25 Police Officers On The Frightening Paranormal Calls They Were Forced To Respond To

1. Everyone in town saw a dead man’s ghost

My uncle was the sheriff of a small town in New Mexico. He was a the most hardcore person in our family, super straight laced, never really BS’ed 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 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 hell 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. (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 3rd 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.

2. An elderly man teleported out of town

Whilst working in remote Australia, we were forced to ‘move on’ an elderly aboriginal man because the other locals had accused him off 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 round and drove back to town, flying, probably 100mph+. It took 45minutes 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.

3. I heard children’s voices in an empty house

Worked as a police officer in a small town in rural Nebraska. Back in the 90’s, 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 7:00p, 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 hell?” 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 fuck out of there. Told dispatch nobody was in the house, locked the back door and never went back in there again.

4. A man made phone calls from the grave

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 5 months. The craziest part about it was that there was no electricity or any other utility working. So there is no way they should have been able to get those calls into dispatch. But if they hadn’t, who knows how long that persons body would have stayed there.

5. A man vanished from his hospital bed

I was doing security at a hospital with a 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’s 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.

6. My father saw a replay from the past

My Dad spent his whole career as a copper, 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, 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 scared shitless at the time (perhaps he would say that), just sort of hugely confused, secondly the look on his colleagues’ face that basically said “wtf, you’re hearing this too right?”, and finally that 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.

7. We heard screams, but couldn’t find anyone around

Called to a residence out in the boonies (this was in Wyoming, so the boonies are really the boonies) at about 11PM 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 1000 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 5 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 shitless and verified with the family to call us again if they heard it. They never called again, and we got the hell 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.

8. We found a child’s footprints, but no child

Back when I was working as a cop on a military base, I loved working night shift. Didn’t deal with 99% of the bullshit that day shift dealt with and what little stuff we did deal with was usually really interesting.

Well most 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, maintence 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 an watch, nothing happens and right as we’re about to leave, another alarm activation 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 class rooms 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 ones in it and that door is locked when it closes. We look in there and we find a single footprint of a bare foot made of water (Left foot as a recall) of a small child. Freaked the living hell 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 damn place (literally a 3 hour deep sweep including ceiling tiles.)

Freaked the ever loving shit out of us and to this day, my partner refuses to go into that school. Speaking of which, schools are really fucking spooky when they’re empty.

9. Ghosts were hidden in a woman’s basement

I was called to a home of an older woman, mid 60’s I’d say. She reported that there were ghosts in her attic or basement every night for the past week or so. So I go in and I don’t hear anything. I check the basement and the attic as she shows me around. I shine my light in the attic but I don’t see anything. The basement had lights on but still nothing to be seen.

A week goes by and I get called back to her home again but this time I’m working a night shift. I go and check the basement. Nothing. I check the attic and their is a man with torn clothes huddled in a corner. Apparently he was climbing in her window on cold nights.

10. A woman made 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 Wacko. The neighbor called about is 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 parents 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 for us.

11. A man murdered his friend, because of a ghost

Not me, But my dad was a cop for 32 years. This was ones of his craziest calls.

A call goes out for reported screaming it’s mid January (important later) My father and another office respond 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 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 a “h’aint” (southern for ghost) and was cheating him.

The suspect grabbed the ax and chased his friend outside and hacked him into dozens of pieces thus causing the warm blood to create steam on the grass.

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.

12. A dead woman called the cops

3 years ago our very elderly next door neighbor died suddenly in her house. They found her body 5 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 8 police cars come out of no where sirens blaring lights on and most park in 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 5 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 friends that night.

13. A lady found a ghost hidden in her house

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, maam, 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 FUCKING SCARED. “There’s 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 1 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.

14. A woman heard footsteps from a ghost

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 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 twelve minutes after the call first came in, we went to the front door. I remained in the foyer with the woman and the other officer when 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.

