Law enforcement, emergency medical technicians, firefighters, and other first responders are on the frontline when emergencies happen. They're trained to handle a wide variety of trying scenarios and to keep calm while doing it. While the vast majority of these emergency situations are bound by the natural laws of our universe (even if the situations are crazy and weird), there are some cases that simply defy explanation, situations that made men and women who are normally cool under pressure stop and wonder, even if for only a moment, that something supernatural or paranormal was going on.
These true and weird stories, shared by Redditors in the law enforcement and emergency response fields, all share a supernatural element that will leave you searching for an explanation when there may not really be one to be found. Some are strange, some are whimsical, and some will have you sleeping with the lights on and one eye open.
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#25 The Sun-Struck Girl
I was driving along and found a girl just standing in the middle of the road. My initial thought was to just to tell her to pay attention, but it was clear that while the lights were on, nobody was home. During my whole time with her, she never uttered a word, which left me in a weird situation. She had done nothing, clearly needed help, but, medically, nothing seemed wrong.
As I was pondering what on earth I should do, the girl suddenly starts spinning. Now, spinning is not illegal and I'm starting to think this girl is one of those protesters that wind up police (I've dealt with troll station before), so I think, crack on, spin to your heart's content.
Then she loses her balance and falls, whacking her head on the side of the police car! Great. So I call an ambulance, but she seems fine. Still not talking, but she is looking up at the sky. It's a nice day so, fine, enjoy the sun.
I do some writing and look back at her now bright red face and watering eyes and realize she is trying to damage her retinas by forcing herself to look directly at the sun. That's a new one for me, so now I'm holding a book or something above her to shield her eyes... the ambulance finally arrives and we get to the hospital and now she has forgotten how to walk. Now I'm 99% sure she is a wind-up merchant, but I get her a wheelchair. In the wheelchair, she strikes up an "I'm a little teapot pose" and keeps this up for the next hour with zero movement, just frozen with her arms out. So I now have 3 potential situations:
1. She is pretending to be frozen in time.
2. She is suffering from a mental health issue.
3. She has been possessed.
By now I'm convinced it's the latter, but I section her and leave her with professionals. A week later, I call the hospital and they tell me she is still frozen.
#24 Footprints
Years ago, my uncle told us about a woman who would call the police station just about every night claiming that "fairies or elves" were breaking into her house and stealing her food. As is custom, every time she called, they send a unit to check on her (my uncle gets it about 2-3 times per week). Every night they stop by her house and reassure her that no one has broken in and calm her down.
One night when he gets to the house, she has poured powdered sugar all over the floor to "record their tracks" and my uncle says he literally has to do a double take. All over the floor of her kitchen are these little tracks, like nothing he's seen before. His partner starts taking photos and trying to figure it out. A few other officers come in, as most of them had gotten the call to her house too, wanting to see the tracks. Ten police officers all completely baffled as to what these weird little prints are...
Turns out a possum had babies and they were sneaking into her kitchen for warmth or food. The prints looked so foreign because most of the time baby possums are carried by their mother and not running around. Seven baby possums are rounded up and released in a less residential area.
#23 The Girl in the Park
My brother is a deputy and, at the time, I worked as an emergency medical technician (EMT) for a few small towns in northeast Colorado. I frequently went on ride alongs with him while waiting for 911 calls to come in.
This took place in Amherst, Colorado. The town is very small, with a population of 50 people, a church, some houses, a grain tower, and a park. It was around 3 in the morning and we were about to call it a night.
As we were making our last check on Amherst, we noticed movement at the park, but couldn’t tell exactly what was going on because it was pitch black. We drove up and stopped alongside the dirt road, flipped on the spotlight, and, as we moved the light around the park, it finally settled on the back of a young girl (maybe 13 years old) sitting on a swing with her back facing us.
We left the spotlight on her though she wasn’t moving; she just sat there facing away from us looking down at the ground. Needless to say, it was a very creepy situation. We both looked at one another with that face you would make when something is out of the ordinary. I quickly suggested that we should call her over using the PA system. He agreed.
As we looked back over, she was gone. I mean, no signs of anyone, anywhere. The park was in a wide open area and she couldn’t have gotten out of sight in the amount of time that we had our exchange of words. I remember asking, “Should we get out and look for her?” I thought maybe she hid behind one of the park toys or something. My brother just looked at me and said, “Heck to the no,” and drove away. It still creeps me out to this day.
