No one likes having to dial 911, as the situations that cause the call are always dreadful. Sometimes it's over something relatively small, like an annoying neighbor playing their music too loud. Other times, it's something more serious, like an intruder or a gravely injured loved one. No matter the case, having to call the police is always an unpleasant and anxiety-producing event.
It's bad when the dispatcher questions the reason for calling or thinks the caller might be bluffing or pranking. It's even worse when people actually do call about something freaking them out that turns out to be nothing at all. However, we think it's always better to be safe than sorry! Here are some of Reddit users' wildest, most heart-stopping tales about the most memorable reasons they ever had to call 911.
The Definition Of Stranger Danger
“This happened when I was at my house by myself. I was about 8 years old and my mom had told me not to let in anyone I didn’t know. A strange man came up to the doorway and tried to open up the door, but it was locked.
He happened to see me looking at him and then tried to talk to me. I remember him trying to get me to open the door. I knew that he couldn’t be trusted, so I did what my mom had said: ‘If there’s a stranger who tries to enter this house, call the magic number 911.’ So I called and a woman answered, ‘Hello, 911 how may I help you?’
I was nervous so I said, ‘There’s a strange man at my house, I don’t know him but he’s trying to get in.’
Dispatcher: ‘What’s your address, bud?’
Me: (Stated my address.)
Dispatcher: ‘Thank you. Now I want to play hide and seek with you, can you go hide somewhere where no one will find you and I’ll send someone to try and look for you?’
Me: ‘Okay, you won’t find me, I’m great at this game.’
Dispatcher: ‘I bet we won’t.’
Five minutes later the cops showed up, but the man was already gone. My mom arrived while the cops were there. They told her what the situation was and said that what she’d told me was the right thing to do.
Later that week, they caught the same man trying to break into someone else’s house and he was arrested.”
The Mysterious Case Of The Balloon Bandit
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“A few months ago, I woke up one night and heard this banging noise and I instantly knew what it was. I saw the hallway light leaking into the room and my husband was standing in the doorway, peeking down the hall.
He had a phone in one hand and he was talking to someone. He was giving our address and saying to come right away. He also had his hunting weapon on his hip in the other hand.
‘What the heck are you doing?’ I asked him.
‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Someone’s breaking into the house. I hear them trying to knock down the screen door.’
I started laughing hysterically and informed him that noise was a helium balloon caught in the ceiling fan. He didn’t want to open the door for the officer that showed up, but I told him he needed to or they would probably bust it in thinking something was up. After that, he popped the balloon with a fork.”
What Kind Of Mother Would Do That?
“I work at Walmart as a Customer Service Manager. One day a cashier approached me and informed me that we had a missing child situation. I went to the customer, who was a bit older than I’d expected (probably in her early sixties) and she had a toddler with her. I started politely asking for the important details, thinking perhaps she had another young child of similar age missing.
It turned out that the toddler was her grandson, the child of her daughter who was locked in one of our family restrooms at the front of the store. The daughter had been in the restroom for over fifteen minutes, and the mother was concerned that her daughter, who she had just picked up from the hospital after a major surgery, had gone in there to do something harmful to herself.
After knocking repeatedly and loudly, asking if she was alright, we heard repetitive grunting and an odd thumping noise with no response from the daughter. We unlocked the door and entered with a warning.
The girl was lying on the floor, her head against the wall and trapped under the toilet paper dispenser next to the children’s toilet. She was having a seizure. I called 911 and the fire brigade arrived first. While they were swarming in to help her, they found a little pouch with a spoon and a handful of needles on the floor.
It seemed the girl had decided that the first thing to do upon leaving the hospital was to get high again, and apparently it was dire enough that she had to do it at Walmart with her mother and son nearby. The whole experience made me feel a little sick with the adrenaline rush of having to call 911 in the first place and then the extreme concern over her state. It was pretty scary.”
She Thought She Was So Stealthy And Sly
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“My burglar alarm once went off in the middle of the night. I was a single mom and my young kids’ bedrooms were downstairs. I loved our home, but the bedroom configuration wasn’t ideal.
I silenced the alarm and retrieved the pouch I kept my weapon in. I grabbed the phone and stood outside my bedroom door at the top of the stairs, listening quietly for a few moments. Hearing nothing and with a good visual, I withdrew the .22 from the pouch, considering a stealthy creep downstairs toward my children. That’s when a few loose bullets inside the pouch tumbled out onto the hardwood floor, making the most godawful racket.
Cover blown, I dialed 911 and kept the dispatcher on the line as I checked downstairs…only to find that the wind had blown open the garage door because it wasn’t latched. Honestly, I would have dialed 911 before descending the stairs regardless, but any notions about my catlike abilities were shattered right then and there.”
