Marines Soldiers Crazy Encounters

[MUSIC PLAYING] Some time ago, the show's writer, Jake, reached out and asked me what my thoughts on the demonic were. You've probably figured out by now if this is not the first episode you've seen, from listening to the credits in each episode, that I don't handle the writing by myself anymore, not for some time now. So sometimes, when he's putting a script together, Jake will reach out to me to ask about my thoughts or opinions on certain topics to help organize the way he wants to frame the stories and introductions. Sometimes, I just go off script anyway when something occurs to me in the moment. When he asked me about demons, well, I told him there's a lot to unpack there. But I think I essentially just told him, I will always defer to basing my opinions on anything biblical to what is recorded in scripture. Now, I don't talk about this often because I'm here to tell stories and not necessarily elaborate on my religious views at the risk of sounding preachy. But I'm otherwise well aware of the speculations and accusations surrounding biblical scripture that exist in the world today, that their ancient legends, their myths, they were written by sheep herders who don't understand basic scientific facts, all of that. Religion is the basis for a lot of wars. So obviously, it's a touchy subject and greatly open to a lot of different interpretations, which I think is the point. But if anybody asked me, I would be happy to explain why I have my reasons to trust it. And Jake, more or less, asked. Thankfully, I've never had a brush with anything I would consider demonic, not in the sense of casting a horde of demons out of a man into a herd of pigs and then watching the pigs drown themselves. Or really, any reasons to believe I've seen any kind of demonic entity that wasn't probably a figment of my tired imagination or something else. But I'm well aware that people do see them. And I'm very open to believing stories about encounters with them. In fact, I would submit that this whole project with few exceptions could be boiled down to wartime demon stories. The idea being that they might just come in many shapes and forms, animals, specters, orbs of light, et cetera. Because whether we are talking from the position of the Abrahamic faiths or ancient Egyptians or Babylonians or from many other religions around the world today, it's interesting that many of them contain some of the same elements. For example, even among the various Native American beliefs, there's often a singular creator, great spirit, great mystery, or master spirit. And I've heard a Navajo medicine man speak about a singular evil one when talking about witches and skinwalkers and things. Now, I can't be sure that wasn't something that became integrated into Native beliefs because Christianity was brought to the Americas a few hundred years ago. But the tribe peoples otherwise believe in animalistic entities and trickster spirits. Reminds me of similarities in Japanese chinto faith about trickster foxes, quitenes, and the like. The point being, demons or a vast array of many spirits are a unifying factor across virtually all branches of faith and folklore. And generally speaking, you never really get the sense that they're very organized creatures, just a bunch of individually minded spirits doing whatever the hell pun intended they want. We tell unusual stories in a specific vein relating to the military, but the men and women of our own forces are still people, subject to the same spiritual observations and influences as the rest of us, and maybe even more with all the infrared and other optical gear that they have, not to mention ripets. And since these spirits seem to love to wreak havoc, it makes sense that they would be hanging around the military or war zones. Those are my thoughts. And these are just a handful more stories from American soldiers, Marines, and Airmen who said that they came face to face with things they could only describe as demonic. [MUSIC PLAYING] I'm Luke Lamana. And this is War Time Stories. When I first started War Time Stories, I honestly had no idea if anybody would even want to watch it. But I knew that if people wanted to eventually support the channel, I would need a storefront that actually worked. I've used Shopify for War Time Stories for the store for years now, and it's made that part of running the business extremely simple. One of the first things I noticed was how smooth the checkout process was. When someone decides they want to support the channel, thank you guys so much. Shopify checkout helps them finish their purchase. And when they come back later, their information is already saved. So they're basically just one tap away from checking out again. Because Shopify handles the storefront and checkout, I get to spend my time researching more stories, editing scripts, and making videos instead of worrying about how the website works behind the scenes. