Amanda Sedlak-Hevener

There’s nothing more horrifying than stumbling upon a dead body. These horror stories from Reddit users are all true – and extremely disturbing. Whether they are about people finding corpses randomly or are from the point of view of law enforcement, these creepy stories might just keep you up at night.

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• The Skeleton Was Picked Clean

From Redditor /u/ZerodOwn:

Worked as a lifeguard on the Central Coast during the late ’90s early 2000s. Got a call that a woman was missing after last being seen in the ocean north of the Pismo Pier. My agency responded by sending men (myself included) to help with the search and rescue. We spent all day doing search patterns south of the pier, as that is where the longshore current would’ve dragged her.

Next day, it was no longer a search and rescue, but a body recovery. We had one of our Harbor Patrol boats on scene and I was riding as the swimmer on the boat. Get a call that patrons at a hotel north of the Pier had found a body in the rocks. My boat was the first on scene and the lady matched the description. But gruesome part… her head, hands, and feet were all preserved and untouched, everything else was picked clean to the skeleton. You don’t forget a sight like that.

• • A Sad Suicide Story

From Redditor /u/JonnyBlazeRSP:

April 30th, 1991

Came home from school (8th grade) and found my mom dead from suicide. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the front door as if she didn’t want me to find her. Someone was supposed to come back earlier in the day and I assume she wanted them to find her.

This was exactly a week after my dad died at home from cancer. It’s crazy, I’ve been alive longer without them now than I was with them.

He died at home and hospice left all the meds, needles and sh*t at my house. She wasn’t playing around or trying to get attention. She did it right.

F*ck. Usually try not to think about it. I don’t realize it every day but I guess you could say I’m still f*cked up from that.

• • Buried Since The 1950s

From Redditor /u/Soggybottomdude:

When I was 14 or 15, I worked construction with my Dad. We had a job demolishing an old gas/service station that was built in the 1950s.

We had gotten done removing the whole building and were in the process of tearing up the foundation. We tore up a chunk of concrete when we noticed what seemed to be a roof to a car. We carefully tore up the concrete surrounding the car and dug all the dirt out around the car. We climbed down in the hole it was a Chevy Bel Air and it was super cool. We noticed the front of the car was all sorts of messed up and pushed to the right.

That’s when I went to take a peek inside and saw a dead a** dude in all 1950s attire hat and all. It was surreal. Skeleton with hair and clothes. We called the cops and a couple weeks later they called my Dad and told him it was a traveling salesman from Savannah, GA who had gone missing in the ’50s and nobody had any clue what happened to him. The cops then go to the man that had the service station built. The dude was old as sh*t like 90 and admitted to burying the car there. He had been drinking with the salesman and the salesman crashed his car into a train resulting in his death. So the dude who owned the service station buried the car before they laid the foundation.

• • Killed By A Great White

From Redditor /u/Pit_of_Death:

I was living down there [San Luis Obispo, CA] in 2003 when a woman was killed by a great white at Avila. I remember it clearly because I had been swimming there only a few days beforehand. Eeesh.

• • The Van Accident

From Redditor /u/trulyunruly:

I have a similar story that stays with me. I was with my family driving back from Utah, and we were just outside of Las Vegas on the I-15 (southbound). All of a sudden, the traffic in front of us quickly comes to a halt. A 15-person passenger van traveling northbound had swerved into the median and rolled over. Everyone in the car was ejected through the windows of the van. There were bodies all over the median.

The people in the first cars that stopped had tried to cover the bodies with whatever was available from the van…sleeping bags, sweatshirts, pillow cases, etc. The faces were covered, but what I remember so vividly is a pair of small, shoeless feet just sticking out from under the coverings. It took my breath away.

As we sat in traffic, we could hear the lifeflight helicopter, the ambulances, and the fire truck making their way to the accident scene. I am not sure if there were any survivors.

We learned later that it was a church youth group being driven by a youth minister. The image of those bodies laying in the median and shrouded in sleeping bags is something I will never forget :

• • He Was Purple

From Redditor /u/patrick_mc:

I was delivering a fruit/flower arrangement to a house and the recipient was not answering the door, I peek in the window on the door and see an adult male on the floor next to his couch, his entire body was purple. I tried to open the door and it was locked.

I called 911, an ambulance and the police showed up and confirmed he was dead. This was my first experience with a dead body. I was a little freaked out, to say the least. A few detectives asked me some questions as I sat on the ground next to the delivery truck. I was shaking the whole time.

The kicker… I was at the wrong address… the arrangement was meant for this guy’s neighbor.

