Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
38submissions
1week left
38 Private Investigators Share The Most Bizarre Things They’ve Encountered
If you’ve ever had a suspicion that someone in your life was keeping secrets, it’s likely that you eventually put that idea out of your head. You’re probably just being paranoid, right? There’s no way your wife is actually cheating!
But when someone can’t seem to put their thoughts to rest, they might end up enlisting professional help to get to the bottom of whatever’s going on. And as you might expect, private investigators have some wild experiences while on the job. [urinate] have been opening up on Reddit about the craziest things they’ve uncovered, so we’ve gathered their most shocking stories below. Enjoy reading through these juicy tales, and be sure to upvote the ones that convince you that some secrets should probably just stay in the dark!
Click here & follow us for more lists, facts, and stories.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Most interesting case? A wife hired us to follow her husband, thinking he was cheating. He wasn’t.
Turns out, every weekend, he’d drive two hours away, check into a cheap motel, and spend the entire night dressed as a clown, performing birthday shows for terminally ill children at a local hospice.
He never told anyone. Didn’t want attention or praise — just said it made him “feel like a human again” after losing his own kid years ago.
Client was shocked. Divorce canceled. Marriage got stronger.
Some people hide affairs. Others hide their healing.
RELATED:
#2
Not a PI here, but someone who was confronted by one and told it was the weirdest thing he's had to do.
A roommate I had in college was a strange guy. This guy came from the other side of the country (I'm US). He went out at all hours of the night, never showed up for class, slept during the day, and drank more energy drinks than is healthy. His parents were worried about him, apparently, and hired a PI to trail him.
Now, living in a college dorm in a part of campus where only freshman live makes an adult who isn't janitorial staff stick out like a sore thumb. So, I picked up fairly quickly that this guy was hanging around the dorms. Thought he was just cruising for some freshman, and didn't bother him.
A few weeks later, I was walking back from the dining hall, and he approached me (it was a public place) asking if we could talk somewhere private. I was weirded out and told him we could talk right here.
He told me he was a PI hired by my roommates parents to trail him because his parents were concerned, and he wanted to ask me about my roommate's dorm habits. We then left to the coffee shop to talk about my roommate.
My roommate apparently liked to go walk on the beach at night for stupid amounts of time, hang out at Steak and Shake playing game on his phone and Nintendo DS for hours on end, and cruise thrift shops for some reason. I told the guy that the dude just slept and didn't even have any personal affects in the room besides his clothes.
The PI and I both realized that this kid pretty much had no direction or motivation in life, and his parents usually pushed him to do everything. He said that this kid's behavior was the most bizarre pattern of activity he's pretty much seen.
To explain the kid's actions, college was the first alone time he's ever had, and he was savoring it doing whatever he wanted. I ended up feeling for the guy and reached out to him. He changed majors from engineering to a psychology degree because he wanted to learn how the mind worked, and he suddenly became super-interested in college. Ended up being a cool guy once he realized he was not in his parent's grasp anymore.
#3
A PI followed a woman who seemed to be living way beyond her means. no fraud, she was a ghostwriter behind several huge influencer brands, running their entire marketing strategy in the background
Quietly making six figures while staying completely anonymous.
To find out how this conversation started in the first place, we got in touch with the Reddit user who invited private investigators to share their stories, Forgetadapassword. They were kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda and discuss what inspired this thread.
"There was a Reddit thread already happening on a different subreddit where a private investigator chimed in, and it was such an interesting comment, I assumed an entire post would be fascinating (which turned out to be true)," the author says.
#4
FINALLY! A question I can answer! Been a P.I. For a going on a year now and the strangest case I had was of a woman asking us to find out if her husband was cheating on her. She said there was something off in the house as if feeling something and she wanted to know what it was. So she suspected her husband of cheating.
So I show up and install Nanny Cam's in her house for the weekend upon her approval and where to place them. She works all weekend and this was the best route. Well 3 days go by and I collect the footage and come to find out the husband was "touching" his 8 year old step daughter. After seeing that I rushed to the court house with a copy of the footage and got a court order for the police to go and get him.
