Creepy A** Military Bases

Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, 3 cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. And that's just pre-game. He knows teamwork. And BJ's knows savings. This is your home, Coach. Home of the Save. Join for just $20 at bjs.com/mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for 6 months. Open soon. Limited time offer. New members only. BJ's. Home of the Save. I'm Luke Lamanna. And this is Wartime Stories. Alright. You're good. You're good. Just. Just. Just the fog. There's. There's nothing out there. No. No, there's something out there. I. I definitely saw something. Okay. Probably just. Another Marine. Maybe. Op 4. One of the eval guys. Then why the hell aren't they moving? Hey. Uh. You. You good? Oh, you're not just gonna stand there like that, man. Come on. Move. Creepy mother. Bro, what. What kind of nods are those? What's with the blue lights? Nope. Nope, nope. That's. That's not a Marine. That is not a Marine. I'm not gonna tell with this. ♪ ♪ Can you, can you forget your window and see who it is? Uh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Hold on one sec. This next story was also submitted to Tales from the Grid Square by a soldier. He writes, So, it's 2013, and I'm stationed at Fort Riley. It's a cold, snowy night, and I'm laying in bed all nice and cozy, and then my phone rings. I answer it, and it's my next-door neighbor. Right off the bat, she's in a panic and whispering, Are you knocking on my door? I was like, Are you crazy? I'm laying in bed. She goes on to say that Someone is not alone. She's knocking at her door and won't go away. She asks if I can get a look at her front porch and see who it is. So, I roll out of bed and walk to the window. Lo and behold, there's no one at her door. I snap a picture and send it to her, and she immediately calls me back, basically on the verge of tears, swearing that someone is hammering on her door. She even put it on speaker, and I heard it. The knocking was loud enough that I could hear it clear as day through the phone. So, doing what any good neighbor would do, I grabbed a weapon, put on a jacket, and went to investigate. As I patrolled around the outside of her house, at first, I didn't see or hear anything unusual, until I went up to her front door. There was nothing there, but something was hammering on it, clear as day, and I then heard the loudest banging ever. I swear you could actually see the door vibrating with how violently it was being hit. Listen, I'm a soldier, I'm not a priest, paranormal investigator, or whoever is supposed to deal with that kind of thing. I think I literally had a "I didn't sign up for this shit" moment. I turned straight around and walked back to my house. I shut the door behind me and locked it, before just kind of standing there, in shock. I had no idea what I saw or what to do about it. I didn't even know what to say to my neighbor, so I gave her a call and told her that I didn't see anything, and hung up, and then I just tried to get some sleep. After everything that happened, that was easier said than done. Subtitles by the Amara.org community Subtitles by the Amara.org community This final story was sent to me a few years back by an H&S. We never had to explain what H&S meant, but for the sake of anybody who's not military, a headquarters and service Marine. Honestly, I never even knew that. We just called, we just said H&S, and I never bothered to question it, but. This story was sent to me a few years back by an H&S Marine named Ruben. Both I and Ruben, spent quite a few nights training on the southeastern end of the island of Oahu, on an old decommissioned air base called Bellows Air Station. We just called it Bellows. I'm not sure when it was last in service, but when I was there between 2010 and 2015, it looked like it had been a while. All there were, were really just the runways and the mount towns. You know, the mock Afghani villages that they'd built there. It wasn't really anything else. Other than just these flat sort of gravel runways. So maybe it had been since World War II. The Japanese did apparently bomb the base during their attack. A couple of guys were killed there. The one saving grace of Bellows is that it's mostly flat. Unlike East Range or Kahuku, two other training areas up on the northern side of the island, training at Bellows meant our patrols didn't completely suck. No mountains to climb, no falling into ravines. That's it. Etc. Worst thing that ever happened to me there was when I tried to take a nap one night and a centipede bit my head. Super painful. Doc had to knock me out with Benadryl. Um, but Reuben evidently encountered some things at Bellows that I am happy to say that I missed out on. One thing I didn't know about the base, as many times as I trained there, there's a cemetery there. Not sure if that matters. But Reuben might think so, because of what he saw. I was an H&S guy with a force recon unit out of Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. I know what you're thinking. Why are H&S guys going out on recon patrols? They should be pushing paper, right? Well, our ops chief recalled stories of H&S guys hopping on patrols with his team back in Iraq when they were short on bodies. Which led him to incorporating us H&S Marines into a lot of the training the reconnaissance Marines were doing. This leads us to the field op in question. We did land navigation all day and went on reconnaissance patrols during the night. The first few nights we had a team guy with us as a walker, mostly acting as an observer who gave us critiques during the after action report. But this particular night, the teams were given full autonomy, no instructor shadowing us, just big boy rules. After spending the day doing our land nav, me, being the team's point man, worked with the TL, team leader, to plan that night's patrol route. Our objective was pretty simple: we get dumped at a random spot within the training area and have to conduct a patrol back to our bivouac site. All while avoiding vehicle patrols that were being conducted by recon Marines and the I&I staff. Our patrol route was submitted and accepted. We started prepping, going through our PPIs. We mounted up into blacked out vans and were driven by one of our SARCs, Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsmen, to the drop point where we quickly dismounted and established 360 degree security. In true Marine Corps tradition, as soon as I dropped to a knee to cover my sector, I tore a giant hole in the crotch of my camis. I should have known that this was going to set the tone for the rest of the night. The van rolled off and I glanced at my TL, who gave the hand signal for us to rally up on his position in the tree line. Due to the dense brush in the jungles of Hawaii, we conducted our patrol in a ranger column, which is essentially walking single file with little dispersion. The first quarter of the patrol went well. It wasn't until we crossed one of the large runways that things started to get a little weird. To give some further context, the training area on Bellows Air Base has around three to four mount towns. Mount stands for military operations. Mount stands for the first time in Japan's urban terrain, a large X-shaped, what I used to believe was an airstrip, and a dense jungle. We had crossed the airstrip at the southwestern most point where one of the smaller mount towns made of shipping containers was. Once we reentered into the tree line, though, my compass began to act weird. I tried looking around, thinking we must have walked too close to some power lines or something, but I didn't see any. What could have been the cause, even though I held it at some distance and the previous nights I'd never had any issues with it? I probably looked pretty weird to my team, trying to stretch the compass as far away from me as possible while being able to keep an eye on the face of it. The lanyard rope is now pulling against my collar. Eventually, the needle stopped swaying left and right, and I tried to reorient myself. After our pause rep, a position report, was completed, I could have sworn, and I still swear to this day, that my TL tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, "Go." So I stepped off, following my azimuth. We could faintly hear the sounds of semis and cars on a main road less than a mile away, but by the time I had walked thirty feet back into the jungle, it was dead quiet. And that was when a weird, foreboding feeling washed over me, and I felt a tingle in my temples and around my scalp. I stopped and looked back, hoping to ask my TL if he felt something too, but no one was there. My team wasn't behind me. I was completely alone. What made it worse was that everything was so dark. There was barely any illumination from the moon, and what looked like the moon was the moon itself, but it wasn't the moon itself. There was barely any illumination from the moon, and what looked like the moon itself, but it wasn't the moon itself, but it wasn't the moon itself. from the moon and what light there was wasn't able to penetrate the trees rendering our nbgs night vision goggles essentially useless so throughout the patrol we were using our natural vision and i was using the very dim little glow-in-the-dark tritium marker the light on my compass to navigate so a wave of panic sets in as i now realize i had royally screwed up i had stepped off without my team behind me and at that moment that's when i began to hear the voices they were faint like the background noise of women and kids talking and playing mixed in with the occasional male voice some bushes began to rustle so i pocketed my compass and lifted my rifle while slowly backing away i didn't have any live ammunition but i was willing to channel whatever warrior spirit i needed to to punch the barrel of my weapon into whatever came out of that bush eventually the movement stopped and i took that moment to quickly turn tail and run back down in the direction i thought i came from luckily for me i saw the pale glow of the moonlight reflecting off the runway that we had crossed from between the trees i looked north and then south only to see the i was significantly further north of the mount town we had passed through now i thought i was losing it there was no way that i covered 300 meters north after i had stepped off but in any case i needed to find my team so i'm moving in a slow jog while trying to muffle the sound of my steps i push south toward the mount town and eventually i found my team still south of the mountain town i was able to find my team and i was able to find my team still south of the mountain town i was able to find my team and i was able to set up in 360 degree security and they all turn to face me as i walk up to them like any good leader would my tl then grabs me pulls me close and whispered you know in an ass-chewing voice and asked me what the hell are you doing where did you go and i told him about how he had tapped me and told me to go and he claimed he never did such a thing he told me that as he was writing down further instructions from the rock the recon operations center i was able to find my team and that i just got up and walked into the jungle i think he saw the confusion in my eyes because he just let me go and told me to get my head in the game we formed up and stepped off together we came across the same area of jungle that i was in before still dead quiet but thankfully i could hear the steps of my team now behind me so this time it made me stay focused and not think about what happened before there were no voices this time or rustling bushes a route led us along the brush to a bridge the only land crossing in the area since the stream itself was out we'd been warned some guys got a flesh-eating bacteria while crossing the stream so we said we're not doing that about 300 meters from the stream we hit a small trail and ran face first into a massive black building that was directly on my azimuth i tried to go around it on the right but the building was still in front of us so we turned around and tried to go left but the building was also there the building was apparently crescent shaped with a rounded roof like a small hangar or bunker and it had a crescent shaped road out in front of it i have looked for this building on the