25 Unsettling Voicemails That People Have Received

Phones have made life more convenient in a lot of ways. If you need to talk to somebody far away, just give them a call. Can’t reach them? Text or leave a voicemail to let them know you’re trying to reach them. While the benefits are many, there are unfortunately some slight downsides too.  Recently, a Quora thread went viral when someone asked, “What is the most disturbing message ever left on your voicemail?” Folks dug deep to reveal unnerving voicemails found in their inboxes from which we’ve shared the most unhinged in the gallery below. 

#1 It wasn’t just one voicemail, it was a series of them. My ex boyfriend, you may have read about it in one of my previous answers but the short of it was that he was arrested while we were breaking up for terroristic threats against me and my kids.

Image source: Tiffany Perez After he got out of jail on bond he started calling me from all kinds of different numbers. I stopped answering calls when I didn’t recognize the number. The voicemails he left were terrifying. Describing what he would do to me if he ever saw me again. Threats to my life and my kids lives if I dared to show up and testify against him in court. I was scared for our lives. I changed my phone number as soon as I could. Sadly, I couldn’t afford to move and one day he did try to make good on those threats. I am happy to say that he is serving life right now. Unfortunately, it took him actually k**ling a girl for that to happen. The DA (even with all the voicemail evidence against him) decided not to pursue charges in my case and he was just told to stay away from me. So a few years later I got a call from the DA where he lived wanting to know if I would be a witness to prove that he had done this before. When the defense attorney found out that I agreed to testify and what I would be saying, he talked my ex into pleading guilty. He has a history of this behavior, but he bullied all the others into dropping and recanting. I refused to do that.

#2 Hi Mom. Dad's dead. Love you. Bye.

Image source: Jeanne Caroline Yates, Peter Fazekas / pexels (not the actual photo) That was the message my 14 year old son left on my machine. His father had overdosed some time in the night. My son woke up to him dead in his recliner. I was 1000 miles away in Colorado. I threw some clothes in the truck and my husband and I took off for Houston. We drove all night non stop, headed for the worst part of Houston that I could remember. I didnt know where my son lived. My ex had hidden him from me for 10 years. We ended up 2 blocks from his apartment. It was the beginning of a new life for my son. He grew and blossomed in Colorado. No one missed my abusive drug addicted ex.

#3 It was my dad telling to come bk home now.

Image source: Tash I was 15 at the time and mum was not in the best place. She was struggling with alcohol abuse and she took an overdose in front of me. I ran to my dad to help call the ambulance. He sat there and said let her k**l herself then. (my dad and my mum love each other so much, they couldn't live without each other and still together now 37 years in total. But that night my dad broke.) So I ran….. out the house at 11pm at night not knowing what to do i ran. I was running so hard I didn't even hear my phone going off. I stop about 2 miles away from home and looked at my phone and there was voicemail. He said to come bk home now. Eventually I got bk home and watched my mum leave in the ambulance. It was the first of many attempts over the months. I watched my dad cry for the first time in my life and it broke apart of my heart that night.

#4 One of my bfs that I was living with left one on my phone one tea time. He called me a dirty effing w**re and loads of other insults. I recognized the background noise and knew where he was. I walked into the bar in question. Pressed play on the voicemail put the phone on speaker and let the whole room listen. I didn't get another voicemail ever.

Image source: Lesley Harris, Alex Knight / unsplash (not the actual photo)

#5 An unknown number called me. I didnt pick up so it went to voicemail. When i checked my messages later there was a child crying on the other end. Then there was a thump which was probably the sound of the phone falling on the floor. Then the more distant sounds of a woman shouting, and repeated impact noises, each followed by the child screaming. There was nothing I could do. The kids mom was beating the s**t out of him. After that i started recording all my calls.

Image source: Joseph William Gagin, Andrea Piacquadio / pexels (not the actual photo)

#6 My mom's last voicemail, when I was 26, for sure. My phone had died in the evening and I was out of town. After I bought a replacement charger the next morning and listened to it, I erased it (as I usually did). I don't remember exactly what she said, but she said that I was the best thing that she had ever done in her life, and that she loved me.

