“I worked as a medic for an ambulance service in the Rio Grande Valley during the late ’80s and early ’90s. This particular incident happened in 1990, and it still sends chills down my spine.
One evening, we were dispatched to the old San Juan Hotel in San Juan, Texas. The call came in as a possible heart attack—an elderly man reportedly collapsing on the top floor.
As we approached the entrance, a strange man stepped out of the shadows. At first glance, he looked like a typical vagrant—disheveled and dirty.
But what made my skin crawl was the way he was acting. He was grinning from ear to ear, almost bouncing on his feet like a child who couldn’t contain his excitement. Then he started laughing and shouting, “Ha ha! He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s gonna die! Hahaha!”
We ignored him, assuming he was just a homeless drug addict loitering around the property. We entered the hotel, found the patient on the top floor, and loaded him onto the gurney. When we exited, the strange man was gone. Moments later, we were in the ambulance, racing to the hospital.
After turning the patient over to the ER staff, we went back to cleaning the rig—business as usual. That’s when it happened.
Over the radio, through the static, came a voice—that voice. The same gleeful, taunting tone we’d heard outside the San Juan Hotel:
“Ha ha! He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s gonna die! Hahaha!”
We froze. My partner and I stared at each other. At first, we thought it had to be a prank—maybe our supervisor was messing with us. But when he radioed in moments later, angry and confused, demanding that we stop fooling around, the blood drained from my face.
We explained that it wasn’t us. He swore it wasn’t him either.
There was no way that vagrant could’ve accessed our radio frequency—none at all.
To this day, I can still hear that laugh echoing through the static.
It remains one of the strangest, most unsettling experiences I ever had as a medic.”-John A.
