The Ghost Elevator

The past belongs to Death, the future belongs to you - Shelley

There was a young woman who forgot her key at the company. She took her son with her in the middle of the night Go back to the company and get the key.

The company is on the 40th floor, which is an international investment building office building. There are four elevators, and the elevators have been used for a long time.

Of the four elevators, only two are open at night. One elevator is temporarily suspended for repairs, leaving only one elevator that is usually used to transport goods. The elevator is not monitored and the lights are dim.

There have been reports of haunted elevators in this building many times. Many employees have encountered strange phenomena, such as elevator malfunctions and automatic doors often opening for no reason on the 18th floor, but there is no one outside; such as walking out at night. In the elevator, you will hear a creepy sneer coming from behind, but when you look back, there is no one in the elevator; the elevator surveillance even recorded an inexplicable thing. The surveillance lasted for more than a minute, and the screen showed two white-collar workers. The man walked into the empty elevator. At one minute and ten seconds, the elevator stopped. Two men who were talking walked out of the elevator. What was horrifying was that an old woman with her head bowed appeared behind them, slowly following them.

The young woman never believed in ghosts. She and her son took the elevator to the 40th floor. All the people on the floor were gone. It was eerie and quiet, and the light in the corridor was very dark. The young woman returned to the company and hurriedly looked for the key. During this period, she called her husband who was on a business trip. Ten minutes later, the young woman finally found the key and returned to the elevator. The elevator stopped upstairs - the 41st floor.

The young woman thought someone pressed the call button. There were often employees in the building who worked overtime until late at night, and she didn't think it was strange.

When the young woman saw that her son's shoelaces were loose, she asked her son to hold down the elevator, squat down and lower his head to tie the child's shoelaces.

The elevator came down quickly and the automatic door opened. For some reason, the son let go of his hand and stood motionless.

The elevator door closed and they went down quickly. The young woman tied her shoelaces and blamed the child for not pressing the button. The child didn’t know what kind of scary scene he saw. His face turned pale with fright and he couldn’t say anything. Words come. It is said that children have very pure eyes and can see supernatural phenomena. The young woman called the elevator again and curiously asked the child what he saw.

Child: There is a sister in the elevator.

Mom: What’s there to be afraid of, coward.

Child: Mom, how can people walk without feet.

Mom: As a disabled person, you can use a wheelchair, or you can use a cane.

The child’s next words made the mother’s hair stand on end.

Child: That sister doesn’t have a wheelchair or crutches either.

Mom: You can sit on the ground, support yourself with your hands, and crawl out.

Child: She is taller than anyone else.

My mother also thought this was strange. She leaned down and asked: That sister, standing in the elevator, without feet?

The child hugged her mother in fear and said: She was not standing on the ground.

The mother picked up the child and felt a gust of cold wind blowing through her. She shuddered and felt a chill down her spine. The elevator slowly rose up from below. My mother was frightened and hesitated to take the elevator, but she really didn't have the courage to go down to the 40th floor. While waiting for the elevator, a frightening picture appeared in her mind. When the elevator door opened, a terrifying hanging female ghost would appear, with long hair and red clothes, with her tongue hanging out and dripping blood.

Finally, the elevator stopped in front of the young woman, and the door opened slowly.

The scary thing about elevators is that you never know what you will see when the elevator door opens.

Date: 2010-11-09 19:22:04

Chapter 6 Corpse Cramps

On October 17, 2008, a mother and son returned home at night After getting the key in the company office, the elevator door opened, and a spherical object rolled to my mother's feet. It turned out to be a bloody human head. The mother was so frightened that she stamped her feet and screamed loudly. The child's eyes were dull and he pointed at the elevator in horror. The mother looked closely and saw that there was a headless corpse in the elevator. The strange thing was that the headless corpse was actually standing in the elevator. .

The walls of the elevator were spattered with blood, and the blood flowed down in a snake shape. The lights were dim, and a headless woman stood in the middle of the elevator.

