The Asphalt Plant — Something Stayed Behind [True Story] Dammam, Saudi Arabia
I won't share my name. Company rules.
I'm an accountant from India. Arrived in Dammam on 18 September 2024. Our crew lived right at the asphalt plant — a place where boiling bitumen is cooked and loaded for road construction.
First thing anyone told me when I got there: a Sudanese worker had fallen into a bitumen tank before I arrived. Boiling tar. He didn't survive. There was barely anything left to recover.
Nobody talked about it. But nobody forgot either.
A few weeks later, small things started happening. Tools found moved overnight — always near the tank. Workers refusing to go near that area after sunset. One guy just shook his head and said quietly, "Wahan kuch hai." Something is there.
Then one night at 2 AM, I saw it myself.
A dull orange glow hovering over the tank surface. Not a flashlight. Not heat — the tank hadn't been running for hours. It pulsed slowly, like breathing. Then it vanished.
Next morning, two other workers described the exact same thing. On separate nights. Neither had told anyone.
After that — footsteps on the metal catwalk above the tank. Every night. We'd check. Empty. One worker woke up screaming, said something black and dripping was standing over him. He flew home without collecting his final salary.
New workers kept arriving, lasting two or three nights, then begging to be moved — even ones who didn't speak the same language and couldn't have heard the stories.
Eventually, the company quietly shifted the entire operation to a new location. The old plant now runs only in daylight. No one stays after dark. No official reason was ever given.
The tank is still there.
I drive past it sometimes. In daylight it looks like nothing. Just rust and dried tar.
I never look at it after dark.