Pale Crawlers, Skinwalkers, and the Like

I'm Luke Lamana and this is War Time Stories. Modern times may have quelled these superstitious fears that many native people once held, always cautious of certain creatures, always on the lookout for skinwalkers. But it was once, if not still, is, a very real fear. Navajo parents would warn their children that skinwalkers could look like anyone else during the day, then at night, transforming into creatures with glowing eyes. Skinwalkers appeared during the day, too, they said, waiting and watching for their victims. They could run like the wind and easily track down a person. One Arizona Navajo man tells us a story that took place about a hundred years ago. This man's name is Art Tracy Jr., and his story was published by fellow natives from the Ponca and Tongva tribes, in a book they subtitled "Chilling American Indian Stories." As his mother relayed the story to him, in the 1920s or '30s, there was a Navajo man working as a ranch hand for a wealthier Navajo landowner, somewhere around the western part of the Navajo reservation in Tuba City, Arizona. One day, he decided to ask his employer for a few days of leave to go and visit his family where they lived in New Mexico. Riding horseback through desert canyons, maces, and open range, he eventually stopped along his route to rest for a while. While paused, staring out at the desert expanse around him, he suddenly spotted an old man-gie coyote sitting on top of a hill not too far away. The man pulled out his rifle, took aim, and fired, watching the coyote drop to the ground. He then walked over to inspect his kill. Reaching the top of the hill, he was shocked to find not the body of a coyote, but a young Navajo man with long hair, at least part of a young man, and he was dead. The top half of his body was human, the skin painted with designs, and his lower half that of an animal covered in the fur of a coyote. Now horrified, the man who shot him looked around, wondering what to do. Spotting a deep crevice along the canyon's edge, he dragged the creature's body to the cliff and hurled it over the edge. His fear growing, he then mounted back up and wrote his horse near to death, riding even past nightfall, trying to put as much distance between himself, the creature, and the place where he'd killed it. Finally crossing the Chuska Mountains, he reached his relative's home just past Shiprock, New Mexico. After recounting his story to them, they too experienced an unnatural fear. You must never go back to your employer, they told him. You have to stay here, the relatives of the skinwalker will be looking for answers, and they'll be out looking for you. We got any plans for this weekend? I'll probably go see the new Rocky movie. There's another Rocky movie coming out, you know, who's he fighting this time, Apollo's kids? No, some comedy bastard, some Russian, that looks alright, alright, might if I come see it with you. The girl just dumped me. Oh, it's again. Yeah, I get, oh jeez, all right, get your hands up, damn, old man, you scared the shit out of me. Get your hands up, get your hands up, you have any idea where you're at right now old man? I think there's something wrong with them, either he's deaf or he's got some sort of mental problem. Sir, get your hands in the air, hey, go ahead and call this in, yeah, I'm good. HQ, this is Rover 1, come in over, HQ, this is Rover 1. The following account was submitted to the curators of the Paranormal Scholar website by Stacey C, on behalf of her uncle Bob R. My uncle Bob was in the army, last Thanksgiving he got drunk and told us all the story that shocked me. It was around 1985, and he was still new to the army, only being about three years in. He was on patrol duty on a base in Arizona. He was late, and he and another guy were walking along the fence line. Bob and the other guy were focused on looking up beyond the fence outside the base, when they heard a sound behind them. The sound came from the inside, from their side of the fence. When they turned around, they saw an old man dressed in buckskin, with long hair and braids. Bob described it as being so grey that it almost glowed in the moonlight. The man was standing approximately 30 feet behind them, both men drew their weapons as the old man was in a restricted area with warning signs all over the place. They could have shot him if they wanted to, but neither my uncle Bob nor his buddy wanted to shoot an old man. They figured that he must have Alzheimer's and had wandered into the base or something. After all, he wasn't threatening them, and he appeared harmless. The men shouted to the old man, telling him he was in a restricted area, and that he needed to put his hands in the air. Bob thought they'd walk him back to post and then call the local police department, who would be able to get him back home. Bob tried to call in a report, but it was just static, asking his friend to help, both he and Bob turned to tinker with the radio. Although they only looked away for half a second to quote my uncle, when they turned back, the old man was gone. In his place was a massive rabbit, just sitting there, watching them. That's what he said. That when he and his partner looked back up, the man had disappeared, and there was this large rabbit sitting in his place. Both men looked around, right to left, and back again to see where the old man had wandered off to, but he was nowhere to be seen. In that time, the rabbit took off towards the fence. Then again, they heard a noise behind the hole, and when they turned around, the same as last time, the old man was there. This time, however, he was now on the outside of the fence. The fence was a good 8-10-feet tall. There was no way this old man could have jumped it. Bob described how that sent him and his buddy off-running, and they agreed not to tell their commander. Keep in mind that my uncle was drunk, but despite over 30 years having passed since that night, he still looked scared as hell. When he told us that, he had seen a skinwalker. All right, ladies, let's go, let's go, let's go, hurray up for the launcher points. Fast you get out there, the fast you're going to get done, unless you're not prior and listed, then there's not really much hope for you, officers and notoriously bad Atlanta. I want to share an experience I had while training with my National Guard Unit at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. I moved from enlisted to officer via ROTC, and was attached to a unit in my prospective MOS while in the program. I don't really want to give specifics on my service as the community is small enough to identify me to my peers. In 2014, my platoon decided to conduct nighttime land navigation at Fort McCoy from 2030 to 0-030 in the morning. While the army is typically all about buddy pairs, night land navigation is one of the few cases we get to do things solo because the whole point is to check that the individual soldier is qualified to do it without help. So I step off on my plotted route, with my compass, my map and headlamp in hand. For those who do not know, land nav involves finding these engineering stakes, these markers, my course, by plotting their coordinates on a map, and then walking from point to point using various map reading techniques, terrain association, and of course, a compass. At night, this is typically done without light as much as possible. When light is used, your flashlight, it's a red lens. This minimizes the impact on our night vision. Ostensibly these methods also keep you concealed in a tactical environment, if you're actually doing this in a real combat scenario, along with practicing noise discipline, so it's all part of the training. So I was moving through the woods, while making a token effort to be difficult to spot or hear. The woodland I was in was part of a larger forest system, but was frequently traveled. That night we had some 15 soldiers clumping around the woods. My source of light was a headlamp that toggled between a red and white light. I had it set up initially so that the red light was the first light to turn on, so you turn it on, it's red, you turn it off, you turn it back on. After a couple seconds, it's still red. Because to cycle the white