#5
Someone wanted to know what their cat was up to when they were working. Paid me to tail it. I don't like wasting my time but the works not always busy as a PI. Turns out the cat just walks around the streets, licks itself and climbs trees....
anon:
Day 17: This is the 4th mouse he's caught. He doesn't even f*****g eat them. He just loves the thrill of the k**l.
#6
Was hired to follow a woman who claimed she was completely blind (collecting insurance money of course). Spent the day following her around as she DROVE from store to store in a church van.
mcdave:
"Jesus take the wheel!"
We also asked the OP if they had any experience working with private investigators. "I have not ever hired a PI, and I can’t really imagine doing so," they shared. "I did consider trying to become licensed in my state, but the median income was not something I was comfortable with."
#7
Client wanted to know why her dog was getting fat.
Turns out the dog was getting fed by almost every stranger it encountered while wandering around outside during the day.
karmagirl314:
It's called a hustle sweetheart.
#8
I’m obviously not a detective or anything, but when my best friend got matched with this girl for an arranged marriage, something about her felt off. Nothing dramatic, just a gut feeling after meeting her once. She was weirdly flirty with me the first time we met, and I couldn’t shake the vibe that she wasn’t taking things seriously.
Me and another friend discussed about it and started casually keeping an eye out. Our offices were in the same area, so we’d see her around now and then. Eventually, we got in touch with someone from her workplace and started hearing she was supposedly having a thing with her boss. And yeah, the boss is married.
We didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but the stories kept adding up. One weekend we got a tip and followed the tip, and yes, caught them at a beach resort 150 kms the city. Saw them hanging out by the pool, holding hands, and staying in the same suite.
All this was happening while both families were planning the engagement, buying outfits, booking venues, the works. It was messy.
We gathered the photos, messages, proof from the hotel guy by giving him some bribes etc and then shared it with my friend. At the next meeting with her family, he calmly showed them everything. The marriage was called off.
Not proud of playing spy, but I’d do it again if it means saving someone close from walking into something like that.
#9
Heard of this story about a girl from my uni before. She started suspecting her dad having an illicit affair, so her friends decided to channel their inner Nancy Drews and started following the dad around. After a couple of tries, they eventually found him meeting up with the same older woman repeatedly. She was devastated. One day, she decided that she was going to confront the two of them but didn't want to make it into a public spectacle. She decided to follow them to the woman's place. She was so confused because she was following them back to her own house. Turns out, the dad bought the mistress a house in the street right behind theirs. Dad also has another daughter 2 years younger than her and named the daughter the exact same name as her.
Finally, we asked Forgetadapassword what they thought of the responses to their post.
"I loved reading every reply," they told Bored Panda. "My favorite was the PI hired to find out if the husband was cheating, only to follow him once a week to a hotel where he changed his clothes into a clown outfit and went and entertained sick children as a therapy for the loss of his own child. Not only did it save the marriage, but it brought them closer together, which is poignant and beautiful."
#10
My story is about hiring a PI. In the 1970s, pre computers, cell phones, and cameras. Managed a car rental place in Canada and had a long term rental not come back. Local people, so I contacted a name I had in an old file. Guy comes in, jeans and a T-shirt, young not even 30. I explained we had little to no information, credit card, home address and names. He found them living in a hotel in San Francisco and he did it with in 2 days. Still think about how the h**l he did that.
#11
Did surveillance on a nurse. She was supposedly so disabled that she couldn't work. They suspected she was working. Easiest surveillance I ever did. I arrived. She got in her car 10 minutes later. Followed her, with no complication, to a [private club] where she went in and began doing her thing.
Club had a posted prohibition on video. So I had to go in and watch her dance so that I could testify that I saw her dancing when it went to court. Over the next few days I followed her to three other strip clubs and did the same.
That month I turned in the sketchiest expense report of my life.
Eventually it went before the WC Board. When the judge asked why she was stripping she just shrugged and said she made twice as much money than when she was nursing.
Benefits got yanked. Insurance company was happy. But the company lawyer gave me the nickname "Detective T*ts" which, most regrettably, stuck and spread to all of the other lawyers I dealt with.
