Anyone who has worked in law enforcement for an extended amount of time is bound to have a slew of stories. As with any job, situations that sound nerve-wracking to the rest of us become par for the course once you've experienced it enough.
However, there are some stories that are so inexplicable and creepy that even world-weary cops feel haunted by the memories.
In a popular Reddit thread, people who have worked in law enforcement and similar jobs shared the weirdest stories from the job, and you don't want to read these before bed.
1. Rob_using_Reddit still doesn't know what was happening with that woman.
I have posted this before but here is my possessed woman story, spoiler alert - as a result of posting this last time users suggested she could have suffered from Catatonic schizophrenia.
Was driving along and found a girl just standing in the middle of the road, my initial thoughts 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, I was left in a weird situation. She had done nothing, clearly needed help but medically nothing seemed wrong. As I am 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 hearts 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 on me so now I'm holding a book or something above her to shield her eyes... ambulance arrives and we get to 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 a 'I'm a little teapot pose' and keeps this up for the next hour, zero movement just frozen with her arms out. So I now have 3 potential situations.
she is pretending to be frozen in time.
she is suffering from a mental health issue.
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.
2. GrapeJuice89 is pretty sure they saw a ghost.
My brother is a deputy and at the time I worked as an EMT for a few small towns in north east Colorado. I frequently went on ride alongs with him while waiting for 9/11 calls to come in. This took place in Amherst Colorado. The town is very small, Amherst has about 50 people, a church, some houses, a grain tower, and a park. It was about 3 am 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 along side 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) sitting on a swing with her back facing us. We left the spotlight on her, 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 each other 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, she couldn’t have gotten out of sight in the amount of time that we had our exchange of words. I remember saying, “should we get out and look for her?” Maybe she hid behind one of the park toys or something. My brother just looked at me and said “hell to the no” and drove away. It still creeps me out to this day.
3. AnxietyDepressedFun's uncle had to investigate fairies.
Obligatory - Not my story but my uncle's.
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 & stealing her food. As is custom, every time she calls, 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 & reassure her that no one has broken in & calm her down.
One night when he gets to the house she has poured powdered sugar all over the floor to "record their tracks" & my uncle says he literally has to do a double take. All over the floor of her kitchen are these little tracks, tiny like nothing he's seen before. His partner starts taking photos & trying to figure it out. A few other officers come in, as most of them had gotten the call to her house too & want to see it. 10 police officers all completely baffled as to what these weird little prints are...
Turns out a possum had babies & 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 not running around. 7 are rounded up & released in a less residential area.
4. Yahspetsnaz was creeped out by the dolls.
Crazy old woman called because she heard someone repeatedly banging on her front door and and garage door. It's after midnight and I get there, 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 open the shed door and peek in with my flashlight, and the entire shed is filled with creepy large homemade dolls. They're each probably like 2 to 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 fucking creepy.
5. 9oreos's dad barely missed the angel.
It's probably too late for this to surface, but this is my dad's story.
He went to a call where a father had gone crazy and decided to shoot his family. He killed his wife and was looking around trying to find his 5 year old son to shoot him. 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."
6. RustDeathTaxes's dad worked at a legendary ghosthunters spot.
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 OSHA has to come and do inspections at all facilities. His was no exception so the OSHA 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, rapists, 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, torso but no legs and just two holes where there should be eyes. My dad noped the hell on 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.
7. landy0034 still doesn't know where the shadow figures came from.
Cop. Real call. I have been on patrol for several years, and love stuff like this. I had a back up officer with me, who witnessed everything.
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 arent very many cars driving this late. I walked along a gated driveway, through a light wooded area. I found the callers 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....I didnt 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 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 suprised because I know for a fact I heard a males 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 stop talking. The caller was shaking. I looked at the monitor, but didnt 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 she said "its 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 pics and didnt 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 featurless, in contrast to the video I saw on the monitor.
I was in disbelief, and thought "oh my god, shes telling the truth."
I continue 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 males 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 leave shortly afterward.
9. sccrj888 thought the man was dead.
Cop here.