15. A man who died of suicide contacted me

Im a security patrol officer (11pm to 7am) in Scottsdale, AZ. I have the largest security beat in the Scottsdale desert and part of my job is to respond to alarm calls in these isolated mansions throughout Scottsdale, Cave Creek and Carefree. One night I got a alarm call at a small airport where the rich play with their airplanes (Sky Ranch Airport), part of the airport are residential homes with built in hangers and that’s where the alarm was tripped at 02:30 am. On arrival I went through the normal alarm process, called dispatch to make a call to the homeowners (vacant) so no one should be there. After the call is made I knock on the front door very aggressively just to make sure if some one is home they’ll hear me before I make entry. (I’ve walked in on the homeowners before at a different house). Anyways, as I walked toward the front door I heard a little shuffling noise behind the door, very faint but loud enough to be noticed, that being the case I rang the door bell and knocked on the door longer than usual and nothing. So I then began the perimeter check and I found the back sliding door handle was broken but there was a little note on the inside that read “handle is broken -realtor”, the realtor paced a metal rode down to keep the sliding door from opening. I finished the perimeter check, called dispatch to let them know that I was gonna make entry. The house was beautiful and everything was fine, so I wrote out my entry slip and was reseting the alarm, but a fault showed on the display that read “zone 35 back room door” and at that very moment my supervisor called me via radio and asked if I knew anything about the house I was in. What he told me more than anything annoyed the shit out of me, he said back in 2008 the previous homeowner committed suicide by the front door with a shotgun when the economy crashed, leaving behind a wife and three kids. I knew he was trying to scare me so I brushed it off and resumed my business, I walked to the back sliding door and long behold the metal rode was removed and the sliding door was open about 4 inches. Which was very creepy. The house has motion sensors including sensors on the door itself and none of them were showing up as “fault.” I put the rode back into its original place and armed the system. A few months later I had a alarm call at a different house and this time Scottsdale Police assisted me, After the call was over and done with we stood outside the home bullshitting and I asked the police if they knew about that house in Sky ranch Airport. One of the officers said he was one of the first police officers on scene shorty after the homeowner blew his brains out by the front door. They confirmed the suicide and if I ever have to respond to that house again… I’ll ask for back up.

16. A man was attacked by a grey creature

Grandmother was a cop in Santa Maria in the late 70s till early 90s. Man calls in saying there is a 7ft grey man at his door. She goes to check it out, door is jammed. The man is screaming and she hears a loud buzzard. 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 atleast 4 hours. Man lives alone in the middle of nowhere. Says he called the police a 5 hours ago. Said that a cop was on their way. He reported seeing a 7ft grey man with big eyes who did that to him. No foot prints, no trace of any kind of invasion. My grandmother lost 4 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. Shits fucking crazy

17. Ghosts kept setting off the security alarms

Navy Security Forces member here. I was on shift with a DoD police officer on the oldest Navy base we have in the states. We get a call about an alarm going off in a near by office and it be being midnight, we quickly get over there. When we get to the building there are lights on in the second story. We try all the doors and they are locked, try the windows- locked, look for any possible entry way and everything is sealed up tight. We call the building commander and they send a guy to come and turn off the alarm and let us look around to make sure all is well.

When he got there his first statement to us was, “alarm going off again? Damn it, I’m sick of that ghost fucking my days off up.” Apparently everyone that works in that building has claimed there is a ghost that likes to move stuff around and cause the alarm to go and a check of the call log for the alarm activation showed that every time it went off, the building was locked up tight.

18. We received phone calls from phantoms

First off, I don’t believe in ghosts or the supernatural, in any way, shape or form. That said, I had a few very strange experiences working at the hospital. I have TONS of stories about working at the hospital, but I’ll post one of the strangest and if you want to hear more, let me know; I have dozens.

The hospital was made up of several buildings, mostly mid-20th century. There was a large 7-storey building with offices and accommodation for student nurses (Simpson Hall), a large central administration building with 8 wings for patients and a forensic (criminally insane) unit (Purdy Building), a new building under construction to replace the old Victorian building (Mount Hope), a building with a gym, kitchen, dining room and swimming pool (Hugh Bell Building), two small outlying buildings for chidren and adolescents (PAU and MCU) and then… the old insane asylum (DeWolfe Building): built in 1856, 20′ ceilings, 200lb oak and steel doors, 18-24″ thick walls, underground tunnels, everything you’ve ever thought an old Victorian insane asylum would be.

When I first started working there, in 1992, my job was to go from the guard post in the Hugh Bell building, down into the basement, unlock the steel doors leading to the tunnel system, lock myself into the tunnel system, walk along to the DeWolfe building, go through another set of steel gates, locking myself inside, walk the tunnel system to the end and then go up in an elevator I called down using a special key. Then I’d go up to the 4th floor and walk through each floor checking doors until I got to the main floor where I’d walk out of the main entrance and back to the Hugh Bell building outside. I had to do this roughly every hour.

