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Police Officers And Detectives Explain Their Creepiest Unsolved Mysteries Of All Time.

Police Officers And Detectives Explain Their Creepiest Unsolved Mysteries Of All Time.

Police officers and detectives have it hard enough. If they're doing their job right, they are protective servants of each and every citizen that crosses their path. They're adding up pieces to a puzzle, plucking answers from what seems like thin air. Sometimes that job is rewarding, sometimes it can be draining, and sometimes it's downright freaky. Thanks to these detectives and police officers for sharing the stories that keep them up at night, staring at the ceiling and thinking, "Why did that happen?"

1. I'm a retired police officer, and the weirdest mystery that I ever encountered still haunts me to this day. There was a period of a couple weeks where people began calling in in sheer panic to tell us that they thought someone was caught under the sewer grate. The weirdest part? They would always say it sounded like someone singing an old love ballad. Sometimes a couple of people would contact us about the same sewer grate. Every time we would respond to the call, we would get there, open up the grate, and just as we cracked the lid off, the singing would stop. More than a couple of us officers said they thought they saw parts of a woman's body drifting away in the sewage below (eyes, flipping feet, long hair) but even after a long investigation, nothing was found. The frequency of the singing is far less frequent now, but people still say sometimes, and now that I'm retired I never have to deal with it, but I still hear from the crew that they get the occasional phone-in.

-[deleted]

2. I'm not a detective, but when I was an RA in a freshman dorm, there was a rash of poop-microwavings. Now, I don't know if you've ever smelled an area in which a turd has been microwaved, but if you ever do, it's not really something you can forget. It happened, I want to say, four times in a month or so. We never caught the culprit.

My theory?

It was one of the freshmen who lived in the dorm.

-halfascientist

3. I do a lot of ride-alongs with police officers, and one time we got called to a gas station for a stabbing call. We arrive at the gas station and there is blood everywhere outside by the pumps. We go inside to talk to the manager and he said no one called, so we couldn't figure out what was going on. Another squad car stopped at the other gas station just to the north (both gas stations have the same name) and it was the same thing...blood everywhere by the pumps. So in the same night, we have two gas stations within a mile of each other that have blood everywhere outside.

My thought was that he got stabbed at the south one (first one I described) and had his buddies drive up to the north one to get him help because the north one was closer to the hospital.

Ended up that someone just had an extremely violent bloody nose at the south gas station after the officers reviewed the tapes. The guy actually did get shanked at the north one and his buddies drove him to the E.R., but it was unexplainable for about a week until they reviewed every bit of the footage and interviewed the victim.

-BenignEvil

4. The initial call was two dead, one with apparent gun shot wounds. Upon arrival we find a man in his sixties with half of his face missing, a gunshot to the chest, and a 30-06 rifle next to him laying in the kitchen. In the living room we find a female of same approximate age, deceased with no visible injuries or signs of death. In the back yard we found a shotgun laying in the grass.


(Continued on the next page...)

It took a huge amount of investigating to figure it out, but long story short... the man had attempted suicide with a shotgun. It's not uncommon for people that try to kill themselves with shotguns to soon realize that holding a shotgun under your chin and being able to reach the trigger is no easy task. Due to the length of the shotgun, the man blew the front of his face off and he didn't die. He walked into the house where his wife saw his injuries, she then went into cardiac arrest and died. The man then went to his bedroom, grabbed the high powered rifle, and shot himself in the chest.

-SixInTheStix

5. My old religion teacher used to be a detective here in Aussieland - weirdest story we ever got out of him was about an abandoned church which they got called out to. The place was just COVERED in blood. The walls, floor, ceiling in parts was just painted with it! Said there was so much that it would have at least had to have been from 6 or 7 people.

They never ever found any bodies, or anything of the like. It was related to a cult that they were chasing ... but as far as that particular story goes, he said there was never any closure or answer for him.

tregetour

6. I was in a Junior Police Academy and one of the Cops told us about a call they got awhile back. And this is true, no joke. I'll tell it like a story with the details I know... A wife and husband had just recently got married and everything was all fine and dandy, they were just working towards the American dream-house with white picket fence, 3 cars, 2.5 kids, you know how it is.

