“He’s a space alien, after all”: 15 real private investigator stories that belong in a movie

Mysteries abounded in a popular Ask Reddit thread calling for stories from actual private investigators—the stranger, the better. Before you ask, yes, private investigators are a real thing and not just a product of black and white movies from the 1920s full of fast-talking blokes in trench coats.

Real PIs often look into workers compensation cases, people who have applied for disability benefits, or end up as process servers. Of course, you can also hire them to follow your partner around if you suspect them of cheating, and there were definitely a couple of those stories in this thread.

"Private investigators of Reddit, what is the most bizarre task you've been assigned to?" asked OP.

For the most part, however, private investigating isn't as glamorous as it sounds. A lot of them get hired for ridiculous but ultimately boring jobs like following around people's pets all day. Occasionally, they also get clients who are simply nuts, which they may or may not discover until after they've taken the job.

Pull up for mysteries, adventures, and a surprising amount of butt stuff, courtesy of Reddit. These stories are entertaining but may kill any ambitions you once had to get into the private investigation game.

1. Tailing the cat

"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." —u/questionguy1000

2. The woman who wasn't blind

"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." —u/trackerjakker

3. Much worse than cheating

"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 Cams 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." —u/AvoidableBoat67

4. The mysterious briefcase

"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."

"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 'F*ck,' 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." —u/NedTaggart

5. Low-effort bugging

"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." —u/dcfix

6. The final case

"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 'sh*t 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." —u/Kryimsson

7. The wandering canine

"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." —u/spartan117au

8. The invisible maintenance man

"I had a case referred to me by an attorney I worked for involving a woman who was convinced that her condo maintenance man was going into her home while she was gone and moving things around."

"I met her to discuss the case and she seemed rational, she was an attractive older woman, the guy would obviously be familiar with the condo layout and would have access, and hell, I've seen weirder things. So we proceeded."

"A couple of days go by and she calls. I go by and get the tape (this was before digital recording) and check it out. There's nothing on it but her. I meet her to tell her this and she says, 'He must have some machine that makes him invisible. He's a space alien, after all.' She had not previously mentioned this vital tidbit of information." —u/DoktorInferno

9. Missing for 20 years

"I found a lady who'd been missing for twenty years out of pure, dumb luck. I was getting lunch another town over and she walked out of a resale shop across the street. It was so unexpected that the only footage I could get on her was with my sh*tty phone camera." —u/44Renegade

10. Child kidnapping

"Was asked by a prospective client to kidnap a child who's parents were in the middle of an ugly custody battle, the one parent was keeping the child in violation of a court order and this family member thought this would be the easiest solution, nope, passed on that one." —u/Ghost_of_Sniff

11. The miracle

"After retiring as a cop, he took on a PI gig and was once involved in an open/shut injury related case which was about to award a massive insurance payout and go forward with a huge lawsuit."

"The person he was investigating was apparently made to be quadriplegic after a work related accident, he even had a doctor confirm that he indeed had irreversibly damaged his limbs. My Grandfather decides to go out on a final 'ah fuck it' check in after about a week of investigation. It was all for formalities sake, as again, the guy basically already had won."

"When he gets to the quadriplegic man's neighborhood however, he was quite surprised to see this man fixing shingles on his roof." —u/BomToody

12. A dog, framed

"Keep watch on the front of the house to see which neighbour was letting their dog sh*t on the yard without picking it up. 3 weeks later a homeless guy opens the blast doors. Case closed." —u/Ryanbrasher

13. Divorced for good reason

"A couple was divorcing and the wife was sure her husband was sticking random items of hers up his a**."

"He was." —u/you_are_d00med

14. Job denied

"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." —u/themeowfactory

15. The hard-working crackhead

"I worked for a PI company that mostly handled workers compensation cases for insurance companies or other employers."

"Assigned to a case in Seattle where a guy was claiming am upper back and shoulder injury. After a few hours on site at his house, he pulls up in a truck, proceeds to empty the truck bed of landscaping equipment ALONE. After he has put everything away, he walks over to the side of his neighbors house, pulls out a piece of the siding of the building, withdraws a crack pipe and smokes it in front of me, all on camera." —u/bojangles001

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