Marion Duchene
I'm a psychiatric nurse; early in my career, I worked at a residential mental health facility. There was a resident I'll call Marion Duchene. He was an elective mute, which simply means that he didn't/wouldn't/couldn't talk but there were no pathological findings as to why. He had spoken earlier in his life and in fact seemed quite normal back then, with the notable exception of being close to seven feet tall. He'd been raised in the Deep South and joined the military when he was nineteen. After boot camp, he was stationed somewhere in the south. One night, he just vanished. It was declared an AWOL for years, and finally he was declared missing and dead.
Ten years later, a seven-foot tall man walked into a VA Hospital emergency room in my part of the midwest and said to the receptionist: "My name is Marion Duchene and I've been dead for ten years."
Those were the last words he ever spoke.
He was covered with dust and he was wearing the same clothes he'd been reported to be wearing the night he vanished. His social security number had not been used and he had no identification on his person. However, they were able to identify him, I guess via fingerprints. He was well-fed and in good health, except for his refusal to speak. The family was notified but they said they had already grieved their lost man and that whomever was claiming to be him simply could not be. They said he was a "haint" and a stand-in for their dead relative and demanded not to be contacted again.
Marion paced all day every day. Not in a frantic way, but just lumbering up and down the halls and outside. He smiled all the time and would be moving his mouth in a way that indicated talking or muttering, but he was dead silent. He had an unnerving habit of throwing his head back with his mouth wide open as if he were laughing heartily but not even a breath could be heard. If told to go to the dining room for a meal, he'd go and eat. But if nobody told him, he just kept pacing, never indicating hunger. If offered a cigarette, he'd smoke it in an oddly formal way, almost delicately, if that makes sense. But he never seemed to crave smoking. The man wanted nothing. If I talked to him, he appeared to listen, periodically throwing his head back in that laughter-mimicking way of his.
There was nothing to do for this man. Various medications were tried, but they did not affect him either positively or negatively. Occupational therapy did nothing because Marion would just grin and unless told to stay put, he'd get up and start pacing again.
On my last day at that job, on my way to something better, the last thing I saw was Marion, pacing in the parking lot, throwing his head back to "laugh." Later I wondered if all along I'd been dealing with a ghost. All these years later, I still don't know.
#Unexplained #Building/Hospital