A lot of us (thankfully) have mundane jobs that don’t require too much mental stress. But, there are thousands of people out who witness some of the more disturbing things in life. From artists who commission special kinds of pictures to prison guards in charge of dangerous inmates, these are some of the most stressful things people saw on their jobs.
#1 Commissioned Portraits
Forensic account here. I remember this one time, I had a client whose employee had used the company account for payments to a graphic designer. Except, instead of marketing materials, he had commissioned approximately $15,000 worth of Loli and Sonic adult material. It was most definitely a strange experience.
#2 Out of the News
My buddy is now a fire inspector, but when he worked, he had to deal with babies in toilets. He does the comedy approach to dealing with this kind of grief (like the doctor on The Simpsons ). That is, except for the babies. He's never joked about those. He just mentions that he's surprised it stays out of the news so well.
#3 Line Art
I was a teen who would digitally color other artist’s line art (with permission) and post it in a web gallery. One piece I colored caught the attention of a furry fan. He asks if I’d be willing to color a piece of line art he’d had commissioned. I did a little research and quoted him a lowball price because I considered myself a bad colorist. He paid and sent me the work to color. I did the work and he liked it. He came back with more stuff for me to color. He referred other folks to me. My first paying job was as a digital colorist for furry material.
#4 Prison Hospital
I used to work as an EMT. When I first started, I went on a prison call once and on the way to our patient, me and my partner witnessed another inmate injure himself. He was beating on his hospital cell door, screaming for painkillers and how "Now y’all have to take me to the hospital.” The nurse was like, “Yeah, we called someone but don't sweat it. This is like the third time he's tried this.”
Also, we were warned not to try and help him because he would most certainly attack us. That dude had really hurt himself and the entire staff seemed to think it was no big deal. It was actually kind of crazy. I soon learned how messed up prison hospitals are and eventually, I too became desensitized to it all.
#5 Stalking People
This is my husband's story as he’s a detective. Someone dumped a body in an alley right by the police department, but in a spot that no one frequented. So after a few days in the mid-summer heat, the body decomposed so bad that they couldn't ID by looks or tattoos, just the clothes and hair, and DNA once they figured out who she was.
Long story short, it was a well-known criminal who had dumped her. They found CCTV of him stalking people at the local shopping center right after he dumped the body. They watched him spend over four hours walking around, leaving for his car and changing clothes and going back in, following women for a bit, changing his mind.
He left empty-handed and ended up getting caught a couple of states away the following week. The creepiest part for me was that I went shopping there the same day. It made me thankful for all the situational awareness training I got from my dad (also a detective). It made my husband more paranoid, but that's a different story.
#6 In the Attic
I’m not a detective, but I know a creepy case. A friend of mine grew up in a big family house with her immediate family plus an uncle and grandparents. Sometimes she and her brother would wake up with things written on their faces in permanent marker. Just random phrases, nothing too shocking. The kids were about eight and denied doing it. No one looked any further into it. Eventually, the uncle is attacked in his bed. The police investigated and it turned out there was a dude living in their attic.
#7 Something You Never Forget
My boyfriend was the detective in this case. An officer doing a wellness check on an elderly woman spoke with her son. He said she was out at the moment, but she was doing well. He spoke in detail about what she was up to lately and all that. The officer noticed a strong smell coming from the yard, though. I’m sure you see where this is going. I don’t think pretending a deceased relative is alive to keep receiving their benefits is uncommon.
The officer turned the case over to my boyfriend, who returned with a warrant. There were two houses; the main house and a small apartment-style house in the back yard where the mother once lived. When they entered, the son seemed calm. He showed them right to the mother. He also continued to speak as if she was still alive and well.
In the bed, they found the body that had clearly been there for a long time. The stench was unbearable. The son adamantly refused that she was gone, insisting she had just been up and around the main house yesterday. I learned this story about from my boyfriend as an explanation as to why he always uses so much cologne, air fresheners, scented fabric softeners, etc. The smell is apparently something you never forget.
#8 Liability Case
Private investigator here and I was once looking into a liability case. They were blaming the apartment complex for the resident getting attacked by another resident. Turns out, the dude was planning a mass attack and was part of multiple right-wing white supremacist groups. His social media was essentially a manifesto and the cops found a bunch of items laid out, fully loaded and ready to go. I feel bad for the neighbor, but them getting attacked likely saved multiple people's lives.
