Every day, police officers put their lives on the line to protect the regular citizens of the country. When they are on their beats, cops see some unimaginable things, from paranormal activity to unruly arrests. Whether scary or sublime, sad or absolutely hysterical, here are the most bizarre and unforgettable police stories.
1. Within an Inch of His Life
My grandfather retired from the police force a few years ago, and one of his stories in particular really sticks out to me. He answered a call about a guy up in a tower shooting at things with his rifle. When my grandpa arrived, the man shot at his squad car. The bullet entered the roof and hit just above his shoulder.
It went right through the shoulder strap on his uniform.
2. Catching a “Break”
Back when I was with the force, I was assigned to go check out an abandoned vehicle spotted in an area on my post. I got there to find a nasty looking one with busted out windows and no license plates. While I was checking it out, I noticed a couple of wires running along it from the front to the back. I lifted up the trunk in the back and found a huge pile of explosive devices attached to the wires.
If something hadn’t apparently broken or malfunctioned, I would have lost my life as soon as I opened the trunk.
3. He’s Got It All in the Bag
My husband has been a police officer for over 20 years. One night, he was patrolling the downtown area when he noticed a purse that someone had left behind. He opened the bag to check for an ID and instead, he found a turd. That’s right, some lady had taken a huge dump in her own handbag and then left it behind.
He'll talk freely about crazy stuff like autopsies and burnt bodies—but this particular story, he definitely wishes he could forget…
4. Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say
I was in an accident a few years ago. The guy who hit me got a ticket for an unsafe left turn, and I got a ticket because I wasn't wearing my seatbelt. In the section on the ticket, the cop inadvertently wrote “Did wear seatbelt while operating the motor vehicle” instead of “did not.” When I got to court, the judge asked how I wanted to plead.
I asked the judge if I could clarify something first, and he said "Sure." I stated that "The ticket says I did wear my seatbelt while operating my motor vehicle. If that's the case, I want to plead guilty." The judge looks down at the ticket, looks back at me, and says "Case dismissed! Have a good day!"
5. Oh, Snap
One day one of the busiest roads on the base was completely blocked because a huge snapping turtle took up residence in the middle of the road and refused to move for anyone. One of the police officers used his night stick to push the turtle off the road. Just as they got to the grass, this HUGE snapping turtle shoots his neck out at lightning speeds and grabs the night stick out of the cop's hand and starts waddling off into the woods.
Two seconds later I hear my squad leader key up the microphone. "1-1, be advised, suspect is now armed and attempting to flee."
Wikimedia Commons, Bernard DUPONT
6. What Goes up Must Come Down
I was doing security at a hospital with an ER, ICU, surgical, the whole works and I got called to several paranormal calls. Most were psych cases or paranoid people that heard a strange noise...This time more than one nurse saw a guy on the camera who was on his death bed, a guy who kept saying "I will not die in a hospital" earlier that day, literally push his curtain aside and walk out of his room toward the elevator.
A code was called and everyone immediately posted at their designated locations. Within seconds there were people watching the elevators and stairs and security started combing the area and investigating. As I reached the ICU floor I spoke with the Lead Nurse and she told me several of the nurses saw him leave. At that moment monitors started going off: the guy never left.
The guy went code blue and died right then. There were 3 witnesses on the report that say he got up and left and were serious enough to call a code which could cost them their jobs if they were wrong. The bosses wouldn't let us watch the video but the looks on their faces said it all. The bosses said the nurses did the right thing and some things just can't be explained.
The portion of the video I was allowed to see did show that nobody had left via elevator or stairs.
7. Coming to Life
This is from a friend who used to work as a security guard. My friend is a night person so he's used to night shifts. Well, anyways, one night he's working to guard a mansion and at 2:22 a door access alarm goes off from the gym room. By usual protocol, he calls 911 and has cops deal with it. The cops, two of them, meet with my friend and head to the gym room.
A short while later, the cops started yelling at my friend how prank calls are a serious offense and he shouldn't waste their time. My friend flabbergasted by the cops' reaction, asks what's wrong and one of the cops says that an old lady told them that she was in the house for a long time. My friend doesn't understand what lady they're talking about since there's no one in that mansion.
The owners left on a cruise for a month or so. They stop to stare at each other in silence and head inside the mansion. My friend swears to me it's true. They go inside and right at the entry hall, you can see the painting of the old lady. The cops turn white and leave. My friend confused by what happened just nopes out of there the moment he finished his shift.
Apparently, that was the painting of the current owner's great-grandmother.
David J Rodger ¦ Science Fiction & Dark Fantasy - WordPress
8. A Rookie Error
I was a rookie cop in a small town, and I was driving to a check on a report of a large group of kids causing a disturbance at a school parking lot late at night. I realized that I had not tested my PA speaker, which I had planned on using to disperse the crowd. On my way to the call, slowly rolling down a random residential street at two in the morning with my windows down, I decide to tap my PA mic a couple of times to check it.
First two taps, I can't tell if it’s working. I slow down. I tap the mic several more times. I definitely hear the speakers loud and clear that time. At that moment, I suddenly hear a "What the heck are you doing??!" from an angry sounding voice outside my window. I look out the passenger side of my car and see this old dude sitting on his porch in his underwear, looking pretty pissed.
Our eyes locked, and I realized that I had no decent excuse for why I was clicking my loudspeaker in a quiet neighborhood in the middle of the night. I froze up, couldn’t think of anything to say back to him, and just floored it up the road. It was definitely an unforgettable moment at the time, despite not being the typical kind of crazy story you would expect to hear from a police officer.
Nevertheless, the awkwardness meter on this encounter was through the roof and it goes to show that there’s more to being a cop than just the exciting parts.
9. One Heck of a Loophole
I once got stopped by a cop for a “fix it” ticket. Basically, you have to fix a broken tail-light and get a cop to sign the ticket, or pay the fine. That night, my car was totaled by a drunk driver who ran off the road and hit it at a high speed. Can't fix a tail light if you don't have the car anymore! So I wound up going in on my court date to contest the ticket.
I said "sorry, I couldn't get the light fixed and don't think I should have to pay." The judge gives me this look like "what's your excuse"—so I hand over the police report papers and briefly explain about the wreck. I didn't have to pay.
10. Superhero Cop
Florida Police Officer here. I had an older lady call that she was trapped in her house. When I arrived I observed a white powder poured out in a half circle in front of her door. I knocked. She spoke through a nearby window. She explained that a Voodoo priest had put a hex on her and trapped her in the house. She claimed that if she crossed over the powder, her back would break.
I told her to sit on her couch and wait, I would be back soon. I went to a store where I knew the clerk. I borrowed a bucket and broom. Returning to the ladies house, I filled the bucket from a garden hose. While saying the Lord’s Prayer loud enough for her to hear inside, swept and rinsed the powder away. I then told her it was safe.
She opened the door and asked what I had done. I told her I had gone to a church for Holy water and had a priest bless the broom. She was so happy, she hugged me for a long time. I got the name and location of the voodoo priest from her. I was able to find him later in my shift. I got in his face and told him if he bothered that lady again I'd kick his butt and take him to jail.
11. The Moment It Sinks in
My cousin was an EMT in Buffalo when he was backing up a SWAT insertion. As he tells it, the “Oh my god!” moment was when he realized that the gunfire he was hearing wasn’t coming from the police...
12. Invisible Battle
My dad spent his whole career as a cop and is the stereotypical straightforward bloke with it who has little time for anything you might label as paranormal. That said, he describes one event from about 20 years ago that he can't explain. One late afternoon in autumn he was patrolling with a colleague in Newbury (Berkshire, UK) when they were radioed and asked to check out reports of a fight on the rural outskirts of town.
Apparently, sounds of an altercation had been heard coming from a field (of all places) and locals were concerned but hadn't been able to describe or give any more info. When they got to the field in question, my Dad and his colleague hopped the fence and headed inwards, not immediately seeing or hearing anything.
It was gloomy and a little misty at ground level, but apparently just about enough light was left in the day to see there wasn't obviously anyone about. Apparently they gave the field a sweep and were on their way back to the car when, as my Dad describes it, suddenly "all went mental"—shouting, screaming, and the sounds of an almighty fight completely surrounded him.
This was even though he was stood in a field completely empty apart from his colleague. He says three things in particular stick with him. Firstly, that he wasn't super scared at the time (perhaps he would say that), just sort of hugely confused, secondly the look on his colleague's face that basically said "you're hearing this too right?"
Finally after a short time, the sounds just stopped and they made their way back to the car and called-in to say nothing was going on. When pushed he admits it felt like he was in the middle of something significant, and that he thinks he felt and not just heard the fighting around him, and with hindsight, he was more frightened after the event than at the time.
He would never describe this as paranormal himself, but to me, this always sounded like a "replay" type event people talk about, and subsequently learning about the civil war history of the specific area in question backs this up (for me at least). I've not heard of other accounts of similar stories from the area, but I haven't looked that hard to be honest.
13. Curiosity Killed the Officer’s Free Time
I’m a former police officer. One afternoon, my partner and I were riding around when we saw another unit dip into a Weapons Storage Area. We figured, eh, let’s go see what they’re up to. So we rolled up to the gate, and the security guard says “You guys here for the bomb leak, too?” I’m sorry, what?? Well, I guess we are now!
We hit the gas and went rolling inside to find the fire department and all already on the scene investigating. We had to evacuate the entire weapons area, as well as most of the supply area across the street and most of the surrounding flight line. It turned out to be something like a 3,000-meter cordon. That was a fun day!
When all was said and done, it ended up just being a sealant issue.
12. You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger
Grandmother was a cop in Santa Maria in the late '70s till early '90s. Man calls in saying there is a 7-ft gray man at his door. She goes to check it out, the door is jammed. The man is screaming and she hears a loud buzz. She slams the door open and the buzz is gone and so is the man. There's blood everywhere. She calls for backup and runs around and calls his name.
She hears what sounds like someone yelling, but someone is covering their mouth. She finds him tied up, piss everywhere. Investigators say that he was in that room for at least four hours. Man lives alone in the middle of nowhere. Says he called the police five hours ago. Said that a cop was on their way. He reported seeing a 7-ft gray man with big eyes who did that to him.
No footprints, no trace of any kind of invasion. My grandmother lost four hours somehow...The guy ended up killing himself a few years later, leaving a note behind. Warning my grandmother that "they" are after him...and thanking her for rescuing him. Stuff is completely crazy.
