Something strange at the coroner's office

Several employees say they have seen, heard things they can't explain

By Ruth Fuller
Special to the Tribune
October 30, 2009

Eerie things have startled people in the Lake County coroner's office ever since the body of a woman was inadvertently left in the cooler for several months before anyone got around to identifying her.

Workers say they hear strange knocking sounds, see sudden movements and sometimes catch glimpses of people walking about in the autopsy room when it should be empty of anyone still able to walk. They attribute it all to a spirit angry at being forgotten.

"Some things that have happened here have made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up," said Robert Barrett, senior deputy coroner.

Sure, it's Halloween. Barrett and others in the office know it's the time of year when scary stories are traded in half-whispers, and with smiling oaths that it really happened. But he considers himself a man of science, and said he wouldn't tell ghost stories just for the sake of the season. And he's not the only one in the office who has felt that tingling over something unexplainable.

The body was of a woman named Anna, the story goes. She died in a nursing home sometime in the late 1990s, and a deputy coroner retrieved her body. But he got swamped with other cases and Anna was untended among the dead. Once she was finally identified, Barrett said, the weird stuff began. When a deputy transported Anna's body to a funeral home, controls in the vehicle went haywire.

"All of the doors started locking and unlocking and the windows started going up and down by themselves," he said. "When he got out of the car to get her out, the car doors all locked and the car was (turned) off."

Barrett, 40, worked as a respiratory therapist before joining the coroner's office eight years ago. He's skeptical of the supernatural.

"It's difficult for me to believe anything if I don't see it for myself," he said. "I've been around the dead and dying for most of my career and I never had any weird experiences."

Until he began working in Lake County.

Sometimes at night, sitting at a computer a few feet from the cooler where bodies are kept, he swears he hears knocks coming from inside.

"The first time I heard the knocking on the inside of the cooler, I was here at night by myself," Barrett said. "I didn't get up for at least an hour or two, so if anyone did come out I was at a safe distance."

On several still and quiet nights, Barrett has been busy working at the computer with a body on the table behind him when he is startled by the person's hand falling. Other times, he has seen out of the corner of his eye a person walking in the autopsy room -- even though there's no one alive except him. "When that happens, I go and close the door to the autopsy room," he said. "Then I just turn up the music and keep on working."

Barrett is not the only one who will tell you about creepy experiences. Everyone who works at the office seems to have a story.

"I wouldn't say I don't believe in ghosts, but I am cynical enough to say that I need to experience something before I will believe it," said Mike Reid, 40, a deputy coroner for more than six years. He has heard the loud whistle reported by many in the office, which sounds like a woman screaming. He chalks it up to the wind.

But the memory that sticks with him is of the late night when he was alone in the locker room, where the doors are supposed to swing closed after you push through them.

"I pushed the door open and it stayed open," he said. "The only way it would have stayed open is if it was pushed open again. No one was there, so that is something I can't explain."

Reid also gets chills thinking about the time he was at the scene of a crash that killed a 15-year-old girl.

"No one realized the girl was deceased at the scene because more than one person said they saw her get up and walk away down the sidewalk," he said. "They actually attempted to locate her away from the scene. She was later located (dead) in the vehicle, so there is no way she could've walked anywhere at that point."

Even Lake County Coroner Richard Keller, a doctor who has practiced emergency medicine for 17 years, has had his share of odd experiences.

"Shortly after I took office I went to check for a pulse on a woman and when I touched her I received some sort of electric shock and was knocked back into a sitting position," he said. "It was quite a surprise. I looked around to see if there were any wires down or something to explain it, but there was none of that."

Though Keller hears the sounds that the others say they've heard, experience has taught him simply to not pay attention. "I used to live in a house that was probably haunted," he said. "It used to be a funeral home. There was a strong feeling of the presence of others there."

Spooky? Sure. Scary enough to feel danger? Not really, the coroners said.

"I've never felt threatened because I try to chalk these things up to something that can be explained through science, or something I don't have knowledge of," Barrett said. "Otherwise, it is something I don't want to know about right now."