• • Killed By A Metal Pipe

From Redditor /u/Chris632:

Didn’t really find a dead body, but a co-worker I was working with died on the same shift I was working on. A large metal pipe fell from the top floor of the factory about six stories down and pierced through his helmet and head. He died upon impact. I saw the whole thing unfold and was the first to arrive on the scene. I was in charge of safety that day.

Let me shed some light on what exactly happened.

This happened at one of the biggest steel companies in Europe. I was working in the factory where they made the liquid steel by throwing in liquid ores and scrap metal into this huge ovens. The cranes take care of throwing the stuff in and this takes place every 15 to 30 minutes. The scrap metal is thrown into containers and then gets transported through the factory by the cranes. While the containers are being moved by the cranes no one is allowed to walk on the factory floor. Safety guys make sure everyone gets off the floor once it is time to transport this stuff. The containers where the scrap metal is in are open at the top so stuff could fall out. This is exactly what happened and the guy that got hit shouldn’t have been walking there. One of my co workers failed on making sure no one was walking on the floor. Needless to say he was fired.

• • Simple, Yet Creepy

From Redditor /u/jagwac:

1) Riding my bike on a levee trail, came up on a couple guys who were waiting on the cops. They had been first to spot the homeless guy laying in the grass next to the road. Natural causes.

2) Guy floated past us while we were on a canal boat cruise in Lockport, NY. Freaked out a whole boatload of people. Suicide.

• • Suicide In A Truck

From Reditor /u/darthphunk:

My wife used to be an animal control officer for the county. She was on a back road just outside of town and saw a truck on the side of the road and idling. She parked behind him and got out to see if they needed help. The driver was slumped over the steering wheel with a gun in his hand, a hole in his head, and his brains covering the inside of the passenger window.

• • Hit By A Train

From a former Redditor:

Three years ago I walked into the train yard at work only to find a 12-year-old boy electrocuted. He got on top of a commuter train the night before and touched a piece of live equipment. 11kv shock followed by a 20ish foot fall onto concrete made for a grizzly scene, the victim being a child made it worse. I also went to the scene of a highspeed train impact but there was no “body” to speak of just pink spray and yellow gobules everywhere. That was a tough day.

Edit: I was way off with my time estimate, and yes grizzly isn’t grisly but I’m leaving it.

Edit 2: it was the scene of an impact with a train traveling at high speed. Not a bullet train sorry for the confusion and thanks for all the love!

• Local Search And Rescue Assignment

From a former Redditor:

In 2009, part of a local search and rescue, we got a call for a report of missing elderly couple who had not been seen for two days and had driven out in a blizzard. We found the car with the wife inside she said her husband had taken the gas can to the nearest gas station. We followed his tracks till we noticed blood stains in the snow eventually we found him laying face down in the snow the blood was from his hands as he had fallen due to exhaustion and tried to crawl to the gas station… it was 100 yards on the other side of the hill… 🙁

• • The Body In The Tree

From Redditor /u/hashyakadave:

In Salt Lake City, UT. I was about 10, walking home from school with a friend. We were crossing a bridge next to a crosswalk when my friend noticed a body in the river, caught on a tree. We ran over to the crosswalk guy and told him, luckily there was a policeman stopped at the crosswalk. The crosswalk guy told the policeman, he made a phone call and then a bunch of cops showed up.

They pulled the body out of the water and put it in an ambulance and then everyone left.

She looked to be about our age. I don’t know why but I was never bothered by seeing a dead body.

Edit: This was at the Jordan River, about eight to ten years ago.

• • It Was A Seizure

From Redditor /u/daprice82:

One of my best friends. His girlfriend hadn’t heard from him. She called me to go check on him (I lived closer) and I went to his apartment. His car was there, but no one answered his door when I knocked so I just assumed he caught a ride to work with someone else.

Then she called his work and they said he never showed up. She called me back as she was racing over there (she had a key). We both got there about the same time and went in together. Turned on his bedroom light and found him. He was hanging upside down off his bed and when I touched him, he fell onto the floor. He’d been dead for hours and was already stiff and purple. I distinctly remember that even though he was on his back, his arm was sticking up in the air.

Turns out he’d had a seizure (he was prone to them) and had one severe enough that it killed him.

Worst experience of my life. I still think about walking into that room every single day.

• • Two Horrific Stories

From Redditor /u/sawwaveanalog:

I’ve found two.