This horrifying scene scared the mother almost to the point of fainting. She wanted to hold the child and leave, but her body was limp and she had no strength. She pressed the phone button several times with trembling hands before dialing 110. ...

The 110 command center quickly issued instructions to the police in the jurisdiction, and the local police rushed to the scene. The building safety supervisor and the security department actively cooperated to comfort the frightened mother and son, and immediately cut off the elevator where the crime occurred. power supply.

The police are divided into two groups, one group is responsible for taking inquiry notes, and the other group conducts on-site investigation.

The inspection work went on all night.

The special case team arrived early the next morning and saw that the crime scene was well protected.

A police officer surnamed Zhou served as the person in charge of the scene. He expressed frustration to the special case team that despite working all night, he could not yet determine whether the case was suicide, homicide or accidental death, so he requested the special case team to assist in the investigation.

Hualong said: My head has fallen off, can it still be suicide?

Officer Zhou said: I have never seen such a strange case. Do you believe in ghosts?

The name of the deceased was Wen Xiaowan, a publishing editor. The publishing company was located on the 42nd floor of the building, which is also the top floor. On the day of the incident, she worked overtime alone until late at night, and died in the elevator when she came home. His head was in a different place, and his hands were tied behind his back with a silk scarf. Although his head fell off, his body remained standing. At that time, a mother and son on the 40th floor were about to take the elevator downstairs. They accidentally discovered a murder in the elevator and called the police.

Based on eyewitness descriptions and preliminary autopsy reports, the police determined:

Time of death - around 11 o'clock at night.

Place of death - elevator, this is the scene of the first crime.

Cause of death - unnatural death.

Officer Zhou introduced that after investigation, the deceased Wen Xiaowan broke up with her boyfriend a few days before the incident. She was depressed and had suicidal tendencies. On the day of the incident, due to a work error, the editorial department leader ordered her to work overtime to complete the work. , died in the elevator when returning home. The child among the witnesses had seen her hanging in the elevator. The police speculated that she should have been hanging in the elevator at that time.

The child only saw a woman hanging in the air and no one else in the elevator.

The police believed it might be suicide, but no ropes or wires were found during the on-site investigation. Strangely, no traces of heavy objects hanging from the top of the elevator were found.

The separation of the bodies was caused by violent pulling by external forces. Such tragedies often occur in elevator accidents. Based on the traces of blood spatter, the police basically ruled out the possibility of accidental death. The wound on the neck was not caused by cutting with a sharp weapon. It looked like a rope or wire was used to strangle the neck of the deceased, and the head was forcibly strangled, or the deceased was suspended in the air, and then hugged the legs of the deceased and used his own strength to The deceased's head was violently torn off.

Hualong said: How is it possible? Even if the murderer is extremely powerful, it would be difficult for him to cut off a person's head.

Officer Zhou said: The traces of blood splatter on the walls of the elevator showed that the deceased was alone at the time. When her head was severed, there was no one around. If there were people, they would have blocked the splattered blood. The police will definitely be able to find it when they survey the inner walls of the elevator.

Su Mei said: Many women are afraid of taking the elevator alone, afraid of ghosts, and afraid of being trapped in the elevator.

Bao Zhan asked: Whose silk scarf was the deceased’s hands tied behind his back?

Officer Zhou said: The silk scarf belonged to the deceased, and the binding was not tight. It is still unclear whether the deceased tied himself or the murderer did it. From this point of view, we believe that this case is very probable. Eighty-nine times it was homicide. However, there have been precedents in the past where suicides tied their hands and hung themselves or jumped into the river. Further investigation is needed to confirm this.

Professor Liang said: My intuition is that this is a homicide, an impossible crime, a crime that is impossible both superficially and logically. The murderer has a high IQ and understands the characteristics of secret room murders. .

