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

by Loren W. Christensen

  A SIGN IN TWISTED METAL

  By Ryan Schwoebel

  I grew up in a household that was “quasi-Christian,” meaning we attended church sporadically and on major holidays. I got involved in Christian youth groups in middle school, eventually becoming born again. But over time, especially in my college years, I walked away from my Christian faith.

  In part, this was due to the partying lifestyle in my fraternity, as well as my exposure to agnostic and atheistic viewpoints from my professors. I was a psychology major, and this was my first exposure to lines of thinking that were rational, that used deductive logic, and that didn’t allow for superstition and religious interpretations to prevail over peer-reviewed, scientific methods.

  When I was a boy I longed to be a cop. My mom tells of washing my clothes and constantly finding holes in my shirts where I had worn a toy badge. As I got older, thoughts of a career in law enforcement waned, particularly in my teen years.

  That changed as I was beginning my junior year in college, still without a real focus on what I wanted to do after graduation. But when those planes slammed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, I decided law enforcement was what I wanted to pursue. I brought my grades up from C’s and D’s to A’s and B’s and pursued internships with police agencies.

  While working my first job out of college I decided to join my local sheriff’s office—Jefferson County, Alabama—as a sworn reserve deputy sheriff. I wasn’t state certified so I could only ride on patrol with a deputy that was.

  Wanting to gain as much practical experience as I could, I went out every weekend on patrol for eight-hour shifts. The certified deputy usually drove and I was the eager rookie riding shotgun.

  About two years into this routine, one of my regular partners called to inform me that something came up at his full-time job, so he wouldn’t be able to go out on patrol that night. If he couldn’t go out I couldn’t go out either, so I made other plans for the weekend.

  A couple of days later, I learned that the deputy had managed to get off work in time to go on patrol, but figuring I was already busy he didn’t call me. Shortly after his shift began, a car T-boned his patrol unit, completely crushing in the passenger side where I always sat.

  The unhurt deputy later told me, “I’m so glad you didn’t come out with me. You would most certainly have been killed if you had been sitting in that seat.”

  I had been praying over the last few months for God to show me a sign that He was real. I asked Him, in His own way and in His own time, to reveal Himself in a manner that spoke directly to me so I would know for certain.

  This experience changed my life and it’s part of the reason that today I teach 7th and 8th grade Sunday school at my church.

  THE VOICE

  By Greg Kade

  “God puts people in our paths for certain reasons.” ~ Greg Kade

  July 3, 2006

  I’ve been working for the Raleigh County Sheriffs Department in West Virginia since 2002.

  On the night of the shooting in 2006, I was technically off duty and working a security job at a construction site. Deputy Hajash, the newest member of the department, stopped by for a short visit. A moment later he got a radio call on a man standing in the middle of the street firing a gun at his own house.

  I could see the concern on the deputy’s face—he was quite young and there was no available backup—so I logged on duty with dispatch, told Hajash to lead the way, and I would gather additional information as I followed in my own vehicle. Dispatch told me there were two young girls in the home with their mother and it was their father who was shooting at the house with a handgun.

  When we got close to the scene, I told the young officer to pull over and we would approach on foot.

  “Are you taking anything?” Hajash asked, which is cop-speak for: “Are you taking a long gun?”

  “No,” I said, and began to head out. But I had taken no more than 10 steps when a booming voice spoke to me.

  Take your shotgun!

  It sent chills to my very core. I don’t know if God allowed my deceased father to tell me this or if it came from God himself, but I know for sure that the loud-and-clear warning, the command, came only to me.

  So I returned to my car and retrieved my Remington 870 shotgun with tac light. My AR15 was out for service.

  As we neared the house, we didn’t hear gunfire but rather loud music, which dispatch confirmed was coming from the suspect’s pickup. The house was located toward the back of the property with a large yard on one side. We stopped near its corner and spotted a male walking in and out of shadows made by a dusk-to-dawn light attached over the garage.

  I instructed Hajash that we would proceed down the fence, go through the gate, and I’d split right and he would go left. The idea was to get into a position between the man and the house. But as luck would have it, the gate was locked. The music was quite loud now so I told Hajash that we would climb the fence and move around the corners of the house. I handed my shotgun to him and began to scoot. But just as I was halfway up the fence, the music stopped.

  “What the hell!” It was the man. For a moment I thought he might have seen me but he was actually referring to the music suddenly stopping.

  Hajash and I could not get the rest of the way over the fence without making noise, so I gently climbed back down. I whispered that it would be better to go around the corner, approach the gunman from the road, and try to prevent him from fleeing toward the house. Fortunately, an eight-foot-high hedgerow hid our advance.

  When I saw the tailgate of a full-sized pickup, I switched on my weapon light and began to sidestep to engage the man. I could see him leaning in his open door, incongruously wearing only Tighty-Whitie under briefs.

  “Police!” I shouted. “Show me your hands!”

  Dispatch told us he had a handgun but when he turned toward us he was shouldering an AK47 and lifting it in our direction.

