Police officers deal with all sorts of things in the course of an eight-hour shift. Whether it's a high-speed chase, a person who is off his meds, two people fighting, or a just a cat stuck up a tree, they never know what a day in the office may bring. You have to figure that anyone with a job that faces that many unknowns and is that unpredictable is going to have some pretty amazing stories. We went to Reddit to pose the question, "Cops of Reddit, what has so far been the creepiest call you've ever had to respond to and what happened?"
From dark and stormy nights to ghostly calls and whispers to seeing things that couldn’t possibly be there, these stories are sure to give you goosebumps and make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
Just try to read them and not get chills! Please be mindful that some of this articles contains sensitive material.
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#25 A Ghostly Smell
We responded to a burglary alarm at a mortuary and found that one of the rear doors had been left open. Our policy now dictates that the entire building needs to be cleared (searched) to confirm that it was a false alarm (which most are). It's the middle of the night and totally dark. We use flashlights and never turn on lights. We walk into one of the rooms and see a body on a table. It appeared that it was waiting to be processed (possibly embalmed) by the mortician. It smelled like a mildly decomposing body. Suddenly, I see a shadow to my right and I shine my light there and find nothing out of the ordinary. I immediately smell a really strong whiff of perfume blow by me. The search was completed more expeditiously than normal after that. Nothing was found.
#24 A Dark & Stormy Night
It was a stormy night on the Oregon Coast. A lady was driving under the influence and ran into the back of a parked school bus. When she did, her car caught on fire, but she was able to escape. When I found her slowly walking down a side street, I told her to stop and turn around. When she turned around, her lower jaw was gone, and she was totally dazed. Her tongue was sticking straight out the top of her neck, and she was trying to talk. She ended up surviving but needed tons of plastic surgery.
#23 He's Right Behind Us
My dad is a cop and I asked him once. He told me it was when he went to this one house because a woman had called and said that men were breaking into the house. When he got there he said it was immediately very clear that the woman was not exactly all together mentally. He said she kept mumbling things and was very jumpy and skittish, not to mention that every single wall of her house apparently had at least 6 or 7 crosses on it, if not more. He calmed her down, checked around the house for any signs of entry or just anything weird and there's absolutely nothing that would indicate that anyone had been trying to or had been successful in breaking in.
He said that she followed him around the entire time and would point to things, like a doorknob or window latches, and say "Oh that's not where I left it!! That's how they got in!!!" He said the whole thing was fairly eerie, considering he was at this woman's house in the middle of the night, surrounded by crosses and listening to her mumble on about random things. To make her feel better, he did a sweep of the whole house to see if there was anyone else inside, which there wasn't. He said the one thing that made it the most creepy for him was the fact that every few minutes she'd say something like "Oh they're here again," or "He's right behind us, I can feel it."
#22 We Need That Powder
I got called to assist an ambulance at an address because they were struggling with a woman who had an apparent seizure. We got there and she's this tiny skinny little Singaporean lady who's being held down on the floor by a paramedic. She's hissing and struggling against her and repeatedly trying to bite the paramedic. Her eyes are all black and red, no white. It takes me (200 pounds), my partner for the evening (around 180 pounds) plus 3 paramedics to hold her down. The whole time she's struggling and trying to bite with veins popping out of her neck. She's looking past us at the corner of the room screaming at something that isn't there, telling it not to kill her and us.
Her husband (who seems weirdly unfazed by the whole thing) tells us this has been happening since she last went to Singapore and got sick after visiting a holy site. Usually her sister has to stop it by putting this powder on her forehead in a cross but unfortunately, she's out of the country.
In the end, she was taken to hospital for a mental health assessment by the paramedics. I often wonder what the outcome was but have no way of finding out.
#21 What Went Through His Head?
Went to the site of a suicide by firearm. The guy had two gunshots to the head. How, you ask? The first one didn't complete the job. You could see where he walked to the bathroom mirror, looked at the failed suicide attempt and then returned to the living room to finish the job.
Not sure if that counts as creepy, but I've always wondered what was going through his head when he looked in the mirror.
#20 The Disappearing Zombie
An elderly woman had called in reporting that a man carrying a drawstring bag was walking around her and her husband's property. She described the man as walking "like a zombie" and was looking down towards the ground the entire time. She wasn't able to tell if the man was attempting to break in or not.
My partner and I were about fifteen minutes away when the call came in from dispatch. When we were about halfway there, the elderly woman had reported that her husband, who was downstairs watching the front yard with a shotgun in hand by the front door, told her that he watched the trespasser disappear into a cornfield that was across the street from their house.
My partner and I quickly searched the area around the cornfield then went to the house. As I took down some information from both the husband and wife, my partner searched the property for any signs of tampering but found nothing. We then patrolled the area for a good ten or so minutes hoping to find the man but didn't.
#19 Secret Agent Man
I stopped a 25-year-old Asian male from entering the east executive entrance of the White House. He told me that he was a secret agent working for J. Edgar Hoover and that he was 60 years old. He said he had important information to pass to President Obama. I ended up having to detain him and then involuntarily commit him. Turned out to be a local college kid going through some mental health issues. I've field interviewed hundreds of White House "callers" but this kid took the cake.
#18 No One Can Blame You
I'm a detention officer at a local jail. We had a guy get brought in about 2 AM one night who we immediately knew was about to give us a fun time based on the way he was moving (he was quickly snapping his head back and forth, looking all over the room, etc). One of my coworkers and I stayed with the booking officer so we could help her out when bad stuff started going down. The guy keeps rambling on throughout the whole process; parts of his speech are understandable but most of it is gibberish. At one point he looks up at my coworker and says, "Would you blame me for it?" Trying to keep the guy calm, my coworker tells him, "Nah, man, no one can blame you." For whatever reason, this sets the guy off. He leaps off the bench and we both push him back down.
My coworker is trying to get handcuffs on his other wrist (he was already handcuffed by one hand to the bench) and I'm holding him against the wall with every bit of strength I have. This guy was STRONG. I swear the bench was about to come up off the concrete when he first leaped at us. Once my coworker gets handcuffs on him, we take a step back. The guy throws his head back, eyes rolled all the way back, and lets out an inhuman scream that I've only heard in movies about demon possession. He then moves his head as if he's looking around the room, but still with his eyes rolled into the back of his head and spouts off more nonsense. I'm not Catholic but I was very tempted to cross myself. The screaming, head throwing back and eye-rolling continue on for about 45 minutes. Every so often he'd come back to reality and talk to us like a normal person for a moment and then go back into crazy mode.
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#17 Don't Go Alone
My friend is a cop in a major Canadian metropolitan, and one night that we were supposed to go out after his shift. He decided to pick me up in his cop car since he was almost finished his shift and was just going to drop the car back at the depot. On the way through he got a call that someone was complaining about noises coming from their basement that sounded like a person, so he decided to make that his last stop. I was told to wait in the car, while he talked with the homeowner and checked it out. He was gone for about half an hour before he came back and had this terrified/amazed look on his face.
Apparently, the homeowner had been hearing loud thuds from his basement for a couple of weeks but on the day of the call they were really loud and scaring him. He had a walk-in basement so he thought maybe someone had broken in. My friend goes to the basement to check it out with the homeowner. The basement is all dark and the lights need to be turned on by the electrical panel. So they get to the panel and my friend says he saw something in the corner of his eye. He turns around and at an end of a hallway (which leads to a cold storage), he sees a guy facing the door of the cold storage just standing there. He yells at the guy to turn around but he doesn't. The homeowner sees him too and is really scared. My friend asks the guy to turn around once more before hitting the switch for the lights and the guy/ghost at the cold storage just disappears when the lights come on.
My friend swore that he searched every inch of that basement and could not find anyone else there. The homeowner is shaken up and says he's going to stay with a friend for a night and my friend calls another cop to watch the house to see if anyone tries to enter the main house or basement. I'm not sure what happened after but my friend swears he saw someone in that basement.
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#16 The Call Was Coming From...
I'm a military police officer, so I worked both law enforcement and corrections for a bit. In corrections, the main office was also the police services desk. Often it would ring and no one would be at the other end. Anyway, one time it rang and instead of a number it had a descriptor that I don't remember exactly. Something like "Emergency Phone 11." I was new and immediately called my superiors about it. They told me to drop it and never report anything like that again. Ominous, right?
The reason I mention that is to tell this. Sometime later, on patrol I got dispatched to essentially an abandoned side of the base to respond to an emergency phone call, no location at first because Radio didn't know where "Emergency phone 11" was and was new to the base so he didn't get the same memo to not report those calls. Radio then went on to say that the caller had sounded frantic and thought they were being chased, meaning that someone had actually been on the other end. Radio eventually digs up some old maps that label an "Emergency Radio 11" location and relays them to me and my partner so we drive there in a hurry.
There is no phone, just a broken pole where one had once been. That was a fun one to report.