The results of the on-site investigation showed that the murderer seemed to have disappeared from the air, or in other words, the murderer never appeared at all. There were no fingerprints, no shoe prints, no murder weapon, and nothing left to solve the case. clues. This case is like the work of a ghost or evil spirit in the elevator. It violently grabbed the woman who was riding alone in the elevator, and used an incredible force to pull her head off.

Su Mei said: This is the first time I have seen a standing dead person.

Officer Zhou said: Yes, this dead man standing still has no head. Let’s go and listen to the forensic doctor’s explanation.

The forensic doctor said that standing after death is a special cadaver spasm, a rare phenomenon of rigor mortis.

Cadaveric spasm occurs at the moment of death, and the posture or expression at death is fixed due to muscle contraction and rigidity.

Cadaveric spasms generally do not pass through the muscle flaccidity stage and continue until the onset of normal rigor mortis. It often occurs when the medulla oblongata is severely mechanically damaged or when the medulla oblongata is severely damaged.

Cadaver spasm is a very special and rare phenomenon of muscle stiffness. It occurs when a person dies without muscle relaxation but at the moment of death, the muscles immediately contract forcefully and quickly form rigor mortis, fixing the limbs in the same posture as before death.

Cadaveric spasms can be localized or generalized. Partial cadaveric spasm preserves the contraction state of certain muscle groups in certain parts of the body at the last moment of life. This kind of local cadaveric spasm is relatively common. For example, some people who kill themselves with a knife or a gun still hold the death tool in their hands after death. The person who strangled himself still held the rope tightly with both hands. The hands of the drowned person were in the shape of eagle claws, holding water plants and sand tightly in their hands. Some poisoned victims can also leave expressions of pain on their deathbed. Whole-body cadaveric spasms fix the corpse in its pre-death whole-body posture. On the battlefield, some soldiers, although dead, still retain the posture of shooting with their guns drawn, or hugging each other tightly and dying together with them.

When cadaveric convulsions occur, they are mostly local cadaveric convulsions, and only a few are generalized cadaveric convulsions.

The head of the deceased Wen Xiaowan was severed, but at the moment of death, due to the phenomenon of corpse spasm, her stiff body did not fall down, but remained standing. Her head rolled down in the elevator. The mother and son on the 40th floor called the elevator. When the elevator stopped, her head rolled out of the door due to the bumps in the elevator.

The space in the elevator was small, so the police quickly completed the investigation of the crime scene, and the body was transferred to the autopsy room of the police in the jurisdiction for further autopsy analysis.

The four members of the special case team stood at the elevator entrance on the 42nd floor. At that time, the deceased Wen Xiaowan entered the elevator from here.

Professor Liang asked the building safety supervisor to turn on the power of the elevator where the crime occurred, and asked Officer Zhou to record the elevator running time on the first floor, and asked the safety supervisor to call the elevator on the 40th floor. He planned to make a record of the elevator running time. test.

The elevator door opened. The blood stains had not been cleaned up yet, and there was a strong smell of blood inside.

Su Mei waved her hands and said: Do I have to take this elevator? Can we not...

Bao Zhan seemed to smell something. The smell of blood in the elevator was mixed with a strange smell, a burnt smell.

Bao Zhan warned: It is best not to go in, there is something wrong with this elevator.

Hualong laughed at the two of them for being timid and pushed Professor Liang in the wheelchair into the elevator. Bao Zhan and Su Mei had no choice but to follow them. Professor Liang notified Officer Zhou on the first floor and the safety supervisor on the 40th floor to start recording time, and the elevator door closed quickly.

The lights in the elevator were dim, and the four members of the special case team did not speak. They imagined that the deceased was also standing in this elevator at that time.

Professor Liang observed carefully that the bloodstains on the four walls of the elevator looked very horrifying under the light. The carpet under his feet was hard and had not been replaced for a long time. The carpet was also soaked with the blood of the deceased. The exhaust fan on the top of the elevator was It was broken and the elevator fire protection device was not installed.

