Thank you, brave souls! We summoned your scariest dev tales this Halloween - and you delivered way more than we bargained for. From ghostly bugs to cursed commits, the number (and quality!) of submissions gave our jury a real fright… and a seriously tough job. Ready to relive the horror? Scroll down to explore the creepiest, cringiest, and most chaotic stories that made it to the final circle of doom. And beware… new contests (with even more wicked prizes) are already brewing in our cauldron.
What you can snag… if your dev tale freezes the coolant in our server racks.
First Place
3 x Second Place
6 x Third Place
1 x First Place
October 31st, 11:45 PM. I’m alone in the office. Everyone else went to a Halloween party, but I stayed behind because “I just need to quickly fix this one bug.” Classic mistake. 11:50 PM – I walk into the old server room in the basement (yes, literally a BASEMENT — cold as a grave). I have to restart the legacy server "TOMB-01" (real name, I’m not making this up). This server’s been running since 2003 and MUST NOT be shut down — only “gently restarted.” 11:55 PM – I touch the keyboard. Dust falls like in a horror movie. 11:57 PM – The screen flickers. A message appears: FATAL ERROR: GRAVEYARD PROTOCOL ACTIVATED ALL BACKUPS WILL BE DELETED IN 00:03:00 PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE... OR NOT. PANIC. What is the “Graveyard Protocol”?! 11:58 PM – I press ESC. Nothing. ENTER. Nothing. The server starts making a sound… like a sigh. 11:59 PM – The server room lights start to flicker. The AC shuts off. Temperature: 27°C... 31°C... 35°C 🔥 The other servers begin shutting down ONE BY ONE. I hear the hard drives STOP spinning. Silence. Complete. Like a graveyard. 00:00 – Midnight. Halloween. Suddenly… ALL the servers turn back on by themselves. The screens display: HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM DEV TEAM 2003 PRANK SUCCESSFUL SCARED? :) P.S. Nothing was actually deleted. P.P.S. But you should check your pants. TURNED OUT: A previous admin (left in 2015) had left behind an easter egg — a script that runs only on October 31st at midnight, simulating a disaster and then restoring everything to normal. 00:15 – I’m sitting on the server room floor, shaking with fear… and laughter? 00:30 – I find a file: README_HALLOWEEN.txt “If you’re reading this, it means you got caught. Welcome to the club. Add your date below:” Dates listed: 2004, 2007, 2011, 2014… and now 2025. Moral of the story: Documentation isn’t everything. Sometimes, legacy code contains literal ghosts of the past. P.S. I still work from home on Halloween. TOMB-01 awaits its next victim. 👻💀
3 x Second Place
I used to love working at night. Everything’s quieter, calmer - your thoughts fall into place. It’s dark, only the laptop screen glowing. I found my rhythm in Photoshop - adjustments, masks, shadows. That was the moment - you just know it’s going to be the one. Click, click, tweak, keyboard shortcut. And then… something’s off. I don’t even know how it happened - instead of Ctrl+J, my fingers hit Ctrl+E. In a split second, all the layers merged into one. At first, I didn’t even realize. I kept looking at the design, went to make another move… my eyes drifted to the Layers panel. One. ONE LAYER. My heart skipped a beat. Ctrl+Z Nothing. Again. Nothing. I could literally hear my own pulse in my ears. The menu was greyed out. The file history - empty. No undo. No hope. Hours of work… reduced to a single, flattened image. Everything I had been building turned into something that looked like a side effect from Paint in 2005. I sat there in silence, staring at the absurdity. I went through all five stages of grief in under three minutes: - Denial – maybe I can undo it? - Anger – why the hell did I do that?! - Bargaining – maybe there’s an autosave…? - Depression – there is no autosave... - and finally, Acceptance. I sat in front of the monitor, staring at that merciless word: “Layer 1.” Took a deep breath - and started over. Because what else could I do?