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at Shopify.com/WarTimeStories. (phone ringing) (laughs) Morning. - All right. - Rough night. - I'm alive, barely. (laughs) - You want coffee? - Ah, I would marry you for coffee right now. - Hmm, a bit early for marriage proposals, but. - Thank you. - Sorry. Do you remember getting here? - Mostly. - Mostly. - We had a mess night. Not a drinking. - Hmm. - I remember leaving. - I remember your porch. And yeah, it's about it. - Huh. - Why are you looking at me like that? - Hmm, nothing. - Sorry, I didn't throw up in the bed, did I? - No, but you really don't remember. - Remember what? - No. - You worked me out last night. - I did. - Why? - You were making a lot of noise. Going through the dresser. - I was in your dresser. - Yeah. Throwing clothes everywhere. - Oh. - And so I asked you what you were doing. - What did I say? - You said you were looking for something. - Maybe Thailand or something, maybe obviously. - A gun or something. I think you said. And then you said there was something in the house and that you were going to kill it. - Yeah. - I said that? - Yeah. - I mean, I'm sorry, I was pretty hammered. So, I don't know, I was probably just being stupid. - Hmm. - But you don't think that. - I've seen drunk before Ian, and you looked scared like legitimately scared, like you were seeing something I couldn't. - This story was sent to me by a Marine named Ian. In 2018, Ian was in Australia on a joint training rotation with the Marine Corps. Being in a foreign country while deployed isn't exactly like going on vacation. You're basically told you're an ambassador for the United States, so, you know, don't be an idiot. You've always got to have a battle buddy, wherever you go, in most places. And there are curfews, places you are specifically told, you cannot go. Some places have short patrols that were uniforms and wander the area, trying to keep an eye on everything in case something does happen. And for good measure, I mean, you take a bunch of young guys and drop them off in an unfamiliar country where the drinking age is below 21. And stupid things can happen. One of my deployments to the Philippines, someone got murdered. So, yeah, there are restrictions. And rules were made to be broken. Like a lot of young Marines overseas, once Libbo hit Ian, also made some decisions that were probably not fully involved. keeping with the Liberty Brief. After Mastnight, Ian snuck off base to see a local woman he'd been spending time with, named Sarah. Full disclosure, I met my wife during a board call. We exchanged Facebook info, stayed in touch for a few years, and it worked out. I did even break a few rules myself, like fibbing on my travel forms when I went to go visit her, so I'm not here to judge Ian for his behavior. Sarah was apparently house-sitting her dad's old place. The house built up on stilts, and it was a house with a dark hallway, a storage area underneath, and a family history of strange things happening at night. Now, like me, Ian was raised Christian in a church that believed in spiritual warfare. And while this would normally denote an invisible war of words between authority figures like how Apostle Paul was a Pharisee, and he argued publicly with other Pharisees and teachers about what was wrong with their doctrines. After his own spiritual enlightenment, spiritual warfare, right, of war of words, sometimes, well, it's not so invisible. So from Ian's Christian perspective, when something finally came through that dark hallway and into the bedroom, he didn't see it as just a harmless ghost of a former resident, or a figment of his imagination. He writes, "So I just found this channel, and figured I'd have a few stories from my time in the Marines that may fit. I don't know if this one fully counts as it's not on a base or with other Marines, but rather with a civilian while I was on deployment. I was in the Marine Infantry, deployed to Australia in 2018. It was more training than anything serious, resulting in libo most nights, especially on weekends. A fair amount of guys ended up with women, they would leave base to go see throughout the week. I was no different. My unit had decided to hold a mess night, which is basically a very informal, formal dinner, where everyone gets hammered, before we then rolled into a 96, a four-day weekend. After the mess night was over, I snuck off base to go see the woman I'd been hanging out with for the last few months, her name was Sarah. On this particular weekend, Sarah was shacked up in her old family home, doing a bit of house sitting for her dad, while he was away, so I figured, why not head over there and give her some company? Now that I'm really thinking about this, I probably was breaking more than a few libo rules, so if you could keep me sort of anonymous, that would be great. Anyway, in the time I'd been seeing her, Sarah had told me stories from when she used to live there, stories about, something coming from the hallway, and visiting her and her cousin's rooms in the night. These stories lingered in the back of my mind when I got there, but I honestly didn't think much of it. I think it's because I myself had encountered plenty of other strange things growing up. Sarah's house was built on stilts due to the monsoons that tend to ravage the area, so it was one floor, but sitting where a second story would typically be, where the ground floor would be was a storage area between the stilts underneath the house. By the grace of God, I somehow made it to the house before all the alcohol fully hit me full force. I'm not proud to admit it, but that night was a blur. I was basically on the doorstep of blacking out not long after my arrival. The only thing I know from that night is that she woke up to me, tearing through a dresser. When she asked me what I was doing, I responded, "I'm looking for a weapon. There is something in this house, and I'm going to kill it." When she told me about that in the morning, we kind of laughed it off, just chalked it up to the alcohol and continued about our day, but the next night, that's when things really got scary. So there we are, laying in bed with her dad's dog. I'm about to drift off to sleep when Sarah just starts screaming, "Something's in the hallway. It's coming." I immediately sat up and looked at the door, which was cracked open, moonlight, illuminating the doorway from a window out in the hall. This door had a five kilogram plate in front of it, like a weightlifting plate, to