google maps imagery and for the strangest reason i can't see it so i don't know if it's just i it was an open air when i saw it so i don't know if it's been overgrown since then or what but whatever this building was we couldn't get around it so my team leader and i did a map check under our camo tarp using a red light and confirmed our position using a nearby t intersection since gps wasn't allowed during training we settled on following the trail to the stream even though it raised our risk of running into another patrol staying out in the open like that so with a final look at this strange moon-shaped building we set off down this trail and get back to where the stream is which has two parallel roads running on each side of it so we're moving alongside this very tall grass that is bordering the road which is bordering the stream and i see headlights coming near to the bridge so i alert everyone i say vehicle vehicle vehicle and we have to force our way into this thick elephant grass we could barely get a few feet inside of it the van that's looking for us that's driving around with its headlights on speeds past us it then turns around and comes back a lot slower almost like it maybe saw something like it's looking for us in the bushes well it doesn't see us and it drives away down the road but then when we exit the elephant grass i notice some movement out of the corner of my eye i caught a brief glimpse of someone across the stream walking against the tree line it looked like a person walking down the road but the way the moonlight was hitting him i don't know it it just didn't look like a guy wearing camis it was weird i froze even though i knew this guy probably couldn't see us because we're in the shadows on the other side and i told my tl who saw this guy too looks like he's just like walking down the road so i pull out my nods to try to get a good look at him now that we're out in the open i can actually use my nbgs but as soon as i put the nods up to my eye this guy's gone no idea where he went just disappears i have no idea what to make of this and not knowing where this guy went if he's one of the role players that's gonna compromise this if he sees us i don't know so we move along the tree line to the bridge it's wide open we got no choice but to just sprint across the road one at a time and then immediately take cover in the tree line on the far side so one last check for danger my tl taps me i nod and we we start crossing one at a time i sprinted across the bridge and took cover in the trees on the far side i was then joined by the rest of my team the team's radio operator then asked to go take a leak he got permission from the tl and halfway through i see headlights coming fast down the road so i warn the team and in the dark this is kind of funny i watch my tl tackle the radio operator midstream mind you to make sure that he's out of sight and we're all very tense worried that this van and their headlights are going to catch us but the truck just passes by and keeps going so we relaxed again and now the ro is moaning about something basically saying that he thinks he has a junk on a sharp stick when he got tackled i mean we had to laugh once the atl got a radio check i reset my azimuth and we moved out and the rest of the patrol was pretty straightforward after dodging the van again driving by we exfilled and returned to the bivouac for debrief so afterward i found the guys that were driving around in the van looking for us and i told them hey you guys drive around in the van and i told them hey you guys drive around in the van and i drove right by us when we were near the stream and we when we crossed that bridge and it was around this time so because we were outside the elephant grass and i did not see anybody walking along the road on the other side but after the van left that's when somebody appeared so i was like which one of you guys got out of the van to go take a leak or something i was because i was looking for you with my nods and i didn't see you and all these guys had no idea what i was talking about they said that nobody ever got out of the van and there shouldn't have been anybody else walking around the training area except us so who was the guy that we saw and moreover who was it that tapped my shoulder if it wasn't my tl that was one of the creepiest patrols i've ever been on this next story is interesting for a couple reasons first it comes from lieutenant colonel seth hall of the u.s army and second it wasn't posted on some random ghost forum or anonymous message board it was published on the army's own website which doesn't automatically mean every detail is true obviously but does make it a little harder to just brush it off as net creepypasta hall's story goes back to when he was a young lieutenant living on fort sale oklahoma in a neighborhood called academic heights and from the way he describes it academic heights was one of those older on post housing areas that actually had some charm to it solid old houses heavy wooden doors brass knobs families living close together kids running back and forth between houses you know the kind of place where when the dads were deployed everybody on the block helped look out for everybody else but according to hall there was something else in that neighborhood too something his dog noticed before he did and something two little girls may have been feeding lunch to without realizing what they were dealing with he writes i'll start off by saying that i've always been skeptical of ghosts and ghost stories and i still am but I'll admit, there are far more things in this world that I cannot explain than things I can. I'll put the following events into the latter category. Both of these accounts are 100% true, to the best of my recollection. They happened some 18 years ago, but they are not embellished in any way. Both happenings occurred on Fort Sill when I was a young lieutenant living in Academic Heights. Out of consideration to the young families who live in the quarters now, I will not share the exact addresses of where these incidents occurred. My first unexplainable encounter happened around six months after we moved into our place. My family left the day prior for a long weekend trip to Grandma and Grandpa's house. Our faithful Beagle Ulysses and I were the only two living souls in the house and had settled in. We settled in to bed around 10:30 p.m. It was a cool fall night. All the windows were shut, and the bedroom door was completely closed, as is my routine when I go to bed. If you've never been in Academic Heights, they were erected in the mid-20th century when buildings were made to last. At that time, all of the exterior and interior doors were made of solid wood, making them extremely heavy. The knobs and latches were all brass, and they looked original, from when the building was originally built. I was reading for around 20 minutes, and Ulysses was curled up in his usual spot at the foot of the bed, sleeping. And out of nowhere, Ulysses jolts awake, and he starts growling at the door. The hair on his back is standing straight up, and his gaze is just laser-focused on the door. He was growling, showing his teeth, posing as mean-looking as I'd ever seen him. I hadn't heard any noises, as we occasionally did, living in a fourplex. In any way, Ulysses was used to those sounds, but this was different. He was scared. In an attempt to calm him, and keep him from disturbing our neighbors, I reached down to pet him, and when I touched his back leg, he kind of startled, and then he looked at me, and then back at the door. And then back at me, in kind of a "can't-you-see-it" kind of way. It was maybe 10-15 seconds elapsed with us locked in that sort of tense cycle. Ulysses could not be comforted or deterred from growling intensely at the door. And just as I was beginning to wonder if I had locked both doors, I heard the latch click, and watched the doorknob turn. Then, the door between the bedroom and the hallway swung open to about a 45-degree angle. That was enough for Ulysses. He lost it. In an instant, all of his bravado vanished as he leapt off the opposite side of the bed and went to hide underneath of it. I instinctively reached for a small aluminum bat that I kept by the side of my bed, and started yelling at whoever or whatever had just opened my door. Over the next 30 minutes, I checked and rechecked the entire apartment, turning on all the lights and triple-checking the door locks. I couldn't find any evidence that anyone else had been in the house. When I felt safe again, when my heart stopped racing, logic took over, and I tried for the next hour to replicate that. The door going from being latched shut to opening, but no use. Something wanted in or out of my room, and it made no bones about letting me know. It wanted me to know. It was there. Because my kids were little, I did not tell them what happened, so that they wouldn't be frightened. I told my wife, but I'm not sure she totally believed me. We lived in those quarters for another few years, but neither Ulysses or I ever saw anything else that we couldn't explain. This second spooky encounter didn't happen in my quarters, or to me directly, but it did happen around the same time as my personal experience, and in the same neighborhood of Academic Heights. As families living on post tend to do, my family became very close to several others in our neighborhood. This was during the Operation Iraqi Freedom 1-3 timeframe. For several consecutive years, at least a few dads were always deployed. When you were gone, you knew your family would be watched out for by friends on the block, and when you were home, you watched out for the other families. I still love that about on-post living. Anyway, my oldest daughter, who was about 4 years old at the time, made friends with a girl her age, who lived in quarters across the street. The girls roamed the neighborhood all summer and fall to the park and back, in and out of both houses, often eating lunch at whichever house they happened to be at when they were hungry. At the age of 4, the world is still magical. Every new playtime comes with dragons to be slain and unicorns to befriend. It wasn't uncommon to hear the girls singing with fairy choirs or whispering secrets to animals who always whispered back. The strange occurrences started, innocently enough, at lunchtime. My daughter's friends started asking if her new friend could have lunch with them. A friend who wasn't my daughter. At first, the adults assumed this request was for a stuffed animal or another make-believe friend. And depending on how much food was left, the adults assumed it was just a request for a stuffed animal or another make-believe friend. When the food was left, whichever mom had assumed lunch duty that day would do their best to set aside an extra plate for this new friend. For a week or two, this lunch plan placated the girls. But that all changed one day when their friend didn't get any lunch. My daughter's friend was visibly upset. When her mother asked, "What's the matter?" she said, "Zoe is mad at you, Mommy, because you didn't feed her today." "Who is Zoe?" her mom asked. "She's my friend, and she's hungry," replies this little girl. Trying to defuse the situation and thinking that Zoe must be a stuffed animal, her mother asked to see Zoe. "Mommy, she's standing right in the hallway, right there. Can't you see her?" Her daughter said, now as equally puzzled as her mother. "No, I can't see her," her mother replied. Her mother replied, very confused. "She has long blonde hair, and she's wearing a long white dress, like always," said her daughter. For fun, my friend showed her daughter photos of girls wearing white dressing gowns from the early 1900s. "That looks just like the dress Zoe wears," her daughter told her. "Okay," her mom said as calmly as possible. "Tell Zoe it's time to go home." For fun, my friend showed her daughter photos of girls wearing white dressing gowns from the early 1900s. "Her mommy will feed her when she gets there," said her daughter. The girls went to tell Zoe it was time to go home. And after that day, they never mentioned her again. they are just terrible people if you are one of these marines by the way may all of your bacon burn anyway now that you have a basic grasp of the layout of the barracks