In the middle of the night, while alone sorting cans in the redemption center he owns in Carroll, Iowa, Brad Sapp heard the words "get out of here." “I honestly thought I was going crazy,” Sapp said, explaining that he looked all over for the source of the voice. When his wife, Carrie, arrived, she teased him saying it must be a ghost, but she, too, heard a voice. This time, it asked for help. A man, later identified as 29-year-old Jordan Kajewski, called out, “I'm in the chimney,” while the couple was trying to figure out what Sapp had heard earlier. He said his wife thought the voice was his at first, but she realized what was really going on when Kajewski said again, “I'm in the chimney!” The couple called 911, and rescue workers were able to get Kajewski out. He told them he fell in while playing hide and seek, but no-one bought it. And did we mention he was naked? Kajewski was, of course, arrested on trespassing charges.

In 2005, the skeletal remains of a teen were discovered in the chimney of an abandoned building in South Los Angeles. Officials initially believed the boy was a runaway and was there for just a few years. But when a forensic artist used the boy's skull to create a portrait, the pieces started falling into place. Robert Thompson, 14, had been missing since Christmas Eve, 1977. Los Angeles Police Det. Chris Barling remained doubtful that Robert died accidentally. As he delved into the boy's family history, he found it was heaped with tales of trauma, tragedy, and bad luck. Theodore Van Smith was the former boyfriend of Robert's sister and had lived with the family. On the day Robert disappeared, Van Smith was not seen the rest of the day. Robert's case went cold until 1985, when a younger sibling, Smith Thompson, told officials Van Smith drove him to a dark alley and raped him in the car saying, "If you don't make me feel good, I am going to kill you just like I killed your brother Robert." Theodoric eventually threw the boy out of the car and ran him over. Van Smith pleaded guilty to five felony counts, including the rape of a child and attempted murder. He was sentenced to 30 years in state prison. But he never confessed to Robert's death. In 2000, he was paroled from prison but was committed to the Atascadero State Hospital in Central California where he remains indefinitely.

A woman became stuck in a chimney for five hours at her home in Pomona, California in May 2016 after purportedly losing her keys. Firefighters subsequently rescued her. When the victim, Ana Moreno, returned home, she did not want to speak to reporters. She suffered only minor bumps and scratches, but was also nursing a "bruised" ego after ending up on the news, her sister said. Maybe try a window next time?

In 2014, firefighters used dish soap to extract Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa from a chimney. The 30-year-old emerged blackened with soot, after a two-hour rescue attempt in Thousand Oaks, California. Nunez-Figueroa made the unwanted visit to a man's home after he ended their brief relationship. The former couple apparently met online and went on about six dates before he called it off. Apparently, Nunez-Figueroa didn't get the hint. She was later arrested for illegally entering a residence and providing false information to a peace officer.

A suspected burglar died in November 2015 after getting stuck in a home chimney in Central California, officials said. “(The homeowner) had tried to light a fire in his fireplace and heard somebody calling out for help in the chimney,” Jake Jensen, of the Fresno County Sheriff's Office, said. It is believed the man entered the chimney overnight, and the homeowners were only altered to his presence when they started the fire. A few minutes after they called 911, “the suspect appeared to be breathing and moving inside the chimney,” the sheriff's office said. Firefighters dismantled the chimney to try and save the suspect, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

In 2014, a British man, Leo Wan, told The Guardian about the time he accidentally slipped inside a chimney during a rooftop party. Wan decided to sit on the chimney because there wasn't much room anywhere else. "I thought it would be dangerous to have my back to the chimney, so I sat on the rim with my legs dangling inside," he says. "In hindsight, that was my first mistake." Partygoers though he was being funny and ignored his hands waving from the top of the chimney. It was then he fell further down to the bottom of the flue, one floor below. He shouted for help for about two hours, but realized the revelers had left the roof! He said, "I tried to get to my phone, which was at my feet, contorting my legs and hands and trying to maneuver it up my body, but I kept dropping it. Eventually, I got my phone up and called 999." Firefighters took 45 minutes to get to Wan, and "dragged me out, which is when most of my injuries occurred—the chimney was quite narrow, and my back scraped along it. I had also taken off my shoes, jeans and jacket as I tried to free myself, so I was only wearing my underwear and a shirt covered in soot." The bemused firemen asked if they could pose for some pictures because they had never seen anything like it. Wan had been down there for nearly seven hours.

In 2010, 49-year-old Dr. Jacquelyn Kotarac apparently tried to force her way into her "on-again, off-again" boyfriend's home by sliding down the chimney and died of mechanical asphyxia. Kotarac had been drinking earlier that evening at a restaurant. While she was trying to break in, the man she was pursuing escaped unnoticed from another exit "to avoid a confrontation," authorities said. Kotarac first attempted to get into the house with a shovel, then climbed a ladder to the roof. She removed the chimney cap and slid feet first down the flue. Three days later, her decomposing body was found by a house-sitter, who was at the house to care for the homeowner's fish. The person smelled the woman's body and found her stuck about two feet above the interior opening of the fireplace.

In 2011, a bank in Abbeville, LA that was undergoing renovations discovered a skeleton inside a chimney that had been closed for three decades. The body belonged to a U.S. serviceman, Joseph Schexnider, who went missing in January 1984 while apparently evading arrest for stealing a car. Schexnider had a history of disappearing and cops eventually stopped looking for him. Schexnider entered the bank chimney from the top, and, since he died of "dehydration and starvation," it seems fair to assume he got stuck while inside. If he was planning a robbery, it was a strange one—no bag was found among his effects.