Monday. The day began like any other. Outside, autumn had fully arrived. The last leaves were falling from the trees, the cold air heavy with damp fog. A fine, piercing rain soaked everything—seeping into the skin, down to the bone. Crows had gathered above the office. They waited. Grim, silent, patient. Though no one suspected the approaching disaster, it had to come. It was ready—merely waiting for the perfect moment. And this… this was its perfect day. Everyone did their part, like in Final Destination. Carefully, precisely, just as always—and without error. Tests passed flawlessly across all environments. But every line of code, every commit, every change, and every closed ticket led in the same direction—paving the way for an inevitable, unpredictable, yet tangible catastrophe to reach production. This urgent, important, and critical release had already been postponed three times, each time for no serious reason. “Everything’s fixed now,” said the most involved devs. When everything was (for the third time) declared ready, it turned out the tag meant to go to production didn’t exist in the repo. It wasn’t there. It had never been there. But that could be fixed—nothing had gone live yet. At that moment, the crows took flight for the first time. They circled briefly, then landed again, exactly where they had been before. Wednesday - “Did they say when they’re deploying?” - “I’ll ask. Yeah, they want to push it as soon as possible.” - “So… today?” - “No, Friday.” - “Friday? The 31st? Halloween?” - “Looks like it.” - “What time?” - “End of day. At 5 PM.” The crows took flight again—this time, they didn’t land. They circled, cawing. There was something ominous in that sound—something hungry, yet oddly joyful and impatient. Ready to dive. Friday, October 31st, 4:59 PM Defying physics, logic, and ornithology, the crows hadn’t perched even for a second. Their ravenous eyes glinted with anticipation. They knew—it’s time. Any second now. Completely unaware, the DevOps engineer sat at his desk, holding a mug of hot chocolate. Wearing a pumpkin-themed T-shirt and fluffy orange Crocs, he logged in, connected to the VPN, and hesitated for just a moment… He took a sip from the mug, pushing away the dark visions of “what could go wrong.” Exactly at 5:01 PM, he clicked “deploy”. And the crows began to dive...
They say true masters of horror can scare you in just six words. According to urban legend, Hemingway was once challenged to write a chillingly short story. The records say it went like this: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Six words. And chills down your spine. So I thought I’d give it a try. Not about ghosts. Not about monsters. Something much, much worse... “Mandatory return to office. Tomorrow morning.” Silence. A scream. And the sound of a camera turning off on Teams…
6 x Third Place
One autumn night, from Friday to Saturday, a small town was shaken by a scream. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaa aa” rang out at 3:33 AM - or thereabouts. The echo answered, “Aaaaaaaaaaa aa a,” bouncing off dark, empty walls. The scream didn’t just wake the people or the animals… It woke the demons too. Moments later, the air fell silent - broken only by a faint whisper: “It’s not prod… it’s not prod…” But it was production. And the database? Gone. Taken straight to hell. No amount of wishful thinking could undo it. That dusty little window, with a cobweb in the corner and a dim, flickering screen - wasn’t the local environment. It was production. Pale - far paler than usual - the developer stared at the screen. He felt something deep in his gut… and it wasn’t butterflies. More like bats. By 7:06 AM, as the sun rose, everything was fixed. Everything looked the same. Everything worked as it always had. But a scratched message on the wall… and broken fingernails… told another story: When touching the base, check two - no, three times your place. Know where you stand, before things get out of hand.
It was my first job in IT. PMO. I didn’t yet know that in this place… technology had a dark side. My manager handed me a piece of paper - just an ordinary, unassuming scrap with a few words that would open the gates to another dimension: “Go to IT support and ask them about this.” I froze. I had only seen them once - during onboarding. Three silent men in a dark room, where the bulbs barely flickered above cables, monitors, and coffee mugs. Their eyes reflected only the glow of the screens, as if they were watching from the other side of the firewall. I knew I’d have to go back there. But I didn’t want to. Holding the note, I noticed it was trembling slightly - or maybe it was my hand. I walked down the hallway where the lights flickered like in a bad B‑grade horror film. And then I stood in front of the door marked: “IT SUPPORT.” I stood there. Seconds stretched out like a timeout in an infinite loop. “What if they ask me something I don’t understand?” I thought. I didn’t even fully grasp what I was supposed to ask them. I pressed the handle. From within, only the low hum of servers. No movement. No sign of life. I slowly stepped back, still clutching the note. Moments later, I was back at my manager’s desk. I said calmly, “There was no one there.” She gave me a strange look… and whispered: “That’s impossible. They haven’t left that room in months.”
In a certain digital kingdom, there lived data. Wild, untamed data - each piece running in a different direction: one into Excel, another into a database, a third disappearing into the far-off cloud. No one could catch them. Developers tried with nets of code, managers summoned integration sorcerers, and the project king could only sigh: “It’s all fallen apart… again.” Until one day, from a distant corner of the world, came the mages of CodeWave. They brought with them a remarkable creature: Flotiq. It had no wings like a dragon, no sword like a knight - but it could do something far greater: It listened to the data and arranged it into perfect order, so all the pieces worked together like a choir of well-coded elves. From that day on, the data stopped fleeing. Developers began to smile again, and the project king declared: “Long live Flotiq—the tamer of chaos!” And so it remained. For as legend says: Wherever Flotiq appears, the data dances to the rhythm of magic.
I was tasked with deleting the dev database of an unused service. I switched to an already-open terminal, executed the DROP DATABASE command, added a comment to the ticket, and stepped out for a well-deserved coffee and smoke break. When I returned to my desk, I saw the team spinning up a P1 for a disturbingly large number of broken production environments. Out of curiosity, I joined the call, and within minutes heard that markets were down because one service had completely failed—the very one whose dev database I had just removed. Was it really dev? I scrolled back through my terminal history and felt my stomach drop: I had been connected to the prod instance the entire time. My heart hammered, sweat trickled down my back… and then I woke up and remembered my name isn’t Damian.
