Cops' True Stories of the Paranormal: Ghost, UFOs, and Other Shivers

by Loren W. Christensen

  The average snowfall in Roanoke, Virginia is 20 inches and it can get bitterly cold. Such was the case in the winter of 1985. On the day it happened, grey, laden skies had dumped about 18 inches on us, and besides the usual closers, the city parks had been shut down for several days. While everyone else huddled around their furnaces in their homes, cops were out in the storm.

  David Ragland was my partner and we were cruising through the parks looking for anyone that might be vandalizing and stealing, as thugs are apt to do when they think they are free to act out in adverse weather. One park we checked was especially remote and we had to plow our way through the snow to the restroom building. These structures are particularly attractive to copper thieves that go after pipes and fixtures to sell.

  As we neared the building, we both heard a loud, metallic—

  Bang!

  Ten seconds passed. The silence was especially profound with everything under a heavy blanket of freshly fallen snow.

  Bang! There it was again.

  Suspecting we had rolled up on copper thieves, we got out of our unit and approached the restroom on foot.

  Bang!

  Bang!

  We moved to the door and listened.

  Bang! We pushed through the door ready to confront the thieves. David scanned right and I looked left, and then our eyes fell on the only person in the deepfreeze-like room.

  Perceptions:

  He was an older man lying on the floor next to the sink.

  In his hand, a walking cane.

  Just above him, a series of metal pipes attached to the wall.

  The man was quite dead.

  The banging had stopped.

  We didn’t know when he had died or why, but our guess was he had froze to death. We called the medical examiner and while we waited we checked around outside. There were no other footprints in the fresh snow.

  Later, the medical examiner told us the man had been intoxicated and dead at least 24 hours. The cause of death was official: He had frozen.

  If it hadn’t been for the banging on the pipes, he wouldn’t have been found until days later when the snow had melted and people—children—were once again out and about.

  We never heard the banging again and we never found a logical reason for it, other than the cane the dead man clutched in his hand, where he lay, perhaps wanting desperately to be found under the pipes.

  A TOUCH OF THANKS

  By Alexis Garcia

  “Gratitude is the memory of the heart” ~ Jean Baptiste Massieu

  I had completed my field-training period and had been working on my own for a few weeks when it happened. It had been a cool, overcast day and I was working the afternoon shift, which began at 4 p.m. I sat impatiently through the sergeant’s 30-minute roll call and then I was the first one out the door, into my patrol car, and onto the street. This was my usual because I was always eager to get into the thick of it.

  I had no sooner hit the street than dispatch broadcasted a BOL [be on the lookout] for a dark blue Nissan pickup with an unknown plate driving erratically on SR-1 highway at speeds of over 85 mph. Apparently, information was being relayed to dispatch from a motorist trying to keep up with it. I was just north of the truck and in a perfect location to watch for it, but I was no sooner in position than dispatch said the pickup was speeding by an overpass north of where I was. I quickly merged my patrol vehicle onto SR-1 and floored it to catch up.

  Dispatch updated, saying the driver of the truck was still all over the lanes and using the shoulders to pass other vehicles. Just as I was gaining ground on him, a huge cloud of dust and debris erupted ahead of me on the right shoulder. I was in the far left lane, so I pulled to the side into the gravel, and anchored it. I goosed my patrol unit backwards until there was an opening for me to safely get across the busy lanes to the other shoulder.

  The smoke and dust had cleared enough to see that the Nissan had center punched a tree head-on so hard the thick trunk was imbedded about five feet into the engine bay. The airbags hadn’t deployed, leaving the driver slumped unconscious over the steering wheel.

  I shouted at dispatch to send fire and an ambulance. I probably sounded panicky but I had never seen a collision so bad. I reached through the driver’s window and touched the man’s shoulder knowing he was in bad shape, maybe dead.

  “Hey, wake up,” I called to him. No response. “Hey, come on, wake up.” Still nothing.

  Someone ran up to help and because it was impossible to extract the driver right then, I asked him to hold the injured man’s head immobile so I could do CPR where he sat. But the more I saw what had happened to him—the steering wheel was imbedded into his chest and his legs were completed crushed—I knew he was dead. But still I had to try.

  Each time I compressed his chest it felt like pushing into a bowl of mush and with each repetition blood gushed from his nose. Ambulance and fire had yet to arrive so I continued, though I knew it was useless.

  When fire medics finally got there, the man was declared dead.

  It was an eerie feeling seeing a dead body for the first time, let alone doing CPR on the man. My sergeant showed up and told me to work traffic control while he took photos. I slipped on my reflective vest, setup a cone/flare pattern, and began waving people through the scene.

  As is always the case, some were obeying me and others were slowing to rubberneck the crashed truck, and the flashing emergency lights from the ambulance, fire rigs, and other police cars. I was guiding traffic with my left hand while holding my right along my hip. I would never have given any thought to this seemingly unimportant detail if it hadn’t been for what happened right then.

  Someone took hold of my right hand.

  My first thought was another officer wanted to show me something or had a job for me to do. But why would he take my hand instead of my arm? I turned to see what he wanted …

  There was no one there—there was no one within 30 feet of me.

