10 Insane Halloween
911 Dispatch Stories
Don't be alarmed.
Halloween, a shift where you’d have to excuse the average 911 dispatcher for having some reservations about working. Where deciphering the difference between prank calls and crisis provides a new but necessary challenge. It’s a weird one, and the stories accumulated over the years are too good not to share. Here’s a few we dug up.
10 | THE REPEAT CALLER
Lancaster, pa (2004)
Back in the day, before the advent of smartphones and the propensity to lean on text messages as our preferred means of communication, it wasn’t unusual for the average American to ring up a friend, business, or the appropriate service in the case of emergency.
On this Halloween, and unsettling trend began to form as local dispatchers received five distinct calls over the course of the night with only a soft, barely audible “it’s behind you.” being muttered on the other end. Each call was later tracked to various payphones spread out over the county. No suspects were ever found.
09| THE NEVADA GHOST RIDER
TONOPAH, NV (2022)
For any driver who’s ever braved highways and byways of this great country at unscrupulous hours, it should come as no surprise that the open road can be a pretty creepy place. That goes for double in the desert.
In the wee hours of Halloween morning back in 2022, multiple US-95 drivers reported to 911 a “driverless car” cruising on the shoulder at dawn. State troopers later located the idling vehicle with the headlights on, no driver, and no footprints. The car was last registered to a local man who had been reported missing in 2018.
08| THAT’S UH...NOT A PROP
salt lake city, ut (2014)
Haunted houses are a trip. It’s the one experience where you know something frightening is waiting for you at every turn, but your brain can’t rewire itself fast enough to fear nothing. For this diabolical dwelling, local actors were employed to portray killers, monsters, and corpses.
There was just one minor issue – an unmistakable stench. Impossible to ignore, the cast called the police when guests started to complain. Ultimately, a real, decomposing body was found to be the culprit. Foul play was ruled out when the body was later identified as a local homeless man. Today, it’s still unclear how he wound up in the house unnoticed.
07| THE PERSON UNDER THE STAIRS
chicago, IL (2012)
I guess there’s a good reason why they’re called haunted houses and not funhouses. The housing tour from hell continues here as a Halloween party took a horrific turn as 911 calls began to flood in when screams for help were heard from beneath a home.
Police on the scene soon discovered a transient who had somehow become stuck in an old maintenance tunnel under the home.
06| the man in the white mask
portland, or (2016)
This one’s a doozy. In a completely normal Oregon neighborhood, multiple homeowners reported a single white mask-wearing individually standing idly in their front yards around the midnight hour. Each call stated that the man was seen quietly staring ahead, completely unresponsive to inquisitive neighbors.
When the police arrived, the stranger had already run off into the woods behind the home. The officers reported no footprints and no usable surveillance footage, as all the doorbell cameras had mysteriously glitched out or failed to record.
05| IF THESE walls could scream
sandusky, oh (2013)
Word of advice, don’t ever play around on the phone. In this case, dispatchers received a frantic call from a woman with the words “help me” repeated before the line went dead. The call was traced to a local home, decked out with Halloween decor everywhere but completely vacant and long abandoned. The caller was never identified.
04| INFERNO ON NORTH MAIN STREET
fountain inn, sc (2025)
There’s taking things too far, and there’s taking it WAY too far. Recently, a South Carolina couple got a head start on spooky season by creating an elaborate light display that made their home appear to be engulfed in flames.
When locals began reporting a home on fire, firefighters made multiple trips to the home and instructed them to only run the display from 8-10pm nightly.
03|THE BODY AND THE BLOODY GARAGE DOOR
GREENEVILLE, TN (2017)
There’s a fine line between real and unreal. Thematically taking things a bit too seriously, a homeowner in Tennessee creating an elaborate Halloween set-up featuring bloody handprints and realistic body crushed under the weight of the garage door.
Several concerned calls from neighbors later, and the police came out to make sure no nefarious actions were behind it.
02| SIGN OF THE TIMES
WEST fargo, ND (2018)
I’m not entirely sure what prompted this North Dakota man to hang a realistically blood-streaked HELP ME sign written in blood in his living room window, but it’s safe to say it didn’t go over well with the locals – or the cops who were dispatched to do a wellness check.
01| AIN'T NO ACCIDENT
LAUREL COUNTRY, KY (2021)
A good way to avoid crashing out is to not have to deal with calls like this one. Tapping into a whole new level of macabre, a Halloween scene was set-up near an old road to resemble a bloody car wreck.
Ultimately, it triggered several 911 calls and forced authorities to have the creators put up several signs alerting the public that, it in fact, was a creatively creepy re-creation.