Partner and I were dispatched to a welfare check. Elderly guy, nobody had seen him in a few days, mail over flowing in mailbox, missed a doctor's appointment, car hasn't moved, etc. We both know we are about to find a body. We arrive on 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. 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 dead dude.
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. At this point we both start screaming oh shits and what the fucks as we both run out of the house. We called ems and they transported him. Said they couldn't get a blood pressure or pulse on him. I think he died a week later in the hospital. I still get jokes about raising the dead.
10. matsumima will never forget the haunted driver.
Not sure if you guys would want to hear an asian story but I thought it’s worth sharing. This was told by my dad when I was 12. Even now, when I ask him about the story, he can remember every vivid detail like it just happened last week.
My dad was in the police force for 20 years and when we just a rookie, he had to conduct nighttime roadblocks meant to catch drunk-drivers.
They had done it many times before and this night started routine enough for them. That was until this Toyota Corolla drove up to them with what looked like a white blanket on its roof, flapping in the wind.
They thought it was weird but did not see anything amiss about it. One of them even joked that this guy was multitasking by drying his laundry and driving home at the same time.
The laughs stopped when the lone car came closer and all of them saw what looked like a woman in white lying face down on top of the car. The woman seemed to slide like a slug backwards until she disappeared behind the car as it eventually came to a stop in front of them.
It took a few minutes for my dad’s team to re-compose themselves as they stared at each other as if to say “you guys saw that right?”.
The most senior of them finally stepped up and shot the usual questions to the driver. There was a noticeable quiver in his voice as he made conversation and asked him to step out of the vehicle. My dad’s team inspected the whole vehicle, including the boot and found nothing strange in it.
The driver was a good-looking Staff Sergeant in the army who was heading home from a company event earlier that night and admitted to have had a few cans of beer. He said he laid down in his bunk to sleep it off, hence why he was driving home at that time (it was 4am).
He passed their sobriety test and they started to ask him if he saw anything weird during his drive. Initially he said no but after more questioning, he mentioned that he had to swerve to avoid what looked like a bird that was flying upside down. It was spooky but didn't think that was a detail worth sharing with police officers.
The senior then told the guy to chill out at a 24-hour coffeeshop before heading home (the locals believe that if a malevolent spirit follows you, making a pitstop confuses them so they can’t set up shop in your house). After some confusion of his own, the driver finally caught on and nodded in agreement.
After the guy leaves, they call in to the station and cut the night short. Never knew what happened to the driver, hope he’s alright.
11. jbizzlern is glad they haven't seen the girl in the yellow dress.
ICU Nurse here.
We had a patient that was dying. No family. Around 3am the guy started crying and asking why the little girl in the yellow dress was in the hospital. We assure him there is no little girl. He cries even more saying yes there is she is at the foot of the bed. Kid you not the man passed in the next few minutes. Myself and my pod partner blame the hallucination on the meds we were giving him to keep him comfortable.
Next night. New patient in the room. She’s completely alert and oriented. About 3 am she hits her call light. She wants 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 5 minutes later the guy in the next room goes into full cardiac arrest and unfortunately we can’t receive him.
Of course we absolutely freak. Two different nights. Two different patients see the same thing. All followed by death.
12. LiesBuried doesn't know how the boy traveled like that.
So this actually happened to a friend of mine who isn't the cop in this story but is the actually family.
So this happened maybe about 5 years ago. My friend is in his mid 30s he and his wife had a 7 month old baby and a 5 year old son. Wife was a stay at home mom and dad owned his own business and had a very flexible schedule he would take his son to school in the morning pick him up etc.
So it's about 11am they call the cops because they keep hearing a a strange sound in the home sound like feet or something and though he was sure it was nothing he wanted to make sure.
So he says the cop arrives and the first thing the cop says is "Why isn't your son in school"
My friend is puzzled and says "huh".
The cop says "Your boy is sitting outside on your lawn".
My friend again looks at the cop strange, looks on the lawn and says "Officer my son is in school, I dropped him off this morning"
The officer looks back sees nothing and looks puzzled.