13. Crimes of Fashion
Law student sharing a former professor’s story: Defendant busted for possession of narcotics, they were in the pocket of his leather jacket. He argues the search was illegal because with his buttery smooth leather jacket, there's no way the officer would have felt the drugs in his pocket during a pat down, so he shouldn't have reached in the pocket to find the drugs in the first place.
Judge asks if the jacket is the one he was currently wearing in court; it was. Judge asks to feel this jacket and the pockets. Defendant hands it to the bailiff. Judge finds more drugs in the pocket. Needless to say, it didn't go well for him.
Maison Nord
14. A Case of Mistaken Identity
I’m not a cop. This is more a story of how I unintentionally gave a cop an "Oh my God!" moment. I had a night job managing a liquor store in a very bad neighborhood. It was a one-room affair with me behind a desk, with the cash register just inside the store's entrance. I had only had the job for about a month when a friend dropped by to hang out for a bit.
After some time, he asked me if the store owners had provided me with any kind of protection, given what a nasty neighborhood it was in. I told him, "Just this old double-barreled shotgun that's kept under the counter here—but it's empty!" With that, I reached down and picked up the shotgun to show him. I didn't think anything of it.
Unbeknownst to me, two armed robberies had just gone down at a fast food restaurant and another business close by—within a couple of blocks—and the police were responding to the calls in full force right outside of our door. I had heard the sirens, but I didn't think much of it because sirens were a pretty common occurrence in this part of town.
A police car immediately swerved into the parking lot in front of the store and an officer jumped out of his car. He dashed in to check if the robbers were hitting my store next. The cop bursts through the front door of the store, literally seconds after I had picked up the shotgun to show my friend. His coming through the door as fast as he did startled me and, without thinking, I turned towards him—with the shotgun in my hands inadvertently pointed right at him.
His gun was holstered and I had the drop on him. At that moment, he didn't know if I was the perp who had just robbed the other stores or what. His face instantly went paper white! Both of our minds were blown at the exact same time! I quickly laid the gun down and let him know that there was no harm intended.
Nevertheless, I'm pretty darn sure that he will never forget that particular shocking moment—and neither will I, for that matter!
15. Just Getting Started
The moment on the job that shocked me more than anything I ever experienced was when I was first being trained and they went over what to do if someone (such as myself) gets acid thrown in their face. I was then told what the procedure is if I get pricked with a junkie's needle, and what can happen to me. The severity of what this job entails just hit me like a ton of bricks that day.
These remain my two biggest fears on the job to this day.
16. Speaking in Tongues Makes Everything Creepier
My dad is a police officer and he was called to an old castle-like house on the outskirts of town. The man who called was telling him about his daughter who was acting strangely. She was talking in a deep voice and speaking in swear words and high-level vocabulary (she was only 10 or so) and being all around creepy as heck.
My dad said,"I think you need an exorcist." And left that house immediately. He's been a police officer for 12 years and he says that was the most scared he's been and he's seen people who have blown their brains out with a shotgun and people decapitated by a train.
17. Take the Win When It’s Given to You
I went to court to contest a traffic citation and the cop didn't show up. Case dismissed. "Thank you, your honor." Next case also dismissed. Guy stands up and is angry. "Your honor, I came down here to fight this. I brought my friend as a witness and everything." Judge: "So you don't want me to dismiss this?"
"I paid $15 bucks in parking and we came to fight this." Judge: "Do you want to take a moment to think this through?" The witness has started tugging on the back of his buddy’s shirt by then and talks him down. "Thank you, your honor, I think I'll just go home."
18. Wrong Place, Wrong Time
We happened to be right on top of the scene when a carjacking with a gun call went out. I saw the car fishtailing in the snow half a block away. We started to chase, and the driver bailed immediately into the driveway of an apartment building. I chased him up a hill while my partner ran around the building to cut him off.
Just as I crested the hill, a shot rang out. He had fired blindly behind him, the old "to whom it may concern" shot. We chased him through a church parking lot where the local Bingo game was just being let out, so there was no return fire. We finally caught him in a backyard behind the church. Our department gave us nice plaques as a reward.
Oh, and cake!
19. Talk About a Rough First Day
I'm not a cop, but my younger brother is. On his first night out of field training, as in the first night he's ever been riding without an instructor, he and his equally new partner were heading back to the station at the end of the night around two in the morning. He's driving down a major street and a there are two SUVs hauling off in the other direction.
All of a sudden, someone leans out of the rear window of the second vehicle and starts firing rounds from a rifle right at my brother’s car as he’s passing them by. Naturally, they flip around and give chase; and call it out on the radio. He said he thinks it must have been either the fact that his partner was screaming his head off into the radio, or the fact that it was the two rookies getting shot at.
But, one way or the other, practically the entire city's police force came down on these people in about two minutes. They ended up successfully catching both vehicles. It turned out that the whole thing was over some sort of dispute at a bar between the occupants of the two SUVs, and Vehicle Two had been chasing Vehicle One.
They then saw the cops, who they didn’t realize had no idea about any of it, coming the other way, and so they decided to take a couple of shots just in case.
20. Driving While Modern
I have a buddy who is a DUI attorney. In the state he practiced in, being in the car with the keys in the ignition, even if the engine isn't running, is considered a DUI if you're intoxicated. A client came in and told his story to my buddy. The buddy goes to the DA after discovery and says "Don't take this to trial!" The DA replies "Yeah, right."
In court, he gets the State Trooper who made the arrest up on the stand. The Trooper says under oath "I saw with my own two eyes that the keys were in the ignition." Buddy gives the cop several tries to walk it back. Then has it read into the record that the car was a Prius. It didn't use a key. BOOM. Instant dismissal and the cop got into some trouble.
21. So Much for Netflix and Chill
I was in high school and my three best friends and me were having a sleepover at one of their homes. We wanted to watch Netflix on the TV but did not have an HDMI cord. My friend’s dad said he’d drive us to Walmart to get a cord, but her older sister said she would instead—kind of an important detail. Anyways, we make a turn out of my friend’s neighborhood on to the main road and we hear sirens behind us, so my friend’s sister pulls over.
When the sirens did not pass us we realized that we were being pulled over for some unknown reason. By the time we realized, the police officer was already at our window. He had a really powerful voice and he yelled at my friend’s sister to “ROLL THE WINDOW DOWN. NOW.” By this point, we are shaking and freaking out. As soon as she rolls the window down the police officer shines his flashlight at all of us.
He sees five terrified teenage girls. Immediately, he backs off. He asks for friend’s sister’s license. She hands it to him and I just remember how much she was shaking. Police officer asks, “Do you know why I pulled you over?” Friend’s sister says, “No sir. I honestly have no idea why.” Police officer says, “Well it’s because of the way you came out of that neighborhood.”
Friend’s sister says, “Okay.” Police officer asks, “Are these your sisters?” I think he’s backpedaling at this point because we are all clearly not sisters. He continues, "Well your car matched the description of another car so yes. Here is your license. Have a good night." After we started driving again my friend’s sister goes, "I’m so glad my dad didn’t end up driving you!!"
And I honestly think about what might have happened if he was the one who drove us.
22. Drunk on Puppy Love
Defendant ran through a red light and crossed against traffic in front of an officer. She was over twice the limit. It wasn't her fault. She had a cut on her arm that her dog licked. The yeast from the dog’s saliva entered her blood stream and converted her blood sugar into alcohol.
23. Ghost Car
I have only been a police officer for two years now. I would not say that I am a firm believer in ghosts but I have no explanation for what happened on this night. This wasn't a call I was responding to but I was just driving around and observed a vehicle parked alone in the middle of a church parking lot. This was at night so I figured maybe some kids were doing whatever kids do right?
So I pull up on the car from the side and see that no one is inside the vehicle. I then position my car behind it so I can run the plate. Maybe someone stole it and dumped it in the parking lot. So I start to run the plate and I look at the car through the back window and I kid you not there was a person in the front seat looking at me through the rearview mirror.
This is something you notice as a cop because when you do traffic stops you can tell how intently someone is really watching you inside your car and possibly if they are going to try something. So I get an oh shoot moment of "I didn't see there were people inside the car" and drive up directly next to it to reassure what I saw.
Anddddddd there was no one inside the car. Chills immediately ran down my back and I noped right out of there. The car was later gone don't know what happened. Don't exactly know what I saw. But I was pretty freaked out. Me and my partners use to sit at that church on quiet nights because it is tucked away and you can just relax. I have not sat there since.
24. Losing the Battle, Winning the War
My older brother is a cop. He got a call one time about a suicidal teenager behind a school with a knife. He rolled up to the spot and when the kid noticed him, he immediately cutting himself. My brother sprinted over to him and tased him on the spot. By doing so, he saved the kid’s life. It was all caught on body cam and the footage is freakin’ wild!
25. Improvising
I’ve heard this story hundreds of times over the years, and this seems like the perfect time to share it. My father was a Miami-Dade County Sheriff in the 80s. He was one of the first rookies pulled from the academy straight to Miami. All the time, he tells me about how police officers are all control freaks. His crazy moment was when he lost control.
On his way home from a shift one day, he had overheard a call on the radio about a convenience store robbery right near where he was. He radioed in and said that he’d check it out, as he was still in uniform. He still had his shirt, pants, and badge, but his gun belt had been removed. As he searched the streets, he spotted a vehicle matching the description and proceeded to call it in while he threw his lights on to pull them over.
As he pulled them over, two kids got out and ran. The driver stayed behind. With no gun belt on, my father proceeded to get out of his cruiser and holster his weapon in his waistband. He then took the driver out of the car and moved them over to the hood of his. As he searched the driver over his hood, he said he felt the moment happen.
The driver started to swing his arm around and proceeded to elbow my father in the face. My father instantly lost all control. They wrestled to the ground where, eventually, my father’s weapon was knocked loose. The driver proceeded to pick up the weapon and shoot my father point blank in the lung with his own weapon.
The driver escaped, but only for a brief period of time before another car caught up to him. My father was blessed to have had one of the top surgeons in the country doing a seminar about 20 minutes away on the same day. He lives to tell the tale to this day, and I’m pretty sure that the piece of trash who shot him just got released last year.
26. The Bearer of Bad News
My moments on the job that have stayed with me more than anything else are the two times that I had to inform people that one of their loved ones had died. It's never an easy task, especially for something sudden and unexpected like a car accident. Both times, it took every inch of willpower I had to not break down with them at the doorstep.