Anyway, the husband and wife wake up one day and go about their usual routine, the husband kisses his wife goodbye and heads off for work. Nothing strange, except the wife notices the husband left his glasses which she knew he really needed for his work. So she tries calling him, he doesn't pick up.

She figures, "Ahh what the heck I'm not doing anything today" so she decides to drop off his glasses to him, his work wasn't that far anyways. So she gets in the car and heads off to her hubby's work, but as she's driving she see's a car pulled off on a dirt road and recognizes it as her husband's car. So she pulls off the main road and down the dirt a bit to see if she sees her husband. Sure enough, she sees him standing off to the side of the road a bit. She gets out of her car and calls out his name. He turns his head to look at her, lights a match, and instantly engulfs in flames... The cops showed us a picture of his body on fire in the fetal position all charred. They never found out why he did it. No suicide note, no indication, nothing.

-[deleted]

7. Former police dispatcher... that said, this wasn't something I was involved with. Sorry.

A lieutenant at my old department likes to tell the story of when he was a beat cop in Northeastern Ohio in the 80s. They got a call of car parts floating in a lake. Fearing someone was trapped underwater, they called in a dive team who found 15 cars parked in a row, all from the 1950s era, about 25 feet below the surface.


(Continued on the next page...)

Due to water damage and rust, they appeared to have been sitting there for quite some time. It appeared that when they were left there they had been in perfect working order. All identification had been stripped off. The lake was natural and had been there forever.

They never did figure out who put the cars there, how, or why. The lieutenant thinks it was a high school prank, albeit a very expensive one.

-OvertFemaleUsername

8. I live in WA state, and the police still don't know why feet keep washing up on the shores around here. I can't remember how many, but one looked like a child's foot and possibly a younger woman's. It's just the foot. No one can figure out where in on earth they come from, and it's frightening/irritating. My guess? Pirates.

sweetiet1180

9. We busted an illegal meth operation and were able to take 10 people people into custody. None of them would talk but were all mysteriously murdered in prison within 2 minutes of each other.

-Xecutor

10. When we first moved into our house someone left a bag of meat in a plastic bag on our back porch. I was home. No one knocked or rang the doorbell. I just went outside and there was a bloody bag of raw meat on a chair with a picture. We called the police and they said it looked like some sort of food and threw it away for us. None of my friends or family did it. No one fessed up to it. It never happened again. Now we joke about it but at the time I was pretty freaked.

-EmpressK

11. One of my colleagues (a journalist) has been working with a Social Security Administration to figure out the true identity of a Jane Doe who stole the name of a deceased 2-year-old then changed her name to another fake name.

Apparently this woman was an expert. She stole the name of a baby born in California but who died in Washington, then changed her name in Idaho and went to college in Texas. The more states you jump between, the less likely you are to get tripped up by state databases. But keep in mind she did this in the '80s, before you could simple google "identity theft."

The family found all the evidence in a box labeled "crafts" in the back of her closet after her death. She was twice removed from the person they thought she was.

Was she running from an abusive relationship? Did she murder someone? A cult? We haven't a clue.

-laurenmichell

12. I live in mexico and I had distant family in Ciudad Jurez. (they moved now) which we kept small contact with. But the city is a ghost town right now, most people don't go out, women especially are not seen on the streets. It's depressing and shocking, everything is desolate and everyone is fearful.

But the strangest part of the city is a streak of feminicides. Women that work on the many factories or maquilas are the usual targets. The killings began in the 90's but they were sparse and the media was silenced easily, but in 00's with the advent of social medias the game changed and a phenomenon began. People realized that way too many women were missing or found dead, the official reports state that about 4000 women were killed or missing during 1993 and 2003. That's not the only problem with the city, because the city is heavy on cartel activity because it connects to El paso, and therefore the US. If a cartel controls Ciudad Jurez, it controls one of the greatest pathways to drug trafficking in the world as a small system of underground tunnels connects Mexico and the US. So killings and other niceties such as shooting sprees, bombings and kidnappings are everyday hazards.

The thing is that her daughter "Laura" was working in a factory and was 18 years old (inside the victims age group). My aunt's neighbor told her that Laura felt many times that she was being followed by a luxury car, usually a Mercedes or BMW.


