Law Enforcement Officers Describe The Spookiest Calls They Ever Received

From Redditor /u/ meriD_ :

Police officer here. One evening about eight years ago, it was pouring outside, and we got a call from an elderly woman. 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, even though she lived alone. We went just to check it out and make sure that everything was okay.

She stayed on the line with the 911 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 12 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 went to the backyard to see if the man was still hiding out or if there were any traces of him. I spoke with her for several minutes until the other officer returned. He said there was no trace of anyone having been in the backyard. We set off to do a quick sweep before we left to make sure the house was all clear. In her living room, 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 had very poor eyesight and was hard of hearing.

The woman 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 911.

Nothing was [taken], 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.

From Redditor /u/SirNobealot:

I am a police officer working on an emergency response team on a busy London borough. We took a call to a suspected domestic incident in a block of flats. The informant said that she could hear screaming and sounds of disturbance coming from the flat above her own.

Once we arrived, my colleague and I knocked on the door of the flat the informant said the noise was coming from. I had heard nothing on my way up and certainly couldn't hear any disturbance coming from the address... After knocking twice, we had no response. My colleague left me to go downstairs and speak directly to the informant.

I stayed by the door. I knocked again, and after some time, it was answered by an elderly woman. She had clearly been asleep and was alarmed to see me standing outside. I told her that someone had called saying that they could hear a disturbance coming from within her address. I asked her if there was anyone else inside with her. She looked bemused and told me that she lived alone and had been sleeping. I asked her if I could come in to satisfy myself that no one else was there.

She invited me in, and I walked into what was a small, two-bedroom flat. The flat was in darkness apart from her hall light and her bedside lamp. I began searching through the flat. As I approached the final door, my colleague called me up on the radio. He told me that he was on his way and asked if I was okay. I told him everything was fine, wondering why he sounded so flustered. He told me that he was with the informant and could also hear screaming and loud thuds coming from the flat I was in. I told him that he must be mistaken, as I was almost done searching the flat and I had heard nothing whatsoever.

I have to admit a feeling of unease as I opened the final door. Like all the other rooms, it was in darkness, but it was freezing cold. My breath misted immediately. There was no one in the room and no signs of disturbance. No window was open. I called my colleague and asked him to listen out for my footfall. He said he could hear my feet as I stamped them but said that the screaming had stopped. This coincided with me opening the door. I left shortly after, apologizing to the elderly woman for waking her.

From Redditor /u/Jrodri0502:

I am a military policeman in the Marine Corps. While stationed at Camp Lejeune, a dispatcher got a call from a terrified wife that kids were trying to get into her house (it was a little after midnight). We thought this was just a drunken spouse call and responded not on high alert - we just kind of wanted to make sure the lady was alright. 

The woman is obviously shaken, still with puffy eyes. She tells us four children with red eyes rang her doorbell and asked to come inside, and when she refused, they got angry. The kids terrorized her for five minutes (her own child was put to bed and her husband was deployed). 

My partner and I decide to do a little walking patrol of that housing area. In each housing area, there's usually a decent-sized playground. As we were walking up to it, we both see some kids swinging (curfew is 8 pm for young children unless accompanied by an adult on base). I'm spooked at this point, and I know my partner is, too. They look over at us and just stare. We started backtracking and then turned and didn't look back. We didn't talk about it the rest of the night, either.

Later on, I looked up the incident online since Lejeune is famous for lots of paranormal activity, and it turns out the little red-eyed kids have been reported before.

From Redditor /u/mwaldorf142:

I was working night shift in a small town and received a call to the hospital. The call was from the lone security guard on site who didn't feel comfortable dealing with this on his own - the call was dispatched as urgent assistance. On arrival to the hospital, the guard stated to me that nursing staff had heard what they referred to as "blood-curdling screams" coming out of the then-closed psychiatric unit (there were no patients or staff in the unit at the time).

The door to the unit was a clear glass door, and there was nothing visible on the other side. I requested the keys to unlock the door. I turned the key in the door and unlocked the deadbolt, but before I was able to remove the keys from the door, something forced the lock and re-locked the door, resulting in my hand (still holding the key) to be physically moved as well. I was pretty creeped out myself, but based on the severity of the call, I still entered the room and conducted a search of the entire unit with no result.

Immediately after clearing the unit, another call came in, but this time it was from a nurse walking to her car on the street - she also heard loud screams. I ran down to the hospital parking lot where another unit met me, and we searched the area. I then came across a small park and could hear a very faint squeaking sound. I followed the sound, only to come across a swing set of four swings. Three swings were absolutely still, as there was no wind, and the other was moving, almost as if there was someone still sitting in it and pumping to gain momentum. I stood there in awe for a good 30 seconds, and the swing did not lose any momentum.

From Redditor /u/Zombie_Dance_:

My uncle works for dispatch in my town, and he recently told my family about 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 body. The person had been deceased for five 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 person would have stayed there.

From Redditor /u/elephantpudding:

I was called to a residence out in the Wyoming boonies at about 11 pm about suspicious activity. When we get there, we are told by the family that there are very strange screams coming from a creek area about 1,000 feet out. And sure enough, waiting outside on the porch with them for about a minute, I hear it. It is very hard to describe what it sounded like. It was like a woman in very severe distress, but higher pitched, and each scream lasted for about 10 to 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... We hear about two more screams, which get louder as we approach the creek. By now, we're both kind of freaked out. There are two possibilities: Someone is [being slain] in the creek bed, or it's a wild animal.

As we approach the creek bed, we hear no screams for about five minutes. We search around and find nothing, yelling at the top of our lungs for somebody to come towards us if they are there.

Then, we hear the exact same scream behind us, exactly from where we came from. We get about halfway back to the house, and the scream comes so loudly, it seems to be right next to us. We frantically shine our flashlights everywhere and find nothing, no eye glints of animals, no rustling of bushes, just silence. We trace our steps back, and the scream comes from around the creek again. This time, it lasted about 30 seconds and was much louder than before. Our retreat becomes a little more hastened.

By this time, we were both scared and verified with the family to call us again if they heard it. 

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 sound - 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.