xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
On Jan. 30, as Angel Eck, 20, drove her Pontiac Sunfire on Interstate 70 toward Denver, she suddenly could not slow down. The car was locked in overdrive and climbed to 100 mph; the ignition would not disengage; and the clutch and accelerator were stuck. A half-hour later, two enterprising Denver police officers, having been alerted by cell phone and reprising a tactic from the old “CHiPs” TV show, slowed the car by allowing it to repeatedly bump the rear of their squad car until it came to a stop. A few days later, idling in the shop at Green Mountain Auto Service, the car jumped gears and pinned a mechanic against an inside wall until a colleague set the emergency brake.
A 30-year-old man challenged as unconstitutional the police search of his 18-month-old son’s diaper that produced a stash of cocaine (a search the police defended as legal, in that they had noticed a “large load” in the diaper (Evansville, Ind.).
At a November hearing on Thomas DeVol’s business practices, Missouri’s State Committee of Psychologists also heard evidence that the marriage counselor had described himself as a “Christian psychologist” who estimated that, during his 20-year practice, about 150 of his clients were possessed by demons and other “evil spirits.” (The committee was still deliberating DeVol’s fate at press time.)
In February in Genoa, Italy, Catholic Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone announced formation of a committee of three priests and three health professionals to decide, in possible cases of satanic possession, whether the parishioner should be referred to counseling or to an exorcist.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD