you get hired, said to evacuate in an emergency.
But his body wouldn’t listen.
His legs were locked in place.
He watched as the machine plowed forward, its tracks crunching over the wreckage, turning right down the aisle for health and beauty products.
Shelves toppled like dominoes, sending a shower of shampoo bottles and makeup across the floor.
It carved a path of destruction, crushing cardboard haunted houses and snapping plastic scythes under its weight.
The machine was a monster, and it was just getting started.
The New Kind of Evil
Finally, the engine sputtered and died.
The sudden quiet was heavy, broken only by the steady drip of some leaking fluid from the ruined machine.
The cab door squeaked open, and a man climbed out.
He was just a regular guy, not big or imposing, wearing a t-shirt and jeans.
He wasn’t wearing a mask.
In his hand, he held a machete.
It wasn’t a plastic prop; he held it like he knew how to use it.
That’s what broke the spell.
Garrett turned and ran, his boots slipping on the polished floor.
He dove behind a long, sturdy aisle of canned goods, pressing his back against the cold steel shelves.
He tried to control his breathing, making himself as small as possible.
The man started yelling.
It wasn’t words, just raw, angry noise that echoed off the high ceilings.
It was the sound of pure, pointless rage.
Garrett could hear the man walking.
The crunch of his boots on the broken glass and debris got closer.
This wasn’t a robbery.
A robber would be quiet.
A robber would have a goal.
This was something else entirely, something much worse.
The man walked past the end of Garrett’s aisle, and for a terrifying second, Garrett could see him clearly.
He was just swinging the machete wildly, hacking at displays.
He took the head off a werewolf cutout with a single, clean swing.
He wasn’t looking for anything.
He was just destroying.
Garrett fumbled for his phone, his hands shaking so badly he almost dropped it.
He managed to dial 9-1-1.
When the operator answered, he could barely get the words out, whispering his location, praying the man couldn’t hear his voice.
He stayed on the line, phone pressed hard against his ear, listening to the man continue his rampage on the other side of the store.
He heard the man find the electronics section.
The sound of him smashing television screens with the flat of the machete was sickening, a series of dull, percussive pops.
It felt like an hour, but it was probably only five minutes before he heard the sirens.
They started as a faint cry in the distance and grew steadily louder until they were right outside, their flashing lights strobing through the shattered entrance, illuminating the carnage in pulses of red and blue.
The man with the machete heard them too.
His yelling got louder, more frantic.
Garrett stayed put, listening to the new sounds.
He heard police officers shouting commands, their voices sharp and clear.
“Drop the weapon!
Get on the ground!”
The man just screamed back at them, a final, defiant roar on a ruined Halloween night.
There was a series of loud bangs, which Garrett later learned was the sound of beanbag rounds being fired.
There was the sharp crack of a taser, a struggle, more shouting, and then, finally, quiet.
A different kind of quiet.
It was the sound of the aftermath, of the situation being over.
Garrett didn’t move until he heard an officer’s voice call out, “Is anyone else in here?”
They rebuilt the store’s entrance and eventually restocked all the shelves.
The police reports were filed, and the man was sent away.
The official story was that an unstable person committed a violent act.
But that was just a label people used to make it fit in a box.
What stayed with Garrett wasn’t the memory of the machine or the blade.
It was the simple, clean fact of the event itself.
It was the knowledge that the world contains people who will just decide to tear a hole in a normal Tuesday night, and that sometimes, there is nothing that comes after.
There is no discovery, no hidden truth.
There is only the destruction they leave behind.
HORROR STORY #3: The turtle in the cage
The Game Begins
The time clock punched out a receipt that read 11:47 PM.
Outside, the parking lot was dead empty, but inside the Southfield Walmart, the workday was just getting started.
This was Joe’s office.
A massive, echoing warehouse of a place where the only other living things were the goldfish swimming in their tanks back in the pet aisle.
He liked the quiet.
It was predictable.
Joe’s job was light work: keep the shelves stocked and the place in order for the morning crew.
He knew the building’s noises like he knew the back of his hand.
The steady drone of the open-faced coolers in the dairy section.
The high-pitched squeak of the front left wheel on his stocking cart.
The loud clank the security gate made every hour as it settled.
For years, these were the only sounds he heard, and they were a comfort.
But this was October.
The corporate office had sent down boxes of Halloween junk.
Fake spiderwebs made of cheap cotton were stretched over the apples.
Cardboard skeletons with goofy grins hung from the ceiling lights.
In the seasonal aisle, a row of motion-activated ghouls and monsters stood silent, their batteries not yet pulled.
They weren’t scary.
They were just plastic, waiting for a customer that wouldn’t be there for another eight hours.
He’d just finished the soup aisle when he heard it: a distinct, solid click from a storage room in the back of the store.