stop it from opening on its own due to the house being slightly unleveled on stills of the door, which is if you wanted to crack the door, it would just swing open. So this plate is sitting in front of the door, and as I'm looking at it, the door, the moonlight from the hall starts to get blocked out until it's just a pitch black void, and then the door starts to open, the weight sliding in all. And I watch, as this dark, probably seven-foot tall, lanky figure enters the room. I remember thinking how its head was unnaturally large and round, and when it moved into the room, it didn't walk like any normal being. It was almost like it glided to the foot of the bed. And at this point, Sarah starts screaming, the dog loses its shit, the poor thing backed up into a corner, or its hair standing on end. It's alternating between growling and whining. I didn't know what the hell was going on. Honestly, I was every bit as terrified as Sarah and the dog, but I'm the guy. I knew I needed to do something. It may sound crazy to some, but I was raised, Christian, and a church that believed in spiritual warfare, so I literally had no idea what else to do. I just started praying. And I stood up, and I really didn't know what to say beyond, in the name of Jesus, you don't belong here, and other variations of that. And this adrenaline hits me like a wall, and bringing Jesus into the picture seemed to turn this thing's attention towards me, like I could feel it looking at me before it just bolted out of the room as I continued praying. I got out of bed and went to the door to peer out into the hallway, but the figure was thankfully nowhere to be seen. With that, I went back to comfort Sarah, who was now curled up in the far corner of the bed, along with the dog. I closed the door all the way, placed the weights back where they were, and we just lay there for the rest of the night with all the lights on. And Needless to say, neither one of us got much sleep. I usually don't get vibes from buildings or locations good or bad, but this whole house just felt angry. All the corners were dark and shadowy. It felt wholly unsafe just to be there. The dog full on refused to leave Sarah's bedroom. Luckily for both of us, Sarah's dad was due to come back the following evening. We wasted no time getting out of there, but I did feel bad leaving the poor dog alone in the house, even if it was just for a few hours. Unfortunately for Sarah, whatever this thing was, wasn't done. It followed her. Sarah lived in a different house, which she rented with two other roommates. And from that day on, even the rental never felt right. They experienced all kinds of strange things. Feelings of dread, objects moving around the house, the three of them chose not to renew the lease when landlord came knocking. From what I remember, Sarah telling me her dad didn't seem to know much about the strange occurrences in his house, I think her aunt had an idea that something was off and her cousin for sure did. Sarah had told me stories of the two of them trying a Ouija board in an attempt to figure out whoever or whatever this entity was. That was a couple of years before all this when the two of them were still in high school. I forgot to mention that her aunt and cousin both had rooms there as well, but both of them chose to stay elsewhere whenever possible. Her aunt's room felt particularly off, and I remember an instance that morning after where the dog was whining at the door, Sarah went to open it and it wouldn't budge. She tried it again and it flew open, causing the dog to then retreat back to Sarah's room tail between its legs. One thing that's always stuck with me is that Sarah said that this thing came from the hallway, whenever her and her cousin encountered it. This may just be a coincidence, but the storage area underneath the house directly below the hallway was this big red antique fireside armchair. That, along with most of the other stuff stored there, apparently came from her deceased grandmother's house. I sometimes wondered if that chair was somehow linked to the entity that tormented Sarah and her cousin. Not long after this, Sarah and I went our separate ways. I don't know if she still struggles with this entity or not. All I know is that whatever this thing was, it was demonic. It was evil, and it wanted Sarah. This next story was sent to me by a U.I. army veteran named Richard. It takes place during his first tour of Iraq sometime in the late 2000s. And while the deployments saw him in some of the country's most dangerous areas, it was an incident in the city of Err that really stuck with him. For students of ancient history, archaeology or theology, Err needs no introduction. The city dates back to the days of ancient Mesopotamia, some 3800 years BC. It was a thriving hub of commerce, politics, literature, art, and is even mentioned in the Bible as being the birthplace of Abraham. While a more modern city stands nearby, the incredibly well-preserved ruins of the great Ziggurat Temple and royal tombs are stark reminders of Err's ancient history. But according to Richard, something else was lingering in the old city. Something that many Iraqis and developed Muslims believe are entities of pure evil. He writes, "I was active duty army from '06 to 2010 and did a deployment to Iraq out of Germany while I was in. It wasn't anything overly fancy. I was just a comms guy and a sat operator, but I ended up being pretty decent at keeping those machines operational, either through gentle sweet talking or percussive maintenance. But overall, it wasn't too rough as far as deployments go. It was my first and only time in Iraq, so naturally I was a bit green behind the ears. But I was very fortunate enough to