it was during the time when most of the marines in his unit were out of the barracks that this marine started to experience well i'll let him tell you about it he writes so i was on a udp and on camp schwab for the story the whole company goes to the philippines three dudes from headquarters and two guys from easy company are left in the entire barracks that's when it starts getting weird every day i did laundry middle of summer oaky sweat issues the doors for every dryer were open i was on the top floor and the headquarters guys were the rooms by me i'd go back to get my laundry out and they're all open i shut the doors every time and then they would be open when i came back but i can clearly hear when the other guys on the floor would open or close the doors so i'm like who the hell is doing this so one night i was in there i had just shut all the dryer doors and out of the corner of my eye was a solid white figure but once i looked it was gone whatever so later on i go back to get my laundry and as i'm kneeling in front of the machine to pull my clothes out into a basket i feel someone run their hand across my head i have a shaved head and there is a distinct difference between a hand and wind on my head later i'm lying in bed that night and suddenly the guy in the room across from me is banging on my door and yelling for me to open the door i let him in and asked what the hell was going on he said that he had a dream and that this lady in all white was grabbing him yelling for him to come with her and when he shoved her away the metal circular vent cover that was attached to his ceiling crashes down onto the floor and he wakes up for anyone who never lived in the oki barracks you have to push up and twist for these vent covers to come down so it's a little bit of a struggle for me to be able to get out of the room it's not like it could just fall on its own i went over with them and checked and sure enough the vent was right there on the floor and now he said his shoes were gone turning a camera light on under his bed we see that the shoes are now pushed into the corner of the room under his bed and this is a guy who kept his shoes aligned like he was still a recruit he's one of those guys so this wasn't normal i start asking him if he'd been experiencing weird things and he said yes the next day we asked a few others in the barracks and they also said yes when everyone came back whatever this was it went away i take it that the ghost didn't have enough energy to haunt some 300 marines but when it was just a few of us we were prime targets Sergeant! Sergeant! Jacobs! Oh, what, uh, what's going on? Oh, that's right. You just, uh, you just checked in, didn't you? Uh, what do you mean, Sergeant? So, nobody's told you yet. About what? That this kind of thing happens all the time. The alarm's going off? Yeah. Shouldn't, shouldn't we be going inside and- Nope. You can head back to your post. Aren't we supposed to clear the building? That's standard protocol, isn't it? Uh, look, you can go in and clear the building if you want, but you'll get tired of it after the first week. Trust me. Sorry, Sergeant. Am I, am I missing something? The alarms go off every night, usually around 0300 to 0330. Don't you get it? Get what? Boy, you are green, aren't you? Look, you see how the guards sit in that little shack outside the front door of the building? Now, why would they want to do that instead of sitting inside at the CQ desk in the lobby? Hmm? Is. Is. Is there something wrong with the building? You're damn right there's something wrong with it. Strange noises, smells, you name it. Sergeant, are you, are you saying that the building is. haunted? Hmm. Took you that long, didn't it? Oh, okay. I get it. Prank the new guy, right, Sergeant? Yeah, very funny. Do I look like I'm laughing? But. Ugh, look, you'll figure it out eventually. Have a good night. Uh, uh, yes, Sergeant. Have a good night. What the hell? This next account was shared by an Air Force veteran who was stationed at Hickam Air Force Base in the late 1990s. We don't have a name for him, so we'll call him Isaac. Hickam lies adjacent to the naval base at Pearl Harbor, and the two are considered joint bases. As a security guard. As a security specialist, Isaac's job largely revolved around patrolling the Central Headquarters building. The building itself, it seems, has a very dark history about it. This is one of two experiences that I had while stationed at Hickam Air Force Base as a security specialist on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, in the mid-90s. This incident would occur in 1997. The first day we were processed in, the other troops there started telling us. new guys. ghost stories. I thought they were just messing with us. until I had been there for a little while. It took all of one shift to start verifying the most prevalent story told on the base. It involves the 12th Air Force Headquarters building being haunted by the war dead of Pearl Harbor. The Pacific Air Force's Pay-Calf Command is also located in this building, so it is a very important place that requires strong security. strict security. There are manned security posts on the premises, as well as state-of-the-art laser and camera systems blanketing the property. Anyway, a little historical background on the building. During the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, the building was used as a hospital and temporary morgue. Over a thousand dead servicemen were stored there until their remains could be dealt with properly. Many of them would die in the building while being treated. There was so much blood that the cleanup apparently required stringing hoses throughout the building and washing the floors with scrub brushes. Pretty gruesome, and for sure sets a good stage for some paranormal happenings. Well, the first night on shift, around 3 a.m., the motion alarms went nuts. And the SRT, Special Response Team, was called to respond. I was training with the base patrol that night, so we went that way and provided backup. Every guy there seemed more tense than they should be. Something strange then happened to me. Instead of the SRT going in the building and clearing it, they simply reset the alarm and documented the occurrence. Anyone who knows anything. about military security knows. this is extremely unusual and not protocol. When we returned to our patrol, I asked my FTO, my field training officer, "Why didn't we secure the building like we should have?" This is what he told me: "It happens every night, usually between 3 and 3:30." He also let me in on why there was a little shack outside the front door of the building. He said, "I don't know. building instead of the guard being posted at the CQ desk in the lobby of HQ. Almost every airman that tried to work the post would refuse to stay in there because they would hear walking and talking, smell what was described as rotten meat or a slaughterhouse smell, and the stairs in front of that location would squeak and vibrate violently on a regular basis. I was still thinking that this was them messing with me. It just seemed like it was a little too scripted. But, man, was I wrong. For the next six months I was there, this alarm thing would occur each and every night between 3 and 3.30, just like my sergeant warned me. I saw the alarm. I saw military dogs refuse to go into search. Every dog would whimper, growl, and try to hide behind their handler. Those of you who know, know that military working dogs don't refuse service. I also witnessed grown men choose to sit on a stool in a four-by-four-foot its shack instead of at a nice desk in a spacious air-conditioned lobby, night after night. I quickly became one of those guys in the shack too, because I experienced the walking, talking, and stares in about the first hour of my shift on that post. I tried sitting at the desk, and I didn't stay there long. Because my shift on the HQ post began at midnight, and by 0100 or so, my time of trying to stay at the CQ desk was over. I was pretty shaken. I never experienced the smells, but would experience the sounds on several occasions. Then at 317 AM, the alarm went off. There was motion detected in the basement and on the third floor. There had been nobody there since 5 PM, when the building had been secured for the evening. Peculiar thing, very seldom did anyone come back in the evening to work there, alone. I think I remember only about two times in my six months that anyone came back to work after 5 PM. And if they did, they didn't stay long, in and out, so to speak. It was creepy, and I experienced a lot of fear. I was afraid to leave the building, I experienced these things on several occasions. But the alarm thing was every morning, without fail. These are my experiences at the HQ building on Hickam Air Force Base. It was an extremely unnerving place to work. the road from the chow hall at around 0200 i got up to rove the barracks while i was making the rounds on the second floor i couldn't help but notice this asian woman standing down in the parking lot looking directly at me it was kind of creepy sure but at the time i didn't think anything of it that it was probably just somebody's family member or girlfriend not my monkeys not my circus right but as i made my way inside and back to the duty hut i stopped dead in my tracks standing there staring at me from the very end of the second deck hallway was the same asian woman there was no way this girl made it all the way up here from the parking lot before me i was beyond creeped out so i just kind of backed away and hauled ass up the stairs to the fourth deck where my aod assistant officer of the day was located when i found him in the lounge i told him about the strange asian girl but just as he was about to respond we heard the distinct sound of footsteps running down the catwalk just outside the lounge door we both got up to investigate but no one was there the footsteps continued but we were the only ones on the fourth deck my assistant officer just let out this big sigh rubbed his temper a little bit and then we were on our way to the fourth deck and i was standing in the back of the car and i heard a sound of footsteps running down the catwalk we both got up to investigate but no one was there the footsteps continued but we were the only ones on the fourth deck my assistant officer just let out this big sigh rubbed his temper a little bit and then we were on our way to the fourth deck his temples and said something like why the hell are you bringing this into my life he then told me to go post back up and get on with tonight's duty but i straight up told him that there was no way i was going back out there alone after all this i think the other guy was a bit freaked out as well because he just left it at that we just spent the whole night holed up in the lounge talking about sports movies anything to get our minds off all the weird stuff but at around 0400 i glanced over at the lounge window that looked out into the hall and felt the chill run down my spine there looking back in at us was the asian girl my buddy saw it as well and we both went absolutely quiet for a good 10 seconds we managed to find some bit of courage standing up and slowly approaching the lounge door to go confront whoever this was but as soon as we pushed it open she vanished there was no sign of her and given how long the hall was there was no way she would have been able to avoid us without being seen after that we both walked around and told one another that we'd never tell anyone about what we'd seen after that we both walked around and told one another that we'd never tell anyone about what we'd seen and never tell anyone about what we'd seen and i've kept that promise until now what the hell is that idiot doing over there that's what i want to talk about oh no bro what do you want bro some weird is going on right now and i'm i'm kind of freaking out and why does this have to involve me go talk to the cq dude please fine coming what dude i i was in the kitchen and something threw a chair at me from across the room what what do you mean something threw it on my mother's grave there is something out there and it just threw a chair at me all right fine i will look but dude if this gets out your ass is 100 going to be on the next piss roster i hope you know that this