Worse night of my life, man.
#12
I'm a PI (among other things.)
I haven't had any bizarre tasks, though I have had some interesting situations, and I've performed surveillance on cheating spouses as well as factual worker's compensation and public liability matters.
One matter which really made an impression on me was where a person had a fatal vehicle incident and a claim was made that it was a workplace injury. I don't know what on earth happened with this claim but it was five years before the insurer gave it to me.
There were some questions about it - the person making the claim alleged to be the worker's wife, though work colleagues did not know her, and also the incident was almost 200km from the workplace.
When I spoke to former colleagues a lot of them struggled to remember him. This really was so sad. It left a deep impression on me that what are we once we are not here if we are not even memories.
I did, however, learn he stayed at a caravan park during the working week. I called that place but the owner said it had changed hands and he didn't know the guy, he didn't have any old records, and he didn't know where the former owner was. He did remember the former owner's name however.
I called everyone in the phone book for the state with that name. I finally got my man, and he remembered the deceased vividly ... along with his wife and son. It was tremendous! I learned the guy would stay near the workplace during the week and travel back home, to a remote town, for weekends.
I drove all the way to that town but couldn't find the wife. She wasn't at any address I had, nor did she answer her phone. I got petrol and asked at the counter if they knew the family, and they said it might be so-and-so and directed me to a house. I went there, turned out to be the wife's parents, they called the daughter, she arrived and both mother and daughter had a big cry while showing me all their photographs of the guy. It was very moving, and I was so relieved to have real evidence the guy ever actually existed after how his co-workers were finding it hard to remember him.
The story was very sad; he died on the way to work on a Monday morning. Normally he would travel to the caravan on a Friday night but this particular weekend was mother's day. He stayed Sunday night and travelled Monday, early in the morning, ran off the road and passed away :(
I was able to determine the lady was genuinely his wife, that he was on his way to the workplace, that it was his regular route to work, and so on. I supplied this to the insurer. I never - well, rarely ever - hear what happens to a matter so I only hope it was finally settled.
#13
I was slightly involved in an investigation by a private investigator. Involved in that he contacted me twice. First, by “accidentally” getting gas at the pump next to me in a not too new, appropriately dirty truck and starting a conversation about hay that led to him eventually asking indirectly about the subject of the investigation who was a not too close neighbor. My impression at the time was that he was a slightly awkward, but friendly, person just trying to get some feed for his animals.
A few weeks later, he stopped by my farm. Different personality. Polite, efficient and direct, driving a typical fleet sedan. Mentioned the previous encounter and explained he was conducting an investigation which was complete. He was just following up to see if I had any comments about the guy in the event it went to court.
Turns out he was on disability due to painful neck and back injuries that caused weakness in his arms rendering him unable to work as a plumber. Selling hay in 80lb bales which he was was recorded throwing onto a wagon several hundred times over the course of the investigation.
The investigator was impressive. My first contact with him left me thinking he was totally harmless. My second showed him to be a competent person.
It was an interesting experience.
#14
A weird dad paid us thousand and thousands to watch his daughter during her first two years of college. Went to her tennis matches, friended her from various sock puppet accounts, ate at the restaurant she worked at, etc. Certainly not the strangest case or circumstances, but one where I’ve been tempted in the years since to reach out and let her know of the insane invasion of privacy.
#15
A good friend was self employed and had full insurance cover 'just in case'. He did get injured while working and couldn't walk unaided for months. It turned out that his business owners compensation insurance was subject to a very high percentage of fraudulent claims so P.I. investigation was normal.
Picture a street of a better class of middle income houses. Good weather and my friend working in his yard doing landscaping by sitting down and dragging his injured leg along. He did this for hours every day. Each day, at lunchtime, he would get up on his crutches, hobble over to the car where two investigators were watching and filming him, and offer them to come into his house to have coffee or a cold drink. Every day for three weeks, 21 days. They angrily refused each time.
After the third week the observations dropped to one or two spot checks each week for the months he needed to get back walking.