have a few very seasoned NCOs guiding me throughout my time in the country. I learned a lot from those guys. Don't do this, do this, buddy system, 98% of the wild life will murder your face, etc. My unit ended up getting tasks out to go cover down for a Cobb contingency operating base that was responding to the Russians. This was during the time that Russia invaded Georgia and I was the low man to go out and cover down. Most of that particular deployment was a bit rough for us since that area the Cobb was in wasn't exactly the most friendly towards Americans. At some point I ended up getting asked if I wanted to do hearts and minds run and escort the siops, folks, the psychological operations. Guys, and by ask, I mean I was volant old. But what really got my interest was that we were heading to the city of Err, the one from the Bible. Of course, being someone who enjoyed history and scene cool stuff, I looked it up before we hit the road. Southern Iraq, about two to three hours by convoy, nothing on the radar for activity, quiet. The NCOs I was with were pretty calm about it as well. They mentioned this wasn't a big deal, nothing to be too concerned about, but reminded us to stay focused. Hearts and minds are important, but remember your training, that sort of thing. We left early in the morning, riding in an M-Rap, and I didn't think anything of it. The weather wasn't too bad, even for August, the usual rainy season hadn't started yet. Few showers here and there, but nothing to make things overly miserable. We rolled into town and actually got a nice greeting. Lots of folks waving to us, kids running near the trucks, all along the way. A nice change of pace from the usual. How do you do? We got. I later discovered that it was pretty common for troops to go and visit the ancient ruins, but only when they were in the area, least that's what I was told. I personally didn't care either way I was there. In one of the most storied sites in the ancient world, I had to remember that I was a soldier with a job to do, and struggled to keep myself from nerding out. While I was there, our unit drew quite a crowd. Still being green, I fed off the emotion of our officers and NCOs. They were well aware of their surroundings, but mellow, so that really set me at ease. There were plenty of kids in the crowd, and they were pretty excited to come see us. Two of them came up to me and started tugging on my hands, wanting me to come play with them. It was honestly kind of surreal, but it was a pleasant reprieve from the usual stoic soldier routine. My battle buddy was near me as we were playing with these kids, and I think they wanted me to play tag or whatever the version of it was. They'd run around this fairly large pillar, laughing the entire way as I started chasing them, and I'm still decked out, you know, in all my combat gear. Well, one tag exchange later, they took off around this pillar and just vanished. And I doubled back and looked around, but these kids were nowhere in sight, but I could hear them, clear as day, giggling as they're still running circles around this pillar. And I called to my buddy like, "Hey, did you see where the kids went?" And the expression on his face told me that something was very, very wrong. He was white as a sheet. He saw the whole thing, and like me, could still hear them laughing. In my attempts to find the kids, I told myself that, you know, maybe they fell into a hole, snuck into a trap door, I couldn't see something like that. My buddy, however, never moved. He was absolutely petrified, sweating profusely, muttering to himself, and just in a state of complete shock. And he keeps just repeating, "This isn't real." That didn't just happen over and over. And that's about all I could get out of him. So I called my sergeant over, and I basically told him that something is really wrong. Our interpreter also came with us since unbeknownst to me at the time, several other people noticed the same thing. The kids were especially freaked out. They ran back to their parents and cried to the point where the adults were also now starting to panic. And I returned to the pillar again. I'm still trying to make sense of all of this. And the first thing I thought to look for were footprints. There's like sand everywhere. There has to be footprints. But all I can see was my own bootmarks. Nothing the size of a child's footprint anywhere near that pillar. My buddy slowly coming to a senses said he saw them running around, but he actually didn't see their feet touch the ground. He chalked it up to his vision, the heat, taking its toll on him. But in hindsight, that was him forcing a rational explanation to something that just didn't make any sense. In the entire time we searched, we heard giggling the whole time. It was like they were right there in front of me. Our interpreter, who was in developed Muslim, said that we needed to leave the area now. According to him, it was no longer safe. Honestly, my thought at the time with the rowdy crowd and all was that we were expecting trouble from insurgents. So my sergeant told us to mount up and I didn't question him. And later on, when we returned to the cob, I checked with the interpreter and the sky looked like he'd seen the devil himself. After exchanging pleasantries, I asked him about what actually went down in Err. What did we see and why were all the rockies so shaken by it? Why did he say that the area wasn't safe? Why do we have to leave? And he turned to me and his eyes were just cold as steel. And he says, "My friend, what I tell you now is that you are closer to death than any other time in your life." And after hearing this, I was like, "What are you talking about?" I said to him, "Explain that to me