first story was sent to me by a soldier under the handle the rewind guy 1. in it he recalls a disturbing incident he and a few other soldiers witnessed while living on fort riley inside building 223 he writes so the story i'm about to share is extremely bizarre to start off i was stationed at fort riley in 2019 as an mp military policeman under the 97th mp brigade 2. at the time i lived in building 223 right next to the cavalry parade field if you google it it's shaped like a t my room was at the bottom of the t-shape on the second floor now my room was the last room on the left side down this hallway before it cut left for the fire exit i had a single room and shared a wall with the neighboring room next to me the rooms themselves were split in two the one closest to me was empty but the other room was occupied this person's room had a common space for cooking and also allowed access to the bathroom each individual room in the building could only be accessed via key card sorry for all the setup it's just important to grasp the layout of this place for the story to make more sense anyway it was late friday night around 10 30 ish and i had just gotten back from the gym i was enjoying my chicken and rice when out of nowhere i heard the guy in the room next to me we'll call him k make a loud crashing noise see he was a known drug user in the unit and i just thought he was bugging out and tripped over a chair or something i thought it was hilarious until i heard him open his front door and start walking over to my room he knocked and i reluctantly got up to answer when i opened the door he looked absolutely terrified he said that a chair sitting in his room had come flying at him while he was in the kitchen now i do believe in the supernatural but i wanted to investigate just to see if this guy wasn't actually tweaking out so we enter his common area and i see the knocked over chair in the middle i pick it up and i put it in the back portion of the room closest to the window i then shut the door and because it requires a key card it auto locks on its own there are two things to note here one k never entered the room past the common area i was the only one that went in two when those doors lock there is a way to pop them open but it's very loud and the force required would have shook things on my wall so i would have known if k tried to get back in k tried to get back in k tried to get back in k tried to get back in k tried to get back in so i would have known if k tried to get back in so i would have known if k tried to get back in so i would have known if k tried to get back in k understandably freaked out ended up going to another person's room right across the hall we'll call this guy b so i moved the chair to the back of the room and left and i was the last one to leave k's room and i locked his door that led out to the hallway so i go back to my room to eat my chicken and that's when i heard the sound of that same chair slowly dragging across the tile floor it froze me in place for half a second before i became angry with the thought that k was now messing with me so i went back to his door and demanded that he open it well to my surprise he was still in b's room the entire time i looked at him and said were you messing with the chair just now k immediately said no so we decided to go check the room once again so we decided to go check the room once again so we decided to go check the room once again and sure enough the chair had moved from the window and sure enough the chair had moved from the window to the center of the room to the center of the room to the center of the room k was beyond unsettled and i could tell b k was beyond unsettled and i could tell b k was beyond unsettled and i could tell b was a bit weirded out now was a bit weirded out now was a bit weirded out now as well while they stayed by the door i as well while they stayed by the door i as well while they stayed by the door i went into the room with a plan to stop went into the room with a plan to stop went into the room with a plan to stop this chair from moving this chair from moving this chair from moving that plan being to duct tape the chair that plan being to duct tape the chair that plan being to duct tape the chair to k's bed frame to k's bed frame to k's bed frame i figured that this would stop whoever or i figured that this would stop whoever or i figured that this would stop whoever or whatever was messing with us whatever was messing with us whatever was messing with us in retrospect in retrospect in retrospect this wasn't the best idea all right that should do it all right that should do it all right that should do it do what exactly do what exactly do what exactly you got a better idea you got a better idea you got a better idea i'm all ears i'm all ears i'm all ears can we just get out of here no way in can we just get out of here no way in can we just get out of here no way in hell i'm spending the night after all hell i'm spending the night after all hell i'm spending the night after all this no way was that the deadbolt on the no way was that the deadbolt on the no way was that the deadbolt on the front door front door front door nope nope i'm done i'm out nope nope i'm done i'm out nope nope i'm done i'm out let's go right after i finished taping the chair right after i finished taping the chair right after i finished taping the chair to the bed to the bed to the bed i guess i must have angered whatever it i guess i must have angered whatever it i guess i must have angered whatever it was was was because the moment i left the bedroom to because the moment i left the bedroom to because the moment i left the bedroom to go back go back go back into the common area the deadbolt to the into the common area the deadbolt to the into the common area the deadbolt to the main door main door main door just locked itself a second after that just locked itself a second after that just locked itself a second after that the oven turned on by itself the oven turned on by itself the oven turned on by itself b and i look at each other and we're b and i look at each other and we're b and i look at each other and we're like hell no like hell no like hell no and bolted out into the hallway while k and bolted out into the hallway while k and bolted out into the hallway while k went to quickly shut off his oven went to quickly shut off his oven went to quickly shut off his oven but as i stepped out of the room and look down the hall. I'm still not sure I saw what I think that I saw. At the end of the hallway, about 30 to 40 feet away, was what looked like a jet black, two foot long, very thick tail of an animal as it disappeared around the left-hand corner. B said he only saw the tail, but I saw the tail and heard a very loud growling noise as whatever this was went out of sight. As it rounded the bend, the motion lights for that section of the hallway shut off, leaving only ours on. I, stupidly, went to investigate, but couldn't find any sign of the thing we saw walking down the hallway just seconds before. At this point, we were all pretty on edge, so we took a moment to gather ourselves in the hallway, just trying to figure out what the actual hell just happened. That's when another soldier approached us, asking why we were banging on his door and making so much noise late at night. B and I, just stared at each other and then started explaining what we had just experienced. This guy blows us off, probably thinking we're either drunk or high or something, but as the soldier walked back to his room, that's when it hit us. He lived at the end of the hallway that this creature just went down. K ended up staying at his girl's place for the night, and B and I went back to our rooms to try to get something out of this. I didn't think we were going to get anything out of this. Skip to Monday, and we're about to tell a friend of ours all the weird stuff that happened on Friday night, but before we could even start, he tells us that he had something weird happen to him as well in the barracks. He said he was laying in bed and suddenly found himself locked in a sleep paralysis nightmare. Shadow people were climbing out of his ceiling light and walking around his room. Accompanied by this overwhelming sense of dread, then he woke up, and that was that. The story was creepy, but what he said next made it ten times worse. According to him, this happened around 10.30pm on Friday night, the exact time all the weird stuff in K's room started going down. And as it turned out, this guy, he lived on the first floor of the building. Remember, we were on the second floor, and this guy's room was directly beneath K's room. *Sigh* How much longer do you think this is going to take? *Sigh* What, you got somewhere important to be? No, I just don't want to be in here. This place gives me the creeps, dude. Bro, it's an aircraft shelter, not a morgue. Oh, so you don't know then? Know about what? What happened during the Korean War? In here? No idea. *Sigh* It's probably better than nothing. I bet you don't. Whatever, man. I'm sure this scary story shit worked on you, but I'm-- *Sigh* Oh, shit! You were saying? Shut up. Just, some shit just fell over. That's all. Uh-huh. Or someone else is in here with us. Probably just ducked in because of the raid. Hello? Is there someone else here? *Sigh* Hello? Holy shit. But it just gives more credence to Korea being, well, eerie. In it, this airman takes us back to the late 2000s, when he was stationed at Osan Air Base in South Korea. According to him, an atrocity committed by North Korean troops during the Korean War has left a lasting mark on that installation, particularly in one of the hardened aircraft shelters that he said many of his fellow service members avoided. At all costs, he writes. I was Air Force stationed at Osan Air Base in South Korea around 2007-2008. This story isn't my own, but was shared by a friend of mine. Back then, during exercises, it was common for those of us in the QRVs, quick response vehicles, to hide in a local HAS, a hardened aircraft shelter, during simulated attacks. But it was common. It was common knowledge that there was one HAS on Bravo Diamond that you absolutely did not hide in. When I asked him why, he told me about the time they broke that rule during an air raid drill. The siren sounded, and all the other shelters were filled, so they squirreled themselves away in the Forbidden One during the next missile attack, shutting the doors and sealing themselves inside. Apparently, during the entire 90-minute attack and post-attack recon, they heard creepy noises, from random shuffling to voices. He swore he heard someone very clearly say, please, no. The generally accepted cause for this was something of an urban legend. Apparently, during the Korean War, the pilots left the maintainers behind on the airbase that was about to get overrun. When captured by the North Koreans, these personnel were tortured and then hung by their necks with safety equipment. And their spirits still supposedly inhabited that hangar. When I came back years later, the HAS in question was now gone, and a new building was currently being constructed where it had once stood. If it actually was the spirits of those poor guys lingering in the shelter, I can only hope that they've found some level of peace since then. If it's the spirits of those poor guys lingering in the shelter, I can only hope that they've found some level of peace since then. This next account was sent to me by a soldier named Ethan. And at the time he wrote it, Ethan had just recently finished basic combat training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. And like most people going through basic, he had plenty of reasons to be miserable. The heat, field exercises, getting woken up in the middle of the night, and told me, well, everybody else gets to keep sleeping. But according to Ethan, the thing that stuck with him the most wasn't a drill sergeant or the training or the Oklahoma summer. It was something that happened out in the field near a place called Potato Hill. His platoon had set up a patrol base for a land nav exercise, and Ethan ended up pulling fire guard in the middle of the night. At first it sounded normal. Coyotes in the distance, other platoons moving around, wind in the grass. But then Ethan heard