(Continued on the next page...)

In a city where drug cartels are about, you try to avoid luxurious environments or things because nobody wants to upset the sicarios or cartel gunmen. Laura had to brush off the feeling, she needed to work and having no car she had to rely on walking or public transportation.

The day before she went missing she told her mom that a handsome man in a suit approached her, apparently accompanied with someone else but the man was out of place, since she was leaving the factory in a slummy neighborhood. Her mom had a hunch and insisted she not to go to work, but Laura was saving for a car and she went anyways. She didn't came back. My family and their once-neighbor insist that it had to be someone from the factory, but no one saw any suited man that day. Nobody.

The police returned the body after "investigations" and didn't have much to say about it. Most people believe that they're in on the whole thing. The question remains to be answered: why women? and more importantly why nobody is doing nothing about it?

-TriasJ

13. In the early 70s, my dad's best friend went missing from Red Wing, MN early winter and was later found by my best friend's mom (freak coincidence) floating in Lake Pepin, Wisconsin, dead. Cause of death and any details of the investigation were never released. I've always wondered.

-cthtc

14. My dad spent 30 years as a cop in California. He told me about a time when he got a call to a building alarm at about 1am, and arrived to find that the building had indeed been broken into, but inside everything looked as if the people working there just up and left years ago; phones and papers on desks, coffee pot and water cooler still on the counter - only everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. After a few minutes of checking out the scene, the "owner" of the property (a female dressed in business attire, in the middle of the night, mind you) arrived. She provided identification, and everything checked out. She then promptly walked to the nearest telephone in the building, picked it up, dialed a number and said, "We've been compromised," and hung up. She thanked my dad and said she'd take it from there. My dad's best guess was it was a front for some kind of higher-up government operation, or maybe some corporate espionage. To this day the story gives me chills.

ApologeticKid

15. I'm not a cop, but I've done a fair amount of detective type work on this case in my life, and it still boggles my mind to this day. When I was 21 the love of my life fell off the Grid. She graduated from AUP and the last I had heard she was going to weekend in Germany. All of her internet presence disappeared 5 days later. Her phone was disconnected within the week. I contacted her parents and they said they were troubled by the phone thing but had received a letter about an exciting opportunity in her handwriting. After a year I got a postcard apologizing for disappearing but everything was okay. Five years pass and I would every now and then try to find a digital trace of her. Just because of curiosity. Her dad emailed me saying they hadn't gotten a letter in a year. I spent most of my free time for 9 months digitally tracking her, piecing things together, then I found a Europeon credit agency who would work with me to get a credit report. They take the info and 200 euros and never respond, but I got an email from an anonymous addresses saying "I am alive, I am fine. You searching for me is making certain things problematic, if you love me you will stop."

I never stopped and have started digitally tracking missing loved ones for people probono. I have some leads on C, and am going to Europe in 2014, to follow up on them.

-DetectingThings

16. I'm not a detective/cop (though I am trying to become one) but this happened to a good friend of mine, and her case was never solved.

On her birthday July 14th 2012, her and her boyfriend went out to celebrate her acceptance into the college she wanted and her 20th birthday. Her boyfriend's account of the story was that they were walking around after having a few drinks and they got separated. He walked around and looked for her and figured she went ahead to their apartment as she had the keys. He got back and she's not there, had to have landlord let him in and he tried calling her, no answer. So he goes out looking for her, finds her shoe in a back alley and calls the cops to report her missing.

Next day she falls from a parking garage naked and according to witnesses extremely out of her mind. The cops talk to the boyfriend, he explains a few things, tells them she was an avid drug user. Family confirms the body, I found out at like 3 am and went over to family's house next day, they were absolutely crushed.

Eventually they tried to put a case against the boyfriend but that fell through, all the evidence they had was circumstantial and nothing was super solid, they eventually had to call it and ruled it an accidental.

So, here are the holes in the boyfriend's story and why I believe he was the murderer:


(Continued on the next page...)

1) One set of keys seems a tad fishy

2) How did he not notice her missing? I knew her quite well and while she was known to go wandering she never just disappeared, she would always come back or be in a really obvious spot

3) Witnesses saw him slip something into her drink at one of the places they went to

4) He claimed she was an avid/heavy drug user, and while this was somewhat true in her high school years, she quit when she got a medical condition and had to have routine blood tests which would have shown any drug use, the records showed she had been clean for quite a while.