#22 Firefighters from Beyond the Grave
I'm a police officer and was working the desk from 3-11 p.m. One day when the fire alarm signal goes off (many, many years ago, the police department offered alarm monitoring service, and we still had 10-12 places that were hardwired and it would require pulling apart a lot of equipment to disconnect the system, so we just kept it going). First shift dispatch is already punched in, so she took it.
I’m headed out the door to the fire department when 911 rings from the same address. I answer it. No one on the other end, so I assumed they barely got to call before passing out. I bolt out the back door, hop in a squad car, radio in the 911 call on channel three that both police/fire can hear, and that I’m going directly to the house.
I arrive just as another unit shows up. No signs of smoke... or anything for that matter.
The older woman comes walking up the street pushing a wheelchair with an elderly lady (her mother). They live there and just went out for an early evening stroll before dinner.
I tell them what we have going on. She said nobody else lives there and as far as the elderly lady can remember the alarm was disconnected from the house years ago during some renovations. They don’t have any alarm system either, just a couple of smoke/fire detectors.
We do a walk around of the house, get to the back door off the kitchen, and you can clearly see and smell gas.
We turned off the gas at the main, set up some fans to air it out, and find a cracked gas line going to the oven. The daughter said she spilled some coffee she was making for their walk and had to move the oven a few inches to clean, probably broke the line pushing the oven back in. Nothing else in the house is disturbed and both phones are on the hook.
The fire chief shows up about 15 minutes into the call. He goes over to the two ladies and gives them both a hug, nearly in tears.
Turns out the elderly lady in the wheelchair was the widow of the former fire chief for our department 60+ years ago. Her daughter's husband passed away a few years back and he was also a member of the fire department.
I never believed in ghosts or spirits, but that call made me think maybe people who spend their lives doing good are allowed by some power to look over their loved ones every so often.
#21 The Doll Shed
A crazy old woman called because she heard someone repeatedly banging on her front door and garage door. It's after midnight and the house is in the middle of the woods with nothing around for miles. I talk to the lady and she insists I check her large shed out back. So I opened the shed door and peeked in with my flashlight, and find the entire shed is filled with creepy, large homemade dolls. They're each probably like 2-3 feet tall and sitting upright facing the door. The hair on my neck went up for a minute. I didn't truly believe that something supernatural was going on, but dolls are just really creepy.
#20 The Guardian Angel
My dad went to a call where a father had gone crazy and decided to end the life of his family. He ended the life of his wife and was looking around trying to find his 5-year-old son next. The boy had run outside and was trying to hide on the side of the house behind the trash cans. The father eventually found him and point blank emptied nearly a full magazine at the boy.
When my dad arrived, they found the boy in shock, hiding right where his dad found him, not a wound on his body. There were bullet holes in the side of the house all around the boy. When they finally got to question him about it, they asked him what happened when his dad found him on the side of the yard. The boy replied, "The angel was in front of me with a shield, and he saved me. He pushed the gun away from me."
#19 The Hidden Room on Fire
A captain on my shift I once knew was on the first-due engine company that was dispatched to a residential fire alarm in the middle of the night. Our dispatch protocols require us to send the first-due unit emergency to a fire alarm, while the second-due engine and ladder company respond to routine. We go to tons of fire alarms and 99% of the time they are caused by a faulty system or burnt food, so we usually don't get too worked up over them.
Anyways, as they approach the neighborhood they see the orange glow in the distance, and when they get on scene they find a ~4,000 square-foot house with heavy fire showing on the rear and it had already broken through the roof. The call was then upgraded to a working structure fire and more units were dispatched to assist. The captain of the first-due stayed on the outside the whole time (he was incident commander until the first battalion chief arrived on scene and took over, and then he assumed the safety role). So, he's on the outside and in radio contact with crews that are inside fighting the fire.
After the bulk of the fire had been extinguished and as operations were winding down, the captain sees smoke inside a second-story window and asks crews inside to go inside the room on the corner to make sure the fire hadn't spread to the other side of the house. The crews search for a few minutes and radio back, "There's no room there, sir." The captain is a bit confused, as he is staring at what is clearly a window that is attached to a room of some sort. He relays detailed instructions of where the room should be to the crews inside, and they again advise that they can't find anything.
