Have you ever been injured on the job or at home despite having done everything right? You wore your PPE, checked the guards were in place on the tools or machinery you were using, and followed all the instructions perfectly, but somehow still ended up on the wrong side of a safety story. Looking back on incidents like this can feel haunting, and for a former industrial laundry worker from Maine named Stephen King, they can even inspire horror stories.

King’s 1978 short story “The Mangler”—included in his first short-story collection Night Shift and adapted into a movie by Poltergeist director Tobe Hooper—evokes every safety professional’s worst nightmare. When Blue Ribbon Laundry’s speed ironing and folding machine pulls a worker into its mechanism and kills her, an investigation reveals that the fatality should have been impossible. The machine was in perfect working order and all the safety guards were in place. But the incident wasn’t a one-off. Shortly after the death, a steam line that feeds the machine ruptures, burning several workers, and later a supervisor loses his arm trying to escape a second pull-in. The emergency shutoffs do nothing—even with its fuses removed, the Mangler keeps mangling.

Exploring all possible avenues, detective John Hunton turns to his friend, an academic and occultist, who suggests the machine is possessed. And it turns out he’s correct  (this is a Stephen King story, after all). Through a series of day-to-day goings on, the speed ironer accidentally consumed all the ingredients for an ancient demon-summoning spell—virgin blood from a previous worker injury, horse remains in the form of Jell-O, and belladonna used in an antacid tablet—turning the machine into a menace. The results are a horror story classic that, while a little silly in terms of its premise, is known to make readers feel sick while reading it.

Now, there is very little likelihood that your workplace is literally haunted like Blue Ribbon Laundry. But it’s not much of a leap to say that, not unlike the demonic diet that breathed life into King’s infernal ironer, there are other holistic factors that contribute to risk and are just as invisible and dangerous as a monster machine from Hell. Human factors are creeping all around us, turning everything from stairs to shelves to our own vehicles into potential manglers.

Nearly 200,000 Americans work in the laundry business, and for them, a workplace injury can be long-lasting, traumatic and even fatal. On a basic level, there are ergonomic hazards with the repetitive motion, stress and overextension that can come with handling heavy and wet linens. The ambient noise of being around industrial washing machinery can cause hearing loss if PPE isn’t worn properly, too. That’s not to mention the potential burns, heat exhaustion, falling objects caused by tangled laundry, and the slips, trips and falls that can happen when working with water, steam and soap. And let’s not forget the potential for mangling. The massive machines used in the business of washing laundry at scale are terrifying all on their own—something King understood from his pre-fame days.

The good news is that, unlike the supernatural situation in King’s story, we don’t need to consult ancient occult resources to understand the ingredients that summon risk into laundries and other workplaces. You can get ahead of the trouble by making sure those human factors are recognized and taken care of before they mix together and bring a monstrous heap of agony into your facility. After all, horror stories are better when they’re works of fiction.

Follow these tips to banish negative human factors from your workplace. Think of it like an exorcism for risk:

• Prioritize wellness: When repetition is part of the job, you need to be on the lookout for mental and physical fatigue. There are many preventative measures you can employ to proactively fight exhaustion and burnout, from facilitating physical activities like walking and stretching, to offering regular hydration breaks, especially in heat-prone facilities like industrial laundries. By giving workers opportunities to stay healthy, you can keep them alert to the invisible elements of risk around them.
• Communicate clearly: Extinguish ambiguity and make people feel comfortable with telling you about the hazards they face. Ambiguity and fear have a way of amplifying the states that lead to injury-causing errors. Whether fear of reprisal keeps folks quiet when they see close calls or potential hazards, or if a lack of clear communication leads to them making assumptions, people can get hurt when there aren’t open and reliable methods of communication in their workplace. Safety leaders can help dispel fear and ambiguity by making an effort to connect with workers, ask them open questions and see if they can walk them through processes.
• Get onboarding right: Industrial laundry has a high rate of turnover. By prioritizing the two previous points, there is a good chance you can stem at least some of the employee churn, but the reality of the industry is that folks come and go. From a safety standpoint, that puts a lot of pressure on new workers, who face an inordinate amount of risk. The best way to protect new employees in every industry is to get the first 90 days right from an onboarding perspective. Make sure your onboarding process is optimized to include an overview of safety processes, procedures and equipment, a discussion of the right to refuse unsafe work, and the training other workers have already received.

These are just some of the ways you can beat back the human factors, no matter where you work, demon or no demon. And while there is little you can do to prevent the forces of cosmic evil should they decide to manifest in your workplace, at least you will be able to sleep at night knowing the other invisible threats to employee safety are in check.