There is more going on in the world than any of us fully understands. No one person holds the depths of human knowledge or can see the breadth of human experience. This means that there will always be mysteries and the possibility for things which defy "natural" law.
Supernatural experiences are not terribly common, but some of us have had them firsthand and many more people know and trust someone who says they have had such an encounter. While some skeptics will dismiss the notion of the supernatural out of hand, the overwhelming number of stories, the amount of evidence, and the simple fact that we cannot disprove such things all makes it quite plausible that the supernatural is real. Hear stories from trusted people, members of law enforcement and similar professions, sharing their stories of cases which were beyond natural.
35. Frozen Possession
I'm a police officer. I was driving along and found a girl just standing in the middle of the road. My initial thought was to just to tell her to pay attention but it was clear that while the lights were on, nobody was home. During my whole time with her, she never uttered a word. I was left in a weird situation. She had done nothing—clearly needed help—but physically nothing seemed wrong.
As I am pondering what on earth I should do, the girl suddenly starts spinning. Now, spinning is not illegal and I'm starting to think this girl is one of those protesters that wind up police (I've dealt with troll stations before) so I think, "Crack on, spin to your heart's content." Then she loses her balance and falls, whacking her head on the side of the police car! Great. So I call an ambulance but she seems fine. Still not talking but she is looking up at the sky. It's a nice day, so fine, enjoy the sun. I do some writing and look back at her now bright red face and watering eyes and realize she is trying to damage her retinas by forcing herself to look directly at the sun. That's a new one on me so now I'm holding a book or something above her to shield her eyes... ambulance arrives and we get to the hospital and now she has forgotten how to walk. Now I'm 99% sure she is a wind-up merchant but I get her a wheelchair. In the wheelchair, she strikes up an "I'm a little teapot" pose and keeps this up for the next hour, zero movements, just frozen with her arms out. So I now have three potential situations:
She is pretending to be frozen in time.
She is suffering from a mental health issue.
She has been possessed.
By now I'm convinced it's the latter but I section her and leave her with professionals. A week later, I call the hospital and they tell me she is still frozen.
34. Young Girls Are Creepier Than Any Monster
My brother is a deputy and at the time I worked as an EMT for a few small towns in northeast Colorado. I frequently went on ride alongs with him while waiting for 9-1-1 calls to come in.
This took place in Amherst Colorado. The town is very small. Amherst has about 50 people, a church, some houses, a grain tower, and a park. It was about three a.m. and we were about to call it a night. As we were making our last check on Amherst, we noticed movement at the park but couldn’t tell exactly what was going on because it was pitch black.
We drove up and stopped alongside the dirt road, flipped on the spotlight and as we moved the light around the park it finally settled on the back of a young girl (maybe 13) sitting on a swing with her back facing us. We left the spotlight on her, she wasn’t moving, she just sat there facing away from us looking down at the ground. Needless to say, it was a very creepy situation. We both looked at each other with that face you would make when something is out of the ordinary. I quickly suggested that we should call her over using the PA system. He agreed.
As we looked back over, she was gone. I mean no signs of anyone anywhere. The park was in a wide open area, she couldn’t have gotten out of sight in the short amount of time that we had our exchange of words. I remember saying, “Should we get out and look for her?” Maybe she hid behind one of the park toys or something. My brother just looked at me and said, “Heck to the no,” and drove away. It still creeps me out to this day.
33. Fairy Prints
Years ago my uncle told us about a woman who would call the police station just about every night claiming that "fairies or elves" were breaking into her house and stealing her food. As is custom, every time she calls, they send a unit to check on her (my uncle gets it about two or three times per week). Every night they stop by her house to reassure her that no one has broken in and to calm her down.
One night, when he gets to the house she has poured powdered sugar all over the floor to "record their tracks" and my uncle says he literally has to do a double take. All over the floor of her kitchen are these little tracks, tiny like nothing he's seen before. His partner starts taking photos and trying to figure it out. A few other officers come in, as most of them had gotten the call to her house too and want to see it. Ten police officers all completely baffled as to what these weird little prints are...
32. Still Looking Out For Us
I was a police officer working the desk 1500 - 2300; fire alarm signal goes off (many, many years ago the police department offered alarm monitoring service, and it was too complicated to remove so we left it). The first shift dispatch is already punched in so she took it.
I’m headed out the door to the fire department when 9-1-1 rings from the same address, I answer it. I heard no one in the other end and assumed they barely got to call before passing out, I bolt out the back door, hop in a squad car, radio in the 9-1-1 call on channel three that both police/fire can hear and that I’m going directly to the house.
Arrive just as another unit shows up. No signs of smoke... no sign of anything.
An older woman comes walking up the street pushing a wheelchair with an elderly lady (her mother). They live there and just went out for an early evening stroll before dinner.
We tell them what we have going on. Nobody else lives there and as far as the elderly lady can remember the alarm was disconnected from the house years ago during some renovations. They don’t have an alarm system either, just a couple of smoke/fire detectors.
We do a walk around the house, get to the back door off the kitchen and you can clearly see and smell gas.
We turned off the gas at the main, set up some fans to air it out and find a cracked gas line going to the oven. The daughter said she spilled some coffee she was making for their walk and had to move the oven a few inches to clean. It probably broke the line pushing the oven back in. Nothing else in the house was disturbed and both phones were on the hook.
Fire chief shows up about 15 minutes into the call. He goes over to the two ladies and gives them both a hug; he’s nearly in tears.
The elderly lady in the wheelchair, her husband was the fire chief 60+ years ago for our department. The daughter's husband passed away a few years ago, and he was also a member of our department.
I never believed in ghosts or spirits but that call made me think maybe people who spend their lives doing good are allowed by some power to look over their loved ones every so often.
31. Saved By An Angel
He went to a call where a father had gone crazy and decided to hurt his family. He got rid of his wife and was looking around trying to find his five-year-old son. The boy had run outside and was trying to hide on the side of the house behind the trash cans. The father eventually found him and point blank emptied nearly a full magazine at the boy.
When my dad arrived, they found the boy in shock, hiding right where his dad found him, not a wound on his body. There were bullet holes in the side of the house all around the boy. When they finally got to question him about it, they asked him what happened when his dad found him on the side of the yard. The boy replied, "The angel was in front of me with a shield, and he saved me. He pushed the gun away from me."
