'University facilities supervision does absolutely nothing' is a tale I can tell in many ways :) Not just UC Berkeley, any university sounds like this.
My favorite was when somebody broke in using a makeshift ladder and university security put safety cones around the ladder, but left the ladder in place for the next thief. It was a safety hazard, after all.
You mean making it even easier to rob the place in broad daylight by just donning a hi-vis vest and acting like you belong? I mean, look at them safety cones, it's clear I'm working here!
my college roommate stole a fire hydrant from a construction crew by showing up with a hard hat and clipboard. He just got someone to help him load it in the back of a pickup truck and drove off. We put it in the corner as like something funny to have for parties. btw, they're surprisingly heavy.
It can be surprisingly easy to take something in broad daylight without anyone noticing.
I once worked at a computer workstation company that was having financial problems. In the hardware engineering lab they had a large flatbed printer. The bed was several feet on each side and the thing was very heavy. It would take at least two people to move and would be a struggle to get through the door.
One day the hardware engineers got back from lunch and found that the printer was gone. They had last used it just before going to lunch, which had taken an hour. So it disappeared sometime in that hour. We later found out it was repo men repossessing it.
The hardware lab had no windows and one door. That door was on a hallway. From that hallway you could go left which would take you through the lobby to the front door, or you could go right which would take you past all the software engineering offices to the back door.
During the time when the hardware engineers were at lunch the receptionist was in the lobby, and one of the co-owners was in his office with the door open and from his desk could see the front door and much of the lobby.
The software engineers that day all either took late lunches or ate at their desks, so all four of us and our supervisor were in our offices on that hallway, with our doors open, and all of us had our desks oriented so we were facing our doors.
Not a one of us saw a damn thing. Somehow at least two repo men were able to stroll in and take that printer without anyone noticing.
That isn't the only case of something being seemingly impossibly moved I've experienced. In the early '80s I lived in this area of Pasadena, CA [1]. See that big building labeled "Crown City Adult Day Health Care"? That building was originally the Temple City Odd Fellows Hall and was unsurprisingly located in Temple City which was 4 or 5 miles away from Pasadena. The space it now occupies in Pasadena was part of that parking lot to the south.
Here's a street view of it to give an idea of its height [2]
I was living in the apartments next to that lot on the north. One day they closed off the north part of the parking lot and started preparing a foundation for a building there. I thought they were going to build a new building there.
Then one day signs went up that the south part of the lot would be closed for a while. I went to bed that night, and when I woke looked out my window, and there sitting in the south part of the lot, on top of something like 200 wheels, was the Temple City Odd Fellows Hall. Apparently they wanted to use the site in Temple City for something else but the building had historical value so they couldn't just tear it down. So they moved it.
The building was not cut into sections and reassembled. The thing was moved whole. In one night. I spent quite a while afterwards driving all around that area and I could not find any route it could been taken on that would not have required a lot of moving cables or traffic lights or signs or trees out of the way. But I could not find any removed or cut trees, or any other sign that anything had been disturbed.
To this day I still have no idea how the heck they did it.
> The contractor said, when he was at the Clark Kerr job site, landscapers were using one of its buildings to store tools. But they did their best to steer clear of the area.
> "They don't go all the way inside," he said, recalling that they had told him why: "'This place is creepy. We see ghosts in there all the time.' And this is before we saw the body."
It is of course extremely improbable that they are seeing actual ghosts but still I would think that when you’ve got multiple people avoiding a place because they think they see ghosts there all the time someone would try to figure out what they are actually seeing.
Most things I can think of that might make people believe they are actually seeing ghosts are things you wouldn’t want happening in or to your unoccupied building.
I'm assuming that an unused building would not be well lit.
One class of things that might be mistaken for ghosts in such a building is various animals. A family of raccoons moving farther into the darkness to hide when a human opens the door, for example. Or a lot of rats or mice.
Another would be humans who are clandestinely using the space.