#9 Hole in the Head
I had an internship at the sheriff's office back where I lived. A guy came in because someone was threatening him over text and sending him pictures. One was three heads (might've been fake) but the other one I saw was a guy with a hole in his head. The wound looked pretty real. The dude’s head looked like it should've been smaller, but getting a hole expanded it.
#10 The Same Man
I once got a case spying on a lady's husband. She thought he was going behind her back with someone else. She wanted proof to present before a judge in court. While investigating, I found the husband going behind the wife’s back with her boyfriend. Both were seeing with the same guy. Needless to say, I minted money from all the three.
#11 Jack in the Box
My teacher was a detective and he told our class about one case that he wished he got, but his partner or friend did. Apparently, it was called “jack in the box” and this guy’s wife attacked her husband with help from some dude. They then put him in a locker and burned it down. If you’re in Michigan, you’ve probably heard of it.
#12 Great Practice
I have a client who commissioned around $5K worth of adult material. He’s only been my client for around four months. I, of course, don't post it. I draw it, send him the clip files, then delete it. What he does from there, I can only imagine. At $150 to $600 a commission, he's received around 20. I don't enjoy this content at all, but it's great practice and great money, so I just keep accepting them.
#13 Shopping at Target
My nurse friend told me that a woman gave birth to her child while shopping at Target. She was wearing sweatpants and just let the baby slide down. She even tried to continue shopping with the baby in her pant leg. But obviously, the authorities were called and she was taken away. Seriously, what’s wrong with people?
#14 Call for Help
Last summer, we had a resident call our leasing office because he hadn’t heard his upstairs neighbor in a while. I went knocking on her door and could hear her TV, but no answer to my knocking. I opened the door and the smell hit me instantly. I turned around and told my manager that her body was there. He didn't believe me so we called the police.
The second he stepped in he went, "Yup, she’s gone." The poor woman was gone for over three weeks. The next day I went to her apartment to take photos and you could see the outline of her body on the carpet. All around you could also see red on the walls as if she was coughing. And the way her arm "shadow" was on the carpet, it looked as if she was trying to reach the phone to call for help.
#15 Paralyzing Himself
I work in a prison and this one time, we had an inmate jump up and land down, completely paralyzing himself. Unfortunately, stuff like that among inmates happens more than you think. However, it was so quick and unexpected, there was nothing the officers could do to stop it. The video footage of it is sickening.
#16 Sense of Urgency
Former prison nurse. I think pretty much all medical professionals are desensitized to whatever field they work in, but prison is a different animal entirely because inmates have nothing but time to come up with some truly wacky things. That and you have to wait for the officers to pop the cell and secure the inmate before you can even think of going in, so you sort of lose your constant sense of urgency after a while.
#17 Back in Time
Former insurance investigator here. The most unsettling arson case I worked on was at the Masonic Temple in the Historic Black Business District in downtown Birmingham, AL. This beautiful eight-storey renaissance-revival style building was constructed in the 1920s and included a massive marble lobby, and a grand ballroom. It also housed numerous black-owned businesses, like tailors, dressmakers, attorneys, doctors, dentists, the NAACP, etc. After integration, the businesses closed or moved, resulting in the building becoming vacant (with the exception of the still-functioning Masons).
Even though the building was heavily secured and guarded by a single security officer, it was still breached by squatters who managed to cause a fire on the third floor. That's where I came in. My job was to determine the source, cause, and extent of the fire damage. That meant exploring the entire building.
The grand ballroom took up the entire second floor, and luckily had no damage, so I just admired the exquisite millwork and decor. The third floor housed mostly professional offices. The fourth floor became darker. I used a flashlight to advance down the gloomy hallways and inspect every room. I found the NAACP office that was literally frozen in time -- file cabinets and all.
As I was moving down the second hallway, my eyes fixated on a large, looming structure in the far corner. I slowly made my way closer, nervous about what I would find. Finally, I was close enough to discover a coffin. An old, Dracula-style coffin, standing up at the end of the hall. Obviously, I didn't dare touch it.
