Hungry Ghost Festival - Office 'Colleague'

A friend of mine, Michelle, related this story to me which happened to her at her workplace. Michelle works in a large logistic company in Klang, Malaysia. As a purchasing executive, she always gets bog down by her workload as there will be plenty of purchasing orders coming in everyday and she needs to deal with customers as well as suppliers. As such, Michelle works overtime after working hours till late night to finish off her work.

During the Chinese 7th lunar month every year, most of Michelle’s colleagues will normally opt to go home earlier than usual. This is because it so happened that older staffs had experienced strange things around the office that goes bump at night particularly during the 7th month and they are definitely not going to stick around to accompany those ‘brothers’. Michelle was aware of the stories but did not experienced any strange happenings and the office was a comfortable place to work in.

One year during the particular 7th month, Michelle was staying back late to finish off her outstanding workload. By 9pm, the last of her colleague, Lee, had left for home. Lee called out to Michelle across the room that he will be going back and jokingly told her not to worry as there are unseen ‘people’ (ghosts) inside the office that will be accompanying her. Michelle chided at the joke and not being so superstitious, she continued with her work.

Michelle was so well engrossed into her work that before she knew it, it was already close to 11pm. She scolded herself for being such a workaholic and sat back on her chair to relax a bit and closed her eyes. As soon as she closes her eyes, she began to hear the sound of someone typing away on a computer keyboard a few cubicles away. Thinking it was someone that might have returned back to the office while she was deeply absorbed in her work; Michelle stood up and glanced around, however there was no one in the office to be seen. She then called out to whoever it was but no one responded and the sound of typing is still clearly heard.

Michelle got up and walked towards the source of where the typing sound came from; then as sudden as the sound started, it stopped. Startled, Michelle begun to feel tense, she felt something was not right and all the stories that her colleagues had told her about the ghost in the office started to run through her head. Michelle quickly walk back to her place and started to pack up to go home.

While packing, Michelle’s phone suddenly rang. She jumped up at the sudden ring of the phone and looked at the caller ID. To her utter shock, she saw that the caller ID was coming from inside the office! Someone was trying to intercom her and the number indicated that it was from her manager’s room. She looked up through the glass panel that separated her manager’s room and her cubicle. The room was all pitched dark. And out of her imagination, Michelle swore that there was a dark figure seen sitting at her manager’s place!

Michelle immediately grabbed her stuff and ran out of the office as fast as she could, behind her she could sensed that the lights in her office flickered away instantly when she ran out. She informed the security officer to shut off all the lights in the office and before the security officer can wish her good night, Michelle had quickly driven away.

After that incident, Michelle did not dare to stay late in the office anymore unless there is someone around to accompany her, she would rather take her work back home even though it is not so convenient. It definitely is better than working the office with an unseen ‘colleague’.