A trail of moving water running down a wall from a water leak might reflect light in such a way as to appear to be some sort of shimmering ethereal thing moving around.
Just to add to other things people have mentioned, reports of ghosts could very easily be the result of false memories, as well. Finding a dead body in a creepy location, then sitting on it for two years is plenty of time and fuel for false memories. (Which are notoriously easy to form.)
Another thing I think is the most likely is [pareidolia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia). Our minds evolved to be sensitive to seeing faces/hearing voices, and so we tend to see these things where they don't actually exist. (Think faces in toast, or listening for satanic messages when playing music backwards.)
> On Sunday evening, the contractor told The Scanner that, while he was still upset about the supervisor's apparent silence — and that UC Berkeley had not hired his firm in months despite years of collaboration — it had been a relief in January to see the police at work.
Is there any law that covers the contractors against retaliation like this? It seems like there should be an investigation into the university for not reporting this to the police immediately, but the article doesn't mention anything. To me, the contractors didn't just report a suspicious death, but also are blowing the whistle on some negligence or even a coverup by the university.
I don't understand that aspect though, anyone can report something to the police?
If I found human remains in suspicious circumstances I think I'd tell the police before my supervisor? If not for some reason, then I definitely would after supervisor's inaction, before the press?
You're likely correct. But based off the story there was no report filed at the time of the discovery. So it wouldn't be retaliation, as there is nothing to retaliate for.
The retaliation backfired on the supervisor who effectively silenced the contractors for months while they hoped he would bribe them with more jobs....
Why didn't they call the police directly? Why didn't they call the police when Berkley didn't do anything?
I don't understand how you can think that you uncovered a crime of that calibre, and then think that its okay just hand it over to campus administration.
This seems to happen all the time though; schools, churches, larger companies all seem to have their own legal system. That is, if your kid gets beat up at school, it's dealt by the school (and parents), not the police (because assault); if a priest diddles kids, they get moved elsewhere and the whole case is silenced.
They rely on appearance and goodwill. No one will send their kids to a school, where homeless people kill each other on campus (which is what this appears to be, but More Will Be Revealed).
I won't speculate, but it seems as if they had simply kept giving jobs to that contractor, it would have remained silent.
I'm surprised no one removed the body, in all that time, though.
Look, someone was told there was a corpse in an abandoned building; but when they tried to put in a ticket for public safety there wasn’t a category for “body found”; so it got kicked back to the supervisor’s intern. It has been resubmitted as a space request for an employee who does not currently have an office, and the body will be moved as soon as its cubicle is setup in a different building && and a laptop is provisioned.
Assume incompetence and work backwards. Maybe he didn't believe the landscapers and didn't want to crawl around under an abandoned building to double check. Maybe he believed them but figured he could get away with ignoring it and not have to deal with yet another problem on his plate. Maybe he kept forgetting about it, even after they reminded him.
Readit News
My favorite was when somebody broke in using a makeshift ladder and university security put safety cones around the ladder, but left the ladder in place for the next thief. It was a safety hazard, after all.
I once worked at a computer workstation company that was having financial problems. In the hardware engineering lab they had a large flatbed printer. The bed was several feet on each side and the thing was very heavy. It would take at least two people to move and would be a struggle to get through the door.
One day the hardware engineers got back from lunch and found that the printer was gone. They had last used it just before going to lunch, which had taken an hour. So it disappeared sometime in that hour. We later found out it was repo men repossessing it.
The hardware lab had no windows and one door. That door was on a hallway. From that hallway you could go left which would take you through the lobby to the front door, or you could go right which would take you past all the software engineering offices to the back door.
During the time when the hardware engineers were at lunch the receptionist was in the lobby, and one of the co-owners was in his office with the door open and from his desk could see the front door and much of the lobby.
The software engineers that day all either took late lunches or ate at their desks, so all four of us and our supervisor were in our offices on that hallway, with our doors open, and all of us had our desks oriented so we were facing our doors.
