From: Stephen Miles Lewis <elfis@austin.rr.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 23:00:10 -0600
Fwd Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 07:17:52 -0500
Subject: When Police Meet the Paranormal ...


Thanks to Felinda for forwarding this to the Forteana list.

SMiles
http://www.elfis.net

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

http://www.apbnews.com/media/reviews/books/1999/12/16/hidden1216_01.html

When Police Meet the Paranormal ...
Hidden Files Examines Strange Cop Cases

Dec. 16, 1999

By Maralyn Lois Polak

NEW YORK (APBnews.com) -- In Costa County, Colo., two startled
deputies told their sheriff they witnessed a cow "floating
through the air in a beam of light," held aloft by an unearthly
buzz.

Around the same time in Mora County, N.M., sheriff's Deputy Greg
Laumbach got a call about a cow from a hunter and didn't think
much was amiss, until he actually examined the grotesque wounds
of the mutilated cow.

Skin and half a nostril had been removed from the cow's face in
clean, crisp cuts. The tongue had been sliced off and the cow's
genitalia were missing.

Think Dragnet meets X-Files and you'll have a handle on Sue
Kovach's book Hidden Files: Law Enforcement's True Case Stories
of the Unexplained and Paranormal (Contemporary Books, $14.95)
-- wacky, wild, weird police cases bordering on the incredible,
peculiar, implausible and downright impossible.

Extraterrestrials and U.S. government

Theories behind the cattle mutilations, Kovach speculates, range
from extraterrestrial "harvesting" of cells for some purpose --
perhaps new methods of protecting themselves from disease -- to
secret U.S. government projects about which citizens must be
kept in the dark. Neither prospect floats my boat.

You don't usually hear of regular-joe police involvement in
"paranormal" cases, particularly when it comes to cattle
mutilations, UFO encounters, mysterious monsterlike creatures,
ghost "visitations," unexplained graveyard exhumations, occult
sacrifices and other odd stuff.

But Kovach has uncovered an arresting array of atypical cases in
this vaguely goofy catalog of law enforcement
believe-it-or-nots, where, she writes, "most incidents involve
actual police cases, occurring while the officer was on duty."

There's something for everyone here, from a police chase of an
alleged UFO through several jurisdictions to a supposed spirit
of a Native American medicine man intervening to save the life
of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable in 1986.

Police 'paranoia'

The author notes a general police "paranoia" about discussing
such matters on the record. This is prudent logic on their part,
since law enforcement careers have been damaged by mentioning
words such as UFO or ghost. Though, paradoxically, police are --
or would be -- among the most credible witnesses for such
goings-on, since normally they do not truck with superstition or
folklore. Some were willing to share their stories:

Jeopardizing his 21-year police career, Hernando County, Fla.,
sheriff's Deputy Ron Chancey filed a report saying that he'd
seen from his patrol car a huge, dark, boomerang-shaped object
flying some 300 feet off the ground beside him. "It's changed my
life forever and got me thinking about my beliefs," he said. "I
really have to believe there is something else out there. And as
wonderful as that prospect can be, it's also somewhat scary."

Sgt. Jim Riffle recalls eerie goings-on after the West Virginia
State Police converted a deceased man's home into a small
three-person barrack for their troopers. Everything was fine
until they bulldozed and paved over the man's precious, perfect
front lawn. "I think we upset him a bit," Riffle says, recalling
the strange thumpings, typing sounds, pacing noises, door
slammings, and once even a "horrendous bang" as though somebody
had kicked in the back door.

Deep in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, Morgantown
Police Chief Bennie Palmer and Officer Ralph Chapman received a
call from the town cemetery's caretaker about some apparent
vandalism. The lid of a concrete vault had burst through the
ground. There were no signs of digging -- in fact, the ground
had broken from underneath, but it didn't look like it was
caused by an explosion.

It was the grave of Harry Spitz, a child who had died of cholera
in 1912, but the body was well-preserved and still had some
skin. "In fact, you could recognize Harry from his facial
features. He even had lots of long blond hair," Chapman said.
Even after Harry was re-buried and apparently behaving himself,
the officers found themselves haunted by his memory. Not only
had Harry been in remarkably good shape, but so was his
clothing, a stuffed lion found at his feet and some dried
flowers. Yet the fabric on the lid of the casket had rotted
away. No one could explain why.

Paranormal help

Some police officers even shared instances in which paranormal
occurrences have helped them solve cases.

Detective Robert W. Lee of the Lake Oswego, Ore., Police
Department didn't just embrace the paranormal after a psychic
helped him with a homicide investigation -- in which it
eventually was revealed that a husband had killed his wife -- he
even married the woman who provided him with 30 details that
eventually proved true.

When Los Angeles Police Department Detective Tim Moss was
assigned to the brutal stabbing murder case of well-known
California psychic D. Scott Rogo, the officer fielded amazingly
precise predictions from a handful of Rogo's psychic colleagues,
who even were able to pinpoint the owner of a bloody fingerprint
on a drinking glass.

Deputy Rich Strasser, of the El Dorado County, Calif., Sheriff's
Office, was assigned to a baffling missing persons case in June
1994 when a driver called 911 after claiming to spot an
"apparition" of a naked woman by the side of a highway en route
to Nevada from California. An investigation revealed a crashed
car in the nearby underbrush and a 3-year-old boy still alive
next to the amazingly preserved corpse of his 24-year-old
mother. "It's almost as though the condition of her body was
preserved to make things easier for her son," Strasser said. "In
his mind, he thought his mom was just asleep."


Maralyn Lois Polak, a Philadelphia journalist, editor and
spoken-word artist, has reviewed books for The New York Times
and is the author of The Writer as Celebrity: Intimate
Interviews.


Fel

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