We guesstimate the cost of the investigation was way more than the insurance payout.
#16
My girl worked for the usps. She was part of the p*dophile investigators.
One day I see her at the library in the middle of the day. I stop in and was going to say hi when she waved me off. She was super flirty with some guy at a computer terminal.
Yep, he was a p*dophile and that's when I found out what she did. She was getting the sites he visited, and was trying to get other info off the computer being used.
So the lesson was, don't let your kids go to the library.
#17
All right, here goes. After I got out of the Navy, I worked for one of the top PI firms in Houston. Because of my electronics background, I'd usually go along on the jobs where were were checking for bugs and hidden surveillance devices.
We got a call from a client who was sure that his office was bugged because his client knew everything that he was doing before he did it. His office was a mobile trailer that was on his client's site. He was a subcontractor for a big oilfield construction company.
We did a full electronic sweep and found nothing (this was back in the early nineties, didn't have to worry about burst transmissions, etc.) No devices implanted in his phones. He insisted on a full physical sweep of the trailer, inside and out. So we crawled under the trailer and got a ladder and inspected the roof. Still nothing.
We're getting ready to leave and he says: "Look, I'm not crazy. Pick up the phone, press 9 to get an outside line, and you'll start hearing all sorts or clicky sounds." Turns our his office phones were routed through the corporate PBX of his client. They didn't have to bug his office, they could just "pick up an extension" inside the main building and listen in to whatever they wanted. We weren't even sure if it was illegal. We advised him to install a private phone line that he paid for if he wanted private conversations. We ended up billing him like two grand for that visit.
#18
I was asked by a lady to investigate her husband because he might be cheating on her. He used to come back late at night with smell of womans perfume. Turns out he was taking dancing classes and he didn't tell his wife.
#19
Worked with a PI every once in a while as a second car for surveillance. Surprised me how many people live off lies. Con artist types and scammers, renter scams were very common.
Employee theft also very common, found that employees from a popular drink company were selling pallets of product on the side. The scam was pretty elaborate to account for the missing product.
Couple cases of husbands who traveled alot for work had multiple families, as in another set of wife and kids.
Found that a young rich woman's fiancé not only didn't go to the college he claimed but actually had no degree at all, no job at all, no income at all. Dude would leave the house in a suit and tie and spend most of the day in a diner reading newpapers. Crazy how long he lived off her without her knowledge.
PM_me_punanis:
As someone with one kid and a husband and a full time job, I honestly don't know how people find the energy to maintain TWO families. My energy sucking vampire of a son ensures I have no energy left for any extramarital shenanigans.
#20
My work partner and I were watching a guy who was cheating on his wife. We were at a restaurant where they were eating dinner together. Had snuck over to his car to put a GPS tracker underneath the fender. At the same time there was another PI team working to put a PI tracker on the girlfriend’s car lol. We never made contact with the other team, but we sort of gave each other just a wink and a nod. Turns out they worked at the same hospital and we’re each cheating on their spouses with each other but we’re also cheating on each other with multiple other people. It was a hot mess and a lot to keep track of.
#21
Doing a standard pre-employment background check on a guy, found that he was found guilty in a sexual harassment case. Didn't have the case details at that point and the guy denied it was him. Pulled more details from the case and confirmed that it was definitely him... And that he was convicted of indecent exposure. The guy finally admitted it was him, but claimed it wasn't as bad as it seemed. Pulled the court transcripts. Turns out he flashed a 12-year-old on the beach and said "ever seen one of these before?" He did not get the job.
#22
Former PI, about 30 years ago.
For me, the amount of people faking disability claims was huge. It made up at least 70% of our cases but it was also easy to prove..way more than other types of cases.
Normally, we'd just hang outside their house and wait for them to take groceries out of their trunk, walk down their porch steps, etc.
But one hilarious case that I will never forget was the one where a man claimed he hurt his shoulder and lost movement of his right arm as a result. We waited outside his house, and on day 1 he came out and got into his car. So we followed him....to the batting cages where we recorded him swinging a bat all day.
