A former Redditor had this chilling story to share:

“Got a dropped call from a house that has no phone. We get a lot of phantom calls from vacant houses usually due to malfunctions with the phone lines or phone company. Anyway, we got a dropped call from a house with no phone so officers went to make checks. The house was vacant. Right before they left, they look over at the property next door and see someone who apparently committed suicide hanging in the garage.”

Redditor /u/JaymzHetfield has had an interesting career:

“I had one girl call who spoke perfect English. She told me that she had been at a party and was arguing with her friends and wanted the police. Suddenly she started speaking in tongues. Chanting. It was likely drugs. Cops never found her and this was at a time just before phase II wireless and triangulating wireless calls was a thing.”

Redditor /u/GoneOnArrival didn’t think it could get any worse:

“The worst call I’ve ever had was really a series of calls.

We took a couple calls about a domestic at an apartment building. Normal he said/she said stuff, they get out there and the lady was moving out away from him into a new place and he was upset about it. Police ask him to leave and he does. Evidently after he leaves, she calls him to talk.

Fast forward a few minutes and the guy from the domestic calls us. He says he was talking to his ex wife, heard a gunshot, and the line went dead. He thinks his wife shots herself. So we get police and everyone rolling back that way.

They get there and she’s fine, nothing is wrong, but she did hear a loud noise. As soon as they relay that to us, I get the call.

Two townhouses down, while all that was going on, a mom walked into a bathroom and found her son just after he shot himself in the head. She’s inconsolable, but I do my best. The police response is quick because they’re already there. But I’ll never forget her screams or her husband’s tears. It wasn’t even related to the first calls. The medics went in once the scene was secure and deemed it injuries incompatible with life. Who knows what that mother saw, but it sticks with me to this day.”

Redditor /u/SmoakyBonaparte got the chills after this one:

“Received a call from an elderly lady who had trouble breathing. I had taken several calls from her and her husband in the past so I recognized her voice. I dispatched an ambulance to her residence and held her on the line trying to keep her calm while the ambulance was responding. Ambulance advise that they had a 15-minute ETA (She lived in a very rural part of WV.) I’m talking to her asking about her husband and how he was doing and just making small talk with her…

Pretty normal yeah? Well here’s where it gets weird. The EMT and Paramedic on scene call back about a minute later and advises no one is answering the door…He tells me that he’s going to call in and needs to speak with the supervisor on shift. We get him over to the supervisor and the supervisor confirms the information that I gave him and asks what’s going on. Apparently the elderly female had been dead for a while and was in already in full rigor mortis. They thought I was wrong on the caller but the other dispatchers played it back and confirmed that it was the female who called. The ambulance transferred the hospital and we got the same calls and disbelief from the doctors.

So… I took a call from a ghost!”

Redditor /u/keltik055 “only” heard the guy:

“Took a call for a guy who lit himself on fire. A sheriff deputy was serving a vacate order, when the guy getting served decided to wrap himself in a blanket, dump kerosene on himself, then light himself on fire. Worst part is that he was still alive when the fire was put out. He was still breathing for another few hours before passing on. Luckily I did not see the guy, I only heard the screams when talking to the deputy.”

Redditor /u/ZCL_LAX_ATL took it to heart:

“Hysterical elderly female. She had just woken up and found her 78-year-old husband unresponsive…

We are approaching the 9-minute mark and I start to get the “uh-oh” feeling. I look at the map and they are not that far away from the Fire Station, first responders should have already been there. By this point, she has given up on the CPR, exhausted. I turn the secondary speaker to the Fire Radio frequency just in time to catch the paramedic on the ambulance request from her dispatcher, “Radio, can you have the caller confirm the address? We are out at the address you provided and there is no emergency here.

My heart sank… It’s at this point when I realized what I had done. The Caller ID information matched exactly what was transferred to the dispatch terminal with one exception, Rd. not Dr…

As soon as I realized the error, I corrected the address and dispatched the correct units. I hang up the phone at 7:02 AM when EMS arrives on scene. Seventeen minutes after she woke up and called me for help. I still feel like that slight lapse in judgment on my part was the reason someone died. As soon as I made it into the car, I lost it. I killed him, me…

I quit two days later.”

Redditor /u/neverhaschill had to exercise a lot of patience for this one:

“Domestic disturbance. Wom[a]n locked herself in her bathroom, husband on the other side of the door with a gun.