I’m alone in the office. Everyone else is out enjoying Halloween, and I’m here stitching together someone else’s bugs before the nightly deploy. The commit finally passes the tests when I hear a loud thud coming from the server room. I stretch my back, grab my access card, and head out—time to loosen up my tired bones and see what the support guys forgot to tighten this time. Inside, the fans hum their usual soothing melody of static and gentle howling, and the LEDs blink mischievously, as if inviting me to join the fun. The cable jungle looks slightly neater than usual today. The racks are firm, everything in its place, nothing fallen. Maybe I imagined it—this is my fourth day of overtime this week. Habit kicks in—I power up the KVM. The screen wakes up slowly. At first glance - just logs, as usual - until one line stings my eyes: “NOV 01 03:17:00 srv01 upsmon[2451]: Mains failure: on battery (AC input lost)” The old fashioned wall clock reads 21:36. Clocks may lie, but usually they run fast—not backwards. I check NTP, logs, IPMI - everything matches. The previous entries show the real time. Only this one line - from tomorrow - burrows deep into the logical order of things. I delete the entry, restart the daemon, disable the event cron - and again, it reappears. Same line. Same 03:17. Second attempt: reinstall NUT, reload the UPS driver. No effect. The entry returns like a boomerang. If it’s a power glitch, a hard reset should scare it off - like a medium rare steak dispersing a group of protesting vegans. I shut down the server, reach for the cable. Suddenly, I feel that all-too-familiar jolt - a shock, the loss of control in my muscles. Electricity. A particularly long and painful zap. With the last fragments of consciousness, I realize I’m collapsing to the floor. I come to, dazed. I don’t remember how I got here. Something’s off. The server room is now split by a glass wall—one that’s never been here before. I look around—I’m in a mirrored version of the server room. One difference: there are no doors on my side. I pound on the glass in desperation. It doesn’t budge. Then, on the other side, the entrance opens. Someone walks in. I freeze. That someone… is me. I rush to the console. If the entry was created intentionally, the logs are the only crack in the mirror. I type: logger -p daemon.err "Mains failure: DO NOT DISCONNECT PSU" The screen on the other side flickers. That other me leans in, reads. IT WORKS! He types something, but I can’t see a reply on my end. Still, (or maybe because of that), I repeat the message. He notices the logs again and reacts. I repeat it again and again until the lines flood the screen like digital rain. That other me nods, shuts down the server. Reaches for the cable. I freeze above the keyboard and notice one final difference between the rooms: On his side, the clock reads 21:36. On mine - 03:17.
It was Thursday, 3:48 PM. The office was slowly quieting down, just like it always does at the end of a sprint - the last few clicks, the rustle of coffee mugs, someone swearing under their breath because the E2E tests failed again. I was about to log off when a new ticket appeared in Jira. No author. No description. Just the title: “Optimize user screams in Night Mode.” I laughed. Probably someone trolling. But the system assigned the task… to me. I couldn’t delete it, couldn’t ignore it. I clicked Resolve. The lights above the open space flickered. First gently, then faster and faster, until everything began to glow with an uneven rhythm - like something out of a cheap B-grade horror. The monitor went black, and when it came back on... it was night. It went silent. Too silent. I looked across the row of desks - no one. And just a moment ago, Marta was on the phone, and someone from QA was laughing at a Kubernetes meme. Now, only shadows. Shadows and… sounds. From behind the wall came a muffled hum - laughter, the sound of keyboards, chairs sliding, even the soft buzz of the printer. It sounded like a regular office in the middle of the day, except... there was nothing there. No lights. No people. Just me and the screen. I tried to stand up. I couldn’t. The chair had somehow fused with the floor, and I had fused with the chair. I couldn’t tell where my body ended and the seat began. There was a strange pressure and something odd on my chest. A sensation like a giant splinter embedding itself - but without pain. Terrified, I looked down - my access card was halfway through merging with my chest. I started to panic. I moved the mouse. Jira refreshed by itself. In the comments section of my task, a new entry appeared - no author, just the current date and time: 3:49 PM. "PART OF THE CREW, PART OF THE SHIP".
If you recognized your story above... make sure to check your inbox! One of our special discount codes is waiting for you there – a little less spooky than a ghost bug, but far more valuable. Once again, huge thanks to all the brave souls who shared their (ghastly) tales from the world of IT. Choosing the winners was truly difficult. Each juror fiercely defended their favorite (some are still waiting to be discharged from the hospital), but in the end, the rules prevailed, and the final rankings were determined by total points. Stay alert and follow us on social media — new chances for fun are coming soon, and you can bet... we won’t hesitate to take full advantage of them.
Sysadmin recommends: before the ritual begins, review the promotion rules and privacy policy to learn the terms of the soul transfer for the purposes of the contest.