#15 Crazy Karma
My grandfather was a cop in a small town in the 1960's - 1970's. Late at night, it was common for officers to pull over vehicles driving through town, especially if they didn't recognize them. My grandfather pulls over a busload of people. He walks through and asks them where they are headed, yada yada. They were headed to California. It was Charles Manson and his group.
Here's another story. The same grandfather, the same car passing through a protocol. He asked the driver where he was headed, chatted for a while, and told the guy to have a nice evening. A few towns over the guy gets pulled over again and ends the life of the cop. Apparently, he was doing this as he drove along, getting pulled over and ending the life of the cop. When they questioned him, he said he had been pulled over by my grandfather but he was such a nice guy he didn't want to end his life, but that he did have the weapon sitting in his lap.
#14 A Call From Beyond
I'm a 911 Dispatcher. I received a call from an elderly lady who had trouble breathing. I had taken several calls from her and her husband in the past so I recognized her voice. I dispatched an ambulance to her residence and held her on the line trying to keep her calm while the ambulance was responding. The ambulance advises that they are a 15 minute estimated time of arrival (She lived in a very rural part of West Virginia). I’m talking to her, asking about her husband and how he was doing and just making small talk with her. The ambulance calls in and advises they are on scene and I let them know that she is in severe respiratory distress and I still had her on the line. I let her know the ambulance is coming to the door so go answer the door and she says okay and hangs up the phone.
Pretty normal, yeah? Well here’s where it gets weird. The Emergency Medical Technician and Paramedic on scene call back about a minute later and advise that no one is answering the door. We have a Sheriff Unit who was in the area pulling on the scene about that time. The Sheriff Unit confirmed the address and advised he is breaching the door to make access to the patient. Five minutes go by, then the Paramedic on scene radios in asking who the caller was. I advise it was the elderly female who lived at the residence. He tells me that he’s going to call in and needs to speak with the supervisor on shift. We get him over to the supervisor and the supervisor confirms the information that I gave him and asks what’s going on. Apparently, the elderly female had been dead for a while and was already in full rigor mortis. They thought I was wrong on the caller but the other dispatchers played it back and confirmed that it was the female who called.
So… I took a call from a ghost!
#13 Like Watching A Cartoon
When I was a probation officer, my first field day with my field training officer, we responded to another officer's house call. That officer put out over the radio to reserve traffic for emergency traffic only. We did this if we had a potentially dangerous situation occurring.
Well, I get to the house, along with about 10 other probation officers, and the family is sitting in the living room, while the case manager is asking about a suspect. I'm told that the suspect possibly ran outside into the backyard where a pit bull is loose, so my field training officer and I go into the backyard to clear the area.
Once we get to the backyard, we hear a loud crash and everyone screaming from inside the house. We run back in and see the suspect lying on the ground in the living room, covered in insulation and drywall, with one of my friends underneath him trying to get up.
Turns out this guy was hiding in the attic, and my old supervisor (who went into the attic to check it out when he heard noises) said it was "like watching a cartoon." The guy stepped off the beams, put his hands up, and fell through the roof in front of his family and a ton of officers.
#12 Down By The Tracks
I'm a former paramedic who responded with police and fire to a report of a man down on the side of the railroad tracks in a wooded area approx 500 yards from the nearest access road. A railroad employee riding the tracks doing a safety check of the tracks noticed the man down the embankment of the tracks. We all parked and walked with all the equipment the 500 or so yards to where the patient was.
He had no signs of life, flat line on the EKG, along with fixed and dilated pupils. We do a little more checking - he has no visible signs of any type of trauma, the body isn't cold yet and there isn't rigor mortis yet so he hasn't been dead too long. We don't see any track marks where he would have shot up and overdosed and feel no broken bones. The guy with the railroad said a train hadn't passed in the last 8 hours. We search the area and find a makeshift tent/campsite where the guy apparently was living and find no medications or anything out the ordinary.
We're not too far from an area that everyone believes is haunted and satanic worshipping takes place, and even though all of us on the scene knew about the rumors none of us had actually seen it or had proof. It's dark and we were all waiting around for the funeral home to show up and bring the body to the morgue for an autopsy. Then the spooky stuff started. A few of us heard what sounded like people whispering but it wasn't from any specific direction. A couple of the guys didn't hear it and thought we were trying to mess with them. Then the whispering noises stopped and the people on scene that hadn't heard the whispering started hearing what they all described as children laughing, but it was from all over, not from any specific direction. Those of us that had heard the whispering never heard the laughing. This went on for about 10-15 minutes while we're standing next to the corpse. Police officers on the scene told their dispatcher to tell the funeral home to step it up and get out there as soon as possible. We helped them load the body and got out of there.