footsteps coming from a place where no one was supposed to be. And when he turned to challenge whoever was walking toward him, well, I'll let him tell it. He writes. So, I recently completed basic combat training and had some weird things happen during a couple of our field training exercises. For context, I completed my training at Fort Sill during the summer months. Most days were spent in sweltering 100 degree heat, while the nights felt like they dropped near freezing, especially with the wind. For my batteries, anvil, field exercise, we rocked out to a location called Potato Hill, primarily to do some good old fashioned land nav training. For our stay, we were divided up by platoons into patrol bases. For anyone familiar with the location, we set up ours in the lowland behind the large hill you encounter when you first arrive at Potato Hill. I ended up having to pull fire guard the first night we stayed, and yeah, I was not happy about that. But my battle buddy woke me up, and we agreed that I'd stay at the entrance of the patrol base and basically challenge anyone who tried to enter. Meanwhile, my battle buddy, another guy, would patrol around inside of the base. Besides the distant howling of coyotes, sounds of other platoons moving around, the first half hour was pretty uneventful, but the peace and quiet didn't last. So there I was, chilling on some flat land facing the pavilion, when from behind me I heard footsteps crunching around in the high grass. I instinctively turned around to address who was there, but there was nobody. My battle buddies were still over at the far side of the patrol base, so definitely not them. At first I thought that it might have been a drill sergeant trying to sneak up on us and making sure we're alert and whatnot. They'd done it earlier in the exercise, so we were kind of expecting it. But just as I was wondering if that was the case, three more footsteps walked right up in front of me, clear as day. I staggered back, completely caught off guard, because where a person should be, there was no one. It was just completely empty. I wasn't hanging around. I think I peeled out of there and then went and linked up with my battle buddies. The whole thing really creeped me out, but I really didn't give it much thought after that night. That is, until we ended up back at that same spot during our forge. We ended up having to do an additional land nav course and found ourselves setting up in the same foxholes and slit trenches we'd already dug and reburied from last time. And just like last time, I found myself on fire guard. That was when the unwanted memories came flooding back. So in an effort to distract myself from all the creepy thoughts, I just started pacing and doing laps around the front of the patrol base. Coyotes were howling again all night. And at one point, I swear, I heard something in the grass. I stopped. I'm just looking out into the dark, and I'm listening. And there they were, just like last time. Footsteps crunching through the tall grass. And at that point, I knew there was something just dead wrong about the whole thing. Nothing too intense happened that night, but just being there had my stomach doing flips. That feeling you get when your whole body knows that just something isn't right. This final story comes from a sailor stationed at Naval Base Ventura County out in California. Now, this isn't one of those bases with a long list of weird stories tied to it. By all accounts, it's pretty normal. But according to this guy, there's at least one thing about that place that doesn't quite sit right. Because at one of the gates, named after a man who was killed in Fallujah, some people seem to think he still shows up from time to time. He writes, So, for context, I'm in the Navy. I work occasional security in Naval Base Ventura County. I say occasionally as I'm more of an auxiliary type, helping to man security at the gates slash ECPs, and security is not my primary job. Anyway, one of the gates was recently renamed after Eric L. Knott. He was a Seabee, or Navy construction worker, who was killed by enemy mortar fire in Fallujah in 2004. That's all I really knew about it. He was a young guy who was killed, and they named the gate in honor of him. But then I heard something else. Knott's unit was Naval Mobile Construction Battalion, or NMCB-4, for short. That unit also happens to be garrisoned at Naval Base Ventura County when Knott deployed. While working the night shift on a Saturday night, myself, a Seabee from NMCB-4, and a third person were posted up at Knott Gate. O-300 pulls around, and there is not a soul in sight, not even the occasional car driving through the intersection just out in front of the base. We're all struggling to stay awake when the headlights of an approaching car, and catch our attention, partially blinding us. I step out to greet the driver. I do the usual song and dance, check his credentials and whatnot. His credentials and his ID card, they look legit. And. But what I notice is that he has the same last name as the gate. Knott. K-N-O-T-T. I look up at him, and I kind of make a little joke about it, and what I get back from him is this pale, cold stare. At that point, I just kind of froze. Because I don't know if my mind was just playing tricks on me, or if I was just tired. But I could have sworn he was wearing a uniform that would have only been worn in the early 2000s. I could barely speak. And he doesn't move a muscle. And I finally choked up and said he could go. He lowers his card, and he doesn't look away from me. As he drives off into the night. I thought it was very odd, and honestly, really creepy. And so I go back inside, and I mention this to the other sentries in the shack. The dude with NMCB4 tells me, in a legend-has-it-but-I-don't-believe-it kind of way, that Eric Knott wasn't supposed to die that day in Fallujah. He didn't know the specifics, but the rumor was that the command he was with messed up. And that his spirit will sometimes come by to scoff at the gate they named after him. To try to make up for their mistake. And then he shows me a picture of Eric Knott. And let me tell you, my heart just sank. All I could choke up was, that was the guy in the car. He didn't believe me, of course, and was convinced I was just tired. But now, every time I have to man the watch at Knott Gate, I just hope that petty officer Knott won't decide to come through. It's only happened that one time, and everyone kind of laughs it off when I tell them about it. I do too, now. But inside, I believe I saw him. Still angry at his superiors for letting him die. I'm not sure if I should be the one to blame. have sleep paralysis. It's not always a constant thing in my life, but it comes and goes. It's maybe 6 or 7 a.m. on a Saturday and I'm asleep in my barracks room. My bed is alongside a wall and you can see the wall lockers from it as well as the little entrance into the room where the sink would be. It has some dim yellowish green light and it's not very bright. Anyways, I wake up at like 0600, 0700 and of course I am now caught in an episode of sleep paralysis. And I felt something staring at me. So I look towards the entrance of the room and I see some weird black smoke or mist, almost transparent. Right away my entire body starts to shake and tremble. And the first thing that comes to my mind is that a demon is trying to possess me. I'm a guy of Christian faith, so I start praying and it suddenly stops. I open my eyes and it's still there, but this time it's closer. I just lay there for several minutes with my eyes shut and I can now smell the scent of something like rotting. So I keep praying and finally it feels like it stops for good. But the moment I open my eyes is when my roommate starts talking to me. And I look and this thing is gone, but my roommate is now staring at me. And he goes, bro, you were sleep talking. I didn't know you spoke Spanish. I don't speak Spanish. And I now believe he actually heard me speaking Latin. But I don't know Latin either, nor have I ever heard it spoken. And I also read somewhere that the scent of something rotting can indicate a demonic apparition. I don't know what it is. So yeah, scary stuff. How long do we have? I don't know. Just hurry up. You're the one who had to go. Yeah, dude. I'm about to piss my freaking pants here. Sue me. Make it quick. Yeah, yeah. Oh, dude. Oh, Jesus. Did you? Yeah. Yeah, I saw it. Holy shit, dude. I thought you were going to piss your pants. Fucking hold it. Wait up. I came across this first story on an online message board. It was posted by a U.S. soldier who went through basic combat training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in January. Of 2017. And if you've ever served, you already know that boot camp stories are basically their own genre. Everyone has one. Some dumb thing a drill instructor said. Some guy in the platoon who couldn't stop messing up. Some miserable night on fire guard when you were tired, cold, cleaning something disgusting and wondering why you made such poor choices that landed you here. But this story is a little different. Because according to this soldier, the thing that scared his platoon the most at Fort Sill wasn't the drill sergeants. It wasn't the training. It wasn't even the usual misery of being a brand new recruit. It was their own barracks. More specifically, the latrine. Because over the course of BCT, multiple recruits started reporting the same kinds of things. Lights turning on by themselves. Voices coming from empty rooms. Shadow figures moving through the hall. And one recruit waking up to see something dark hovering over his bed. Now, normally, boot camp is the perfect environment for your mind to play tricks on you. You're exhausted. You're stressed. You're sleep deprived. You're living in a room with 50 other people. But what makes this story interesting is that it apparently wasn't just one guy. It was enough of the platoon that by the end, even one of the drill sergeants had a chance to do it. And that's why I'm here. I'm here to help you. Walk out of the latrine and down the hall towards him. But just before it got close, he said it evaporated into thin air. Another person said that he heard noises on the other side of the latrine while he was cleaning it. And another guy said he actually heard voices when it was his turn to scrub the toilets. But by far the worst story I heard came from a recruit named Hunt. So Hunt's cot was at the far end of the row, right next to the latrine door. He told us that one night he woke up to see this dark figure hovering over his bed. He didn't even try to hide how freaked out he was, saying that he screamed like a little girl. According to him, it had happened a few times after that and he was having a really hard time coping. It got so bad that he straight up refused to use the latrine after hours. He was too afraid to go in and turn on the lights, I guess. He didn't want to risk seeing something that he wasn't supposed to. Honestly, I should have taken his advice. For me, the scariest moment actually happened during daytime. A buddy and I broke away from the group for a latrine break. We both ran inside and, right as we flipped the light switch on, I saw this maybe six foot tall black figure standing there, just watching us. It almost seemed to fade away as the light came on and I was terrified. My brain was like, that didn't just happen, that wasn't real. But when I saw the look on my buddy's face, I could tell that he saw it too. And he was every bit as freaked out as I was. So fast forward around a week later, I was in the middle of the night, week nine or ten, the final week of BCT. The drill sergeants actually start talking to you like normal human beings instead of, you know, dirt. We had a Q&A and someone asked about the, you know, like what's going on with the haunted living area. And our drill sergeant, she said something along the lines of, you're not the first platoon to talk about this shit. I personally think there's a portal here. There's a history of people taking their own lives on the base. And I think they stick around, but I'm not the one who lives here, so I don't mind. Needless to say, sleeping there for the last few nights after hearing that was tough. I know some people might not believe my story, but for any new recruits