As I ascended, each floor proved darker and gloomier than the one before, even though each floor had the same amount of windows. The further up I moved, the more coffins I found. In the middle of offices, in closets, blocking doors from the inside. It made no sense, until I got to the top floor. There, I found only two businesses: a coffin company, and the Order of the Eastern Star. I had an overwhelming feeling that I absolutely should not be there, especially not snooping around the OES lodge.
The only area I hadn't inspected was the basement and I wasn't sure my nerves were up to it. I discovered a full fallout shelter down there: hundreds of drums of community shelter supplies. Water, food, medical supplies, radiation detectors, everything . The whole building was a massive time capsule, and I felt like I went back in time just being there.
#18 In the Bathroom
I was working midnights in a neighborhood with a high violent crime rate, and we got sent to a dispute at a pub. This wasn't just any pub, we always referred to it as the Star Wars cantina because it was always nuts in there. I was working with a female that night. We made our way through, systematically booting people out, and got to the bathrooms.
I opened the door to the men's room and it was empty. My female partner went to open the women's bathroom door, but it was locked. She knocked on the door and a female said, "I'll be out in a minute." We advised her that the place was closing. After a couple of minutes, we grew impatient. My partner knocked again and the female agreed to open it.
When she came out, we asked what took so long. She didn’t provide any substance in her answers. She was wearing tight yoga pants and we noticed that she had a large bulge in the back of her pants. We believed she was either using substances and shoved the rest in her pants or that it was something dangerous. When we questioned her about it, she was very evasive and wouldn’t answer us.
My partner began to search her. As she pulled back the woman’s pants and shone her flashlight, my partner screamed. This chick had given birth and continued to stay at the pub. When the ambulance arrived, they went back into the bathroom with the woman and pulled the rest of the baby out. I've seen some crazy things in my career, but that one always stands out the most.
#19 Damaged Face
Paramedic here. I went on a county call where an inmate had been attacked. The prison didn’t want to pay for medical (I assume) so they released him onto the street where passersby called EMS. Anywho, the dude had Lefort one two and three. That's right, all the Leforts. He refused to say who did it and he’s probably still eating all of his meals through a straw.
#20 Smell of Fumes
I'm a paramedic. I responded to a house after police did a welfare check and requested EMS. We pretty much knew what the outcome was already. We showed up and they took us to this elderly lady's bedroom and we determined she had passed. I noticed and didn't think much of it at first, but she had a red color to her skin that isn't typical for a deceased body to have.
While we were waiting for the coroner to show up and pronounce her, her adult son made a comment about the fume-y smell and that he was going to open some doors and windows. We decided to have the fire department come over and check the house with their gas monitor. While the other paramedic and I were waiting outside by the garage that the son had opened up, I noticed a weird burn mark above the car's exhaust that just didn't sit right with me.
I then noticed the floor had a black, dusty look and figured out it was soot. That's when things started to click about what may have actually happened. So we checked her car. The ignition was on and the battery was shot. She didn't get out much, but her son went out for dinner with her a few days before and that was the last time anyone had heard from her.
No foul play was suspected. The lady came home, forgot to shut her car off, went to bed and passed away from carbon monoxide poisoning during the night. The son was handling things well up until we made that discovery. After figuring out she passed from an accident liked this, he became a bit shook up and understandably so.
#21 Broke Her Fall
My mom fell through floor joists while renovating and broke her fall with her face. Her cheeks, nose, eye sockets and sinus were all injured. Luckily, she got immediate surgery by a specialist who had just spent three years in Northern Ireland (in 1978) and patched her up good. Then, off she went. 40 years later, though, and she was persistently sick and her face was swelling. She even had uncontrolled diabetes despite all attempts to control it with diet and medication. She'd always had an intensely sensitive and itchy forehead and constant postnasal drip, but didn't think anything of it.
#22 Best Nurse
I personally know a lady who’s a higher up and got an award for being the best head nurse in the country (she’s a VA nurse). I've heard (I work with her husband, he's a marine and army vet) through her husband that she catches bad things happening all the time and struggles to put a stop to them. She protects so many vets, it's amazing.
