Lighthouse Horror Podcast - I'm a Janitor at a TERRIFYING School. Never Enter Room 6

Episode Date: September 27, 2025

Join Lighthouse Horror Backstage on Patreon:Lighthouse Horror | PatreonPatrons get extra lore that never reaches YouTube, early looks at new merch, and insider updates from the creative floor.Shop at the Lighthouse Horror Giftshop: https://hauntedstuff.com/Straight from the stories: patches, shirts, and haunted stuff you won’t find anywhere else.Thumbnail art by Ninerio: ninerioartsBusiness contact: [e-mail] Original YouTube link: I’m a Janitor at a TERRIFYING School. Never Enter Room 6. Social MediaINSTAGRAM - @lighthousehorror FACEBOOK -  Lighthouse HorrorTIKTOK - Lighthouse HorrorYOUTUBE: Lighthouse HorrorMusic:Lucas King - YouTubeMyuu - YouTube IncompetechDarren Curtis Music - YouTubeCopyright © 2025 Lighthouse Horror. All rights reservedThank you for listening to this scary story! If you enjoyed this new creepypasta story, please check out some of my other horror stories. We'll be uploading new episodes every week, featuring ghost stories, haunted encounters, mysteries, true stories, creepypasta, and anything supernatural and paranormal. Don't miss out on the thrill and suspense that await you in each episode!

Well, get ready for the craziest story you've ever heard. It's true, too. Though, I don't think you're going to believe it. So what do we begin? About me. I'm not 40 yet, all right, but I am pretty close. Time goes by fast, kids. One day you're in your 20s thinking you have got all the time in the world,

and then suddenly you're standing in your kitchen, staring at a stack of overdue bills, realizing you've got nothing put away. No, savings. Nothing. I used to have a decent job, too. Warehouse work. Long hours, steady enough paycheck to keep me afloat. But I, I've got a bit of a temper. My boss was going really hard on me one day, really laying into me over something stupid. The kind of thing you could fix in 30 seconds if you weren't trying to make an example out of somebody. I snapped, yelled at him in front of everybody. I didn't just cross the line. I didn't just cross the line.

I stomped on it, and that was it, I was gone. So there I was. Broke, out of work, and feeling like the walls were closing in. No plan, no safety net. Just me? Cheap beer and overdue bills. And that's when I saw the ad. Was not a job side?

This was old school. I'd grab the newspaper out of boredom, and there it was. Tucked between a used car listing and in obituary. janitor wanted school that's it no phone number no name just an address and a time the time was the weird part midnight not nine in the morning not after lunch midnight who the hell interview someone for a janitor job at midnight but i didn't have the luxury of being picky work was work i hopped on i 90s that night and started the drive old Chevy humming along gas gauge a little too close to E for comfort. By the time the needle dipped past the red, I knew I had to stop. And that's how I ended up in a place

called Daggerland. Wasn't much of a town. Just a few blocks strung together with old brick buildings, half the lights burned out on the street lamps. I pulled into a gas station that looked like it hadn't been remodeled since the 70s. Hand pumped my gas, grabbed a stale coffee from the cooler inside. And that's when I saw it. The biggest German shepherd I have ever laid eyes on. Thing was a beast?

Broad shoulders, thick coat. Head held high like it owned the whole street. But what really froze me were the scars, gouges right across its face, deep claw marks like something with bare-sized paws had tried to rip it apart. Ugly lines carved from its muzzle up past its eye. And yet somehow, the dog wasn't mean. It stood there in the middle of the street, looking at me with this strange, thoughtful tilt of its head,

like it was deciding whether I belonged. And then its tail wagged. It held my stare for another second, and then turned, trotting off into the dark like it had better things to do. Maybe it was going to fight another bear. I pumped my gas, climbed back into the Chevy, and drove the rest of the way. By the time I found the school, it was creeping up on midnight. The place sat on a low hill at the edge of town, hulking in black against the sky. No cars in the lot, no lights in the windows, just a long square block of brick with weeds crawling up the walls and a broken chain-link fence sagging around the property.