Incredulous, the captain asks the Incident Commander for permission to go inside of the structure so he can show the interior crews exactly where the room in question is. His request is granted, and he goes inside, walks up the staircase, and walks towards the corner in question. There's no room there. Just a hallway with a corner. No doorway, no window, no room. Knowing that there has to be something behind the wall, they breach the drywall and crawl through to find a child's bedroom. The bedroom had a dresser, a desk, and a perfectly made bed that looked as if it hadn't been disturbed in years. For whatever reason, the owners of the home decided to wall off the bedroom and leave it just as it was, untouched and unaccessible. The captain said it was one of the strangest and eeriest things he had seen in a while.
#18 Raising the Dead
My partner and I were dispatched to a welfare check. It was an elderly guy, nobody had seen him in a few days, mail overflowing the mailbox, missed a doctor's appointment, his car hasn't moved, etc. We both know we are about to find a body.
We arrive on the scene and can't get anyone to the door, look through the window, and, sure enough, we can see his foot on the floor in the living room. My partner is a corporal and pulls rank and makes me go first.
The door is unlocked and, as soon as we open it, we smell a mostly fresh dead body. Almost relieved, we both enter and he tells me to check vitals on the dead guy. He is obviously dead, with lividity, dried feces on him, and dried saliva around his mouth. So I go to stand over him and see if I can get a pulse, at which point he takes a deep breath, rolls over, and asks why we are in his house.
My partner and I both start screaming and cursing as we both run out of the house. We called an ambulance after we calmed down and they transported him. They said they couldn't get a blood pressure reading or pulse on him. I think he died a week later in the hospital. I still get jokes about raising the dead.
#17 Ghosts in the Asylum
I'm a second generation firefighter. My father spent the latter days of his career as a fire safety director at a massive mental asylum. Our state version of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has to come and do inspections at all facilities. His facility was no exception, so the Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors make their way to an abandoned part of the facility that used to house the criminally insane. The absolute worst of the worst. Serial killers, abusers, cannibals, etc. My father left them with keys and a flashlight because the electricity didn't work.
The inspectors were radioing back to my father that they kept hearing talking and footsteps, which was impossible. Not even squatters could move around because each section is isolated with locked doors to prevent escape. Eventually, the inspectors give up and actually flee without finishing. My dad decides to stick around and check the alarm boxes they didn't. As he is checking one of the alarms, he feels as if someone is watching him from down the hall. As he looks, a shadow forms with a head, shoulders, and torso, but no legs and just two holes where there should be eyes. My dad noped out of there.
Since the hospital has shut down, it has been on Ghost Adventures, Ghost Hunters, and a myriad of other shows and movies. My dad has been in some of them. Jason from Ghost Hunters called it the scariest place he's ever investigated!
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#16 The Nice Woman
I’m a detective and spent some time as an expert on romance crimes and crimes against children. It was the best/worst assignment I’ve had. One case I had came in at midnight. A young woman with a toddler comes into one of the precincts to report her ex-boyfriend romantically abused her during a custody argument. Long story short: it was legit and was one of the most violent and sadistic cases I’ve ever had, so I’ll spare the gruesome details. I still have no idea how this woman made her own way to a precinct with a toddler.
Part of the investigation requires me to talk to the toddler (the victim said the toddler was present for everything). I’m a qualified Child Forensic Interviewer as well. During the interview, the toddler recalls their father becoming angry and hitting the mom. Then, the toddler said that the “nice woman” showed up and she couldn’t see past the nice woman. The Nice Woman held her and told her that they were both going to be safe and sang her a song in a different language. The toddler said the Nice Woman went over to the front door and knocked. Then, the Nice Woman helped them and their mom to the car before flying away.
In the victim’s interview, she said that her ex-boyfriend had a weapon to her throat and put it to the skin to cut her, but he got distracted for some reason and ran out of the apartment. She had no explanation why.
The suspect was caught about 8 hours later. He confessed to absolutely everything. When I asked him about the weapon to the throat, he said this:
“I swear to god I was going to cut her. But I thought I heard a knock at the door and thought it was the police. Once I saw it was clear, I ran outside.”
He is now serving life in prison, and the mom and toddler are safe and doing well. I’d love to know more about the Nice Woman.