The elevator stopped at the 40th floor. The safety supervisor pressed the stopwatch and told Professor Liang the running time of the elevator.

Professor Liang nodded, the elevator door quickly closed and continued to descend.

Suddenly, the lights in the elevator flickered a few times, and there was a power outage, leaving the elevator in darkness. This over-the-age elevator plummeted from the 40th floor without any warning. Many people think that during an elevator emergency, they can jump up the moment they land to avoid disaster. However, under weightless conditions, people cannot jump at all...

In the line between life and death, if the elevator falls to the bottom, it will also Just go down to the first floor, and the four members of the special case team will be smashed to pieces. Su Mei shouted, with quick eyes and quick hands, she pressed a few buttons of the elevator in a critical moment. During the rapid fall, the four of them stumbled, and the elevator suddenly stopped on the first floor.

Elevators are generally equipped with a self-locking device. If the falling speed exceeds the limit, the elevator car will be locked.

In the dark elevator, the four of them felt like they had saved their lives.

The light flashed a few times, then came back on, and the elevator automatically activated its emergency backup power supply.

When the elevator door opened, Officer Zhou looked surprised and asked strangely: Why are you so fast?

The four members of the special case team were terrified, and everyone broke into a cold sweat.

Hualong wiped the sweat from his forehead, pushed Professor Liang out of the elevator, and said: He came back from hell.

Bao Zhan supported the pale Su Mei and then walked out. He said: There is a fault in this elevator and it has stopped running.

Professor Liang said: The murder weapon was found.

Officer Zhou said: Where?

Professor Liang said: This elevator is a murder weapon!

Chapter 7 The Hanging Female Corpse

The special case team asked Officer Zhou to summon police officers and hold a case briefing in the conference room of the building. Different from the past, Professor Liang did not Analyze the case and arrange tasks, but first give everyone a puzzle.

This question is also a criminal reasoning test question of the US FBI. Only those who can answer it correctly within one minute will be admitted to the FBI.

The enthusiasm of the police officers in the conference room was aroused, and everyone was eager to try and seemed very excited.

FBI test question: An old man in a wheelchair took the elevator downstairs. There was no one in the elevator except the old man. But when he got downstairs, the elevator door opened and people found that the old man was dead and had a hand on his back. With a dagger inserted, how did the murderer do it?

The police officers present talked a lot. There was no murderer in such a small space as the elevator, but how to explain the deadly sword?

The police in the conference room couldn't come up with a reasonable answer no matter how hard they tried, and the one-minute time limit was about to expire.

Bao Zhan blurted out: Using the elastic rope and the downward force of the elevator to launch the dagger was a way for the murderer to kill without being present.

Everyone suddenly realized that a police officer asked, how did the murderer determine the location of the old man in the wheelchair?

Bao Zhan explained that the position of the wheelchair user in the elevator must be close to the elevator button, and the murderer's dagger was aimed in that direction.

The murderer had connected a highly elastic rubber rope to the handle of the dagger and passed it through the ventilation hole of the elevator. The other end of the rubber rope was tied to a fixed object above the elevator shaft. When the elevator goes down, the rubber rope will stretch as the elevator descends. When the length reaches the limit, the rubber rope will tighten and break. Because of its elasticity, the dagger will shoot out like a bow, arrow or bullet, killing the victim. people.

Professor Liang nodded in approval and said: The answer is correct. Next, I won’t tell you what we are looking for, everyone can guess it.

Bao Zhan volunteered: There must be traces of the murderer in the elevator shaft or in the machine room at the top of the elevator. I will definitely find them. I just don’t know what kind of rope, steel wire, or nylon the murderer used. Rope, or carbon fiber textile rope.

Professor Liang said: Let’s study the neck.

Su Mei took out a prepared anatomy diagram of the neck, with clear structures. The outermost part is the skin, underneath the skin are muscles and lymph nodes, there are longitudinal blood vessels and nerves on both sides, the respiratory tract and digestive tract are in front, and behind the fascia is the spine. The neck is very fragile, with a lot of soft tissue and only one bone, with the spine and neck as the backbone. There are ligaments between the cricoid cartilage of the spine. When the executioner aims at this position when beheading, he can easily cut off the head.