#23 Rinse and Repeat
I never worked with this inmate directly, but when I was working in the prison system, this one inmate tried to hurt himself all the time. The medical staff was doing their best from what I understand. The story I was told was that the guy wanted pain meds so badly, he intentionally gave himself a hernia that required surgical repair. He went in for the surgery and came back with pain meds.
When the prescription was finished, he reopened his wound. Naturally, he went back for surgical repair and returned with more meds. Rinse and repeat; eventually he hurt himself enough times that no surgeon would fix him. So, he’s in the infirmary. I was told you could smell him from the other side of the building. Poor guy.
#24 Good Friend to Me
This didn’t happen on the job or anything, but it still stuck with me. Our next-door neighbour was a poor guy and I took him to the hospital when he was having a heart attack. He later passed away from complications. It was known that he had two daughters but we couldn’t trace them for the funeral. No one picked him up from the crematorium, so I went and got him and kept a few things from the house in case the daughters ever showed up and wanted something. They never did. I stayed next door for years. He was a good friend to me and I thought I’d do right by him. It’s a shame he was alone.
#25 Missing Person
When I was on patrol, I got a call to check the welfare of a guy whose neighbour hadn't seen him in a couple of years. We rolled up and the windows were black with mold and flies. The car was parked in the garage and there were no signs of forced entry. We breached the door and found the guy wrapped up in a phone cord beside a toppled chair in his dining room. He was barely recognizable as a human aside from his shape and clothes.
The smell of him mingled with the inches of stagnant water in his basement from burst pipes and all the dead flies and mold. I'll never forget it. We also found two bags of groceries neatly packed on the floor in his kitchen. The house was very tidy as well. There were no witnesses and he was estranged from his family. There was clearly a cat, but we never found its remains.
The medical records indicated he had a heart condition. My theory is he was having a heart attack and tried to call 911 but never got to make the call. Perhaps the creepiest part? His mailbox was overflowing with past due bills and cancelled utility notices. The last one was a couple of months old and it still took someone that long to call.
#26 Few Times a Year
I work for the utility company and apparently, finding passed-on residents is something that happens a few times a year for our techs. Most of the time, they'll have been gone for only a short while but occasionally they find one that's been gone a lot longer. In 2013, they happened to find one that had been gone for ten years. The utility company in one of the other cities around here found one resident who had been gone for six years.
#27 So Much Chaos
My neighbor showed me an ER intake from San Quentin. To get out of prison, he rammed two pens into himself. He managed to get them quite far into himself. Hospitals get all those guys all the time and calling them heroes isn't even close to enough. They deal with so much chaos and weirdness, especially right now.
#28 True Sociopath
I have a case that I was tangentially involved with. There was this smart Chinese student coming to America for school on an engineering scholarship I believe. He was dating a girl during undergrad, but they broke up so he could go to grad school at an ivy league. She started talking to someone else a while after they broke up and he caught wind of it. He bought some tools online and the next day, he air-shipped them to his apartment.
He then drove back to where his ex lived and staked out her house, taking meticulous notes about the comings and goings, when his ex was home, when her roommate was home, etc. He went and knocked on the door when just the roommate was home, brandished one of the tools he bought and negotiated his way in. He bound and gagged to roommate and waited for his ex to get back. When she finally got back, he forced her to sit in a chair where he tied her up and taped over her mouth. He then just attacked his ex.
To me, the creepy part is the level of planning that he did. I can understand a crime of passion, but this was so dispassionate. To have enough time to order your stuff online and have them delivered, then drive hours to the destination and plan it out… that’s a lot. Plus, at no point did he get the feeling that he shouldn't follow through with this act. To me, that's the sign of a true sociopath.
#29 Mole People
Insurance adjuster here. I'm not a detective, but I do lots of investigations. The ones that aren't fraudulent sometimes just turn out to be really weird. The winner for me hands down is the man who claimed he was terrorized by mole people. We had a laugh about the adjuster potentially trying to pad their claims count because this man filed 60 claims in about seven months. The average is one a year for most policies. After talking with this gentleman, I no longer had doubts.
My in-person interview was for about two hours. I had more than enough in the first five minutes and was trying to leave for most of it, but he kept blocking the door or directing me to the wrong way to keep the mole people off my scent. It was kind of sweet in a twisted way; he genuinely thought the mole people would come after me if I didn't follow his rules.