The sign out front was so faded you could barely read it. Letters had peeled off, the school's name half gone. The Marquis' bulbs buzzed weakly, a few stubborn ones sputtering yellow lights over the cracked pavement. I parked near the steps and killed the engine. The building loomed over me, dark windows lined up and rose, like eyes that hadn't blinked in years. The front doors groaned when I pushed them open. Inside, the hallway stretched out in both directions,

dim and uneven under old lights. Some of the fixtures flickered. Others were dead in tire light, leaving patches of shadow broken up, by sudden bursts of light. Display cases line the walls. Their glass fogged and streaked. Trophies sat inside, doled to a dirty bronze,

and plaques hung crooked beside class photos, so faded, the faces looked more like smudges than people. My boots echoed sharp against the tile as I walked, each step bouncing back at me louder than it should have. I found the front office and stepped in, side. No receptionist, no principal, just an empty desk, a single chair pushed back, like somebody had left halfway through standing up, and one sheet of paper sitting dead center. It said, Hi, Tommy, you've got the job. Congratulations. Underneath, in thick, kind of angry

handwriting, that looked like someone had hammered each letter with a black marker, was another line. All six rooms must be clean tonight, no matter what. If you do not clean them, you will die. Okay. I folded the paper back up and put it in my pocket. You can call me stupid, but I am the kind of guy who notices weird little things. Superstitions cling to me like lint. If I walk under a ladder, I will apologize out loud. If I stay. step on a crack, I will kick the curb and mutter something until I feel okay. I keep an old coin in my wallet. I rub when I'm nervous. Stupid. Yeah, sure, but weird little rituals have gotten me through worse nights than this. Standing there in the empty office with that sentence in my pocket,

my palms started sweating. I knocked once on the desk, a stupid half-laugh at myself, because knocking on wood is the dumbest habit, and apparently I still do it. I cross myself, an action so automatic I hardly thought about it, and then I spat over my left shoulder like my grandmother used to when she wanted to ward off trouble. It felt ridiculous. It also felt right. You don't notice how small things keep you sane until something as blunt as you will die

is staring you in the face. I took one small look around the room, half expecting a camera, some sort of prank. It was nothing. Just the chair, the faded plaque on the wall, the dim lights above. I slid the paper back into my pocket, and I walked down the hall. I wondered. Didn't mean to you really. Just walking, trying to get my head straight.

The school was a maze. Lockers, trophy cases, a hundred doors that all look the same. Most of them were labeled with little printed signs, gym, art, cafeteria. And a lot of them were padlocked or chained. Every corner I turned, the lights hiccoughed, and then went back to whatever sad light they had laughed. Then I started seeing them red arrows painted on with a thick. brush, not neat, not official, hand-drawn arrows, half a dozen inches apart, pointing down the side hall. The paint was still a little glossy, like it hadn't been there long. Each arrow led me further away from the main corridor and toward the back stairwell. They took me down, three flights into the basement. The stairs were metal. The stairs were metal. the kind that rattles underfoot. At the bottom, a hand-lettered sign hung crooked on the door. Janitor's room.

I opened it. Rows of lockers filled the tiny room. Not the empty, rusted kind you see in abandoned places. These were still bolted to the floor. Some of them denned. Some with stickers peeling off. A few were open. Jackets draped over the doors.

A couple of coffee tumblers. A lone soccer ball tucked into a corner. Someone had left a kid's backpack in one locker. A name tag still stuck to the strap. Another had a winter scarf with frayed ends. My eyes snagged on one locker halfway down. Written across the metal door and thick marker was my name. Tommy.

I froze. A laminated eye. ID card was clipped to the door. My picture. My face staring back at me in grainy print, like I'd already been hired years ago. I opened the locker. Inside, folded neat and spotless,

was a uniform, crisp like it'd never been worn. A new badge clipped to the chest, red Tommy, and block letters. I stared at it longer than I should have. then shrugged and slipped it on. It fit like it was stitched for me, sleeves the right length, the waist sitting in the exact place a body my age would expect. When I came back out into the hallway, there it was.