The first time was when I was 16. I was riding bikes with a friend of mine through a narrow wooded area behind a strip mall. There was a bike trail back there and it was kind of known as a spot where teenagers would hang out, i.e. secluded, but not that secluded. About halfway through the length of it we rode by a guy that was standing on a big old wood grain ’70s style speaker that was leaned up against a tree. He was mid 40s and had a blank look in his face. I said hi to him, not knowing what else to do, and we kept on riding through. At the time I didn’t wonder what the hell an adult would be doing back there standing on a speaker, I did weird shit all the time, the thought of someone in trouble didn’t occur to us. Well, an hour or so later we were riding back home, coming the other direction down the same trail… except this time there was a corpse hanging from the tree. When we rode through the first time he was tying the noose…. he must have gone through with it right after we passed. The last words he heard were a random kid, me, saying hi to him. My parents were freaked out, but I was never really bothered by it. Even more strangely, the police officer that interviewed me afterwards was shot and killed several days later by a kid I had been in school with and known for most of my life.
tl;dr I saw a guy stringing himself up to hang himself but didn’t realize that’s what he was doing, then found him hanging dead an hour or two later.

The second time was last spring. My city has a river running through the middle of it that floods like crazy every year when the snow melts. Last year it was particularly high. I am pretty familiar with how it changes with the seasons because there is a long bike path that runs the length of it that I ride daily (I’m a cycling nerd). There is usually a week or two every spring when the water gets too high and spills over onto the path in one area, and I have to cut through a neighborhood and skip that part until the water goes back down. Well, last year that day happened very suddenly. The river was flowing fast as hell, and the trail was completely swamped. That night there was a police chase in the area that ended up with the guy getting out of his car, running on foot from the police, they chased him down until he got to the bank of the river, which on the west side where the chase happened is a 50 feet fairly steep bank. He ran down the hill, the police heard a splash, and he disappeared. Permanently. It was a fairly big story locally because no one knew if he was just in hiding from the police, or if he had fallen into the river and died. Again, this was on the worst possible day of the year to go in that water. It was many feet higher than usual, fast, and cold as hell. Fast forward about 10 days. I am on my ride and get to the spot where I have to decide to either turn off, or keep going if it isn’t flooded… horray! The water level is down probably two feet from the day before, and the trail is rideable. I press on, and as I pass a dock that I always look at because it’s usually covered in either ducks, or hot Notre Dame rowing team girls, I notice a weird looking log floating slower than the current. Keep riding. Holy f*ck. Cold wave and goosebumps hit me. That isn’t a log. I instantly knew it was the kid that had gone missing the week before. This was only maybe 500 feet from where he originally went missing. He must have fallen in and gotten tangled in branches and just broken free as I was riding due to the water level dropping back to normal. It took the police probably ten minutes to show up. This was one of the eeriest experiences of my life, because I had to just hang out with this floating dead body as it slowly drifted, face down with his pants around his ankles and shirt hiked up to his neck, down the river until they showed up. He was right near the shoreline… I could have reached out and touched him for most of the time. I saw a lady sitting on a bench a bit down the river that he was soon to float by, so I rode up to her with I’m sure a crazy look on my face and just said “you may want to move, something is coming down the river”… the look that came on her face after I said that is actually one of my strongest memories of the whole thing. She just silently, quickly got up and left. When the police finally arrived I was fairly surprised at how they got him out… a guy in jeans and a t-shirt just hopped in the water and grabbed him with no gear on whatsoever like it was no big deal. He was stiff when they pulled him out. It was not a pretty sight. His family started showing up on the scene and at that point I took off and finished my ride. Turns out a bunch of people I know knew the guy. No good.

TL;DR guy ran from the cops, fell in a flooded river, I found him 10 days later

• • Found A Body While Boating

From Redditor /u/alas11:

I was coxing a pair, (Rowing boat, two oarsmen) on the River Ouse in Bedford (UK) in the ’80s, in early January just after the river had thawed. I would have been in my mid teens.

A strong cross wind blew us toward the bank, the prow of the boat thunked over something floating just below the surface. Then it sort of slid and rolled down the side of the boat. I said ‘We’ve hit a bag of rubbish,’ as I didn’t want the oarsmen to think we had grounded. As the ‘rubbish’ came alongside the stroke oarsman, he said ‘The rubbish is wearing a tie.’

It was clearly a body, floating face down, it’s hair forming a sort of moldy looking corona around a bald patch, the tie, red paisley, surfaced just next to the head. The collar and shoulders of a dun raincoat were also visible in the dark water.

We skulled into the bank and went to call the plod. But before we could find a phone, a patrolling bobby came along the bank. His reaction: ‘It’s too cold to swim, you lads couldn’t get him for us could you?’ So we got back into the boat, skulled out to where he was, the stroke man grabbed him by the coat tails and we headed back for the bank. The act of pulling the cadaver through the water was a little unexpected, in that he pivoted, rose head and shoulders out of the water, then gently headbutted the side of the boat, all the way to the bank, thud, thud, thud.