like, what do you mean?" I was close to death. And he told me in a hush voice that those two little girls were not actually girls. Hearing voices, seeing them run, but not touching the ground, feeling them tag your hands or clothes, then turning and running that, my friend, was a gin. They're dangerous beings that need to be given a wide berth, stay away from them. Very dangerous. That's kind of how he said it. Of course, I'd never heard of a gin before. Genies? Sure. Aladdin, you know, the cartoon, but a gin. After the interpreter gave me the rundown on gin and Islamic scripture, I did a little bit of research on my own. And according to Muslims, gin are basically these entities that can appear when they want in any shape they want to do. Anything they want, they're often seen as tricksters or malevolent entities, bad news all around, to say the least. Our interpreter didn't say much else after that, and I could tell he was too frightened to continue talking about it. No matter how hard we press, he refused to say anything else on the matter. Whenever since then, I've been a lot more open to things like the spirits, cryptids, stuff like that. I myself have a doctorate, so I know from my own work and studies that there's usually at least some kernel of truth, even the most extraordinary claims my own included. Scientifically speaking, I saw something that I could not explain. I heard sounds that I couldn't pinpoint the source of, and several other people around me reacted to whatever was going on. Now, I'm honestly not sure if we saw a gin that day, or two gins, but I do know that whatever we witnessed was enough to scare the absolute shit out of both the interpreter and my battle buddy. All I I can say is that I know what I saw. I know what I heard. I know what I felt. And I know what happened afterwards. Whatever we encountered that day in the city of Er, was far from normal. This final story was sent to me by a member of the California Air National Guard. She wishes to remain anonymous to avoid any heat from her old command, understandable. This story takes us back to the days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many remember this as a time of stress, isolation, and uncertainty. But for this National Guardsmen, the pandemic led her to some truly dark places. Personal tragedy and depression that she believes invited something evil into her life. She writes, "I was deployed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the lead-up to my departure was filled with the typical mix of nerves and anticipation one might expect before, and overseas deployment. The added procedure of quarantining due to the pandemic meant, I was sent to Travis Air Force Base before heading to Qatar. These times were fraught with the uncertainty of the pandemic, rising tensions in the Middle East and back in California, the occurrence of massive wildfires. The fires cast an eerie, deep orange-red hue over the skies, which was an unsettling departure from the bright blue skies I was accustomed to before. Deploying to Qatar. Before leaving the quarantine at Travis Air Force Base, a group of friends and I attempted to get in touch with a friend who lived near my apartment prior to my deployment. Despite numerous attempts to contact him via phone and online, we received no response. We learned later he had tragically taken his own life. A discovery made just as I was about to board my flight to Qatar. The isolation of the quarantine, compounded by the news of my friend's death, it led me into a deep depression, and on the last I endeavored to keep myself together, knowing the importance of my mission and the reliance of others around me on my performance at work. As a newly promoted staff sergeant, I felt a very strong duty to represent my unit well, especially since I was deploying, as an individual replacement. During my flight to Qatar, I sought comfort by speaking with a chaplain on board the aircraft. This interaction provided being with temporary sense of comfort, offering a brief respite from the heavy emotions I was carrying. The chaplain's presence and willingness to listen were a small beacon of light during a time of overwhelming darkness. However, the need for emotional and mental support did not end with that flight. Throughout my deployment, I found myself seeking further guidance and turned to another chaplain station in the area. This ongoing support was crucial as I navigated the complexities of my mission and personal challenges I faced, including the deep depression that followed the news of my friend's death. During all this, I also tried to engage with mental health services, only to be told I was a well-adjusted person. This response was frustrating, as I felt I was barely holding myself together. The dismissal of my struggles by those who were supposed to offer support added another layer of difficulty to my situation, which took a strange turn not long after my arrival in Qatar. Initially, I believed I had a roommate due to sounds of movement from behind the partition in my room, which was divided by large lockers and a black cloth creating two separate living spaces. However, when I was told that I would be receiving a new roommate I mentioned that I already have one, only to be told that no one else had been assigned to the room. This was unsettling, but I initially dismissed it, assuming that it was a mix-up in room assignments. The noise is continued for several weeks, and I paid them little mind until I was instructed to verify that the space was vacant, and to my surprise, the space was indeed empty. This realization was unnerving, and, though I tried to rationalize it as noise from another room or the building structure, the clarity and