He directed me to park ye olde company car about a mile away on a concrete parking flat he had made. We couldn't walk on the dirt road there; the mole people constantly changed where it went. The claims he filed were all in similar veins. The mole people moved his car every night with magnets and damaged the suspension and the noise kept our insured awake. They'd take his hubcaps and put them back before they thought he would notice, but he noticed and they were covered in scratches from being pulled through the dirt.
They would also use long thin sticks from underground to siphon gas or wiper fluid or oil, but never more than a few drops. And for every one of these things, he would file a claim. which would inevitably be well below his deductible. We decided there was no fraudulent activity, but a call to adult protective services was merited.
#30 Hunting Turtles
A buddy of mine worked on a famous case. He said there was this guy who liked to hunt turtles on a pond on his property. He’d see a turtle and pop it two times. He also had a hunting dog that would go fetch the turtles so he could make soup with them. One day, the dog went out and got the turtle, but an arm popped up. The “turtle” he hit was the back of the man’s head who was floating in the pond.
The guy who fell into the pond might have had an accident or car trouble and slipped in the clay and hit the water at night the day after Christmas. The cops rule it a drowning. The body had water in his lungs. There was a website that the parents had that said that the guy hunting the turtles was responsible and dumped him in the pond.
#31 Dumping Phones
I’m a forensic computer examiner for my local sheriff's department. I work closely with detectives and do lots of investigative work. Despite what the title suggests, a lot of my work is actually based on cell phone dumps. I once got a request from a detective to dump a guy’s phone because he was attempting to sell our county jumpsuits. So, I dumped his phone’s data into a report for the detective to go through.
The problem was, there was way more on the phone that what we had bargained for. Turns out, the guy was really into inappropriate material. To the point that he had thousands of images on the device. I called the detective up and informed him that he was going to need another warrant to cover the photos for the device. So he did and began creating a case against the guy.
Several days later, it was time for the guy's preliminary hearing for the county jumpsuit sales. He left the courthouse after the hearing and was immediately re-arrested for the violations. He had a backpack on him with three more phones in it. I was given said phones to dump for the new case. He had the same amount of pictures on all three devices as on the first one.
#32 Lock the Door
I've heard this one many times from a detective’s friend as it's the most told story. They were undercover in a mob and gathered enough evidence to search a house the guys used a lot. The search led them to a basement filled with water halfway up the stairs. They shone flashlights and didn't see anything at first, then saw something glinting in the water. They got their lights and went back down and it turns out the guys had two crocodiles in there. When someone angered them, they put them in the basement and locked the door.
#33 My Hero
I was a young cop at this time. It was a fire and I was primary on it with another guy. Fire scenes usually consist of making sure all residents are out of the building, taking down the information of all people so that you can account for residents, blocking off streets so the firemen can work, etc. FD was doing their thing and we were canvassing all of the people at scene to see who was a resident of the building and also for possible witnesses.
One thing they always harped on in the academy is that arsonists will return to the scene. So, I saw this guy on the perimeter, pacing back and forth for a while. I made my way over to him and started up a conversation. I found out he used to be a resident of the second-floor apartment and the landlord recently kicked him out. It was a huge red flag, so I immediately handed him off to detectives.
He ended up being the guy who set the fire. After we handled our business, we were just standing across the street watching FD do their job. A huge blast on the third floor blew a firefighter out of the top floor window, and we immediately heard his co-workers screaming. I immediately called for an ambulance. I help them wheel the stretcher over to the fireman.
He ended up hitting a lower roof on the way out the window that ultimately caused his passing by internal injuries. After the fire was put out, we responded to the hospital. I'll never forget the look on the faces of the firemen who were sitting at his bedside after he was pronounced, all covered in soot from the fire. I want to say it was Foo Fighters’ "My Hero,” but some song came on the radio when I was driving home and it turned my world upside down.
#34 Burning Passion
I've seen stories from a couple of different artists out there who hate commissioning portraits like that with a burning passion. They just kind of fell into it and want nothing to do with it, but the money is so much better than anything else they could be doing. At the end of the day, I kind of feel bad for them.
