©1 May 2025 Levite
http://themediadesk
1.
I usually try not to make plans as to when I will go on one of the special investigations I do. It just seems that if I go in one morning expecting to go out on one, then something hot will come in from another County Agency and I'll have to take care of that. So it's just easier for me, and results in less drama for me to work the assignments that are part of the Sheriff's Office official portfolio, and then when that is done, to, well, in this case, drive out to what somebody a long time ago called "the Irishman's House" in the Farmingdale area.
The first thing I had to check was that the house was actually in Suffolk County. It was, but only just. If whoever the Irishman was that owned the place 'back in the day' spit too hard off the front porch it would land in Nassau County.
There wasn't much left of the original house. The place had been remodeled and built on to, and then repainted. And now. It was sitting empty, being used for storage.
I used the first of the three keys on the ring to turn off the alarm, then I used the second to unlock the door. And then I wondered what 'cabinet' the third key unlocked.
I walked into the house and into several stacks of plastic tote boxes.
Some of the totes were labeled with hand written notes taped to the box, or written on the side with a marker, and some were unlabeled. "Census Q's, 1980," I read off one, and then, "Swan and Patch River Water Tests, 1976 to 90 Sept".
I peeked in one tote that wasn't labeled and found a huge collection of first class mail. All of the envelopes had been opened, some had notes written on them or stapled to them. On one legal sized envelope, a canceled check had been paperclipped to the envelope with a note that said "fine paid in full".
It appeared that somebody in the city had wanted, or needed, to keep all these records, but had no place to store them, and the Irishman's House was available basically for free.
I continued on my tour, and found some cardboard boxes of other records, one of them only said "1958" written in what looked like a grease pencil.
Other than some very dated and very basic furniture, like a chrome and formica table and some mismatched chairs in the kitchen, and in another room, what may have been the ugliest fake-leather covered couch in New England.
I went through and got a sense of what was the original house, and what had been added on in the last hundred years or so. The historic information indicated that the kitchen and back bedroom had been built onto the house in the nineteen teens or so, but that before then what was now the driveway side had been the front entrance. Then I did a sweep with the EMF detector and found out that there was only electricity in the kitchen and living room.
It was during that sweep that I noticed a cabinet in the back bedroom that had a padlock on it. The third key on the ring was a padlock key, so, curious, I opened it. And found nothing. The cabinet was almost empty. There was an old box in one corner with nothing in it, and a good collection of cobwebs, but that was it. So I relocked the cabinet and continued my sweep.
Later I sat in the kitchen and listened to the place while my recorders ran. Then I took several pictures with the full spectrum and thermal. And then sat and listened again.
According to the information about the house, the people that came here to either drop off files, or to dig through the totes and boxes reported hearing unfriendly whispering and loud bangs and pounding that cannot otherwise be explained because there was nothing in the house that made noise or could bang or pound. So I went back out to my car and got a spare envelope and some odd papers, and brought them in to file.
"Let's see, I was down here in April of last year. That tote box should be over there," I said as seriously as I could to the otherwise empty room with my recorders still running in the kitchen and on a shelf in the living room.
I waited for a while before I did anything else. Nothing ever spoke or banged. I made a production out of moving totes around, and talking to myself about dates and where my file about an investigation should be stored.
I went out and got a pizza, then came back and sat in the kitchen and listened and watched the house. I even decided to change the way one of the stacks of tote boxes was piled, and instead of January being on the bottom, I put it on top.
I gave up and went home around midnight. Then the next day I reviewed my recordings and looked at the photos. Other than what I'd said and done, there was nothing else on the recordings. I did have evidence that somebody on that street had a car with a bad muffler because at just after eight PM they drove by, then, about half an hour later, they returned. But nothing else.
I know that all that proves was that the Irishman's House was quiet yesterday. So I made that note in my file, and decided that I'd give it another shot in a week or two. Then I checked to see if I had any normal assignments.
It took about an hour to clear the emails and voice messages that had come in since yesterday, then I was back looking at the list of historic properties and had decided that a former lighthouse keeper's house on the bay on the north-eastern end of the Island looked interesting.