light, I would have to turn it off twice, so if you've used a headlamp like this, I don't need to explain it to you, but for those that are not familiar. Can you cycle this headlamp? It starts on solid white. You turn it off, you turn it back on immediately, it changes to flashing white, you turn it off immediately, right back on, solid red, off again, back on again, flashing red, and then off, and then if you turn it back on, it's back on solid white. Now I'm not telling you all this for nothing, but I'll explain shortly why that matters. During my initial planning, I saw that my sign points would take me to the other side of the course and back, good hour and a half distance, at least as the crow flies, bit longer to actually walk because the train goes up and down and you're in the woods at night, you're meandering around trees, moving slowly, trying not to gouge your eyes out on low hanging branches. But the points I had were more or less in a straight line with one another, so I was just gonna hit each one as I walked out into the training area. So I estimated maybe two and a half hours out and back. I was just gonna walk out, hit all my points, and then just walk back after I was done. But I knew if I came back too early, I might be given another set of points. So I resolved to just walk out, take a break for an hour once I was done if I had time, and then mosey on back. The first half of this goes as planned. I get my points without much trouble and wind up sitting on a hillside at around, it's maybe now 10 at night. It's cloudy, but the moon is full, but it's windy. So the clouds are intermittently blocking the illumination from the moon. So I can see pretty well when the sky is clear, but there is no allume when the cloud cover is too heavy. Occasionally I see a red light bobbing in the distance below me, a pair of my platoon members pass down on the hill in front of me using a white light to read their map. And I startled them when I asked if they needed help, 'cause you're not supposed to be using a white light out there. But by the end of my break, I don't see any more motion in my area. Most people had likely walked out and back, they found all their points, or they were too lost, and ended up taking one of the roads to get back. So I'm feeling pretty at one with my surroundings. Having sat in the same spot, eating stale skittles for a good long while, it's owls hooting, trees or swaying. It was nice. I trought down this hill and I stepped through some brush, and I'm now in a clearing where this prairie land intersects with forests. There are some dead trees in the area, and one of them is split. It's still standing and it's split halfway up. At the top of this broken tree, about 15 feet above the ground, I can make out a distinct head and shoulders silhouette against the clouds which were backlit by the moon. There's enough light coming through that I can still make out this silhouette of this person. So I walk up to ask how the hell they got up there, and if they're stuck, and they need help. When this shadow twitches, and I get the distinct impression, it's now turned toward me. I stand there looking at it, and maybe it's looking at me. The situation definitely feels off, but I wasn't about to let a battle buddy punk me. So I asked if they needed a hand. But mid-sentence, the moonlight comes back. And it's immediately clear to me that the thing on that tall stump was not a soldier. This moonlight glimpse is the best look I get at the thing. It looked like a stretched out ball person. Its long arms are clutching the stump. I can't make out the face, but it looks pinched. And by that, I mean, I couldn't see its eyes or mouth. Like they were very small, and in the middle of the head, it's skinny, like it hasn't eaten. But it's tall, and obviously strong enough to have made such a vertical climb on his tree. He was definitely looking at me. Probably was the whole time I was in the clearing, maybe even since I came down the hill. So I swear loudly, and then it rapidly scurries down the track. I flick my red light on, and I catch it on all fours, moving toward the brush line in the direction I'm heading. And automatically, I keep toggling the lamp to be in the white light. That means it goes off, then to flashing red, then to back on, then finally to white. So in the flash, as I scramble to get my damn headlamp working, I see the thing at the wood line, but I think it's flipped itself around, and is backing in to the tree line. Probably to keep its eyes on me. And in a few seconds, it takes for me to get to the white light. It's gone. I scanned the tree line, which is now silent. When it moved, there was a scraping noise. Plus, the woodland brush was dense. If it was still running, I would hear it. So I reasoned that it must have stopped moving, and it must still be watching me. So I fumbled to get my knife out, and I keep looking around the woods in front of me. And after what felt like ages, I start inching along a perpendicular path to my initial route of travel, an angle that will link me up with the hardball road that runs up and down the side of the training course. And once on the road, I figure I can just take that road back to where my fortuna is parked. My major problem is that the road is 10 minutes of walking from my current position, and it's mostly woodland. That can't be helped. I have to get out of this clearing first. And my progress on that front is painfully slow, because I'm just trying to keep my eyes on where this, where I think this thing still is. And the whole time I am fighting this kind of natural urge to just freeze in place and not move. After side-stepping about a good 10 meters, I hear a corresponding rustling, and I think I see movement. That was enough to get me to just turn and fold. Right into the seat down, log, it strips me. I scramble back up to my feet, and I look back to the woodline where there is an audible commotion. I glimpse an emaciated leg and an ass moving back into the woods. And at this point, I am done with the whole situation, but I don't want to run again and keep tripping. So I start power walking to the road, trying to look as much as I can over my left shoulder to see what this thing is doing. And over the movement of my own kid, I can hear it moving alongside me, the parallel. And as I near the end of the clearing, I think I hear it picking up pace as if to cut me off before I enter the tree line. I made the decision to sprint. And when I enter the woods, my path is clear, but I'm pretty sure I can still hear it moving along with me and my periphery. I don't stop. I'm just running hard until I hit that paved road. And I ate it pretty hard a few times, tripping over stuff in the woods, but I just kept frantically getting back up and running. And once I'm on the road, I just ran until I couldn't hear it. I didn't think I could hear it anymore. So now I'm winded from this dead out run for, I don't have her many minutes. From the middle of the road, I had pretty good visibility, so I decided to walk, try to catch my breath. It's quiet for a while. And then I hear a branch move about, it had to be about 30 feet in the air from the woods on the side of the road that I had just run out of. I snap my gaze up and I see this pale oval-shaped face, this obvious face, half in shadow peaking at me from around the trunk of a tree, way up on the tree. I took off again and I did not stop. And after what felt like way too long, I finally make it back. I see the headlights of our L-M-T-Bs, and I check my watch. It was 12.15. What happened to dead? Did you get lost out there? Why are you, you covered in mud. You fall down? Why are you on breath? Oh yeah, I got lost. I'll be right back. I got lost. You, uh, you gonna be okay? How far? (crying) I knew better than to tell them that I saw what I saw, a monster, basically. In the years since drilling at FMC, I have never experienced anything like that again. McCoy does not have a history of disappearances, as far as I know, neither do the two closest towns, Sparta and Toma. I've done nightland navigation alone a few times since without issue, but this is less from courage, and more from me just deciding to think that, you know, maybe I just