It’s one thing to see creepy stuff on TV, but these police officers saw it in real life. Once they saw it, they could never forget.
Warning: This article contains descriptions of graphic violence and disturbing images.
[Source listed at the end of the article.]
A coat rack with a hat on. Clearing a dark house and seeing what could easily be a person standing motionless in the corner is not fun.
clobberellabeatsyoup
I’m a cop now, but this happened when I was a kid, at my grandparents’ house on vacation in Iowa. They live in the middle of nowhere, just other elderly neighbors and corn fields for miles.
It was like 2am and I was gonna go have a smoke before bed. Their back porch has a big sliding door. Well I walk into the room with the sliding door, and there’s a guy in creepy mask and his eyes are jet black. He’s quietly wiggling the door, trying to open it (the lock is weird and lets the door have like an inch of free play). I feel my whole body tighten up in terror.
Right then the guy freezes and looks right at me. He pauses, then starts frantically shaking the door trying to open it. Like this dude is trying to rip the door off the house. I run over to my grandpas gun cabinet and grab something and by the time I whipped around to point it at him, he was gone. I ran and woke up my grandparents, we all walked around the house with loaded guns for a minute but the guy was gone. I won’t even go in cornfields in broad daylight anymore.
Paul_Morale
Family Disturbance call on Christmas Eve 2011, Husband vs. wife. No battery, nobody went to jail, but the house was filled with hundreds of knives and ‘toys’. Normal toys, little toys, great big horse toys, and every kind of mall ninja knife you can imagine. Every horizontal surface was covered with sharp metal or jiggly silicone, there were even a few new ones under the tree.
After clearing the house we had to talk to these folks with a straight face for a good 10 minutes, it was one of the greatest challenges of my career.
geekcop
This one is just funny. My cousin is a cop and a little on the short side (min requirements for a New Zealand Police Officer). During a search of a house for drugs, he was using a 20-liter paint container to stand on to assist in searching higher areas of the house i.e closets and such.
At the completion of the search and after 3 hours they had found nothing. My cousin then looked inside the paint container he was using the whole time to stand on, thinking it would be just paint but instead it was full of the devil’s lettuce. About 20 kgs of it. Much laughter ensued.
kiwibrandon
We found a dead guy, but not just your average dead guy. This guy died on his couch, surrounded by no less than 1500 Miller Lite cans. Plus, he had no friends or family. None. He was retired and his electric bill was auto-deducted from his checking account. He died, on his couch, and no one realized it for 5 months.
Forensicunit
I volunteer with local PD and I go on ride alongs often, my creepy thing isn’t scary so much as freaky. So we get a call about some squatters in a house that’s going to be demolished soon to make room for a freeway. No big deal, kick them out, go on with our business. It’s sunset, just starting to get dark. Our car and the other officer arrive at this place and it’s all fenced off and looks abandoned.
And by abandoned, I mean it looks truly scary. It was like an old school house, metal swing set, a “friendly” scare crow next to a fence. Some crosses here and there, but it was in a residential neighborhood. On the blocked in windows, people wrote in sharpie all kinds of spooky stuff, “this place belongs to us” and just all around weird stuff.
So there was a main house, a garage type thing, and then a cellar. A friggin’ door leading under ground with creaky ass wooden steps. If you walk down those, it’s concrete and there are windows, but it’s a basement. The windows just show dirt. There are beds and stuff but it looks like it’s been abandoned for a LONG time. It was so scary it’s ridiculous.
OBVIOUS_OBSERVATlONS
I used to volunteer with my local PD. Nothing will beat the old lady who passed away in her house and her little dog ate her face. Literally just the skin from the jaw line to the hair line and from ear to ear. It left the eyeballs in the sockets. Just a skeleton in a lady suit, doing the 1000 yard stare.
robinson217
Not creepy, just a surprise. Get a call for a burglary. I’m doing a walk through with the resident noting all missing and damaged property. He was an older guy. We are in the bedroom looking in drawers.