He had barricaded himself inside the house, all my guys were in a stand off outside that house.

That poor woman was terrified. Every time he started banging on that door I just knew he was going to break through and get her.

Lasted at least an hour. They got him, alive.”

Redditor /u/BurnedOut_ITGuy didn’t have it easy:

“Sent firefighters to a house fire that was out in the county. It was in the boonies so it took them a few minutes to get there. They found a man there who had got out of the house but his kids were still inside, and he was trying to get back in the burning house. They spent time fighting him and then police officers showed up and he fought them as well. Both of the kids (who had been playing with a lighter) died in the fire.”

Redditor /u/starkkuw had a few stories to share:

“Get a call, no one is answering me, hear an older female voice close by crying and saying “please don’t leave me pleas don’t leave me” and sounds of the phone brushing up against fabric. Then the line disconnects. First thought was this was some sort of dv call. I call back and immediately get the female on the line who said she found her son (adult) dead from a heroin OD.”

Redditor /u/KingThorvar had every reason to be angry:

“Back when I first started, there was only one dispatcher on duty for a 12-hour shift. I took a call from a woman that had just been raped and beaten just down the street from the police department. She worked at a convenience store, and he smashed a monitor over her head before leaving. I had to put her on hold to answer the other phone line. It was her manager.

After he walked in on the aftermath, he left, went next door to a gas station, and then called the police. Felt horrible that I had to put her on hold, then rage at the manager for leaving her (and thereby making me put her on hold, too).”

Redditor /u/TanstheMan14 won’t forget this moment:

“I was dispatching an alarm for an unresponsive/not breathing elderly male. I get the paramedic first responder there and then the ambulance shortly after. They confirmed that the guy was dead literally a minute after that I heard the voice of the paramedic come over demanding a second ambulance. After that I couldn’t get a hold of him. I assumed that one of the family members of this man who died either had a heart attack or fainted at the news of the death. I got a second ambulance there very shortly and I heard from someone else at the FD HQ I worked out of that it was the paramedic who went down.

Turns out he had a heart attack and died on the ambulance. It was very sad and very eerie for me to hear. Especially after someone also told me that his last words were spoken to me on the radio…”

Redditor /u/IAmA_Dispatcher had no words:

“I had two children trapped in a house fire. Mom and the family ran out of the house, leaving the kids inside. The fire had engulfed the home and was blowing out the windows and through the entire first floor. The mother called 911, and I fielded her call. The panic and despair in her voice. The screams. Pounding on the door, the door that locked behind them when they ran out of the house. The screams of pain as someone is being burned while trying to get back into a fire filled house.

…I wanted to cry right with her. I wanted to yell and scream and ask whatever God why.”

Redditor /u/Mnazary had to listen to it all:

“A frantic father calls 911 yelling his 14-month-old son wasn’t breathing. The boy somehow got outside and fell in the pool. At minimum he was underwater for a few minutes. I start giving CPR instructions over the phone. I try my best to calm the father enough to listen to me to start compressions.

One of our officers gets there and takes over CPR. Fire department get[s] there shortly after. I’ve done CPR over a dozen times as a former EMT. I’ve done a few over the phone. But never for a child as young as this kid. I couldn’t hang up. The father left the line open and I kept listening. I heard the compressions. I heard the Lifepack charging up. I heard the shock. And I heard silence still. After a few minutes they load and go. I could hear the parents crying. Blaming themselves for killing their own baby…”

Redditor /u/KimPeek reminds us about our fragile mortal state:

“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 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…

I know it’s not my fault and that she decided the outcome before she ever placed the call. It doesn’t change how it made me feel though.”

Redditor /u/TheChocolateWarOf74 had to learn of this horrible incident:

“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 or 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.”

Redditor /u/crathis stayed with the traumatized kid:

“I’m not allowed to give exact details, but one of my worst calls was from a little boy, I think he was 5. 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 in to 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 calls goes on you can still hear the guy beating her, but her screams turn into grunts and moans…

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.”

Chilling story from a former Redditor:

“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 five 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 sh*t 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.”

Another shocking tale from a Redditor:

“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.”

Redditor /u/Sheqaq must have needed a drink after this one:

“Guy shot his wife and after he found her cheating. He was hysterical and scared sh*tless 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…”

This Redditor did all he could:

“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’ve 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.”