#15 It's Them
Dispatch sent me to a call in a mountain area late one night. Dispatch said the caller reported several people holding a baby above their heads and chanting while standing on her property. The call sounded ridiculous and I smirked as dispatch gave the details. I arrived at the proper address after driving about 20 minutes along a mountain road. There is not much else up here, and it was extremely quiet. No one walks around out here, and there aren't very many cars driving this late. I walked along a gated driveway, through a lightly wooded area. I found the caller's house, with two dim lights near the front door. The house was surrounded on three sides by heavy woods. I felt a little uneasy just looking at the house.
I knocked on the front door of the house while standing on a large patio. I heard something move to my left, which startled me because it was close. It sounded like a person, something big. I looked to the left and used my flashlight to light up the patio, but I didn't see anyone.
I continued to knock. I could hear two voices inside the house. I clearly heard a male and a female. This made me feel a little better. I thought I heard someone on the patio, but it must have been someone inside.
The female eventually opened the door. She was terrified, almost crying. She asked me to come inside and to close the door. She led me to the living room, where I saw a very cheap security monitor, almost like a baby monitor camera setup, with audio and video playing. The camera setup only provided a live feed. The camera was positioned to view the front door and patio area where I was just standing. The audio was silent as I watched the monitor for a few seconds.
The woman began to explain when I interrupted and asked where the male was inside the house (I heard his voice). She looked confused and said she was here alone. I was surprised because I knew for a fact I had heard a male's voice when I knocked. I asked her several times, and initially thought she was lying to me. My partner checked the house and did not find anyone.
The woman said she was reading while sitting on the couch when she heard something over the security camera. She looked at the display and saw two people on the patio, standing at the front door. She heard knocking at the door and called the police. I looked at the monitor and, although it was low quality, I could see the patio and front door area with decent clarity. As the woman continued to explain, the audio on the monitor went from quiet to extremely loud. We all stopped talking. The caller was shaking. I looked at the monitor but didn't see anyone. Loud audio continued to blast from the speakers. The audio sounded like wind, but it was not windy that night. I asked the woman, "What is that?" and she said, "It's them." I looked at my partner, who was nervous.
The woman gives me her cell phone, stating she took pictures of the monitor, showing the two people on her patio. I looked through several low-quality pictures and didn't see anything. I continue to scroll and, sure enough, I see what looks like two tall figures standing at the door. One of the figures is holding something. The figures looked strange, all dark and featureless, in contrast to the video I saw on the monitor.
I was in disbelief, and thought, oh my God, she's telling the truth.
I continued to scroll and saw one figure holding something up over its head. Another picture showed the item at the base of the door with both figures standing near it. I tried to reason, to explain what could have caused these images, but it was pretty apparent that there had been two subjects on her patio.
We check outside, walking the property to the tree line. I mention the movement on the patio and the male's voice from inside the house. My partner asks me to stop talking about it.
We finish checking and return to speak with the caller. She says she will be driving into town and staying at a hotel because she is too scared to stay here tonight.
We walk along the driveway back to our cars. My partner jumps into the patrol car and takes off. I laughed, but I felt really uneasy standing there in the dark. I left shortly afterward.
#14 The Woman in White
I know an old detective who has lots of stories. In his younger days, two patrol officers found a woman in white wandering barefoot around a graveyard past midnight. They asked her what she was doing and she said she was lost, so they brought her back to the station.
At the station, this detective was on duty with his partner, who handled the woman’s case. His partner took down her details and let her go.
The detective I know never saw her face, only his partner did, but he remembers seeing her back as she walked out of the station and for some reason she was tip-toeing as she left.
His partner ran her ID or name through the system after she left... apparently, she was supposed to be dead.
#13 The Little Girl in the Yellow Dress Comes at 3 AM
I'm an intensive care unit nurse. We had a patient that was dying. No family. Around 3 AM, the guy started crying and asking why the little girl in the yellow dress was in the hospital. We assured him there was no little girl. He cried even more, saying, "Yes, there is she is at the foot of the bed!"
I kid you not, the man passed in the next few minutes. my pod partner and I blamed the hallucination on the meds we were giving him to keep him comfortable.
The next night a new patient was in the room. She’s completely alert and oriented. At about 3 AM, she hit her call light. She wanted to know why the little girl in the yellow dress was outside her room. We told her it was just her imagination from being in a strange place. Not five minutes later, the guy in the next room went into full cardiac arrest and, unfortunately, we couldn't save him.
Of course, we absolutely freaked. Two different nights. Two different patients see the same thing. All followed by death.
