David Ragland and I are both retired now and still friends. He is a very religious and church-going man, and while we have occasionally talked about that evening, he still has no opinion on what we saw. Nor do I. Both of us have discussed it with his minster but no explanation has come forth from him either.
That is, no explanation other than we saw and chased the actual spirit of the deceased driver still fleeing from the police.
TRAPPED
By Jess Burlingham
Dispatch said, “You got one not seen for several days and the complainant says there’s a foul odor coming from his apartment.”
“One not seen” is never a good call, especially on a steamy 95-degree July day with the humidity dense enough to support aquatic life. Whenever I had one of these, it was always such a pleasure to step outside afterwards and take a deep breath, not only to cleanse my lungs but also to exhale the image of death from my head before going on to the next call. But this time it was different.
This time something left with me.
The awful stench was apparent from the parking lot, though the apartment in question was 303, three floors up, and it only got worse as we climbed the stairs. The complainant lived two apartments away and told us she hadn’t seen Mr. Jones, who was in his late 40s, for a week. When she smelled the terrible odor, she decided it was time to call the police.
The complex’s maintenance man met us in front of the apartment, unlocked the door, and quickly left, leaving us to open it, either for legal reasons or because he didn’t want to get knocked back by the smell. Smart guy.
We opened it a crack and announced ourselves. “Richmond Police! Anybody home?”
Silence.
We nudged the door open to a blast of heat and an unbearably thick, gut-wrenching odor. I attempted to step inside but the stench was so overpowering I had to back out. My partner gave it a try too but he didn’t make it any farther than I did. A third officer joined us and he was also forced back out into the hallway. There was no doubt in our minds that Mr. Jones was inside and had been long deceased.
The homicide detectives arrived and, apparently accustomed to the odor of death, went in, found Mr. Jones, and quickly determined his death was a natural passing. (Later we learned he had died about two weeks prior.) Although it was impossible to imagine that the smell could get worse, it did when the body retrieval services arrived and began moving the man—he was bloated to double his original size and on the verge of splitting open—for transport. These people do this several times a day in the city and have seen every form of death, but they said they hadn’t had a deceased person in such bad condition in years.
Although the ravages of two weeks in the terrible heat—made worse by an oven left on—had affected the deceased far worse than others I’d seen, the investigation, body removal, and paperwork were all routine. That is, mostly routine.
Something happened to me in the man’s apartment, though I didn’t realize it until I got home around 2 a.m. I stripped off my fouled uniform and left it at the backdoor. I quickly showered, all the while amazed at how overwhelmingly fatigued I was. I attributed it to the unusual intensity of the circumstances—heat, odor, and decay of the body—that was beyond anything I’d experienced. Still, the deep exhaustion surprised me.
There was also something else and it was profoundly disconcerting. I had never felt anything like it before at any time in my private life, during or after any other police situation, and never after a dead body call.
I could feel the dead man’s presence.
It almost felt like he was trying to cling onto me. No, it wasn’t his odor, and it was intense; I’m talking about his … spirit? Yes, his spirit and I could feel it hovering over me, as if trying to possess me. It was so intense, so tangible, so overwhelming that I was on the verge of a panic attack. And I never, ever get panic attacks.
As I lay in bed, my girlfriend sleeping beside me, I fought the feeling but it was only getting worse. A sense of being trapped and restrained seemed to be pressing me deeper and deeper into the mattress. It was such an incredibly strange and oppressive energy. I didn’t understand what was happening. Why was I feeling this terrible—?
Then I knew. Just like that I understood.
I never once felt threatened by the presence; I never felt it was going to do me harm. What I was feeling, however, and I was sure of it, was that he was seeking my help. He was trapped—not me.
I woke my girlfriend and told her about the call and what I was experiencing. She is a deeply spiritual person, almost medium like, and she immediately understood what was happening. After asking me a lot of questions about the call, what all I was sensing and if I would like her to assist, she began to sink into a meditative state of deep concentration to still her mind.
She told me she sensed the spirit’s energy around me and she began to put into words things that were unclear to me. As has happened before between us, I trusted her in a realm that was unfamiliar to me and, in so doing, I could feel her calm me. To others this might seem strange or new age, but I knew what she was doing because I had seen her do it successfully on past occasions. She continually asked if what she was doing resonated with me and if I understood what she was saying.
I don’t know how much time had passed but I suddenly knew the spirit was gone. The weight of it had been lifted from me and I could feel it gone even before she told me it had been released.
Can I explain what I felt, what I knew was happening that night? No. But what I believe is that the dead man’s spirit, or whatever it was, was stuck in a space between his Earthy existence and whatever else there is after. I’m convinced he was clinging to me to help him.
I never felt in danger but I knew for sure I couldn’t carry his weight for long.
EYES
By Bill Coffee
In the summer of 1981, I was a young and eager cop working out of Portland, Oregon’s infamous North Precinct. The often-heard refrain on the Portland Police Bureau was, “You screw up you get sent to North Precinct graveyard shift.” Happily I hadn’t messed up, but I was newbie and working with a senior officer on day shift. Actually, I would have preferred graveyard because it was such a blistering hot summer that year. According to the National Weather Service’s historical data, August 8, the day in question, was a record-breaking 107 degrees.
