Link: https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1tjq4ir/we_have_a_new_volunteer_at_hillvale_public/

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Present_Designer3745 on 2026-05-21 16:40:00+00:00.

It’s been three days since I’ve had any sleep. I’m not sure what’s real or in my head anymore. I’m typing this from the third floor of the Hillvale Public Library on a laptop in the stacks. I work the night shift on the reference desk with Angie every Tuesday and Friday. Well, that’s just it, I think her name is Angie. That’s how she introduced herself that first day I met her about six weeks ago. She said she was a student and that she’d gotten the OK to volunteer in the evenings to shelve books for class credit. I didn’t think anything of it then because we get volunteers all the time. Students, retired folks, people with nothing better to do on a random Saturday than to shelve books and clean tables or take out trash.

Those first couple weeks, everything was completely normal. She showed up to work on time, sometimes even a little early, ready to shelve that day’s books and wipe down the kids' computers on the second floor. Our library is subdivided across four floors. The first floor is circulation. The second floor is children’s. The third floor is reference and the fourth floor is mostly admin and meeting space. No patrons really go up to the fourth floor, especially at night.

It was probably around 6:15 when all the day staff left for the night and left just me and Angie to man the bottom floor. After 6:00, we usually saw a very limited crowd of people getting off work who needed to check out a book or magazine on their way home or maybe use the computers to print out something. The main computer lab on the third floor closes at 6:00 and I usually cover until 9:00 with Tara down on the first floor, but she went on maternity leave a couple months ago so I’d been pulling the night shift solo for a while.

Well, until Angie that is. I don’t know if you’ve been inside a library at night, but even I get creeped out sometimes. It’s like the shelves come alive, and not in a Night at the Museum kind of way, more like in a The Shining sort of way. Maybe less the ax murderer and creepy kids. Something about all these books and lives held in one place has a sort of gravity that I’ve never felt anywhere but in a library. It’s part of what drew me to the profession in the first place. That and people watching. Not that I’m a creep or anything. I just notice things sometimes. Like how shelves in the dark sometimes look like people just standing there or like how, even when I know I’m alone, I can feel eyes peering at me just behind the next shelf or between the books on the next aisle over. You never quite feel like you can let your guard down here.

Around the third week after Angie started working here, I ended up letting my guard down. For the first couple weeks, I treated her like all the other volunteers who had filtered in over the years. I just gave her the usual instructions of what needed to be done from the day crew and then went to the front desk on the first floor and played on my phone until it was time to close up for the night. I remember she finished up on third pretty quick and came down to talk to me around 7:30 that night. We got to talking about scary stories, because of course, we loved to read. I told her how the library is a special place. Many are even haunted. She’d laughed and told me that she loved to feel scared and watched scary movies all the time. I told her we’d have to swap stories one day. I remember she grinned really wide and looked around before she leaned in close, almost right in my ear, and told me that she liked collecting people. I laughed thinking she was joking because it came out super creepy and I assumed she was trying to be funny. When she didn’t laugh, I asked her what she meant and she told me that she takes little mementos from the different places she volunteers that people give her, one way or another. I thought that sounded super weird, but I didn’t ask any more questions because the phone rang and we had patrons coming in. She lingered at the desk a little bit longer and then went back to cleaning and shelving so I didn’t think anything else about it. We didn’t talk much after that and she kept mostly to herself and things went like clockwork until three days ago.

It was Tuesday and Angie met me like she always did down on the first floor after everyone had left for the night. I assumed she came in the back and already signed the volunteer sheet, so I didn’t bother checking behind her and we started talking. She said she always carries a scary story with her, even if it's just in her head and asked if I wanted to hear one. I’d laughed, thinking surely she was kidding or trying to be cool, but she just grinned and tilted her head. She just stared at me for a few seconds, like she wasn’t giving me much choice, so I told her to hit me with her scariest. I was bored anyway and we had over an hour left and nobody had come in for over forty-five minutes. She smiled even wider and leaned closer, over the desk, and almost whispered to me. She said the scariest story she knows happened in a library, as it happened. Color me intrigued, I’d said. She winked and put her hands then her arms on the raised ledge of the desk, and leaned in further as she spoke. She told me that she worked in a library very much like this one, and she often volunteers for shifts at night because she likes the quiet and the dark. One night, when she was working late, she got bored and wanted to play a game with her coworker. They made up a game kind of like hide and seek, but with a twist. Since they were playing in the library, both players had to remain entirely silent. In order to win you had to gradually reveal yourself and creep the other player out so much, they make a sound. She said it was wicked fun trying to scare each other until one night when the game went too far. At this point, Angie stopped and looked around. I told her she was kind of creeping me out and we needed to get back to work.

She just grinned and said it’s just a scary story, right? Then she turned and disappeared up the stairs. I legit thought she was just pulling a prank so I just stayed behind the desk and laughed to myself. It’s not like I could play a game, we were working. About ten minutes went by and I hadn’t heard from Angie again and I needed to use the bathroom, so I grabbed the cordless phone and walked over to the stairs and went up a floor and looked out at the children’s area. It was dark now that the sun had fully set and only the emergency lights were left on. Several of the cutouts of kids’ book characters I knew from when the full lights were on, now looked like ghosts in the dark. I avoided stopping on this floor when going up the stairs for that very reason, especially after dark. Creeped me the fuck out. You try not to imagine a serial killer reaching for you even if you know it’s just Curious George. I could have sworn something moved just out of sight. I focused on the shadow near the kids’ circulation desk and knew it must be another cutout that someone had moved there before closing up for the night. I blinked and rubbed my eyes. It was getting late. When I opened my eyes again, I shit you not, that shadow moved. Now, I figured this was Angie just trying to scare me with her little game so I didn’t even make a noise. I just turned and walked up the stairs to the third floor.

The lights were still on up here. I had left my bag and thermos from lunch behind the desk. I turned off my computer and grabbed my stuff and turned off the lights at the switch by the stairs. Something told me to stop moving as soon as the lights went off. I could feel eyes on the back of my head and I turned slowly. The same fucking shadow was standing by the desk, except that was impossible because I know Angie didn’t follow me up the stairs. I would have seen her. I didn’t blink this time, but rather backed slowly towards the stairs and planned to sprint down them as quickly as I could. Now, these stairs were not somewhere I liked to pause even in the daylight. On the wall that ran the length of the building, a giant mirrored panel stretched from the ground floor all the way up to the fourth floor so whoever was coming or going had to stare at themselves as they went up or down. Of course, the rooms slightly behind them were always visible in the background too. I don’t fuck with mirrors. Full stop. Hated them.

On a normal day, I’d just look at my feet or focus on my phone so I could avoid the mirror altogether, but for some reason as soon as I turned around, I locked onto my face in the mirror. At first, I jumped just from seeing my own reflection, but then my eyes slid slightly behind me and caught eyes looking at me in the dark. That was not Angie. It couldn’t have been her because whatever it was didn’t have a body and when it smiled, the mouth curled up unnaturally until it was all teeth. I screamed and almost fell forward down a couple steps, but managed to find my footing at the last second. When I looked up as I turned the corner onto the second floor, I saw something move and could hear footsteps closing in behind me. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t even know what time it was or if anyone else was in the building. I reached the first floor and tore through the lobby and ran outside and got into my car. I didn’t turn off the lights or lock up. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if I was shaking from fear or from wet pants, because sure as shit I’d pissed myself somewhere bet...

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