A janitor's cart parked just past the stairwell, sitting where it had not been a minute before. Heavy, industrial. real, with buckets stacked and mops coiled like sleeping snakes. A roll of plastic trash bags hung off the side. It had been wiped, clean, been organized. I jerked, because I knew I had not seen that when I came downstairs. No footprints, no sound, just the cart sitting patient, like it was waiting for me.

I grabbed the handle, the middle. the metal cold against my palm and pushed. The cart rolled smooth enough, but the back hallway sloped up. I had to lean into it, shoulders pressing, feet sliding on the slightly slick tile. The ramp to the first floor felt longer than it should have, an incline that tested every push until sweat pricked at my neck. I kept pushing, up and up. The cart groaned in the wood.

wheels clicked. And when I finally made it to the landing, I let out of breath. And that's when I heard it. Music. Not the kind you'd hear on the radio. No bass, no polish. This was old, scratchy, warbling. Like it was leaking out of a broken record player. Someone had forgotten down here. The tune was faint, but it crawled into my ear. It crulled into my ear. It was a years all the same. A slow dance number, maybe. Something from another lifetime. I tightened my grip on the cart and started pushing again. The wheels squeaked with every turn, answering the music like some ugly duet. Down the hallway I went, and the music grew louder. And then there it was. A classroom door

Painted metal Number plate bolted above the frame The digits were plain But they sent a chill through me A large number one This was the first room The music was pouring out from behind it Muffled

Steady I parked the cart beside me Wipeed my palms on the brand new uniform form and stared at the handle. The door creaked when I pulled it open, hinges shrieking like they hadn't been used in decades. The music hit me full in the chest now, clearer, sharper, the kind of tune you'd imagine echoing through some grand old ballroom, violins, a soft piano, the faint thrum of strings keeping time.

I pushed the cart in, rubber wheels thumping over the lip of the door, and froze. The classroom wasn't a classroom anymore. Hell, wasn't anything I'd expect to see inside a school. The walls stretched high and arched in glittering plaster, chandeliers swaying just slightly overhead, light spilling down like moonshine. There was a gleaming dance floor, polished enough to see my own reflection in it. And on that floor, dozens of people. Couples dressed in suits and gowns straight out of some history book.

Women in flowing dresses with lace gloves. Men in waistcoats and tail coats, hair slicked back, shoes shining like mirrors. They moved in slow, purses. unison, gliding across the floor as the music carried them. Their faces were pale, features drained of color, like photographs that had come to life. Not one of them looked at me. The door clicked behind me. I spun. The handle rattled once in my grip, then locked with a final metallic snap. Great, I muttered.

My throat was dry. I turned back toward the dancers. They hadn't stopped. Still moving, still twirling. Skirts brushing over the floor. Shoes tapping in rhythm. My heart slammed against my ribs. Uh, hi, I'm...

The music cut off. Every dancer froze mid-scently. step. All their heads snapped toward me in perfect unison. Their faces were blank, gray, but their eyes were sharp as knives. In the same instant, every single one of them raised a finger to their lips. I gulped, my Adam's apple bobbing like a stone in my throat. My palms were slick on the broom handle, as I slowly pulled it from the cart. Nobody moved. They just stood there watching. Fingers pressed to their mouths. So I swept. The broom moved across the polished floor, bristles whispering under the music that

had cut dead silent. Every dancer stood frozen, eyes locked on me. My whole body, felt like it was shaking out of rhythm with the stillness. I made a slow circle around the edge of the room, keeping my back to the wall whenever I could, sweeping dust that didn't even look like it was there. My cart creaked as I moved it, the bucket sloshing faintly. And then, without warning,

the violin started again. One note, two, a bar, And then the entire orchestra swelled back into existence, like someone had dropped the needle back onto the record. The dancers moved with it. In perfect time, every single one of them dropped their hands, turned away from me, and resumed. Skirts twirled, shoes tapped. Couples spun as though nothing had interrupted them at all. their blank gray faces were expressionless again, locked on one another, ignoring me completely.

My throat tightened, my pulse hammered in my ears. I didn't know if I should be relieved or more terrified. So I kept sweeping. Round and round the floor I went, broom bristles tracing invisible dust, until the silence of my work drowned under their hearts. haunting music. When I finally dared to stop, the room gleamed. I slid the broom back into the cart and wiped my palms on the legs of my uniform.