At this moment my friends cell phone rings and it's his son's school. Apparently he has had some sort of allergic reaction to some finger paints that had egg base or something in it (allergic to eggs) and became extremely swollen, throat swollen and couldn't breathe rushed to the hospital.
The cops give them an escort to the hospital so they can fly through lights and all.
Arrive at hospital and the son is doing fine is stable got the lil shot to help him and everything. The cop waits to see how the family is doing and wants to check on the kid.
My friend is appreciative and let's the cop come up and he says that he had never seen a paler face in his life and he said the cop looked as if he had seen a ghost. And said "That's the kid I saw in your yard"
My friend told me this it creeped me the fuck out I didn't believe it but the wife cosigned the whole thing.
TL:DR- Cop came to friend house investigating foot sounds. Cop saw a kid in the yard, my friend son was in school, friend gets call that son is in hospital for anaphylaxis, cop goes to hospital says the kid he saw in the yard was in fact my friends kid.
13. defnotacop doesn't want to return to that basement.
I was dispatched around 3am 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, and she hadn’t been downstairs 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 turn it off. We shut the basement door behind us and clear 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 asks 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, and gtfo. We met up after the call and dug a little bit into the history of the house, and it turned out that a year ago on that day we attended to help paramedics because her husband had fallen down those stairs. Not sure if he made it or not but... nope.
14. Bow_Ties_R_Cool is still haunted by Tiberius.
I worked as a forensic nurse in a lock up unit in the hospital once with state and county inmates. 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 - 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 - like at one point she was in protective restraints because the doc thought she was hurting herself, there was no way she could have moved or done anything to herself while in these restraints, but 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’d 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 reporting that lights were going on and off in a room? It was that one.
15. canaryblu hated that one room.
I am a CNA in a local hospital. One of my patients just had a quad bypass (open heart surgery) and I went into 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 looks up at me and say “my dads here.” Passes back out... I finish my job and leave. When I would go to that floor again as a floater I would hate to go into that room.
16. jeep_devil_1775 knows which house to nope away from.
I work in a pre civil war town that has lots of antebellum homes that survived the war. Ghost hunters have been to the town on several occasions. There is this one antebellum mansion that is more of a museum, that gets alarm calls semi frequently. Every time, the side door to the house is open and the kitchen has all cabinet doors and drawers open. Every. fucking. time. The care taker says its been happening since she started looking after the place about 30 years ago. We don’t clear it without backup.
17. darthsantaclaus27's dad saw the ghosts of Native American people.
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 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.
18. SACDINmessage used the Lord's Prayer.
I was a patrol officer in a large west coast city for a short period a little while back.
The city I worked for had (and continues to have) a problematic influx of transients. The first thing you learn when dealing with homeless populations is that mental health problems and drug use are overwhelmingly abundant. By the end of my stint I felt more like an armed social worker than a police officer, and that’s one of the reasons I left.
I’ve always been a horror movie buff. After The Conjuring debuted I bought a copy of The Demonologist, the biography of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Ed recounts meeting a homeless man in NYC who spoke as if possessed (p.219) and goes on to say that prolonged cases of mental anguish can lead to influence from other worldly beings.
I’m not sure if I believe that, but I always kept it in the back of my mind. I do know certain chemical substances (DMT, MDMA, psilocybin) can make the user “see” or “feel” the presence of spiritual entities. So many homeless people have drug addiction problems I wouldn’t be surprised that, if these kinds of entities are real, they wouldn’t find ways to mess with people.
One night, on patrol in a two man car, I was flagged down by a disheveled man standing next to a Winnebago. He told me a women he didn’t know was inside with his son and wouldn’t leave. After alerting dispatch my FTO and I knocked on the door and asked if we could come in. The son said yes, and I stepped inside. The woman looked slightly less disheveled than the son, but I could tell she was either on something or mentally ill. The son was lying very still on a cot, looking absolutely terrified. The woman was quietly mumbling something and fidgeting with empty hands. After trying (and failing) to converse with her she quickly ran out of the Winnebago.
