'Ghostly fog' caught on camera the moment it rips car mirror off police vehicle leaves officers scared and meteorologists scrambling for an answer

'Some of the officers said they think the parking lot's haunted,' said Hartford Lt. Brian Foley

NBC Connecticut Meteorologist Brad Field concluded that the fog is not a ghost, rather it is a mini-tornado

The car mirror was ripped off the car and swept through the air before it fell down to the asphalt beneath the car door



The Hartford, Conn. Police department was the scene of a mind-blowing vandalism. A Hartford police officer's car was mysteriously damaged on Wednesday.



Strangely enough, no one is to blame.



Surveillance footage of a 'ghostlike' entity twirling around the parking lot and brushing up against the cop car is the unlikely culprit.



The footage shows the 'ghostly' fog creeping towards the car, violently twirling around the vehicle, and then ripping the vehicle's mirror and jostling it mid air. Finally the mirror drops harshly to the ground beneath the car door.





The fog (circled here) can be seen swirling across the flat asphalt parking lot, an ideal environment for a mini-tornado to occur

The black dot in the center of this image is actually footage of the car mirror flying through the air

'At the end of his shift, he went out to his car and found his rear view mirror had been damaged and it was lying there next to his vehicle,' said Lt. Brian Foley of the Hartford Police department.

At first, cops thought that a human was responsible for the damage but the surveillance video footage proved otherwise.

'Some of the officers said they think the parking lot's haunted,' said Lt. Brian Foley to NBC Connecticut.

Lt. Brian Foley of the Hartford Police department said that some officers think that the parking lot is haunted

NBC Connecticut meteorologist Brad Feild concluded that the mysterious fog was actually a dust devil

Brad Field, an NBC Connecticut meteorologist, believes there is a more scientific explanation for the event.



After reviewing the video, Field concluded that the fog was not a ghost, but a dust devil. A dust devil is a mini-tornado of sorts. It's a swirl of wind that picks up the debris surrounding it. They have been known to form on asphalt surfaces.



'The only way you can see the dust devil is that it picks up dust and debris into it,' Field said.



'To be able to rip a mirror off a car, throw it around and then put it right back below where it was ripped off is interesting ... to say the least,' Foley told NBC.



A public information officer for the Hartford Police department told the Mail Online that while the event was creepy he hadn't heard of any other parking lot hauntings.