The special case team analyzed the entire murder process in detail.

The deceased's wound was in the submandibular triangle. Only mechanical power can tear the head off alive. Assume that the murder tool is a steel wire. The steel wire covers the head and the other end is tied somewhere above the elevator shaft. Machinery like elevators generate huge amounts of force. The elevator continued to descend. First, the deceased was hung at a high place with his head on the top of the elevator. The steel wire was tightened and strangled into the neck and soft tissue. The first splash point of the deceased's blood appeared at the top of the elevator. The steel wire was strangled into the ligaments of the spine. That was also The very fragile part of the neck bones was then strangled by the wire, and the wire quickly disappeared into the elevator's ventilation hole.

The entire murder process was very fast, almost completed in an instant.

Due to the instantaneous force, although there were tear marks on the skin of the deceased's neck, the entire wound was neat.

Then based on the blood spatter trajectory and distribution map, it can be determined that the deceased has been standing after death. After the steel wire cut off the head, the deceased's body convulsed and stiffened, fell from the air, and the headless body fell into the elevator, trembling. He swayed twice and still didn't fall down.

Blood spurted out from the neck of the headless corpse like a fountain, splattering all over the walls of the elevator.

Professor Liang said: The murder rope is very thin, has super strength and elasticity, and is at least as long as two stories high.

Officer Zhou asked in confusion: The wire rope hasn’t been found yet, how do you know the length?

Professor Liang said that the deceased Wen Xiaowan took the elevator on the 42nd floor. After entering the elevator, he must press the button on the first floor. The murderer should have been in the elevator at the time. He put a wire around the deceased's head and tied it behind his back. Hands, leave on the 41st floor. Witnesses were on the 40th floor. The mother and son were on the 40th floor. The mother lowered her head to tie the child's shoelaces. She did not see the scene in the elevator. What the child saw was a person hanging in the air. This means that the length of the rope was at least two floors long. high.

Hualong added that what the child saw was definitely not a body hanging in the air. The victim might not have died at that time, but was just hanging in the elevator and struggling, with his legs struggling to lift back. This is why the child said that the sister had no legs. Later, when the elevator came up again, the witness saw the standing body.

Officer Zhou raised a question: It only takes a few seconds to go down from the 42nd floor to the 41st floor. It is impossible for the murderer to tie the victim's hands behind his back and put a muff around his neck in such a short time.

Professor Liang said: This question cannot yet be answered, and the time when the murderer committed the crime is still a mystery.

Before the meeting ended, Professor Liang assigned tasks. Bao Zhan carefully inspected the elevator shaft to find the tools and traces left by the murderer; Su Mei visited colleagues in the company where the deceased worked to learn about the relevant situation, especially those who had conflicts with the deceased; Hua Long and Officer Zhou were in charge Investigate the people left behind in the building at the time of the incident, focusing on the elevator control room and those who knew the deceased worked overtime, and make a detailed list.

Professor Liang warned everyone to work carefully, as the murderer's name is likely to be hidden in this list.

Everyone took responsibility and started working quickly.

It was Friday when the crime occurred. Two days later, employees from various companies in the building began to go to work.

A female editor who worked overtime until late at night was killed in an elevator. Her head was severed, but her body was still standing. When this terrible news came, it was like a pot exploding. Colleagues at the publishing company where the deceased Wen Xiaowan worked were shocked and no one was interested in working. Three employees submitted their resignation reports that day. They have to take the elevator to and from get off work every day, and they feel very frightened when they see the elevator where the crime occurred. I believe that every colleague will have a psychological shadow for a long time.

Su Mei asked the editor-in-chief of the publishing company: Wen Xiaowan’s boyfriend must be among the three resigned personnel.