30. Worst Of The Worst Might Still Be Around
I'm a second-generation firefighter. My father spent the latter days of his career as a fire safety director at a massive mental asylum. Our state version of OSHA has to come and do inspections at all facilities. His was no exception so the OSHA inspectors make their way to an abandoned part of the facility that used to house the criminally insane. The absolute worst of the worst. My father left them with keys and a flashlight because the electricity didn't work. The inspectors were radioing back to my father that they kept hearing talking and footsteps which was impossible. Not even squatters could move around because each section is isolated with locked doors to prevent escape. Eventually, the inspectors gave up and actually ran out without finishing. My dad decided to stick around and check the alarm boxes that they didn't. As he was checking one of the alarms, he felt as if someone is watching him from down the hall. As he looked, a shadow formed with a head, shoulders, torso but no legs and just two holes where there should be eyes. My dad noped the heck on out of there.
29. Voices And Figures
Cop. Real call. I have been on patrol for several years, and love stuff like this. I had a backup officer with me, who witnessed everything.
Dispatch sent me to a call in a mountain area late one night. Dispatch said the caller reported several people holding a baby above their heads, and chanting while standing on her property. The call sounded ridiculous and I smirked as dispatch gave the details. I arrived at the proper address after driving about 20 minutes along a mountain road. There was not much else up there, and it was extremely quiet. No one walked around out there, and there weren't very many cars driving that late. I walked along a gated driveway, through a lightly wooded area. I found the callers house, with two dim lights near the front door. The house was surrounded on three sides by heavy woods. I felt a little uneasy just looking at the house.
I knocked on the front door of the house while standing on a large patio. I heard something move to my left, which startled me because it was close. It sounded like a person, something big. I looked to the left and used my flashlight to light up the patio... I didn't see anyone.
I continued to knock. I could hear two voices inside the house. I clearly heard a male and a female. This made me feel a little better. I thought I heard someone on the patio, but it must have been someone inside.
The female eventually opened the door. She was terrified, almost crying. She asked me to come inside and to close the door. She led me to the living room, where I saw a very cheap security monitor, almost like a baby monitor camera setup, with audio and video playing. The camera setup only provided a live feed. The camera was positioned to view the front door and patio area where I was just standing. The audio was silent as I watched the monitor for a few seconds.
The woman began to explain when I interrupted and asked where the male was inside the house (I heard his voice). She looked confused and said she was here alone. I was surprised because I know for a fact I heard a male's voice when I knocked. I asked her several times, and initially thought she was lying to me. My partner checked the house and did not find anyone.
The woman said she was reading while sitting on the couch when she heard something over the security camera. She looked at the display and saw two people on the patio, standing at the front door. She heard knocking at the door and called the police. I looked at the monitor, and although it was low quality, I could see the patio and front door area with decent clarity. As the woman continued to explain, the audio on the monitor went from quiet to extremely loud. We all stop talking. The caller was shaking. I looked at the monitor but didn't see anyone. Loud audio continued to blast from the speakers. The audio sounded like wind... but it was not windy that night. I asked the woman, "What is that?" and she said, "It's them." I looked at my partner who was nervous.
The woman gave me her cell phone, stating she took pictures of the monitor, showing the two people on her patio. I looked through several low-quality pics and didn't see anything. I continued to scroll, and sure enough, I saw what looked like two tall figures standing at the door. One of the figures was holding something. The figures looked strange, all dark and featureless, in contrast to the video I saw on the monitor.
I was in disbelief, and thought, "Oh my god, she's telling the truth."
I continued to scroll and saw one figure holding something up over its head. Another picture showed the item at the base of the door with both figures standing near it. I tried to reason, to explain what could have caused these images... but it was pretty apparent that there had been two subjects on her patio.
We checked outside, walking the property to the tree line. I mentioned the movement on the patio and the male's voice from inside the house. My partner asked me to stop talking about it.
We finished checking and returned to speak with the caller. She said she would be driving into town and staying at a hotel because she was too scared to stay there that night.
We walked along the driveway back to our cars... my partner jumped into the patrol car and took off. I laughed, but I felt really uneasy, standing there in the dark. I left shortly afterward.
28. Raising The Dead
Cop here.
My partner and I were dispatched to a welfare check. Elderly guy, nobody had seen him in a few days, mail overflowing in the mailbox, missed a doctor's appointment, the car hasn't moved, etc. We both know we are about to find a body. We arrive on the scene and can't get anyone to the door. Look through the window and, sure enough, we can see his foot on the floor in the living room. My partner is a corporal and pulls rank and makes me go first. The door is unlocked and as soon as we open it we smell a mostly fresh body. Almost relieved, we both enter and he tells me to check vitals on dead dude. He is obviously dead. So I go to stand over him and see if I can get a pulse at which point he takes a deep breath, rolls over, and asks why we are in his house. At this point. we both start screaming as we run out of the house. We call EMS and they transported him. They said they couldn't get a blood pressure or pulse on him. I think he died a week later in the hospital. I still get jokes about raising the dead.
27. The Nice Woman
I’m a detective and spent some time as an expert on crimes against children. It was the best/worst assignment I’ve ever had. One case I had come in at midnight. A young woman with a toddler comes into one of the precincts to report her ex-boyfriend assaulted her during a custody argument. Long story short: It was legit, and one of the most violent and sadistic cases I’ve ever had so I’ll spare the gruesome details. I still have no idea how this woman made her own way to a precinct with a toddler.
Part of the investigation requires me to talk to the toddler (victim said the toddler was present for everything). I’m a Child Forensic Interviewer as well. During the interview, the toddler recalls their father becoming angry and hitting the mom. Then, the toddler said that the “nice woman” showed up and she couldn’t see past the nice woman. The “nice woman” held her and told her that they were both going to be safe and sang her a song in a different language. The toddler said the Nice Woman went over to the front door and knocked on the door. Then, the nice woman helped them and their mom to the car before flying away.
In the victim’s interview, she said that her ex-boyfriend was about to kill her, but he got distracted for some reason, then ran out of the apartment. She had no explanation why.