Image source: Nicole Padron, Adrienn / pexels (not the actual photo) She often left those kind of sappy messages after a few drinks when I didn't answer. Or if I did answer, she'd ramble on about how much she loved me, that she was proud of everything I did, etc. Little did I know I would never hear her voice again. My mom took her own life that night, soon after the missed call, parked on a logging road near a lake we had always gone to swim and picnic. She was 49. They found an empty bottle of vodka and a gun she had purchased hours before she shot herself. Later I learned she had called me several times. She called her best friend. Neither of us picked up when she needed us most. I feel a deep remorse and guilt about not answering, and then erasing that last voicemail. It will be 12 years since she died in a few days, and it still doesn't hurt any less than when I first learned what she did. Infact, it hurts more.

#7 This was years ago. It was an answer machine message. It happened whilst I was still living at home with my mum, dad and sister.

Image source:  Chris Bishton My mum was the first one to listen to it and was suitably freaked out by it. When she saw me the conversation went like this - Mum “O God, Chrissy, there's a really weird message been left for you on the answer machine! This old woman! She sounds really strange! I'm worried” Me “What? What do you mean? I'm nervous now. What did she say? “ Mum “Just listen to it, she sounds freaky” So I played it with trepidation. A woman's voice says “Chrissy! Chrissy! WHERE ARE YOU? I'M BLOODY WAITING FOR YOU! YOU'RE FOR IT YOU. JUST YOU WAIT YOU MARE! “ I started pissing myself laughing. Mum goes “What? What are you laughing at? She's so weird” I said “It's you! It's you, you cracked cow! It's that message you left for me weeks ago when I was late meeting you! Haven't you heard your voice on tape before? “ Mum “No.” The Bad Weirdo.

#8 I got home and checked my answering machine ( pre mobile phone days for me, anyway)). My best friend had left a disturbing message.

Image source:  Cin Gordon, Norbert Schnitzler / wikipedia (not the actual photo) He said he'd just woken up from a nap and there was smoke everywhere. He sounded confused and suspected there was a bushfire in the area. He ended by saying he was going to get on the roof and see if he could see anything. The message was left around 30 minutes earlier. I'd heard on the radio on my way home that a bushfire had started in the “Hills” as they are locally known. I immediately dropped everything and called his number. No answer. I prayed he wouldn't try and be a 'hero' and try save his home and would just get the hell out of there. I called again and again but still no answer. I worried all afternoon and into the night. He didn't have a car and I didn't know what he was going to do. I kept calling but eventually the lines went dead, taken down by the fires. All I could do was wait. Thankfully early the next morning there was a knock on my door and there he was, traumatized but miraculously unhurt. He had been seen by a neighbour wandering around and was given a lift. They made it out just in time. The fire he escaped was the worst in the country's recorded history. 173 people lost their lives including 3 of my other friends. They named it the Black Saturday Bushfires. Sad.

#9 I was on a night out with my best friend and felt off all night when usually I'm the first one on the dance floor.

Image source: Sam , Ahmed Aqtai / pexels (not the actual photo) My phone was away in my coat for most of the night. I went out for a smoke and checked my phone, noticing I had a lot of missed calls from my aunt. She left a voice message saying she needed to speak urgently and I knew exactly what was wrong. My dad had passed away. I will never forget that night. I broke down completely and my friend had to help me hold it together. 5 months later I got a similar voice message not long after leaving the hospice my mother was in. I had the exact same feeling as the night my dad passed. I still haven't fully processed what happened.

#10 I was in class (first year of community college). This was back when not everyone had a cell phone. I got out of my 7:30am class and had 13 missed calls from a bunch of different phone numbers and 1 voice-mail. The message was from my sister, it went something like this, “Answer your phone. There was a shooting at the school. I cant find our brother.” she had borrowed a bunch of people's phones trying.