misinterpreted the situation in what I was seeing, but then again, maybe the world is weirder than I previously thought. For many paranormal enthusiasts or those fascinated by cryptozoology, the creatures supposedly encountered in these two stories will almost certainly ring familiar, with another infamous malevolent supernatural being commonly spoken of in Native American lore. It would seem that the offhalker, despite being half a world away from the American mainland, shares more than a few similarities with the feared skinwalker, and possibly even another creature known as a rake or pale crawler. Skinwalkers are described as evil beings or corrupt witches that have the ability to turn into possess or disguise themselves as animals. While there are certainly some differences between the skinwalkers and their German counterparts, in a world rife with strange, dark and mysterious encounters, they certainly seem to be cut from the same demonic cloth. This is all the more interesting when considering the vast geographic and cultural differences of these entities, which has no less garnered the attention of paranormal enthusiasts and investigators. Once such person, a British author by the name of Lee Brickley, was keen to discover the shared connections various shapeshifting entities had, in seemingly, unconnected cultures all over the world. He recounted his many findings in his book entitled Skinwalkers. Traveling to Germany to follow up on leads of a few supposed shapeshifter encounters, Brickley found himself in the company of a man named Stefan Richter, who, alongside his family in late 2020, claimed to have also encountered one of these nefarious beings while walking in the woods. Stefan, along with his wife and two young children, were getting ready to go for one of their morning walks, along the trails in the Rehan Forest, near their home in Brundenburg, which is just a few miles from the center of Berlin. Oddly enough, Stefan's children, usually enthusiastic about adventuring in the outdoors, apparently woke up that morning with a strange version to the forest. He recalls, "The children usually love our walks in the forest. It is their happy place, but something was different that morning. It was almost as if they were scared of something. Both were quiet and reserved, and neither wanted to venture far away from us. It was very out of character for them to act that way. Despite concern that his children may be coming down with some sort of illness, the family continued with their morning ritual. After all, what better remedy is therefore a common cold than a couple of hours breathing in some fresh air. And so, the Richter family made their way to the Rehan Forest, setting off on their trek along a narrow, winding path. As they walked further into the woods, the canopy overhead grew denser, shrouding the family below and darkness. And although Stephen couldn't quite define it, something in the woods, unseen or unheard, now had him on edge. It was his wife that saw it first. Freezing in her tracks, her eyes fixed at a nearby point in the surrounding trees. When asked what was wrong, Stefan's wife in a shaking voice said that there was someone watching them from a point beyond the trees. When asked what was wrong, Stefan's wife in a shaking voice told him, he said, she stopped dead in her tracks and told me there was someone watching us from beyond the trees. I couldn't see anyone, so I told her, no, not to worry. The children seemed to be getting more upset, though, and a few minutes later, my wife saw the figure in the distance for a second time, and refused to continue walking. Stefan told his family to stay put and then walked ahead to see if he could see anyone for himself, and he did. He said, he was a huge man, crouching down with what looked like an entire wolf skin draped over his head, shoulders and back. He looked like something out of a Viking movie. I took a few steps closer, but ice stood on a stick that snapped and made a loud noise. The figure in front of me turned around in an instant, and I could see that it wasn't entirely human. The eyes were bright yellow. It looked straight at me before transforming in front of my very eyes. It was almost as if the wolf skin, the creature wore grew over its entire body in seconds. It changed from a man into a wolf, and then began running towards myself and my family. I carry a hunting knife, and all I could think to do was to throw it in the direction of the beast. While he wasn't sure if he hit the thing or not, throwing the knife at it was apparently enough to send this unearthly creature running back deeper into the woods, leaving the knife behind Stefan and his wife scooping up their terrified children, tore out of the woods as fast as they could, lest this wolf, or whatever it was, chose to come back. While the story itself was quite outlandish, Brickley, having spent the better part of the last few days with the family, had come to trust them. If anything, Stefan's retelling seemed to take an emotional toll on the man, clearly calling up a memory that he would much rather leave buried. With the Rohan forest a mere five minutes down the road from the Richter household, Brickley inquired about possibly going to the site where they encountered the shapeshifter. Stefan reluctantly agreed, and then led Brickley into the woods. In much of their surprise, they found the very hunting knife that he had talked about, and chillingly, its blade was covered in the unmistakable stain of dried blood. Realizing that they may very well be in the possession of some sort of cryptid DNA, Brickley said that he insisted on finding a local blood lab and having the knife tested. Not realizing at first that they might inadvertently be suspected of murder, if the knife was found with human blood, the final results of the blood tests were otherwise just as baffling as they were terrifying. The blood lab technician was confused. According to the private company that it tested the blood samples, the DNA didn't match any animal native to German soil. In fact, it didn't seem to come from any known animal in their extensive database. The closest DNA match at 96% was that of the steppe wolf, however the species was almost entirely confined to the region of Siberia, the other side of the continent of Asia. She told them such an animal being cited should be immediately reported to the authorities. Still, she said there were notable discrepancies in its DNA profile that prohibited experts from definitively identifying it. In the end, the two men and the DNA experts were at a complete loss. I was getting an x-rays during my out processing from the Marines a few years ago and the doctor walks into the room and says he was surprised. Based on my scans, he thought I was in my 50s, and I'm now in my mid-30s. That's when you're late, a decade of caring, heavy Europe mountains jumping out of airplanes and helicopters and hitting the ground, little too hard to lose to you. If you spent any time online lately, probably heard about Brian Johnson, the "don't die" guy, his whole mission is figuring out how to age better. One of the things that came out of that work is blueprints longevity mix. I've only been using it for a little while, so I'm not going to sit here and pretend like it's working miracles yet. It took years to put this kind of wear and tear in my body, and I'm not expecting anything to undo that overnight. But it also took years to research and develop something like blueprints, and I'm always looking for things that are going to help me support my health in the long run. Vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, creatine, taurine, glycine, lysine, glucose, I mean, the same kind of ingredients that blueprints has. I've thrown away more supplement bottles than I care to admit that are half-used or not even used because I forgot about them, they got stuck in the back of the cabinet, whatever. That's what I like about this. It's not a big cabinet full of pills. It is just one bag, one scoop in the morning, put it into water, and you're done. Brian Johnson is known for tracking his health data, publishing it publicly, and building everything around that data. That's the same approach behind blueprints. It brings all of those ingredients together in one scoop that's designed to support energy focus, sleep, cellular resistance, and healthy aging. It's also third-party tested for purity and toxins like heavy metals and blueprint publishes those results on its website. Science-backed, precision dose, no-b-b-b-b-b. Yes, for limited time only, new customers get 20% off plus free shipping at blueprint.brionjohnson.com by using code wartime stories to check out. That's code wartime stories at blueprint.brionjohnson.com for 20% off. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them, please support our show, and tell them who sent you. My squad's name is Skinwalkers, and there's a story behind it. A little over a year ago, we had a division-level exercise called Steel Knight. My gun squad was attached to April Tune in a defense position above the Camp Hornet Combat Town. While we were out there, one of my buddies told me how he had seen this skinwalker when he was younger. It creeped us all out when he said it was still following him to this day. We only had one boot in our squad, a Marine just out of boot camp, I mean. So me and my buddy took an hour of gun watch, so my boot could get a little sleep. But instead of sleeping, it's 30 minutes into this watch shift, so maybe around 0130 give a take, and this boot keeps saying he's hearing weird noises like the sound that the predator makes. But it says it sounds faster and louder. My other buddy that told us he had seen a skinwalker when he was younger, he then tells us that the one he saw made that same noise. So that freaks us out and we get real quiet and start listening for whatever this noise is. Sure enough, we hear it. This strange sound, along with a screech and rustling in the brush that's coming from down the front side of the hill. We had a 13-golf on the gun, which is a thermal optic, and I looked down the hill and saw this deer looking fan. It was standing on two legs, as soon as I caught sight of it, it then ran straight up the hill past our defense on the right flank, and then it dropped back down on all four legs and disappeared down the backside of this hill. My buddy Rick had a skater, which is another type of thermal, and he saw that thing too. Since then we came up with the name Skinwalker Guns, since we just say that's what it was, it embraced it, and that's how our squad name came to be. Yep, still here. All quiet on the western front, maybe a little too quiet, over. Yeah, I'd take a couple of pouches if you got them. I'll pay you back. This first story was posted online by a US Army soldier riding under the handle Nunbutter, in it he recalls a strange disturbing experience he had while pulling a late-night guard shift in Afghanistan. I was in Marja, Helman Province in 2010-2011. I had a lot of weird experiences when I was there, but this one really terrified me. So I was standing at my guard post alone in the middle of the night. Must've been between 0200-0400. It was a quiet night, and everything was almost completely silent. I remember thinking this was weird, because there was always some kind of noise, dogs barking and running around, goats randomly screaming, stuff like that. My post was isolated at the northeast corner of our fob, forward operating base. A good 100-plus yards away from the nearest post. It was built on top of the mud wall that surrounded the compound, and it was enclosed like a treehouse. We built a sturdy roof on it, so guys could climb up on top and get good view of the area if they needed to. The post itself must have been 15 feet high, in total, and connected to the guard post was a mud hut which housed a few of the local Afghan security guards. So I was standing there, chugging rippets and contemplating my life choices when all of a sudden I heard something running along the wall behind me outside of the post, like on top of the wall, which was only about a foot thick. It should have been impossible for a man to run on top of it. It didn't sound like a dog, because whenever its feet hit the top of the wall, it made this clicking sound, like it had talons or something. There was a section of concertina wire, a few feet out from the post on the top of the wall, and when this thing made it to that section, it jumped. Like, it cleared several meters of height and distance to land right on the roof of the guard post. This thing then started stomping its feet right above my head, like it was messing with me, sounded like a full grown man was up there jumping around trying to create as much noise as possible. Immediately after that, it sprinted full speed and leapt onto the roof of the mud hut that the Afghan security guards were sleeping in before then bounding off into the darkness. All of this happened so fast, and I didn't see it. I just heard it and felt its presence. I was obviously freaking out. I hopped on the 240 Bravo and swung it all over the place, trying to pick up whatever this thing was on the thermal sites, but the country around us was completely cold and empty, I couldn't see it anywhere. There was no way it was a human, and it couldn't have been an animal. The way it moved was unlike anything I'd ever heard about or seen in that part of Afghanistan. When it was on top of the post, it was like a large man was stomping his feet, but the way it jumped and moved along the wall meant that it had to be small and nimble. I don't know how to explain it. I've never told the story to anyone, but it was probably the most scared I've ever been in my life. Let's keep the white lights off. I don't want to give away our position too early. Roger that. Hold up. Where's that coming from? Sounded like it was over there, two o'clock. Tree line. Might be a deer. If it's a sniper team, they are sloppy. Yeah, I'm not seeing anything on the nods, switching to thermal. There it is. You see it? Yeah. Is that a person? What the hell is that? He's standing up. Sergeant, oh, are we sure that's. Whoa, wait, where'd he go? We'll just stand there and move. Let's go. Yes, Sergeant. I'm not sure if you've had anyone in Germany see weird stuff, but this is my story. A few years ago, deep in the forests of the Grafenvor training area in Germany, members of our recon and sniper teams were conducting a nighttime training exercise. The objective was straightforward. One team would set up a hidden surveillance site, and hours later, around 0100-0300, another team would try to locate them. I was on the tracking team that night. We drove in quietly, parked the GMV, and continued on foot down a narrow, silent road. Our eyes were scanning the darkness using NVGs, thermals, and white light. The area was thick with tension, but it was no different than any other late night exercise. Well, until it wasn't. We'd been walking for a while when we heard rustling in the tree line after our right. At first we thought it might be an animal, or maybe even one of the snipers moving around for counter-recon. I flicked my NVG's to thermal, the screen flickered, warmed, it lit up, and I saw it, something was there in the tree line. It looked human at first, pale, gaunt, too skinny, its limbs were long, almost exaggerated, and it had the unmistakable posture of something trying and failing to mimic being human. As we approached its stood upright, towering, slightly hunched, and motionless, just watching us. We were weirded out, but we just thought it was one of our guys playing a part in the training scenario, so we didn't panic, but then, without warning, this thing just turned and bolted into the woods. It moved fast, like, inhumanly fast, within seconds it was gone, swallowed by the darkness. Probably more out of instinct than logic, because of the training scenario, we took off after it, we chased it, our boots are pounding through the underbrush as we are pushing deeper and deeper into the woods, and as running out of nowhere, the night just explodes with a sound that I will never forget. It was a growl, a deep guttural, just wrong, growl. If I were to describe it, it sounded part human, but not, so part human, part beast, whatever it was, it was clearly not friendly, all malice, and this growl stopped us dead in our tracks. We all heard it, we had all seen it. We knew then that