The Dispatcher Laughed At Her At First
“My teenage son and I were at home when we heard what can only be described as a ‘kerfluffle’ outside in the backyard. When I looked out the patio door, I have to admit, I didn’t believe what I saw. I mean, I couldn’t, there was just no way an actual, huge, sleek, black panther would be in my yard! I called my son over to verify, and he was speechless. We called 911 and reported what we saw.
Now, I have to tell you that we live in North Carolina, home of the Carolina Panthers professional football team. Their mascot is a huge, cartoonish, blue panther. When I told the 911 operator what was in our yard, at first she seemed amused. She actually asked me if the panther was Carolina Blue, and if it doing flips and cartwheels…
I had to explain to the operator, her supervisor, and the officer on the way to our house that it was a real black panther, and that it was just lying down back there, eating what looked like a small dog. I was warned, several times, that if it was a prank, I’d be going to jail. While I was on the line with the officer, dispatch interrupted with another call. That caller wanted to report that he’d been house-sitting for a friend, didn’t know he had an illegal panther in his basement, and accidentally helped it escape.
Needless to say, there were apologies and, finally, a serious plan to capture the panther, unharmed, and help it find a new home with the zoo in Greensboro. Instead, the big cat left before the police arrived and they’ve never found it. They did package what it had been eating for ‘further testing,’ but I haven’t heard anything about it.”
She Knew That Most People Would Simply Do Nothing
“When I lived in a student housing complex, there was this woman in an apartment below us who had loud ‘relations’ almost every single night. One day, we heard similar moans during the daytime, but they got louder than usual. I thought I heard sobs and then it stopped. Something was strange about it, so I called 911.
It turned out what I had heard that day was from another apartment where a woman was being beaten by her husband. When the police knocked, she answered the door and they noticed the black eyes. The dude was taken into custody. A police officer then came up to my apartment and thanked me. I was the only one who had called. I told them that it helped that I was taught about the bystander effect in school, so I knew it was up to me to do something.”
He Found It To Be The Most Insane Thing He’s Ever Seen
“After grocery shopping in northwest Atlanta, my wife and I were returning home when something 80 feet in the air caught my eye. I saw an 8 passenger jet moving parallel to us at a low altitude, wobbling, and appearing to struggle to stay in the air.
I said to my wife, ‘That plane is in distress. I think it is going to crash. Oh snap, it’s headed for our neighborhood!’ Since we live near the flight path of the Charlie Brown Airport, we often see and hear planes in the area. But it was never that low or flying in our direction. I also saw some smoke plumage coming from the left side of the plane, I assume from the engine.
As soon as the plane passed over us, it took a sharp nosedive as it performed a sweeping turn. We’ve all viewed plane crashes on TV, seen pictures, and read stories about them in the newspaper. But, there is something much scarier and visceral about watching a distressed plane crash before your eyes in your own neighborhood.
I have seen crazy events in my lifetime including death on the streets, but that time was different for me and I don’t know why. In this mayhem, I seemed like a part of the event more than I had in the past.
The plane continued south for a few hundred yards then turned sharply and nose dove behind the line of pine trees. There was a couple second delay before anything happened. For briefest of moments, I thought they might be okay. But, that hope was dashed when the initial fireball rose a good 50+ feet above the tree line.
I asked my wife to dial 911 and call the police. Events are a bit of a blur after that. Here is what I recall today from memory. I drove us immediately to the crash site. I thought survivors from the area homes could use our help. Thankfully nobody’s home was struck by the plane or affected by the fire.
Except for the people living in the neighborhood, we were one of the first cars to arrive at the scene. It was surreal. A massive fireball burned and I could see no plane. It smelled of pine needles, jet fuel and dirt – all burning. My eyes started to water from the heat and jet fumes. And the air was difficult to breath like an unnatural fog in the air. Some eyewitnesses believe, as well as details in FAA report indicate, the pilot purposely steered the plane away from hitting any homes.”
Every Parent’s Worse Nightmare
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“My wife and I had had a busy day. We’d been shuffling the contents of one garage into another, then we stopped at the Chinese buffet for a good late lunch and went home. Around 5 pm, my son’s girlfriend called. She was expecting him for dinner and he hadn’t showed. My wife knocked and went into his room…and started screaming.
‘Call 911! Call 911!’
Our only son was laying on the floor, dead. I ran to the phone and poked at it desperately, but nothing was happening! Why?! Oh, his girlfriend was still on. I told her to hang up, but the thing still wouldn’t work. I couldn’t figure out how to hit the three numbers.
Seconds ticked by and then I remembered my wife’s cell phone which just needed one number, ‘9.’ That worked, and the fire department was up there in about 5 minutes. Unfortunately, it was to no avail. He had been dead for a while, and there was nothing they could do. I still remember being unable to figure out how to dial those three numbers. Panic is a powerful thing.”
