Found A Friend

This occurred when I was very young in Cumberland R.I. around 1974 - 1976.

Our family dog had run away, (he was old and probably just running away to die in the woods), but of course being a loud upset child, I was able to talk my father into taking me out to look for him.

We walked up the road a bit and eventually, being a child, I wandered ahead of my father shouting my dog's name. After rounding a corner I noticed a car in the woods and naturally went to inspect it from a much closer distance. Inside the car was a man who I thought was pretending to have killed himself. (Remember I was a very young child and the thought of killing yourself seemed to me like a real 'give-up', somebody else might want to take you out of the game, but you would never take yourself out, right?) Anyway, I recall noting to myself the large amounts of 'ketchup' on the windshield and the very real looking 'cap gun' which was on the seat. (Wow this guy had gone a long way to make it look like he had killed himself huh?) As I reached into the car in order to pick up the cool 'cap gun', my father rounded the corner and saw everything. In one of those 'father voices', that makes you freeze dead in your tracks, he shouted at me to get away from the car, which I then hurriedly did. We then went home and he notified the authorities.

Later that afternoon I was outside with my cousin relating my strange story about the guy I had found who had pretended to kill himself. Just then, a white box van, shaped like an ambulance, came down the road from the direction I had found the car earlier that morning. The van looked like an ambulance with no markings and only one small window in the back. In the window was the man I had found, smiling and waving to me, I of course waved back and excitedly told my cousin, "Hey, that's him, that's the guy I found!!!". My cousin looked perplexed and asked what I was talking about. I re-stated, "That truck that went by with the guy in the back waving, that was him!". My cousin then stated that nothing had gone by, no car, no truck, no horse and buggy,.. nothing.

Well, I ignored him and didn't give this particular odd occurrence another thought for years, (there were and are, still odd occurrences in this town), however when I was a teenager I asked my Mother what ever happened to the guy that I had found who had pretended to commit suicide, she just kind of stared at me and stated that he had not pretended, he had actually died and my parents let me believe he had just pretended to commit suicide due to my adamant assurances that I had seen him later that day, and they thought that was how their 'child' was dealing with it.

Well , let me tell you, that van was there, whether visible to any one else or not. Perhaps he felt some remorse at being found by such a young child and he then felt compelled to let me know he was 'alright'. Well, I did know. (This story is verifiable, the gentlemen who died was a Cumberland police officer and my father had actually known him, this is the first, I guess, 'paranormal' event I can remember, however when these events occur frequently, the term paranormal does not come screaming into your mind, since it is, at least to you,... pretty normal.)

Perhaps I'll share another with you soon.

~Thanks