doing their BCT at Fort Sill, just know that you're probably not crazy. There's something seriously wrong with that place. Oh, shit! Dude, what the hell are you doing? You're just going to walk out like that? Unbelievable. Ugh, it's two in the morning, man. Where did you guys even come from? What the hell are you wearing? You guys know it's a real stupid idea to walk in front of a seven-ton, right? What are you guys doing anyway? Land nav? You lost? What are you guys, like MCT? What's with the old-ass camis and the flacks? What unit are you guys in? What unit are you guys with? Hello? All right, well, ask me then, I guess. This final story is a short one, but it's as interesting as it is creepy. Camp Pendleton, and by extension, Camp Horno, have trained generations of Marines for service. In World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and right up to the modern battlefields of today. During training. safety is always paramount, but accidents do happen and more than a few Marines have sadly lost their lives over the years in tragic on-site incidents. Maybe that explains what this next Marine saw during his early morning drive to work at Camp Horno. Or maybe, I don't know, time slipped for just a moment, allowing him a brief glimpse into Horno's past. He writes, so this happened to me just a few weeks ago. I was heading to work at like 2 or 3 a.m. driving down to Horno from the airfield area. I passed the ammo dump and went down the big hill right before you hit the PFT trail. I went to make one of these turns and these two guys just appeared in my headlights, like completely out of nowhere. Based on where they were, I should have seen them way sooner. But the more I looked at these guys, the more confused I got. They weren't wearing our usual MARPAD fatigues. Instead, they were wearing these old green camis and dark green Kevlar helmets on their heads, no covers or anything. They were also wearing what looked like some old-ass flak jackets instead of the issued plate carriers. But what really weirded me out the most when I noticed it was that nothing on these guys reflected the light from my headlights. No plastic buckles shining, hell, not even the slightest glint of light off their rifles. It was almost like the light was going through them instead of touching them. At the time, I tried to write the whole thing off as some new guys who'd been issued hand-me-down gear for a training exercise. But as I passed by an obstacle course, I slowed down and looked to see if anyone was out training or going on an early morning hike. But there was no sign of them at all. I tried to write the whole thing off as some new guys who'd been issued hand-me-down gear for a training exercise. But there was nothing. It honestly felt like I was the only person from miles around. I'd heard stories about Horno being haunted, but I'd never actually seen anything paranormal with my own eyes. Well, at least, maybe not till that moment. messing with me right uh no why did you hear something i could have sworn i heard you crying like like heavy crying like you just found out someone died so so i ran up here well okay one thank you that's very considerate of you but two hearing things isn't good are you feeling okay i don't know uh honey you're probably just tired from all the field prep are you gonna be done packing soon yeah yeah yeah i'll be done soon i'll come up to bed yeah i'm just tired maybe maybe it's this damn house i'll be up in a bit this next story was first submitted to nick orton's tales from the grid square project in it a soldier talks about how he and his wife came to realize that something strange was living in their on-base housing something that seemed to have the terrifying ability to mimic them he writes i lived in fort riley with my wife for about two years as many servicemen know fort riley has a reputation for being a very haunted base personally i'm used to the paranormal stuff i've had countless experiences since i was a kid but nothing was as intense as what i experienced there on our first night in the house my wife and i were brushing our teeth in the bathroom which is tucked into the corner of our bedroom we both look over at the same time to see this dark cloud hovering over our bed it was gone in the blink of an eye so we kind of just dismissed it but shortly after that some of the weirdest things started happening and it was the first night in the house that my wife and i were brushing our teeth in the bathroom which is tucked into the corner of our bedroom we both look over at the same time to see this dark cloud hovering over our bed it was gone in the blink of an eye so we kind of just dismissed it but shortly after that some of the weirdest things started happening it started off simple at first like seeing shadows out of the corner of your eye or hearing bumps and knocks but one night my wife went to bed early leaving me alone to finish packing for an upcoming field exercise downstairs i was organizing my rucksack and i hear my wife just start bawling from upstairs like she just saw her whole family die kind of bawling i drop everything and run upstairs to see if she's okay and when i enter the bedroom she's just there on her phone earbuds in completely fine i told her what i'd heard and she said that i was probably just tired and hearing things and i believed her until the exact same thing happened again but this time i was the one in bed and she heard me crying only to come in and find me reading a book things only got worse after that constant voices and shadows it actually got to a point where i would knock and ask whatever it was to knock back in response sometimes it did one night the two of us were feeling lazy and ordered a pizza the doorbell rings and i get up to pay the delivery guy but as i'm standing at the front door i glance over my shoulder and clearly see my wife walking into the kitchen but when i went into the kitchen right after she wasn't there no one was she apparently had a similar experience it shook her so bad that she actually refused to talk about it even to this day i don't know the details but basically she said she clearly saw me at home when i was actually out at work mind you this was all going on within the first week of us moving in strange things were happening almost every day so we really just started getting used to it no one was getting hurt so what was the big deal right but then whatever this was started going after my wife she soon started waking up with these random cuts and bruises all over her body she said she was also having these horrible nightmares about somebody attacking her i won't go into details but the last straw for us was when we woke up one morning to find these marks on the wall and the marks were identical or very similar at least to certain scars that my wife has on her stomach from a pretty dark chapter in her life some years ago so after some research on what to do about this we bought some sage and burned it around the house recited a protection spell i found and hung up various protective sigils laugh if you want to but it seemed to work we still had paranormal experiences in the house but nothing nearly as crazy if anything we felt a more peaceful presence of whatever was left behind so maybe there were multiple spirits in the house we got rid of the bad and the good ones stayed behind but after a couple of months all the strange stuff almost entirely stopped so he comes up looking like someone just stole his lunch money and i'm like what happened to you and he tells me he dropped that he had to go you know take a and he drops that brand new cold steel knife he bought into the port-a-john like when he was pulling his pants out that 300 knife that he kept bragging about and showing everyone but never actually used to cut anything yeah and you know as much as i wanted to rake him over the coals about it i honestly felt really you hear that footsteps could be a deer i don't i don't think so you think it's out for who else give me that rock what just give me the rock dude if that's a guy if it's up four he'll just shoot at us if it's an animal it'll take off all right you got anything No. I think it. No. Bro, what the fuck? What the hell is that? You think we should, uh. Think we should call this up? Uh, yeah. Yeah, I'll call it. Charlie Golf, this is Post 3. Come in over. Scattered throughout Camp Hornos Valleys and Rolling Hills are these little collections of mock buildings and streets known as Mout Towns. Mout, or Military Operations on Urban Terrain, refers to combat training that takes place in cities and towns. Urban environments are probably some of the most challenging to fight in. During the last two decades of wars in the Middle East, it was often an environment Marines found themselves in. These little towns made of metal shipping containers were then constructed to give Marines a taste of just how brutal and complex fighting in populated areas can be. This next story was written by a U.S. Marine who found himself posted up in one of Hornos' Mout Towns during a late-night field exercise. If you thought these little ghost villages couldn't feel any more creepy in the dead of night, his experience with Mout Towns was the same. His experience begs to differ. He writes, My unit was on a pre-ITX integrated training exercise field op in the area surrounding Horno on Camp Pendleton. We were posted up in this little Mout Town in the heart of a valley surrounded by steep hills and ridges. I was on my usual 0200-0400 firewatch that I always had in the field because my staff NCO had a hard-on for me. I was sitting on my 240 Bravo post facing a Mout Town. It was a long stretch of gravel road with our side of the Mout Town on the right and dense trees and brush on the left. So our post was roughly 10 feet from the tree line and my buddy and I started hearing a good amount of rustling coming from the left. My buddy threw a rock at it and it stopped for a while, but a few minutes later it picked right back up again. Around this time there was that eerie moisture layer coming in from the ocean. What's strange is that it had this darker shade to it compared to the regular fog that often rolled in. I'm not sure if that's related to what happened next, but my buddy thought that it was worth pointing out. Then we started hearing voices from the trees on our left. Voices that sounded just like a little girl. I couldn't quite make out what she was saying, but soon the talking stopped and she started laughing. Like just this non-stop childish giggling. We were really creeped out and didn't know what to do in this situation. So I called it up to the corporal of the guard over the radio who then forwarded it up to the sergeant of the guard. The sergeant wanted absolutely nothing to do with it, so he sent the corporal down to hang with us for a bit. It was silent for the first few minutes that he was with us, but then it picked right back up and he heard it loud and clear. E4 hit up our lieutenant, who said we had no other units operating in the area. So the sergeant of the guard said to just go ahead and ignore it. Not knowing what else to do, the three of us just sat there for the remaining hour of our firewatch, listening to footsteps running around the woods and a giggling child laughing at us from the darkness. The entire time this was happening, static, was blasting out of the radio. And when our relief finally arrived, everything just went silent. My buddy and I had had enough and we got the hell out of there as fast as possible. This next story was posted online by a soldier under the handle JamieLyn96. And I have to say, after reading through these Fort Sill accounts, I do feel bad for the people who had to go through BASIC training there. Because BASIC is already miserable enough. You're exhausted, you're getting yelled at, you're cleaning constantly, you're waking up in the middle of the night with a fire guard. You're trying to adjust to this completely new world where every small mistake somehow turns into like a platoon-wide punishment. And now on top of all of that, imagine finding out that your barracks, might have something else living in it. Footsteps coming up an empty stairwell, voices in a bathroom nobody's supposed to be using, showers turning on after lights out. And then one night, a scream ripping