  I squeezed my trigger.

  The majority of my 00 buckshot went into the suspect’s weapon but the rest punched through his head. He dropped.

  The mind distorts perceptions at such times. My hearing blocked out Hajash’s shots and mine, but the sound of the AK47 hitting the concrete driveway sounded like an explosion. I shouted at Hajash to take cover and watch the house.

  A few months earlier I had served a court order at a home. A moment later, family members from five other houses on the same street came to interfere. The situation became volatile but we managed to successfully serve that warrant. I was concerned something similar might happen this time, and I was especially concerned the young girls would come out and see their dead father. Fortunately, backup arrived and further problems were avoided.

  I truly believe God was watching out for us during this tragic incident.

  The first time was when we were approaching the house in our vehicles. If we had taken the shortest driving route instead of the one driven by Hajash, we would have driven to the side of the house where the shooter was and where there was no cover or concealment. The gunman would have had a superior advantage in the gunfight because of his elevated position and line of sight.

  Second, when Hajash and I were approaching the pickup, we waded through nearly three dozen pieces of spent brass from when the gunman had been shooting at his house. With God’s help, we walked right through all those shell casings without kicking any aside with our feet. If we had, we would have given away our position and the gunman might very well have shot us first.

  Thirdly, Hajash’s was a good police officer but his shooting skills weren’t his strongest asset. Although I feel like we helped each other get through the ordeal, some officers, including non-religious ones, as well as Hajash’s mother, believe I was put into the situation to get him through it safely.

  July 3, 2007, exactly one year later

  I had sought counseling in the months after the shooting because no matter how justified, taking a life is difficult. Making it even worse was t
hat I could relate to the man being a father. I had a young daughter, as well, and I had just found out I had another on the way. My greatest concern from the moment I squeezed my trigger was for the man’s daughters.

  On July 3, one year to the day since the shooting, I was a corporal working the night shift. Although I was still having issues with what happened a year earlier, I knew if I didn’t go in I would never be able to work another July 3rd and 4th. My wife was at home listening to a police scanner, which I had never allowed in the house, but she understood how important the date was to my psyche, and had gotten one from somewhere.

  Within two minutes of my shooting 12 months earlier, dispatch put out a call on an armed man barricaded inside his house and holding his family hostage.

  He had already discharged a shotgun inside the home.

  Immediately my wife called me; she was upset, and talking a mile a minute. She didn’t want me to go to the call. Let the others handle it, she pleaded.

  “Melissa,” I said affectionately. “What kind of a man would I be if I didn’t go?” With that she knew I was taking the call.

  I always pray anytime I get a hot call or execute a high-risk search warrant. On the way to the barricaded armed man, I prayed, “Dear Heavenly Father, please keep us all safe and let this end without violence. But should the need for violence arise, please let us all go back home to our families. And God, if it’s my time, please take care of my family and always let them remember I loved them.”

  We took up our tactical positions at the scene and I used my cruiser’s PA system to talk the guy into giving up. He came out peacefully five minutes later.

  But I know in my heart that it wasn’t me who got through to the distraught man. It was God using me to get him to turn himself over to law enforcement. That Sunday, I told my pastor what happened. He smiled gently, and said, “Greg, don't you see. God has healed you. Your internal strife should be over.”

  Yes, the majority of it was over, and it was made abundantly clear by the way the barricaded man call played out. But one thing still hung over my head: I knew that one day I would meet the daughters of the man I killed.

  This year I did.

  I’m a school resource officer now and a teacher contacted me to say one of the daughters wanted to meet me. Was I nervous? Oh yes, more than I ever was in my 28 fights as a boxer. The emotions were running high, as one of these young ladies was sitting on the tailgate of my pickup truck needing to know what happened that night. My wife told the girl, in a gentle, motherly tone, that it had been a horrific experience for me too and that I had sought professional help. That softened the mood and made it a little easier to tell her what had happened. It was important that she actually hear, not just listen to my explanation of that night.

  It was clear that my side of the story, which conflicted with the skewed version her family had told her, confused the young lady. In the end, she said she wanted to get to know us, and with that, the seed of communication had been planted, and it’s now beginning to grow.

  I used to ask myself why God would let this happen to me. I believe now that it all comes back to what I said earlier: God puts people in our paths for certain reasons.

  Whenever I relate my story to someone, I get emotional telling about the Voice that spoke to me so loud and clear that night. I'll go to my grave knowing it was from above.

  HE PULLED THE TRIGGER FOUR TIMES

  By Loren W. Christensen

  You got to be tough to live out West and never was that expression more true than on that December day when freezing rain was pinging off the roof of the police car and a howling wind had dropped the windchill to 15 degrees below zero.

  Veteran Officer Jace Lansford patrolled the streets of his beat as usual, though he didn’t expect much to happen on such a miserable and bitterly cold day. But he was about to get a call from dispatch that would heat things up and change his life forever, as well as the life of another man.