  I remember feeling chills crawl down my spine; I still get them just thinking about it. It’s hard to explain but I suddenly felt really cold. I had never experienced anything like it before and never since. It really creeped me out.

  By the time I had finished directing traffic and returned to my car, I felt a sense of relief and I was surprisingly quite calm. I sat there for a moment thinking long and hard about what had just happened, and what it was that touched me. Eventually, I went back on patrol and finished my shift as usual. I didn’t dare tell anyone because, well, who would believe me?

  Later, I found out that the driver was actually a friend of a friend of mine and he had been suffering from a drug addiction. I guess some demons you can’t put to rest.

  What do I think I felt in the middle of the highway that night? All I know is I was busy directing traffic when someone or something grabbed my hand.

  Possibly it was the driver of that pickup—his spirit—saying to me, thank you for trying.

  THE SNITCH

  Del Kane

  Car chases are exhilarating. Dangerous, for sure, especially in heavy downtown traffic, on jammed freeways, and in school zones. Less so late at night when the streets are barren of cars and the sidewalks are deserted. But add wet streets, a cold drifting fog, and a driver armed with a gun …

  Officer Thomas controlled his emotions and spoke clearly into the mic as he careened around corners in the sleeping residential neighborhood in pursuit of a fleeing dark blue sedan. Even when the driver nearly lost it and bounced off the curb, Thomas remained composed as he continued to relay his location to the other cars rushing to assist in the narrow streets. Sometimes the suspect was half a block ahead and other times Thomas was right on his bumper. The officer didn’t know the driver, but he wondered if he might be escaping to a specific location, one of these houses, maybe.

  The suspect slid to a stop, sprang out the door, ran up onto a porch, and into a house. His house? A stranger’s? Thomas gave his location to dispatch before following the man inside. If th
e suspect lived there, he had home court advantage. If it was a stranger’s home, he and Thomas were on equal footing.

  The house was quiet, dark, and the only known factor was that it was occupied by at least two people: a desperate man who didn’t want to go to jail and a police officer who wanted to take him there.

  After Thomas cleared the living room and a small kitchen, he moved stealthily over to the entrance to a hallway and quick-peeked around the corner. It appeared to lead to an unknown number of bedrooms and bathrooms, all places that needed to be checked. It was eerily quiet in the house, but outside the night was filled with the wail of approaching police cars. Thomas crept around the corner and into the hall, his gun in his hand, his breathing controlled.

  The man was hiding in a closet. His bullet, fired from less than 15 feet away, tore through Thomas’s face.

  Somehow the wounded officer returned fire, the bullet missing. The suspect shot again, the round ripping through the officer’s hand. Back-pedaling toward the living room, Thomas yanked his trigger but his rounds hit the doorframe.

  The nightmare continued as the suspect moved toward him firing, but this time it was his turn to miss. Thomas shot one, two, three times, the first round hitting the man near his heart, the second slamming through his shoulder, and the third punching through his leg.

  Within minutes, the formerly sleeping neighborhood was in chaos as a disco show of strobing red and blue lights from a dozen police vehicles and an ambulance bounced off the sides of houses and trees. Some officers began a high-risk coordinated sweep through the streets and yards, other officers set up perimeters two blocks out from the shooting site, ever alert for the fleeing suspect that was now wounded, desperate to escape the area, and willing to shoot anyone that got in his way.

  Yards and garages were checked, cars were looked in and under, trees were searched with flashlight beams, and frightened neighbors were told to stay inside.

  Officers not assigned an area to canvas conducted their own searches. Such was the case with Officer Malik and Officer Kane.

  By himself, Kane moved through the shadows from yard to yard, gun drawn, his eyes searching for any sign the suspect had passed through the area. Coming to the end of the block, he halted under a large tree that concealed him from view. No one could see him but he had a good visual of a four-way intersection, lit in a yellow-orange hue by an overhead streetlight. Kane hadn’t been standing there long before he detected movement from the side of a dark house across the street. He started to inform dispatch but realized it was a cop, Officer James Malik, moving through the shadows.

  Kane watched as Malik hesitated at the side of a fence, no doubt pausing to look over the open intersection before deciding what to do or where to go next.

  Dispatch said Thomas had wounded the suspect, possibly multiple times before he fled the house in an unknown direction, no doubt in a haze of pain and panic. If he was hit bad and he knew he was dying, he might decide to go out with a bang. It happened all the time. Suicide by cop, it’s called.

  Kane noticed Malik jutting his head as if leaning forward to better see something. But he wasn’t looking about at the surrounding shadows; he was looking toward the lit intersection. A minute passed, and Malik stepped away from the house and walked down the slope of lawn to the sidewalk, all the while looking into the intersection.

  Kane held his position, not sure what the other officer was up to. He didn’t like the idea of stepping out of the shadows, let alone into a lit, wide-open street.

  Malik crossed the sidewalk and stepped off the curb. He took another three steps before stopping under the streetlight. Kane watched him carefully as he tilted his head as if listening. Then Malik nodded, and said something too low to hear. He listened again and then snapped his head to his left. Kane was at a loss.