through the squad bay loud enough for it to wake everybody up at once. According to JamieLyn, that's exactly what happened during her time at Fort Sill. She writes, I was at Fort Sill for my BASIC training. Every night, we took turns doing fire guard, which is basically two soldiers rotating every hour to watch the door clean up, make sure everyone stays in bed. There were four barracks bays. Ours, the female bay, was upstairs and across the hall from the male bay. But each bay used a separate stairwell. Us females and the drill sergeants were the only ones to use, the center-most stairwell. The sergeants would come up to check on us periodically while we were on fire guard. We could always hear them when they were coming up the stairway because the doors were heavy and loud. But every now and then, we would hear footsteps come all the way up to the top of the stairs and just stop. Neither of the doors would open and we'd never hear the footsteps actually go back down the stairs. I swear, sometimes we'd even hear what sounded like objects rolling and crashing down the stairwell, bouncing off each individual step. And we'd go out, we'd look, and you guessed it, nothing. I know a lot of the girls tried to shrug it off, but it was honestly really scary. After lights out, everyone who wasn't on fire guard had to stay in bed. If we wanted to get up to use the bathroom, we had to let those standing guard know. And there was absolutely no showering allowed after that time. But despite this, there were times where we'd hear people talking in the bathroom in the middle of the night. Sometimes we'd even hear the showers going. So we'd go and investigate because we're all going to get in shit if anyone was out making noise. But nobody was ever in there. I should also mention that the lights in our latrine were on motion sensors. But every time we'd hear noises coming from inside, all the lights were off. We'd walk in, the lights would flick on, which meant nobody had been in there for at least a few minutes before we arrived. Between the stairs and bathrooms, things were creepy enough. But one night, something happened that still freaks me out, even all these years later. So in our barracks, the beds were lined up in two rows. We're all fast asleep. And suddenly, this blood-curdling scream just tears through the room. Like, it sounded as if it came from right next to our row of beds. Everybody heard it. We all jolted out of bed at the same time, freaking out, looking at each other, trying to figure out who or what had made that noise. But nobody. On watch or anybody. We never figured out. Where it came from. December 7th, 1941 stands as one of the darkest days in American history. The Japanese Empire looking to expand their control of the Pacific, and seeing the U.S. Pacific Fleet as a threat to their ambitions, devised a plan. A surprise attack that would knock the Americans out of the war before they even had a chance to join it. In the first week of December, alongside coordinated strikes against U.S. and British bases in the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, and Hong Kong, a Japanese naval task force positioned itself just a few hundred miles off the coast of Hawaii. Six Japanese aircraft carriers and dozens of support ships, transporting 353 fighters, dive, and torpedo bombers. The planes took off just before sunup on the 7th, flying toward the island of Oahu. It was a beautiful Sunday morning. Church bells were ringing. Some sailors were either sleeping in or nursing their hangovers. And then the planes started flying over. Most people thought it was just part of some kind of drill. It wasn't until the explosion started that they realized this was no exercise. The Japanese attack would last for an hour and a half. In that time, the damage they caused was devastating. All eight of the battleships moored along Ford Island were badly damaged. After being struck, by nine consecutive torpedoes, the USS Oklahoma had completely capsized, trapping hundreds of sailors and marines inside the hull. The USS Arizona had been sunk, with 1,177 of its crew being killed when the ship exploded. For days after the attack, frantic banging of trapped men could be heard from within the wrecks. The noises themselves traumatized the men hearing them on the outside, because they could only listen, unable to cut through the thick steel bottom and rescue them. The rest of the island hadn't been spared either. Hundreds more military personnel had been killed. Every major airfield had been hit, most of the aircraft being destroyed or severely damaged before their pilots could get them off the ground. The Americans, meanwhile, had only managed to shoot down 29 of the attacking Japanese aircraft. The American defeat was hard to stomach. 2,403 people had been killed. The USS Arizona had been sunk, and the USS Arizona had been shot. Some people had been killed, or would later die from starvation or suffocation inside the upturned ships. With such a massive and sudden loss of life, as with other battlegrounds, perhaps that is why, even till today, the island of Oahu, and no less Pearl Harbor, is no stranger to paranormal activity. Pearl Harbor remains an active naval base. Because of the brutal attacks in 1941, it has also become a well-known memorial site, receiving an average of 1.8 million visitors every year, and some of them experience more than they expected. Out of all the museums and historic World War II buildings on site, the USS Arizona Memorial is one that stands out. The best part about Pearl Harbor is that it is the only one in the world that has a memorial site. The battleship is sitting on the harbor floor, a corroded and metal husk of its former self visible just below the surface of the water. If you've seen it, maybe you have also contemplated the horrible reality that the remains of hundreds of its crew are still down there, trapped inside. Above the ship, the Navy has constructed a white concrete and steel structure, which can be reached by a short ferry ride, allowing visitors to view the ship from above. In 2011, the Navy built a new ship, the USS Arizona Memorial. The USS Arizona Memorial is the oldest ship in the world, and it is the oldest ship in the world. In 2011, an Australian woman named Suzanne Devaney visited the Arizona Memorial along with her family. Taking in the solemn beauty of the monument, Suzanne began snapping photos of the interior, as well as the sunken ship. Her visit to the memorial was an emotional and somewhat haunting experience by itself, but unbeknownst to her, Suzanne had captured something even more haunting on her camera. Looking through the photos she had taken earlier in the day, while sitting in her hotel room that evening, Suzanne suddenly grabbed her husband's attention. What they saw on her screen was one of the photos she had taken of the Arizona, and clearly visible in the brackish green water was a face. The distinct face of a man. It was uncanny. The face appeared young. The expression was what could only be described as a look of profound sadness and anguish. After the funeral, Suzanne was taken to the hospital. She was taken to the hospital, and she was taken to the hospital. After sharing the photo with her family, it was then posted online before going viral. The photo then made headlines all over the world. As is the case with all things paranormal that are ever taken seriously by reputable media outlets, the photo received both approval and skepticism. Could the face have been one more instance of pareidolia? Of course, 1.8 million people snapping photos of the same location year after year. It's bound to happen. A ripple of water, just forms in such a way, the light reflecting off of it at just the right moment. In a previous episode about strange things seen on submarines, one submariner said his sub was docked in Pearl Harbor. His chief came screaming up to their compartment, saying he'd just seen a man in an outdated naval uniform walk past him. He tried to question him, and then watched the man walk right through the hull of the ship. He may not have grabbed a photo of the man's face, but we could hardly say that his experience was pareidolia. Knowing the tragic history of the USS Arizona, and the men who died banging on the hull from the inside, waiting for a rescue that would never come, the picture of the man's face in the water might as well be the most convincing proof of ghosts we will ever get. Because the reality of how those men died is far more haunting to me than the idea of seeing one of their faces floating in the water 70 years later. Besides, this is hardly the only story about the island being haunted. This story was posted online by an Army nurse writing under the handle Lissador. While working at a hospital on Fort Riley, she recalls the many strange stories she heard during break room conversations with her fellow nurses, surgeons, and hospital techs. "My brother works in a hospital, and he's easily one of the most rational people I know. And the stories he's told me, as well as the other stories I've read before, have me convinced that hospitals are paranormal hotspots," Lissador writes. "I was stationed at Fort Riley and worked at a community hospital. While I had my own paranormal encounters, they don't compare to those my colleagues experienced during my enlistment there. Riley is one of the oldest Army posts in the country. There's a lot of literature detailing the multiple known hauntings, particularly in the officers' housing and even named addresses that are available for purchase or readily found on Google. It was during my time there that I heard some of the most unsettling stories in my life. During one of my work shifts, we heard from one of our OB/GYN surgeons that she had moved from her home on post to a new house off-base with her spouse and two toddlers. The move came out of nowhere, and when we started asking what prompted such a sudden change, she simply stated that her house was haunted. This naturally got us all excited, and we relentlessly pestered her for the details. She finally gave in and told us the two incidents that led to their decision to move. So one day, the surgeon and her family returned home from grocery shopping to find every kitchen cupboard, cabinet, and drawer wide open. Needless to say, it wasn't like that when they left. This in itself made them uneasy, but it wasn't enough to scare them away. But the second encounter was something else altogether. On that same night, after they came home to find the kitchen in a mess, the surgeon and her family had some company over to the house. They were entertaining downstairs, while their two small children, both under the age of three, were in bed upstairs. At some point, a noise was heard coming from upstairs, so her husband went to check on the kids. Their first thought was that the kids had woken up and were goofing around. But when he reached the top of the stairs, the husband shouted down for everyone to come up and have a look. And what they found made their blood run cold. Right in the middle of the hall was a mountain of all of their bedding: duvets, pillow covers, sheets, blankets, comforters. The pile reached so high that it was almost touching the ceiling. The children were sound asleep in their beds. And considering the height of this blanket tower, these very small children could never have done it. That was the final nail in the coffin. They packed up and moved out as quickly as they could. A doctor on the other end of the hospital told us a creepy story of a pilot friend of his who apparently used to live in that very same haunted house. Well, it was either that house or one of the five homes that were next to each other near an airfield. He came downstairs into his kitchen one morning to find every single one of his canned goods neatly lined up next to each other on the counter, and every single one was opened. I don't recall whether he left or stayed in the house after that. The same doctor also told me about his ghost cat. Their family cat had died, but apparently was still seen inside the home by friends and relatives on occasion, and they said it was clear as day. I also knew another nurse who lived in one of the famously haunted Fort Riley homes. She experienced lots of stuff, but it wasn't until the encounter became