The dancers still spun in their slow, flawless rhythm, gown swaying, suits flashing in the chandelier light. Not one of them glanced my way again. I edged toward the door. the handle was cold in my grip. I turned it, praying it would move this time, and it clicked open. The handle to the next door was lighter than I expected.

I braced the cart with one hand and pulled. The hinges whined, and the door swung open into what looked like a box. That is the only way I can describe it. A tiny little room carved right into the concrete, maybe two feet across, a foot and a half deep. A dollhouse space wedged into the wall. And inside that box, a house. And not just any house.

A mouse house. Little wooden walls painted and faded green. A tiny rounder rug. A miniature lamp that glowed weak orange. The furniture was carved to scale, tiny armchairs, a couch no bigger than a child shoebox, and tiny stairs winding up to a second level. Everything was there, down to the crooked family photos on the walls,

nailed in with pins for frames. And the mice? They weren't scurring around the corners like normal mice. No, these live there. Like a family. The father mouse sat in a chair with a folded scrap of newspaper, holding it open like he could actually read. A mother mouse bustled near a tiny oven,

wearing a rag of cloth like an apron. Somewhere upstairs, I heard the scratchy little voice of what I can only assume was a teenage girl mouse, giggling like she was on the phone. I blinked and leaned closer, and that's when I noticed the sign nailed over the little front door. The nibblers. I rub my eyes.

What the hell? It got worse. On their dining table, right in the center of the little room, was a skeleton. Some strange-looking creature, bigger than a rat. picked bone clean. Every rib gleamed white. The skull was smooth and hollow. Jaw still open, like it'd gone down screaming.

And the mice didn't seem to mind. The mother fussed with the oven. The father turned another page of his tiny paper. The daughter mouse kept chattering upstairs. I let out a shaky breath and reached for a rag. It was insane, absolutely insane, but the paper in my pocket still burned against my leg. All six rooms must be clean tonight. So I crouched down, dip the rag into the bucket, and carefully wiped down the base of the miniature mouse house.

I scrubbed around their door, vested their porch, and even polished the brass doorknob smaller than a pea. The father mouse lowered his newspaper long enough to glance at me. His whiskers twitched. And then, calm as anything, he raised a tiny paw and gave me a wave. My mouth went dry. I forced a nod back, finished wiping, and back the car slowly away from the box. The door shut with a soft click. The next door was marked room three.

My hand shook a little on the handle, but when I opened it, it just about laughed. A classroom. Rows of old desks bolted to the floor. Chalkboard across the wall. A globe in the corner gathering dust. No dancers, no music, no mouse family waiting for me in a box. Just a room? So I swept.

I mopped. I emptied a bin filled with nothing but crumpled math worksheets. When I finished, I stood there waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. So I left. Room four was the same. Classroom, normal as they come. Alphabet poster peeling off the back wall. Books stacked crooked in a shelf.

I have expected the letters to rearrange themselves in. to something obscene. But they didn't. The floor was just dirty tile. The desks were just desks. I swept. I mopped. I wiped the blackboard clean.

Nothing? And this somehow was almost worse. The first two rooms, yes, had been insane. These. They were boring. Plain. Which made me start thinking, maybe this was a trick.

Lull me, soften me. Get me to breathe easy so the next door could bite twice as hard. I rolled the cart back into the hallway. The wheels squeaked once, echoing down the empty corridor. And I realized my shirt was plastered to my back with sweat. Four rooms down. Two to go. Room five. The handle was bloody when I grabbed it. My stomach turned. My gut screamed, don't open it. But that noted my pocket burned hot against my leg. All six rooms must be clean tonight. So I pulled. The hinges wailed, and the doors swung open. The sound hit me first.

A cleaver, heavy and merciless, slamming into wood and bone. Each blow thudded in my chest and rattled through the floor. The room wasn't a classroom, no desks, no chalkboard, just rows of chains dangling from the ceiling, each one ending in a hook. Slabs of meat swung for. from them, dripping steady under the tile below. Some cuts, I could almost convince myself were animal, sides of beef, hunks of fat, slabs of muscle. But others.