27. A Wheel-y Good Defense
A friend's sister went to court over a moving violation. She's an engine tuner and had built herself a beautiful first gen Mitsubishi Eclipse with 6-700 horsepower at the wheels. This car, inevitably, attracted the attention of local law enforcement, who pulled her over with no fewer than eight cruisers after some slightly aggressive acceleration around a left turn.
During cross-examination, she asked the officer who'd made the call why exactly she had been pulled over. "I heard the engine revving, and I saw you spinning the tires and sliding around the corner." "To be clear, officer, which tires were spinning?" "The rear tires." "So I was spinning the rear tires, and it was the back end that swung out?"
"Yes ma'am, that's correct." "And you're sure that's what you saw?" "Clear as day, ma'am. The light turned green, you stepped on the gas, and the rear tires broke loose under power." "The rear tires broke loose under power? There's no doubt in your mind that that's exactly what happened?" "None at all." The courtroom went quiet. And then:
"Your honor, this officer is either lying or hallucinating. My car is front wheel drive."
28. Saturday Morning Smackdown
I'm a lawyer for the police. I defended an officer who was chasing a bad guy and lost him in the courtyard of an apartment complex and then ran into the back of the wrong apartment and tackled and tased an old man watching Saturday morning cartoons in his underwear while eating fruit loops. He got tased because he was fighting back, as any sane person would do after being tackled by a stranger while watching TV and eating cereal.
The city paid that man some money.
29. Witchdoctors Are Real
Whilst working in remote Australia, we were forced to "move on" an elderly Aboriginal man because the other locals had accused him of witchcraft, and other things. We drove him to his township approximately one and half hours drive away. The other locals were terrified of him as he was rumored to be a witch doctor.
We dropped him off and warned him not to return to town for three days. We turned the vehicle around and drove back to town, flying, probably 100mph+. It took 45 minutes to drive back, upon our return, we find the SAME elderly Aboriginal sitting in the street. To this day neither of us can explain it, maybe the other locals had every right to be scared.
30. Going Above and Beyond
I’m not the cop in this case, but the way that the officer dealt with our harrowing situation truly deserves to be told. My brother died by suicide, and the cop who was called to scene has since reached out to us many times over the years to check in and see how we are doing. While my family and I were freaking out in the moment, he carefully cut my brother down from the rope and tried to save his life.
At the same time, he was trying to be sensitive to our feelings and keep us as calm as possible during this traumatic experience. He also helped us through the entire process of coping with the stress and aftermath of our family’s loss. My mom once made the remark “imagine if we had had to cut him down ourselves”—and I think that says it all about how much gratitude we owe this police officer.
I think all the time about the incredible service he gave us during our greatest moment of need. To all police officers out there, thank you for handling society at its worst. We love and appreciate you for it more than we can ever hope to show.
31. From Beyond the Grave
I work as a dispatcher at my local Sheriff's office. Two days ago, one of our deputies was attempting to serve a protective order on someone. After they got on the scene, they asked me to run someone’s license plate. This happens quite often, as it is a way to see if who they are looking for is at the place they are looking at.
So I run the plate and it comes back to an individual who happened to have a warrant for reckless driving in the next state over. So I key up on the radio and say, "Radio to 124, 10-86, 10-12?" Basically, a call out meaning, hey something popped up on that plate, are you okay and alone? He confirms he is good to receive the information, and after I tell him he says he is with the individual.
Then he asked me to send a hit to the state the warrant is from, which is how we confirm warrants from out of county are valid. Before I get a chance to, he asks me to confirm the date of birth on the subject. Turns out that the subject was a junior, and the car was still registered to his late father who had passed away two years ago.
I check the operator’s license attached to the license plate and sure enough, the guy was reported deceased. I was so caught up on the warrant hit that I missed that, and apparently the county the warrant was out of messed up on their validations to make sure they needed to keep the warrant active.
32. Liquored Above the Law
A conversation in my office: “It doesn't matter if you were sober or not. You jumped out of a third-story window with a beer bottle and threw it at a cop. The jury is going to think you were drunk. Also, I think you were drunk.”
33. It Was a Warning
My uncle is a cop in a pretty sleepy town. He used to always go to the cemetery and take naps in his cruiser. He told me how, one night, he was awoken by a sound and it startled him. He looked out the window and saw a weird glow coming from about 30 yards away. He kept looking, thinking maybe his sleepy eyes were playing tricks on him but it remained.
He decided to go check it out and as soon as he got out of the car, the glow disappeared. He still walked towards the general vicinity, which was a group of gravestones, to investigate. He didn't see anything strange but just as he was about to walk back to his cruiser, he realized the gravestone he was standing in front of had his last name on it.
He said it completely freaked him out and he ran back to the car and locked his door. He admits it’s likely just a weird coincidence but he also said that was the last nap he ever took on duty.
34. Accidental Hero
My grandpa was on the California Highway Patrol for over 20 years. He would always tell the story of the time he pulled over this one guy back in the day for a busted taillight. My grandpa walks up to the car, asks him for his license and registration, and the guy says, “How’d you catch me so fast?” Grandpa said that the hair on the back of his neck never again stood up even half as fast as it did when he heard that sentence.
It turned out that the guy had robbed a bank not even five minutes earlier and had just started trying to make his getaway.
35. This Works on so Many Levels
I had a call to a residence for a mental evaluation or a "5150." Anyways, I get there and speak to a 50-something-year-old woman, who states her 20-something-year-old son is under the influence of an unknown drug and kept repeating that he can't go in his bedroom because there was an old man hanging in his room.
She stated she was too scared to go into his room and investigate it for herself, because he constantly brings over friends that are drug addicts, and is unsure if his claims were true or not. I then go speak to the son, who is clearly under the influence of a stimulate. He goes on to tell me that he was told by a "spirit" to not enter the bedroom, because his father, dressed in his military "Class A" uniform was hanging in his bedroom.
I check the room out and of course, there was no body hanging in the room. As I'm in the middle of explaining to the mother that there was no body in the bedroom, a veteran officer arrives on the scene to assist me. He pulls me aside and stated earlier in his career he responded to this residence, and that same bedroom, he had to investigate a suicide by hanging of an older male subject.
He didn't remember all the details, so I looked it up in our report management system in my patrol car and sure enough, the officer was correct. The subject who died was a WWII veteran and had dressed in his military uniform and hung himself. In my mind, I always thought that when they purchased the home, possibly this incident was disclosed to them?
However, I thought the mother would have mentioned it to me if it had been disclosed to her. She was genuinely concerned about her son and the allegations.
36. Getting Into Icy Territory
I once got out of a noise violation ticket. I was driving around and had the music in my car up pretty loud. A cop pulls me over and gives me a ticket for the noise violation. I go to court about it. My defense was, "If the ice cream man can drive around blaring that creepy music, I can listen to my radio." The judge tried hard to keep a straight face and I got out of the ticket.
37. You Talkin’ to Me?
Not a police officer, but one time I was walking out of Walmart with some groceries. As I was on my way to my car, a police helicopter was circling around the parking lot. Over the helicopter's PA system they described me and told me to get on the ground. “You in the grey shirt, bald head, in the Walmart parking lot, next to the green car, get down on the ground.”
Everyone in the parking lot was just staring at me. I didn't listen because I just kept thinking I didn't do anything wrong, they have to be talking to someone else. As I am putting the groceries in my car I see six or seven police cruisers coming my way thru the parking lot with sirens on. At this point, I am just standing there like a deer in headlights.
The police officers surrounded me and draw their guns, shouting at me to get on the ground. I comply. They pat me down and ask what I was doing at “so and so apartment complex.” I say I was never there, and they check my ID. Right after looking at my ID I noticed all the officers were kind of confused and weren't really acting all hard up to me anymore.
Then this older guy who looked like a higher ranking officer walks up to me and says, “You are free to go 40ozfreed, sorry for the misunderstanding.” I asked what was all this about? He says, “Well for lack of a better phrase WHOOPSIE.” Then he shook my hand and gave me a hug. We both laughed it off. As I was driving out of the parking lot, all the same police officers and many more had another man arrested on the hood of a police cruiser.
He had a bald head like me, grey shirt, and green car. Everything identical.
38. When Reality Hits
As a cop, The first time you hear a gunshot close-by sticks with you for a long time. That's when the job gets real. At first, you're all rainbows and candy canes and excited about trying to help people—but once your life is put in danger, you're never the same.
39. Herding Cats
My dad is a police officer and he recently told me a story from before I was born. Him and his partner are patrolling in a rural town. A call comes in from an old lady that a group of men in white hoods are walking up and down her street. Now being in England, the Klan would be an odd appearance and so my dad, thinking this at least would be interesting, and another car drive to the street as fast as they can, from opposite sides.
The two cars meet at the street, which is a dead end, with none of the men in sight. But the weird aspect is that my dad swears around 30-40 cats were just wandering in the middle of the street. All of the residents were out and none of them knew anything about the cats.
40. You Can Hide, But You Can’t Run
I was doing a welfare check at a house for a suicidal male. He was the only person living in the house. His car was in the driveway and the house was locked up. I gathered some more info and was told where a key was. I opened the front door, announced myself, and started searching the house expecting to find a dead body.
I opened a closet door and found the guy hiding in there with a rifle right next to him. If he had wanted me dead that day, I would not be typing this right now because I would have been a goner instantly. It turned out the dude was having some issues. We sat and talked for about half an hour. He told me he had heard me calling, but didn’t want to talk to anyone.
I arranged for him to get the help he needed.
41. Nice Try, Lady!
I almost got scammed 12 years ago. It was the maddest I've ever seen a cop. I rear ended a lady in a Toyota 4x4 doing about ten mph. We were pulling off at a stoplight and she hit her brakes. Her brake lights were obviously less visible to me than the setting sun and I hit her. The only part of my truck to impact her vehicle was a tow hook about three inches long and an inch wide.
The entire left side of her back bumper was pushed in, a tail light broken, and minor body damage. I don't have pictures but it was very clear that there was no way my impact could have caused all that. She claimed otherwise, and very loudly to the officer that reported to the scene. He was furious. He tells me that I am free to go and I waste no time doing so.
As I pulled off, he was giving her the drill instructor treatment.
42. Inconsiderate Ghouls
I was sent to a residence where an old woman was upset that the ghost that lived in the attic was listening to the music too loud. She wasn't upset about the ghost, just that his music was too loud. I had heard of other officers going there before and just talking with her and shrugging it off. When I got there, I met with her on the porch.