Image source:  Gertrude, RDNE Stock project / pexels (not the actual photo) I'll never forget that day. My parents were out of town. I raced down the freeway and two major roads. Within a mile of the school there were tons of cars parked illegally. I parked at my friend's house who lived nearby and ran. I found my sister, hugged her, jumped on a parked truck (with many others) and we looked for my brother. Luckily we found him within 10 minutes. It was one of the scariest moments in my life. I still remember driving him and his friends to go get something to eat. On the way home a construction crew was jackhammering the street and started right when we pulled up. Everyone (but me) ducked… later that day I found out one of my friends died in the shooting…

#11 First day on the job at the VA. My new job is to pay the medical bills for veterans who suddenly go to an Emergency Room. In some cases for some veterans, the law allows VA to pay the ER and the ambulance.

Image source: Mike Thinkman, Austin Distel / unsplash (not the actual photo) I sit down at my new desk. There are messages. The first one is an old man, weak and out of breath. The message is several weeks old. He says, slowly and perhaps in tears, “Please pay my ambulance bill. I can’t live like this. I swear I’ll never call an ambulance again. I ’d rather die. I guess I’ll just die.” That changed my life. I spent the next three years fighting with supervisors, researching the law, finding mistakes on denied claims, and fixing the financial lives of veterans that my office had made mistakes on. Never did find that old vet. Not knowing how the phones worked, I erased the message accidentally. I hope he called again, I was quite successful as a medical financial troubleshooter.

#12 I was at work and my daughter should of been at school and I didn't make it to my mobile in time, so I had to listen to a voicemail message from the school that said “your daughter isn't at school today, there's been an accident on the road, we hope she's okay, please call back! “

Image source: Emma S, MART PRODUCTION / pexels (not the actual photo) So you can imagine where my head went with that, my heart definitely skipped a beat, the colour drained out of my face and panic mode set in. I was miles away from the school and didn't drive, my initial reaction was to get in a taxi quick and start a ground search. So then, when I started to be able to breathe again, i rang my friends who had collected my daughter (our kids were best friends and we became close and they offered to drive four miles out of their way to pick her up and drop her off.) Anyway, it was easily explainable and my heart stopped racing when they said “we were taking the kids to school and a tree fell down on the road so we had to turn back and the children are fine, I've taken the morning off to look after them and didn't want to disturb you at work incase you worried “ Phew massive relief. But i seriously wish the school had explained that instead of leaving a vague message that scared the life out of me! Sheesh.

#13 Paraphrasing it: It's me, I can't believe you are leaving me here, I'll die here, come get me out of here. ( while sort of sobbing between words)

Image source: Carol La Rubia, Sofia Alejandra / pexels (not the actual photo) That was the second identical message left on my answering machine by my domestic violence attacker, who perhaps all of 24 hours prior had tried to k**l me by kneeling on my neck, with my face pushed into the carpet. Didn't matter to him there was an Emergency Order of Protection and No Contact against him. He didn't think I had found out he was quite used to prison, as a convicted violent felon. Or that he had prior domestic violence victims. He didn't think i had found out he had legally changed his name to obscure his past. He thought wrong. He was so busy pretending he was a former Italian-American NYer who was Lucky Luciano's grandson that he was really scared crapless now that he was in a place with real NY thugs and gangsters, who would suss out his fake past in a heartbeat.

#14 I got a voice mail from a surgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital in England (a pediatric hospital).

Image source: Louise Towle, Oles kanebckuu / pexels (not the actual photo) “Hi Ms Turner, this is Dr Husain from Great Ormond Street. Just to let you know your son is out of theatre and in recovery. His brain surgery went well and he should be coming round soon if you want to make your way back to the hospital.” I am not Ms Turner and I don’t have a son, or any children for that matter. This voicemail was left to me over 6 years ago and I still hope that the little boy’s Mum made it to the hospital in time for him waking up.

#15 One day my mother picked me up at school for some reason I can’t remember. When we got home, there was a message from Grandma on the machine (this was back in the days of a separate tape machine the phone plugged into). ”I hate these goddamn machines. Your father’s dead.” *click*

Image source: Melissa, 94-Nigel-Knightwalker / wikipedia (not the actual photo)

#16 “Hey guys, it's Heather. I'm running a bit late, but I should be there in a…..”