#23
Worked as a PI for 9 months, the company I was with investigated employee workers comp fraud. I'd follow people who supposedly had injuries so debilitating they couldn't work, and then film them doing things like carrying 3 j*** of detergent through a grocery store, or lifting a massive concrete tortoise out of a garden bed and moving it to the other side of the yard.
Most interesting thing was a job I did in another state, and I filmed a guy about a mile away in farm field slowly take apart a small plane he had sitting in a field over a period of 8 hours when he supposedly had a back injury so bad he couldn't lift 10 pounds. Maxed out my camera memory, ended up taking pictures the last 4 hours every time he moved a piece of plane.
Small piece of advice: if you're committing workers comp fraud and the company's insurance tells you to go to a specific doctor...they have paid PI people to wait for you there and follow you home/around for the day. They wanted to get you in a specific place to be followed after you pretended to be hurt so they can show after you went and did things you shouldn't be able to.
#24
I was living in Tokyo. Someone posted an ad looking for someone to do some investigative work. I was broke and interviewed for a job despite not knowing anything about private investigation.
A Japanese woman who spoke good English had a crush on a white guy. She wanted someone to investigate where he hung out, then befriend him, then introduce him to her.
I declined the job. But later on she hired me to do some marketing work for her. Unsurprisingly, one of the worst marketing clients I ever had, purely because she didn't respect boundaries. Shoulda seen that coming. :p.
#25
A couple was divorcing and the wife was sure her husband was sticking random items of hers up his a**.
He was.
#27
A mother hired me to look into the new boyfriend of her daughter who was way older than she was. She said there was just something off about him, and she was right. They broke up in the middle of the case so it got cut short and I never got to the bottom of everything, but he had like 5 different current addresses (some apartments and some private homes) all in different cities, and he had multiple cars registered in different states of which none of the plates were coming back as registered to him or a family member (in fact, one of his trucks was registered to a deceased couple he had no affiliation with).
Also ran a vehicle sighting report and one of his cars was all over the place in like 3 different states over the course of a year, spotted parked in the driveways or random homes he had no seeming affiliation with. Very weird. I still wonder what I would’ve found if I kept digging.
EDIT: the databases are subscription based, but they’re not unlimited use. You have a certain number of searches per month based on whatever tier you select, and I had the lowest tier since I was just starting out my agency at the time. You also have limits to the features you can use. The more features, the more money. It’s easy to blow through all your credits very fast, especially in cases like this.
Vehicle sighting reports weren’t included and were $25 a search. I believe tow trucks and police vehicles with license plate technology capture the plates as they drive by. One particular vehicle of his just happened to have a lot of hits. I ran my own plate as a test and it’s never been spotted anywhere before, so it’s a hit or miss.
No I didn’t report anything to the police. They honestly wouldn’t care in the slightest if I did. Hate to say it, but that’s the truth.
#28
I located and assisted in serving my husbands sleezy former boss which led to his arrest on federal charges. Good times.
#29
I was a fraud investigator for a finance company. I went to interview a small business who we had lent to, got there first thing in the morning. Walked in and had just introduced myself when a dude walked out of the back with a black clean sack. He got a shock I was there dropped the clean sack and bundles of cash just fell out and on to the floor. Said quickly I wasn’t there for that and they needed to pay for the equipment they had secured and not paid a cent for. It was paid before I got back in the office.
#30
Way back in like 1998, we surveiled a house for an older guy who thought his younger wife was cheating on him. I wasnt on this shift, but heard the same story from everyone there. They wired the house and waited in the van behind the back fence. Guy leaves on a business trip. Lady gets dropped home by the Chauffeur. He carries her bags into the bedroom.
Suddenly, he slaps her HARD across the face knocking her back onto the bed. One of my coworkers jumped out of the van thinking she’s about to get hurt. Before he gets to the sliding glass door, he hears over the radio (from the other guy watching the video feed), “come on back, she likes it.” She then proceeded to also bang the pool boy.
When my boss informed the client, he just asked, “How much?”
Back then camera equipment was expensive, and we rented it. He just wrote a check for $10k on the spot.
My boss checked in with him later and said the old guy had a private collection of vhs tapes.