My partner had court so I was sent out alone with a caution from my old sergeant to watch myself. Ours was a rough beat, Portland’s version of a ghetto where violence was as common as the hookers that lined the streets. But as it turned out, my problem wouldn’t be any of the usual shots fired, knifings, and felony car stops. Mine would be from … well, I’m still not exactly sure.
I told dispatch I was clear and I was immediately sent to meet a complainant that had called in a welfare check, which was typically a “one not seen” call. This entailed the police knocking on the door, checking neighbors and, depending on the circumstances, forcing entry into the residence. Usually the person in question was in the hospital or had taken an unannounced vacation. Sometimes the person had died alone inside their home. I was hoping it wouldn’t be the latter, especially on such an oppressively hot day.
The house was in a seedy neighborhood and I recognized it from a previous contact several months earlier, in which I had warned the middle-aged man about his car’s expired plates. He was a Vietnam War veteran, having served in the early years of the long conflict. He said he was struggling with his faith and spirituality, and he had told me a little about the B’nai B’rith stickers covering his bumper. As a vet, I had a soft spot for others that had served, so I just gave him a warning to get his licensing squared away.
A grim-faced mailman met me on the sidewalk and I asked him the usual who, what, and when questions, though the overgrown lawn, full mailbox, and the accumulation of daily newspapers made it clear how to proceed.
The mailman walked with me around the old, large house. As far as police calls go it was a no-big-deal sit
uation, but I remember feeling somehow grateful he was with me. He was a talker, giddily chatting about everything and nothing, no doubt thrilled by a little departure from his routine letter delivery.
We stopped at what appeared to be the kitchen window; on the inside several large, black flies flitted along the dirty sill. I knew what that meant.
Over the mailman’s constant chitchat, I tried to decipher all the heavy radio traffic on my portable to see if any of the neighboring beat cars might be available to assist. Finally, I asked dispatch and I was told that every North Precinct car was tied up, as was East Precinct’s. Even supervisors were taking calls. I was on my own.
The back porch was enclosed, its feeble door secured by an old-fashioned hook and eye latch. I retrieved my shotgun from my car, returned to the back porch, and easily undid the lock, all the while the enthralled mailman watched from a distance. He remained outside as I moved through the dark doorway.
I don’t know what I expected as I stepped just inside the door to the kitchen—a dead body, maybe, bloody carnage, signs of a burglary—but what I could see from where I stood, there was none of that. It was only an empty kitchen, but not for long.
One of the largest dogs I have ever seen before or since stepped into the kitchen through the far doorway. The muscle-dense beast—black and gray and unkempt—neither growled nor postured. He just stared at me, stared into my eyes so intently, so profoundly that it chilled me despite the intensive heat of the closed house.
I know now that it was an Irish wolfhound, one of the tallest of dogs, even towering over Great Danes. A dumb animal he was not. Those unblinking eyes exuded intelligence … and something else. Even today I cannot put into words what that something was other than to say I could see in them—a presence. Of what? I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. But those eyes and what were in them, burned into my mind.
No way did I want to force an encounter with the great dog so I asked dispatch to have an Animal Control Officer come to the house and get him. The mailman stuck it out just long enough to see the wolfhound extracted from the place and witness what I had told him about the creature.
The animal didn’t fight or resist Animal Control, but it never once broke eye contact with me. Even when it got turned this way and that way as the officer maneuvered him into his truck, the dog continually turned his body toward me or twisted his head about to burn me with the intensity of its eyes.
With the dog finally gone as well as the mailman, and still no backup available for me, I chambered a round into my shotgun, announced my presence, and reentered the hot kitchen. This time I went farther in than I had before the strange dog had stopped me. But I had gone only a few steps before a dreadful scene stopped me again. It wasn’t another great beast, but rather a massive pool of coagulated blood that spread into an empty dining room.
I turned down my radio so as not to announce my movements, and began to stealthily follow the blood trail, which led me into a bedroom where I found yet another large pool. The blood was on a wall too, splashed crimson nearly as high as my shoulders.
Next to it, an open door.
I moved toward it, paused to listen, and then peered around the door facing into a small bathroom. The blood trail continued across the floor and disappeared through another doorway into what looked like another bedroom.
Doors make cops nervous. Much time is spent in the police academy and in ongoing training learning the safest ways to go through a door where on the other side are often surprises, some dangerous, some deadly so. We learn to go in as a team with well-trained strategy and tactics.
But I was little more than a rookie and I was by myself. The big house and its rooms were thick with heavy heat, stench and filth. But my senses shut all those things out of mind, leaving only the two most needed at the moment—my ears and my eyes—both functioning at 110 percent.