this wasn't part of the training exercise, this thing was clearly some kind of animal or god knows what, we pulled out of there as fast as we possibly could. After that night, we got in contact with the other team, the ones we were supposed to be tracking, they were nowhere near our position, in fact they had been operating on the complete opposite side of the training area, and no one else was supposed to be out there. What's even more creepy was that this apparently wasn't the first time this thing had been seen. We found out later that some of the other guys in our platoon had reported seeing this same pale, skinny, human-like creature the year before. No one believed them then, everyone just figured they were sleep deprived or playing it up for laughs, but now I can't speak for the other guys, but after that night I didn't doubt them. We're trained observers, recon and sniper teams, we don't jump at shadows, we know what we see, and we saw something that night on the GTA that none of us could explain. So, jump master sees him going right, says, "Nope, he reaches up, grabs the overhead, and then doggie kicks his ass right out the door. I got out right after him, and he is screaming." This happened during the 2021 Dixie Fire in North Cal. My lieutenant, our driver, PFC Bravo, and myself were driving around, making the rounds, and checking on all our guys out at their checkpoints. We got to one where our guys were blocking a road, and they had one of those generator lights. So we stopped for a bit, and we're all just standing around talking and making conversation, when we started hearing a woman screaming, startled the hell out of all six of us. My LT and I ready up our weapons as we take a few steps towards the woodline. We had been told that if we hear a woman screaming, it's usually a mountain lion attacking a deer, or something like that, but this sounded close, and honestly, it just sounded too much like a woman screaming. So my LT yells out, "Hello!" And I shit you not, in his same exact voice, we hear back. This wasn't an echo at all. It came clear as day from the direction we heard the screaming, and it was his exact voice. We all immediately said, "Screw that!" My crew and I got back in the truck and nope the hell out of there, after telling Specialist Sierra and his crew to stay in the truck, and to combat lock all their doors. Pretty sure a skin walker was out there trying to get one of us. Creepy as hell. I am not easily scared. When my experience occurred, I was a cadet in boot camp in East Germany. It was around 5 o'clock in the afternoon. We were doing drill courses, whilst the base was having technical problems with the electric grid, which was uncommon considering it had just been inspected days earlier, and nothing I noticed that time was really that odd. Except a few of us kept hearing these eerie, unexplainable noises coming from one of the headbuildings nearby where the water is kept during 5 minute breaks. But skip ahead a few hours to around 8 o'clock. The power was going in and out again, and the drill sergeant had told me and three others to go fix it. So me and the others grabbed flashlights and tools and went to the basement where the generators are located. We found the first backup generator, and it was turned off, but operable as expected. It was the same with the second generator. The third generator was the largest main source of power on the base. The first thing I noticed were the scratches. This seemingly super hard to break hunk of metal had what I think were scratches and cuts, claw marks, piercing its outer metal shell like a buzz saw. So deep the scratches had cut the cords inside and had damaged the batteries as though they were paper. After a moment of thinking I knew this couldn't have been a person doing this, seeing as nothing any cadet had could cut through that tough metal so easily. I immediately rushed up the stairs to tell my drill sergeant hoping he would know what to do. He told me the most we can do is tell base command and put someone to guard the door and have the generator replaced. Good thing reporting this could at Shaefer. Shaefer after receiving a pat on the back and commendation for his report was then told to resume his daily training activities, which went without further incident. Still the nonchalance displayed by his sergeant at being told that someone, or some kind of animal, had ripped through one of the base's power generators, did little to quell the young cadets' concerns. At best there was an apparent saboteur running a muck on their base. At worst, well, he didn't like to think about it. As the sun sets and the cadets retire to their bunks, Shaefer must have drifted off into what was an uneasy sleep. And it didn't last long. He continues. Some hours later, sometime in the night type, can't be exactly sure when. I heard scratching noises, but not from the basement. They were too close and too loud as if they were in the sleeping quarters. After that moment of realization, I opened my eyes and I looked around. And I saw what I thought was someone in the corner going through a bag. But when I looked around the rest of the room, Shaefer terror came into me because all the other bunks were full, everyone. So I thought to myself, "Wait, the hell?" But then as if it had heard what I was thinking, this thing, what I thought was a person in the the corner, turn two. face me. It was pale gray with no nose and had claws like razors. This thing was skinny and at least two feet taller than my six foot self. After that I just froze in a blank stare of horror and in my mind seconds turned to minutes, minutes to hours, hours turned into what felt like days. Ultimately I think I passed out in terror because all I remember after that is waking up to my buddies and sergeant looking at me while talking to me, telling me I looked sick and I felt sick too like all energy from me was drained for days on end. I swear during my entire military career I have never been so afraid since that night. Kind of crazy how quiet it gets out here. Yeah. I've never seen stars like this back home. Me neither. I heard people used to come out here just for that, before everything with hell, figures, hold up. What? Movement by the village about 600 out. Where? That stone wall top of it. Is that a dog? No. No? That's. It's the thing I told you about. What thing? The other night when I was on watch. You serious? Yeah. Look. What in the hell is that? This next story was first posted to an online message board by a soldier under the handle D Suzy. In it he shares a very strange story told to him by one of his drill instructors who served in Afghanistan. He writes. One of my drill sergeants has a creepy story from one of his Afghan deployments. He was infantry, so being in the field or out on missions for days or weeks at a time wasn't uncommon. One night while sleeping in a fighting position, he felt something nibbling at his feet. Startled, he wakes up and attempts to kick off whatever this thing was. I'm sure he thought it was like a wild dog or maybe even one of those camel spiders that are known to come out at night, but it wasn't either of those things. He said that what he saw wasn't an animal, but a little humanoid figure that he could only describe as looking just like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, which then darted off into the night as soon as he saw it. My instructor was a very level-headed, rational guy. He said he'd been in the field for a long time by that point and was running on very little sleep, so he just chalked it up to being some kind of hallucination brought on by exhaustion. But what happened a few nights later would change his opinion on that. A couple days later, he and another guy were on watch. My drill sergeant's buddy starts pointing to a stone wall in the near distance and said something like, "What the hell is that?" My drill sergeant looked through his optics and crawling across the top of the stone wall was the exact little humanoid creature he had encountered a few nights before. You can read about gnomes, cursing people, and possessing all kinds of supernatural abilities, but whatever that Gollum-looking thing was? Well, while researching further, I