25 Law Enforcement Workers Reveal Their Unexplainable Cases That *Must* Have Been Paranormal

"My partner and I received a 911 call from an old woman having a dispute with someone. We get to the house and she says she's alone. We say who are you having a dispute with? She says, 'Oh just this spirit in one of my rooms.'"

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These stories from Ask Reddit are much creepier than anything you could make up.

A paranormal shadow
Unsplash / Chad Madden

1. A woman was haunted and abused by a demon 

“I worked as a forensic nurse in a lock up unit in the hospital once with state and county inmates. Had one older/demented lady who swore she was being haunted/abused by a demon she would call Tiberius. So many crazy things happened whenever she was there – like we’d go into the room, do normal care, leave and seconds later she’d start screaming bloody murder and we’d run into the room to find her looking like she’d been in a fight with a boxing champ – bloody lip, black eye, markings all over her body – no one ever saw her doing this stuff to herself. Things would get moved around the room by themselves – like at one point she was in protective restraints because the doc thought she was hurting herself, there was no way she could have moved or done anything to herself while in these restraints, but new marks would always appear or her tray/cart would be across the room. The room was secure so there was no way someone else was doing this. You’d ask her questions and she’d just say, ‘It was Tiberius.’ After she was discharged we always had trouble with that room – if there was going to be a rapid response or code, it happened in that room. One of the guards reporting that lights were going on and off in a room? It was that one.” — Bow_Ties_R_Cool

2. They watched disembodied boots running through the prison

“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 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 cell 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.” — strawberrygnome

3. An angel with a shield saved a little boy’s life

“It’s probably too late for this to surface, but this is my dad’s story.

He went to a call where a father had gone crazy and decided to shoot his family. He killed his wife and was looking around trying to find his 5 year old son to shoot him. The boy had run outside and was trying to hide on the side of the house behind the trash cans. The father eventually found him and point blank emptied nearly a full magazine at the boy.

When my dad arrived, they found the boy in shock, hiding right where his dad found him, not a wound on his body. There were bullet holes in the side of the house all around the boy. When they finally got to question him about it, they asked him what happened when his dad found him on the side of the yard. The boy replied, ‘The angel was in front of me with a shield, and he saved me. He pushed the gun away from me.'” — 9oreos

4. Something supernatural stopped a woman from having her throat cut open

“I’m a detective and spent some time as an expert on sex crimes and crimes against children. It was the best /worst assignment I’ve had. One case I had came in at midnight. A young woman with a toddler comes into one of the precincts to report her ex-boyfriend raped 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 help them and their mom to the car before flying away.

In the victim’s interview, she said that her ex-boyfriend had a knife to her throat and put it to the skin to cut her throat open, but he got distracted for some reason then ran out of the apartment. She had no explanation why.

The suspect was caught about 8 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 cut the bitch’s throat open. 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.” — mattnewby04

5. We saw a strange shadow coming out of the jail cell

“Former inmate in a small county jail in Oregon. At about 2am one night, the radio in the pod started squealing really loud, all static screeching. One of the COs came in and turned it down, changed the station, walked back out. Next day when I was working in the kitchen, one of the nicer COs came in and was talking to us about what happened the night before. Apparently on the video of the pod, you can see something of a shadow come out of one of the cells and move to the radio. About a minute later, there was a flash in front of the radio before it got loud. Unfortunately I ended up back in jail, and got placed in the cell the CO said the shadow had came out from. Something about that cell creeped me out. It almost sucked the thoughts right from you.” — SkumDaddie

6. A woman called 911 about a bad spirit inside of her home

“My partner and I received a 911 call from an old woman having a dispute with someone. We get to the house and she says she’s alone. We say who are you having a dispute with? She says, ‘Oh just this spirit in one of my rooms’ immediately me and partner look at each other and give the ole ‘she’s elderly, it’s prob dementia or something along those line’ 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 911 call. She insists we check it out. So we do. Now, the house, they 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 on the whole room and Thankfully, nothing was there. We told the lady, nope, your 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 religious institution of your choosing and best of luck.’ We got the fuck outta there.” — jtesagain625

7. The same wicker lighthouse was present at ALL the unexplained suicides 

“This is unexplained, and probably just coincidence, but I still never mention it to my co-workers.

