By EMS1 Staff
In the spirit of Halloween, we thought it would be interesting to set aside the ghost stories and hear more about the peculiar calls EMTs and paramedics are sometimes dispatched to.
We asked our Facebook fans to describe the strangest, creepiest or most unexplained thing they’ve seen in their EMS careers; here are some of their responses.
Did we miss your chilling story? Tell us in the comment section below.
- “Dispatched to mile 286 on I-40, single vehicle rollover with multiple ejections at 1355 hours. No wreck found at the reported location, checked 10 miles east and 10 miles west of where it was reported. Nothing. The next morning: called to the exact same location for a single vehicle rollover with multiple ejections … only this time it was real.” – Rez Medic
- “Called to a home for a PNB late one night, and found that the home had no electricity. Found our patient on the floor of a back bedroom, and the engine boss was using his flashlight to keep things ‘lit.’ As I got down to intubate, I kept hearing this rustling in the closet right next to me ... the rustling turned into hissing and then a weird growl. I was freaking out, but managed to sink the tube just as this huge opossum ambled out of the closet next to my elbow - teeth bared, and now hissing like a rattlesnake! As I screeched bloody murder, a family member chirped up from the doorway, ‘Oh that’s just Harry ... he’s our pet, and won’t bother you!’ By this time, most of the crew was out the door!” – Elizabeth C Hinckley
- “I was dispatched to a residence for chest pain. Patient was found to be having a massive heart attack. Halfway to the hospital, the patient went into cardiac arrest and was still talking to us. Every time we defibrillated the patient, he screamed in pain.” – Ian Lombardo
- “I had a paranoid schizophrenic off his meds and on meth when I was a student. He looked at me stone faced and just said ‘Happy birthday.’ It actually was my birthday, and I hadn’t told anyone!” – Chelsea Roper
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“I have two stories, because I can’t decide which one is creepier. I was doing a critical care transfer with a patient that attempted to die by suicide. She overdosed on her prescribed medications and was not found for three days. When she finally was found, she was in multi-system organ failure, hypothermic and septic. During the transport in the daytime, she looked up to the ceiling, reached up toward it and said ‘Do you see that? The light, it’s so beautiful.’ She saw the light. And then she asked if she could go toward it. She was suddenly warm (she had been complaining she was cold the entire two-hour transport).
I was also dispatched for a person screaming that she needs an ambulance, no further information. Arrive on scene, lady opens the door to the house and says that was a mistake that she is perfectly fine and does not need an ambulance. The lady would not let us into the house. As we were getting ready to leave, we heard screaming coming from inside the house. The lady moved out of the way as we walked in, what we found was incredible. The lady that met us at the door, lady 1, won a free haircut from a hairdresser (lady 2). Lady 2 was finishing up lady 1’s hair and was pushed down the basement stairs and hit her head on the pipes, then hit the floor. The pipes broke, and the basement started to fill up with water. Lady 2 eventually became conscious after almost drowning in this small basement. She proceeded to crawl up the stairs and grab a phone to call 911. Lady 1 and her husband took the phone away from Lady 2. Then Lady 1 met us at the door trying to get us to leave. The creepiest part about this call is – what if we had left when they said they did not need an ambulance? What would they have done to her?” – Brian Conner
- “We were picking up a patient out of a psych floor at the hospital, and my partner and I walk up to the patient’s room, and the patient says ‘Hello, Jim’ (my partner’s name).” – Connor Cheney