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- Cases of mutilated cows and a mysteriously preserved
body are chronicled in book.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Extraterrestrials and U.S. government
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- Police 'paranoia'
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- 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:
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- * 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."
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- * 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.
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- * 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.
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- 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.
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- Paranormal help
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- Some police officers even shared instances in which paranormal
occurrences have helped them solve cases.
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- * 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.
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- * 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.
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- * 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."
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- _____
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- 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.
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