#35 An Accident
Detective here, attached to a coastal town with a fishing wharf. I started work one day when we got a call from the water police who have responded to an abandoned boat floating off the coast. They have towed it into the bay where they requested our assistance and they would advise us further upon our arrival.
We headed down, thinking someone had stolen the boat or something else routine. When we get there, we were told that no one went further than the entrance before it was sealed off as a crime scene. We had a quick look below the deck and saw why. Three people, clearly gone. One was slumped over the wheel, one was on the floor, and the other in a chair. There was no struggle, no injuries and nothing out of place.
It was completely silent other than the water on the hull and the fenders squeaking against the police launch. Turned out to be an accident. Lack of upkeep on the very old engine meant fumes leaked in and the three of them were poisoned. At that point, the engine just ran until the diesel was completely gone.
#36 Hot Shower
My uncle was a cop. They got a call to a house because the neighbors had called the police and told them there was a strong odor coming from the apartment next door. They got a little worried as this was an older woman who only really left her home for essentials. They knocked on her door and she wouldn’t answer.
Basically, the police got there and after many times knocking and calling, there was no answer. So they had the landlord unlock her door. They weren’t necessarily thinking she had passed away initially. They got inside and the odor was just awful. What happened was the woman was taking a shower, she went to adjust the knob and slipped.
She hit her head on the tap and somehow in the fall, managed to turn the heat up way too much. Essentially, she passed out and then passed away. The hot shower was running on her for about a day and a half. The tenants said that they were wondering why there was very limited hot water in the small apartment, which was downtown above a pub.
#37 Collecting Parts
My father used to work as a detective back in the day. Naturally, me and my siblings always pestered him for stories. He once told us briefly about a case where a criminal would take a different part of each body. He had collected enough to make some sort of body of his own. His motive was that he wanted someone to play with.
#38 Fun Lecture
I’m a doctor who had a few "fun" forensics lectures back in med school. Forensics got called to a home after a few days and the police were called because of the smell. You probably already know where this is going. They arrived and found a guy under suspicious circumstances. The guy (around 40) was found in the bathtub, but not drowned.
Eventually, they found out that he went out partying and decided that he wanted to take a bath. Substances and the hot water must've made him sleepy, because he only turned on the hot water knob, passed out, and then left the water running. The worst part? They took a picture and that's the one they used in our lecture. Fun.
#39 Did Not Exist
The suspect we had simply did not exist. Like, I'm serious. We discovered that this guy just couldn't have been a real person. The crime was already committed but the identity was fabricated from the ground up or something. No matter what we did, we could not prove the man who committed the crime was at all real.
#40 Abandoned House
A house two blocks down the street looked abandoned from the time we moved in. We were remodeling our house at the time and the city inspector told us the story. They believed the house was abandoned and was going into the house to claim it. To do that, due to local law, they needed a fireman, policeman, a city inspector, and the locksmith because the front door was locked.
Ultimately, the city inspector said the house was a complete hoarder’s house. They could hardly move anywhere. The basement was flooded with about four feet of water. Once they started to drain out the water, they found a nasty stain on the roof of the basement. They decided to move everything to actually get to the room. They ended up finding a pile of bones. It was estimated that the owner had passed away about five years prior. The crazy thing is, they were about to tear the whole house down with the body inside because it was so full of stuff.
#41 Missing Car
A former co-worker of mine told me that she and her girlfriend had just moved into an apartment in a bad part of town. They were saving up to find a better place but they needed somewhere fast. This was about a year before I met her. They only had one car and sometimes I would give her a ride home from work since it wasn't too far out of my way. One day, she invited me in to pay me back for driving her.
After a couple of drinks, she asked, "Did I ever tell you about my neighbor?" When they first moved in, their neighbor was a mid-30s white guy. The neighborhood was majority black. He was friendly and would always say hello to my co-worker and chat about music or TV shows. He used to have parties all the time and would invite people from the complex. One night, he was having a party and invited my co-worker and her girlfriend over, but they both had to wake up early the next day so they declined.
When they got up the next day, his car was gone. They went about their business and when they got back home, his car was still gone. They didn't see him for a week or two and eventually asked someone else from the complex who said they thought he moved out. A few months later, they got a knock on their door from the apartment manager who asked if they saw him.
