Think about it, who would make a better witness than a cop? Police officers are trained observers, they venture into the unknown every day, so it’s hardly surprising that some of the best paranormal experiences we’ve ever heard are from members of law enforcement.

Here are 10 of the most chilling ghost stories shared by the men and women in blue.

1. The Key Holder

Myself and a buddy on my squad responded to an alarm. The incident location was an old office type building that had been converted to doctor’s offices. There was a pharmacy attached to it. Our dispatch received a motion signal from an upstairs office. Key holder arrives on scene and we go in to secure the building. The stairs were locked behind a door that, of course, the key holder didn’t have keys too, so we took the elevator up to the second floor (not the most tactically sound option, I know).

Elevator opens to a pitch black hallway… Except for one overhead light at the end of the hall. We start checking doors, and so far all are secured. We get to the last office, and sure enough, the door is unlocked. We make entry and observe it to be an unused office. The door opend to a sizable waiting room and reception area. There were about 10 or 12 exam rooms, all cleared with no hiccups.

We exit the office and immediately, something seems off. That is when I realize the overhead light at our end of the hallway that had been on was now off, replaced by another light over by the elevators. I look at my squad mate and he is completely white. I ask him what is wrong and he says, “weren’t all those doors we just checked closed and locked.” I tell him yay, so buddy says, “well now they’re all standing open.” Sure enough, all the offices down the hallway we had just checked were now standing open. Pucker factor sinks in at this point.

So we start clearing offices and securing offices. We finish the last office, and on our way out, just before we turn the corner to get into the waiting area, the main door just slams shut. Then, our radios start going nuts with some kind of static feedback. Now I just want to get the hell out of there.

We get back in the elevator and head down to the first floor to make contact with the key holder again. However, key holder is no where to be found. I contact dispatch and request a call back number for the key holder so I can advise him of what we found. Dispatch states that the key holder was still enroute to us and was advising an eta of 5 minutes. I advise dispatch that we had already been out with the key holder. Dispatch requests I give them a call.

I call dispatch and she tells me that there is no way we were out with a key holder. She states that the alarm company had only just made contact with one. Eventually, the “real” key holder arrives on scene and I ask her about the man that had let us in the building (the first key holder). She asked me to describe him, so I did. She states that that sounds like one of the doctors that used to lease the office on the second floor AT THE END OF THE HALL. She then states that he had committed suicide at his summer home several days ago.

I still won’t go back there.

2. The Abandoned Hospital

A few years back, prior to sworn LEO, I worked as a Security Guard at a hospital. Sounds cool, and it was, except for the fact it was 9pm to 7am, I worked alone, and the hospital I guarded was abandoned.

A year prior, the hospital built a brand new facility to replace their five story tall, 1900’s building. When the employees and patients left, they left everything in place. It looked like the people just disappeared in a hurry. Partially full coffee mugs, uniforms hanging on coat racks, wheelchairs in the halls, everything as it was, with a good coating of dust.

I was always a 3rd shift kind of person, I don’t get night ‘jitters’ or scare easily. But this place could do it to the best of em. Every night I would walk (or ride a wheelchair) through the halls that were supposed to be empty/unused. Every night I would end up having to close doors and re-lock them. I would walk one floor, move up to the next, and continue on.

I got a little shakey when an hour after already walking a hallway, I would have to turn off the same hall lights and close the same doors AGAIN in the building. Or when I would be walking a hall and then I would hear footsteps on the floor above me, doors opening and closing, elevators moving from floor to floor, phones ringing, nurse call lights going on, etc.

There were only 3 times I got the “I hate this sh*t” feeling. 1st time I was checking offices on the 4th floor. There was a light on in a locked hallway (no surprise). This hallway hadn’t been renovated since the place was built, short of electricity, so everything was from the 1920’s. Unlock the door, flip the lights, walk out, re-lock the door, and turn to leave. Behind me I hear the “flip” of a light switch. Through the frosted glass I see the the lights went back on. I left the hallway alone that night.

2nd time was riding an elevator between floors. I was taking the elevator to the top floor, when at about #4 of #5 floors, I hear laughing and muffled talking. It kept getting louder as it got higher. Elevator makes it to #5, doors swing open, and absolute silence. Of course, every light was on on the floor, even in the patient rooms. I checked high and low, not a single living and breathing person in that place except for me.