The next afternoon we went to the morgue to speak with the corner and find out the cause of death. The first thing the corner asked us was why did we clean the body? My partner and I looked at him kind of strangely and asked what he was talking about? He said it must have been a very bloody scene, so we told him there was no blood anywhere around the scene. He turned a little pale and said that fact just added to the confusion because the body had absolutely no blood in it whatsoever. Plus, there were no marks anywhere on him where blood could have been drained out. He also said he had a weird experience while doing the autopsy but refused to tell us what happened. To this day we have still never learned the actual cause of death.
#11 Did You Hear That?
So it was 2008... I was about 10 weeks into our 12-week field training after coming out of the academy. My primary field trainer was a patrol veteran - grizzled African-American guy... squared away, late 30's named "Adams." He was mean as everything and not afraid of anything. So we were going through my "task book" and realized we had not done a security check on a church or place of business. Deputies routinely check doors and windows of businesses late night and early morning to make sure all was OK. We were deep on the west side of Wake County... in the still rural backwoods areas so we decided to stop at a church nearby and check it. The church was really old and had a HUGE graveyard beside it, I'm talking 3 or 4 acres worth of grounds, some of the graves dating back to the Civil War era. There was little to no security lighting, so we grabbed our flashlights and began to make the rounds pulling on doors and checking ground level windows.
After about 20 minutes we were done with the rounds and walking back up a gravel drive from the rear of the building right beside the graveyard. That was when I heard what can only be described as a woman softly weeping coming from within the graveyard. My field trainer stopped... he didn't say anything at first but swept the gravestones with his light.
I spoke first and whispered, "Did you hear a female crying?"
"Unfortunately yes..." he said. "I was really hoping I imagined it."
So into the pitch black graveyard, we went, walking about 6 feet apart sweeping between the stones toward the sound which we both could still clearly hear. In fact, It was getting louder as we approached where we thought she must be. About the time we came to the far side of the graveyard the sound changed. It was all around us. Amplified is the only way to describe it, like surround sound. Then it completely stopped... and all we could hear were the crickets. I looked at him... he looked at me... we turned around and headed back to the car. We did not run but I think we both wanted to. We did not include that information in our informational case report for the security check!
#10 Mannequins Tell No Tales
One night I was working the late shift due to some construction going on behind the mall. They needed to kill the power to do some of the work.
Now, this is a relatively small place, not many stores, most of which are located down a long stretch. One of these stores sells antique clocks.
It's pitch black, and all I can hear is "tick, tock" all night. At about 2 AM I received an alarm call saying that somebody was inside one of the stores. Typically these are just faulty alarms or improper securing of the doors.
So I'm walking through the place with my flashlight trying to see what tripped the alarm before the real police show up. I turn my light on a fully clothed mannequin laying sprawled out on the floor and nearly wet myself.
Turns out the girl closing was setting it up for a sale the next day and stood it up next to the stairs when her ride showed up. Somehow it tipped and fell down the stairs.
#9 A Trump Shrine
I got called to an apartment complex at probably 11 PM. The caller describes hearing a very loud argument on the third floor. I'm the first unit to arrive and I can hear the commotion as soon as I open my door. As a matter of fact, I can point out the exact window it's coming from as it's halfway open. I could only hear a woman's voice but it was clear she was yelling at someone. It was like she was arguing with somebody and right now was her turn to do the yelling. As I get closer, though, I realize it's just... convoluted rambling. Donald Trump this and Bernie Sanders that. Government spies.
Finally, I knock on the door and she screams in the most guttural voice "WHO IS IT?" I identify myself and the door jerks open but it's chained so it only opens a couple inches. "WHAT?"
In my most polite voice I replied, "Ma'am, we got a call about the noise. Is everything okay?"
"IT'S FINE."
"Is it okay if I come check everything out?"
"NOT WITHOUT A WARRANT."
"Fair enough, I just need your ID then."
"GET OUT OF HERE. I'M NOT GIVING YOU NOTHIN."
At this point, she blades herself away from the door and starts reaching around inside the apartment. Given the obvious officer safety concerns, I start to reach for the chain to make entry. She reaches up and tries to peel my fingers back, screaming the whole time about how she doesn't trust men and I'm up to no good. Finally, a female officer shows up and talks her into calming down so we can come in.
She has a shrine to Donald Trump. Cutouts of his pictures and Donald Trump action figures (I didn't know those existed). The whole apartment smells like cat urine and rotten trash. Everything is a giant mess but the Trump shrine is meticulous. There are empty adult beverage cans everywhere and she is obviously under the influence. She denies having ever yelled anything and she is emphatic about that. I insist that she was in fact yelling and ask her to keep it down and get out of there. She called the sheriff (who is not even my boss) to complain about me.