found something worth mentioning. As I said earlier, what we refer to as gnomes are often grouped in with the gin of Arabic folklore. And of the many different kinds of gin, there is one known as the Palace. They don't exactly have a single physical description, but palaces are sometimes said to have a goblin or bat-like appearance and are known to prowl around the deserts of Arabia and Persia. The creatures are vampiric and are said to have a particular liking for human blood. But what's interesting is how this is described. The palaces will almost exclusively drink a person's blood through the souls of their feet, which would explain why that thing was described as nibbling at the drill sergeant's feet. I guess it's a good thing he slept with his boots on. Still further, another veteran who served in Iraq shared a similar story, writing under the handle Comprehensive Mix 931. His description is not only close, but he also indicates that these things can burrow down into the sand. This is one of the reasons I felt like that village with all those sinkholes is somehow connected to these stories. He writes. I personally did not experience this, but a buddy of mine who served with me in Iraq did. He said that his unit was out in the field one night, asleep in their tents. When he woke up and witnessed this thing, he said it was human-like in appearance, but that it had apparently been feeding on the blood of some of the guys who were asleep. He sounded the alarm, but whatever it was, it sank into the sand and disappeared. He told me the guys that it had fed on had these puncture wounds, that they didn't hurt, but later started to itch like hell. My buddy is a very rational sort of dude. He's not really prone to overly sensational BS, so I can't help but think that he really did see something supernatural. Oh, hold up. What's up? Something moving over there by the river. All right, weapons up. Let's check it out. The series of events leading up to Thomas' encounter in the 1970s would begin during his overseas deployment to Vietnam. According to Thomas, who felt he was still under obligation not to disclose any specific details, his army unit was around that time deployed on a covert assignment. Considering the timeline, it is possible that Thomas was serving alongside other special operations forces in the jungles of Laos or Cambodia during the cross-border conflicts in Vietnam, but again the specific details of his service were emitted. What we do know is that while operating in an undisclosed country, his team was hit by some kind of chemical weapons attack by enemy forces. Thomas would fortunately survive, but not without severe injury. His lungs were permanently scarred. After being extracted, he was rushed to the nearest hospital where he spent the next month undergoing treatment. But with the available care being insufficient, the army cut Thomas' deployment short, sending him and several other wounded men back to the US in order to receive more specialized medical care. Thomas would return to his home state of Indiana, enjoying some much needed rest and recuperation, in between the numerous hospital treatments that were slowly beginning to mend his lungs. Then about five years later, Thomas was invited to partake in an experimental medical trial based out of Deming, New Mexico, along with 16 other men suffering from similar conditions. Having nothing to lose, Thomas gladly accepted the offer. Once he arrived at the treatment center, Thomas started to get acquainted with the 16 other patients who would also be partaking in the many experimental procedures and exercise programs over the following weeks. Much to his surprise, within the group of men, a familiar face caught Thomas' attention. It was his friend and old army buddy, Dave Longlass. The two men smiled and slapping one another on the back immediately gave each other a big bear hug. During their time in service, Thomas said he and Dave were inseparable, serving together in the same unit for eight years, including two over overseas deployments. It was during the second one that the duo were both hit by the chemical attack. With both of them suffering lung damage, they hadn't seen each other since the army had shipped them both back home for treatment, Thomas to Indiana, and Dave to Navajo Country in New Mexico. Fighting in a war together bridges a lot of gaps. With Thomas being white and Dave being a Navajo, their differences in culture certainly had no impact on their friendship. The two men were more akin to brothers. Their service together in the army uniting them on a far deeper level than anything else could. Now, finding themselves in another unfamiliar environment, it was comforting to know they would once again have each other's backs as they began this new experimental treatment. Yeah, I'm almost starting to feel bad. Well, well, well. You cleaned everybody out at the car table, but it looks like I might finally have the upper hand. Maybe I can finally win my money back. Yeah, thanks again. I think all those paychecks you guys lost put the down payment on my house. Too bad I seem to spend more time at the Damned VA Hospital. Oh, man, a way times you're insane. I'm not even sure where they flew us back here, but, hey, Tommy, I'm glad you're here, this whole treatment thing. Misery lost company, right? Me, you against the VA. Some reason I feel like we'd have better luck against the NBA. All right, how long man am I worried? What are we drinking? Another beer from me. Thanks. Eric, is that you man? Are you sinned by yourself? In between their periods of treatment and light exercise programs, Thomas and Dave were left with plenty of time on their hands. With their evenings free and five years of lost time to catch up on, they bounced around Deming's local bars and pool halls, swapping stories from the time of the army and everything else that had happened since they'd been separated. It was during one of these nighttime outings that they bumped into Rick, an old high school friend of Dave's, and a fellow Navajo who worked at a local card dealership. All three of them became fast friends, and Rick became a regular fixture on the two men's nightly excursions, the men bonding over beers and a few games of pool. However, during one night of particularly heavy partying, Rick's typical upbeat demeanor was replaced by something more sullen and pensive. It was as if he had something weighing heavily on his mind, though he wasn't sure how to go about expressing it. After much prodding by Thomas and Dave, Rick nervously looked around the bar before quietly telling the two men to follow him outside. The two soldiers, more than a little inebriated by now, eagerly followed, completely oblivious to the very bizarre turn that the evening was about to take. Once outside and clearly wanting to be out of earshot of everyone else inside the bar, Rick looked at his two friends and presented them with an intriguing, albeit very unusual opportunity. Somewhere out in the barren New Mexico desert, that night, a meeting was going to take place. A gathering of men, Rick only referred to as "shape shifters." Sober enough to acknowledge that this was a rather strange thing to be talking about, Thomas said he remained silent, not entirely sure what to make of the whole interaction and Rick's bizarre proposal. He sensed that Dave, however, was actually excited at the prospect of attending one of these ritualistic meetings. He started talking a low voice about how his relatives would speak of shape-shifting witches involved in various forms of black magic, while clearly aware that the subject was taboo in Navajo culture, Dave, feeling much looser after a few drinks, couldn't help but to submit to his own curiosity regarding this darker side of his people's history. With the collective enthusiasm of both Dave and Rick egging him on, Thomas soon agreed to join the men in attending this mysterious gathering, albeit still a bit apprehensive. After all, while Rick and Dave were distinctly indigenous in their physical appearance, the same couldn't be said for Thomas. At this, Rick laughed, assuring him that all the other men in attendance would likely be much drunker than they were. That combined with the cover