#12 The Spinning Hanger
We got a call for a sudden death. It was a sad call. A foster parent found their foster child no longer alive in a closet. We arrived on scene, found the foster parent sobbing on the main floor, and told us the kid was upstairs. The paramedics had already come and gone, pronouncing the youth deceased, likely from the night before. The kid had tied a belt around their neck to the closet rod (for lack of a better term) and ended their life. The foster parent had cut them down and called 911 and thus the body was slumped on the floor. We conducted an investigation to ensure nothing was suspicious, which included a visual inspection of the scene, questioning of anyone in the house at the time, contacting the medical examiner, etc. Here’s where it gets strange for me.
As I’m in the room alone with the deceased looking around, all of a sudden I hear a loud clanging coming from the closet. There’s something eerie about being alone in a room with a dead body; it's always in the back of my mind. And when this sound happened, I almost had an accident. I turn and look to the closet and see a single hanger spinning round and round the closet rod, almost as if someone manually tried to start a propeller on a plane. No one else in the room but me and the deceased.
I pride myself on being able to stay composed throughout some pretty intense situations during my career, but that one stuck with me. To this day I can’t explain it and can’t find a reasonable explanation as to how it would have happened.
Maybe it was paranormal. Maybe I was tired. Who’s to know?
#11 My Dad's Here
I am a certified nersing assistant in a local hospital. One of my patients just had a quadrupal bypass surgery and I went in to check her vitals. The room was dim and the hall was quiet. I’m looking at her and, in the corner of my eye, I see something drop from the ceiling out of nowhere. It makes a big clunk sound and I turn to see what it could be. There’s nothing there. At that moment, my patient looked up at me and said, “My dad's here.” They then passed back out. I finished my job and left in a hurry. After that incident I would always hate to go back into that room.
#10 The Sounds From Downstairs
My partner responded to a priority breaking and entering call along with three other officers. A housesitter/dogsitter called and said that he can hear loud banging and footsteps coming from downstairs (the ground floor) and he should be the only one home. The housesitter and the dog are both upstairs (the dog is in a cage). So a few officers responded priority, including a K9 officer. The police released the K9 into the house first to clear it. The K9 comes out empty-handed. The three other officers, including my partner, then go inside the house and clear it themselves. Again, nothing and nobody inside.
Officers then step out front with the housesitter that called 911. As they’re telling him the house is empty, they see the curtains of the bedroom window on the second-floor open. They’re heavy curtains and they parted from the center, so they claim it couldn’t really be possible for air vents kicking on or anything like that. All three officers and the housesitter see it.
Then the guy asks the police to come back inside with him because he’s going to take the dog to a different home for the night and he needs to get the dog out of the cage. The police refuse to go back inside with him (not the best example of public service, I know).
#9 The Phantom Lights in the Abandoned Factory
Where I grew up there is an abandoned factory that high school and college kids would visit, usually around Halloween, because it's scary enough in the dark.
It also houses a decent amount of homeless people. So once every few months, the cops would come in, do a sweep, and force anyone there to leave.
One night my uncle is working and there's a call to the non-emergency line saying there's a lot of "movement" at the building and that the caller can see light on every floor but the first. My uncle and a few other officers respond.
No more than 10 minutes have gone by when my uncle gets there. There's no one around, but there's plenty of light pouring out of the openings where the windows once were. The officers all agree it looks more like fire than flashlights, so they call the fire department as a precaution.
They walk into the 1st floor and start searching for the stairs. They find them and ascend to the 2nd floor, but there's no light anywhere. Same with the 3rd, 4th, and 5th floors. They sweep the entire building, every nook, and cranny, even the roof. There's no light source and no one there that they can find.
The fire department had finally arrived shortly after they went in and they couldn't see anything from the outside other than the subtle glow of flashlights, which was faint. Nothing like what my uncle and the others had seen.
But my uncle said that what was even more unsettling was that none of the homeless areas, which were usually comprised of piles of trash along with cardboard boxes and blankets, were there. Not that they didn't find any homeless people, but that there was no sign that anyone had been in there at all, ever.
#8 It Was Tiberius
I worked as a forensic nurse in a lock-up unit in the hospital once with state and county inmates. I had one older/demented lady who swore she was being haunted/abused by a demon she would call Tiberius. So many crazy things happened whenever she was there - like we’d go into the room, do normal care, leave, and seconds later she’d start screaming bloody murder and we’d run into the room to find her looking like she’d been in a fight with a boxing champ. I'm talking bloody lip, black eye, markings all over her body. No one ever saw her doing this stuff to herself.
