Halloween is one of the funnest times of the year, especially when you work in a funeral home. After all, what’s Halloween without an exchange of spooky funeral home stories?

I have to admit I read these stories for the first time while sitting home alone, and I’m still pretty spooked about them.

So gather around, my fellow funeral professionals, and let the scary funeral home tales begin:

#1: Gone in the blink of an eye

“We had a younger man a few weeks ago who passed suddenly. One night, after closing up and hitting the lights, we walked towards the back hallway. As I looked down the hall before heading out the door, I saw a man with dark hair and a dark suit at the end, just standing there. I thought it was a director. When I blinked, he was gone. The director with me that day was in a light gray suit, and had blonde hair.

The next day, I went to close the casket in the chapel. Lo and behold, it was the same gentleman that was in the hallway the day before. Two of my co-workers said they experienced similar events, such as when walking past his casket, they felt like they bumped into someone, but no one was there.”

– Krisspy451 via Reddit

#2: Turn the light on

“At least once a week we had to turn off the attic light at our funeral home. We never would turn it on, but we would always have to turn if off. We were then only ones that had access to the attic…”

– Suckit_maine via Reddit

#3: An encounter too scary for even a ghost hunter

“ …As I sat alone in the kitchen…I heard something. It was only a little sound at first and so I ignored it. But then it came again, louder this time. There was a steep spiral staircase that lead to the second floor, winding up from the corner of the small kitchen, and it was where the noise seemed to be coming from. Assuming it was simply one of the homeowners restless after dropping their son off in an institution, I glanced up.

It was coming down the stairs. I can’t say walking, because that wasn’t the case. It was just… floating isn’t even the right word. Just coming. Coming down the stairs, straight at me.

It had no eyes. It had no face. And yet somehow I knew it was looking at me, right at me, into the very depths of my soul. Then it spoke. I’m not sure how it spoke — I don’t think I actually heard anything, so perhaps it used some sort of telepathy? Either way I can recall the words to this very day: ‘You know what he did to us.’”

Read the rest of this horror story here.

– Drainsinthefloor via Reddit

#4: The hands of the dead

“There aren’t many options in Atchison for funeral homes so almost everyone in town has been to all of them at some point in their lives for a service. I remember as a child sitting on a chair in the lobby of one of the more prominent funeral homes bored out of my mind during a visitation for a distant relative. A kid I knew from school walks up and says ‘hi’ and we start to chat when something catches my eye. Far down the hallway going into a closed off area of the funeral home I see the hands of an old man come around the corner and grasp onto the wall. Slowly the old man peeks his head around the corner and just stares blankly down the hallway into the visitation room. I’m thoroughly weirded out and look over at my friend who is staring down the hall, he turns to me and says ‘what is he doing?’. When we looked back the man is gone.

We didn’t ever really talk about it again until 20 years later, when I got a call from my old friend out of the blue. He says ‘this is going to sound crazy but do you remember the old man at the funeral home?’. I was a little hazy on it but I did remember. He continues to say, ‘well I was just there and my daughter saw him! During the viewing for my Uncle Bill she came over and asked my wife why the creepy man down the hallway was staring around the corner at Uncle Bill…. there wasn’t anyone there man.’

I could hear the fear in his voice and I instantly got chills. I have been back to that funeral home many times now and I have not seen anything else but I still get uneasy anytime I walk past that hallway..

– Moveoverem via Reddit

#5: Graham cracker mystery

“I came home from school one typical day, and I always get home first before anybody does. I was in middle school at the time, so it wasn’t a big deal for me to be home by myself for a while. My dad was working since 6am and hasn’t been home yet. My mom was gone since 7ish. I was the only child at the time too. Anyways, I went to get a snack and brought it upstairs to play in my room. I had this old recliner chair in the corner of the room. I always sit in it when i eat my snack and watch TV or listen to music. I leaned over to the side to flip the foot rest and i felt an empty box of graham crackers. There wasn’t any plastic inside it to hold the crackers… I was like ‘hmm where did the hell did this come from?’. NOBODY in my family including myself liked graham crackers in the first place. By the way, I didn’t see it in the morning before I left for school. The house was locked up tight as a safe too!

So I asked my mom and dad about it and they said we never even buy that stuff. I’ve seen shadows lurking around in my newly remodeled room on the first floor. An interesting finding, while tearing out the floors/walls in the room upstairs… we found little toys for a boy to play with. And I assume it was that little boy’s toys who died in the fire :(. Here is the most creepiest thing about the house ever: my parents told me this like a year after we finally moved out of the haunted house. They told that my room on the first floor was a funeral showing room! The house used to be a funeral home..ugh. I know they were telling the truth because my dad reminded me that when we were remodeling the room, we found an old screen door on the right side of the room and another screen door on the left side of the room. It was set up for people to walk in and see the casket and then walk out. That’s how they ran things in older style funeral homes back then.”

– Atriley26 via Reddit

#6: Buried alive

“I work at the funeral home in Ashland, Massachusetts [and one day] my boss heard moaning coming from the prep room. When he went in the room, the woman was barely (but still) alive!”