malicious that they also ended up moving out. After returning from a short family trip, they came home to find the police at their house confused they asked about why they were there and the mps told them that a 911 call was placed from someone inside the home the family was of course alarmed and they explained that they'd been gone for the entire weekend no one should have even been in the house thinking that someone must have then broken in the mps searched the house but found no signs of any trespassing or burglary they gave the all clear and left but they could never explain who made the call or how it happened on two other occasions this nurse's husband said he felt something shove him from behind while standing at the top of the staircase this also happened to their adolescent son except he was at the top of the staircase while the house was still there and the house was still there actually pretty banged up because he had been pushed down the stairs by this unseen force it was after that that this nurse and her family started looking for a new place like i said my own accounts don't compare to any of these but i have experienced some strange stuff while working at the hospital we had frequent 24-hour in-house call duty we'd be able to sleep on the couch in the break room when all duties were done but had to be there for emergencies one night i was lying on the couch with my back to the room facing the wall a break room door stayed open but the door leading from the patient holding area to the hallway just outside is heavy and makes a loud creaking noise when it's opened even in a deep sleep the sound of that door opening is enough to wake you up and it shuts loudly on its own too so i'm having a nap and wake up to feel something poking me in the back like a finger i was frozen in fear because i knew i was the only one in the break room i just squeezed my eyes shut ignoring it until i somehow fell back asleep i really felt that if i turned around to look at whatever was touching me i would see something i would regret on another night i was watching a movie in the break room when i heard the distinct sound of that heavy door opening this was nothing unusual nurses from the ward surgeons anesthesiologists and other staff could come in at any time and the dressing rooms are connected to the break room but i heard no footsteps just the door opening and closing again honestly i was too chicken to go look i stayed put convinced a ghost just came in or went out i didn't care to know it was a spooky place to be late at night all alone all right let's get these targets reset sir did you see those people there wait you wait you mean you saw them too yes sir why i thought everyone was gone yeah but i thought okay uh hold up range control come in over this is lima one interrogative is anyone still on the range over negative lima one all packs are accounted for you should be the only team out there over hey did you guys also see those people the ones dressed in black sprinting like hell across our lights yes sir hard to miss them hey if you guys are up four we gotta get these targets reset corporal yes sir there's no op four out here there's not supposed to be anybody out here oh whoever's here this is a restricted area we are conducting live fire drills we need you to leave immediately i don't know why you're even here we will escort you out if needed but you need to leave now hello there what the hell was that did you guys see that okay specialist myers take your guys and let's clear these buildings out we don't have time for this nonsense whoever you are darting around between the buildings we will remove you if you do not leave this is your last warning when speaking about strange happenings on the island of oahu the deaths of american servicemen is not the only cited cause the island of course has a history that long predates the adoption of hawaii as the 50th state a history of the indigenous people that has both countless wars and paranormal legends one of note is the night marchers the legend of the night marchers begins well before the american occupation of hawaii in their language native hawaiians would refer to themselves as kanaka maoli or true people this name distinguishes themselves from the americans and other foreigners who have migrated the island over the last century still today tensions exist on the islands especially oahu the same as they always have in other colonized nations native hawaiians are descended from polynesian peoples those who migrated over from the marquesas islands between sometime around the 4th and 7th centuries and over the following centuries warfare was not uncommon in hawaii tribes fought over territory and ruling power tribes from one island would frequently invade other nearby islands even something seemingly as slight as one tribe disrespecting the honor of another could provoke a bloody conflict the heart of hawaii's tribal societies were the chiefs unlike many modern political leaders the chiefs of hawaiian tribes were front-line warriors which is probably why they were so respected and revered by their people during times of peace the chiefs maintained order over their lands during times of war they led their men into battle and a warrior's fierce loyalty to his chief was so strong in fact that it didn't end with his death according to native hawaiians their devotion to the chief carried over into the afterlife legend has it that while the ancient tribes of the hawaiian islands are long dead their spirits remain not only can they be seen but they are often heard these spirits are known throughout hawaii as the night marchers but if you thought these entities were something only talked about by the natives you would be wrong american soldiers sailors and marines stationed on the island have been sharing stories about them for decades and the history of hawaii has been passed down from generation to generation sharing his story online a soldier using the handle napoleon was right recounted a truly bizarre experience he had while stationed at schofield barracks we were doing a live fire exercise on a set of buildings after a company got done shooting the place up i headed up there with a small group to reset the targets for the future of hawaii after the shooting i headed up there with a small group to reset the targets for the next company attack. As we approached in the LMTVs, I saw in the headlights numerous figures sprinting between the buildings. They were moving insanely fast, faster than anyone should be at full sprint, and it looked like each was holding a red chemlight in their hands. I chalked it up to exhaustion and didn't think much more about it until one of my soldiers got out and said, sir, did you see those people there? I thought everyone was gone. That started the heebie-jeebies. I called down on the radio to confirm everyone was off the objective. Everyone was accounted for off the range. Then four more of my soldiers got out of the truck. They said they saw the same thing. We called a hold on training and cleared the entire area. Never found anyone there. Hawaiian folklore has a lot of specific stories about them, and a lot of guys I know who were stationed in Hawaii saw them in different areas. All describe the same thing I saw. I can't even remember the exact time I saw them, and I can't remember the exact time I saw them. I can't remember the exact time I saw them. Guys? This next story was originally submitted to Nick Orton for publication in the Tales from the Grid Square project. In it, an anonymous Marine recalls an encounter he had while stationed at Kaneohe Bay. I was stationed in K-Bay not long ago. This happened in 2021. It was a common thing for me and a group of my buddies to go camping on the North Shore, mostly to do some fishing overnight. We had just set up a little before Kaina Point in a spot we frequent often. Up until that point, I had heard the stories of the night marchers and the Menehune of the island. And although superstitious myself, I never gave it much thought. The day carried on as usual and with the night, we eventually started to go into our tents to sleep. At around 0200, I woke up to the sound of marching and drums off in the distance that were getting closer to our campsite. In my mind, I immediately knew what it was. Out of. fear, I lay there in my tent, trying not to make a sound and hoping that they would just pass by. Thankfully, the sounds eventually started to grow distant and were soon gone. When I woke up, I just chalked the whole thing up to being a weird dream. The next morning, I didn't mention anything to my friends and started to pack up. But just as we were finishing, an older Hawaiian woman, who I assume was also camping nearby, came over to us and started asking if we heard the marchers last night. Come to find out that where we had set up is a known path for the night marchers to be on. We were able to find out that the marchers were on the way. It comes from a civilian employee who says he's worked at Fort Sill since the late 1990s. So this is somebody who'd been around the base for decades. He knew the buildings. He knew the stories. He'd heard the rumors. But according to him, he'd never personally seen anything he couldn't explain. Until one morning, in broad daylight, he walked across the street for a smoke break and saw a man crossing an open field. in broad daylight, he walked across the street for a smoke break and saw a man crossing an open field. And at first, it didn't seem strange, just a guy walking through the grass. But then he noticed the uniform this guy was wearing. And after doing some research, he came away believing that he may have seen something connected to one of Fort Sill's oldest pieces of history. A buffalo soldier, he writes. I've been working civil service at Fort Sill since late 1999, almost 25 years, and never seen anything like this before. I'm a smoker, so when I take smoke breaks, I have to walk across the street to the small park, a vacant lot with a few trees. Last Thursday, I went out for a smoke break at around 10 a.m. And as I was having my cigarette and looking at the news on my phone, I noticed a black man in a cowboy hat walking through a field. I see people walking across that field occasionally, so at first I didn't think much of it. However, I looked up and I noticed that his corporal stripes were upside down and much larger than on modern uniforms. He was about my height, 5'8", and he had a light beard and shaved in a week or so. It then occurred to me that this guy is dressed in, like, a Civil War style uniform. And I thought, oh, you know, cool, it's a reenactor, you know, a Civil War reenactor. Maybe they're having some kind of historical event nearby. So I immediately thought, you know, I'm going to take a photo of this guy. So I switched my phone to camera mode, and I went to take a picture, but the man completely vanished. Mind you, he was 50 feet or less away from me the last I saw him, and we were in a wide open field. There was absolutely no way he could have run out of sight or ducked down that quickly. Puzzled me all day. I was trying to justify it in my mind, you know, what I'd seen, and I just could not. I've never been much of a believer in the paranormal, but I have no other nation for what I saw, a full-bodied apparition of a buffalo soldier in broad daylight. He looked like a real solid person, not a translucent, you know, see-through kind of thing like you see in the movies. I did some research and discovered that buffalo soldiers, which were African-American troops that served from the late 1860s up until World War II, had built some of the fort's original structures. Old post quadrangle, which was the old post quadrangle, was built in the late 1860s. Quadrangle, officer's quarters, the original hospital, and livery stables were all built by these men sometime 1869 to 1870. And to this day, many of those soldiers are still buried in the Fort Sill post cemetery. Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke LaManna. Written by Jake Howard and myself. Audio editing, sound design, mixing, and mastering by Alex Carpenter, with additional audio work by me. Animation and motion design and production coordination by David Williamson. Research by Jake Howard and myself. Artwork by Pekata and Radomir Izgarovic. you