22 Security Guards Talk About The Scariest Thing They’ve Ever Seen On CCTV

1. No Warning

I used to do IT support for a charity that supplied housing and support for homeless people. A large proportion also had mental health issues, so there were a fair amount of ‘interesting’ events that happened. Being in IT, I avoided experiencing most of it first hand, (though I was threatened with being stabbed on about my third day!)

Anyway, I come in one monday, and there’s an email labelled ‘urgent’, saying there was an incident at the stairwell of one of the properties on sunday night, and could I pull the relevant CCTV footage and put it on a DVD. I had to do this fairly frequently, I skip through the footage, find the incident (usually a fight or blatant drug-dealing) and burn it to DVD for the police.

The email never mentioned what the incident was, so I skip through the footage, and watch as a clearly very agitated man ties a rope around a stair rail at the top of the stairs, then his neck, looks over the rail and then just casually tips forward over it. The rope flipped him round, and he dangled there twitching for far too long, before he just stopped.

So yeah, that was a fun monday.

L1A1

2. Don’t Watch the Footage

Wasn’t a security officer, but I worked at a 24/7 gas station for a while. One night my coworker accidentally killed himself while at work, and I made the mistake of watching the footage. He went to the back of the store with a bag of drugs (probably cocaine), snorted it and started acting funny for about 10 minutes. He then sits in the back office and gets fidgety/ thrashing around until finally he just goes limp in the chair. He had died of a heart attack and sat there for 5 hours before anybody came in, thought the absence of an employee was strange, and called the cops. It was really weird seeing people come in and act all pissy for the lack of service.. they’d just leave thinking someone was lazy. But nah. Dude was dead.

drugsarebadmmkae

3. Tragic Ending

Was watching cctv footage of a parking deck, and on the ninth level there’s this guy sitting in the middle of the deck, banging his head on one of the pillars. All of a sudden the guy just stops, and runs to the edge. Without stopping or jumping, he flings himself over the edge. I immediately call dispatch and told them what had happened. Few days later I was offered counseling for those events.

Behby_Goose

4. Hitting the Wall

I work in a retail store, and for a while I worked security here. Watching the security cameras wasn’t technically my job, but we were consistently short handed in that department and the manager was grooming me for promotion, so I got to fill in and watch the cameras occasionally. One day when we were reviewing footage from overnights, we saw this teenager calmly set down his shopping basket, take off his hat and glasses, and just charge at a wall. Hit it head on. He did this two more times. When he was done, his face was a bloody mess, and he put his hat and glasses back on and just left. Weirded me right the hell out.

Agnol117

5. Dining on Train Tracks

Was a security coordinator for a large electric company and had access to like 80+ facility’s CCTV infrastructures. Was doing maintenance check on some random train station at like 3 AM, panned a camera as far to the right as possible to check that it was functioning, and this dude was on all fours eating a deer in the middle of the tracks. Watched him for like 10 minutes and went to get the other guy on shift, when I came back, the dude was gone. Rewound it, and the dude stopped munching on the carcass, wiped the gore off his face, and walked into the woods like he didn’t have a care in the world.

Nissir

6. Shopping Day Gone Wrong

I used to work Loss Prevention for a big box store. We had a lady get arrested for public indecency and I was asked to investigate.

I had to follow her backwards from the point of arrest and it was a trip to say the least.

She arrived at the store swerving and nearly hitting several cars. She entered the store with 2 young children, both of whom are mentally handicapped. That lady literally dragged those kids around the store, slapping them and tugging at their ears/collars if they didn’t obey.

At some point she just abandons them in the clothing section, walks through the back doors (to the break area) and I’m assuming she thought it was the bathroom because she proceeds to pull down her pants and shits all over the fire exit door. She pulls her pants up (without wiping mind you) and goes back to the floor like Nothing happened. Someone saw what she did and followed her. Luckily there’s an officer in the store at the time and quickly approaches her when the associate tells him what she did. Needless to say, she was definitely high and/or drunk and was arrested.

The scary part is, she did not mention those kids not one time. It wasn’t until I reviewed the tape that I saw they were just still waiting by the shopping cart completely oblivious and afraid to move. Child services was later called and I still think about those kids often. Breaks my heart to think about the bullshit those kids must still be going through.

codfish88

7. No Bathroom Breaks

I was working at pub in Sydney and watching the CCTV when I saw a guy continually cross and uncross his legs while playing a poker/slot machine. After a few minutes he walked to a corner of the room, took a shit and proceeded to go back to playing his machine. Talk about being addicted!