3rd, and worst of all, was just an average night. I’m on the lower level locking a door in a corridor. The door had a glass middle but on the backside it was covered by white tape. The room it led to it was dark and the hallway a few feet behind me was partially lit, so the glass acted like a perfect mirror. Everything normal, key in, lock clicks, turning the key… When behind me I see the full outline of a person walk past me in the hallway. Clear as day, just a full shadow of a person walk past. I froze only for about a second, and then ran into the hall after the supposed ‘person’. No one, just silence.

Awesome gig, but after a year it felt like I should’ve been an exorcist with all this stuff happening. The other guards that worked on the days opposite to mine had the same stuff happen, except they always saw nuns walking into rooms just outside of an old rectory/chapel on the 3rd floor. Better nuns than something else I guess.

3. Did You See Grandma?

When I was a municipal cop, I was sent to a missing person/runaway juvenile call. The town I worked in was inner city and poor, but it was one of the better streets in town and the family was squared away (the husband and wife were both educators). While I was taking the report of their runaway teenage daughter in the family’s living room, an older daughter who was in the room pointed toward a hallway and yelled, “Grandma!” The husband ran into the hallway yelling, “Ma, Ma!” The husband returned to the living room, and asked, “Officer, did you see her? Did you see my mother?” I told him I had not, and asked him why it was remarkable that his mother had walked down the hallway. The husband replied, “She died last year. We see her walking around the house all the time.”

I took the rest of the report while standing on the front porch.

4. The Eyes That Watch

I work for a Tribal Police Department as well, and believe me the spirits here can get to you. There is a section of Florida road between Dade and Collier counties known as the Western Camps; Dade-Collier airport is located here.

Anyway, while on midnight shift I was patrolling this area and called an area check. My radio worked absolutely fine. Just then, that commercial for the movie “Fourth Kind” played on my FM radio… I immediately became spooked. A couple of miles down the road, I called another check and got nothing but loud static. Since I was near the end of my check, I decided to turn around, and when I did I froze. Tons and tons of eyes staring at me from in the water, in the trees, and on the road. I couldn’t tell whether they were alligators or what not, but I flew back East to familiar territory.

Another officer who works with us said he was doing the same check and heard someone knock on the back window of his patrol car while he was stopped. He stepped out of the vehicle with his weapon drawn, but saw absolutely nobody.

I hate going out there.

5. Last Call

My old partner told me this one. Enjoy.

Back in ’87 an A-7 Corsair crashed in to the Ramada here in Indianapolis. The story was there was a Boy Scout Troop staying in the hotel. One of the boys placed a call to his parents after the crash and said “Dad tell mom I’m fine, everything is alright, don’t worry….” and the line was disconnected. The parents were already watching the news and saw what was happening and drove to Indy to get their son. When they arrived the Chaplin from Wayne Fire broke the bad news that their son was killed in the crash. The father said there is no way because he spoke to his son after the crash on the phone. The Chaplin explained their son was found in the lobby where the majority of the damage and fire took place. He was found by the pay phones.

Later it was determined that a call came from a lobby phone, 20 minutes after the plane struck the building.

6. The Shadowman

I was sitting in the flat of a hill, monitoring traffic. It was about 2-3am. Where I was sitting; its a well known spot where an unsolved murder victim was found about 26 years ago. No other officers would sit here, even though citizens are constantly doing 15-20mph over the limit in this area.

As I was sitting there I saw a shadow cross the back of my unit, coming from the passenger side. Almost immediately afterwards the shadow came up the driver side of my unit then across the front. Mind you its completely dark in this area, and the only lighting around me is from the moon.

Thinking the worse, I turn on all my lights to light up the area to see if I can see who, or what is around me. —– Nothing.

I figured it was time to leave that area. Once I got to a lighted area I stopped and realized that my camera was recording from where I hit my emergency lights. I reviewed the footage and you can see where a figure starts from the driver front of my unit, then for a half a second the entire camera goes black, as if someone put their finger over the lens, then it goes back to normal.

Needless to say, I haven’t sat back in that spot yet.