5) Before she fell, witnesses heard her and a male voice arguing over something

6) Her body showed some signs of a struggle

My guess is that they had an argument, most likely over her drink being spiked and ran off, he wasn't able to find her that night so went out searching the next morning. They ran into each other the next day, most likely by him searching for her. She tried to escape, went to the parking garage. He caught up to her, physical struggle resulting in her loss of clothes, the end result being him shoving her off the parking garage, taking her clothes and dumping them somewhere (no clothes found at or around scene) then making up an alibi. All witness statements supported a similar timeline, nothing supported his story.

I'm not the only one that believes he killed her, however it sadly will probably never be reopened and properly solved. Nothing can bring her back, but eventually she will be brought justice.

-SeattleMurderThrowaw

17. From Pennsylvania.

About 4 years ago I was working the dispatch desk. Around 11pm I received a call from a resident that stated he had just seen 6 diamond shaped objects fly over his house at only a couple hundred feet, making no noise and had mirrors of thousands of lights glowing from underneath.

No big deal I think. Another alien conspiracy theorist calling in. But he prefaced his whole call by saying, "listen, I'm not nuts, I know you get calls from crazy people but I'm not one of them. I have this on video and my whole family saw it." He gave me their approximate height, their travel direction, the times. It was weird and it sounded unbelievable but there was something about it that sounded different so I decided to dispatch someone out and check this guy out, and more importantly, to see the video.

So the officer goes out, sees the video and writes a report. He comes back to the station and I jokingly say as soon as he walks in, "So how crazy are they over there?" And with a straight face he goes, "That was something."


(Continued on the next page...)

I had to then call the nearest military air base and ask to speak to a supervisor at their flight control center. I gave her the time and area it occurred and she stated that nothing had been in that grid for hours. Then, feeling like a complete fool, I had to tell them that I had to report a UFO. They took the information and I faxed them a copy of the report and they said they'd look into it.

I didn't think anything of it for two years since we only got that one phone call and I hadn't heard anything about it. Sure enough though, two years later, I had a friend going through county wide training who called me and asked if I had been the one who had dispatched that call. When I said yes and told him the story he explained that at his training they had gone over how to handle unusual events and calls and that my dispatch had been played and he recognized the voice. He told me that later that night that exact report was called in over 6 times throughout the county in various areas.

To this day I have no idea what those lights were. The investigation was out of our hands.

-MaybeACop

18. This isn't my story but it's about a constable and it gets me every time.

At approximately 5:00 AM on November 28, 1980, Constable Alan Godfrey of the West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police Force was investigating a report about a missing herd of cattle near the town of Todmorden. While driving on a country road, Godfrey encountered an unidentified diamond-shaped flying object. After being blinded by a bright flash, Godfrey experienced his own missing time episode. According to Godfrey, the flying object just disappeared without explanation, and his patrol car had somehow traveled over 20 meters (60 ft). Even though it was raining, there was a large unexplained large dry spot in the middle of the wet road. Godfrey was also surprised to discover that approximately 30 minutes had passed, but he had no memory of what happened.

A lot of strange events surrounded Godfreys encounter. The missing cattle were soon found in a field behind a locked gate, but there was no sign of any hoof prints. Five months earlier, Godfrey had discovered the body of a man named Zygmunt Adamski in a Todmorden coal yard. Adamskis official cause of death was heart failure, but he had disappeared without explanation for five days, and since his whereabouts were never accounted for, there was speculation that Adamski was abducted by aliens. Shortly after Godfreys alien encounter, he had sex with his wife for the first time in years. Even though an injury had rendered Godfrey incapable of conceiving children, his wife miraculously became pregnant.

Like Herbert Schirmer, Godfrey agreed to undergo regression hypnosis and described meeting with alien beings inside a spacecraft. The notoriety behind Godfreys story eventually forced him to resign from the police force, but he continues to maintain that the events actually happened.

-Anonymous

People Reveal The Weirdest Thing About Themselves

Reddit user Isitjustmedownhere asked: 'Give an example; how weird are you really?'