of darkness, and Thomas' quote-unquote "dark enough features," Rick said it would be enough to pass Thomas off as one of their own. So all three of them agreed to go. Shaking hands, Rick then got serious for a moment and made the two men solemnly swear to never reveal the details of what they were about to witness. After Thomas and Dave agreed, they piled into Rick's truck and drove off into the barren expanse of the New Mexico Desert. As Rick drove the men further out into the desert, the sun dropped below the horizon, the blackening sky then filling with stars. For Thomas, the initial excitement he felt at the bar had somewhat dissipated. He now felt anxious. What exactly had the two men gotten themselves into? What kind of weird setup was this? Were they really heading to meet with a secretive league of shape-shifting Navajo witches? That was almost certainly too outlandish to be true. But if not, then who or what were they on their way to meet, a bunch of strange men out in the desert, so deep in the bottle that they've convinced themselves of having magical abilities? It didn't help that Rick himself had become eerily silent over the last few miles. His eyes now sullen and remaining locked on the road ahead which was bathed in the truck's headlights. Thomas grabbed a bottle of whiskey Rick kept in the truck to stymie his growing sense of unease. He took a few swigs and it seemed to help. After what must have been at least a 30-mile drive into the middle of nowhere, the paved road they were on gave way onto a dirt trail. It didn't look very worn, like it was hardly ever driven on. There was a delish red glow in the distance, a bonfire. Thomas knew, it must be getting close. Still a short distance away from the bonfire, Rick was flagged down by one of the secretive groups members holding a flashlight. Rick then pulled his truck alongside several other vehicles in a sort of parking area. After exiting their vehicle, Rick, Dave and Thomas began walking towards the nearby bonfire, before being approached by the same Navajo man with the flashlight. Thomas couldn't help but notice that the man was armed, cradling a shotgun as he shined his light across their faces. Recognizing Rick, he nodded and told the man to proceed towards the fire. After a short walk, the trio arrived to find a sizable group of Navajo men surrounding a roaring bonfire, all of them drinking, talking, and laughing amongst themselves. It wasn't entirely unlike anything the two soldiers had experienced during their own get-togethers, which put them a little more at ease in the unfamiliar environment. That was until two other Navajo men, both of them carrying guns, approached Dave and Thomas and started asking them a series of questions. Who were they? How did they know Rick? What were they doing there? Thomas and Dave answered honestly, which seemed to satisfy the men, who then permitted them to take their spot around the fire, after issuing one final warning. If either of them was to disclose anything they were about to see to anyone that wasn't gathered around the flames, they would be met with a painful death. Thomas and Dave stared at them in silence, waiting for the punchline, but despite the party like atmosphere going on around them, the faces of these two Navajo men were deadly serious. However many red flags they'd already seen, Thomas said this really just made both of them even more curious. They agreed to the terms and went to join the others. But nothing could have prepared them for what they then witnessed. The heavy drinking I'd been doing had surely clouded my senses, but the ceremony seemed to be well regulated. As certain chants and words were spoken by the host and quickly repeated by those at attendance, so this must have been a regular occurrence. Obviously following a pre-plant regimen, Rick was called on by the moderator and he stepped into the center of the circle. A sort of "shall" made of what appeared to be animal skin sewn together into a cape-like garment was placed around his shoulders, and then he danced around the circle chanting words I couldn't understand. Rick had explained that their tribe's traditional guardians of the spiritual world were witches called. I found it hard to understand how the people who must attend these ceremonies accept or understand all of the significance in mysticism contained within all the chants and dancing. Right in the middle of a major part of chanting by all the participants, Rick threw some sort of powder into the large fire, which exploded into a huge cloud of smoke. And suddenly there was a large seven-foot creature standing there that looked like a giant feather-covered praying mantis with a wolfish face, and Rick had disappeared. Both Dave and I looked at each other, jaws wide open, and in total bewilderment, neither of us could speak. We sat for several minutes, watching this creature wildly dancing to the sound of the drums being beaten rhythm by the attendees, and the scrawny beast came up close to each person around the circle. Neither Dave nor I could see any remote resemblance between this scraggly being and our lost friend, Rick. Suddenly we were both again assaulted with a huge explosion of smoke that completely smothered every one of us, and when it dissipated, there was Rick still dancing as though he had never left. I never did understand the significance of Rick changing into this other creature or where he was when it was there. Rick hardly spoke on our drive back to town. It was like he was completely exhausted. And when I try to ask him about how he changed into a creature that looked nothing like him, he just mumbled later. Dave and I exchanged looks that we both understood to mean we'd let it go for now. The following day, their heads still spinning from the combination of all the drinking and bearing witness to literal supernatural events. Dave and Thomas found themselves, you know if there's no other word for it, dumbfounded. It certainly didn't help that try as they might, Rick was proving difficult to get a hold of that day. They couldn't find him. Sitting down at a local restaurant, the two men recounted the previous night's events. Wondering if perhaps what they saw was merely the result of having too much to drink, some kind of shared hallucination or maybe they put something in our drinks kind of thing. But as much as they tried to rationalize what they saw, they just couldn't make sense of it. Thomas in particular said he found himself in the dark, being completely unfamiliar with these shapeshifting witches that the Navajo appeared to be well acquainted with. At this, Dave felt quiet, making sure nobody was within earshot before responding to Thomas in a low, hushed voice. What they had encountered last night, he said, was an entity known as a skin walker. Hello. Thomas, Dave. Hey, what's going on, brother? Oh, man. I don't know what to do, man. Man, man, okay, slow down. So are you okay? No, this is bad. What's going on, man? It's Rick. He found him? It's Rick, man. What about him? He said he's dead, man. What? Rick is dead. That's. No. All right, just. Oh, no. I'm coming over. I'm coming over. Whatever they might have gained from it, the two men had little time to properly investigate their brush with the skin walkers. Their upcoming treatment schedule for their damaged lungs would see them occupied for the better part of the next two weeks, leaving them with little time for anything else. But this wouldn't be the end of their bizarre story. About a week before their experimental treatment was scheduled to end, Thomas got a call from Dave, who sounded frantic. It was about Rick. After several days of attempting to get a hold of Rick, Thomas and Dave finally found out where he was. His badly mangled body had been found in a shallow roadside ditch, about four miles outside of town. Based on the state of his damaged corpse, it seemed that Rick had been struck by an oncoming vehicle, a hit and run accident. However, as Dave continued to lay out the details surrounding Rick's death, Thomas began to notice that there was something off about his death. The stretch of road where Rick was found was frequently traveled by motorists and law enforcement patrols. If anyone had been struck