Image source:  David Breaux, Ketut Subiyanto / pexels (not the actual photo) There was absolute silence in the room. “Message received: September 3rd at 11:55 am.” Not a word was spoken among the three of us listening to the message and none of us could muster anything useful to say afterwards other than a very weak, “save that message”. It was September 5th. In less than 24 hours, we would be going to Heather's funeral. Her car had been t-boned by a large truck and she had been k**led instantly. The police report showed that the accident had happened on the 3rd. Slightly before noon.

#17 I came home from vacation. That I really needed. Time away from my own prison. I checked my voicemail. I had been in grief hell for over a year at that point. I got a voicemail from my husband's ex. That I don't know, and she doesn't know me. I was grieving my six year old child. She had been Facebook stalking.

Image source: Amanda Ferguson McCulloch, Tim Mossholder / unsplash (not the actual photo) In that message she said “you two little birdies belong together” ( what's birdies supposed to mean) also “you are fat and ugly” OK… fine. Then “I am glad Xander died. He is better off dead, than with you” Woah. I have no idea where she lives, or why she would say such a thing. We don't even live in the same state. I wouldn't say that to anyone ever. Who says that? I have not gotten an opportunity to respond, it's been six years since that call. It was a complete gut punch.

#18 A man left a message on my voicemail claiming that I had stolen his wife years ago.

Image source: Michael Lam, Arina Krasnikova / pexels (not the actual photo) He threatened my life in the message. I called him back. I tried explaining that I didn't know him or his wife but he kept calling me a liar and cursing at me. He said he was coming to k**l me. I waited outside all day. Nobody ever showed up.

#19 I wasnt growing up with my father and I used to get bullied in school, which wasn't too bad at first, since I still had a friend to talk about my problems.

Image source: Chiron Winter, Iswoar / wikimedia (not the actual photo) Well, so he knew all about my father and stuff. Anyway at some point he betrayed me and started bullying me too. I was good in tanking it, so I went to school, pretended everything was okay when I was home, so my mom who was working two underpaid jobs wouldn't have to worry about my s**t too yata yata I know this is boring but it is important for the answer: when I came home after a nice day of getting beaten up and spat on, I saw the answer machine blinking and went to check it, the message was something like this(I deleted it directly after hearing so my mom wouldn't find out, that's why I don't remember the exact wording): “Hi Chiron, it's me *name of my father*, your father… why did you cry in school today, you little bi**h, you cried louder than when I raped your mom, you f**king pu**y a** german s**t, tonorrow we are gonna f**k you up again *group laughter*” Well since I had only known my dad briefly, I wouldn't recognise his voice and at first I thought he wanted to connect to me, but with the insults, they couldn't hide their Turkish accents and I realized really fast what was happening, but it didn't matter, the Turks got their goal, making me cry like a little bi**h again and hating my life even more. Well my only solace was, that my mother didn't have to hear those disturbing things being said about her.

#20 Truly sad story here:

Image source: Mel Newmin, hessam nabavi / unsplash (not the actual photo) When I married, my spouse came to live in my town. Unbeknownst to either of us, someone living here locally had her exact name. We purchased a house and she wanted a land line for security purposes, so it went in her name. Boom! The world had tracked down the missing JS the moment her name appeared in directories. First we got calls from the police at 2am demanding JS turn herself in. We had to call and explain our JS wasn’t their JS. We got billions of calls from bill collectors demanding payment. We got calls from the hospital saying JS bolted on hundreds of bills. We had to explain to all these people our JS wasn’t this scumbag. Then, one Christmas, came the terrible call. A young child called wanting to talk to her mommie. Why wasn’t mommie coming home? Where was she? Couldn’t they spend Christmas together? Such a dreadful person to have abandoned her children, leaving them to reach out to someone who happened to have her name.

#21 I have a message on my phone that I never deleted from my daughter who was accidentally k***ed by a bus just before the bus hit her.

Image source: Roosevelt Wallace , Taylor Grote / unsplash (not the actual photo) She just called to say hello. At first it made me sad and depressed to hear her voice after her death. Some people told me to delete it and move on, but I wanted to remember her voice after her death. In time, It did not make me sad to listen to it sometimes. Instead it made me feel happy. A voice has more realness than a picture. It made me feel like she was still alive.