Not a one of us saw a damn thing. Somehow at least two repo men were able to stroll in and take that printer without anyone noticing.
That isn't the only case of something being seemingly impossibly moved I've experienced. In the early '80s I lived in this area of Pasadena, CA [1]. See that big building labeled "Crown City Adult Day Health Care"? That building was originally the Temple City Odd Fellows Hall and was unsurprisingly located in Temple City which was 4 or 5 miles away from Pasadena. The space it now occupies in Pasadena was part of that parking lot to the south.
Here's a street view of it to give an idea of its height [2]
I was living in the apartments next to that lot on the north. One day they closed off the north part of the parking lot and started preparing a foundation for a building there. I thought they were going to build a new building there.
Then one day signs went up that the south part of the lot would be closed for a while. I went to bed that night, and when I woke looked out my window, and there sitting in the south part of the lot, on top of something like 200 wheels, was the Temple City Odd Fellows Hall. Apparently they wanted to use the site in Temple City for something else but the building had historical value so they couldn't just tear it down. So they moved it.
The building was not cut into sections and reassembled. The thing was moved whole. In one night. I spent quite a while afterwards driving all around that area and I could not find any route it could been taken on that would not have required a lot of moving cables or traffic lights or signs or trees out of the way. But I could not find any removed or cut trees, or any other sign that anything had been disturbed.
To this day I still have no idea how the heck they did it.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1486783,-118.1378355,123a,35...
[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1478366,-118.1369049,3a,75y,...
> "They don't go all the way inside," he said, recalling that they had told him why: "'This place is creepy. We see ghosts in there all the time.' And this is before we saw the body."
It is of course extremely improbable that they are seeing actual ghosts but still I would think that when you’ve got multiple people avoiding a place because they think they see ghosts there all the time someone would try to figure out what they are actually seeing.
Most things I can think of that might make people believe they are actually seeing ghosts are things you wouldn’t want happening in or to your unoccupied building.
One class of things that might be mistaken for ghosts in such a building is various animals. A family of raccoons moving farther into the darkness to hide when a human opens the door, for example. Or a lot of rats or mice.
Another would be humans who are clandestinely using the space.
A trail of moving water running down a wall from a water leak might reflect light in such a way as to appear to be some sort of shimmering ethereal thing moving around.
Another thing I think is the most likely is [pareidolia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia). Our minds evolved to be sensitive to seeing faces/hearing voices, and so we tend to see these things where they don't actually exist. (Think faces in toast, or listening for satanic messages when playing music backwards.)
http://www.weirdca.com/location.php?location=322
Cows? In Berkeley? MOOOOOOO!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10JSPdTDFsI
https://eastbayexpress.com/mister-dairy-goodness-1/
Here’s a brief of it: https://higgs.ph.ed.ac.uk/outreach/higgshalloween-2021/haunt...
The full story is a PDF that is the first google result of “Vic Tandy’s Ghost in the Machine”
e.g. failing mechanical equipment
Is there any law that covers the contractors against retaliation like this? It seems like there should be an investigation into the university for not reporting this to the police immediately, but the article doesn't mention anything. To me, the contractors didn't just report a suspicious death, but also are blowing the whistle on some negligence or even a coverup by the university.
If I found human remains in suspicious circumstances I think I'd tell the police before my supervisor? If not for some reason, then I definitely would after supervisor's inaction, before the press?
I don't understand how you can think that you uncovered a crime of that calibre, and then think that its okay just hand it over to campus administration.
They rely on appearance and goodwill. No one will send their kids to a school, where homeless people kill each other on campus (which is what this appears to be, but More Will Be Revealed).
I won't speculate, but it seems as if they had simply kept giving jobs to that contractor, it would have remained silent.
I'm surprised no one removed the body, in all that time, though.
It was appearances and public image, 100%.