The right horror stories can instantly give you goosebumps and churn your brain. And today, we stumbled upon a series of threads where several police officers revealed the spookiest stories they witnessed during their duties. 

1. "My dad, now retired, was an officer in Bihar Police. He was posted in a district that lies along the Bengal border. There is a highway that connects the eastern part of India and goes all the way to Bangladesh. Once, during the winter season, he started getting several complaints about trucks going off the road very frequently. He ignored these complaints and linked them to the winter season and fog. Since there were no deaths, no one bothered as much. In the summer season, he again started getting complaints about frequent accidents. This made him curious he asked the computer officers to gather data on the last few years. He found out that all accidents were reported within 100 meters stretch of the highway and only between 2–3 am. Then, he decided to stay at the location for a few days. A temporary police booth was built, slightly before the bend to safeguard them. On the first day itself, a truck went off the road at the same spot. However, the driver was drunk and he was of no use. But, over the next 15 days, there were more than 20 incidents, and almost everyone had the same explanation: They suddenly see 5–6 teenage girls appear right in front of the truck on a bicycle. At first, he did not believe their story. But, when almost everyone told the same story, he had no option but to accept it. Later, he searched for old case files and surprisingly found that long back, an accident took place where an overspeeding truck had mowed down a few school-going girls on bicycles at the same spot."  - Ujjawal Singh

2. "A Maharashtra-based inspector, who goes by the name Bhadule, once had an informant, who informed the police that he knew someone who could help them solve the case of the senseless killing of a 25-year-old school teacher from the nearby village of Kuhi. The inspector accompanied the informant and met a farmer, who took them to a deserted field where stood the ruins of a temple. When they arrived, an old man in the temple recited some mantra, blew a conch shell and asked a spirit to appear. The inspector heard a voice inside his head who told him where he could find the weapon which killed the girl. To his amazement, the inspector found a blood-stained knife in the same place. The lab tests showed that the blood matched that of the victim. When the owner of the yard, where the knife was found, was faced with the weapon, he broke down and confessed to the crime."   - Shri Gopal Soni

3. "I was painting my truck in my workshop, with the garage door open. After I was finished, I turned around and saw a woman standing on the porch. She said, “Looks nice”. I was about six or seven feet away. I said my wife’s name questioningly and the woman vanished. She didn’t disappear in a puff of smoke or fade out, she was simply gone. She was as real as anyone I have ever seen. Later, two of my officers stopped a woman walking in the fog on a lonely stretch of road in the middle of the night. They filled out a contact card with her name, sex, dob, address, etc. They offered her a ride home and she got in the back seat. When they arrived, she got out, thanked them and then, walked into the fog. All the old farmers knew this woman. She had worked in their fields for years and had died 35 years earlier."  - Edwin Harris

4. "My uncle was the sheriff of a small town and he told us this story. Back in the day, there was a local reporter, Bob. He would always show up at every major police activity like big car wrecks, fires or anything worth reporting in the local paper. Bob liked messing around with people by flicking them behind their ears. Unfortunately, he had bad lung cancer and died pretty suddenly. His wife buried him (against his wishes, he wanted to be cremated.) For the next couple of weeks, after his funeral, people kept talking about "seeing him" at car wrecks, fires and all the same stuff he used to report on. There were 20-30 reports from civilians and members of the force. My uncle didn't buy it. Until the night he and my aunt showed up at our house, pale as paper. We asked him what the hell happened, and he said that he was sitting on the couch in their house watching television. My uncle kept scratching at his ear, over and over. Finally, he turned around and saw Bob standing there. Clear as day. My uncle jumped up, cussed and got my aunt's attention, who turned to see him there too. As soon as they both made eye contact with him, he smiled, turned around, and walked across the living room and out their front door. He also closed the door behind himself after he was gone. At that point, they ran over to our place. My uncle saw him two more times, each time confirming he was looking more worn. My dad concluded that he was decomposing and his ghost was reflecting that process. Every time my ear itches, I get goosebumps."  - ClockParadoX