I spent some time as a homicide investigator. We would respond to all apparent suicides and investigate them just to make sure it wasn’t a homicide. Usually we determined a motive for suicide 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 bitch?” and made sure his wife found him after he hanged himself).

But occasionally you get a case where all forensic evidence indicates that the person killed themselves, but there’s no note and no discernable reason why this person would be suicidal. 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 suicides like this. The last three before I left homicide all had the same thing at the scene. These 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 damn lighthouse on another suicide and even pointed out the coincidence to a patrol officer.

A few months later I go on another suicide and I see that same wicker lighthouse. That’s when it clicks that it’s always been unexplained suicides. I go back and look at crime scene photos from every suicide 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 as hell but I transferred a couple of months later and I let it go.” — Narren_C

8. Little children were laughing at three in the morning

“About 3 in the morning, the sound activated alarms at the local school were triggered. The reason? They picked up on small children laughing. The cop gave a big nope to that call and just half heartedly shined a spotlight on the area from his moving car.” — immotleighton

9. Don’t Fall Asleep was painted onto the walls

“Cop here. Got a call for a missing person, lived at a large halfway house type apartment complex. Sponsor hadn’t seen the person for a few days. We get a manager to unlock the woman’s apartment to make sure she’s not dead inside, and go in to look. It’s very dark. It’s a cheap apartment with only a few lights, kind of a haunted house vibe. Check the bedroom, no ones there. Move into the living room, and stop dead in my tracks. In the semi darkness, written in large swaths of black paint on the wall, is the phrase, ‘DON’T FALL ASLEEP.’ The phrase was copied several more times in smaller permanent marker on other spots in the living room. Like something was haunting this lady enough in the dark, or in her dreams, to not make her want to ever fall asleep. Made all my hair stand up. Noped right on out of there, filed the missing persons report, and never heard anything about it again.” — Arminius213

10. During a welfare check, I raised the dead

“Cop here. Partner and I were dispatched to a welfare check. Elderly guy, nobody had seen him in a few days, mail over flowing in mailbox, missed a doctor’s appointment, car hasn’t moved, etc. We both know we are about to find a body. We arrive on scene and can’t get anyone to the door, look through the window and sure enough, we can see his foot on the floor in the living room. My partner is a corporal and pulls rank and makes me go first. Door is unlocked and as soon as we open it we smell a mostly fresh dead body. Almost relieved, we both enter and he tells me to check vitals on dead dude. He is obviously dead, with lividity, dried feces on him and dried saliva around his mouth. So I go to stand over him and see if I can get a pulse at which point he takes a deep breath, rolls over, and asks why we are in his house. At this point we both start screaming oh shits and what the fucks as we both run out of the house. We called ems and they transported him. Said they couldn’t get a blood pressure or pulse on him. I think he died a week later in the hospital. I still get jokes about raising the dead.” — sccrj888

11. A patient’s deceased father visited her in the hospital room

“I am a CNA in a local hospital. One of my patients just had a quad bypass (open heart surgery) and I went into check her vitals. The room was dim and the hall was quiet. I’m looking at her and in the corner of my eye I see something drop from the ceiling out of nowhere. It makes a big clunk sound and I turn to see what it could be. There’s nothing there. At that moment my patient looks up at me and say, ‘my dad’s here.” Passes back out… I finish my job and leave. When I would go to that floor again as a floater I would hate to go into that room.” — canaryblu

12. They heard a baby crying, but couldn’t find a baby anywhere

“There was a small island just off the coast of PEI, and one night people had called the police to report a baby crying from the island. The police show up, and sure enough they hear a baby crying. They make their way over to the cries, but when they get to the island the crying stopped. They searched everywhere and guess what they found. Nothing. No baby or any sign that someone might be there. They started to leave the island, and immediately the baby crying starts up. Of course they go back, and it stops. I can’t remember how long they were looking but they haven’t found anything, and you could tell it has been bothering him for a long time by the way he talked about it. It always creeped me out and I doubt I’ll ever forget about it.” — wowwoahwow

13. He saw a procession of injured ghosts outside of the prison

“My dad used to work as a CO (corrections officer) at a rural prison. He drove perimeter, which just means he made circles around the jail in a truck, checking empty buildings for runaway inmates and just generally being bored for eight hours every night.