She was a sweet little old lady who couldn't hear Wheel of Fortune or whatever was on TV because of the ghost's music. I didn't hear any music but figured that since she did I ought to do something. She had one of those attics with the old school door you pull down that has stairs on it. I pulled that down and crept up the stairs slowly, just in case there was a homeless person sleeping up there or something.
When I finally got half my body up into the attic, I looked around and found no one or nothing. I asked her if she still heard the music and she said she did. Not knowing what else to do, I loudly said "This is the Police Department, I am here on a noise complaint. The homeowner requests that you turn the music down as it is disturbing her."
I stood at the top of the stairs/door thing for a few, then looked back down at her. She stood there looking at me unchanged, then suddenly smiled. She said "oh thank you so much young man" and walked into her living room. I climbed down and closed the attic up, she turned her television on, smiled again and thanked me again.
We haven't been called back there since. I still stop in once in a while to see how she is though. She said that the ghost is much better now about his music, but still plays it loud from time to time, just not enough to warrant calling the police. I like my job, front row seat to the greatest show on Earth. (Not dementia, just humans in general).
43. Should’ve Dug Deeper
I woke up on my day off work at 6 am to police banging on my door. I am arrested, thrown in a police car and hauled to the station. After fingerprinting, mug shots, and everything, I’m finally told why I was arrested. A detective comes in, straight off TV. I’m handcuffed to a bench and he starts telling me everything I had done.
Paying cell phone and utility bills for my other homes out of my neighbors checking accounts. I’ve lived in the same house for 10 plus years. No other houses. I asked the detective if he had bothered to do any detecting before filing felony mail fraud charges against me and asked if the other officer remembered being at my home no less than two weeks ago taking a report of stolen mail and checks.
The other cop definitely remembered as soon as he saw me. I have never had a speeding ticket much less anything more serious. They got super apologetic and put me back in the cell for the rest of the day until they got the charges dismissed. Someone had stolen my identity and opened accounts in my name then paid for those accounts with stolen info from other people.
I spent a day in jail while they straightened it all out. Not as bad as some of the stories, but always fun to tell about the time I did hard time.
44. What Did I Sign up for?
I was still a cadet in the Highway Patrol and I was loading live rounds into my service revolver for the first time. That was when it hit me. I have the power to kill someone in this job. It really messed with my head.
45. I’m Sorry, What Was on the Strange Wood Pile Sitting in the Middle of the Room?
Worked as a police officer in a small town in rural Nebraska. Back in the '90s, I was patrolling through town in winter. We had several abandoned houses in town, but one seemed to have the attraction of copper thieves, so we were told to keep an eye on it. Drove by it around 7:00 pm, since it sat on a corner lot, I had a clear view of all four sides of the house.
As I drove around the corner. Nothing looks out of the ordinary. About two hours later I drive by again and the back door is wide open. I know that the back door was not open when I drove by it earlier. Looking at the snow on the ground around the house, there were no footprints. So I think "What the heck?" Call dispatch, tell them I'm investigating an open door at that address and ask for a county sheriff to start my way.
I walk to the open door, pull out my flashlight and shine it inside. The house has obviously been gutted for the most part. The plaster walls have been torn down, debris piles everywhere. Since there were no footprints in the snow around the door other than mine, and with all the dust on the floor not showing any footprints, I chalk it up to the wind or maybe the door just opened on its own.
I was about to secure the door when I heard a loud thump come from upstairs and what sounded like kids laughing. So I enter the house and yell out "Police department, come downstairs!" More of what sounds like kids playing. I tell dispatch that it sounds like there are kids in the house and start making my way through the kitchen into the living room where the stairs are.
All the while cautiously checking the main floor. Two more times I hear something upstairs, but since I've had no response, I start thinking maybe it's an animal. Still, I hear what I'd swear was kids laughing. I head upstairs and it all gets quiet. The upstairs is relatively small with a hallway at the top of the stairs that has one bedroom on the right, one straight ahead at the end of the hall, and a bedroom on the left.
As I get to the top of the stairs, I hear a thump in the bedroom to the left. I carefully peek around the door and it's an empty room with a small pile of plaster and wood debris in the middle. No kidding, sitting on top of the pile of debris was a page torn out of a child's book with a picture of a police officer on it. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, I got out of that room, quickly cleared the other rooms upstairs and got the heck out of there.
Told dispatch nobody was in the house, locked the back door, and never went back in there again.
46. Turn up the Volume
So, last month we received information that a person driving a certain car with a certain license plate was transporting a lot of substances and money through our city on a weekly basis. In reality, it’s very difficult to find these people as they use multiple routes and our cameras don’t cover every road in and out. However, as luck would have it, my colleague and I spot a vehicle, same description and same license plate speeding along.
We turn on the lights—he doesn’t stop. Horns blaring, again, he doesn’t stop. So, we get authorized to begin a pursuit. Soon, two, three, four, five cars begin to join until there are around seven of us. This guy is sitting at around 96 km/h (60 mph) in a 50 km/h (30 mph) and we’re fairly convinced that we may get this prolific drug dealer.
Well, that was until he made a hard left into a housing estate and parked up. We weren’t sure whether to approach or wait for a specialist team to come down in case of weapons. Before we could do anything, an 85-year-old man gets out of the car and says he’s sorry for speeding. Turns out he didn’t actually hear our sirens, didn’t see us in the rearview mirror and when he did see the sirens he didn’t think they were for him.
To make matters worse, his license plate was off from the suspect's by one letter.
47. Indestructible
My dad was a police officer. My mom took me and my siblings to the doctor one day, and turned off her cell phone as per the doctor’s office policy back then. Fast forward a few hours, we pull up to our house and there’s a cop car waiting for us in the driveway. It was not my dad’s. Anyone with family in law enforcement knows that having a cop at your door that isn’t your loved one is something you NEVER want to experience.
To make a long story short, they were there to tell us that my dad’s flashbang had malfunctioned and detonated in his pocket during a call he was on with SWAT. It was definitely a shocking moment for him and everyone else who had been in the back of their van. He very nearly bled out and they couldn’t get a hold of my mom.
She swears that the whole department was in that car waiting for us when we got there. And the best part is, my dad lived to tell the tale. Love him!
48. H’aint Proof Police Car Won’t Save That Person
My dad was a cop for 32 years. This was one of his craziest calls. A call goes out for reported screaming it's mid-January (important later). My father and another officer responded to find a known deranged individual (very long rap sheet and has been in and out of psychiatric care for years) sitting on the front porch holding a double sided wood splitting ax.
Steam is coming up off the grass and there are "chunks" lying all over the lawn. Upon interviewing the suspect he admits that he and a friend were playing poker, the suspect was losing nearly every hand and came to the conclusion that his friend was an "h'aint" (southern for ghost) and was cheating him. The suspect grabbed the ax and killed him.
My dad tells the suspect that he needs to get in the police car because it's h'aint proof. He said the suspect dropped the ax and sprinted to get in the back seat while thanking them for helping him.
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49. Put Me in, Coach
I got a call about an emotionally disturbed person. I arrived on scene to find a 350-pound man, who was built like an NFL lineman, passed out on the floor face down. His wife tells me that he suffers from PTSD from the first Iraq War and that he was an army ranger. He had been drinking heavily as well. His 16-year-old son is on the scene as well, watching this unfold.
The man finally begins to wake up, and proceeds to smash his forehead into the ground repeatedly. We call for an ambulance. A small pool of blood begins to form on the floor. The wife grabs a rag and goes to wipe it up when this guy's head jerks up real quick, his face contorted in rage. He grabs his wife by the neck and throws her clear across the room onto the couch.
We immediately jump on him, but he is preternaturally strong. There are four of us, and we are each fighting one limb without much progress being made. The kid jumps in and helps us get two sets of cuffs on him, because one set would not have been wide enough to connect his wrists behind his back. I ride in the ambulance to the hospital with him while he glares at me angrily.
All he was doing was reciting his military registration number and telling me that I won't get any information out of him. He then starts hurling racial epithets at me, even though I don’t remotely look like someone of the race he is referring to. The entire ride, I’m just sitting there quietly hoping that he doesn't break out of the cuffs along the way.
If I'm being honest, I'm not sure we would have been able to gain control of him if his kid hadn't jumped in unexpectedly and helped.
50. From Father to Son
I once went to a guy’s house to arrest him on a warrant for missing court for a speeding ticket. I knock on the door and ask the guy who answers if he is “Bob Smith”—can’t remember the real name but he spoke broken English—and the guy says yes. I ask him if he got a speeding ticket that he never took care of and he says yes, so I tell him he is under arrest and take him to jail.
At the jail, I discover that this “Bob Smith” is about 30 years older than the one on the warrant and I forgot to check the date of birth before arresting him. I was looking for his kid “Bob Smith Jr.” Turned out that the kid was on his way to post bond for the dad, so I let the dad go free and arrested the kid when he got to the jail to pick his dad up.
51. What’s Your Favorite Scary Movie?
I am not a cop but three years ago our very elderly next door neighbor died suddenly in her house. They found her body five days later in the kitchen. Fast forward to last summer. I'm sitting in my house watching a movie and all of the sudden about eight police cars come out of nowhere sirens blaring lights on and most park by that empty house.
Some park in my driveway so I went outside to see what was up. A police officer went through the quick formalities and asked if I had seen anything strange in the past five minutes. I replied no and rather hesitantly asked what was going on. He said that the police department received a call from the house and when the operator picked up the line went dead.
I stayed at a friend's that night.
52. You're Not My Son
I was sitting in my apartment and my girlfriend was in the shower. I heard knocking on the door and ignored it. I heard a knock again, looked out the window, nothing. Then came the cop knock. So I get up and open the door. Two cops with guns drawn were hiding behind the doorframe and asked me to put my hands up. I comply. They ask, "Are you here with your girlfriend?" I am super confused but I say yes, because I am.
They storm in and cuff me. About this time, the girlfriend comes out of the shower, sees me handcuffed and is understandably pissed. The whole time I am asking what is going on and saying I think there has been a mistake. Then the cop points out the door to an old guy and asks, "Is this not your dad?" It wasn't and I said, "No, what is going on?"
