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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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."

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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