The suspect was caught about eight hours later. He confessed to absolutely everything. When I asked him about the knife to the throat he said this: “I swear to god I was gonna kill her. But I thought I heard a knock at the door and thought it was the police. Once I saw it was clear, I ran outside.”
He is now serving life in prison, and the mom and toddler are safe and doing well. I’d love to know more about the Nice Woman.
26. Make A Pitstop
My dad was in the police force for 20 years and when he was just a rookie, he had to conduct nighttime roadblocks meant to catch inebriated drivers.
They had done it many times before and this night started routine enough for them. That was until this Toyota Corolla drove up to them with what looked like a white blanket on its roof, flapping in the wind.
They thought it was weird but did not see anything amiss about it. One of them even joked that this guy was multitasking by drying his laundry and driving home at the same time.
The laughs stopped when the lone car came closer and all of them saw what looked like a woman in white lying face down on top of the car. The woman seemed to slide like a slug backward until she disappeared behind the car as it eventually came to a stop in front of them.
It took a few minutes for my dad’s team to re-compose themselves as they stared at each other as if to say, “You guys saw that right?”
The most senior of them finally stepped up and shot the usual questions to the driver. There was a noticeable quiver in his voice as he made conversation and asked him to step out of the vehicle. My dad’s team inspected the whole vehicle, including the boot and found nothing strange in it.
The driver was a good-looking Staff Sergeant in the army who was heading home from a company event earlier that night and admitted to having had a few. He said he laid down in his bunk to sleep it off, hence why he was driving home at that time (it was four a.m.).
He passed their sobriety test and they started to ask him if he saw anything weird during his drive. Initially, he said no but after more questioning, he mentioned that he had to swerve to avoid what looked like a bird that was flying upside down. It was spooky but didn't think that was a detail worth sharing with police officers.
The senior then told the guy to chill out at a 24-hour coffee shop before heading home (the locals believe that if a malevolent spirit follows you, making a pitstop confuses them so they can’t set up shop in your house). After some confusion of his own, the driver finally caught on and nodded in agreement.
After the guy leaves, they call into the station and cut the night short. Never knew what happened to the driver, hope he’s alright.
25. Like No-One Was Ever There
Where I grew up, there is an abandoned factory that high school and college kids will visit, usually around Halloween, because it's scary enough in the dark.
It also houses a decent amount of homeless people. So once every few months, the cops will come in, do a sweep, and force anyone there to leave.
One night, my uncle is working and there's a call to the non-emergency line saying there's a lot of "movement" at the building, that the caller can see light on every floor but the first. My uncle and a few other officers respond.
No more than 10 minutes have gone by when my uncle gets there. There's no one around, but there's plenty of light pouring out of the openings where the windows once were. The officers all agree it looks more like fire than flashlights, so they call the fire department as a precaution.
They walk into the first floor and start searching for the stairs. They find them and ascend to the second floor... There's no light anywhere. Same with the third, fourth, and fifth floors. They sweep the entire building, every nook, and cranny, even the roof. There's no light source and no one there that they can find.
The fire department had arrived shortly after they went in and they couldn't see anything from the outside other than the subtle glow of flashlights, which was faint. Nothing like what my uncle and the others had seen.
But my uncle said that what was even more unsettling was that none of the homeless areas, which were usually comprised of piles of trash along with cardboard boxes and blankets, were there. Not that they didn't find any homeless people, but that there was no sign that anyone had been in there at all, ever.
24. Omen In A Yellow Dress
ICU Nurse here.
We had a patient that was dying. No family. Around three a.m., the guy started crying and asking why the little girl in the yellow dress was in the hospital. We assure him there is no little girl. He cries even more saying, "Yes there is, she is at the foot of the bed." Kid you not, the man passed in the next few minutes. I and my pod partner blame the hallucination on the meds we were giving him to keep him comfortable.
Next night. New patient in the room. She’s completely alert and oriented. About three a.m., she hits her call light. She wants to know why the little girl in the yellow dress was outside her room. We told her it was just her imagination from being in a strange place. Not five minutes later the guy in the next room goes into full cardiac arrest and unfortunately, we can’t receive him.
Of course, we absolutely freak. Two different nights. Two different patients see the same thing. All followed by death.
23. Stubborn Lights
I was dispatched around three am. to attend a house where the caller was concerned that someone had broken into the basement and was still inside. The caller was a very old lady and she lived alone. As far as she could tell, she woke up and noticed that the basement lights were on, and she hadn’t been downstairs in years.
My partner and I get to the call and the lady is standing at the front door with her walker anxiously waiting for us to come inside. My partner and I go into the basement and you can tell that no one had been down there for a while because as I walked I kept hitting cobwebs that were dangling from the ceiling. Anyway, everything appeared to be in order, and eventually, I found the light switch further into the basement and turn it off. We shut the basement door behind us and clear the main floor too since she was so adamant that she heard rustling and coughing in the basement (the basement was relatively empty, and I assure you no one was down there).
As we are about to leave she asks if we turned the light off. I said yes, and opened the door to show her, but the light was back on when I did. I kept my composure and asked her if I could turn the lights on/off from upstairs as well. Negative. My partner and I exchanged looks and I went back down to turn the lights off again and get out of there. We met up after the call and dug a little bit into the history of the house, and it turned out that a year ago on that day, we attended to help paramedics because her husband had fallen down those stairs.
22. Spinning Hanger
This was a couple years ago while I still worked a general patrol car.
We got a call for a sudden death—sad call. Foster parent found their foster child hanging in a closet. We arrived on the scene, found the foster parent sobbing on the main floor, told us the kid was upstairs. Paramedics had already come and gone, pronouncing the youth deceased likely from the night before. Foster parent had cut them down and called 9-1-1 and thus the body was slumped on the floor. We conducted an investigation to ensure nothing was suspicious which included a visual inspection of the scene, questioning of anyone in the house at the time, contacting the medical examiner, etc. Here’s where it gets screwy for me.
As I’m in the room alone with the deceased, all of a sudden I hear a loud clanging coming from the closet. There’s something eerie about being alone in a room with a dead body, it was always in the back of my mind. And when this sound happened I almost pooped myself. I turn and look to the closet and see a single hangar spinning round and round the closet rod, almost as if someone manually tried to start a propeller on a plane. No one else in the room but me and the deceased.
