911 dispatchers have a tough job. They're constantly faced with the pressure to send help to people in need while also keeping the injured person or witness to a crime or accident calm while police, paramedics and firefighters race to the scene. Not only this, but dispatchers also sometimes have to hear crimes - in particular, murders - happening in real time, which can certainly take a psychological toll.
A group of 911 dispatchers shared their creepiest and most unforgettable phone calls on Reddit. Here's a collection of some of the more outstanding tales.
911 Dispatchers Describe the Creepiest Call They've Ever Had,
Three Nightmare Stories
"I've had a lot of messed up calls as a 911 operator. The one I had, this lady was screaming. Just horrific screaming. Then the phone went dead. I called back only to hear that horrific screaming again. Then I heard someone in the background screaming 'He's stabbing her! He's stabbing her!" She died. He did get caught by an officer I had dispatched - she literally jumped off a car roof and landed on top of the guy. Not sure what his sentence was.
"I had another guy who drowned his two-year-old son. That fucked me up for a while because I was pregnant with my son at the time. I kept thinking how unfair that some child could be so terrified as the one person he trusted and loved was harming him. Not only that, but when you drown you're conscious to the end. I still cry for that little boy some days.
"I had another man who was changing the oil in his SUV. Long story short, the SUV fell on him and he died before help got there. There were a lot of calls like that - where you're the last person to ever talk to someone. I knew as soon as I heard his breaths go agonal, he was done."
Diana
"She was depressed and suicidal. She called from a disconnected cell phone and refused to give me her location. I never stopped trying to to get a ping on her but it was an apartment complex and there wasn't much I could do for that.
"She refused to let me send anyone to her, refused to talk to EMS, suicide hotlines or supervisors. I answered the phone so I was the only one she would talk to.
"We talked for a really long time, not just relative to my normal calls of a couple minutes, I mean around two hours of my life was spent trying to talk Diana out of it.
"She ingested a large quantity of narcotics and alcohol. I remember her telling me her husband's name was David and they were recently divorced. She had the narcotics for pain because she was involved in an auto accident not too long before all of this. She was unable to work, in extreme pain, and considering the recent divorce it's easy to see why she felt the way she did. Her youngest son had just moved away from home as well. I felt really bad for her."
Blood-Curdling Scream
"I took a public safety dispatcher class (for POST cert). The class is taught by a current dispatcher. The teacher played one for us I won't forget.
"It was an old woman on the phone that was calling to report someone creeping around in the backyard. She asks them to hurry. The dispatcher says police are on their way but won't be there for 5 minutes. The dispatcher asks for an address but hears it wrong. As the lady is saying the address she gets attacked and lets out this scream that sounds like a dying animal combined with the worst fear you've ever heard in your life. Then, it's silent--gone. The phone's on--you can hear someone moving shit around. Police spent four hours looking for that woman's house. The dispatcher got the address wrong.
"It was an example of how important it is to ask for a clear address/address first. I will never forget that dead woman's scream."
The Vanishing Man
"A year into the job in a pretty large town with woods all around. Got a call from a young man, identified himself as 21. Said he went on a hike with his best friend, this is where it got weird. I asked for his location and it was ~50 miles from the nearest trailhead, but not in the direction the trails move. I asked him to tell me what the problem was and what services he needed when he burst into tears, saying one moment his friend was in front of him, and the next he was gone. Dispatched sheriff and was told neither man was ever found. Still freaks me out."
Attack with Baseball Bats
"I had one person call in screaming about a guy getting beat to death in her front yard, with the sounds of aluminum bats ringing in the background."
It Never Stops
"I was honestly debating whether or not to even post this because it upsets me.
"I'm not allowed to give exact details, but one of my worst calls was from a little boy, I think he was five. He was hiding in his closet because his dad was drunk and beating the ever-loving sh*t out of his mom. He lived in a very rural area, and it was about an hour drive from the nearest police detachment. I stayed on the phone with him for almost 45 minutes (the guys drive FAST when there are kids involved) trying to keep him calm. You literally talk about anything that pops into your head. The weather. Favorite TV shows. What his favorite toys are. All the while you can plainly hear a woman screaming and crying in the background, and as the call goes on, you can still hear the guy beating her, but her screams turn into grunts and moans. You can't tune it out, because you are constantly typing what your hear. Any details you can get from background noise are valuable to the officers attending. Anyway, the members arrived, arrested the piece of shit, and I hung up once they had the kid safe. And then the phone rang again. Because there is no stopping. There's no time to process what just happened and honestly, it's probably for the best. A lot of the time you don't find out the outcome of the call because as I said, there are always more phones ringing."
Man Shoots His Wife, Himself
"Guy shot his wife after he found her cheating. He was hysterical and scared shitless about what he had just done. He put the phone down and there was another gunshot. He killed himself and I heard it. His wife was still alive and she was screaming that she forgave him over and over and that they were gonna get through it. It was fucked.
"...she survived, so there's a little bright side to the story."
Check an even crazier story here.
The Calm, Suicidal Man
"Got a call from a guy saying he was sitting in his car with a shotgun and was going to kill himself. He seemed very calm and I could tell in his voice that he had made up his mind and this wasn't a cry for help like most of the other suicide calls I receive. He told me he was at one of our train stations but wouldn't tell me which one so while I had officers out looking for him I made small talk with him about his family and sports, I even had him laugh a few times. After about 10 minutes of talking and me thinking I'd made progress, he finally says, 'Well, it's been nice talking to you but I gotta get going.' He then proceeded to put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. I heard his death gurgles."
Haunting Mother-Son Story
"Had to help a maybe 12-year-old boy start CPR on his mother who attempted suicide on July 4th some years back. She died. That's never left me."
Horrendous Neglect
"My worst call was a child that died in a hot car. This was not a case where a parent went shopping and left a baby in the car for some time on a summer day. It was not someone who admitted they forgot their child in the back seat. This was a child that was old enough to walk, talk, turn the car on and off if air was needed, hang out and read a book or go inside and cool off. The parent had restrained the child in an SUV so none of these things could be done and did not check on the child for several hours. It was a few more hours before the parent told anyone the child had died."