Cold Cases That Still Haunt Investigators
Unsolved cases are always chilling. In many ways, ambiguity is more frightening than learning the grisly details of a strange case, especially when you’re the person tasked with getting to the bottom of the incident. Investigators, firefighters, security guards, and others responsible for public safety or just interested in the subject took to Reddit to share the cold cases that still haunt them, even if the danger passed years prior.
Some of these are mysterious encounters, others are tales of people vanishing into thin air, and still others are gruesome discoveries with no explanation. Read through their eerie accounts to hear about investigators' creepiest cold cases.
A Lurker Watched Them From The Fence
From Redditor /u/enrtcode:
I'm a retired police officer, and this one scared me. So I was sent to a house at [3 am] one winter night for a prowler call. It was an old, widowed lady who said a man was in her backyard watching her.
Usually this is dementia, but we went. She let us in the front door, and we went to the backyard to shine our lights around and look for anything. It was a midsize yard with a pond and lots of nice Japanese maples, etc. Really well taken care of. We were looking around for about two minutes when I get to the back fence and I just felt odd. Like I was being watched...
I shined my light up on the top of the fence, and there is a guy in an all-black hoodie with the hood over his head perched on the fence not three feet from me, just watching me. The instant I shined my light on him, HE DOES A F*CKING BACKFLIP off the fence into the other yard and runs. We look over the fence to see [his] direction, and he is inhumanly fast...
We call in the [cavalry] and surround the area and find not a footprint. This was winter and damp out - there needed to be something... but nothing.
A week later, she calls and says he's back and dressed as a f*cking clown watching her. I drove as fast as I could [but] never saw him. She would call every few days to say he was there, but every time, we never saw him again.
Never in my career was a suspect so nonchalant about us. People just don't sit and watch the cops approach them mere feet away, then do backflips off the fence. It was so bizarre.
A Hunter Disappeared Mysteriously And Never Returned
From Redditor /u/ asouthernthrowaway33 :
I was a firefighter. Back a half a dozen years ago, I paged out to a call for a member of a hunting party that had gone missing. This was a volunteer department outside of my day job, and I headed out with a probie (new firefighter) to a hunting camp. Hunters go missing all the time, so I didn't think too much of it. Most of the time they just lose track of time and turn up by a road or something.
We get there, and there's three men looking very shaken. I talk to the sheriff deputy, and he tells me the men keep saying, "They got him," and something about being in the trees. It's already nightfall by the time we get there, so we do a drive-through, but no dice. Over the next few days, various groups do SAR [search-and-rescue] parties, but the hunter is never found. I didn't think much of it until I talked to a buddy of mine (in a neighboring department) a couple years later.
We were talking, and the events of that night came up. He tells me that two of the men in that hunting party [took their own lives], and the third had been in and out of [a treatment facility] ever since. To this day, as far as I know, the fourth hunter hasn't been found.
A Man Was Found Full Of Toxins In A Cornfield
From Redditor /u/RegulusGuard:
[I] heard a story about a guy who was found on a cornfield. There were no signs of how he [passed], but it clearly wasn't on purpose because of the serious amounts of toxins in his body. These toxins weren't harmful though, more likely side effects of whatever happened to the poor sod. No one knew who this fella was, or where he was before. The only clue anyone gave was that they saw a man looking like him [lying] down on a bench in a shady part of town, and that he looked groggy and zombie-like...
The most creepy part about the case is his state when [we found] his body. He was wearing no clothes except for several green wristbands on his right leg. His body was in a swastika formation.
A Seemingly Normal Man Vanished Without A Trace
From Redditor /u/tangobravomike:
For a time, my business contracted to a PI company that was made up of part-time police officers. One case they told me about was a guy who simply vanished: normal life, wife, kids, active in the community, gone out of thin air.
Over the years, there were verified sightings of him. There is [a] recording of him over a year later at a bar in Omaha (bartender happened to be from the area where he disappeared and recognized the guy after he left).
Best anyone could tell is that he just wanted a new life and successfully started over.
A New Spree Began On An Old Stomping Ground
From Redditor /u/ YourLeastBestFriend :
In League City, TX, there used to be a dead-end road. The city grew... [and] in the process of clearing land, they found dozens of girls [underground]. Still several unidentified. They stumbled onto the dumping ground [of] a serial [slayer]...
My sister went to prom with a guy who lived next door to this... One night, she is over at his house, and a random girl comes running, no [shoes] on, screaming, [and] banging on the door saying some guy picked her up or was following her. Boys say the man was nowhere to be found. Prom date and brother get her to safety, then proceeded to tell my sister all the [town's] weird ghost stories because "weird things like that always happen around here"... They thought she was spooked by feelings of being watched or something.
Until a few years later when they started finding [cadavers]... Again.
A Security Guard Went Missing After Calling In A Trespasser
From a former Redditor:
Got assigned to a construction site, overnights. Huge, big city construction site. Three buildings, 500 units per building. Ground-level retail. Three guards on site. The project is about 75% complete. Around four in the morning, the radio goes off. Guard No. 1 reports trespassers. Requests backup. I go to provide backup. Takes about five minutes to get to the location where Guard No. 1 called in from. Radio is silent.
I'm keying the mic, asking for any information. No reply. I get to the location. I hear Guard No. 1's radio. I find it on a blueprint table. No sign of Guard No. 1. No sign of struggle. No sign of any trespassers. Nothing. I call Guard No. 3. We search. No sign of Guard No. 1. No sign of any trespassers. If they were homeless, they didn't leave behind any packs or bedding... Nothing.
Shift ends. I go home. I go to sleep. Around noon, Guard No. 1's [girlfriend] texts me saying Guard No. 1 never came home from work. A few days later, [she] files [a] missing person [report]. A few days after that, Guard No. 1's family hires a dog. Searches around the construction site. Dog follows scent out to street then sits down. Guard No. 1 must have got into a car. And that's it. Guard No. 1 seems to have vanished into thin air after reporting trespassers and requesting backup.