I open one and see it full of women’s panties and bras. I ask him when his wife will be home to help identify missing items. He stutters a little bit and finally says, “Uhhh those are mine.” I just closed the drawer and went on with my investigation. Hey, far be it from me to judge you for wearing pretty underwear.
fineillmakeausername
Brother in law is a cop. He told me about a time he and his partner were called to do a wellness check on someone with a terminal illness (family didn’t know where he was).
So the get to the house, knock, and get no response. They entered the house to see if he had passed away due to his illness. They did not find him there, but what they did find was a stairway leading down to a basement.
In that basement was a vast number of toys, ropes, harnesses, etc. There was also a stage with a bed on it, and a video camera on a tripod focused on it. He had stumbled upon this guy’s dungeon.
The guy ended up being alive, but was visiting someone out of town and didn’t notify any of his family.
brainsurgeon23
Bathtub of dead rats in a share house of illegal workers. They’d leave traps and poison out and when they caught the rat they added it to the pile. Whole house was disgusting.
UsquatM8
We went to an apartment which was a local drug den. A female we knew called and said the male renter had been assaulted and she had run. We got there and the door was bolted shut. I kicked the door over and over again and it wouldn’t open. What I found out later is the tenants had reinforced the door jamb with a metal plate. It took me a total of 22 times kicking the door before I broke the deadbolt in half which flew across the room and hit the wall. We made entry; guns drawn and started clearing the apartment.
This place was the kind of spooky I have only seen in drug dens. It was dark, there were swastikas, 666, upside down pentagrams painted on the wall, pictures of faces hung on the wall with the eyes X’d out and baby dolls with their eyes scratched out into X’s. As we cleared the first room we started seeing the blood. First on the bed, then a trail on the floor leading into the back room. We followed the trail of blood down the hall to the bathroom door. In front of the door was the renters dog which was shaking uncontrollably and urinating all over the floor, scared out of its mind.
I made my way around the dog and entered the bathroom where I found the renter hunched over in the shower, bleeding from his face, holding his cheeks with his hands. He was frantically trying to talk, pleading with us not to hurt his dog. Blood was dripping from his mouth and I couldn’t understand him. Then I saw the extend of what had happened to him. His jaw had been dislocated on both sides when he was beat by 2 men with a hammer and it was just hanging there. As he was trying to plead with us he could only attempt to talk by flicking his blood covered tongue in the pattern of the words because his jaw didn’t work at all.
imcodefour
Abandoned houses are pretty depressing, family pictures and albums collecting dust and decaying. Sad stuff written in marker as daily reminders to start again, get off drugs, look for work, make things right. All written in Spanish and seeing a sleeping mat comprised of towels and old sweaters in a corner and pizza boxes from Little Caesars next to it.
Lots of stuff you see tell a story you never asked for or expected to find, makes me feel lucky to have what I have.
Gambit2099
Corrections officer here – cell search in a women’s prison turned up a very large ‘toy’ made of jolly ranchers from commissary, and a rubber glove that she used as protection for it.
More like an arm made of jolly ranchers.
ArmyTroll
Before I joined the police department, I was a weird teenager I had this strange thing that I would just take night walks in areas with no lights, mostly forest walking paths. My logic then was facing fears and feel awesome after.
On one night, it was pitch black, could really not see far. So was doing my thing and I just bumped into someone else. Saw him at the very last moment. I just screamed and started running back only to hear him chasing me, I could hear the sound of his footsteps. After a while of booking it as fast as I could they became more distant. I just kept running.
Never went for a night forest walk again. Thinking back my guess would be that he was perhaps a forest ranger or something. Back then, I figured serial killer.
hungamaclub
My house was broken into during the day while no one was home, but luckily our neighbor saw this guy break in and called the cops, they showed up and checked out our house and notified us.
When we got back we talked to the cops about the break in, and what not. The cop who showed up first to check the house told us when he was going into our basement he almost had a heart attack because he thought the thief was still there, mistaking a life size cardboard cut out of a tv character in the corner for a real person.
_notmoose_
Just a nod of respect to all cops who have to deal with a lot of scary, creepy stuff on a daily basis, while several of us deal with that stuff only when watching movies.