One night, my dad is parked on a hill just reading a magazine when he starts to feel a thumping in his body. He described it as the feeling you get when speakers are playing a song with really heavy bass and you can feel the bass in your whole body.

Anyway, he puts the magazine down and checks his rearview, and he sees someone outside the truck. He grabs his pistol and jumps out of the truck, weapon drawn. When he gets outside, he sees a procession of Native Americans walking through the truck (and directly through his seat) only to disappear at the exact spot he was sitting. He said it was clear they were ghosts because many of them appeared injured. This went on for a few seconds, and then whole procession disappeared.

He called the other perimeter guy on his walkie to try to explain, and the other guy almost immediately stopped communicating. Turns out the other guy had seen this happen before, but didn’t believe in ghosts, so he wouldn’t talk about it.” — darthsantaclaus27

14. A little girl claimed that she lived with demons

“EMT here, once had a call at our local mall. Show 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 at a bad place. She said she lived with demons and I shit you not as she described the demons her heart rate plummeted to 90bpm to 45bpm 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, I will never forget that experience.” — lexi_lawson

15. We saw a mysterious man on the highway in the middle of nowhere

“Not LE but am paramedic/fire. Late summer night 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 then 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 hauling ass on a bicycle. No up and down motion like running. Obviously, I’m pretty confused about a hillbilly 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. Look out 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 towards the call and I ask my partner if he had seen that guy. His response is, ‘Man I thought I was crazy.'” — daringdonkey

16. I bought ice cream from a shop that had been closed down for years 

“When I was 19-21 I was employed as a security enforcement officer through a local private investigator firm. I know I wasn’t technically the LE you’re asking for, but I’ve always wanted some place to share this story

I spent a 12p-12a shift at an upscale theater and then my boss called me and told me I was assigned to a YMCA construction site that everyone kept calling out from. ‘The sooner I could come in the better,’ he said. So after working 12 hours at the theater, I spent another 3p-8am at that site. By the time I arrived home, it was around 9:30 and I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. But I received a phone call. It was my brother. His birthday was that day, and I had completely forgotten about it.

My whole family and I went shopping around and then ate at a restaurant about 45 minutes from my house. At around 1p, I told them I had to leave because I just couldn’t keep my eyes open.

As I was driving home, no amount of music or driving with the windows down would keep my eyes open. I started drifting into the opposite lane of traffic. I decided it was best if I pull over. I looked around, and there was an ice cream shop. So I stopped in. It was weird place for it to be, because the highway I was driving on was a smaller country highway and it was on the outskirts of town. So an odd place to put a shop that would seem to rely on foot traffic.

There was a woman out front asking if I had stopped for ice cream. I didn’t want to be a dick and just tell her I wanted a nap, so I said yes. I went inside and it was rather junky. It looked like they bought furniture from old barbeque restaurants and threw it at random into the building. The same woman was now behind the counter.

I said I wanted two scoops of chocolate on a cone and pulled out my bank’s debit card. ‘We don’t take cards here,’ she said. She handed me the ice cream cone. I dug around in my pockets and went back to my truck for change (I never keep anything but a debit card on me) but I found about 50 cents and I gave it to her. She said the price was $1.80, but that’ll do. I didn’t know what else to do, because I was half asleep and she had given me the ice cream cone already despite the fact I was attempting to pay with a debit card as she was making it.

I said thanks and walked outside it stand and eat it. I’m a pig when I eat, so by the time I made it to my truck, I had some already on my face and uniform. Before I could make it to my truck, the woman walks outside to talk to me. ‘You look troubled.’ She said, ‘But whatever you’re going through, you’ll be fine.’ I get in my truck and leave this (I’m now assuming) batshit crazy ice cream vendor. I get home and fall asleep.