Others had shapes that twisted my stomach. A curve that could have been a rib cage. A length of pale flesh with joints too much like knees. a bundle of something that looked sickeningly familiar, but I kept my eyes down. I didn't want to know. At the back of the room stood the source of the chopping. A butcher.

He was massive. Shoulders so wide they swallowed the light. A filthy apron clung to him, stiff with redden stains. His cleaver was the size of a shovel, and he swung it with ease, each strike splintering wood, spraying flecks of blood across the floor. From his skull curled two thick, ridged horns, catching the light like wet stone. The chains clanged, the meat swayed, and my heart jammed itself into my throat.

I wanted to run, but the door behind me clicked locked, same as the others. I was trapped, just clean. The brim bristles scraped across the tile, grease smeared, little bits of bone and God knows what rattled into a pile. The smell of iron clung to everything, coating the back of my tongue. There was the chopping sound. and then silence. I froze mid-sweep.

My brum hovered just above the floor. Slowly I looked up. The butcher had stopped. His cleaver rested on his shoulder, eyes burning through the dim. He stared at me, unmoving, like he was weighing something. and then his lips peeled back and in a low grinding voice that scraped my bones he said

my legs nearly came out I forced the broom forward dragging bristles hard enough to screech against the tile my pulse was hammering so loud I could hear it and for one awful second nothing moved and then the cleaver rose again The sound slammed the air apart.

The butcher went back to work. The meat swung gently. Chains creaked. And I swept like my life depended on it, and it probably did. I didn't look closer. I didn't want to know what hung there. I just kept pushing scraps into piles, moving around the edges of the room as fast as I could without running. When the floor was finally clean, I jam the brum back into the cart and wiped my forehead with a shaking sleeve.

My chest heaved. My hands wouldn't stop trembling. I moved slowly back toward the door. The handle was slick with old blood under my palm. For a second, it wouldn't open, holding me the hair in the silence. And then at last, it gave way. The door creaked open, and I slipped into the hallway. I pulled the cart behind me, and I shut the door very quietly.

The chopping started up again. I eased the cart forward. The number plate above the last door read Room 6 in plain stamped metal. I touched it with two fingers, the metal cool under my skin, and for a second the whole hallway seemed to wait. The handle turned, and the door swung open. For half a heartbeat, it looked like an ordinary classroom. Rows of desks, a poster of the solar system warped at one corner, chalkboard with half-erased math problems. and then the room folded itself like a cheap theater set.

And suddenly I was standing at the threshold of my mother's kitchen. Not like her kitchen. It was her kitchen. The linoleum with that same faded flower pattern. The dent in the table where she dropped a heavy pan years ago. The little magnet on the fridge shaped like a lemon. The curtains were the old yellow print she'd loved. It smelled wrong.

And there she was, sitting at the head of that table, hands folded like she was saving them for a prayer. She looked like the photos that never got old. The woman who used to stand in the doorway when I came home late. Arms crossed, one eyebrow cocked. Her dress was a faded dress. floral, the same one she'd keep for Sundays. Her face was the face I knew better than my own. She smiled the way she had when I was a kid. Tommy, she said, voice small and like a creek in the hall. I've been waiting for you. Something in me shut down and opened all at once. The note in my

pocket turned cold. All six rooms must be clean tonight, no matter what. Or you'll die. My mouth felt like gravel. I took a step forward, the cart rattling behind me, and the room settled around us. The table was set, plates, cups, a loaf of bread half-slised, a casserole dish, steaming like it just come from the oven. It was obscene and domestic at once, like a postcard from a life that hadn't been taken apart by time and trouble. Ma, you, you look good. You look, I mean, you look like you did. She cut me off with that smile. You're home, she said. Sit, sit, eat. Don't be funny now. Tell me everything. I sat, because my legs had stopped being useful for anything else.

I watched her spoon gravy over my plate the way she always had. The motion automatic. We talked? She asked me about the weather, like that was the news that mattered. I told her about the drive, about the job. And she nodded and said she was proud. She asked, too, about the man I used to work for. I told her I'd been fired.

