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This week they received a very special call in the control room of the East Netherlands police. In the middle of the night a man called from the morgue. He was locked up there and was no longer sure how he got there.
“It started as a night shift like any other,” the East Netherlands police control room wrote on Instagram. “The phone rings, someone calls 9-1-1 and I answer: ‘Police control room, where is the location of the emergency?’”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone until a very fragile older male voice responded: “Am I speaking to the police?” The man sounded a bit shaky, so the officer asked him what was going on. “I’m locked up!”, it sounds on the other end of the line. Surprised, the officer asks if the man knows where he is locked up. “My thoughts are thinking of a possibly confused or demented person, or a person in a hospital/institution. They often call in the middle of the night to say they want to leave,” the police wrote.
The old man answers clearly: “Yes, I know where I am, there is a sign here, madam.” What does that sign say, the officer asks. “Mortuary!”, it sounds. “The morgue tells you…?” the officer responds. “Yes, the morgue at this and this address.”
The officer takes a look at the map and at the reporting party’s details and sees that a landline is indeed being called from that location to the control room.
“I don’t know what to say and some images flash through my mind of an old man with gray hair in a long nightgown barefoot in a morgue, with an open coffin next to it of course. In my head I quickly try to think of a question that I can ask this gentleman, because of course I cannot ask whether he came out of a coffin…”, the police wrote on Instagram. “Sir, do you know how you got there?”
The man thinks, but cannot immediately answer the question. “Have you perhaps fallen asleep?” the officer helps. “Yes,… now that you mention it, I was at a friend’s house to say goodbye and I think I fell asleep!”
Relieved, the officer calls the funeral home and asks the night employee to open the door as quickly as possible. “I have had many strange reports during the night shift, but I will never forget this one,” the police officer concludes the message.