The cops look at the old guy and he stumbles saying, "Uhhh no. No, that is not my son." The cops turned white. They were super embarrassed and they left quickly. A couple hours later, one of the cops comes back and apologizes. Apparently, that old dude got a phone call from his estranged son saying he had a gun and was going to shoot his girlfriend. I don't know what came of that but it wasn't me and that dad apparently didn't even know where his son lived.
Crazy day. Then I went and got some tacos and a margarita.
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53. Coming out of the Closet
We were looking for a guy who had stolen guns from his ex, and we eventually found him under a pile of clothes in a closet at a different house. Unfortunately, there were something like seven kids sleeping in the same room, so I had to quietly and discreetly start getting them out of there while my partner cuffed the guy who was pretending to sleep in the closet.
We decided to drag him out. When I went to move the mattress out of the way, we found the stolen guns right under where the kids had been sleeping. The fact that a person could be so easily willing to put a bunch of innocent children’s lives in danger for his own sick purposes shocked me to my core.
54. The Call Is Coming From Inside the House
Police officer here. One evening about eight years ago it was pouring outside and we got a call from an elderly woman (seems to be a common theme in this thread). She called in and said that she was hearing footsteps in her house and she thought there was a ghost inside because she regularly heard the sound of someone walking upstairs but she lived alone.
We went just to check it out and make sure that everything was okay. She stayed on the line with the 9-1-1 operator because she was frightened. About three minutes after she initially called in, she said that there was actually a man standing outside in her backyard, staring at her through her sliding glass door.
Petrified, the woman froze in that spot and continued to stare directly at the man. For the next minute or two she said that he was just standing there, still as could be, staring at her. Eventually, the man slunk off, out of sight.When we arrived, about 12 minutes after the call first came in, we went to the front door. I remained in the foyer with the woman.
The other officer went to the backyard to see if the man was still hiding out or if there were any traces of him; I spoke with her for several minutes until the other officer returned. He said there was no trace of anyone having been in the backyard. We set off to do a quick sweep before we left to make sure the house was all clear.
In her living room (the room that has the sliding glass door) we discovered a trail of mud and footprints INSIDE the house. I asked the woman if she had been outside at all that day or if anyone had been over to visit her. She said no, that she lived alone, and that no one had come by to visit. The woman was very old (probably around 85) and had very poor eyesight and was hard of hearing, as elderly people tend to be.
The woman obviously had seen the man's reflection and mistakenly thought he was in front of her, on the other side of the glass, in her backyard. In reality, he had been standing only a few feet behind her in the same room while she had been talking to 9-1-1. Nothing was stolen, broken, or out of place so we don't know what his intentions were.
Who knows what would have happened had she not stayed on the line with the operator. I know it sounds like something out of a campfire story, but it was honestly one of the most unnerving and creepy experiences I have had while on duty.
55. New Tenants
A few years back, my girlfriend at the time—she’s my wife now—just got a new apartment and we moved in together. About a week after we moved in, I was in the shower. The door gets kicked in and I get dragged out of the shower. Butt naked and soaking wet. My girlfriend is on the couch, handcuffed. They start asking me about some Spanish named guy Roberto something.
There were more cops in our apartment than I'd seen anywhere before, like two to three dozen cops in our apartment and you could see a bunch of other cops, through the windows, walking around outside. I have no idea what this Roberto guy did but I’ve never seen such a show of force before. The whole thing ended with the head officer yelling at the rookie who was supposed to verify the address.
I guess it was the right address, but Roberto had moved out the month before.
56. Meds Are Important
Best story I've got is how they tracked a hit and run driver back to his house around midnight about 10 years ago. Guy came to the door in full chainmail armor and sword advancing on the officers before running back inside. His sister apologized and said that he's been off his meds. They go into the basement, action figures lining every inch of wall space, find him in leather armor waving a large mallet around taunting the officers.
They lit him up (tased him) and last I heard they made sure he got his meds. I love police stories, you just can't make this stuff up.
57. Oh Fantastic, Unidentified Screams of Terror
Called to a residence out in the boonies (this was in Wyoming, so the boonies are really the boonies) at about 11 PM about suspicious activity. When we get there, we are told by the family living there that there are VERY strange screams coming from a creek area about 1,000 feet out. And sure enough, waiting outside on the porch with them for about a minute, I hear it.
It is very hard to describe what it sounded like. It was like a woman in very severe distress, but higher pitched, and each scream lasted for about 10-15 seconds, it never sounded like it was saying anything, it just sounded like a cry of sheer terror. And it repeated again. We tell the family we are going to investigate, so we just walk down to the creek since it was nice out.
We hear about two more screams, getting louder as we approach the creek. By now, we're both kind of freaked out, there are two possibilities: someone is getting murdered/maimed in the creek bed, or it's a wild animal. As we approach the creek bed, we hear no screams for about five minutes. We search around and find nothing, yelling at the top of our lungs for somebody to come towards if they are there.
Then, we hear the exact same scream behind us, exactly from where we came from. We get about halfway back to the house, and the scream comes so loudly it seems to be right next to us. We frantically shine our flashlights EVERYWHERE and find nothing, no eye glints of animals, no rustling of bushes, just silence. We trace our steps back, and the scream comes from around the creek again.
This time, it lasted about 30 seconds and was much louder than before. Our retreat becomes a little more hastened. By this time we were both scared and verified with the family to call us again if they heard it. They never called again, and we got the heck out of there. I still don't know what it was, as an avid outdoorsman, I KNOW no animal makes a cry like that, especially one that can move stealthily without being spotted by flashlights.
Something else that weirded me out was that it was completely silent while the screams were happening. During summer in Wyoming, there is always some type of ambient animal sounds, frogs croaking, crickets chirping, owls hooting, coyotes howling, etc, but there was nothing. Until we were leaving and the screams had stopped. Then a frog started croaking.
It gives me the creeps just thinking about it still.
58. Inside Job
I took a report for ID theft/larceny at a Chase Bank. A guy had funds withdrawn from his account without authorization. Keep in mind that my complainant does not have a common name, for example, “Tom Smith.” About a week or so later I am called back to the same bank, as the caller stated that the subject who has been doing fraudulent transactions is currently in the bank.
I’m less than a minute away when the call comes over and they are stalling the guy in one of the offices saying there is a problem with his account. I get there, they point him out, I move in, quickly cuff him up and explain that he’s not under arrest, just being detained for an investigation. I find his ID and it has the same name as my complainant from last week.
I think oh wow, this is legit, fake ID and all. I think back to my original complainant and the address and dates of birth don’t match. Long story short, Chase has been doing transactions for one guy on the other's bank account.
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59. Overheard on the Radio
Sometimes I get bored and listen to the dispatch radio for my county. One day while listening they started saying something like "suspect took a right down 3rd" So I thought that there might be a chance that it was my street, ran downstairs, out to that front porch to watch for a car chance. A few minutes pass when I'm about to give up and go inside when I hear sirens.
About a minute later, I see a guy in boxers on a horse going down the street followed but a couple officers on foot and a car. Turns out, there was a shady house disguised as a farm that breeds horses just out of town. There was a raid and the guy ran out on one of the horses.
60. A Deal With the Devil
Not my call, but my dad served for 25 years. Wasn't really a ghost story but I think it's worth telling. One night he gets a call from a woman who says her neighbor has made a pact with the devil. The woman calling is about 35 and a religious whacko. The neighbor who she called about was about 75 at the time.
My dad went over and knocked on the door, and the old lady answers, all happy, nice place decorated the same way for the past 50 years. She invites my dad in without even asking why he came, makes him some coffee, and asks how his day was. Naturally, at this point, my dad is wondering what the heck the call was about, but it came clear soon.
At some point, my dad realizes he isn't the only person she is talking to, and that she thinks her apartment is full of people. My dad thanks her for the coffee and she tells him to come back any time. The whole time she was talking he was writing down the names of the people she was talking to and does some research on her when he gets back.
Turns out she was talking to family members, who were all dead. She had a daughter, three sons, a brother and a husband. All dead, and she had no family and no friends. She hadn't spoken to another person in years, her groceries were delivered and she rarely left her apartment. Over the next 19 years, my dad took care of her, my sister and I came over all the time and just sat and talked with her, she even taught me how to cook.
Over the years she stabilized and stopped talking to her dead relatives, she just needed people to live with. She actually lived till she was 94 and died in the guest room of my parent’s house since it had become harder to take care of her from a distance as she got closer to the end. She was like a grandma to us.
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61. Plot Twist
I served a subpoena to a guy who witnessed an attempted murder. I went to the door and the guy told me his name, which matched the name on the subpoena. I explained everything to him. He was just nodding his head and eventually he was like, “Yeah I think you’re thinking of the other guy who lived on this road, he’s dead though.”
He was, in fact, dead. Guy had the same name and lived a few houses down.
62. Skeletons in the Trunk
My mate on the force had an "Oh my god!” moment on his very first week of solo traffic patrols. He pulled a drunk guy over, only to discover that the guy’s trunk literally had two unwitting people just chilling inside of it, fast asleep.
63. Reads Like a Freddy Krueger Nightmare
Back when I was working as a cop on a military base, I loved working the night shift. Didn't deal with 99% of the stuff that day shift dealt with and what little stuff we did deal with was usually really interesting. Well almost every building on a base is alarmed and the alarms are tied right into the desk so we know the instant they go off.
When we get an alarm activation, we close the base, and go check the building, pull on all the doors, see if we can get in. If we can, we go into the building and secure it, check all the doors and corners to see if someone set the alarm off. Well, one night I was on patrol with my alpha (partner) and we get called to respond to an alarm activation at the elementary school.
So we go, secure the building, and call in that the building is all secure. No problem, keep patrolling. So about 15-20 minutes go by and we get another alarm activation. We get back out there and check and now there is a maintenance door open that leads into a boiler roomish thing. Nothing in it, we close it, lock it and get out.
Another 20 minutes and another alarm. We respond, all the doors are still locked and we can't get in, maintenance door is locked. Call in the all clear. This time my buddy and I sit on opposite sides of the school and watch to see if someone is coming and yanking the doors real hard to set the alarm off. We sit there and watch, nothing happens and right as we're about to leave.
Then another alarm activation happens as we're sitting there. We inform the desk that we'd like the building manager on site to help us secure the interior and to let us in. (This is like now 3 am.) Building custodian shows up and we start doing a walk through, checking all the classrooms and checking all the maintenance rooms and that's when we see one of the maintenance doors open with the lights on in the room.