Edit: Holy shit this blew up! To answer some of your questions, this kind of thing is not rare. Mostly it’s people pissing themselves. These machines are evil and designed to get people addicted and that results in some people not being able to pull themselves away, even to use a bathroom. Finally, thank god I’m a manager, but telling someone it was their job sucked.

walko2232

8. The Jack Off Bandit

I used to work IT at a university, and last Easter we had a break in. We found the footage of the guy going in at 2 PM, leaving at around 3, and not really taking anything. Fast forward to 7 PM and the guy comes back in and is walking around the auditorium til 6 AM the next morning. In that time he proceeded to strip into his underwear, steal and wear a mask the Japanese exchange students made for the teacher, and smoke a shit ton. He managed to steal 6 full bags of random items. We’ve dubbed him as the Jack Off Bandit.

MacZilliren

9. Monitoring the Property

Not for a living, but we had security cameras installed on the property whilst we were living in South Africa.

We had a monitor setup next to the bed so we could see what was happening on the four cameras without having to get up out of bed. One night we heard something, so we turn on the monitor and see nothing unusual. I’m ready to go back to sleep but my partner thinks something is off about one of the cameras;

“Does this camera look like its pointing in a different direction slightly” she asks.

“No. Same as always” and its back to bed for me.

She isn’t convinced so she starts watching the recordings. True enough, footage of some dude prowling around on the property and the camera catches him adjusting it. The terrifying bit? The way his face looked beneath the balaclava. Murder mask is what my SO called it. Pretty creepy shit.

Tax_pe3nguin

10. Infiltrated by Nuns

My time to shine! My first job out of college was working for a bigass security company (think worldwide big). I was doing Electrical engineering and security system design for them.

One of the first assignments I had was assisting in writing a report about a security system for a nuclear storage facility we had designed that had been infiltrated by nuns (no joke).

Basically, the facility got invaded by octogenarian nuns who started covering the nuclear storage facility in blood they had conveniently provided in water bottles. The footage was…..jarring…in quite a few ways.

GlastonBerry48

11. I Saw That!

So many of these will give me nightmares so I’ll throw one in the mix that I never want to forget. A year back I was working at a hostel and we have security cameras throughout the building. Watching the footage from the camera in the kitchen. It is about 2 am and a very drunk guest walks in, grabs some snacks. and accidentally drops an empty bottle on the ground. He then proceeds to kick it up into the air then kick it again in air, where it flys across the entire length of the room perfectly into the recycling bin. In his drunken state he threw up his hands, ran around in a circle clearly in shock at how amazing he is. Then after looking around he noticed there was noone their to see it. After that he looked visibly depressed and stumbled back out of the kitchen

xXxwiskersxXx

12. Oops, My Bad

Working in a rehearsal studio for bands we had camera at the front desk that pointed down the hall with the entrances to all the rooms.

One day I’m sitting there minding my own business and noticed there was a girl sitting in the hallway outside one of the studios. She had come in with the band that was practicing and I just assumed she didn’t feel like sitting in the loud space with the band. So I got up and went to tell her she was welcome to sit in the lobby where there was a couch and tv. I got around the corner and she wasn’t there. I went back the desk and there she was, sitting in the hall waiting outside the room. So I went back out to find her not there again.

I assumed she had gone into the room so I went and knocked and they informed me that the girl had left a while before, just after they had gotten started practicing. So I went back and there she was, still on the camera.

It was only then that I realized I had accidentally bumped the freeze frame button for the monitor…

tylergoldenberg

13. Funny, But Wrong

Not creepy but funny: we have security camera footage of one of my co-workers slipping and falling on his ass while operating a floor cleaning machine.

The only thing that bothered me about it is the manager on duty decided to text the video to everyone in the company. I thought that was a bit shitty (and probably unethical in some way).

SwordOfJustice

14. Poor Eagle

We have an old fountain at my apartment building that has a large eagle statue. One night I had to check the security cameras because of a break in, and at 2am I came across footage of about 5 guys taking turns humping the eagle. One of them even stole the Santa hat I had on it.

fioratom

15. He’s Watching You

Was my mom’s experience. She works on a cruise ship and has to go through surveillance footage and put the footage in different folders. She said she has nightmares of one simple but creepy thing. One night a guy walked out of a cabin into the view of the camera and stood for a few minutes, doing nothing. Then looked up at the camera, moved as close to it as possible and smiled into the camera for about 5 minutes, but she said watching it felt as if he was looking into the camera for hours. She said it’s just something she can’t get out of her head and it made her feel so uncomfortable.

Kn9ne9

16. Spitters Are Quitters

Story time:

My brothers friend used to watch security cameras at an amusement park. In the park there was one of those river boat rides, which had hidden cameras to prevent people from pissing in the water, valdalizing ect. One day a couple hop on the ride, and the girl starts giving her boyfriend a blowjob.