They said no and told him they had heard he moved out. Roughly six months after the last time anyone saw him, they started to notice a smell in the complex. They thought that maybe a dog or cat had passed in the apartment. So the managers came out with a key and went in only to find this guy’s body. They determined the cause to be blunt force trauma. They think he might have been some kind of gang activity. They never found the car or the people who did it.
#42 Crude Logbooks
My brother, not me. A schizophrenic woman reported being watched by ghosts at the abandoned funeral home. When investigating, someone was actually watching the people in her building and keeping crude logbooks of their coming and goings and left some of them in the place. My brother's theory was that they were almost discovered and fled. I have no idea what was being planned but that whole thing sounded creepy to me.
#43 Lights Still On
My grandfather was found a few years back. It was incredibly sad. What made it even creepier was the fact he lived in a trailer way out in the middle of a field. We all went there after a huge storm. So, we were in the middle of this huge field next to nothing; pure blackness around us and the wind blowing nonstop. The door just swung back and forth all night while we were there. His lights were still on. The mattress had been pulled by one of the corners and was hanging sideways. And then he was clutching a jacket to his chest. He had been gone for two weeks and no one knew.
#44 Tumblr Submissions
My sister is an artist and she started commissioning adult material when she was in her teens. She started out doing pet portraits, then got a couple of offers from people on Tumblr that she couldn't refuse. That being said, that's how she started doing very mature material art commissions at the tender age of 15.
#45 Horrifying Video
Medic here. I had a prison inmate who jumped off a table repeatedly onto his head, ending his life. The video was horrifying. He kept going over and over, even after appearing to have hurt his neck. It looked like a horror movie and no one was sure what happened. He had no known history of mental illness and no previous attempts.
#46 That Question
I’m not a police officer myself, but I have a friend who is. I’ve heard from him that finding people in their homes after they’ve passed away is surprisingly (and sadly) common. My friend in question definitely has stories in response to the standard "Have you seen a dead body yet?" question that all cops’ friends ask.
#47 Certain Kind of Person
My brother-in-law was a prison guard for a while. For him, it was all about money and perks; raising a young family he wanted the stability of a job with good pay; benefits and possibility of pay rise the longer you worked there. It destroyed him mentally for a while and he’s now much happier being paid less to fit carpets. It takes a certain kind of person to withstand it for sure.
#48 Retired Cop
I used to work with a retired LAPD beat cop of 30 years in his retirement fun money gig working on an ambulance. He told me this story that sent chills down my spine. He pulled over this Sedan for expired tags and neither the driver or passenger had any paperwork. They were driving illegally and both acting shady, so he called for backup, detained them, and searched the car.
He found two young teenage girls in the trunk. There were tons of devices obviously meant to hurt them. He called in the homicide detectives and the cavalry comes. The two guys are hauled away to jail, and his day wrapped up after all the normal procedures and paperwork were filed. He said that was the last he ever heard of that case. Nothing. No subpoenas. No testimony to a grand jury. No interviews for the homicide detectives. No stories in the paper. Nothing .
He said that the whole thing didn’t take place in his normal area. He also didn't know the other police officers and detectives that showed up, so that it's possible the case just got lost in the enormity of the LA justice system. However, he has always wondered if there wasn't some shady stuff going on with that.
#49 A Weird One
The vice manager who was my mom’s manager at work got busted after his wife found inappropriate material on his computer. The detectives came in and cleaned out his office and took his work computer. But, they also found a filing cabinet filled to the brim with hentai and cartoon animal stuff. No one ever looked and he always kept it locked away in a cupboard, but that was a weird one.
#50 Crisp Bill
I had a few forensics lectures back in med school. One was an old woman they found at home. They found her on the floor, in her pajamas with the TV still on. It was almost ruled it a natural cause, but the doctor involved thought it was a bit weird how she was positioned. They called forensics and the police, which launched an investigation. Long story short — she was taken out by a "mercenary.” The mercenary? Her addicted neighbor, who did it for a crisp $20 bill. I still don't know why you'd hurt someone for twenty bucks, but yup. It wasn't even the bad part of town.