5. "I worked as a police officer in a small town back in the 90s. One night, I was patrolling through town in winter. We had several abandoned houses in town, so we were told to keep an eye on them. I drove by a house around 7 pm. About two hours later, I drive by it again and the back door was wide open. Looking at the snow on the ground around the house, there were no footprints. I called dispatch and told them that I'm investigating an open door at that address. I walk to the open door, pull out my flashlight and shine it inside. The house has obviously been gutted for the most part. The plaster walls have been torn down, and debris piles everywhere. I was about to secure the door when I heard a loud thump come from upstairs and it sounded like kids laughing. So, I enter the house and yell out "Police department, come downstairs!" More of what sounds like kids playing. I tell dispatch that it sounds like there are kids in the house and start making my way through the kitchen into the living room where the stairs are. Two more times, I hear something upstairs, but since I've had no response, I start thinking maybe it's an animal. I head upstairs and it all gets quiet. The upstairs is relatively small with a hallway at the top of the stairs that has one bedroom on the right, one straight ahead at the end of the hall, and a bedroom on the left. As I get to the top of the stairs, I hear a thump in the bedroom to the left. I carefully peek around the door and it's an empty room with a small pile of plaster and wood debris in the middle. No kidding, sitting on top of the pile of debris was a page torn out of a child's book with a picture of a police officer on it. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, I got the fuck out of there. Told dispatch nobody was in the house, locked the back door and never went back in there again." - KC135R

6. "Back when I was working as a cop on a military base, I loved working the night shift. Almost every building on a base is alarmed and the alarms are tied right into the desk. So, we know the instant they go off. When we get an alarm activation, we close the base, go check the building, pull on all the doors and see if we can get in. If we can, we go into the building and secure it, checking all the doors and corners to see if someone set the alarm off. Well, one night I was on patrol with my partner and we get called to respond to an alarm activation at the elementary school. So we go, secure the building and call in that the building is all secure. About 15-20 minutes go by and we get another alarm activation. We get back out there and check. Now, there is a maintenance door open that leads into a boiler room. Nothing in it, we close it, lock it and get out. Another 20 minutes passed and we get another alarm. We respond that all the doors are still locked and we can't get in. This time, my partner and I sit on opposite sides of the school to see if someone is coming and yanking the doors real hard to set the alarm off. We sit there and watch, nothing happens and right as we're about to leave, we get another alarm activation as we're sitting there. The building custodian shows up and we start doing a walk through, checking all the classrooms and the maintenance rooms and that's when we see one of the maintenance doors open with the lights on in the room. Now, this room is literally the size of a closet. We walk down there and look in, no one is in it and that door is locked when it closes. We look in there and we see a footprint of a barefoot made on water, of a small child. It freaked the living hell out of us because no one reported a missing child and the entire building was clear and locked up. No one left, no one entered and we checked every inch of that damn place. To this day, my partner refuses to go to that school. Speaking of which, schools are really fucking spooky when they're empty."  - B1ackMagix

7. "I was a 911 dispatcher for about 5 years. One night, I got a call from a lady at a residence in town. She was freaking out with heavy breathing and a scared shaking voice. I sat up straight and my heart started to pump faster. I asked her about the emergency. She said that there was someone in her house. I confirmed her address and dispatched the cars. I asked her if she knew who this person was and she said that it was a ghost. By the time they got there, the ghost was gone and the poor lady was freaked out. The officers later told me that her sincerity actually freaked them out a lot and when they searched the house - guns drawn - even they were scared."- PatrickKaine

8. "My brother is a deputy who worked as an EMT for a few small towns. I frequently went on ride alongs with him. The town he worked in was very small and had about 50 people, a church, some houses, a grain tower and a park. It was about 3 am and we were about to call it a night. As we were making our last check, we noticed a movement at the park but couldn’t tell exactly what was going on because it was pitch black. We drove up and stopped alongside the dirt road, flipped on the spotlight and as we moved the light around the park, it finally settled on the back of a young girl (maybe 13) sitting on a swing with her back facing us. She wasn’t moving and she just sat there facing away from us looking down at the ground. Needless to say, it was a very creepy situation. I quickly suggested that we should call her over using the PA system. He agreed and as we looked back over, she was gone. I mean no signs of anyone anywhere. The park was in a wide open area, she couldn’t have gotten out of sight in the amount of time that we had our exchange of words. I remember saying, “should we get out and look for her?” My brother just looked at me and said “hell no” and drove away. It still creeps me out to this day."- Anonymous