So they get done, and the girl leans over the side of the boat to spit. Now in the event of any bodily fluids getting into the water, there is a whole process that must be followed involving draining the whole river, and decontaminating the ride. It takes a long time, and all the employees hate it. So as soon as my brother’s friend sees her about to spit, he grabs the intercom to the ride and shouts: “SPITTERS ARE QUITERS!! SPITTERS ARE QUITERS!!” She panicks, having no idea anyone was watching, and swallows it.

Crisis averted.

adw4125

17. Spa Fun

Creepy then funny. I was a property manager at a giant apartment complex for a year. Part of my job was to take complaints that came in during my off hours, review tapes to see what the cams caught, then address the problem. We got calls for people fucking in the spa a lot. On the video: a young couple was doing the biz in the spa in just about every position. I recognized them and got the form out to issue the warning when the maintainance supervisor says hold on, he zooms all the way in and across the property, he could see a woman we all knew sitting on her patio smoking a cigarette watching. We thought, oh man shes enjoying the show. Then we notice theres the glow of the cig and a second glow, a small red light. She was taping the whole thing with a handi cam. She was a pastor at the local church who was always telling us how bad we were for allowing smoking and drinking on the property. She recommended multiple times that we update our rules to align more with the moral teachings of the church.

Frank-Wrench

18. Nighttime on the Psych Ward

The closest to a horror movie IRL thing I’ve ever seen:

Some of the patient rooms in our hospital on the “psych” floor have cameras to help monitor patients so they don’t move around too much or hurt themselves since they are often confused etc.

Obviously the “night vision” low light camera makes everything look creepy. One night a phlebotomist came running out of a room totally freaking out.

We looked at the camera footage to see what had happened. Patient was an old lady. Video shows a dark empty room, the phlebotomist walks in and sees that the bed is empty and thinks they must have moved the patient. At that point as she turns around the door swings and standing behind the door looking at her what I can only describe as pure hatred in her eyes is the patient, naked, with her long hair down to her waist.

The phlebotomist was scared as anyone would be. She finally managed to say “Mrs. Shelby I’m from the lab and I’m here to draw some blood, is that OK?”

And the patient just said “No. GET OUT.”

Phlebotomist didn’t need to be told twice.

We walked over to the room and the old lady was back in bed sleeping as peaceful as could be, never remembered a moment of it.

moby323

19. Clothing Not Optional

Spent a few years working front desk for various shifts at a few hotels (moved a lot during this time so I got a pretty big sampling of people from here and there) but the one thing I will never forget was right here in my home state of KY, in broad daylight. A woman who did not have a room with us walked into the pool area from the large, sliding glass window, speaking on her cell phone with a bag hanging from that hand, and a toddler walking with her on the other hand. She let go of the toddler, then proceeded to get completely nude and continue her conversation standing in the pool area; not the pool itself, just the pool area.

rotolotto

20. Nothing Stopping The Impatient Customer

I saw a guy at my old job have a seizure on camera. It was at a liquor store. He was a town regularly, and never took care of himself. Looked off, but not even drunk. In the middle of counting his change his head snaps up in the air like he’s looking to the heavens above. Then just falls right onto the ground. His head missed this wooden wine display by an inch or two. He flailed around and all the change he had was scattered along the ground, while one of the guys I work with called 911….Paramedics ended up coming and taking him to the hospital. He was okay, but ended up spending a couple days there.

The best part of the story is while this guy is seizing out, he was in front of the cooler of 40’s. So this one impatient customer, you can see his head sorta looking for a way around to get his booze. He steps over this dude, gingerly opens the cooler door, and grabs his Old English 40, before walking up to the register.

The_Axem_Ranger

21. Interesting News Video Feed

This was around 1997. In college, was a traffic reporter in a largeish city. I worked in a studio with live video feeds from our cameras all over the city/region. One Monday afternoon another reporter came running in & yelled “turn camera #7 to the underpass by (big football stadium)!” A man & woman were going at it big time over the hood of his truck. After about seven minutes, they took a break, & he got sandwiches & beer out of a cooler in the back. After snacking, they went at it again.

After about a half-hour one of us suddenly remembered that one of our TV affiliates had started linking the video feeds on their website.

Tweetystraw

22. Aliens on the Run

Don’t watch for a living, but work in IT so when something happens at one of our retail offices (such as theft) I am the one tasked with making a copy of the footage for the police. I usually will then show office workers the video because the people stealing are incredibly obvious and we get a laugh.

My boss pulls me into the office. He says there was an incident as such and such location at whatever o’clock and I need you to get the footage……..and maybe keep this one discrete. Turns out a woman high on something runs into our office totally naked carrying a pillow. She says that aliens are chasing her and she needs to use our phone to call the police. She runs behind the counter and then starts running around the office. The police show up and she runs out to meet them and quick gets in the car.

She was not a lady you would want to see naked.

HippoKingOfOld