Baby Lily Groesbeck — The 'Help Me' Voice at the Spanish Fork River (2015)

On the evening of March 6, 2015, Lynn Jennifer Groesbeck, 25, drove off the road near Spanish Fork, Utah; her car came to rest overturned in the Spanish Fork River. The crash went unseen. Roughly 14 hours later, on the afternoon of March 7, a fisherman spotted the car and called 911.

As officers Tyler Beddoes, Jared Warner, and Bryan Dewitt reached the vehicle, they later said, they heard a distinct adult voice say "Help me." Firefighters Paul Tomadakis and Lee Mecham reported the same. The responders answered the voice, righted the car, and found Groesbeck dead (police believe she died on impact) and her 18-month-old daughter Lily unconscious but alive in her car seat, which had been suspended inches above the near-freezing water all night. Lily was hospitalized, recovered fully within weeks, and was raised by her father.

What Makes the Case Unusual

Claims of mysterious voices are common; six named, on-duty public employees repeating the claim to ABC, CNN, and local outlets within days is not. The officers were consistent on the key details: the voice was adult, it came from the car, and it came before they knew anyone was inside. Lt. Matt Johnson of Spanish Fork police publicly confirmed both the accounts and the conclusion that the mother could not have spoken that day.

The Natural Explanations

They are substantial. Rescues are loud, fast, and adrenal — exactly the conditions in which the brain manufactures pattern from noise. A shout from the riverbank, radio traffic, or one officer's own words could have seeded the perception, and the crew's joint debrief afterward gives memory conformity time to do its work. The released bodycam footage does not settle the question; no clearly anomalous voice is isolable on it. The officers themselves stopped short of a uniform supernatural claim — Beddoes said only that all four heard it and none could explain it.

Assessment

The survival of Lily is remarkable but naturally explicable. The voice is the genuinely contested element: well-attested by anecdote standards, unverifiable by recording, and sitting squarely where perception research says false positives live. We score it low — but it is the rare modern case where the witnesses are named public officials with no obvious incentive, interviewed within days.