– Jamie Jacqueline Bordner via Facebook

#7: An old man and his cane

“There was an elderly man who came in to pick out his own casket. He told my father that he was terminally ill and that he had about a month to live. The man was very easy to please, he wanted a simple casket, simple sermon, a few songs and a few loved ones. He did how ever have one very strange request, he wanted to be buried with his cane on top of the casket. He explained to my dad that the men in his family that have died before him all were buried with their cane outside their casket. He made the joke that it was because he would need it when he woke up out of the casket and would go on a walk with Jesus. My father promised the man his wishes and the man left happy.

Sure enough about a month later the gentleman passed and his funeral went perfectly as planned. He had a sweet, simple service, with about 20 close friends and family, a few songs he picked out and his daughter sang a song to him. Fast forward about an hour after the funeral, and to the burial site. It was a nice little area with a handsome gravestone with an angel carved on it. My father gave very strict instructions to the grave digger that after the casket was put in the cane was to be placed on top, then the dirt is to be added. The man said he understood and my father left because he had to prepare for another funeral.

The next day a man from the cemetery came to the funeral home saying that he thinks someone left an item by the grave. It was the man’s cane! My father was so upset because he gave very strict instructions to the digger about the placement of the cane and told him the importance of it to the man. My father was very distraught because he felt like he failed the mans last wishes. My father took the cane to his office and was going to call the family and ask if they wanted to have it. And this is when it started. The cane was everywhere.

The cane would show up in all of the different rooms around the funeral home. We would see it hanging on door knobs, on chairs, leaning against walls, in the bathrooms, ON MY BED! We knew for a fact that the cane was haunted by the old man and he did not seem too pleased that he didn’t have his cane in his grave. (To be continued)

Read the rest of this spooky story here.

– Kaybrides via Reddit

#8: Scared of the living, not the dead

“As I was pulling my charge out of the back of the removal van at about 2 in the morning, I saw three large men round the corner from the side of our mortuary building. I was working alone (in heels and a pencil skirt). The way our mortuary building, funeral home, garage, and prep area were set up, I was cornered. I left the body half in/ half out of the van, ran into our prep room, locked the door, and called the cops. I’m sure those guys were probably more scared than I was, once they got close enough to see what I had been doing! People ask if I’m scared of picking up dead bodies. I always tell them that it’s the living people that’ll hurt you, not the dead ones.”

– Christy M. via Facebook

#9: Playing with fire

This is an excerpt from the new homeowner of the formed Jacobs Funeral Home in Kokomo, Indiana who purchased the property in 2000:

“Many people that have worked here or rented have told me about hearing sounds and seeing black shadows during all hours. One of the things that has turned me to wonder about all this even more is the children saying things about a “black fog” in different rooms during the night.

It’s apparent that something is causing all this. Whispers in the hallways, lights going out and coming back on, leaving rooms with the lights off and seeing them turn on. Even water turns on and off. Finally when the people remodeling came to me and said something about a high pitch drilling noise from the basement one afternoon I told myself and my wife I’d humor everyone and speak with a local psychic. I did so the same afternoon of the drilling.

The psychic was a nice little lady but, I was frustrated that all she kept saying and insisting to me was that I shouldn’t remodel and stir up the spirits in the building and I’m causing nothing but problems some people in the community would choose to forget. It was a creepy thing to say I thought and it really wasn’t what I wanted to hear from her. She didn’t help and what she told me, I didn’t feel was what I was calling her about but, either way she refused to come over and answer questions about black figures in this building for me and she kept on and on about stopping what I was doing to the building. Before the phone call ended I remember very well the last thing she said, “You sir are playing with fire”. Whatever that means but, it stuck with me.

So after a few days I called a local Christian preacher who prayed for me and claimed I was involved in a demonic process and should come to church Sunday morning before it’s too late. He did finally come over to the building and did some water sprinkles of whatever it’s called around the place but, when he left everything started freaking out. Lights would turn off and on and we started getting light headed sometimes when we walked through areas of the building. So now every since that day my wife won’t stay in a room alone when we are here. We still really don’t have any clear answers on the building, the items inside, or it’s terrible history but, after we finish remodeling we hopefully clean and rid ourselves of the spirits of Jacob’s Funeral Home. We hope by getting rid of the items we are unearthing that the spirits will go with them to people who can help them. If you’d like to be involved you can look for all the items we find here at the funeral home to be placed on eBay for auction.”

– Property owner via Jacobs Funeral Home website

#10: The other occupants

“Most nights as we were returning to quarters from a run, my partner and I would scope the parking lot for vagrants or people that shouldn’t be there before we opened the bay doors. While looking on more than one occasion, we would see a light on in the adjacent building on the top floor. There should have been no lights on. Figuring someone had gotten inside, we would watch the building for more lights. No other lights ever came on, but on every occasion a young woman in a dress would come to the window and stare at us.

One night, after seeing the figure, we got brave and called some law enforcement friends from the area to help us search the building. We went to the room that had the light on expecting to find a vagrant camped out there. The only thing we found was a room that had untouched dust on the floor and no light bulbs in the sockets. We got the willies and split. We never went back into that building at night.”

– Anonymous post via Tales from the Walker Funeral Home

Which story spooked you the most? Do you have a tale of a haunting at your funeral home? Tell us in the comments below!

Rochelle Rietow

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