The next day I’m getting my uniform ready when I see chocolate ice cream on my uniform shirt. The ice cream shop wasn’t far away from my house, so I felt I should go pay her what I owed.

I pulled up to the building but it was locked. There building was empty and there was a sheet of dust caked over the doors like no one has touched them in years.” — nutcracker2018

17. I kept seeing the ghost of a dead man over and over again

“Brant was my worst suicide and most creepy. I’ll.never forget him and he made sure of that.

Brant was a weird resident but nice. Always chatted with me but you could tell was hurting from his ptsd. Around Christmas his packages sat too long in the office for pick up but I figured he was on vacation. Shortly after new years his parents called and asked to talk to me directly. Manager hands me the phone and they tell me they haven’t been able to get ahold of him for weeks (they live out of state). I tell them to call PD (were not allowed due to privacy laws) and I grab my keys and head to his apt. His dog Rocky is barking, I check the front door and it cracks open, the smell hit my face like a ton of bricks. He’s dead and has been dead. Police arrive. Brant shot himself and sat for ten days. I had to ID him before they called his family. Rocky started to eat him due to going so long w out food.

The residents above/on the side/ behind him noped out and we let them go. At this point I think I’m losing my shit bc I keep seeing Brant out of the corner of my eye at work. Only at work. Sometimes I would see him walk by the office windows and I would yell for my manager, who believed me thankfully, but could never see him.

About a month after we get his place cleaned up and turned over the apartments around his a pair of little Korean sisters move in next door. The apt shares a wall with his bedroom. At this point no one in that area knows what happened and bc of Brant being a shut in no one knew him or who he was.

Cookie (one of the sisters) comes in and asks me one day if someone died in their apt. I tell her no. She says a man is around her apt and is distraught about not being able to cross over. At this point I ask her if she’s seen him and she describes Brant. I tell her about what happened and she assures me she’ll do a cross over ceramony for him that evening and also gave me a bit of sage later that day.

I never saw or felt Brant again after that night.” — Hollywood7

18. A (possessed?) woman was standing completely frozen in the middle of the road 

“Was driving along and found a girl just standing in the middle of the road, my initial thoughts was to just to tell her to pay attention but it was clear that while the lights were on, nobody was home. During my whole time with her she never uttered a word, I was left in a weird situation. She had done nothing, clearly needed help but medically nothing seemed wrong. As I am pondering what on earth I should do the girl suddenly starts spinning. Now spinning is not illegal and I’m starting to think this girl is one of those protesters that wind up police (I’ve dealt with troll station before) so I think crack on, spin to your hearts content. Then she loses her balance and falls whacking her head on the side of the police car! Great. So I call an ambulance but she seems fine. Still not talking but she is looking up at the sky. It’s a nice day so fine enjoy the sun. I do some writing and look back at her now bright red face and watering eyes and realise she is trying to damage her retinas by forcing herself to look directly at the sun. That’s a new one on me so now I’m holding a book or something above her to shield her eyes… ambulance arrives and we get to hospital and now she has forgotten how to walk. Now I’m 99% sure she is a wind up merchant but I get her a wheelchair. In the wheelchair she strikes up a ‘I’m a little teapot pose’ and keeps this up for the next hour, zero movement just frozen with her arms out. So I now have 3 potential situations.

1) she is pretending to be frozen in time.

2) she is suffering from a mental health issue.

3) 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.” — Rob_using_Reddit

19. A man without a pulse suddenly jumped to his feet

“I was an EMT for a while. We got a call about someone who was riding their bike at a ‘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 crippled 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 fucking jumped up. He didn’t use his arms to pick himself up, he just fucking 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 fucking 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 like fucking hell, so you’d think the guy would leave a long red trail of blood for the cops to follow.” — compsci2000

20. He saw a black, cloaked figure while doing security work 

“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 shit out of me. He’s always said, ‘I don’t mess with that stuff’ regarding supernatural things, but anyway. This story is in the early 80’s. With working at the factory he always had the night shift. It was just him… and the big ass 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 flash light 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. Although 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.” — AirJackieQ