I pride myself on being able to stay composed in some pretty intense situations through my career but that one stuck with me. To this day I can’t explain it, and can’t find a reasonable explanation as to how it would have happened.
21. Tiberius' Room
I worked as a forensic nurse in a lock-up unit in the hospital once with state and county inmates. I had one older/crazy lady who swore she was being haunted/abused by a demon she would call Tiberius. So many crazy things happened whenever she was there. We’d go into the room, do normal care, leave, and seconds later she’d start screaming bloody murder and we’d run into the room to find her looking like she’d been in a fight with a boxing champ—bloody lip, black eye, markings all over her body. No one ever saw her doing this stuff to herself. Things would get moved around the room by themselves.
At one point, she was in protective restraints because the doc thought she was hurting herself. There was no way she could have moved or done anything to herself while in these restraints, but new marks would always appear or her tray/cart would be across the room. The room was secure so there was no way someone else was doing this. You’d ask her questions and she’d just say, “It was Tiberius.” After she was discharged we always had trouble with that room. If there was going to be a rapid response or code, it happened in that room. One of the guards reporting that lights were going on and off in a room? It was that one.
20. Invisible Jim
I'm a CMA; I was working a night shift in an Alzheimer's unit. All of the residents were in and out with their lucidity. One lady seemed to be having hallucinations, which was pretty common for those residents. She insisted her husband was there and she talked to him, scooted over so he could sit next to her, etc. She just generally acted like there was another person was there when there wasn't. Her husband, Jim, had been dead for a couple of years. She seemed happy, and there's no point arguing with someone with dementia anyway, so we left "them" to visit. After a while, she quiets down and says Jim left.
Across the hall, the lady in that room turns on her call light. Her complaint? "This man won't get out of my room!" We don't see anything and ask, "What man? Who is it?" She turns to the nothingness beside her bed and says "Who are you?!" Then turns back to us and says, "His name is Jim."
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19. Doesn't Happen If He Doesn't Talk About It
My dad used to work as a CO (corrections officer) at a rural prison. He drove perimeter, which just means he made circles around the jail in a truck, checking empty buildings for runaway inmates and just generally being bored for eight hours every night.
One night, my dad is parked on a hill just reading a magazine when he starts to feel a thumping in his body. He described it as the feeling you get when speakers are playing a song with really heavy bass and you can feel the bass in your whole body.
Anyway, he puts the magazine down and checks his rearview, and he sees someone outside the truck. He grabs his pistol and jumps out of the truck, weapon drawn. When he gets outside, he sees a procession of Native Americans walking through the truck (and directly through his seat) only to disappear at the exact spot he was sitting. He said it was clear they were ghosts because many of them appeared injured. This went on for a few seconds, and then the whole procession disappeared.
He called the other perimeter guy on his walkie to try to explain, and the other guy almost immediately stopped communicating. Turns out the other guy had seen this happen before but didn't believe in ghosts, so he wouldn't talk about it.
18. A Little Experiment
I was a patrol officer in a large west coast city for a short period a little while back.
The city I worked for had (and continues to have) a problematic influx of transients. The first thing you learn when dealing with homeless populations is that mental health problems and substance abuse are overwhelmingly abundant. By the end of my stint, I felt more like an armed social worker than a police officer, and that’s one of the reasons I left.
I’ve always been a horror movie buff. After The Conjuring debuted I bought a copy of The Demonologist, the biography of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Ed recounts meeting a homeless man in NYC who spoke as if possessed (p.219) and goes on to say that prolonged cases of mental anguish can lead to influence from other-worldly beings.
I’m not sure if I believe that, but I always kept it in the back of my mind. I do know certain chemical substances can make the user “see” or “feel” the presence of spiritual entities. So many homeless people have addiction problems I wouldn’t be surprised that, if these kinds of entities are real, they would find ways to mess with people.
One night, on patrol in a two-man car, I was flagged down by a disheveled man standing next to a Winnebago. He told me a woman he didn’t know was inside with his son and wouldn’t leave. After alerting dispatch my FTO and I knocked on the door and asked if we could come in. The son said yes, and I stepped inside. The woman looked slightly less disheveled than the son, but I could tell she was either on something or mentally ill. The son was lying very still on a cot, looking absolutely terrified. The woman was quietly mumbling something and fidgeting with empty hands. After trying (and failing) to converse with her she quickly ran out of the Winnebago.
Neither the complainant nor the son wanted to file a report and simply asked us to keep an eye on the area. I agreed, walked back to my car, and slowly drove away. About a block down the road I saw the woman walking slowly and decided to pull up and try to talk to her again.
I’m in the driver’s seat and my FTO is riding shotgun. We pull up, he rolls down his window and asks for her name. She says it’s Rachel and begins to mumble louder and faster. The fidgeting intensifies, and the only intelligible thing she says is that she’s “always searching”. My FTO calmly and patiently asks her the basic questions (where do you live, do you know how to get home, are you hurt or in danger, etc), but isn’t getting anywhere.
At this point, I start to feel a little creeped out but haven’t said anything. Something in her eyes told me this is all wrong. Rachel continues to mumble and fidget but is looking down at her hands. I decide to run a little experiment (because I might not get the chance to do so again) and began mouthing the Lord’s Prayer. I’m not actually saying anything, just thinking it and moving my lips. The whole time I continue staring at Rachel to make sure she wasn’t looking at me, which she wasn’t, and to make any reaction even more unlikely I said the prayer in old English (like Beowulf old English). That way, even if she glances up at me, it’s highly unlikely she’ll understand what I’m doing.
I finish the part which says “deliver us from evil” and Rachel stops mumbling. She jerks her head up, her eyes go wide, and she glares at me for the longest second I’ve ever felt before sprinting down the street and into an alley.
17. A Dead Biker
I was an EMT for a while. We got a call about someone who was riding their bike at "break-neck speed" when they hit a car head-first without a helmet. We went over immediately. Despite the fact that it was broad daylight and we were in the middle of Suburbia on a Saturday, nobody even came to check on this poor guy. Seriously, the streets were empty. Usually, a massive crowd gathers around violent accidents like this.