That Must Have Been An Awkward Police Visit
“The last time my mother called 192 (911 in Serbia) was because of our neighbors and their loud lovemaking. I’m not even kidding (I wish I was). It was a really dumb situation, but when you have to listen to your neighbors getting it on for five hours and all their noises, you would go crazy as well.
My mother is a light sleeper and pretty much anything can wake her up, but the sound of their bed banging the floor and their noises were annoying and preventing her from sleeping, so after some time, she had enough. She called the police, explained the situation (pretty sure they laughed) and after 15 minutes, they came and interrupted them in their ‘action.’ After that incident, they were pretty silent most of the time.”
It’s Sad How Money Can Be Valued Over A Loved One
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“I was hiking back down a very popular trail and my group was almost back at the trailhead when I saw a water bottle roll down the path and heard someone yell, ‘Help me, please!’ It was a teenage girl, maybe 14 or 15, and she was running towards us. She was very distraught: ‘Please help! My dad collapsed and he has a heart condition!’
She explained that they were hiking together with some other family members and she and her dad had slowed down and fallen behind, and then he suddenly collapsed. He lay unconscious at the side of the trail. She also told us that he’d had some heart surgeries very recently. I pulled out my cell and called 911.
At that point the rest of the family had arrived (mom, older son, and a cousin). They ‘d realized the dad and daughter weren’t catching up and turned back to look for them. I told the operator I’d hand it over to the wife to give more details of his heart condition. To everyone’s great surprise, she promptly took the phone, said, ‘Cancel the ambulance,’ and hung up. She glared at me, saying that they’d manage just fine so we should leave.
We were dumbfounded and asked if she was sure. She insisted that they’d carry him down themselves and take him to his doctor. We started walking away, wondering what else we could do. We never did find out what happened to him.
It wasn’t until later that my American friends explained to me how expensive one ambulance ride can be. It’s very sad to think that people have to make a choice between the health and safety of their loved ones and the prohibitive cost of a ride to the hospital.”
An Utterly Heartbreaking, Unfair Reason To Have To Call The Police
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“My girlfriend lives with an abusive family. Most of the time it’s verbal and emotional, but occasionally it’s physical. One day a fight happened…a bad one. Her family does not approve of me, as I am female-to-male transgender and they are rather homophobic and transphobic. It came down to the fact that my girlfriend had to make the choice to either leave me or be kicked out.
Now, such threats had been made before, but they had never been followed through on. For the first time, I managed to convince my girlfriend to go to the counselor’s office. She planned on trying to get an emancipation form, but the counselor said the best thing to do was to talk it through first, and that she would send people to talk to the family as a whole and try to de-escalate the situation.
That school day ended and I went with her to her house. We were unsure if the threat was real or not. She told me that she didn’t think it was real, but when she went to the door, the locks had been changed so she couldn’t get in. That’s basically child abandonment and all of that fun stuff.
We decided to stay until her mom got home, to try and talk it through. I was parked across the street, not on their property at all. Her mom got out of her car, asks what ‘it’ was doing there, and started yelling about how my girlfriend was kicked out. She said she could pack a bag and that’s it.
Now, my girlfriend’s mom had made general threats about me before. She’d said that she’d try to have me arrested for assault, for kidnapping, and for things that I haven’t done and would never do. All that put me pretty on edge. Her mom walked out the front door and wrote down my license plate number. I knew at that moment that she was going to try and have me arrested for kidnapping, so I called 911. The entire time, her mom was standing there screaming at me.
In the end, nothing was done. The police came and her mom exaggerated truths to make it look like she had done nothing wrong. The police had a family discussion with all of them while I stood across the street, ready to take my girlfriend away. The police said that odds are we would come to an agreement so my girlfriend could come with me for a couple days, but they also said that my girlfriend could be listed as a runaway and taken back if her mom called about it. In the end, they decided that they would work it out at home and I was followed by police as I drove away from the house, still shaken up about how close I was to being arrested over things I never did.”
To Call Or Not To Call?
“One time my neighbors were fighting. It wasn’t uncommon for them to fight, but this time it was about 2 am and the fight had gone to their patio. They were screaming at each other and waking the whole apartment complex. Someone stood on the grass and yelled, ‘SHUT THE HECK UP SO WE CAN ALL GO TO SLEEP!’
I called the complex courtesy officer. No response. Then I heard the crash; one of them had tossed a full suitcase off the third-floor balcony, and it exploded upon impact. I called the cops. Big mistake.
The cops arrived at 3:30 am and stayed in the parking lot until 5:30 am with their lights flashing the whole. Entire. Time. You can’t block out that much light, so I was utterly exhausted at work the next day.”