  “Complainant says she was taking a shower,” dispatch said, “and a man began chopping through the outside wall of her house, just on the other side of her shower stall.”

  Officer Lansford got there as quick as he could on the dangerous streets, but the suspect was gone. Neighbors who had heard the commotion met the officer out in the ice rain and said the man was rambling incoherently and appeared high. The officer took the complainant’s information, and then parked a block away to write up the report and watch the streets.

  Lansford had yet to go back into service when another beat car was dispatched to a residential alarm in his district. He grabbed the mic and told radio he would take the call but asked for the other car to keep coming. There are lots of alarms on stormy days but he had a feeling, and the veteran officer always trusted his gut.

  Lansford got there first, and slid over a fence to find the backdoor to the home damaged. His gut feeling intensified and he decided it was best to wait for his backup. But the second officer couldn’t get over the fence, and he told Lansford he would get a shotgun and come around the other side.

  He had no sooner left when the burglar came out the backdoor and froze in place when he saw the uniformed officer standing a few feet away.

  The burglar, William Warren, was high and his mind was dulled and foggy. That wasn’t the 26-year-old’s first face-to-face with a police officer; in fact, beginning as a child there had many, and none of them had been pleasant for the man who had a long history of drugs, burglaries, car theft, fights, and possession of stolen firearms.

  Warren had lived for years with his mother in one of the city’s crime-infested projects and getting pinched by the police was just part of his life. Warren was just a teenager when his father, far from an upright citizen, introduced the boy to crosstops and crank, which started the lad on a 20-year love affair with hard drugs.

  “I had no fear,” Warren said, “because I was seeing everything through a big fog. After getting scared away from the first house, I went to another but they had a big dog. I kicked in the door anyway and it set off a loud alarm. I was stoned, and I went in regardless. I was busy collecting stuff when I saw the police car pull up outside.”

  Officer Lansford drew his gun and shouted at the man that had just exited the house to put up his hands. “But he kept moving closer to me,” Lansford said. “I backed up, keeping my gun on him. He kept coming until he was about four feet away. He was making arm movements as if trying to distract me. He wanted to lunge for my gun.”

  Lansford sighted his weapon on the man and was shouting commands when the burglar casually turned and began walking away.

  Warren said later he never wanted to get the officer’s gun. He had one of his own.

  Lansford didn’t see him pull it; he said later it was as if Warren suddenly had it in his hand when he turned around. It was a cheap, Saturday night special.

  “I just wanted to scare the cop away,” Warren says. But that’s not what happened.

  Gunfire.

  Warren’s gun was pointed at Lansford’s chest as he squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times, and then a fourth.

  Lansford says, “It was if I was outside my body watching myself fire my gun.” His first round punched through Warren’s side and went out his back. The next round went through the man’s stomach and crushed his spine.

  Warren remembers, “I instantly felt all the electricity leave my lower body.”

  Lansford took cover behind the corner of the house. He could hear Warren cursing and saying over and over, “I wasn’t going to shoot you.”

  When the two officers finally rounded the corner, their guns pointing, they saw Warren scooting on his rear and dragging his dead legs. “I’m paralyzed!” he shouted over and over. “I’m paralyzed! I wasn’t going to shoot you.”

  Warren’s gun hadn’t fired. The hammer dented the primer of four cartridges, but not one exploded out the end of the barrel that was pointed dead center on Lansford’s chest.

  Warren would be in and out of the
hospital for several months. Finally when he was well enough to go to court, the judge gave the man only five years probation. Not one day behind bars for attempting to kill a police officer.

  Lansford was enraged because of the light sentence.

  Warren was enraged because he had been shot.

  In time, Lansford decided he couldn’t stay angry forever, and he asked his church to prey for him and the burglar. Warren mellowed too. He said, “Why was I hating a guy for doing the same thing I would have done if the roles were reversed.

  A year later, Lansford and his partner pulled over a car leaving a known drug house. Warren was inside. Officers drew down on him, searched him and the car, but they didn’t find anything. Meanwhile, Warren’s father, a career criminal, repeatedly made threats to kill Lansford, not just because of what happened to his son, but because Lansford had arrested him repeatedly on drug charges.

  Over the next six years, Warren continued to hang out with his doper friends, all of whom idolized him for trying to kill a cop. At one point, he was arrested in California during a drug raid and sent back to his home state where he was sentenced to a year in prison for probation violation. Warren said it was a blessing because he got into a drug program behind bars and was clean when he got released.

  Warren found a job and avoided his drug friends. More importantly, he pondered why his life had been spared. “In the hospital,” he said, “I had an out-of-body-experience and I could feel myself going toward God. But I had done so many bad things in my life that I was sent back to correct them.”

  Warren also heard that Lansford had asked his church to pray for him.

  After the former burglar got a car equipped so he could drive, he would often cruise the country roads. One day he passed a sign for a Catholic church. “I couldn’t see it from the road, but I got curious and drove down it to find a big, beautiful church. I was immediately drawn to it but the doors were closed.”