9. "Once, an old woman called because she heard someone repeatedly banging on her front and garage door. It's after midnight and I get there. The house is in the middle of the woods with nothing around for miles. I talk to the lady and she insists that I check her large backyard. So, I open the door and peek in with my flashlight. The entire yard is filled with creepy large homemade dolls. They're each probably like 2 to 3 feet tall and sitting upright facing the door. The hair on my neck went up for a minute. I didn't truly believe that something supernatural was going on, but dolls are just really fucking creepy."- Yahspetsnaz

10. "One evening about eight years ago, it was pouring outside and we got a call from an elderly woman. She called in and said that she was hearing footsteps in her house and she thought there was a ghost inside because she regularly heard the sound of someone walking upstairs but she lived alone. We went to check it out and to make sure that everything was okay. She stayed on the line with the 911 operator because she was frightened. About three minutes after she initially called in, she said that there was actually a man standing outside in her backyard, staring at her through her sliding glass door. Petrified, the woman froze in that spot and continued to stare directly at the man. For the next minute or two, she said that he was just standing there, still as could be, staring at her. Eventually, the man disappeared. When we arrived, about twelve minutes after the call first came in, we went to the front door. I remained in the foyer with the woman and the other officer when to the backyard to see if the man was still hiding out or if there were any traces of him. I spoke with her for several minutes until the other officer returned. He said there was no trace of anyone having been in the backyard. We set off to do a quick sweep, before we left, to make sure the house was all clear. In her living room, we discovered a trail of mud and footprints INSIDE the house. I asked the woman if she had been outside at all that day or if anyone had been over to visit her. She said no, that she lived alone, and that no one had come by to visit. The woman was very old (probably around 85) and had very poor eyesight and was hard of hearing, as elderly people tend to be. The woman obviously had seen the man's reflection and mistakenly thought he was in front of her, on the other side of the glass, in her backyard. In reality, he had been standing only a few feet behind her in the same room while she had been talking to 911. Nothing was stolen, broken or out of place. So, we don't know what his intentions were. Who knows what would have happened had she not stayed on the line with the operator. It was honestly one of the most unnerving and creepy experiences I have had while on duty.- meriD_

11. "Once, I was doing security at a hospital and more than one nurse saw a guy on the camera, who was on his death bed, literally pushing his curtain aside and walking out of his room toward the elevator. A code was called and everyone immediately went to their designated locations. Within seconds, there were people watching the elevator stairs, and security started combing the area and investigating. As I reached the ICU floor, I spoke with the lead nurse and she told me that several of the nurses saw the man leaving. When they checked, the guy never left and died right then. The bosses wouldn't let us watch the video and said the nurses did the right thing and some things just can't be explained. The portion of the video I was allowed to see did show that nobody had left via elevator or stairs."- fzombie

12. "My grandmother was a cop in the late 70s till early 90s. One day, a man calls in and said that there is a 7ft man at his door. My grandma goes to check it out but the door is jammed. The man is screaming and she hears a loud buzzard. She slams the door open and the buzz is gone and so is the man. There's blood everywhere. She calls for backup and runs around, calling his name. She hears what sounds like, someone yelling but someone is covering their mouth. She finds him tied up, piss everywhere. Investigators say that he was in that room for at least 4 hours and called the police 5 hours ago. The guy ended up killing himself a few years later, leaving a note behind. He warned my grandmother that "they" are after him and thanked her for rescuing him. It was fucking crazy."- PLUSsignenergy

Looks like I would be keeping my lights on while sleeping tonight!