So. There’s that.
#31
I have a story about this. My Brother was a PI in the early 90's. He worked for a law firm. I was in my early 20's and so he got me a gig as a process server.
He was working a particularly nasty divorce case. Husband was a Jordanian national married to an american woman (one of several wives) who was over being the broodmare in the family and wanted out. Also, she worked for Nasa.
He was tasked with going into their house, which was in her name (she wasn't living there, she was in an apartment until this was settled) and getting a briefcase with financial information in it. Since I was the process server, I had to go along in case someone was home for whatever reason.
We went and waited down the road until everyone left and went in and got the briefcase. no big deal. We take it back to the attorney's office and he calls the lady and says he has it. She gives him the combination he opens it and it was full of technical plans from Boeing for the Apache helicopter.
Attorney says "[darn]", instantly shuts the briefcase, tells me and my brother to leave now, so we did. We never heard any more about that case at all, other than he contacted the FBI over it.
#32
Caught a guy on disability carpooling Amish kids to school.
Was insurance fraud case. in southern MD. For a week I watched a supposed completely disabled person shuttle kids in a blue station wagon to a public school. Pick up and drop off. Long time ago, 20+ years, video'd it all on a handheld VHS cam. Even got video of what looked like a cash payout by one of the parents at the end of the week.
He then drove to the local 7-11 and bought a 'bagfull' of scratch offs. Weird times.
#33
Working for an insurance company in the IT department and created a secured file server for our disability insurance investigator to upload video. Worked closely with him so I got all the stories. Primarily just catching people who were 100% disabled building fences, unloading bags of groceries and walking them up two flights of stairs, just doing things things they physically said they cannot do.
#34
It was one of my last cases that I worked on. It was for a child custody/paternity case.This case was the one that made me rethink what I was doing and I got very disturbed by what I was asked to do. This is the case that made me stop being a PI
Our client was denying that the child in question was actually his and was fighting the child support case. He believed that the mother of the child was a serial adulterer. So much so that he spent THOUSANDS on the case for us to make sure there was evidence to support his claim.
The icing on the "s*** cake" was when my case manager told me that client wanted video evidence that the child did not look like him. The client told us that we had to record the child at play.
So here I am, beside a playground, in a completely limo tinted car, videotaping a 9 year old. I couldn't have felt worse about my life choices. To this day I have never felt like such a creep before. I hated that case and the case manager.
Two weeks later I handed in my resignation.
#35
We did mostly disability fraud. Most PI work is insurance because it’s consistent and easy to bill.
It’s basically professional doorknob watching. Show up to site around 4am, sit there all day and see nothing. Take timestampped photo or video every hour. Sit in car all day peeing in Gatorade bottles and watching movies. Go home, submit report that nothing happened and you saw nothing.
Sometimes catch people claiming disability working out at a gym or cleaning gutters, basic normal stuff that people claiming disability shouldn’t be able to do.
Weirdest thing I ever saw was a municipal client that wanted surveillance on a dude suspected of violating a zoning ordinance by manufacturing fertilizer in his house. Never confirmed any of that but that would be stinky if true.
Sometimes you have to follow the subject in a vehicle and that requires a crazy amount of traffic violations, mostly running red lights and speeding.
Most contracts want you to break surveillance if you get noticed. You just switch cars and try again the next day.
All things considered, awful job. Little career growth. Crazy hours. Inconsistent work. Licenses can be difficult to acquire so mostly you work for a company that holds a license and never progress. You’ll miss holidays and family events. S**t retirement.
If you think you like that work, be a cop and then make detective. At least you get a pension.
#36
I was asked to help my boss fire another investigator do to his short temper. I was told to arrive at 7:30 because he likes to arrive at 8:00.
So like any other day I woke up and started to drive to work through a [darn] blizzard and didn't end up getting there till 7:40. Go to my boss and says he already fired the guy.
What the [darn] man what if he lashed out and what not and I wasn't there.
His reply was he didn't, but he wanted me to stick around just in case.