We took off, to put the boat away, some distance up river and came back on foot, by which time he’d been covered up. I had however seen his face, and I was pretty sure I’d seen him somewhere.

Fast forward several weeks… I was called to a meeting with the head of music, which was odd, as I was and am about as musical as a canteen of cutlery in a tumble drier. He wanted to thank us for pulling his brother from the river, who had committed suicide by jumping off the town bridge through the ice. He had been psychotic and off his meds, apparently he frequently used to ‘commit suicide’ by jumping off the bridge, but never when the river was frozen before. He looked exactly like his brother.

• • Drowned In The Hot Tub

From Redditor /u/i_like_snacks:

A few years ago I was vacationing at a Mexican resort and while everybody was lounging out at the pool, we suddenly heard a shout, and everyone running towards the hot tub.

An 8-year-old boy had jumped in, hit his head, and slipped under – nobody noticed EVEN THOUGH HIS FAMILY WAS IN THE HOT TUB WITH HIM. Not until he’d been under for a bit did his family clue in and pull him out. An American woman who was there happened to be an MD and tried to revive him until the ambulance came. Unfortunately he had been under so long that it was hopeless.

The little body lay out there for what seemed like forever. I’ll never forget it, because they’d put him up on a lounge chair and it looked like he had just dozed off in the afternoon sun.

It was an accident, clearly, but the most messed up thing about it was that I was walking into the town one day and this woman sauntered up beside me, and all matter-of-fact asked me if I’d heard about the boy who drowned. When I got a little weepy and said ‘yes, it was tragic,’ she began TO BRAG HOW IT WAS HER GRANDSON. Oh and they stayed the rest of their week at the resort.

TL;DR Young boy drowns in Mexico, family brags about the death like its something to be proud of

• • Dead In A McDonald’s Bathroom

From a former Redditor:

As a third year medical student I was on a one week break and took the train home from out of state. My wife worked/lived in my home state at a local hospital and I had driven her to work. I decided to stop at McDonald’s and since the drive through line was long, I went inside.

As I was waiting for my food, a younger girl came in and stated her mom was in the bathroom for a long time and that she was going to be late for school if her mom didn’t come out. School started at 8:00. I looked at my watch and it was around 8:10 if memory serves. This woman was clearly in the bathroom for way too long. My first thought was, unresponsive woman – get in there. The McDonald’s employee seemed unfazed.

I ran back to the bathrooms and knocked – no response. I immediately ran back up to the counter and told the employee to call 911 given there was an unresponsive woman in the bathroom and that we needed to get in there ASAP. The lock was one of those that can be opened with the turn of a flathead screwdriver. The girl basically said there weren’t any tools there, so I asked a guy who looked like a construction worker if he had one in the car. He ran out and I got the employee to sit with the girl on the other side of the restaurant because.. I knew what I was going to see a) a woman in a diabetic coma b) nothing and the mom ditched her child c) a dead woman. Unfortunately, it was C. She was opposite the toilet (this is a one person bathroom) seated on the floor, in a pile of urine. She was barely warm, but a big gal. She was too big for me to pull flat to start chest compressions and the McDonald’s employees wouldn’t help move her (they were scared). I started compressions by pushing her up against the wall (best I could do.) Strangely, my phone (old school Verizon, one of the first that could play music… still have it to this day) started playing “Danny’s Song” since I must have pressed play up against my shorts/the wall. The cops finally got there and EMS showed, she was transported to my wife’s hospital DOA. Really scary and nerve racking, I felt awful for the little girl. It was my first and only time doing CPR/ALS outside of the hospital and I was actually impressed with myself and quick thinking… for those of you who aren’t familiar, third year med students are still in the idiot phase.

Other side notes: The cop told me I was an idiot for doing compressions up against the wall. I was wearing sandals, so I’m sure I got pee on my feet but the adrenaline made me not mind it. I also got to see a chest compression device in work for the first time.”

• • Saved A Headless Man

From Redditor /u/BeachBumHarmony:

Thankfully not me, but coworkers/friends:

We all live in a beach community and work at the beach. They’re all lifeguards. So, they’re walking on the beach at night and see arms waving frantically in the tide. Their natural instincts came and they jumped in to pull the person out. Well, the two of them pulled out a larger man with his head gone.

They had saved a dead body from the ocean.