I was looking at the information about the place when an emergency call was transferred to me that changed my plans. And within a few minutes I was in my car on my way to see if I could help.
2.
The emergency was in the kitchen at a county correctional facility.
It had been more years than I want to think about since I'd been inside the fence of the place. I remembered to secure my sidearm and the other things I routinely carried in my car before I went in, but it was still an unpleasant process to be allowed in.
Things had changed since I'd been there, including where the kitchen was. But I found it, and sat and listened to the Foodservice Manager for some time. Then he paraded in several other staff, and a few inmate trustees, that all collaborated the story. Some of the cooks refused to use the ovens, saying they kept hearing somebody cussing at them, or got pushed or slapped when near them. One cook had had an oven door shut on his hand, another narrowly missed having that happen to him.
And all in the last three weeks.
"We bought the ovens at an estate sale last month, and then had them installed here. Do you remember Nannu's Sicilian Pizza in Jericho? It closed, what, two or three years ago." I nodded, he continued, "Anyway, that's who we think it is."
"The old man that ran the place?" I said remembering the ancient looking gentleman who was supposed to be the Grandfather that they named it after.
"No, no. His cook. He slipped and fell and cracked his skull against the side of the oven, or on the floor under it, depends on who tells the story. And now he's haunting the ovens because we don't cook pizza and stuff in them."
"Well, if they'll let me bring my gear in, I'll do what I can do."
"I'll get an escort for you, just to make it easier."
We decided that I'd get a baseline while the pizza ovens were on, but not otherwise in use. Then as they prepped the next meal I'd watch and do what I could to record any paranormal activity, while staying out of the way.
In short, it didn't work out that way.
My directional recorder has a screen on it that indicates when it is picking up audio. I had placed it on top of the oven's control panel and stood back to watch to make sure it was working. The kitchen was reasonably quiet, and I saw the audio indicator bouncing up and down. It was picking up sound, and from the strength of the signal, it was either close to the unit or fairly loud.
I gently picked it up and held it slightly away from the ovens. The sound level indicator was still saying that something was making a lot of noise. I gave it a minute, then shut it off and took it back to the office where my laptop was in my bag.
I woke up my machine and downloaded the file, then played it.
We were treated to an outburst of all sorts of abuse in what sounded like a combination of rough Italian and even rougher English.
I played it again. "I can make out some of it," I said, "he says 'get that .... thing ... off my oven' and then goes on in what might be Italian."
"Or Sicilian," the manager said.
"I would say it is confirmed that there is an attachment to the ovens. And that it is somewhat intelligent because it knows I put my recorder on the oven, and it, or he, is quite protective of his ovens."
"They're not his ovens any more, and we need them, one of the old ones didn't work any more, and it couldn't be fixed, and we're running full capacity for three meals a day."
I looked out the office door and I could see the ovens on the other side of the kitchen.
"Has anybody told him what happened and why you need the ovens?"
It took some quick digging, but we found the name of the angry pizza cook, and then I went out to talk to Reginaldo, who, when cooking, was called Reggie.
I was the only person in the kitchen. No, let me rephrase that, I was the only Living person in the kitchen. The facility was shut down for the evening, and there was supposed to be a cleaning crew of inmate trustees in it with a staff supervisor. But the cleaners had been given the night off, and their supervisor was in the office with the manager watching me.
"Oh, yes, ma'am." The supervisor said when he came in and found out what was going on. "Some evenings we have had problems getting over there just to mop the floor. You'd hear all kinds of shouting and then he'd cuss at us."
"Could you tell what he was saying?"
"I did a couple of times. He'd say he had customer orders in the oven and I needed to get that mop bucket out of his way."
"You heard him say that?"
"Yes, I was standing at the end of the cookline because John was mopping and he said somebody kept trying to knock the mop out of his hands. Then I heard him say it from right here," he gestured to his left side. "I could feel his breath on my neck."
"What did his voice sound like?"
"Like every Italian mob guy you've ever heard on TV."
"Reginaldo." I said to the quiet kitchen, then I walked over to the pizza ovens, which I had been told should be called baking ovens. "Reginaldo." I repeated, I turned my recorder on and put it on top of the ovens. I watched it for a minute and it was showing dead silence.