Now, this room is literally the size of a closet. We walk down there and look in, no one's in it and that door is locked when it closes. We look in there and we find a single footprint of a barefoot made of water (Left foot as I recall) of a small child. Freaked the living heck out of us because no one reported a missing child and the entire building was clear and still locked up.
No one left, no one entered and we checked every inch of that darn place (literally a 3-hour deep sweep including ceiling tiles). Freaked the ever-loving heck out of us and to this day, my partner refuses to go into that school. Speaking of which, schools are really darn spooky when they're empty.
64. Just Act Casual
I got a call for a loud house party. Showed up and contacted the resident. Advised that I was well-aware that there were under-age kids drinking. Told them to get sober drivers and kick the kids out. We get another call to the area. I give them one more chance. Third time is because of a fight on the front lawn. So by this time, I've had it...
Officers are interviewing involved parties out front. I'm walking around the back looking for stragglers. Back door comes flying wide open and about a half dozen kids come running out of the house. I say "stop, police" and all that jazz. Kids obviously keep running, so I announce that I'm in a foot chase and start after them.
I'm catching up to the person in the back of the group when, out of the blue, he stops and sits on a stone bench in the neighbor's garden. Looks to me and says, "oh good evening, I think they went that way." I was completely bewildered, but he wasn't in his right mind, if you know what I mean.
65. Check the Footage
We had a large number of burglaries in a single night after a recent snowfall. Almost 20 houses in a neighborhood had been burgled. We were tracking footprints in the snow, finding more and more houses, which kept adding to our number of victims. Eventually, the footprints came to rest at a residence in town occupied by one of our known offenders.
By the time I arrived, officers had gotten everyone out of the house, detained them, and were working on a search warrant for the residence while other officers were processing the various crime scenes. Mind you, all occupants had declined to speak with us. During the time the search warrant was still being worked on, at one of the scenes a receipt from Walmart was found which wasn’t the victim’s, and had to belong to our suspect based on the time stamp on the receipt.
An officer took the receipt to Walmart and found the surveillance of the person who had made the purchase. Turned out to be somebody completely different. The residents of that home were sent back home with an apology.
66. One Is Worse Than the Other
Two of my colleagues—murder squad detectives—attended custody to meet a defendant answering bail. When they arrived at the custody desk there were a couple of people hanging around, waiting for their solicitors. They told the custody Sergeant they were there for [insert name] and he pointed one of the guys out. They went up and introduced themselves and said they would be questioning him at another station.
So all three got in the car and headed off. Whilst driving, they told the defendant what would be happening—on arrival he would be arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, questioned, and either bailed or remanded. The guy was like "you've got to be joking, attempted murder? I was shoplifting!" He was relatively calm, half laughing and shaking his head.
A short time later one of the officers got a call from the custody Sergeant—their actual bail appointment had arrived. There were two defendants with the same name answering bail that day. They apologized to the non-murderous shoplifter, turned the car around and headed back to bring the right person in for questioning. Keystone cops to the max.
67. Drinking the Punch Instead of the Kool-Aid
This happened in August of last year. It was about 1 or 2 in the morning when a 911 hang-up call came in. All that was heard on our end of the phone was a bunch of screaming and swearing. I was the closest unit and I was riding alone, as my partner had been put on another assignment for that set of days. So, when I got out into the area, I was initially waiting for backup to arrive before approaching to knock on the door.
However, as I was walking up to the house, I heard several voices screaming and I realized that I had to act right away. Rushing up to the house, the first thing that I noticed was blood. It was absolutely everywhere. It was on the floor, on the walls, on the door—everywhere you can imagine. The whole room was covered up to shoulder height.
When I stepped inside, a distraught woman screamed and pointed me towards the living room. Once I made my way into the living room, I saw a male and a female on a couch, both covered in blood. The male had a massive laceration on his right forearm, and the female had taken a belt and snake wrapped it around the wound to try and stop the bleeding.
Seeing how the belt had been applied, I knew that it wasn’t doing anything to stop the blood flow, so I pulled out my tourniquet and said to the guy “This is gonna hurt like heck, but it’ll stop the bleeding” as I prepared it for him. I applied the tourniquet just above the top of his bicep and made sure that it was on properly.
That was when he told me that his hand had started to go numb. It was at that point that I noticed a second deep gash on his tricep that went all the way down to the bone. It took EMS about 15 minutes to get to the house. When the paramedic had seen the situation, he made it abundantly clear that had I not applied the tourniquet right when I did, the male would have bled out and died long before they were able to get there.
In the end, it turned out that the guy had come home drunk and forgotten his keys. So, he decided to climb up to a second story window and punch his way into the house, with near-deadly results. Make better decisions, people!
68. One Smart Cookie
When my mom was working at the sheriff's department, god, over twenty years ago now, they got a 911 call from a girl who said the gas station she worked at was in the process of being robbed. The girl was calm, told the officers she wasn't in danger, but that they shouldn't take too long getting there. They were intrigued, and weren't sure what they would be faced with when they got there.
What they didn't expect was to pull up, see the girl sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette, and the robber sitting inside the locked-up gas station with a look of utter defeat on his face. Here was the girl's statement, which the robber corroborated when questioned: He came into the gas station, went to the register, and demanded that the girl empty it.
He hinted that he had a gun, and when the girl realized this was the real deal, she started to think. She offered to get a bag from the back room to put the money into, hoping he'd agree so she could grab the phone and call the cops. Surprisingly, he did, and he didn't follow her. So, not only did she grab the phone, she grabbed the keys and went out the back door, locking it behind her.
She then ran around to the front and locked that door, effectively sealing the building. She then slowly and purposefully showed the man that she was dialing 911, watched him try fruitlessly to break the glass (the gun was a fake), and then just waited for the cops to show up. My mom has always said that she had never before, and has never since, laughed so hard while on duty.
69. We Worked Together
Got pulled over a block from a local McDonald’s by a cop. Officer explains he got a report that the manager at McDonald’s reported that a guy about my description tried to grab the cash drawer from a register when she opened it to make change for him. When she resisted he fled in a yellow Ford LTD. I happened to be driving a Ford LTD.
I told him I wasn’t the guy. I asked if the name of the manager who reported it was Tina. Yep. Well, then she would have told you my name when reporting the attempted robbery if I was the culprit. I had been working there as a manager for about two years and she would definitely have recognized me. He agreed that I was unlikely to be the culprit. I immediately drove over to find out what happened from Tina.
Evidently, she went agro when the guy tried to grab the drawer and just grabbed both his hands and dug her nails into the top of his hands. It was all the guy could do to tear himself away and flee. Tina may have weighed 45 kg (100 lbs) wet.
70. It Could Happen to You
I was a 9-1-1 dispatcher for about 5 years out of school...one night I got a call from a lady at a residence in town. "9-1-1, what is your emergency?" "Is this the police?" she breathed. She was freaking out. Heavy breathing, scared shaking voice. I've taken many calls like this and from the sound of her voice, this was not going to be a routine call.
I sat up straight and my heart started to pump faster. "Yes, ma’am, what is your emergency?" "There's someone in my house..." she trailed off—very breathy and genuine, but not loud and freaking out. "OK, are you located at (house address)?" "Yes." I dispatch the cars to start heading over to the address, and I don't give a reason yet.
"OK, do you know who this person is?" "Well, no I don't, I think it's..." "It's...?" "I know this sounds so crazy, I think that there's a ghost in my house..." she begins to sob and sound SO SCARED. "There are noises and I KNOW THERE IS A GHOST right in the other room, I CAN HEAR IT RIGHT NOW!!" At this time, the Sergeant asks me the reason of the call and why I sent him and 2 other cars without explanation...
Normally you'd send one car to something like that. "It's suspicious activity," I told him "WHAT activity!" he demanded over the radio, a fair question. "Sir, the caller is claiming there is someone in the house and she believes it to be a ghost." Silence on the air for about a minute. "10-4" is all he said. By the time they got there, the ghost was gone and the poor lady was a freaked out mess, and she kept apologizing for calling us, but IT WAS REAL she kept repeating.
The officers later told me that her sincerity actually freaked them out a lot and when they searched the house—guns drawn—even they were scared.
71. America the Free
My first arrest out of rookie school. My training officer told me to handle it, and I found out later that the guy was well-known to them. We got a call of an inebriated guy trying to get into the city fire department. I arrive with my training officer to find a man with a full-face motorcycle helmet on, who has pissed himself.
Next to him is a bicycle with no seat. I approach him and very nicely ask him who he is. No reply. I help him stand and ask him to take his helmet off. He does, and locks of sweaty golden mullet hair pour down. This dude is smelling of alcohol and urine so bad I'm coughing. I ask him one more time, "sir, what's your name?"
He looked me dead in the eye, and said "they call me rooster." Stupidly, I asked him why that was. He then began dancing about and clucking like a rooster. Other officers on scene were cracking up. I took him into custody (no charge, just to spend the night at jail and sober up). And while driving to the jail, he proceeded to "cluck" the national anthem while I sprayed him with Febreeze.
You can't make this up.
72. World’s Youngest Criminal
There had been a string of robberies—seven in two weeks—in my neighborhood, so everyone was on high alert. I was home by myself, and one of my dogs started puking, so I rushed to let him outside, forgetting my dad had set the alarm. We had a silent alarm, so I had no clue it had been tripped, sending out a dispatch request to the local 5-0.
Five minutes later, there was a knock on the door. I'm young, home alone by myself, and had been told to never answer the door if I was alone. So I didn't. They kept knocking. Long story short, they broke the door down and they thought they had caught the burglars. Multiple cars, I vaguely remember there being a K-9 unit involved, and the police had their suspect—a nine-year-old girl, crying her eyes out.
I was not the group of thieves, who ended up being caught about a week later.
73. A Red Light Doesn’t Mean Go
I was on a traffic stop when my Sergeant came and backed me up, due to the possibility of having to tow the vehicle. My Sergeant’s vehicle was behind mine and we were both in the right lane. My Sergeant was sitting in his car and I exited my car to go talk to him. As I walked closer to his car, I suddenly heard a vehicle’s engine rev all the way out, but I couldn’t see it.
Within a split second, I knew what was going to happen and thought “Oh no!”—but I couldn’t react fast enough. The vehicle I had heard smashed right into the back of my Sergeant’s SUV, which then struck me and threw me into the middle of the road. The driver was completely hammered and didn’t even have a license. This just happened last Sunday, and now I have to have surgery in a couple of weeks for my knee.