7. The Haunted Church

I used to work for a private police/security firm as a patrol supervisor. On one of my patrol routes, we had a huge church that was also a private day care and kindergarten. It was my responsibility to clear and secure the building every night between 3 and 4am due to recent instances of doors being found left open in the morning. In the early 1900’s, the building was a schoolhosue and supposedly a fire killed several children trapped inside. I didn’t know any of this prior to working for the company. I only lasted about a week on this route prior to requesting that the church be moved to earlier in the shift. Several extremely creepy things happened while assigned to the church:

My first night there, I had just walked down the very long main classroom hallway to clear all of the rooms and when I turned around to walk back up the hallway there was a red balloon floating in the middle of the hallway that was definitely not there prior.

In the old pastor’s office there was a lamp shaped like a lighthouse that sat on a table in a large window. When I would pull up to the church the lamp would be the first thing I would see in the office window. It was always turned on. However, when I would go to check/lock the pastor’s office from the inside, the lamp would always be off. When I would get back into the car to leave, the light would be back on again.

One weekend, the church was having a bake sale and the kitchen was full of plates of cookies and brownies, etc. There had been a note left on the door telling us (security) that we could help ourselves to anything in the kitchen (within reason.) I cleared the kitchen and noticed a large plate of chocolate chip cookies. I continued past the plate to clear the rest of the kitchen and when I went back to the plate of cookies, there were only 3 left where there had once been at least a dozen or more.

And I also had the usual phenomena of previously closed/locked doors being found open just seconds after closing and locking them. Another officer that filled in for me one evening quit the very next day because he reported that as he was checking the main chapel, the pipe organ started playing itself.



8. The Water Tower

It’s been a while… But I only have one. Get a call for an alarm at a new water tower they are building. Alarm company also has cameras on the site so when the alarm activated, so did the cameras. The alarm company advised that there were two teenagers observed going under a sign.

I was already in the area, so I was on scene quickly. The alarm company stayed online and said they have not passed the camera again. A few more units get there and we are checking the site for this sign. Well we find it, but it’s not a sign, it’s a piece of construction equipment. And when you go under the sign, it leads to only one place, the entrance to the water tower. So we go inside and immediately hear people talking. We shine our lights toward the next landing and it stops. So we are giving commands and all that but no response.

We are considering climbing up there, but the ladder is being held on by a carabiner and we can’t figure out their harness system. We call one of the workers out so it takes him a bit to get there. We’re sitting there BSing inside the tower because it’s cold and decide to turn our lights off.

After a minute, the talking resumes along with what sounds like someone walking or shuffling around. So we shine a light up and it stops. We do this 3 or 4 times and it’s the same thing. Guy finally gets there and goes up the ladder, checks that level, the next level then the actual bowl. No one was up there.

9. A Guardian Angel?

A traffic guy at my agency was catching up to a DUI suspect, no lights/sirens. The suspect was easily 300-400 yards ahead, at 0330 hours, on a very long stretch of semi-rural road. The left side of the street was lit by street lights, and the right side was dark. Both cars were moving fast, about 80 mph or so.

His dash cam video showed the suspect vehicle lose something from its rear and it turned out it was the suspect’s rear bumper. After the bumper stopped tumbling, the video showed a black figure dart into the roadway from the left, (the side lit by streetlights), pick up or move the bumper, and then dart to the right side of roadway where it was dark. The video showed nothing on the right side of roadway when the officer drove by the area. The officer did not see this occur at the time, but instead when he reviewed his video in the car to find out where the suspect lost his bumper.

The dark figure had no reflective clothing on, as most joggers/dog walkers do in the area, and was definitely in the ‘right place at the right time,’ as the officer most likely would have hit the bumper due to his speed and possibly crash.

10. The Fallen Officer

I wasn’t present for this, but heard this from co-workers. It was second week of April a few years ago. Around 2am, a young, junior female officer was coming off shift and walking to the locker rooms past an empty admin area. At that time of night, the office is all cleared out and can be eerie. She saw an older male officer standing there that she didn’t know and she said hello as she walked by, he ignored her and when she looked back over her shoulder, he was gone. Of course she was creeped out, but told herself she was just tired and imagining things.

A couple days went by and she saw a picture of the same officer she had seen that night posted on a wall of fallen officers. That officer had killed himself with his service weapon a couple years earlier… During the second week of April. He used to have a desk near where she saw him. I didn’t know him very well as we have a large department and we didn’t work in the same areas. In all my dealings with him, he was very talented and skilled at his job and had a clear passion for it. It was a big loss. There’s another one watching over us…

[Source: Officer.com]

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