distinctness of the sounds were hard to ignore, and the situation escalated when I moved to the back portion of the room where the noises were coming from. There I experienced some of the most intense nightmares of my deployment. One dream involved a confrontation with an entity that seemed to want to feast on me. As I tried to communicate and befriend it, the being grew increasingly frustrated and angry, ultimately I chose to confront it with anger of my own, which led to a sensation of being strangled. I have never been so scared, I remember staggering out of bed and getting dressed for my shift two hours early, so just so I didn't have to be alone in that room. Another dream transported me to a dark, dirty manner, filled with buzzing flies, the atmosphere was creepy, to say the least. Eventually, I found my way out to a garden where an old man and medieval attire seemed surprised to see me. And beside him were three women bathed in bright white light, my mother, my godmother and my grandmother, whom I had never met but recognized through the logic of the dreams. And to me, this dream suggested that I had inadvertently stumbled upon a demon's domain, and the presence of these three women implied that they were there to guide me away from this dark place. The dream would later inspire me to explore my own spiritual practice, but at the time it was a stark reminder that something was truly wrong with my barracks room. My new roommate also noticed the strange occurrences and initially questioned whether I was present in the room when they were sleeping. I couldn't be in the room as I was the one on night shift and my roommate would relieve me in the morning. She was probably trying to rationalize it like me when I arrived and was all alone in the room, simply trying to find a logical answer for all these noises. Despite our attempts to secure a different room, we were unable to be rehoused due to the limited availability of our accommodations for non-commissioned officers. So we had to come to terms with sharing our space with some unseen, unsettling presence. I might have attributed all these experiences to the stress and trauma of deployment, the loss of my friend and the intense isolation, I was undergoing, however, the experiences of my roommate, who was unaware of my own encounters served as a critical validation. I had never openly discussed my suspicions about what was happening in our room, except to humorously suggest that our third roommate was simply a reclusive individual who valued their privacy. So for my buddy to independently experience and confirm the same phenomena before being aware of my experiences, it was a pivotal moment that shifted my perspective on the world. After returning home, I embraced a path as a practicing pagan, incorporating elements of occult practices to safeguard myself from the entities and energies I encountered in my dreams and in that room in Qatar. The spiritual practice has been a source of strength and protection, helping me navigate the aftermath of those unsettling events. They would well, but so far it has served me well. Thanks for reading and please continue sharing stories, it's reassuring to hear that these kinds of things do occur and that I'm not alone in my own experiences. This isn't something definitively provided in Scripture or anything, so don't take this as gospel, but one thing I have heard suggested about demons is that they tend to look for people who are more open to having them around. Like maybe one on one hand, a person is more eager to see these things, or their mind is more open looking for things like that. Versus someone who could look at a shadow person in the face and just say, "Yeah, you're not even real," and then walk away. But something about this guardsman story seems to suggest that when you're dealing with something emotionally or spiritually heavy, when you're at your most vulnerable, that's when demons become more. When they start to really test you, if you're familiar with the story of Job, this might make more sense. So she loses a friend, she deploys during COVID, she gets isolated from everyone she knows. She tries to get help, she feels dismissed, and all while experiencing something that she can't explain where she even drives her further into that sort of place. So whether you think there was actually something in that room or not, stress, [BLANK_AUDIO] grief and isolation have a way of changing how you experience the world. I also appreciated that she actually did reach out. She talked to chaplains. She tried mental health. She was looking for a way through it instead of just pretending that she had everything under control. I think that's something that a lot of us who served eventually have to learn. The military teaches you just to keep pushing through almost anything. But eventually you get out, that structure disappears, you get older, life gets busier, and you start to realize that you just can't attack every problem the same way that you did when you were 22. And speaking of which, I've tried a handful of supplements over the years, but Marsmen is one I've actually stuck with. And they graciously offered to sponsor this video. The whole testosterone space is confusing as heck. It's honestly pretty sketchy. I wasn't interested in lifelong injections or anything that felt extreme. I just I wanted something simple. One thing I found interesting is that as we get older, our bodies are still producing testosterone, but more of it gets bound up by a protein called SHBG. Marsmen is designed to help your body make better use of what it's already producing instead of just forcing hormones into your body. I've been taking it for a few months now myself, and it's not like