Meanwhile, my Sergeant now has a broken back. I won’t soon be forgetting this ridiculous incident.
74. Someone Needs New Glasses
I travel frequently across the Canada/US border, sometimes by bus. On one bus trip, the whole bus was held up by one woman who was pulled back to be interrogated. An hour later, she gets back on the bus, announcing that there was a person on the most wanted list with her same name. HOWEVER that person was a 5’4” white male, and she was a relatively tall, probably 5’10” black woman.
It took them an hour of interrogating her to realize they had the wrong person.
75. Hit Him Where It Hurts
My friend is a cop, and she told me the funniest story the other day. She got a call about a disturbance at a convenience store. She arrived to find a naked man yelling at the clerk. The naked guy saw her and ran. He didn't get far before she pepper-sprayed him (I forget why she had to, I think he started getting aggressive towards her).
Well, he dropped like a dead fish, screaming from the pepper spray. She hand-cuffed him face down, and backup arrived and started to spray something in his eyes to relieve the pepper spray pain. He immediately rolled over and spread his legs screaming "Get my junk! Get my junk!"
76. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
I was dating this girl and when things didn't work out, she got vindictive. She had a copy of my car insurance and got a guy friend to pose as me to call the police and report my vehicle stolen. I go be-bopping out of work one glorious Friday afternoon and get felony stopped by about 10 Dallas, TX PD officers. Guns drawn on me and everything, right outside of the large office complex I worked at.
Turns out the people who reported my car stolen used their own phone number when filing the report and eventually got caught and charged.
77. Killing the Moment
I was responding to a domestic violence call one time and when I showed up, I heard a lot of yelling and banging. A friend of the family was standing outside screaming for help. I saw my backup down the block, so I decided to run in on my own, figuring he'd be right behind me any moment. I got inside and saw two older siblings, a brother and a sister, practically choking each other out, while a younger sister tried to jump over the older sister and stab the brother with a knife.
I didn't see the knife until I was right next to them and, when I did see it, my first reaction was to grab the younger sister by the wrist, slam her arm into the wall to knock the knife out, and throw her to the ground. I then held her with my left hand as I elbowed the big sister in the face to separate her from the brother.
The brother then came at me and I ended up punching him in the sternum, which sent him to the ground. He landed next to the knife and looked at it as though he was gonna grab it. I drew down on him and told him not to move. All four of us then looked each other in silence for what felt like a full minute before that officer who was down the block ran in.
The first words out of his mouth were, "Sorry, I ran into the wrong apartment!" Kind of killed the moment, but hey—it could have been much worse!
78. Justice Served
My grandfather, a retired police sergeant, has a great story. One night when he was on patrol, he got a call of a break-in near his location. So, he went to go check it out. He gets to the house and sees this guy holding a stereo, climbing out the window backwards. My grandpa decides to have some fun; he creeps up behind the guy and screams, "Boo!"
The dude drops the stereo and literally poops himself. He gets arrested and taken in, with poo in his pants.
79. Bad Timing
I was 16 and worked at a golf course mowing lawns and such. We got a call at home from the cops that said I'm a suspect in a hit and run accident because my plate numbers were on the car that drove away without stopping. The cops said the car was maroon colored—my car was gray. We told them and figured that was that.
The next day at work there was a minor accident. A stupid coworker pulled a metal rake too hard and the rack holding it came down onto my forehead. It wasn't a deep wound, but it bled A LOT. My boss took me to the ER to get my head super glued, and to be safe, took me home too. Thus my car stayed at the golf course.
That evening a cop comes by and finds me with a head wound and my car is missing. I look quite guilty. By sheer luck, the cop calls someone after talking to my parents and discovers they got the guy and the plate numbers were close. I probably would've been arrested.
80. Jumped the Gun
While on an operation, we had a driver of a vehicle meet a boat on a river where there was an exchange. Eventually, the driver gets spooked and takes off at high speed. We had aerial surveillance so we followed at a distance. The driver takes us out to rural farming country. Eventually, the driver pulls into a driveway, jumps out of his car, throws something in the woods and then continues to flee on foot. So our team moves in to catch the driver.
The aerial surveillance is calling out the location of the driver who is now running in the woods. So, my partner and I are driving along one of the parallel roads to where the driver is running. It's pitch black out and we are looking in the woods when we happen upon a guy on the edge of the woods. Bingo, we got our guy.
We shine or lights on the guy. He freezes like a deer in the headlights. We arrest him by bringing him down to the ground and handcuffing him. I go to the radio to say we got him when I hear the aerial surveillance still giving the play by play of someone still running. So we ask the guy who are you and why are you in the woods in the middle of the night.
He says I'm a farmer and I just finished plowing the fields and now walking home. My partner and I are like, ooh shoot we are so sorry. We uncuffed him and apologized. We explain the situation. He was totally cool about it. We gave him a ride home. He could hear what was happening on the radio and thought it was pretty cool.
He thanked us for making his night exciting.
Wikimedia Commons, bigwavephoto
81. Beware the One-Armed Lady
A buddy of mine arrested a lady for public intoxication around 2 AM one morning. Before he puts her in the car, he puts the handcuffs on one wrist. He reaches for her other wrist...and there isn't one. The lady had one arm. I think he solved the problem by hooking the other cuff to the belt loop of her jeans.
82. Revenge Is Best Served Cold
My father was a Boston cop, he told me about a memorable call back in the early '90s. He got a domestic call (cops hate those) where when he showed up, the man who called was waiting outside covered in blankets shivering to death... on a hot day in the middle of August. Apparently, he angered his woman and she responded by making a voodoo doll and chained and padlocked it in the freezer.
The man wanted the cops to break the freezer open but they weren't going to destroy property over this so they sent him to the hospital. My father said this guy's teeth were chattering & his lips were turning blue when it was sunny & 80 ° out.
83. Remember That Time…
Someone had stolen a car and I went to go check it out. I'm driving behind what I think is the car. It had the same color and was the same car and the mistake I made was not matching the license plates. I pulled them over, got out of the car and realized it was my friend with his family. I re-read the license plate and I noticed they were the same except for the last letter on the plate. The last letter on the stolen car was J. The last letter on my friends was I.
I laughed it off and apologized and we went out to dinner later that night.
84. Having a Cow
I once chased a loose cow into someone's backyard, wrestled it to the ground, then tied it up and called the ranger. Even came up over the radio as "in pursuit of brown cow."
85. Made Things Worse
This story is more humorous than serious. I used to be a police dispatcher, and part of my duties involved monitoring the audio and video in the holding cells. One night, an officer approached a 22-year-old for public intoxication and discovered that he had a warrant for an unpaid parking ticket. The officer arrests the kid, who somehow ended up in the holding cell with his cellphone.
I tuned into the cell's audio and heard him frantically explaining to the person on the other end of his phone call that he had given the cop his older brother's ID. Turns out, the kid that was arrested was underage. He attempted to use his older brother's ID to avoid getting in trouble, but it just so happened his older brother had a warrant.
I don't remember what ended up happening after that, but I like to imagine how awkward that next family dinner was.
86. His Bark Is Bigger Than His Bite
This one comes from my cousin's husband. He and a few fellow officers were responding to a disturbance at a house, and they eventually ended up with a suspect "hiding" (they knew he was there the whole time) from them under a porch that he'd pulled the lattice off of. He won't come out, and nobody wants to risk going in to get him.
So they call the K-9 unit. K-9 shows up, and the cop yells, "Come on out! K-9's here, and if you don't come out, we'll send in the dog!" This brilliant guy responds, "Fine! Send in the dog! I'll bite it!" Well, the dog won.
87. All Ears
My uncle was the sheriff of a small town in New Mexico. He was the most hardcore person in our family, super straight-laced, and wasn't at all a joker. So when he told this story (backed up by my aunt) we all believed it without question. A local reporter named Bob D. would always show up at any major police activity from the police scanner.
Big car wrecks, fires, anything worth maybe reporting in the local paper. Everybody on the force knew Bob D., he was around at least once or twice a week at various police activities. Bob was a bit of a joker himself, he would mess with people by flicking behind their ears. People would react to the flicks thinking it was a bug only to turn around and see it was Bob jerking them around.
Everybody liked Bob. Unfortunately, Bob had bad lung cancer and died pretty suddenly. His wife buried him (against his wishes, he wanted to be cremated). For the next couple of weeks, after his funeral, people kept talking about "seeing Bob" at car wrecks, fires, all the same stuff he used to report on. There were 20-30 reports like this from civilians and members of the force.
My uncle didn't buy it. Until the night he and my aunt showed up at our house, gun drawn, pale as paper. We asked him what the heck happened, and he had to sit down, take his breath, compose himself and start to outline what happened. Note: This is a guy that I never saw get rattled, by anything. He said that my aunt and he were sitting on the couch in their house watching TV.
My uncle kept scratching at his ear, over and over. Finally, my aunt asked him what the problem was and he turned around just in time to see their bedroom door open. Bob D. standing there in the doorway. Clear as day. My uncle jumped up, cussed or something, got my aunt's attention who turned to see him there too.
As soon as they both made eye contact with him, Bob smiled, turned, walked across the living room and out their front door. Closed the door behind himself and was gone. My uncle got control of himself and ran outside, gun drawn, looking for Bob, but he was gone. At that point, they ran over to our place. We went over there and didn't see anything but my aunt and uncle stayed at our place that night.
At work the next day, all the guys on the force were giving my uncle lots of "we told you so." People around town said they saw Bob D. show up at police scenes for at least another 2-3 months. My dad saw him in our darkroom in our basement with a friend. He was flicking their ears in the dark. During the third month, people that saw him kept saying he was looking worse and worse.
My uncle saw him two more times, each time confirming he was looking more and more worn. My Dad had concluded that he was decomposing and his ghost was reflecting that process. Every time my ear itches, I get goosebumps.
88. A Balanced Breakfast
One of my uncle's stories from Australia highway patrol. Guy was doing 180 km on the local highway (80 km limit). When my uncle pulled him over, his excuse was that he'd just bought 2 breakfast McMuffins and had one on the dash in front of the speedometer, so he couldn't see how fast he was going.
89. More Than One Option
I was at my boyfriend's—we'll call him B—apartment in Louisiana, which is in kind of a rough neighborhood. We were watching a movie on the couch, and after taking my sleeping pills, fell asleep. At about 1:30 AM, there’s loud banging on the door and B gets up to investigate. My pills knock me out pretty hard, so I barely opened my eyes and see B get yanked out the door and about nine officers flood the apartment.