So I sat there for 4 hours drinking coffee on double time which was great until I had to file the 2 page report on me drinking coffee
Tldr. Drank coffee for 35 bucks an hour.
#37
Not a PI, but I met one. I was at my friend's house and he got a knock on the door. The dude was black (EDIT: Congolese to be specific).
"Hello, sir, are you X?"
"Yeah, why?"
"[explains that he's a PI and that he'd like to talk in private]"
"Nah, I'm fine just talking here at the door."
"[shows him a picture] Do you know this man? His name is Y."
"Yeah, that's my great-uncle, he's vacationing in the Congo right now, why?"
"I'm sorry sir, but your great-uncle died of hepatitis. [elaborates how his great-uncle, a priest, b***** some [working woman] and got infected and died]"
I was in the living room eating pizza the whole time, pretending to be watching TV.
#38
I've worked a few bizarre cases, including one involving a stolen horse and almost getting shot by rednecks. But due to legal reasons, not sure if I can mention that one.
There was a workers compensation case I worked last year. I was told to get film of this older lady who had supposedly be on total disability due to a severe ankle injury. Seems cut in dry. But she lived in a motel in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. The motel was called "Johnnies" I looked up the place online, and found reviews of it on google. There were really sh**ty reviews including one that said the place was mostly run by the owner's son, who was a druggie and would ask people who stayed there if he could buy any prescription d***s they had. That isn't sketchy at all.
So I show up to this 'motel' which looked like it hasn't been renovated in 40 years. It was a small motel, had about 14 rooms. I have no idea what room the person I'm supposed to find is in. I figure I should talk to someone at the front desk. There is no front desk. The office part of the motel looked boarded up. But next to it was one of the motel rooms, and in the window of the room was an "Open" sign. On the door it was a sign that said "office" and instructions for long term customers of the hotel on where to drop their payment. There was a door bell. I rang it and waited. The guy who opened the door looked exactly like Kenny Powers from Eastbound and Down. He was wearing a Ninja Turtles t-shirt and Hawaiian shorts. He tells me to come in. I walk in and what I walk into is just a room with 1 desk. Nothing else. There was [mess around] carpeting and really dark colored walls and a lava lamp on the desk. I realize that this was the owner's son, Johnny Jr. I give him some fake story how I'm an insurance adjust looking for this lady, he then replies "Oh Mary? She lives in the room next to me, want me to go get her?" This is a problem because I have absolutely no backstory on what to tell this lady. She was repped by an attorney and likely knew a PI might be looking for her. I tell him, no, I just needed to confirm she lived her and bolted.
Now, park in the parking lot with view of the room Johnny Jr pointed at. A couple hours go by and then some old guy is standing near my car getting stuff out of his car. Johnny Jr walks out and starts talking to him. I realize the older guy is Johnny Sr. They are literally standing right next to my car and I can hear everything they say. What proceeds to happen is they start talking about me, well at least the "insurance adjuster" who visited earlier. Johnny Sr having seen some s*** in his day immediately says "that wasn't an insurance adjust you idiot, that was a PI, insurance adjusters don't work on Sunday" He tells Johnny Jr to tell Mary to watch out that a PI might be in the parking lot.
My car is tinted. I think I'll be fine. Except, the parking lot I'm in is shared with a Diner. The owner of the diner comes out and starts talking to Johnny Sr. Apparently I parked in front of a shed that the cleaning staff for the motel use. Johnny Sr now starts talking to the owner of the diner asking her if my car belonged to any of her employees or any of the people in the diner currently. She says she'll ask and she leaves. Johnny Sr then goes into on of the motel rooms, where apparently he lives. He constantly stands in the door way looking at my car. I leave as soon as he looks the other way.
I would come back later in the day and would get film of the lady I was supposed to watch. Was totally faking her injury. Johnny Jr and his girlfriend actually came out a couple times and tried figuring out what cars might be a PI's car. But because they saw my car earlier that day, they didn't seem to suspect it as suspicious.
You Might Also Like: 50 historical figures mocked in their era who were eventually proven right
Add Your Answer! This post is a community curated
Add Your Answer!
Explore more of these tags
Related on Bored Panda
