THE MAN BY THE CROSS I would like to start off, by saying this is completely true, I witnessed this personally. I had just graduated from the Police Academy and it being that I was the new guy, I got stuck with the graveyard shift,11-7. I didn't really mind except for it being so quiet. I live in a small town. I was on routine patrol it was around 2:00a.m. when a group of teenagers flagged me down, they told me there was some guy standing in the ditch dressed in all white, at that point I called for another officer thinking it was a wreck or someone that was drunk. On my way a light rain started upon getting near the area where the teenagers said this man was. The rain got harder as I pulled my cruiser to the side of the road and turned on my spotlight searching the sides of the road. As I was getting ready to leave another car stopped and said there was a man that needed some help around the next curve, so naturally I hurried up and got over there. Upon pulling up I noticed a man down on his knees, I got out of my car and asked if any one was hurt? I got no response, so I started walking down the embankment of the road when the rain really started coming down. I turned around to go get my raincoat. When I reached the top of the road my partner was getting out of his car and we both got our raincoats and flashlights and started back down the hill. About midway down I searched with my light looking for the car but there was none. When I was within 20 feet of the man standing by the tree he turned toward us with a confused look on his face and pointed to a cross that said "nook 12-9-88". I kept asking if he ok?. When I got about 15 feet from him we heard a loud screeching noise and a tremendous bang. Thinking there had been a wreck on the opposite side of the road my partner ran up the hill to check on it. I turned toward the man to tell him to stay here and he was gone, it scared the you-know-what out of me so at that point I ran up the hill to find my partner asking me what the hell was going on? We could not find what caused the noise and there was no sign of the guy by the cross. We searched about 2 minutes for the guy when once again we heard a horrific scream from the side of the road. I said to my partner "lets get the hell out of here"!. Needless to say he agreed and we left in a flash. Arriving back at the station we asked our dispatcher about what we had just seen, thats when she told us the story of a guy coming from a wedding reception and had had a little to much to drink and lost control of his car in the rain. He laid in the ditch for hours before anyone found him and his family had put up the cross on the tree he had hit. This just happened to be the anniversary of the accident. I try not to go by there too much, it always gives me the creeps, and I have noticed there is always a strange smell in that area late at night. Well I hope you liked my experience, thanks for reading. Contact me here: magpolic@telepak.net Submitted From: Brent Mullins, Mississippi, USA