They start asking me tons of questions and I'm barely coherent at this point. “Ma'am, are you okay?” “Did you call the police?” “How long have you been asleep?” “What is your name?” etc. From outside the apartment, B tries telling them I fell asleep watching a movie, and they berate him for trying to answer for me.
They are patting him down up against the wall outside and are about to cuff him. They radio dispatch to call back the number that dialed 911 and are searching the apartment listening for it. I hold up my phone and tell them we didn't call the police, but they won't listen. Once I finally was able to get a word in, I ask them what this is all about.
Turns out, a woman in apartment 29 was being beaten by her boyfriend and he was dragging her around by her hair, so she called the police. I tell them this is A29, but there’s also B29, C29, and D29. Suddenly, they all rush to me and are baffled by this new information. They start yelling, "WE'VE GOTTA GO. WE'VE GOTTA GO", and suddenly they're all gone.
There are dents in the door and we didn’t get an apology, but I'm happy with the way they handled the situation. If I had called the police for a domestic abuse case, they made me a priority.
90. Three Is Plenty
One day I was on my way home and I noticed a police helicopter flying overhead. I lived in a big city at the time so I thought nothing of it until I was blocked in by two police officers. Someone in an SUV very similar to mine had been trying to lure children at a school nearby, and was considered a dangerous offender due to previous convictions.
They thought they had their guy, but all they had that day was a very pregnant and bewildered white girl in an SUV with her ice cream. The one officer came to my window with his hand on his gun and asked me if I knew anything about someone luring children in my Jeep that day and I looked at him in bewilderment—I have a panic disorder, hopefully that explains my reaction—and blurted out, “I have two under five and one right here, what the heck do I want someone else’s for?!”
Luckily they let me go after telling me what to keep an eye out for. I can laugh about it now.
Public Domain Pictures
91. Spirit’s Final Dirge
I'm a police officer and I was working a fresh homicide—had occurred within the last hour. We'd checked the house, and it's me, two other patrol officers and a homicide detective standing there talking and waiting for the medical examiner. All of a sudden the stereo kicks on, playing a song I don't know the name of, but sounded like something you'd hear at a funeral.
None of us were near the stereo or had the remote. It took us like five minutes to figure out how to turn it off. Was very eerie to me.
92. Follow That Car!
I was driving down the interstate on my way to work on a Saturday morning. I was driving in the middle lane. At a certain point, I glanced at my side mirror and noticed a car catching up to me quickly. I looked over as it passed me and saw that, in the back of this coupe, there was a lady banging on the window and screaming for help.
When I sped up to get a better look at them, she noticed me and started screaming again. I got behind them and began to follow. I could see him reaching back and hitting her in the face as she screamed. I called the police and told them what I was seeing as we both continued speeding down the road. As I was talking to the dispatcher,
I caught up with him and he noticed me. He then realized that I was following him. He moved over in front of me and came to a complete stop. At that point, I had no idea whether he had a gun on him or what, so I just went around him and exited the highway. Once he went past the overpass, I got back on and followed him again, but he eventually lost me as I couldn't keep up with his wild pace.
Fortunately, I had still been on the phone with the police the entire time, and they had cops ready and waiting to pull him over by this point. Eventually, they found him and pulled him over. When I passed them on the road a few minutes later, he was handcuffed on the ground and she was sitting there with the door open.
I came to find out that she was his ex, and that he had abducted her and was planning to take her who knows where. I followed them for around 30 miles, weaving in and out of traffic and going over 100 miles per hour at times to keep up. It was definitely a creepy experience, especially when I think of what he could have been preparing to do to her had no one intervened…
93. A New Role Model
A kid had drowned at a local pool, so I had to tag along with the ambulances for an investigation. I got there first and saw his father holding him and crying. My heart immediately sank. I ran over there and tried to perform CPR on him to the best of my ability for about ten minutes until the ambulance finally arrived. The kid woke up right as it was pulling onto our street.
I proceeded to visit him in the hospital, and now he swears he wants to be a police officer when he grows up.
94. Where’s the Nearest Barbershop?
Remember Diane Downs, the woman in Oregon who shot her three kids to be with her lover? She originally said a "shaggy-haired strange man" had done it. So, my buddy is out jogging in that area and stops at a pay phone to call his sister to pick him up. Cop car pulls up and the cop pulls out a shotgun and points it into the phone booth.
“Uh, sis? I gotta go. If I don't call you within the next half hour look for me at the police station.” Turns out that he looked like the "shaggy-haired stranger" who supposedly had just shot three kids a little way up the road. Took him some fast-talking to convince the cop he had nothing to do with it.
95. That’s Just Freaky
Paramedic/volunteer fireman, here. Hope I'm allowed to contribute...We covered a town in the middle of nowhere. Get a call from "Woodchuck City" as we call it, which is a trailer park with all of the chaos you'd associate with an alcoholic meth scene, but without the alcohol and meth (they were just lazy, crazy Seventh Day Adventists).
Call was FNRP (Found Non-Responsive, with/weak Pulse), so we rushed out there. These are usually overdoses or strokes, so time was important. I get there and when I come in there's four or five adults, all wearing their church clothes (black pants, white shirt, women in blue or grey gowns) which threw me off because it was about two in the morning on a weekday.
I kneel down next to her and feel her wrist. Cold as ice. My guess is they're wearing their clothes because they knew she was dead, and the minister was on the way for last rites or something. Paramedic with me asks if we should defib, I shake my head and try to verify there aren't any vitals. Nothing. Their dog starts growling at me, and I'm thinking he doesn't like me touching her.
I ask them to get rid of the dog and he starts howling. Then the dog just stops. At the very moment the dog stops, a light blows out, and the "dead" person sits up, says "Make sure [victim's sister] gets the heck out of her place" and slowly lays down. My partner and I are freaked out, as I was CERTAIN that woman was dead, but nobody else is.
Partner starts going through, checking, to see if I screwed up. Nope, still dead, skin is getting a little change. We call in the coroner, who has to come out from the other part of the county, nearly 40 minutes away. Sheriff radios in and says they'll be a few minutes, as a tree has fallen on a cabin a few miles away.
Later find out they had called the sister and she hadn't taken two steps out of her place when a tree had fallen on her cabin, totally destroying the bedroom in which she slept. I don't know if it fell directly on the bed, but, at that point, I didn't want to know any more about anything that happened that night. Nothing at all, ever.
Not that I think anything "paranormal" was at work here, but it certainly wasn't normal what I saw.
96. A Neverending Case of Nepotism
Two years ago I was struck head on in an intersection by a woman driving an SUV (I was driving my dad's Civic). She was speeding and had gone through a red light. My car was totaled, while hers looked like her bumper needed to be replaced. When the police showed up they told me that she was obviously at fault and not to worry.
A few days later I get a call from my insurance company saying that I was at fault... turns out the lady that hit me was the police chief's wife. It took a year to fight the case in court, which I eventually won due to the huge amounts of evidence against her. But it gets better...Two months ago I get a call from my insurance company saying that they were going to close the case.
Huge relief that that chapter of my life was over. The NEXT day I get a call saying that the case was reopened and I was being sued because the lady had suffered injuries in the crash...a crash that I was ultimately found not at fault for...
97. Don’t Stop Believing
My dad is out of state on business driving through some no-name town when he goes through an intersection. Suddenly, a cop pulls him over and tickets him—stating that he ran a stop sign. My dad insisted that there was not any stop sign, but the cop did not listen. Pissed, he went back to the intersection and saw that there was indeed a stop sign hidden behind a tree and twisted in the wrong direction!
Even more pissed, he went into a convenience store and bought a disposable camera. The clerk laughed because he saw what happened and knew what was up. Luckily, my dad had to be back there in a few weeks for work. The cop assumed that someone with out of state plates would just pay the ticket, and was shocked when my dad turned up in court,
He calmly presented his evidence to the judge, and strolled out in five minutes scot-free.
98. Reputation Is Everything
Girl was 18 years old, sitting in the parking lot of a restaurant in her little VW Jetta. All of a sudden, some older woman in a freaking Escalade backs into her. Rather than getting out like a normal person, the woman gets out and starts screaming at the girl saying it was her fault and "why didn't you see me backing up!!!" etc.
So, when the cops come to write up the police report, the woman immediately tells them her story of how she was backing up and "that dumb girl" backed up into her without so much as a glance backward. She made sure to throw in little embellishments like, "I could have been KILLED!" etc. Friend told them that she hadn't moved and was in park the whole time. That the woman had backed into her.
Well, turns out the woman was a well-known woman who was exceedingly rich and gave an absurd amount of money to the police department every year at their annual fundraiser. So, who did they believe? The irresponsible 18 year-old girl or the woman that almost single-handedly built them a new jail? You guessed it.
Eventually, she had to settle with the woman because of lack of evidence.
99. Eerie Phone Call
My uncle works for dispatch in my town and he recently told my family of the weirdest call he's ever gotten. He says that he had received a call from a landline one night and when he answered it there was only static on the other end. This happened two more times. Finally, he calls a squad to go check out the address from the caller ID.
When the cops got there and walked into the house they immediately saw that there was a dead body. The person had been dead for five months. The craziest part about it was that there was no electricity or any other utility working. So there is just simply no way at all that they should have been able to get those calls into dispatch.
But if they hadn't, who knows how long that person’s body would have stayed there.
100. I’m Sorry, What?
I’m a former paramedic, 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. So we all get called into the scene.
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. Do a little more checking and he has no visible signs of any type of trauma, the body is not 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 are not too far from an area that everyone believes is haunted and is a site for satanic worship. 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 weird/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 wickedly, but it was all over, not from any specific direction.
Those of us that had heard the whispering never heard the new noise. 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 ASAP. We helped them load the body—more like throw it in the darn stretcher.
We didn't even bother strapping it down and got the heck outta there. We didn't take time to strap him down because he was already dead—it ain't gonna make him more dead if he fell off. The next afternoon, we went to the morgue to speak with the coroner and find out the cause of death. The first thing the coroner asked us was why did we clean the body?
Me and my partner looked at him kinda strange 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 pale and said that just added to the confusion, because the body had absolutely no blood in it whatsoever. But it got worse.
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, or been able to explain the whispering and evil laughing. Yeah, one of those calls I'll never forget!
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