In 1995, the building closed and patients were moved into the new Mount Hope building; because the space was no longer being used and because the building was slated to be demolished in 1996, they didn’t bother heating it, it had no power, and maintenance had been through and stripped it of things like lightbulbs, etc. A lot of the old furniture was left in place as they had bought new stuff for the new building. One of the things that also happened was they shut off power to the elevators and had all the phones removed. Now I know that every phone was removed becauseI was the guy who went through with the guy from the phone company in late summer and removed every single phone from the place.

So it’s the winter of 1995 and I’m working a back-shift (7pm-7am). I was a shift supervisor and had 3 guards on the ground with me and one locked in the forensic unit. Around 2am we get a call from the hospital operator saying that the police had called her to let her know they were getting calls from inside the DeWolfe Building. She had, of course, told them that was impossible and why. They insisted that they were getting calls from inside the DeWolfe Building. So the four of us go into the building and each take a floor of the building and search it. Now it was the dead of winter and temperatures had been getting fairly low (-20C or so) and there had been a pipe burst about a week before which maintenance had dealt with (interesting story there, too) but it had left two floors entirely coated in ice – there was ice on EVERYTHING that was about 3″ thick and shadows were bouncing everywhere from the flashlights hitting ice. So we’re walking through the building, checking every unit, every floor, eyeballing every empty phone jack. NOTHING.

We get back to the guard post and report that the building is empty. 10 minutes later, the operator calls back and says that there are more calls coming from DeWolfe and the police are insisting we find the cause. So back over we go. I was about 10′ away from the nursing station on a unit called N-16 and the operator calls to say that there is a call active RIGHT NOW coming from the N-16 nursing station. I go rushing over to see and there’s nothing in there; no person, no phone. I tell the operator where I am and there’s nothing in there. She says that it’s now coming from the N-16 lounge which is way down the other end of the unit. So I go rushing down there and, again, nothing. Now it’s coming from the N-16 elevator phone and this time it’s not just dead air but it sounds like someone talking with their hand over the phone. So I go rushing back down to the other end of the unit (this is a good 60 seconds or so of running – big building) and I’m standing outside the closed (unpowered) elevator doors and she is saying that the calls are coming in every few seconds from the elevator I’m standing in front of. Then they stop.

We all decide to wait inside the building, one person per floor, for a few minutes until we know things have stopped. We waited maybe 15 minutes and as we start to leave, the phone calls start again. One more trip around the building and same results. Eventually we said we couldn’t waste any more time on it and it must be a technical glitch. The operator puts in a call to the phone company and requests an engineer first thing next morning.

I was supposed to go home at 7am (my last back-shift, so I was starting 4 days off), but I stayed to meet the engineer ’cause I was curious. The engineer said the lines had likely been reassigned and the calls were coming from real people wherever the lines had been put. So we go into the old building and check the junction box and the engineer gets a puzzled look on his face. He hooks up some equipment and is talking back to someone at the phone company. He starts checking connections and numbers. Then we start walking around the building and plugging his phone into the jacks; turns out that none of the lines had been reassigned and they were all live.

Here’s the strange part; that day, the engineer and the phone company killed all the lines. The phone calls continued off and on for 2 more weeks and then stopped. We never did find out the cause.

19. A little girl was possessed by a demon

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 strange. 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. 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.

20. We were stuck in a mental ward

We got a call of trespassers at an abandoned hospital during the daytime. There was on site security who kept it secure even though it was shut down. They swore they heard footsteps and talking on the second floor over the past few days. They locked down the entire perimeter and called us out there. There was no way out.

We went in there with 6 officers and started from the 7th floor and systematically checked every single room down to the bottom floor. There was no power so we were lucky it was still daylight and there were a lot of windows. It was an older hospital so they left old CRT monitors from the 1980s and 90s in there.

It was pretty eerie and reminded me a lot of the first scenes from The Walking Dead. We cleared down from floors 7 to 5 no problem. Once we hit the 4th floor it started getting weird. This was the hospital’s storage area. Instead of the big spacious rooms it was super cramped and cinder block walls. There were chain link cages all over the place with old locks on it. It seriously looked like a horror movie prisoner area where they locked victims up. It was also pitch black. The Hospital was so big that we worked in 2 man groups on each floor but naturally split up as the floors opened up more.