Let's get one thing straight: no one is normal. We're all weird in our own ways, and that is actually normal.

Of course, that doesn't mean we don't all have that one strange trait or quirk that outweighs all the other weirdness we possess.

For me, it's the fact that I'm almost 30 years old, and I still have an imaginary friend. Her name is Sarah, she has red hair and green eyes, and I strongly believe that, since I lived in India when I created her and there were no actual people with red hair around, she was based on Daphne Blake from Scooby-Doo.

I also didn't know the name Sarah when I created her, so that came later. I know she's not really there, hence the term 'imaginary friend,' but she's kind of always been around. We all have conversations in our heads; mine are with Sarah. She keeps me on task and efficient.

My mom thinks I'm crazy that I still have an imaginary friend, and writing about her like this makes me think I may actually be crazy, but I don't mind. As I said, we're all weird, and we all have that one trait that outweighs all the other weirdness.

Redditors know this all too well and are eager to share their weird traits.

It all started when Redditor Isitjustmedownhere asked:

"Give an example; how weird are you really?"

Monsters Under My Bed

"My bed doesn't touch any wall."

"Edit: I guess i should clarify im not rich."

– Practical_Eye_3600

"Gosh the monsters can get you from any angle then."

– bikergirlr7

"At first I thought this was a flex on how big your bedroom is, but then I realized you're just a psycho 😁"

– zenOFiniquity8

Can You See Why?

"I bought one of those super-powerful fans to dry a basement carpet. Afterwards, I realized that it can point straight up and that it would be amazing to use on myself post-shower. Now I squeegee my body with my hands, step out of the shower and get blasted by a wide jet of room-temp air. I barely use my towel at all. Wife thinks I'm weird."

– KingBooRadley

Remember

"In 1990 when I was 8 years old and bored on a field trip, I saw a black Oldsmobile Cutlass driving down the street on a hot day to where you could see that mirage like distortion from the heat on the road. I took a “snapshot” by blinking my eyes and told myself “I wonder how long I can remember this image” ….well."

– AquamarineCheetah

"Even before smartphones, I always take "snapshots" by blinking my eyes hoping I'll remember every detail so I can draw it when I get home. Unfortunately, I may have taken so much snapshots that I can no longer remember every detail I want to draw."

"Makes me think my "memory is full.""

– Reasonable-Pirate902

Same, Same

"I have eaten the same lunch every day for the past 4 years and I'm not bored yet."

– OhhGoood

"How f**king big was this lunch when you started?"

– notmyrealnam3

Not Sure Who Was Weirder

"Had a line cook that worked for us for 6 months never said much. My sous chef once told him with no context, "Baw wit da baw daw bang daw bang diggy diggy." The guy smiled, left, and never came back."

– Frostygrunt

Imagination

"I pace around my house for hours listening to music imagining that I have done all the things I simply lack the brain capacity to do, or in some really bizarre scenarios, I can really get immersed in these imaginations sometimes I don't know if this is some form of schizophrenia or what."

– RandomSharinganUser

"I do the same exact thing, sometimes for hours. When I was young it would be a ridiculous amount of time and many years later it’s sort of trickled off into almost nothing (almost). It’s weird but I just thought it’s how my brain processes sh*t."

– Kolkeia

If Only

"Even as an adult I still think that if you are in a car that goes over a cliff; and right as you are about to hit the ground if you jump up you can avoid the damage and will land safely. I know I'm wrong. You shut up. I'm not crying."

– ShotCompetition2593

Pet Food

"As a kid I would snack on my dog's Milkbones."

– drummerskillit

"Haha, I have a clear memory of myself doing this as well. I was around 3 y/o. Needless to say no one was supervising me."

– Isitjustmedownhere

"When I was younger, one of my responsibilities was to feed the pet fish every day. Instead, I would hide under the futon in the spare bedroom and eat the fish food."

– -GateKeep-

My Favorite Subject

"I'm autistic and have always had a thing for insects. My neurotypical best friend and I used to hang out at this local bar to talk to girls, back in the late 90s. One time he claimed that my tendency to circle conversations back to insects was hurting my game. The next time we went to that bar (with a few other friends), he turned and said sternly "No talking about bugs. Or space, or statistics or other bullsh*t but mainly no bugs." I felt like he was losing his mind over nothing."