I stood next to the Pizza Ovens and waited, "Reggie." I said. Then when I didn't get the sense that he was anywhere near, I reached over and turned off the ovens on the right side.
The manager told me they never turn them off because they were real firebrick ovens and it took them forever to get back to operating temperature. He'd been told that the day the restaurant closed was the first time they'd been turned off in over two years. Even when they closed the place for a family vacation, they only turned them down, not off. I just shut them off.
I heard something on the other side of the other ovens, then I felt something brush past me. "Don't turn them back on until I explain something to you," I said to the air. "Reggie, are you listening to me?"
There was no sound or movement.
"Nannu's closed. The old man had problems not long after your accident and the family didn't want to keep it open. We bought these ovens and moved them here. They're used every day. We can tell you took good care of them, and we like that you still do. But, Reggie, you've got to let our cooks and cleaners do their jobs. We're trying to take as good of care of the ovens as you did, and they like cooking in them. But you've got to let them use them."
I stood by the oven and waited. Then I turned back to the ovens on the right and reached over to turn them back on.
The top one was on, set on four hundred degrees, and I know I had turned it all the way off. The bottom one was still off. I turned up to where it had been before, three fifty. Then I turned the top one back down a little.
"OK, Reggie? You can watch the ovens at night after the cleaning crew gets done. But when they're in here cooking, please let them work. Understand?"
I waited another minute, then I retrieved my recorder and went to the office and listened to it.
We could hear my asking for Reginaldo, then Reggie.
"Wait a minute, what did that say?" The manager asked after something came through the recorder.
I replayed it and we could hear that same Italian voice say "bella donna... bella..." but it sounded like it was further from the recorder than the last voice.
"He likes you," the cleaning supervisor said with a smile, "he's got good taste."
"Thank you," I answered and went through the file.
A minute or so later we could hear the male voice repeat the phrase "nannu close" when I had stopped to take a breath. Finally when I asked if Reggie understood we heard him say 'bella donna' again, and then "... si . signora."
We sat and listened as I replayed that last bit again.
"I hope it works," the manager said.
"Yeah," the supervisor agreed.
"It might not hurt to remind him that you are taking care of the ovens and using them to make food for people."
"Si, Signora." The manager said.
3.
The next morning I got a call from the dealer that maintains the department's hybrid cars.
My car was still having the issue with it randomly rolling down one or another of the other windows. And now, once in awhile, it would bring down one of them, and then one of the others would roll down. So far, it hadn't done it with the driver's window although the online user's group had some owners report that their car would occasionally roll that one down while they were driving as well.
There was no pattern that I could determine, it appeared to be random, and there was nothing I did, or that the car did, that caused it. Just once in awhile, and sometimes it didn't happen for several days, one of the other three windows would roll down at least half way. And the control for that window on the driver's door wouldn't roll it back up until the car had been shut off and restarted.
I saw the ID on the call that came in, it was the service manager at the car dealer, "You still want to buy my lunch?" he asked after a few minutes of conversation.
"That depends on whether or not you can fix my windows."
"I think we can, now."
They needed the car for two days, so I got to drive a regular department car during that time. The fix involved wiping all programming from the computers in the car that had anything to do with the cabin and user controls. Then, after they disconnected the batteries and let it set over night, they put the power back to it, then began reloading those systems with the latest programming, which was supposed to include the correction for the window problem.
"So far," the service manager said, "it has worked. But you will have to reprogram your radio stations."
"I think I can do that."
We arranged lunch for the day the work was done, he'd bring the car to the office, we'd go to lunch and I'd buy. Then I'd drop him back off at the dealership. If the windows stayed up for a week, he wouldn't have to pay me back.
That was two weeks ago. And, so far, none of the windows have taken it upon themselves to let in any fresh air.
Which I hope solved that case as well.
-end three cases-
[NOTE: The above story were written as adventure fiction, and is to be taken as such. While most of the features of Long Island exist, including the County Correctional Centers, the rest of the setting is fictional.
Thank you, Dr. Leftover, TheMediaDesk.com]
http://themediadesk.com