They Seemed Like A Picturesque Family, But There Was A Hidden Darkness
“I was a teenager still living with my parents in my childhood home. My parents lived on a beautiful, tree-lined street in a quiet, upscale suburban neighborhood, all well-kept lawns and soccer moms. It was late at night, mid-summer, and I was in my bedroom having a smoke out the open window.
A car pulled up in the driveway next door, which was below my window. I heard raised voices: a man yelling and a woman saying something I couldn’t hear in a pleading tone. The car windows were rolled down, headlights on, but I couldn’t see inside the car.
The neighbors were a family, a couple in their early thirties with two young children. He worked for a bank and she was a stay at home mother. They had a basketball hoop in the driveway and built an ice rink out back for the kids in the winter. However, I had noticed he was a yeller, as voices would travel on nice days when windows were open.
On this night, voices were rising and falling, and I was getting nervous. His voice had a hysterical edge. The house was dark; the children must’ve been somewhere else for the night. Suddenly, the driver’s side door flung open and he came flying out. Then I could hear what he was yelling.
‘Get out of my car!’ he screamed. He ran to the passenger door, opened it, and I could see a struggle. I groped for my phone, heart racing. Then I watched him pull his wife from the car. She hit the pavement on all fours, sobbing audibly while he dragged her. The violence of his actions was unmistakable; in a minute he’d be hitting her, if he hadn’t already.
I rushed into my parents’ bedroom, phone in hand, to wake them and tell them I was calling the police, and why. I don’t know why I wasted seconds doing that, I think I had some idea that they might knock on our door. Then I dialed 911.
As I said, we lived in a quiet neighborhood. The cops were there in two minutes, and I’d gone back to the window in the meantime. She was still on the ground, and to my horror, I watched his blank, pale face turn towards my window. My lamp was on and I know he saw me. I pulled my curtain shut.
He left with the cops that night and was back in the morning. I don’t know what happened, but I know that every time we crossed paths from then on, the two of them greeted me with identical, tight-lipped expressions and evasive eyes. She looked chastened, somehow. He looked angry.
That was the only time I’ve ever called 911, and the first time I saw a man lay hands on a woman. It was a sobering experience.”
When A Children’s Game Gets A Bit Too Intense
“A few years ago, a friend (let’s call him Eli) and I were playing 1, 2, 3 block, a game similar to hide and seek, but it requires players to run and ‘block” themselves at the checkpoint.
We established the blocking point to be the front door, a big wooden one with windows on each side. It was my turn to hide, and I could hear Eli calling for me and searching. I jumped out of my hiding place behind the couch and started sprinting towards the door to ‘block’ myself. As I got within a few meters of the door, I noticed him running towards the door as well to block me and thus win the game.
I started running faster, and before I realized it, I had passed the door. My hand shot out in front of me and smashed through the thick glass window. I was in shock. I couldn’t feel anything, but there was blood everywhere. I noticed part of my arm still in the window. My family started gathering around, shouting, bustling, and hurriedly calling 911.
I was rushed to the hospital, holding my mutilated hand and arm in my lap. I kept repeating, ‘I’m fine, it’s okay,’ as I wasn’t in any pain. Then the dizziness kicked in; I had obviously lost too much blood. Bursting into the hospital, nurses pushed me through to a small room. A doctor ran in, and after a bit of unnecessary anesthetic, she sewed my hand and arm up with 30 stitches.”
Right Place, Right Time
“I was driving down the highway at 45 mph and the car in front of me hit a large dog. He was a large adult white colored lab.
The car didn’t slow down, hit their brakes, stop to check on the animal or observe any vehicular damage it may have caused.
Nobody was behind me so I slammed on my brakes to prevent from hitting the dog as well. The poor thing immediately saw my car coming close and used his front legs to drag his helpless body as fast as he could to the side of the road.
I pulled to the side and called 911 so animal control could be dispatched. As I waited, I comforted the animal in hopes of helping him any way I could.
I assumed his injuries weren’t fatal. There wasn’t any blood or open wounds but it looked as though both his hind legs were broken but it was possible he could’ve had internal injuries.
He whimpered and cried but as I talked kindly to him and pet him gently, he calmed down. It was difficult for him to wag his tail but he tried. I could tell by his eyes and the way he looked at me that he very much appreciated the love and concern I was giving him.
Help arrived and I said my goodbyes to him as they carefully placed him in the vehicle.
I called animal control a few days later to check on the status of this precious feller. Both his hind legs had been dislocated. One of them had a small fracture & his tail was broken, but he was expected to fully recover. That was great news considering what he had been through.
I was also informed of more good news for this lucky guy. As soon as he was well enough, he was going to be spending the rest of his K9 life, happy, with a loving, caring family on a large acreage farm, for he was in the process of being adopted.
Not many animals survive being struck by a vehicle and definitely not many injured animals are chosen for adoption. Not many have a beautiful ending such as his.”