"It was summer, the bar had its windows open. Our group hit it off with a group of young ladies, We were all chatting and having a good time. I was talking to one of these girls, my buddy was behind her facing away from me talking to a few other people."

"A cloudless sulphur flies in and lands on little thing that holds coasters."

"Cue Jordan Peele sweating gif."

"The girl notices my tension, and asks if I am looking at the leaf. "Actually, that's a lepidoptera called..." I looked at the back of my friend's head, he wasn't looking, "I mean a butterfly..." I poked it and it spread its wings the girl says "oh that's a BUG?!" and I still remember my friend turning around slowly to look at me with chastisement. The ONE thing he told me not to do."

"I was 21, and was completely not aware that I already had a rep for being an oddball. It got worse from there."

– Phormicidae

*Teeth Chatter*

"I bite ice cream sometimes."

RedditbOiiiiiiiiii

"That's how I am with popsicles. My wife shudders every single time."

monobarreller

Never Speak Of This

"I put ice in my milk."

– GTFOakaFOD

"You should keep that kind of thing to yourself. Even when asked."

– We-R-Doomed

"There's some disturbing sh*t in this thread, but this one takes the cake."

– RatonaMuffin

More Than Super Hearing

"I can hear the television while it's on mute."

– Tira13e

"What does it say to you, child?"

– Mama_Skip

Yikes!

"I put mustard on my omelettes."

– Deleted User

"Oh."

– NotCrustOr-filling

Evened Up

"Whenever I say a word and feel like I used a half of my mouth more than the other half, I have to even it out by saying the word again using the other half of my mouth more. If I don't do it correctly, that can go on forever until I feel it's ok."

"I do it silently so I don't creep people out."

– LesPaltaX

"That sounds like a symptom of OCD (I have it myself). Some people with OCD feel like certain actions have to be balanced (like counting or making sure physical movements are even). You should find a therapist who specializes in OCD, because they can help you."

– MoonlightKayla

I totally have the same need for things to be balanced! Guess I'm weird and a little OCD!

Close up face of a woman in bed, staring into the camera
Photo by Jen Theodore

Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.

Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?

But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.

It would be so great to be sure there is something else.

But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.

Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:

"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"

Sensations

Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy

"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."

PeachesnPain

Recovery

"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."

"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."

"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."

good_golly99

Take Me Back

"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."

"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."

rayrayrayray

Free

The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy

"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."

TooReDTooHigh

This is why I hate surgery.

You just never know.

Shocked

Giphy

"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."

Admirable_Buyer6528

The SOB

"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."

"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”

1-cupcake-at-a-time

Colors

"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"

Hannah_LL7

"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"

huntokarrr

The Fog

"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."

"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."

Fluffy-Hotel-5184

Through the Walls

"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."

"She's quite alive and well today."

Hot-Refrigerator6583

Well let's all be happy to be alive.

It seems to be all we have.

Man's waist line
Santhosh Vaithiyanathan/Unsplash

Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.

The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.

Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.

Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:

"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"

Redditors didn't see these coming.

Shiver Me Timbers

"I’m always cold now!"

– Telrom_1

"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."

– r7ndom

"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."

– mr_remy

Drawing Concern

"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."

– dee-fondy

"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"

"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."

– LizardofDeath

Unleashing Insults

"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”

"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."

– alanamablamaspama

Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight

"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."

– KeltarCentauri

"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."

– KatMagic1977

"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."

– Jaew96

These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.

Shopping

"I can buy clothes in any store I want."

– WaySavvyD

"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."

– ganache98012

No More Symptoms

"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."

– colleennicole93

Expanding Capabilities

"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."

– Ramblonius

People Change Their Tune

"How much nicer people are to you."

"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"

– LiZZygsu

"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"

"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"

– awholedamngarden

It's gonna take some getting used to.

Bones Everywhere

"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."

– Princess-Pancake-97

"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."

– bekastrange

Knee Pillow

"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."

– snic2030

"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."

– Strongbad23

More Mobility

"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."

"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."

– dma1965

People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.

But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.

That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.