Lincoln/Mercury Repair: brakes on 1988 Lincoln Continental, manual brakes, lincoln continental

Question
Every once in awhile my ABS light and my brake light come on.  When this happens, my brakes work for a short time and then all of a sudden the peddle gets very hard and it is like i have the old manual brakes.  I'm talking push as hard as possible to try to stop type brakes.  It used to be that when it  happened if you shut the car off for a period of time, when you started it again the lights would be off and the brakes would be normal for awhile.  Now the lights won't go off and the brakes are almost non-existant.

Answer
Without actually checking the car, it sounds as if you either have a bad master cylinder, a bad brake booster or both. im sure if you have it checked its one of the two..thank you for your question and i hope i have helped you, i would believe its most likely your booster though