Things would get moved around the room by themselves as well like at one point she was in protective restraints because the doctor thought she was hurting herself, so there was no way she could have moved or done anything to herself while in these restraints. Despite this, new marks would always appear or her tray/cart would be across the room. The room was secure, so there was no way someone else was doing this. You would ask her questions and she’d just say, “It was Tiberius.”
After she was discharged, we always had trouble with that room. If there was going to be a rapid response or code, it happened in that room. One of the guards reported that lights were going on and off in a room? It was always that one.
#7 The Light in the Basement
I was dispatched around 3 AM to attend a house where the caller was concerned that someone had broken into the basement and was still inside. The caller was a very old lady and she lived alone. As far as she could tell, she woke up and noticed that the basement lights were on, though she hadn’t been downstairs to the basement in years.
My partner and I get to the call and the lady is standing at the front door with her walker anxiously waiting for us to come inside. My partner and I go into the basement and you can tell that no one had been down there for a while because as I walked I kept hitting cobwebs that were dangling from the ceiling. Anyway, everything appeared to be in order, and eventually, I found the light switch further into the basement and turned it off. We shut the basement door behind us and cleared the main floor too since she was so adamant that she heard rustling and coughing in the basement (the basement was relatively empty, and I assure you no one was down there).
As we are about to leave, she asked if we turned the light off. I said yes and opened the door to show her, but the light was back on when I did. I kept my composure and asked her if I could turn the lights on/off from upstairs as well. Negative. My partner and I exchanged looks and I went back down to turn the lights off again, then run out as fast as possible. We met up after the call and dug a little bit into the history of the house, and it turned out that exactly a year before on that day we attended the same house to help paramedics because her husband had fallen down those stairs. We weren't sure if he'd made it but found out later that he hadn't.
#6 Civil War Soldiers Looking For a Midnight Snack
I work in an antebellum town that has lots of homes that survived the Civil War. Ghost hunters have been to the town on several occasions. There is this one old mansion, that's more of a museum nowadays, that gets alarm calls semi-frequently. Every time it does, the side door to the house is open and the kitchen has all the cabinet doors and drawers open. Every. Single. Time. The caretaker says it's been happening since she started looking after the place about 30 years ago. Needless to say, we don’t clear it without backup.
#5 A Ghostly Procession
My dad used to work as a CO (corrections officer) at a rural prison. He drove perimeter, which just means he made circles around the jail in a truck, checking empty buildings for runaway inmates and just generally being bored for eight hours every night.
One night, my dad is parked on a hill just reading a magazine when he starts to feel a thumping in his body. He described it as the feeling you get when speakers are playing a song with really heavy bass and you can feel the bass in your whole body.
Anyway, he puts the magazine down and checks his rearview, and he sees someone outside the truck. He grabs his pistol and jumps out of the truck, weapon drawn. When he gets outside, he sees a procession of Native Americans walking through the truck (and directly through his seat) only to disappear at the exact spot he was sitting. He said it was clear they were ghosts because many of them appeared injured. This went on for a few seconds, and then the whole procession disappeared.
He called the other perimeter guy on his walkie to try to explain, and the other guy almost immediately stopped communicating. Turns out the other guy had seen this happen before but didn't believe in ghosts, so he wouldn't talk about it.
#4 The Friendly Shadow
A burglary alarm reported to dispatch from a private company. A motion sensor went off in a local business. Usually, the alarms don't send an alert requiring police response unless three sensors pick up movement. Usually, we don't respond to these kinds of calls unless a person calls us. Heck, sometimes we don't even respond to 911 hang-ups.
We go anyway since now two other alarms for motion get tripped. Another unit and I set up a canvas on the building. Nothing strange from the outside. It doesn't appear to have any forced entry. The other unit and I get permission to enter from the building from the owner. We go in through a side door on this thrift shop. We announce ourselves, no response. We clear the entire two stories of a standard thrift shop size, not too big. We don't find anything.
The store owner meets us outside with an iPad to show us camera footage. The three alarms that get tripped show a faint gust of something wind-like that moves clothes on racks. We just assume it was a draft because it happened to three consecutive clothing racks. So the owner resets the alarms and we leave.
Fifteen minutes later, the store owner calls us and wants to meet again to show us something. Clear as day, as my partner and I were leaving the side door after clearing the building, is a shadow-like figure appearing to wave at us, saying goodbye. Chills hit me. I didn't want to accept or deny it.