#22 It wasn't on my voicemail- but a voice on the other end of the phone. “ I'm going to come over and r**e you” I was all alone, it was well after midnight, and I was in a crappy little house in a not so nice section of town my senior year in college.

Image source: Mary Grayson, Solving Healthcare / unsplash (not the actual photo) I slammed down the phone and instantly went into panic mode. I called a friend, woke her up, and she came over and brought me back to her house. I was shaking I was so scared. Both my roommates practically lived at their boyfriend's places, so I was typically alone at our house. When I returned the following morning, I peered around the house, looking for any signs of entry. For weeks, I was freaked out. I found out months later that it was a roommate's childhood friend- thinking he was funny. I screamed at him telling him what he did to me and how I felt unsafe for months. He didn't quite get it and responded “I called back to tell you it was a joke!”. To which I replied “ who in their right mind would answer a phone after midnight, knowing a r**ist was on the other end?!” I never really forgave him, mainly because he never really felt bad or understood why his behavior was above stupid.

#23 It wasn’t left on voicemail as voicemail had not been invented. I was in 8th grade Algebra class The intercom phone beeped.

Image source: Annabelle Lee , Feliphe Schiarolli / unsplash (not the actual photo) My teacher picked it up. I heard her say “ They are all dead?” She hung up and walked to her desk. She said, “Laura, you need to go to the office” No one with me I headed to the office knowing they were all dead. All who ? How? “Why” It was January 25 and so cold. But I was colder. My teeth chattered. My lips turned blue. I was in shock. As I turned in the office I saw my father. They were not all dead. I fainted. I had moved 10 times by then. the only constant friends in my life were my cousin Lynne and my friend Paula in Ohio. Between moves my Dad would send us there until he got us situated. My cousin and the whole family had died in a fire that AM. I have not accepted it and I’m 72. They were all dead. What a terrible message. Could it be worse ? Paula stood by my side. A month later the call came. Paula’s family were sledding and Paula’s sled hit something, turned, flew off a cliff and landed in a major highway. She and her sister were k**led by an 18 wheeler. Yes, they were, in fact, all dead.

#24 This was many many years ago and we did not have cell phones it was left on an answering machine.

Image source:  Judith Bunting, Dan Dennis / unsplash (not the actual photo) I was babysitting my baby sister. I was watching a movie (from the 80″s) called “When a stranger is watching” It is a horror movie about a babysitter and she gets terrifying phones calls with a man asking if she had checked the children and things such as that. The phone rang but I did not answer it since I was told not to, just to listen to the message in case it was my parents calling me and not to answer to anyone else. It was a guy saying that he knew I was babysitting my sister and that I was alone. He told me what I was wearing and what room I was in. I lived in a 4 story old home. This scared the hell out of me. I was 10 years old in a house alone and on top of that watching that movie. He kept calling and leaving messages saying things that I had no idea how he knew unless he was in the house with me. I was so terrified that I could not move, not to even go to the phone to call the police. He kept calling me. I finally took my sister and ran to a neighbors house until my parents came home. Come to find out it was a bunch of male teenagers that lived across the street from me playing a prank. This was one of the most terrifying things that has ever happened to me.

#25 Years ago I received a voice mail from an army buddy who i served with years ago. We would typically text and check up on each other several times a year.

Image source: Samuel Heiting , Alexandre Boucher / unsplash (not the actual photo) Anyways I was working full-time and I wasn't allowed to have my phone on me so the employees kept their phones in there personal lockers. On the way home from work I played the voice mail, it was a short message, he said “ I'm so sorry, tell my wife and kids im sorry. I whipped the truck to the side of the road and called him imedietly. No one answered and I kept calling for several days with no results, I didn't have any other number to try and reach him. After what was probably a week went by I received a call from his ex wife. I Guess she took it upon herself to go thru his contacts on his phone and deliver the news. Its been years now that my friend took his life but it still feels like yesterday. Thanks for the question.