21. I worked security inside of a haunted shopping mall

“Not a cop, but I used to work private security. For a bit I worked 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.” — TheCopenhagenCowboy

22. There was a haunted mansion in town that ghost hunters visited

“I work in a pre civil war town that has lots of antebellum homes that survived the war. Ghost hunters have been to the town on several occasions. There is this one antebellum mansion that is more of a museum, that gets alarm calls semi frequently. Every time, the side door to the house is open and the kitchen has all cabinet doors and drawers open. Every. fucking. time. The care taker says its been happening since she started looking after the place about 30 years ago. We don’t clear it without backup.” — jeep_devil_1775

23. After a hanging, I heard noises coming from the closet

“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 scene, found the foster parent sobbing on the main floor, told us the kid was upstairs. Paramedics had already came and gone, pronouncing the youth deceased likely from the night before. The kid had tied a belt around their neck to the closet rod (for lack of a better term) and hung themselves. Foster parent had cut them down and called 911 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 house at the time, contacting the medical examiner, etc. Here’s where it gets screwey for me.

As I’m in the room alone with the deceased looking around the room, 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 shit 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.

Maybe it was paranormal. Maybe I was tired. Who’s to know.” — C109

24. A small child’s bedroom was hidden behind a wall

“Fire/EMS here. This is not my story (it happened on a different shift), but Captain working overtime with us one day told it to us, and it creeped me out.

The Captain was on the first-due engine company that was dispatched to a residential fire alarm in the middle of the night. Our dispatch protocols require us to send the first-due unit emergency to a fire alarm, while the second due engine and ladder company respond routine. We go to tons of fire alarms and 99% of the time they are caused by a faulty system or burnt food, so we usually don’t get too worked up over them.

Anyways, as they approach the neighborhood they see the orange glow in the distance, and when they get on scene they find a ~4,000 square foot house with heavy fire showing on the rear and that had already broken through the roof. The call was then upgraded to a working structure fire and more units were dispatched to assist. The Captain of the first-due stayed on the outside the whole time (he was incident commander until the first battalion chief arrived on scene and took over, and then he assumed the safety role). So, he’s on the outside, in radio contact with crews that are inside fighting the fire.

After the bulk of the fire had been extinguished and as operations were winding down, the Captain sees smoke inside a second-story window and asks crews inside to go inside the room on the B/C corner to make sure the fire hadn’t spread to the other side of the house. The crews search for a few minutes and radio back, “There’s no room there, sir.” The Captain is a bit confused, as he is staring at what is clearly a window that is attached to a room of some sort. He relays detailed instructions of where the room should be to the crews inside, and they again advise that they can’t find anything.

Incredulous, the Captain asks the Incident Commander for permission to go inside of the structure so he can show the interior crews exactly where the room in question is. His request is granted, and he goes inside, walks up the staircase, and walks towards the corner in question. There’s no room there. Just a hallway with a corner. No doorway, no window, no room. Knowing that there has to be something behind the wall, they breach the drywall and crawl through to find a child’s bedroom. The bedroom had a dresser, a desk, and a perfectly made bed that looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed in years. For whatever reason, the owners of the home decided to wall off the bedroom and leave it just as it was, untouched and unaccessible. The Captain said it was one of the strangest and eeriest things he had seen in a while.” — GPCB

25. We responded to a fire alarm… and there was no sign of smoke

“Police officer working the desk 1500 – 2300, fire alarm signal goes off (many many years ago the police department offered alarm monitoring service, still had 10-12 places that were hard wired and it would require pulling apart a lot of equipment to disconnect the system so we just kept it going). 1st shift dispatch is already punched in so she took it.

I’m headed out the door to the fire department when 911 rings from the same address, I answer it. No one in the other end, assumed they barely got to call before passing out, I bolt out the back door, hop in a squad car, radio in the 911 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.

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.

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 any 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. Daughter said she spilled some coffee she was making for their walk and had to move the oven a few inches to clean, probably broke the line pushing the oven back in. Nothing else in the house is disturbed and both phones are 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, her husband passed away a few years ago, he was also a member of our department.

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.” — Grizzly_treats Thought Catalog Logo Mark