I moved quickly through the bathroom, stopped at the door facing to first listen and then quick-peek around the bathroom door into the semi-dark bedroom. The blood trail led across a floor to a rancid, disgusting mattress. On it, the body of the old Navy veteran sprawled naked on his back, his mouth agape in an expression of horror, his open, dead eyes beginning to putrefy. I looked down at his neck and I immediately wished I hadn’t.
His throat was mostly gone, ripped and torn apart as if by some ghoulish fiend. A yawning opening of red shredded meat and white was all that remained of what once was his throat and spine. As horrific as that was, it was his eyes …
I might have thought at that moment, at least for an instant, about the eyes being a window to the soul and all that. But there was something else about them that chilled my thoughts. It was as if his eyes had looked through a portal and saw something dark and dangerous. As if they had seen hell and its tortured beings.
My training overrode these thoughts long enough to continue clearing the house. Then, not entirely certain of what I had seen, I returned to the bedroom and the obscene spectacle on the bed. When I could no longer look upon the terrible sight, I lifted my eyes to the wall behind the bed and at a framed testament from B’nai B’rith. I started to read it when …
I felt a very real sensation of being watched. No, not watched. Studied. This was followed by an extremely heavy, dark, and oppressive energy pushing down on me. It was as if the room itself was drawing breath to assist the crushing weight.
So intense was this sensation that I felt compelled to leave not just the room, but the entire house, and order the medical examiner from outside away from what had occurred inside the walls.
When the ME showed up, I had to go back in and escort him through the dreadful scene. He told me the dog had savaged the dead man’s throat to seek moisture in the awful heat of the closed house. The large blood pools were a result of how the man chose to take his life.
The can of Drano he ingested had literally burned out his digestive track and internal organs.
No crime had been committed, the ME confirmed, and then left—“I’m having a busy day,” he said—no doubt the result of the 107 degrees.
I would have many other suicides during my long police career but the accusation in those two sets of eyes, the man’s and the dog’s, have remained with me to this day. I understand that our minds are a powerful organ and that it’s possible I underwent some form of transference of stress so common to war veterans that are expected to hide or completely bury their emotions. But the intrusive memories and mental images that would appear seemingly from nowhere—the vivid recall of the dog, the man, and the blood— perhaps triggered by something, will not leave me. They are infrequent now and I have put them to rest. I realize they are probably just the result of an accumulation of events over a long career.
As a street cop and a long-time member of SWAT, I faced a lot of evil during my career. But nothing like what I experienced weighing me down in that house. I’m not deeply religious, but I do have a sense of spirituality and I’m convinced I experienced the presence of something unusual that hot day in August so many years ago, some type of evil entity.
Whatever it was, I know it was something at once dark and terrible.
DEAD MAN WALKING
By Cason Kai
It’s cold in Southeast Michigan in January, bitterly cold the closer you get to Lake Erie. I was patrolling a part of an area that is busy in the summer months with boaters and tourist, but it’s desolate in the deathly white of winter. One night I was carefully driving through a snowstorm on a road that leads down to the lake.
That’s when I saw him, a man, walking down the road ahead of me dressed in a suit and a Fedora; the kind of hat men wore in the 1940s. Wrapped around him, a coarse, grey blanket. He walked with a purpose, as if he had somewhere to go.
It was 20-degrees out, snowing hard, and the man was walking on a road where no one should be. The guy had to be mentally ill to be dressed like that in such horrific weather in the middle of nowhere. I notified dispatch that I was going to make contact with the g
uy.
I rolled up on him and positioned my car so he was next to my right front fender. At this distance I could clearly see every detail of his clothing, the rough texture of his blanket, and that 70-year-old hat. I looked down to switch on my alley lights, and when I looked back up …
He was gone.
Thinking he had fallen down, I got out of my car and hurried around to the other side. There was no sign of him. It was snowing so there had to be footprints; there were none. Given the terrible weather it was now a possible rescue mission, so I called for another officer to assist. We thoroughly looked everywhere, but we came up with nothing. No guy, no tracks, nothing.
I got teased a bit at the end of my shift because I had wasted a good amount of time looking for a man who wasn’t there. But I remained puzzled. I had seen him as plain as day and then he—vanished.
At one point, a senior officer pulled me aside and told me something I didn’t know. That road, he said, is notorious for paranormal activity. In fact, not many officers will drive down it after dark. Apparently, beginning in the 1940s to the 1960s, the mob used to dump bodies down there because it was the nearest unpopulated area from Detroit.
It was also common for them to wrap the body in a rug or blanket.
A retired officer told me that one time he was parked in a lot next to the infamous road when he saw a horse-drawn wagon go by. When the officer turned onto the road, it was gone. And this happened in the middle of the day.
I’ve always thought ghosts were supposed to be blurry and transparent. The man I saw was so clear I could see every detail of him.
Either way, that’s the only one I ever want to see.
DEAD MAN’S CANE
By Kerry L. Wood
“Spirits communicate to everyone all the time but most people are too busy to notice.” ~ a medium
Cops' True Stories of the Paranormal: Ghost, UFOs, and Other Shivers Page 3