Anonymous
My uncle is a cop and likes to tell the story of the time he shown up to arrest a 15 yo who skipped school to throw rocks through some cars and steal things in them. He gets there and knows the kid, They’ve gotten him a few times from the school with drugs, one time for having a knife. They knock on the door and his 18 year old brother and 17 year old sister open it.
Cops show they have the warrant for the kids arrest and that they have to open the door, but the teenagers refuse. The uncle said they might have to force their way in and break the chain. The 18 year old says he’s got a gun, so of course they immediately break down the door. They had to arrest both of the siblings.
When they got to the second-floor, it REEKS. Worst smell they’ve ever smelled. They open the door and find a long rotten body of an elderly woman. Uncle said later it came out that they grandmother died of a drug overdose, and the kids never reported the grandmother was dead so they could keep cashing her Social security checks. She had been dead for about a year.
suitology
My very first dead guy had been in his house for almost a week during a very hot July with no air conditioning.
Did you know that your skin will become clear and you can see EVERYTHING? He popped when the funeral home came to get him. Yes, popped. Some people, they’re not bothered by this. Me? No no no. I don’t have the stomach. This is the only part of the job that bothers me.
MaxTitration16
I searched an inmate’s cell and found a rolled up magazine wrapped tight in cellophane. It was awfully greasy/lubed.
SmallTownJerseyBoy
I found some guys “hate room” a back room in a trailer with a red light full of knives and holes in the panelling.
It’s not uncommon would walk into a house with weapons but there was one dude I remember had motion detectors and cameras in his yard as well as a hunting or sniper rifle at every window of the house.
drzebrapants
She attended a scene where a body was found wearing a clown mask. Her colleague went to look under the mask before forensics arrived and the face sloughed off as it had adhered to the mask, replacing a clown face with a grinning skull. Natural causes after a party apparently.
welsh_dragon_roar
My friend is a police officer. They got a call one night from a 4 year old that dad was hurt. When they got to said address the small child answered the door. As they head inside they hear a woman calling out “in here” . They approach the bedroom to find mom tied to the bed dressed as scantily like Wonder Woman. Dad is knocked out cold as Super Man . Apparently Dad jumped on the bed forgot about the ceiling fan and knocked himself out cold. My friend said it was the funniest, craziest thing he ever saw. Woman had to scream to wake up the child to call the cops.
Beausoleil57
My brother is a cop. He told me about this time when they responded to a work place accident where a railyard worker had been crushed between two railcars. The guy had been crushed/pressed into the ladder of one of the cars. They kept hearing voices coming from the body. Muffled voices but definitely coming from the body.
It took them a while to figure out the worker had been carrying a radio. Needless to say they were a bit disturbed until they reached that conclusion.
tmoz12
My dad was a state cop.
He responded to a call in a rural area once. The couple involved were known repeat domestic violence/battery offenders. This time, the lady apparently had had enough, and either shot the guy in self defense, or shot him point blank.
When my dad entered the trailer, he told me he could see a trail of blood on the floor. Some spots were more splattered/thicker than others, but it was clearly a trail, as if something had been dragged. My dad and his partner followed the slick through the front room, where the man had been shot. It crept down the hallway and into the kitchen, where they saw the man himself.
He had dragged himself, bleeding from the chest/stomach, through his house trying to reach a phone. He made it into the kitchen, where he managed to hook his chin onto a table. So his chin was still on the table top, and his body kind of drooped under him with his legs kicked out behind him.
theriversom
I was clearing a house (with my gun out obviously) and rounded a corner to see a man pointing a gun right at my face. I yelled and was taking slack out of the trigger when I realized I was looking at a full length mirror.
Took a while to recover from that adrenaline dump. That’s a good illustration of how the human mind can’t process an entire scene at one time and you’ll focus on what’s important (the barrel of a gun) vs other details (my own face and police uniform.)
Viking042900
My dad used to be one awhile back. He told me about a time he had a call to domestic violence. If I remember right, the boyfriend was abusing his girlfriend and somehow it came down to self defence and the girl shot him and killed him. I guess they still had their guns out when the body twitched and scared the crap out of my dad’s partner. He almost shot the dead guy on reflex. After that, they found his drivers license and discovered it was his birthday.
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