Neither the complainant nor the son wanted to file a report, and simply asked us to keep an eye on the area. I agreed, walked back to my car, and slowly drove away. About a block down the road I saw the woman walking slowly and decided to pull up and try to talk to her again.
I’m in the driver’s seat and my FTO is riding shotgun. We pull up, he rolls down his window, and asks for her name. She says it’s Rachel, and begins to mumble louder and faster. The fidgeting intensifies, and the only intelligible thing she says is that she’s “always searching”. My FTO calmly and patiently asks her the basic questions (where do you live, do you know how to get home, are you hurt or in danger, etc), but isn’t getting anywhere.
At this point I start to feel a little creeped out, but haven’t said anything. Something in her eyes told me this is all wrong. Rachel continues to mumble and fidget, but is looking down at her hands. I decide to run a little experiment (because I might not get the chance to do so again) and began mouthing the Lord’s Prayer. I’m not actually saying anything, just thinking it and moving my lips. The whole time I continue staring at Rachel to make sure she wasn’t looking at me, which she wasn’t, and to make any reaction even more unlikely I said the prayer in old English (like Beowulf old English). That way, even if she glances up at me, it’s highly unlikely she’ll understand what I’m doing.
I finish the part which says “deliver us from evil” and Rachel stops mumbling. She jerks her head up, her eyes go wide, and she glares at me for the longest second I’ve ever felt before sprinting down the street and into an alley.
Now I don’t know if that’s necessarily anything supernatural, but it sure as hell creeped me out for the next few days.
19. Hollywood7's new tenants helped Brant cross over.
Not a cop but leasing agent.. We deal w a surprisingly high amount of deaths.
Brant was my worst suicide and most creepy. I'll.never forget him and he made sure of that.
Brant was a weird resident but nice. Always chatted with me but you could tell was hurting from his ptsd. Around Christmas his packages sat too long in the office for pick up but I figured he was on vacation. Shortly after new years his parents called and asked to talk to me directly. Manager hands me the phone and they tell me they haven't been able to get ahold of him for weeks (they live out of state). I tell them to call PD (were not allowed due to privacy laws) and I grab my keys and head to his apt. His dog Rocky is barking, I check the front door and it cracks open, the smell hit my face like a ton of bricks. He's dead and has been dead. Police arrive. Brant shot himself and sat for ten days. I had to ID him before they called his family. Rocky started to eat him due to going so long w out food.
The residents above/on the side/ behind him noped out and we let them go. At this point I think I'm losing my shit bc I keep seeing Brant out of the corner of my eye at work. Only at work. Sometimes I would see him walk by the office windows and I would yell for my manager, who believed me thankfully, but could never see him.
About a month after we get his place cleaned up and turned over the apartments around his a pair of little Korean sisters move in next door. The apt shares a wall with his bedroom. At this point no one in that area knows what happened and bc of Brant being a shut in no one knew him or who he was.
Cookie (one of the sisters) comes in and asks me one day if someone died in their apt. I tell her no. She says a man is around her apt and is distraught about not being able to cross over. At this point I ask her if she's seen him and she describes Brant. I tell her about what happened and she assures me she'll do a cross over ceremony for him that evening and also gave me a bit of sage later that day.
I never saw or felt Brant again after that night.
20. moby323 doesn't know what happened with that patient.
I’m a P.A. and did a phlebotomy rotation.
I followed a phlebotomist around and we had to draw blood from a patient late at night (I think it was like 4am).
Anyway we walk into the room and it’s dark and then we realize the bed is empty. I took a peek in the bathroom, also empty. We were confused and started to leave when the door swung back.
Standing behind the door was the patient, like an 80 year old naked woman with white hair down to her waist looking at us with pure hatred in her eyes.
We almost had a heart attack, but the phlebotomist got it together enough to say, “Mrs. Jones, we are here to draw some blood, is that ok?”
Patient says in what sounded like barely controlled rage, “No. Get out. NOW.”
We noped the fuck out of there and told the nurse. Nurse told us when she walked in the room like 3 minutes later the patient was dressed and sound asleep.
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