taking a cup of coffee or anything, but it's just a steadier sense of drive throughout the day. And that's exactly what I would have hoped for. It's made in the USA, third party tested, and if you don't love it, there's a 90 day money back guarantee. Just check out the reviews. For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off for life plus free shipping, and three free gifts at mengotomars.com. It's mengotomars.com for 50% off, and three free gifts when you check out. After you purchase, they will ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them who sent you. When I first finished reading through these stories, I thought back to that question, Jake asked me, "What are your thoughts on the demonic?" I mean, in the context of these stories and in kind of all of the culmination of the things that we've seen people talk about on the channel, I still don't know if I have a need answer for that. I have my own beliefs from scripture, other people have theirs. And depending on where you are in the world, the language changes. A marine in Australia sees a tall shadow figure come through bedroom door. He prays in the name of Jesus Christ and believes he came face to face with something demonic. I thought the head size was very reminiscent of like a gray alien if I'm being honest on that one. A soldier in Iraq says he's playing with these two little girls running around a pillar in the ancient city of Err, biblical city, and then watches them vanish behind the pillar. And later has his Muslim interpreter tell him that they weren't children at all. They were gin, dangerous, malevolent, something he needs to stay far away from. Then you have the Air National Guardsman in guitar. She's isolated, grieving, depressed, trying to hold herself together on deployment during one of the strangest periods of time. Most of us have ever lived through. Now we just call it COVID. And then the sound start, movement from an empty side of the room, dreams that feel less like dreams and more like being pulled into something else. A presence that seems to feed on fear, grief, and exhaustion. And eventually, her way through isn't the same as Ian's. It isn't scripture. It isn't continued visits to the chaplain. It's her own spiritual practice. Her own way of feeling protected again. And that's, I guess, what I would come back to. Because these stories aren't all from people with similar backgrounds, same religions, or even the same understanding of what they saw. One calls it demonic. Another one is told that it's a gin. One comes away seeing it through more of a pagan or spiritual lens. But the thing underneath each story feels very similar, something intelligent, something intrusive, something that seems to know when a person is vulnerable, a dark house, an ancient city, a lonely barracks room. Three completely different places, and yet in each case, the person involved walks away feeling like whatever they encountered wasn't just strange. It was hostile. Now maybe that psychology, maybe it's stress, maybe it's fear, giving shape to things. People already carry with them. I'm open to that. But I'm also not arrogant enough to pretend that because I can't explain something, it automatically means there's nothing there. Especially after reading the many accounts from people who have served. Because the military sends people into places most civilians will never see. Old cities, remote bases, foreign countries, abandoned buildings, deserts, jungles, mountains, ruins, places with long histories, old beliefs, and stories that were being told long before any American servicemember ever showed up with a rifle on a radio. And sometimes the thing that follows them home is in combat. It isn't a firefight, it isn't the deployment itself. Sometimes it's the thing that they saw in the doorway. The laughing voices they couldn't find, the empty room that kept making noise. The nightmare that didn't feel like a nightmare. So I won't sit here and tell you I know exactly what these things are. But I do think stories like this are worth listening to. Because whether you call it a demon, a gen, a spirit, or something else entirely, the people in these accounts believed they came into contact with something real, something that wanted something from them. And whatever it was, they never forgot it. War Time Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana, 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. Art work by Pacata and Ratamere is Garovic. Hey guys, thanks for sticking around here for the after-action in the credits. For those with maybe a more trained ear that you might have noticed, I was a little bit raspy on this one and probably the next weeks as well. I think I inhaled something or I've got some sort of lung infection or something. My lungs have been trying to kick this out since like a week ago. So I hope the reading still went okay. Just a really obnoxious thing to happen for all the obvious reasons. You know, this was an episode that I felt like from the very onset. I was offering a lot of my personal thoughts and feedback inside of the episode and in between the story. So as I was kind of wrapping this up and thinking like, do I have anything to say on the back end of this? I really couldn't think of anything. I mean, I've shared my personal sort of shadow person's story to death in previous episodes. So I didn't want to beat a dead horse, but you know, maybe because of the nature of this whole premise of demons, you can't. Demons, I don't know if it was John Ballon. I know there was a story that I read recently because I'm talking to John, for instance, if you haven't seen his episode, I would go and watch it because when you know somebody a little bit better, then