So his skull was pretty much smashed in and he was unresponsive. It was the worst head injury I'd ever seen. We assessed that he had a major skull fracture, a concussion, and he was bleeding profusely. He was also missing teeth and had a minor road rash, but fortunately, he wasn't missing much skin. To give you an idea of how bad it was, this was the kind of injury that most people don't survive. If you did survive, you'd basically be a vegetable. Normally we would've moved him off the road, but when someone has a head/neck injury that isn't very safe.
My partner, who was also training me as I was still kinda new, went to check his pulse while I began to unload our gear. He crouched down, felt for a pulse for a while, and then stood up and opened his mouth to say something. Suddenly, the guy jumped up. He didn't use his arms to pick himself up, he just jumped to his feet. It startled the two of us. He looked at us, smiled, and attempted to grab his bike. We tried to stop him, but we didn't exactly want to wrestle him to the ground given his condition. He gets away from us and bolts into the woods without his bike. My partner was in even more disbelief than I was. He just stared at where the man had run off, mouth agape. Then he turned to me and muttered, "He had no pulse, man." I asked him if he was sure and he swore up and down that the biker was clinically dead.
We contacted the authorities for assistance and they sent a search and rescue team into the forest. I don't know if he was found or not, because we normally don't get much information about patients after they go to the professionals. Keep in mind that this was the Pine Barrens, so they had a lot of ground to cover. My best guess is that he went to a loved one's house out of confusion. What I found odd about that is, head injuries bleed, so you'd think the guy would leave a long red trail of blood for the cops to follow.
16. Probably Dementia, Right?
My partner and I received a 9-1-1 call from an old woman having a dispute with someone. We get to the house and she says she is alone. We ask her, "Who are you having a dispute with?"
She says, “Oh just this spirit in one of my rooms.” Immediately, my partner and I look at each other and give the ole, “she’s elderly, it’s prob dementia or something along those lines" look. As we’re talking to her, she’s explaining how sometimes a “bad” spirit comes around. She states that he’s in the back room and (of course) the lights don’t work. We try to tell her that spirits probably aren’t in her house and we have to get to another 9-1-1 call. She insists we check it out. So we do.
Now, the house, the way she was speaking about spirits, made me believe something was there. When we got the room and she opened the door, seeing a ghost wouldn’t have shocked me. She did say that it’s usually in the corner up on the ceiling. Well, that corner was dark and had the freakiest shadow that legitimately was terrifying. My partner and I shine our flashlights around the whole room and thankfully, nothing was there. We told the lady, nope, you're good, nothing going on here. I said to her, “If you feel there’s a spirit there the NYPD cannot help you. Go to a local church or religious institution of your choosing and best of luck.” We got the heck outta there.
15. Darker On Darker
Before my dad became a state police officer, he did some security work at a big factory. He's not normally a superstitious person, so when he told me this story with such a weird seriousness to it, it kind of scared the poop out of me. He's always said, "I don't mess with that stuff," regarding supernatural things.
This story is in the early 80s. While working at the factory, he always had the night shift. It was just him and the big factory. He had his own little room where he could watch TV, listen to the radio and do whatever. But the rest of the factory (for the most part, besides the exits) was dark. His job was to actually patrol the factory every hour. He'd get up, grab his flashlight, and just stroll around the place going down row by row, peeking his head out left to right.
One night, he set out to do his usual run with a flashlight in hand. But he could see that something was unusual to his eye when he walked out into the dark. You know that sensation you get when your eyes adjust to the room and you can just start to make out certain objects but nothing full or whole? There was something darker in the main hall or row. And it was moving. He paused for a minute and as his eyes fully adjusted, there seemed to be nothing... He took a second to swipe the factory with his light, and then decided that he was just seeing things. He went down into the main row and started his run. Everything was normal, nothing out of the ordinary. He was still a bit on edge, seeing as the factory without a big moving shadow was creepy enough.
When the rows of the factory ended, there was a big open area at the end. This was the entrance to the factory. Normally there would be a light at the front door, but tonight it had dimmed lower. He thought that was weird and really began to sweat, so instead of investigating any further he turned from the exit and went to go back into the main row and get back up to his room. That's when in the corner of his eye on the right side he could see what he described as a black cloaked figure. His light hit it and he saw it. Tall and distinctly human-like. But he didn't stop. He just went right back to his room, locked the door and stayed in there until it was light out. He left the factory and called the owner to tell him he wouldn't be returning to the job. I don't blame him.
14. Fast Floating
It was a late summer night when we were responding to a call in a rural area. My partner and I were driving down a winding two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere. No light of any kind other than the headlights and moon. We’re coming up on a sharp right turn when I see a man traveling across the grass from an area of brush. He’s moving very quickly and smoothly, as if riding a bicycle. No up-and-down motion like running. Obviously, I’m pretty confused about a guy on a bike in the middle of the night but not surprised. He comes to a tree and stops. It’s about this time we’re driving by him. I look out the window and see a man standing next to this tree with no bike or anything in sight. Just standing there staring at the truck passing by. My hair is standing up. We continue toward the call and I ask my partner if he had seen that guy. His response is, “Man, I thought I was crazy.”
13. All Eyes On Me
For a bit, I worked security at a shopping mall. My partner and I already had a feeling this place was haunted, one reason being the homicide that happened right before I was hired.
The very west of the mall made the hair on my neck stand up the most and I don’t know why. It’s also good to note that there is an animal shelter at this end of the mall. You can see the cats and dogs through the windows at night. They would bark and whine a lot.
One night, I was walking to that end of the mall and I started feeling like someone was following me or walking behind me. When I got to the shelter none of the animals were making noise, but I swear to god all of the ones that were awake were staring at or behind me.
I got really bad goosebumps and a horrible feeling in my gut. I put my head down and walked as fast as possible out of the closest door. Once I was outside, all of the negative feelings went away.
12. The Dog Heard It Too
I was doing nighttime K9 training at a local abandoned sanitarium/hospital that is owned by the state. This building is comprised of the old section, which was largely converted to offices, and a newer section, which looks like a standard hospital.
We had several guys and their K9 partners training that night. All of the dogs stay out in their respective patrol vehicles while they are not being used or training. For this night, everyone is conducting training in the basement of the newer section of the hospital. They are running scenarios where the dog searches the building and finds a bad guy in a bite suit and bites the bad guy. My dog isn’t in that stage of his training yet so I go off to another floor of the hospital with my head trainer to do other training.