We occasionally get tripped alarms from the place and any time we don't respond, more alarms get tripped until we at least show up. If we show up, we will have like a 6-8 week streak without any activity. We think there's something just wanting police friends. We did research and we can't find anything regarding death or dying in the building. So who knows? As long as it's friendly, it can trip whatever alarms it wants. I still won't go in without a partner.
Angry Birds Rio Game
#3 The Undead Biker
I was an emergency medical technician for a while. We got a call about someone who was riding their bike at a "break-neck speed" when they hit a car head first without a helmet. We went over immediately. Despite the fact that it was broad daylight and we were in the middle of suburbia on a Saturday, nobody even came to check on this poor guy. Seriously, the streets were empty. Usually, a massive crowd gathers around violent accidents like this.
So his skull was pretty much smashed in and he was unresponsive. It was the worst head injury I'd ever seen. We assessed that he had a major skull fracture, a concussion, and he was bleeding profusely. He was also missing teeth and had minor road rash, but, fortunately, he wasn't missing much skin. To give you an idea of how bad it was, this was the kind of injury that most people don't survive. If you did survive, you'd basically be a crippled vegetable. Normally we would've moved him off the road, but when someone has a head/neck injury that isn't very safe.
My partner, who was also training me as I was still kind of new, went to check this guy's pulse while I began to unload our gear. He crouched down, felt for a pulse for a while, and then stood up and opened his mouth to say something. Suddenly, the guy jumped up. He didn't use his arms to pick himself up, he just jumped to his feet. It startled the two of us. He looked at us, smiled, and attempted to grab his bike. We tried to stop him, but we didn't exactly want to wrestle him to the ground given his condition. He gets away from us and bolts into the woods without his bike. My partner was in even more disbelief than I was. He just stared at where the man had run off, mouth agape. Then he turned to me and muttered: "He had no pulse, man!" I asked him if he was sure and he swore up and down that the biker was clinically dead.
We contacted the authorities for assistance and they sent a search and rescue team into the forest. I don't know if he was found or not, because we normally don't get much information about patients after they go to the professionals. Keep in mind that this was the Pine Barrens, so they had a lot of ground to cover. My best guess is that he went to a loved one's house out of confusion. What I found odd about that is, head injuries bleed like nothing else, so you would think the guy would at least leave a long red trail of blood for the cops to follow.
#2 The Shadow in the Back Room
My partner and I received a 911 call from an old woman having a dispute with someone. We got to the house and she says she's alone. We asked who she was having a dispute with.
She says, “Oh, just this spirit in one of my rooms.” Immediately, me and my partner look at one another and give the ole “she’s elderly, it’s probably dementia" look.
As we’re talking to her, she’s explaining how sometimes a “bad” spirit comes around. She states that he’s in the back room and (of course) the lights don’t work. We try to tell her that spirits probably aren’t in her house and we have to get to another 911 call. She insists we check it out. So we do.
Something about the combination of the house and the way she was speaking about spirits made me believe something was there. When we got to the room and she opened the door, seeing a ghost wouldn’t have shocked me. She did say that it’s usually in the corner up on the ceiling. Well, that corner was dark and had the darkest, creepiest shadow that legitimately terrified me.
My partner and I shined our flashlights on the whole room and, thankfully, nothing was there. We told the lady, nope, you're good, nothing going on here. I said to her, “If you feel there’s a spirit there, the NYPD cannot help you. Go to a local church or religious institution of your choosing and best of luck.” Then we got out of there fast.
#1 The Bike-Riding Hillbilly
I am a paramedic/firefighter. Late one summer night, I was responding to a call in a rural area. My partner and I were driving down a winding two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere. There was no light of any kind other than the headlights and moon.
We’re coming up on a sharp right turn when I see a man traveling across the grass from an area of brush. He’s moving very quickly and smoothly as if riding on a bicycle. No up and down motion like running. Obviously, I’m pretty confused about a hillbilly on a bike in the middle of the night, but not surprised.
He comes to a tree and stops. It’s about this time we’re driving by him. I looked out the window and see a man standing next to this tree with no bike or anything in sight. Just standing there staring at the truck passing by. My hair is standing up. We continue towards the call and I ask my partner if he had seen that guy. His response is, “Man, I thought I was crazy.”
