After the September 11th attacks leveled the World Trade Center, NYPD Sgt. Frank Marra spent a year searching through the rubble.
In his new book From Landfill to Hallowed Ground, the now retired cop details the harrowing things he saw while searching through what was left of the Twin Towers at the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island.
From 2001 to 2002, Marra along with fellow volunteers, found the remains of 1,200 people who had tragically perished along with 54,000 items left behind.
It wasn't the personal effects that stuck with Marra the most.
He says, while working on "The Hill," he was mostly struck by the appearance of a woman dressed like a Red Cross worker from the second world war.
"I thought she was trying to help us, being first responders," he told the New York Post.
He wasn't the only worker who saw this spirit, who, a psychic medium explained could have been a "Soul collector," guiding people to the afterlife, according to the New York Post.
Marra says that he repressed the memory of her until he was doing research for his book and a former crime-scene detective asked him, "You ever hear the stories about the old Red Cross worker trying to serve sandwiches and coffee out by the sifters?" And then, Marra says, "It hit me like a ton of bricks.”
Marra isn't the only one who claims he saw haunting images.
Some report "Large black masses," says Marra, who was the supervisor of the World Trade Center vehicle impound section of the landfill.
In his book, Marra notes that the landfill became so much more than a place to sort through the wreckage.
"As time passed we realized how many people's ashes and DNA still remain at the landfill. It was clear this became a holy ground, a place of rest for many who would never be recovered, a cemetery without tombstones.”
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