Myself, my pup, and the head trainer go to the third floor of the building and begin training. The hospital has a central area which looked to be a nurses station. Several long hallways lead away from the nursing station. I’m standing in a hallway with my dog facing the nurses' station. The hallway continues for about another 40 yards behind me and has multiple rooms. I put my dog in a sit stay and begin listening to the instructions from my trainer. Both I and my dog are focused on what my trainer is saying. While the instruction is going on my dog looks back at the hallway behind me. Just as he does this I hear a deep mumbled male voice behind me. I interrupt the trainer and turn my head to listen. As I turn my head the voice fades out. Once the voice fades out my dog looks forward again.
I’m a little freaked out at this point. The hospital is locked down tight. We also walked through to make sure no one was squatting. Even if we missed a squatter, you would think that announcing multiple times, “Police K9. Come out now or announce yourself! If not, I’m sending the dog and you’ll get bit!” would drive someone out.
I believe in ghosts but I do not think I was hearing the conversation of the other guys training. We were four floors away in a large hospital. After this happened, I went looking for the noise and never found anything.
11. The Boots
My dad used to work as a correctional officer at Goulburn jail in Australia, which is probably one of the oldest and hardest prisons there. A story he tells of his time there is one I always remember.
He said that the whole place was creepy anyway, not helped by some of the inmates at the time including the notorious Ivan Milat (on which Wolf Creek is based). Anyway, the first thing he noticed was that dogs would outright refuse to enter the prison. He said they couldn’t get them past the gate no matter how hard they tried. But the creepiest occurrence was one night when they heard the sound of running booted footsteps. Everyone was in their cells so they couldn’t figure out what was causing it. Next thing, all the doors of the open and unoccupied cells on the top floor were banged shut, one after the other, with loud clangs. Then, they see the source of the running noise.
Now, dad swears this is what he and his colleague (so he has another witness) saw: Apparently, they looked up and saw what looked like disembodied hobnail boots run down the aisle right over their heads, banging as they went. Dad decided to stop working in the prison not long after this. Super creepy.
10. Something In The Riverbed
I was supervising on an evening shift in a small town in rural Australia. We have a large river that snakes its way past the town and runs close to some of the residential areas. Its a kilometer wide in some parts has steep banks and thick bush in the bed when its dry.
One of my crews were tied up with something and the other was attending to two brothers threatening to hurt themselves after having a fight at a residence near the bank of the river.
I heard the job and attended to give my crew a hand. Upon arrival, one brother had been restrained and sent to a hospital to prevent him from harming himself. Most of the crew went with him and I was left alone. The family told me the other brother had run off down the riverbank.
I parked my unit at the top of the bank with the lights pointed into the bush hoping that if the other brother saw my lights he'd come towards me. It was dark and rainy at this point. I got out my torch and made my way down the bank. I found a small clearing and a small distance away was a thick bush.
I heard something moving in the bush. It sounded like something taking deliberate steps. I yelled out thinking it was the guy I was after. I told him I was here to help and pleaded with him to come out.
No response. When I was talking, whatever it was stopped moving. I kept talking attempting to make contact as my instincts told me someone was in the thick bush in front of me. No response.
My torchlight couldn't penetrate the bush but I could hear distinct footfalls. I stopped making any noise, turned off my light and stood still listening...
I heard movement coming toward me in the bush. I remained still and listen. It came closer. Without thinking, my hand went down to my gun and I was ready to draw.
I turned on my light and walked forward and heard whatever it was moving away from me. I backed off, turned off my light, and remained silent.
It started coming closer to me, probing my position. I repeated the exercise once more, and once more, it backed off and came back at a different angle.
By this stage, I was on high alert. Something told me to get the heck out. Any animal that was down there would have run off upon my approach. Once I got the overwhelming feeling to leave, I backed off with my hand on my gun, and I didn't turn my back until I had to climb up the bank.
Once at the top and back near my car, I felt a lot better but I could still hear something moving in the bush. I stayed there for a while as I was curious.
I left and conducted enquires, finding the missing brother on the other side of town fast asleep and fine. To this day I don't know what I ran into down in the riverbed that night...
9. Descriptions Give Power
EMT here. I once had a call at our local mall. I showed up and an eight-year-old was having breathing problems. Her mother, aunt, and cousin had just been caught stealing and it was late at night. We assumed the breathing problem was stress induced. Once we got into the back of our unit, she looked my partner and myself in the eyes and said that she lived in a bad place. She said she lived with demons and I kid you not as she described the demons her heart rate plummeted from 90 beats per minute down to 45 in a matter of seconds. My partner and I looked at each other and immediately started trying to lighten the mood and preparing for a code. She ended up being ok, but I will never forget that experience.
8. Definitely Disturbed Something
I was on the coast guard. Back in 2008, I was "deployed" to the Caribbean on a counter-substance/migrant interdiction patrol. We ended up coming up on a chug chug (slang term for a terrible boat thrown together using spare parts) that was ridiculously overloaded with Dominicans and Haitians heading for Florida. As per protocol, we dropped our small boats in the water and ferried all of the people onto our boat and set up a small camp for them on our flight deck.
To preface this next part: apparently, voodoo and other weird cult-like religions are pretty prevalent in DR and Haiti (I think the Caribbean in general).
So we set up the camp and we start medically evaluating the children (depressing, to say the least) and some of the ones that look out of shape or complain of some ailment (most of the time hoping to get MEDEVAC'd off the boat to the US).
While this was happening, I was standing on the fantail helping collect and inspect the odd bags and other belongings that we found in the vessel before we scuttled it. Well, my LTJG that was going through this little duffle bag pulls out what looks to us like a brick of illegal substances; wrapped nice and tight in some kind of burlap material and cellophane. Upon unwrapping it we found this shabby old leather-bound book with weird symbols and stuff in it as well as a few weird looking wooden statues and other weird little trinkets.
Well, as soon as we opened the book and started inspecting these stupid looking wooden statues we hear this blood-curdling shriek almost directly above us. We dart out from under the overhang and look up on the flight deck to see this older-looking woman absolutely losing her mind—screaming, flailing around, wide-eyed. I thought she was having a seizure but she was apparently yelling out in Creole, something to the effect of "the spirit has been disturbed" and that we need to contain it lest death sweep through our ship. Our security guys are having a good time getting this lady to chill and can't even pick her up to remove her from the flight deck. The corpsman comes over to evaluate her and my LTJG and I go back to looking through all the things we found on the boat. We get a final chuckle out of the weird stuff from the duffle bag mentioned earlier and he closes the book, puts everything back in the little bundle it came in and wrapped the burlap material back around it.
