Illustration of policeman ghost from Weird Georgia (Sterling Press, 2006)
Chief John Barreras gave his job at the Harlem Police Department his complete concentration, working late into the night to complete the never-ending paperwork. The lifelong smoker only learned of his lung cancer a few days before his death in 1991 at age 52, and a growing body of evidence indicates he is still on the job.
Harlem, with a population of 2,500, has a small constabulary-seven officers and four dispatchers whose primary problems involve public drunkenness, drunken driving, domestic disputes, and shoplifting. The department occupies a red brick building that started life in the 1930s as a gas station. It has served as city hall and fire station, and the jail wing was added thirty years ago. Harlem’s claim to fame is as the hometown of comedy great Oliver Hardy-a laundry behind the jail occupies his birthplace.
Bonnie Parker, Harlem’s records clerk and head dispatcher, was close to Chief Barreras and had the first unusual experience. Shortly after the chief’s funeral she was alone in the building when she heard a man coughing in his old office. “I opened the door but there was nobody there,” Parker told Augusta Chronicle reporter Johnny Edwards in October 2001. “It was just cold.”
Parker had heard and seen other unexplainable phenomenon-rapping on a typewriter and file drawers and doors being slammed. During a shift change in 2001 Parker, another dispatcher named Terri Casteel, and a uniformed officer were sitting in the dispatch center. A mounted black and white TV monitor displayed the views from several cameras set up around the building. When the scene shifted to one room the three spotted the back of a man who was bending over to unlock a prisoner’s handcuffs, but there were no prisoners in the jail. A VCR only recorded when the jail held inmates, but Casteel leaped to activate it. “As soon as I went to hit the record button, it was gone,” she said. The officer on screen was wearing the type shirt the department mandated before Barreras’s death.
For some time off duty officers were paged and reported for duty, only to learn that they had not been summoned-at least by the living. The false reports ceased when new pagers were issued.
Barreras’s replacement unlocked his office one day to discover his pictures removed from the walls and neatly stacked on the desk. Later a ceramic police pig was mysteriously shifted onto the center of the floor.
Connected to the dispatch room are the cells, arranged in one row along a concrete corridor. Unidentified figures have been observed on surveillance cameras strolling down the hall, and on one occasion a man was seen standing outside the cell of a rowdy prisoner, Parker testified. One inmate asked the identity of the officer in the white shirt, while a different prisoner claimed to have conversed with the mystery man. Most of the department staff have often heard the heavy jail cell doors slamming shut when no one was in that wing.
Officer Alan Baldwin experienced two different phenomenon. While talking with a dispatcher he heard someone clear their throat and cough. The sound originated from the cells, but no one was back there, he was assured. “I know I heard someone,” he swore. On another occasion, while a sergeant was briefing him at a table in the department’s kitchen, he suddenly heard water running-a faucet had turned itself on.
“There’s something in the station,” said Shawny Justice, the dispatcher working between six p.m. and six a.m. A weekly event was the sound of keys falling on the top of a filing cabinet. One morning at 2:30 the lights winked out and the phone ceased functioning. The problem was a thrown breaker, one of the dead chief’s favorite practical jokes. She has never been frightened by the ghostly activity, believing the chief is just watching over his jail.
Although Barreras’s wife Diane has experienced nothing unusual, the occurrences do not surprise her. “I think he loved the department so much that he’s not ready to leave,” she stated. “Everybody’s got a spirit watching over them, and I think he could be up here looking out for everybody.”
Local politics forced Barreras’s resignation in 1988, but he was soon rehired. “This time they won’t run me off,” the chief reassured his wife. “I’m not leaving.” Apparently he has kept his word.
From Weird Georgia (Sterling Press, 2006).
http://brownsguides.com/weirdgeorgia/20 ... ant-ghost/