something you just read on the internet or somebody submits a story and when you know somebody and you talk to them and you see them tell the story, it carries a different kind of weight to it. And so somebody like John and his sort of encounter story, it's like, you know, you really have no choice but to either call him a liar or just really accept that he probably saw something demonic or something that is, I mean, he doesn't have an explanation for it, but from a biblical standpoint, you know, I would say that yeah, it's it's like these things exist. So whether you believe religiously or not, I think the scariest thing about demons is that to see them and have no background in faith, it brings that question to mind. Is there something I'm missing? Because what is this? You know, these guys that go to Fort Sill and they're like, they're just trying to go to boot camp, they're not trying to have a religious experience in the bathroom. And so I it does beg the question in any given religion, because there's so many different types of religions and methods of faith in a higher power or in spiritual entities. I mean, you've got the Greeks with like, you know, there's many different gods, Zeus and I mean, even Zeus is mentioned in the Bible. But it begs the question, what is the purpose of demons. They exist in just about every religion and if they exist then you know it's I mean maybe there is no purpose but what would be their what would be the reason for them to exist, what differentiates them from from the other side because we're with few exceptions right we're not getting a lot of stories about angels right the angels of Mons turned out to be maybe not what it appeared to be from from the original story but you're not getting you're mostly getting a lot of stories about negative encounters with negative spirits like these sort of these are not happy events so kind of goes back to the point I made at the beginning of the episode which is that I mean one for demons to exist there there has to be some acceptance of there being a spiritual realm right something beyond what the human mind the human body can perceive right these things sometimes you see them sometimes you don't the way they live and exist and and if there's ascenteants to these things which I believe there is based on their demons they're just fallen angels but it would bring everything into question as a human being if you didn't have any faith and as a person of faith across all of the religions demons do in every religion these trickster spirits or whatever you want to call them they all serve the same purpose which is just to chaos it's just distraction it's just doing whatever they want tormenting people I mean even in the Bible you know the the story of Legion where Jesus is preaching throughout the countryside and there's this man who's been tormented for years by these many demons that are inside of them and they they introduce themselves as Legion because it says there's many and when Jesus cast them out it's I mean what did they they begged him not to basically send him into the lake of fire like the abyss worried that he was going to punish them so he cast him out into the pigs and then the immediate effect was that the demons made the pigs run into the water and drown themselves like what and then everybody in the town saw it happen they freaked out like can you please go away like to Jesus like this is kind of weird like can you please but the guy was healed and the guy wasn't being tormented anymore and he wasn't probably living in a cave and and whatever weird psychological nonsense that he was being tormented with so that what was the purpose of those demons they were just messing with this poor guy and then they just killed a bunch of pigs there was another story of a little boy that he was possessed and he would throw himself into fires and his father kept having to like stop him from basically trying to you know mutilate himself so demons like what is their purpose it's just to cause havoc and and from a biblical standpoint that havoc is supposed to be a distraction and so you look at all the strange stories across the board and if if it's meant to distract I mean what do you learn from it right it's like okay I saw something weird I was terrified on one hand it makes me wonder if there's something else to this world that I should be worried about and on the other hand it's just I didn't learn anything from it it just freaked me out you know so demons um it's just like marines when they're bored right they just they they find ways to get in trouble now saying that marines are demonic yeah even though you might get some arguments there but uh yeah it's just me those are my thoughts um but from a purely biblical standpoint demons they exist because they were build uh they were they were spirits who decided to leave their positions of duty to do whatever they wanted and that is exactly what they're still doing today just waiting for the last day because between then and now they just have nothing better to do and that's kind of what you see it's just these stories is like what purpose did these demons serve by freaking these people out in boot camp probably nothing except now we get to hear an interesting story but from their perspective what did they gain from it you know anyway thanks for listening thanks for watching for subscribing like and sharing commenting anything and everything you guys do that supports the show we really appreciate it here at wartime stories as always a huge shout out to both our patrons our youtube channel members for your incredible support may god be with each and every one of you no matter what you're dealing with and i will see you in the next episode