Barton Gray, a 31-year-old Connecticut resident, topped off a June 22nd Phish show at Great Woods in Mansfield, Massachusetts like any other phan: selling nitrous oxide in the parking lot of a Red Roof Inn, throwing rocks at the cops who came to bust him, then running off into the woods. And as a perimeter of police closed in around him, Gray disappeared into the sewers, where he got lost for two days because most of the pipes are about 2 feet in diameter, and not wide enough for him to turn around.

It wasn't until June 25th that he began heaving a manhole cover up and down in the parking lot of a Stop & Shop, and a manager at the supermarket was able to help him out. Gray wandered off, but then came back, prompting the manager to call police and report an intoxicated man on the premises (presumably offering heady nugs for their "extra.") Patrolman Roy Bain, who responded to the call, tells the Sun Chronicle Gray was "extremely disheveled," speaking nonsense, was "dirty," and "looked like he'd been dragged through a briar patch." In other words, he looked pretty much the same as when he showed up for the Phish concert two days earlier.

Bain took Gray to a local hospital, but didn't connect him to the incident at the Red Roof Inn until he talked about it with the department's court prosecutor. Fortunately for Gray, the local police decided not to press charges, probably figuring that two days in the sewer and a lifetime spent following Phish was punishment enough. [Via Yemblog]