He stopped his cart, the squeaky wheel falling silent.
He was certain he’d left that door propped open.
He walked the long aisle back to check.
The door was closed tight.
He figured the building’s air conditioning must have pulled it shut.
He shook his head and got back to work.
A little while later, one of the fluorescent lights directly above him began to flicker, making a sound like a bug zapper.
Bzz-bzz-bzzzzt.
He looked up, and it stopped, glowing steady like all the others.
Bad ballast, he thought.
Old building.
But a weird feeling started to set in.
The feeling of being the only person in a very, very big room.
That feeling got a lot worse when he went back to the employee office for his break.
Sitting directly on his keyboard was a folded piece of paper.
It wasn’t company letterhead.
It was cheap, lined paper torn from a spiral notebook.
His hands felt cold as he picked it up.
Inside, written in messy block letters, were four words: “I know you’re here.”
He immediately broke protocol, locked himself in the office, and called the police.
Two officers showed up twenty minutes later.
They walked the store with him, flashlights cutting through the dark aisles.
They found nothing.
No broken locks, no open windows.
They took the note, but their questions made it clear what they thought.
“You sure one of the day guys isn’t just messing with you?” one of them asked.
They filed a police report for a “nuisance complaint” and left.
Joe was alone again, but the store no longer felt empty.
It felt occupied.
The next few nights were a masterclass in psychological torture.
The person playing this game was careful.
Joe would come back to an aisle to find an entire row of cereal boxes turned perfectly backward.
He’d find a single child’s tricycle parked in the middle of the main walkway, facing him, as if waiting for a rider.
He called the police a second time, but over the phone, the dispatcher told him that without a direct threat or evidence of a break-in, there was nothing they could do.
He was on his own.
The Clown Mask
One week after the first note, Joe decided he needed proof.
He propped his cell phone up on a high shelf in the main aisle, hidden between two large boxes of laundry detergent, and hit record.
An hour later, he retrieved the phone and locked himself in the bathroom to watch the footage.
He fast-forwarded through long stretches of nothing.
Then, he saw it.
A figure stepped out from behind a pillar two aisles down.
They were wearing a dark hoodie and a cheap, plastic clown mask.
The person was huge—at least six-foot-five, with the lean, powerful build of a basketball player.
The figure looked directly toward the camera for a long moment before slipping back into the shadows.
Joe’s hands were shaking.
He was in his early forties, five-foot-eight and carrying 220 pounds he knew he should have lost years ago.
He was no fighter, and he had no weapons.
He was on the phone with 911, whispering his location, when he saw him again, standing stock-still at the far end of the main aisle.
Before Joe could even finish his sentence to the dispatcher, the towering figure broke into a dead sprint.
He wasn’t running at Joe, but past him.
The stalker moved with terrifying speed, a blur of dark clothing and a grinning clown mask that shot past Joe’s aisle, the wind from his movement rustling the chip bags on a nearby display.
The sheer shock and surprise of it sent a jolt through Joe’s system.
He stumbled backward, his legs giving out, and he fell hard onto the cold, polished floor.
By the time he looked up, the figure was gone.
For ten minutes, there was nothing but the sound of Joe’s own ragged breathing.
He picked himself up, his body aching, and began cautiously moving toward the front of the store, his eyes scanning every shadow.
He passed a large, promotional wire cage full of colorful plastic balls for kids.
As he drew level with it, the clown figure exploded out from behind the cage.
“BOO!”
The shout was so loud it was like a physical blow.
Joe yelled and fell back again, scrambling away on his hands and feet.
The clown didn’t pursue.
He just stood there for a second before sprinting off again, vanishing into the labyrinth of shelves.
Joe knew he was being played with.
This was a game, and he was the mouse.
He was completely broken, no longer even trying to be quiet, just focused on getting to the front doors.
He was halfway there when a voice hissed directly behind his ear.
He hadn’t heard a thing.
“Freddy’s going to get ya!”
Joe screamed, a raw, panicked sound, and spun around to see the clown standing right there, its painted smile inches from his face.
The figure let out a horrible, cackling laugh, then turned.
He didn’t sprint this time.
He just casually jogged away, pushing through the front doors and disappearing into the night just as the first police car arrived.
The Turtle in the Cage
The police swarmed the building, but the clown was long gone.
The detective who took his statement confirmed what Joe already knew in his gut.
This wasn’t personal.
Reports from a town sixty miles away described the same routine.
The same game.
The person who did this was never caught.
That’s the part that sticks with Joe.
It wasn’t a ghost.
It was a real person—a six-foot-five athlete—who, for fun, found a man who was alone, out of shape, and helpless, and decided to sadistically torture him.
He’s still out there, a shadow in a clown mask, looking for another cage, and another slow turtle to play with.