#8 Don't Drive Angry
My dad was on the freeway and saw a guy in a big truck (it may have been a mail carrier?) that was swerving and driving crazy. He pulled him over, and the driver's hands were shaky and covered in blood. It turns out he had an adult romance worker in the back of his truck that he had ended her life not long before.
#7 A Chilling Discovery
I got a call that someone wasn't answering their phone or the doorbell. We got to the house and noticed that every window was blinded by either curtains or pieces of paper. We rang the doorbell and yelled through the letterbox but there was no answer. We opened the door and got inside. In the house, it looked like someone just had lunch. There was bread on the table and juice or milk in the glasses. Children's toys scattered all around. Then I saw a note that gave me the chills. It was a suicide note.
As the door was locked from the inside, the person had to be in the house. We checked room by room and my heartbeat was at 300% when I checked the bathroom. I was preparing myself for the worst as I opened the door slowly, but there was nothing. Finally, there was one more room left which was the attic. We walked slowly up the stairs and we found the resident there who had taken their own life. I will never forget the adrenaline I had, the scene in the living room or the resident I found.
#6 He Can Still Hear The Sound
My father-in-law is a retired sheriff and was a deputy before that. He was the first responder to an accident. A truckload of farm workers was coming back from the fields. The truck went over a hump in an interception and a little girl in the back of the truck flew out and landed head first on the pavement. My father in law held her as she moaned and eventually died in his arms. He says he still hears the sound in his head all these years later.
#5 Something That Sticks With You
My cousin is a cop and he responded to a call on Valentine's Day night. A 12-year-old girl called in to say her mother had ended her own life in the living room. I guess she and her brother were getting ready for dinner and the mom just used a weapon to end it. He said the creepy thing about it was dinner was all set up, drinks on the table and suddenly she ended her life. The kids were sitting outside when he arrived, and to this day I can't imagine Valentine's Day for them. But I know that is something that stuck with him seeing that.
#3 Not A Merry Christmas
I once went to a two-fatality car crash. The cars had collided head-on in a 55mph zone.
One of the drivers had left the house suicidal, and it was surmised that he picked a car out at random and went straight into it.
I had spoken with that man several weeks prior and seeing his skeleton in the burned up car was a little creepy.
I won't describe the rest of the scene, but the worst part of it is...
This was Christmas Day. Not a merry Christmas at all.
#2 Covered In Snow
I went to a welfare check. A neighbor called in he hasn't seen this guy for a few days and the lights have been on for a while. I go and look around and find no footprints or tire marks in the snow (there had been a recent storm). I check the garage and nothing. I check the house which was unlocked and found the guys cellphone, keys, wallet and cash with the TV on. That's when I realized this was now a dead body search. I looked everywhere in and outside the house and around the garage. There were several old junk vehicles on the property but again, no tire marks or shoe prints or anything. I call all recent numbers on his phone and no ones heard from him. There's only so much I can do so I issue a BOL (Be On The Look Out) and we start getting paperwork ready.
The next day the day shift officer goes over to follow up. Turns out, the guy was plowing his driveway and had a medical condition or something and either passed out or died on the spot and crashed the truck onto the other junk cars, which then caught on fire leaving only a pile of bones in the front seat. The investigation showed that this happened about a week before I was called out, so by that time everything has been covered over with snow. I felt bad for not finding him that night but it was really creepy knowing his remains were inches away from where I was searching.
#1 The First Time I Saw Him Cry
My father has been an officer for over 20 years and this story is probably the worst thing he has ever had to do. My father and I were heading to the range one day to sight in our hunting rifles. We were in his police vehicle since we were going to the shooting range for local law enforcement personnel. Dispatch came over the radio to get an officer out to a 911 call of a possible dead body. Many of the officers joked over the radio that it was probably a prank or someone overreacting since it was around Halloween. The responding officer arrives at the scene and calls in that he is going into the woods to investigate.
A few minutes later he sends out a call confirming it's an actual dead body and to get the necessary resources sent out to assist. Then the responding officer personally calls my father because he recognized the body. It was my dad's brother. He had been having rough times and decided to end it next to railroad tracks. The second worst part was that he had been reported missing for a few months. So by the time they found his body he was severely rotted. The worst part was that my father had to go to assist in the removal and scene investigation. That day was the first time I ever saw my father cry and I was in my mid-teens.