Almost instantly the wailing and panicked shrieks above us stops.
I look up at my LTJG with a look of relief but as I make eye contact with him he glances down at this burlap bundle, walks over to one of the stanchions, and says "screw this" as he hurls the burlap overboard.
According to our corpsman, the woman returned to normal once she calmed down and had no recollection of her manic episode.
7. Blood Trail To Nowhere
EMS. Called to a house with police at around three a.m. It was a relatively small shared house with a lot of rooms and people who don't know each other living there.
Caller reports that there is blood everywhere, all on the walls, staircase, in the kitchen, on the doorstep. He thinks one of the upstairs residents is into "dodgy stuff" which I assume was meant to be crime of some kind or whatever.
Well, we open the door and, sure enough, there is blood everywhere. It's all on the floor and all the way up the stairs. It goes into the kitchen too but stops at the back door. There's a pool on the front doorstep but not a big one.
A couple of cops go upstairs ahead of me. I'm there thinking, "Well, if someone's lost this much blood there isn't a great deal we can do for them anyway, and if whoever did it is still in the house we're about to have a major scrap on our hands" (in the UK, police are unarmed).
We go to the door the "dodgy" guy is in, and knock, he kinda answers like, "Yeah?" The cops say they're police and they need to have a word with him. He comes to the door in pajama trousers and says he was asleep. He's not injured and has no blood on him. There's none in his room. He lets the cops have a search and his room is all fine. Seemed like a regular guy to me.
We speak to all of the other neighbors in the house and the cops search their rooms and nothing. No one heard anything (that they told us anyway) and no one had anything suspicious in their room. There was no blood in anyone's bedrooms, it was only on the stairs hallways, kitchen, and front doorstep.
The two cops call for a dog unit to attend and search the area. The dog arrives but tracks the blood no further than the front doorstep. Whatever had caused that blood to be there seemed to still be in the house, and we had no idea whose blood it was. Thought it could potentially have been an animals blood somehow, but unless it was a large animal there was way too much for that, and I hope we'd have found a bleeding large animal in our search.
I had control pestering me to redeploy to another job so I thanked the cops for helping me clear the house and said I had to go. They said they were gonna go do a wider search and then resume as well as there was nothing they could find. I never heard any more about it, and as far as I know, there was no murders or anything like that reported after that incident so it's still an absolute mystery.
6. Someone Else Is Home
Patrol officer here. This is not my story but my partner’s, and all three officers on the scene verified this story too.
So my partner responds to a priority breaking and entering call. A housesitter/dogsitter calls and says that he can hear loud banging and footsteps coming from downstairs (the ground floor) and he should be the only one home. The house-sitter and the dog are both upstairs (the dog is in a cage). So officers respond priority, including a K9 officer. Police release K9 into the house first to clear the house. K9 comes out empty handed. Three officers then go inside the house and clear it themselves. Again, nothing and nobody inside.
Officers then step out front with the housesitter that called 9-1-1. As they’re telling him the house is empty, they see the curtains of the bedroom window on the second-floor open. They’re heavy curtains and they parted from the center, so they claim it couldn’t really be possible from air vents kicking on or anything like that. And all three officers and the housesitter all see it.
Then the guy asks the police to come back inside with him because he’s going to take the dog to a different home for the night and he needs to get the dog out of the cage. The police refuse to go back inside with him (not the best example of public service).
5. The Suicide Lighthouse
I spent some time as a homicide investigator. We would respond to all apparent taking of own life calls and investigate them just to make sure it wasn't a homicide. Usually, we determined a motive and found a note or other indicator that the person killed themselves (one guy just taped a note to his chest that said "Happy now?" and made sure his wife found him).
But occasionally you get a case where all forensic evidence indicates that the person died by themselves, but there's no note and no discernable reason why this person would want to do that to themselves. These are people in good health with decent careers and a seemingly happy family life. But who knows what's really going on with someone?
Here's the part that freaks me out: I've worked maybe ten scenes like this. The last three before I left homicide all had the same thing at the scene. There was a little decorative wicker lighthouse at each location. It was the same lighthouse, same design and painted white and blue. It stuck out to me the first time because it was by the bed where the body was, but two weeks later I saw the same lighthouse on another case and even pointed out the coincidence to a patrol officer.
A few months later I go on another case and I see that same wicker lighthouse. That's when it clicks that it's always been unexplained deaths. I go back and look at crime scene photos from every case I've worked. In two of them, I see what could be the wicker lighthouse, but the angle is off and there's too much junk around to say for sure.
I dunno. I thought it was creepy but I transferred a couple of months later and I let it go.
4. Horror Movie House
I've been in law enforcement for nearly six years and I have had a few supernatural things occur during my shifts. The most recent one came from a 9-1-1 hang-up call.
I was riding two-man on a summer night and it was probably around two or three a.m. when we get a call for a 9-1-1 hang up. The only call comments were was a call was placed to 9-1-1 and upon answering it the person hung up. When dispatch attempted to call the number back no one answered.
The area in which I was working this night I have basically spent my whole career in. There aren't a whole lot of streets I had yet to respond to. However, the address this call came in from (they used GPS coordinates to find the closest location since the caller hung up) I had never been to. I had driven past this road many times but never actually revived a call from it.
We pull up to this old dirt road and it has a metal chain going across the entrance with a sign that says no trespassing. Because we have to figure out what is going on me and my partner continue on foot up this long dirt/gravel road. The road was maybe about 100 yards long. The worst part was that on each side of the road was a tall chain link fence. Why this was bad was because now I and my partner were now walking down a fatal funnel. If there happened to be a guy waiting for us at the end of this road with, let's just say, an assault rifle, we would have no place to take cover. Thankfully this did not happen.