• • Found In The Backseat

From Redditor /u/RollinBawls:

My brother and I were going out clubbing on a Friday night during the winter of 2006ish. There was a small nightclub beside our house (this is not the club we were going to). It started to snow as we were leaving we noticed a girl getting out of a new Mercedes as we drove past. Later that night around 3 am we drove back home and it was really icy and snowing. We noticed that girl’s Mercedes was the only car still in the parking lot by our house. Didn’t think anything of it (regrettably.) Later that morning we woke up and went to go get food. The roads were still really icy and the car was still there. We decided to scrape the snow and ice off drivers side window.

We seen that girl in the backseat curled up and purple. She was dead, no doubt. We freaked out for a second then called the cops. A fire truck pulled up really soon. They broke the window out and confirmed she was dead. She had a half empty bottle of wine still in her hands. The cops interrogated us separately in cop cars. They let us go right after. If only we would have checked out the car the night we came home and not the next day.

• • The Boy On The Plateau

From Redditor /u/Ouroboros:

Conducting research in South Africa, hiking along the border of Lesotho, up on a high, remote plateau. Late winter, a cold front had whipped through a day or two before and dumped almost a foot of snow on the high plateau where I was working. Middle of nowhere, saw a blue blanket with an impossibly small human-shaped lump under it. Knew what it was, took a long time to gather my will to look underneath. Pulled the blanket back, saw a Basuto shepherd boy – probably eight years old? – curled in fetal position, probably hunkered down for shelter and froze to death when he was caught by the storm. There was a lizard on his face, coming out of a hole that shouldn’t be there. He was wearing nothing but a woman’s night gown and a traditional blanket. Presumably his job was to hike way up into the mountains in late winter, alone, to get his family’s flock some green forage, and he died doing that just because of bad timing.

Made me realize all my problems are first world problems.

• • Neighbor In The Pool

From Redditor /u/tokitorii:

I’m a little late to the party but I actually finally have a story to share –

I moved to Florida in June and found this awesome apartment/townhouse that was quite large and fairly cheap. The property was nice and quiet, mainly filled with graduate students and my place overlooked a large pool that I was excited to use (having lived in Seattle the past three years).

Well I had a habit of looking out my large window upstairs in the morning before I headed out to take care of my horse around 7 am and most of the time there was no one there except for a man that did Tai Chi fairly regularly.

About two weeks after I had moved in my (ex)boyfriend had slept over and the next morning we got up and were getting ready to go take care of the horses and while he is in the bathroom I look out the window. An object in the pool catches my eye and to this day I will never forget it. There was a person at the deep end of the pool at the bottom, just sitting there. I kept staring hoping that he would just move. I kept trying to convince myself that he was moving, that maybe it was the Tai Chi man doing some weird underwater exercise, hoping that I say a little breath bubble. Those 10 5 seconds felt like minutes and I turn around and yell for my (ex)boyfriend to come help, that there is someone at the bottom of the pool.

Luckily my boyfriend at the time had just gotten out of the coast guard and ran out to the pool while I grabbed my phone to call 911. By the time I made it out behind him, he was at the pool just looking down and he told me to stop – that the man was already dead. He didn’t want me to see, but proceeded to push the man over to the shallow end of the pool and pull him out.

The guy’s body was in a fetal position stuck in rigor mortis. As I was trying to tell the dispatcher about him, he let out an awful death groan and blood poured out of his mouth. It was horrific. The dispatcher kept trying to convince me to give him mouth to mouth and wouldn’t believe me when I said he was dead, long dead. She finally shut up about when my ex took the phone and told her because he didn’t have a cpr mask and there was blood in the man’s mouth that he didn’t feel comfortable giving him cpr.

Soon there were fire trucks and police everywhere. Some dick cop started asking us if we knew the kid and why we had pushed him into the pool. Got interviewed by detectives and everything.

Turned out the kid was a grad student who had a habit of going swimming at night (which you weren’t supposed to do because there were no lights in the pool) and dove into what he thought was the deep end, but it was right on the edge. He had hit his forehead and broken his neck. He was only 25 and from China.

The most f-ed up thing was that the apartment complex didn’t clean out the pool right away or really close it down. So I came back a few days later after calming down at my ex’s to find the pool had been used.

No one understood why I refused to go near that pool afterwards.

TL;DR Moved into a new apartment w/awesome pool. 2 weeks into the lease find a dead body in the pool. Poke him to the edge with a pool net, pull him out, hear death groan with blood coming out of his mouth and dispatcher wants us to do cpr on a body in rigor. Get accused of killing him. Find out the pool gets used before they drain and clean it. Don’t ever use the pool afterwards.

EDIT: Proof. Also this article has his picture. It was really hard on me at first to see pictures of him because I could only remember him the way he was when he was pulled out. Hell it’s still hard.