She pursed her lips and said something about pride. She looked at me then, long and steady. And for the first time since I'd walked in, she asked only one thing. Stay with me, she said. I didn't answer right away I looked down at the plate in front of me at the neat curl of potatoes at the steam rising in slow

innocent spirals my head filled with other sounds the ballroom music the little mouse voices upstairs the cleaver's rhythm far away she watched me her hands folded on the table patient and small.

Give your old mother a hug, she said. I stared at the plate a few seconds, counted the steam curls like there were seconds on a clock. Then I stood. The chair legs scrape the linoleum. My hand found the box cutter clipped to the cart. The little silver blade clicking out behind my bag. with a sound that felt too loud in that quiet kitchen.

She opened her arms. I took the two steps to her, close enough to see the tiny lines at the corner of her eyes, close enough to smell the gravy cooling on the plate between us. I didn't say anything. I reached in like I was going to hug her, and I drove the knife into her chest. Now I know what you're thinking.

Tommy, you just killed your own mother. Well, a couple things. One, she was already dead. She died years ago. I know. I was there. I watched. Two, my mother wasn't the kind of woman who baked cookies for the PTA.

She was one of the most notorious female serial killers. in history. People gave her a name that the papers loved to print. The broth widow. They called her that because she fed them soup, warm and sweet and easy to swallow, and then drag them down into the basement

like she was sending them home with leftovers. Poisoned chicken soup. That was her thing. Invite them over, ladle them comfort, Watch them die soft and slowly. Then the basement? Then bury them.

That was the pattern. I figured it out on my 14th birthday. I was a kid who liked to look for things nobody else wanted to see. I told the sheriff what I thought. The whole police department laughed at me, except for him. The sheriff crouched down to my level, looked at the sheriff. me like I wasn't a crazy kid and nodded. He went over to the house. He found the bodies in the basement that I was never allowed to go down into, and he dragged her out. I know she's dead

because I saw her die. I saw the needles go into her veins at the state pen. I watched the curtains close and the papers print the final story. I was relieved then. and I was relieved tonight too. I'd been glad she was dead 25 years ago, and I was glad she was dead now. I only hope she stays that way. I eased her back into the chair like she was some old coat that hung up too rough.

Her head lulled forward, and impossibly, it tipped right into the bowl of soup on the table. For a second I just stood there, the cart breathing at my side, the house around me silent. And then I did what the note had told me to do. I cleaned. I wiped the table. I stacked the plates like she used to. I swept the linoleum in slow, methodical arcs until the floor showed no streaks.

I folded her napkin and put it where it been. Nothing dramatic, no speeches, no breakdowns. Just work? When I was done, I stepped to the door. And it opened without arguing. It clicked open like any other plain, stupid door, and I walked out into the hall with a cart. Back downstairs, the janitor's room was the same as it'd been when I left it.

Lockers, the Dennett Soccer Ball. that one coffee thermos with a cracked lid. But on the bench, folded and plain as daylight, was a stack of cash. Exactly 500 bucks. No note. No fanfare. Just the money.

Sitting there like payment for a night's work. I picked it up. I slipped it into my pocket, feeling the paper press against the old warning, like an ant, answer. I put the uniform back in my locker, clip the badge where it belonged, and closed the door. The locker shut with a small final click. Outside, the sky had started to pale at the edges. My Chevy was where I left it. The engine still warm. I started the truck and pulled out of the lot.

As the tires crunched over the gravel, I glanced in the rear view at the hulking shape of the school. And I just drove slowly home. So yeah, you're probably thinking this whole story is made up. Probably think I'm crazy. Maybe you heard the part about the ballroom and the mice and the butcher and your head did that little tilt. Wait, what?

Maybe you think the same thing is to burn the place down or call someone, or drive away and never look back. But, you know, I'm almost 40 and I'm tired. I don't know what's going to happen next. But honestly, I am a damn good janitor. Let's be real, those other janitors probably died, you know, horrible, gruesome deaths. But, you know, I bet they didn't sweep like I do. So yeah, call me crazy, but the pays good.

I kind of enjoy it. The hours are quiet, and hell, somebody's got to do it. And if my mother shows up again tomorrow, I mean, I'll just kill her again. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to keep this job.