We eventually reach the end of the road and there are two houses on each side. At first, we believe one of these houses is where the 9-1-1 call had come from. As I am shining my flashlight at one of the houses I see a figure move from inside. Instantly I'm like, "Oh my God people actually live back here!" as I thought for sure the houses were going to be vacant. Shortly after, a man and a woman walk outside and ask what is going on. We tell them we received a 9-1-1 hang-up call from address 123 Main (made up) and asked if they had called. The man tells us his address is 124 Main and the one across the street is 125 Main (which he says is vacant). He proceeds to tell us there is a 123 Main which is basically in the middle of these tall weeds/forest looking area just to the north of his house. He says the house is vacant and run down and can only be reached on foot. I ask him how far away it is from his house and he says probably a couple of football fields away.
Now while all this walking/investigating was going on we had received, I think, two more 9-1-1 hang up calls. Same address. Same result. Before we made this trek out into the middle of the woods we called for another car and eventually another two-man unit responded.
The four of us now wandered out into the woods, two of us with our assault rifles out and followed a barely beaten path to where we assumed we would find a house. Fighting spider webs and low-hanging tree branches we eventually reach our destination.
I am terrible at describing things but this house was straight out of any horror movie you wanna imagine. It was rundown. It had a tree that had fallen through the middle and had now become incorporated with the house throughout the years. The house was nearly falling apart and was completely overgrown by greenery. Having come this far we decide to continue on, even though we were pretty sure the house would be vacant.
After fighting through some thick brush we find our entrance. We each have to climb over some fallen brick walls and other wooden things before we actually make entry. My biggest fear at this point is this stupid rotten house collapsing on itself and being trapped inside with no one being able to find us. We search the entire house and like we thought no one inside. And when I say we searched the entire house, I mean the entire house. Nothing was left unchecked.
Feeling satisfied we all climb our way back out of the bush and start heading back toward where the two original houses were. As we walk back, dispatch radios us and tells us they received another 9-1-1 hang-up call coming from the same address. This time dispatch tells us they were able to make a callback and when the person answered they could hear what sounded like a child playing on the phone.
The four of us looked at each other and decided we were done with this call. We had done everything we could up to that point and were not about to get called back into possibly a demons house because a "child" was on the phone. We clear the call and don't receive anymore 9-1-1 hang up calls for the rest of the night.
Fast forward maybe six months and it's the middle of the cold winter. 9-1-1 hang up from the same address. This time, it's me and three guys who weren't there previously. I tell them the story of what happened and all three are super psyched and want to check it out. The four of us walk back out to this house now much easier to get to since the cold had killed off a lot of the greens. The three of them decide to go into the house. I wait outside as I already had my fun. They don't make it too far once they realize this house is about to collapse on itself. We all leave again. No call back from a child this time.
3. Flying Yellow Friends
I was working as a paramedic and my station had a mental hospital in our area. They knew they weren't allowed to call us for basic transports that it had to be an emergency. We get a call there one night for a possible stroke on the fourth floor. We knew that the fourth floor is where they kept people who were guilty of murder, assault, etc. and that a police officer would be with us.
When we get there the nurse has this look on her face that we are really about to walk into something sketchy. She tells us that the lady won't stop looking to the left (her excuse for calling us and saying it was a stroke) and talking to something. When we walk into the room she's in full conversation with something outside the window. We ask her to talk to us and she got quiet. We load her up and the LEO cuffs her to the gurney. When we get outside she looks back towards the window then quickly shoots her head to the other side and said it's so cool how fast they fly.
About five minutes from the hospital, she asks me if I'm worried that the ambulance is about to break down so that she and her flying yellow friends could kill us? I said, "No," and she started this screeching laugh that I'll never forget. The LEO was as white as snow and said nothing to her. We drop her off in the ER, come back outside and the ambulance had cut off and wouldn't start. I went back inside to ask the LEO if he had turned it off and they said no LEO walked inside with us. We couldn't find him and dispatch sent a bunch of cars to look but he wasn't at the hospital. They found him sitting in his cruiser back at the mental hospital and he couldn't remember how he got there. To this day I really think her and the officer saw something.
2. The Old Sweat's Story
When I first joined the police, during our first two days of training school we had a lecture from this old sweat (British police slang for an officer who has been in the force for a long time) who'd been in the job for about 20 years. He told us of his weirdest experience of policing.
He said he'd been out on patrol in a car when they got an abandoned call to a house. He got there and it was a big house sort of isolated, and they knocked on the door and no one answered. He went to open the door and it was unlocked, and he walked in. The house was empty. No people, no furniture, no possessions. Completely vacant. He looked around and found no one there, but then looked upstairs and thought he saw someone move. He went upstairs. It was a really big house with a long hall upstairs. When he got up there he saw someone go into the bedroom right at the end of the hall. He followed the person there, calling out as he went. Again, all the other rooms were completely empty of even furniture. When he got to the room he saw the person go in, he found it completely empty. No one was in it, and nothing was there apart from a big long mirror. He walked into the room and looked into the mirror. He told us he saw something in the mirror that he said has haunted him for the rest of his life. He wouldn't tell us what he saw, and said he'd tell no one ever, but that it terrified him. He turned around and left the room to leave.
As he walked down the hallway, he saw that all the rooms were now filled with furniture. No one was there still, but the house no longer looked abandoned. He said he left the house that day never knowing what had happened, or who had called the police, but absolutely 100% sure of what he'd seen.
He was completely serious and it was obvious that he really believed that was what he'd seen, and it gave me chills down my spine when he was telling us. I've never forgotten it.
1. Walking On The Roof
I got a call out to a funeral home for a business alarm and found the front door cracked open. My partner and I went inside, started checking rooms, and eventually made our way to the basement where they do the embalming. I'm not one to get rattled and don't believe in ghosts, but my partner and I started catching some really weird vibes as soon as we went down the stairs.
After an expedited check downstairs, we went back to the main floor and were wrapping up checking the last few rooms. Suddenly, we both heard two distinct footsteps on the floor of the room above us. Game on, Mr. Burglar.
We quietly made our way to the stairs leading to the second floor and started up them when I came across a window. The window looked over the room we had just been in, so the steps actually had to have been on the roof itself. The problem with that was that section of the roof had no other ways of entry or egress other than the window I was looking through and it had been painted shut years prior. The weird vibes ramped up so my partner and I looked at each other, agreed that we had done enough room clearing, and noped right out of the building.