The 3rd floor was a mental ward area so the padded walls and pitch dark rooms started to get me a little nervous. The 2nd floor was by far the worst; the surgery ward. There were no windows, again it was pitch black, and there were large eerie operating rooms all over. In the middle of some of the rooms were large metal slabs where they would operate on people. I’m adjoining rooms they had huge peg boards where they stored the surgery power tools. How did I know it was power tools? They had marked the outlines of various drills, saws, and other painful looking devices. It was kinda freaky thinking about how many people had died in those rooms when they couldn’t save them.

I was definitely nervous clearing those rooms solo in pitch black with only a flashlight. We eventually cleared every single room on every single floor… And found nothing. The security guards swore up and down they always heard talking and footsteps down the halls though. We pretty much swore off that place and said not to call us any more.

21. An animal changed shapes in front of me

I recently started working as a security guard and one of my first assignments was the graveyard shift at a new housing development outside of town. Over the course of the three nights I worked there, I had some pretty bizarre things happen. While doing my patrols through the neighborhood, I would often see people watching me from the upper windows of the vacant houses, but when I would enter the house to investigate, they would be empty. One of the first things on my to-do list when I arrived on-site was to go through the eight model homes next to the real estate office and turn off all the lights and TVs. The first night, this part went smoothly, but the following night, as I was making my way through the kitchen of the fourth house, I heard the light switch click and all the lights in the kitchen went out. It wasn’t a power surge or a blown breaker, as all the appliances were still on and all the little green lights underneath the light switches were still lit. A few minutes later, I heard another click and the lights came back on, followed by the lights in the next house going out, but the TV remaining on. By the time I made my way to the next house, the lights were back on, but the TV was in standby (only possible by hitting the button on the front). As I was finishing up in the last house, I looked out the window and saw that the second and third houses were lit up again. The third night, the light situation got weirder. The lights would either turn off or on in a room as I entered and in one house, as I entered the kitchen, the hood light over the stove turned on. As I turned to look at it, I heard a series of clicks coming from the second floor, as if someone were running through the house turning on the lights. When I went up there, sure enough, many of the lights I had turned off were back on. In another house, a desk lamp turned itself back on three times. Another lamp in the same house that had a dimmer slowly started lighting up right in front of me. Now, for the worst events: As I was walking past one of the construction sites, I saw what appeared to be a skunk walk behind the port-a-potty. When it walked back out, however, it looked more like a black shi-tzu. It proceeded to change size, shape, and color several more times right in front of me (doberman, bloodhound, tan mastiff, then finally a yellow lab) before running off into the dark. I’m willing to concede all of these can either be chalked up to my mind/eyes playing tricks or a timer gone haywire (I was assured there wasn’t one), but this last one defies logical explanation. As I was walking back to the office around 2:30, I glanced up at one of the houses. As I did, something hit me in between my left pec and shoulder. Hard. Hard enough to stagger me. I weigh 250 lbs., so I’m not exactly little. It felt as if someone were walking the opposite direction on the sidewalk and shoved their way past me. I have since asked my supervisors not to assign me to that site again.

22. A driver disappeared from his front seat

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 rear view 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 shit 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 the fuck 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.

23. An old woman in a painting called the cops

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, meets with my friend and heads to the gym room. A short while later, the cops starts yelling at my friend how prank calls is a serious offense and he shouldn’t waste their time. My friend flabbergasted by the cops’ reaction, he 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 not understanding 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 heads 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 turns white and leaves. 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.

24. Aliens shot laser guns at cattle

I was called to a job at night where the informant said there were firearms being shot in the area (semi-rural). Nothing strange at first glance. Searched the general area and found nothing so approached the informant. She was a middle aged hippy. She proceeded to tell me that a ufo had landed a couple of properties over and she saw aliens shooting laser guns at cattle. I smiled, doffed and left.

25. A woman spotted a rhino in her home

Not me but my mom is an animal humane officer and my dad a cop. My mom got a call of a wild animal in an old woman’s house. She went and this old lady is standing in a chair and pointing at her couch saying “there are pink rhinos fucking on it and she wants them out and the couch set out by the curb.” So my mom pretends to shoo the rhinos out and the lady finds some men to carry this couch and set it by the road. Later that night my dad got a call cause she wanted him to shoot the rhinos outside trying to get in.