  Malik abruptly moved out of the streetlight, crossed to a house on the far corner, and headed toward a garage, his gun leading the way. Kane moved out from under the tree and started to cross the intersection, all the while trying to see what the officer was reacting to. Malik stopped before a shrub near the garage.

  A bloody man stood up from behind the bush. He thrust his weapon at Officer Malik but the officer was faster, and sent a fatal bullet into the man’s body.

  Once more chaos erupted in the quiet neighborhood. Police cars slid into the intersection and the siren of an ambulance moaned in the distance.

  It would be hours before the neighborhood was again quiet, though it would be months, maybe years, before the families would feel their lives were again normal.

  Sometime later Officer Kane was able to confer with Malik.

  “How did you know where he was hiding?” Kane asked. “The suspect. How did you know?”

  “How?” Malik said, puzzled at the question since he know Kane had a full visual of the intersection from where he had been standing. “That old black man told me.”

  Confused, Kane asked what old black man.

  “The one in the intersection, Kane. The old guy standing under the streetlight. He told me exactly where the suspect was. Behind that bush.”

  Note: Kane told me there was no one anywhere in the area that night and he had a clear and unobstructed view of the four streets, the sidewalks, and the well-lit intersection. The officers talked about it at length and agreed to keep what happened just between them.

  Until now.

  Though shot in the head, the officer survived and retired years later after a long career.

  THE COUPLE

  By Melissa Davis

  It was cool that 9 o’clock fall night, cool enough for a jacket and wet enough for rain gear. Actually, the rain was slapping my patrol car so hard my wipers were struggling to keep up.

  I was working as a patrol deputy, assigned to a small county with a little over 370,000 people.

  Small, but it has a reputation for over 50 haunted locations, some of which are just legends and hearsay, but others are well documented.

  Squinting through the rain-hammered windshield, I turned off Lone Rock Road and headed eastbound on Powell Road toward Tall Pines Park. The park’s 64 acres of dense woods was quite nice when it wasn’t pouring and I often enjoyed sitting in its parking lot to do my paperwork. A nursing home across from the park sat by itself; the closest house was about three blocks down on the opposite side of the road. One of my duties on the night shift was to close the park at dusk and to check to ensure it was clear of people, which wouldn’t be an issue on such a terrible night.

  Or so I thought.

  I had no more pulled onto Lone Rock when my hard-working wipers revealed two people walking across the road, both wearing jackets with the hoods up over their heads. It was unusual to see anyone out at that hour, especially in a storm without an umbrella, and walking toward Tall Pines Park, of all places. So I pulled up next to them and lowered my passenger window.

  “Everything okay?” I shouted over the pounding rain.

  A man, late 40s, leaned in my window. “I was taking my mother for a walk,” he said, “and we’re headed home now.”

  There was something about his voice, the tone. It was so dull, almost … robotic. And they were out for a walk in a downpour?

  Still leaning in the window, he added in that strange monotone, “We live in the first house on the left.”

  He straightened and a moment later an elderly woman’s face appeared in my window. “Thank you,” she said in that same dry, lifeless voice as the man’s. Then she too moved away from the opening.

  I rolled up the window and began to drive off. Wait—

  We live in the first house on the left.

  I stopped in the middle of the road. There is no house on the left. Only Tall Pines Park is on that side. I looked up at my rearview mirror.

  The couple wasn’t there.

  I moved the mirror left and right, but still I couldn’t find them. I grabbed my flashlight, got out, and shined it all about. They were gone. But how …? I quickly got back into my car
and thoroughly checked the area. Nothing.

  But where could they have gone in such a short period of time? I had driven no more than 10 seconds, if that, after I left the couple when I stopped and began searching for them. There was simply nowhere for them to have gone in that time frame. Not into the park, not down the street, nowhere.

  Later, I asked other deputies if they had ever seen the couple or if they knew anyone that lived on that sparsely populated road with that description. None of them had.

  For seven more years I worked that area in our small community, and I never saw them again.

  THE WARNING

  By Loren W. Christensen

  Police officers and just about anyone with experience in the realm of violence understand the concept of “I had a gut feeling.” I had had my share of them in the Vietnam War and on the city streets as a cop. But this time—a pleasant afternoon in August—the feeling was different because it came at me out of the blue when I was engaged in a no big deal traffic stop.

  Let me illustrate the difference between what is considered a typical kind of gut feeling in police work and what I experienced on that summer day.

  The previous winter, other officers and I responded to an armed robbery of a veterinarian hospital in which staff and customers, to include an off duty cop, were forced into a large dog cage. The cop was carrying his weapon but he was quickly overpowered and disarmed.

  Just as we arrived at the hospital, dispatch told us the three armed holdup men had fled out the backdoor. One officer went into the hospital to gather information and the rest of us began a coordinated search of the back lot and the connecting backyards of private residences.

  There were a number of stacked kennels in the lot, waist-high weeds, two sheds, and an old garage. This was before cops called SWAT for every little thing, so the three of us searched the kennels, the small buildings, and behind a six-foot high wooden fence surrounding the lot.