security camera in the office breakroom. after-hours feed, 2:41am. no one is scheduled to be in the building. the vending machine has been flickering for weeks and no one has fixed it. i pulled this clip because my coworkers kept hearing whispers. he was there. he doesn't move between visits.
Footage is AI generated. The archivist logs what the cameras
catch after everyone's asleep — a figure with a camcorder appears in every
transmission, always in the background, always recording something else.
CASE 083 — OFFICE BREAKROOM VENDING FIGURE
source: Ceiling-mounted dome camera, corridor-side breakroom entry, Channel 07 of a twelve-channel DVR loop running continuous 24/7 capture at 15fps, retention window nominally seven days before overwrite.
recovered: Forty-one segment files pulled across a nine-day window; two contiguous gaps at 02:14–02:19 and 03:02–03:08 on the night in question, with overwrite flags manually toggled on the parent folder three days after the incident and reverted by facilities IT without explanation.
Facility is a mid-floor tenant office, badge-access after 19:00, cleaning contractor scheduled Tuesdays and Fridays only. The clip in question falls on a Sunday. Access logs for the twenty-four hours prior show no badge events after 18:47 Saturday. HVAC cycled down at 20:00 per building automation.
Review of Channel 07 across the preceding week corroborates the witness statement filed on intake. The vending unit (Model N-243, contract vendor) began exhibiting ballast failure on 2026-08-24; a work order was submitted, deferred, and remains open. From 08-29 onward the fluorescent tube enters a flicker cycle averaging one interruption every 40 to 60 seconds. No maintenance visit is logged.
At 01:58 on the recorded night, ambient audio on the adjacent hallway channel (Channel 06) registers a low sustained tone below the compression floor, discernible only on waveform inspection. At 02:12 the breakroom motion sensor triggers the overhead LED for its default nine-second interval; the room is empty by the camera's account. At 02:34 Channel 04, covering the elevator lobby, captures a smeared vertical artifact at the edge of frame — a hunched silhouette at chest height, something boxy and handheld raised toward the breakroom corridor. The figure does not cross into full coverage. It is present for three frames.
The submitted clip begins at 02:41:03. Its contents are logged verbatim in the intake sheet and are not restated here. Attention is directed to the gap between the vending unit and the west wall, a space measured by facilities drawings at 4.2 centimeters.
At 03:47 the vending unit's ballast stabilizes for the remainder of the night. The paper towel roll is found on the floor Monday morning; no incident report is filed.
Additional channels from this window are retained under separate seal. The nature of the audio recovered from Channel 06 is not disclosed at this tier.
on-frame device clocks appear as recovered; the archive does not correct them.
the night log · never runs on the feed