The editor-in-chief said: Yes, it is normal for publishing editors to change jobs and personnel turnover.

Su Mei said: I think it is related to this case. Does your company have any competitors?

The editor-in-chief said: The competition is very fierce. Almost every publishing company is our competitor, and there is a cultural company on the 40th floor.

The editor briefly introduced that although their publishing company and the cultural company on the 40th floor were working in the same building, there had been a legal dispute in the past due to competition, and the cultural company ended up losing the case.

Su Mei wrote down the editor's words with a pen, and then asked about Wen Xiaowan's boyfriend. His name was Yang Zi. He was a colleague of Wen Xiaowan. He was a book planning editor and had written many suspense books. After the incident, the police went to his residence to make an inquiry transcript and found nothing suspicious.

When Yang Zi was questioned, he acted very calmly. His attitude was that the matter had nothing to do with him and that he and Wen Xiaowan had broken up.

Su Mei reminded that you only broke up for a week, and your colleagues confirmed that you were very loving before and had a big fight when you broke up.

Yang Zi tilted his head to one side and said in a calm tone: Isn't this how lovers break up?

Su Mei said: Your eyes are a little red and swollen. It can be seen that you have cried. After investigation, we learned that you gave her a silk scarf.

Yang Zi glanced at Su Mei, lowered his head, and his tears flowed out again.

Yang Zi told Su Mei that before the breakup, Wen Xiaowan had straightened her hair and had an ion perm. She didn't dare to sleep at night for fear of deforming her hair. He knew a little trick, which was to put a pillow on the pillow. A gauze scarf or silk scarf will prevent her hair from deforming easily after she wakes up, so give her a silk scarf.

Su Mei said: It seems that your relationship is very good, but there is such a passage in your online diary. Let me read it -

Every time I fall in love, First love, it is impossible to love one person for the rest of your life. There are thousands of beauties in the world, and beauties are like clouds. I always want to appreciate different women and feel different kinds of love, including passionate love, unforgettable feelings, and tender attachment. A life lived in this way is not wasted. Braised pork with pickled vegetables is delicious, why should I eat one dish for the rest of my life?

Yang Zi interrupted Su Mei impatiently and said, this is my view of love, what's wrong.

Su Mei said: Did you write it in the diary to make her angry on purpose?

Yang Zi raised his voice and said, "I'm annoying her. Xiaowan is too jealous. She gets jealous every day. She gets in trouble with me when I see pictures of beautiful women. She even checks my text messages. I'm not allowed to do this." I was not allowed to do that. I was so annoyed that I simply broke up.

There was no progress in the investigation of Hualong and Officer Zhou. The building property management department has several working groups, security group, maintenance group, health group, water and electricity group. When the elevator murder occurred, everyone in the building The team has several night watch personnel. There were originally two people on duty in the elevator control room. Because the only operating elevator on the night of the incident did not have monitoring installed, the two people on duty took leave and left. Two security guards from the security team did not find anything unusual during their night patrol.

Officer Hualong and Officer Zhou asked each other one by one, asking everyone on duty to write down what they were doing at the time of the crime and their relationship with the victim.

Wen Xiaowan has an average appearance, but has a hot figure, fashionable clothes, and flowing hair. From the back, her back is very charming. The autopsy results showed that she had not been sexually assaulted. No one on the night shift knew her, and only a few people had some impression of her.

Bao Zhan first conducted a careful survey of the elevator machine room. There were traction wheels and guide wheels in the elevator machine room. No traces of wire suspension were found on the base. Bao Zhan was a little disappointed, and then inspected the bottom of the elevator shaft. , hoping to find murder weapons such as wire ropes, but found nothing except garbage.

When Bao Zhan was about to give up, he found a hanging point on the guide rail bracket at the top of the elevator shaft. The friction marks were very new and the anti-rust paint had peeled off. Obviously, this point had been hung. Heavy object, it seems that this is where the wire rope is tied.