by an oncoming vehicle, then it certainly would have been reported by passing motorists, even if the guilty party fled the scene. However, nothing about a man being struck by a car had been reported in the days leading up to the discovery of Rick's body. What was reported and verified by two other motorists was a deer being struck and killed by a passing car. Responding to the scene of the incident, a patrolman was able to locate the body of the deer, dragging it off the road and then rolling it into the ravine that ran alongside it. It was two days after this report was made that Rick's body would be found, in approximately the same location that the policeman reportedly disposed of the deer's remains. Strange as it was, Thomas couldn't help but wonder if that deer was actually Rick, his body somehow changing back after he died in animal form. Despite Thomas's insistence, Dave had had enough and flatly refused to dig any deeper into the incident. If Dave wasn't previously convinced about the supernatural powers of these beings, he certainly was now and under the Navajo Code, he didn't want to draw their attention by discussing the matter. Thomas thought about it and likewise agreed to drop it and leave the subject alone. By the time Thomas wrote his letter in the 30 years since their encounter with the skin walker, Dave had passed away. Despite knowing it was taboo and that he had sworn not to mention it, Thomas said that after all that time, he just felt that he had to share the experience with somebody. I'm an MP at Quantico, and there's definitely been a couple of weird things I've seen on night's patrolling Westside. So I've been at Quantico for about two years as an MP. For those that don't know about Quantico, it's set up with two sides, main side where everything is, east of Interstate 95, and the appropriately named Westside, where they do TBS, the basic school for officers, and all the ranges. Westside is pretty damn massive, like I'm talking it would take two to three hours to drive around it, and it has all of these unused backroads and old cemeteries from homesteads dotting the landscape. Plenty of forgotten training areas too, dating back to World War II. When I was on night shift, I always asked to be the roving unit out there, because it would give me a chance to scout out places to hunt or fish on my off days, and being the only unit out there and being left alone was pretty nice to just skate or do my own thing over my 10 hour shift. Now, I'm not a stranger to the woods, or to the outdoors or anything. I grew up running around the mountains for quail and deer in Southern California as a kid, and spent a ton of nights out camping by myself in my teens, so there's really not much out there in nature that freaks me out. But one night, in about November, when the nights get really dark real fast, I was done posting Marines out on the gates and was heading up to a far off training area. I had my tree stand and trail camera that I'd previously set up and wanted to go take a look to see if anything had been around. To get there, you have to drive about 30 minutes up one road and then another 15 until you hit a long dirt road that dissects that part of the base in half. And in this particular area, comms always sucks, so without a working radio, you're pretty much out there on your own. I parked my Durango on the offshoot. I grabbed my flashlight and started off heading into this creek bottom about a mile or so off the road. I've done this a ton of time, so I got there pretty fast. I grabbed the chip out of my trail cam, and I hop up into my tree stand to take a look at it and to kill some time. And not even five minutes into flipping through pictures, most of which were just some turkey that were hanging around. I hear someone, and I say someone because I thought it was a person, walking through the woods about 30 yards in front of me. Now this is like the middle of the night on a training base, so a lieutenant who got lost doing nightland now. isn't out of the question. So I'm thinking maybe this is my chance to mess with them from up in my stand. I quickly closed my laptop and I turned off my flash light and I try looking out to see where they were. Now here then walk closer and closer and then stop about 20 yards in front of me. At that point with the allume being fairly bright that night I could make out the outline of what looked like a deer which was kind of disappointing. So I just stayed quiet to watch where he was heading so I wouldn't spook him. All of a sudden this thing starts bashing its head against a tree over and over and over and over until its entire skull cap was crushed and it was leaking blood and brain matter. Then this effing thing stands up on its hind legs and turns towards me as though it was staring directly at me even with its eyes being clearly now useless and then it's spook in the clearest tone I've ever heard in my life. My stomach dropped and I was too frozen and fear to even think to draw my pistol but then as quickly as it had walked up this thing dropped back down onto all fours and walked away. I waited about 10 minutes shaking like a leaf trying to calm down before I left my laptop I left everything I just hauled ass out of there got out of my stand ran back to my patrol car and I grabbed my shotgun and I sat for the rest of the night in the lit parking lot of the MCX. It took about a month before I summed up the courage to go back grab my laptop and stuff I'd left there and I went with a friend who I didn't tell what had happened but I told him to bring his long gun as well. When I got there I grabbed my stuff and I looked towards where the thing had been and the tree was busted up with splinters everywhere and what looked like you know the bone fragments and and the mess the blood scattered on the ground. Needless to say I don't go out checking stuff in the middle of the night anymore and I hunt on the complete opposite side of the base and anytime I do need to go by there now I always take a shotgun in condition one. I told my Navajo grandpa about this and he told me not to speak about it but clearly I don't listen well it freaked the hell out of me got me so messed up to the point where I really I don't even like going in the woods anymore. My name is Corporal Oscar with the United States Marine Corps and I have a story I'd like to share with you from our platoon's time in Bridgeport for Mountain Training Exercise. A couple years ago from September to October our platoon Alpha 2 of first CEB Combat Engineer Battalion went to Bridgeport for a joint exercise with our Victor Unit 2-1. Before we got there we were briefed back on Camp Pendleton about things like high altitude pulmonary anemia and how the oxygen difference with the altitude could cause hallucinations. We also heard other strange stories about the training area such as people sometimes waking up right as marine animal packers, Marines patrolling with horses and donkeys would unexpectedly walk through the middle of the patrol bases at night because the animal packers course use the same training area. Anyway when we got to Bridgeport's lower base camp we were given two days to acclimatize our bodies to the altitude. In that time we explored the surrounding mountains and we may or may not have climbed up mountains we weren't supposed to and taken some cool pictures. The strange activities though started around two weeks into Bridgeport. We don't always make jokes about skin walkers coming by and grabbing us in the middle of the night, but something did actually show up. Yo Rambo, put your damn knife away and how am I gonna get these tarps up? Alright but one it's a bayonet and two you gotta admit this thing is pretty damn cool. Look at this thing. How much you pay for that thing anyway? 250. Damn bro seriously. Did it come with a Camaro and 29% financing? Whatever man. This thing is awesome. I mean it's a class. Tell me get the damn tarps up will you? Alright alright. One night during an operation we called the Cool COOL. I'm not sure what it stands for probably combat operations something something. We were at Bridgeport's highest landing zone, Elsie Owl. We'd set up shelter with our tarps for the night. I should mention this tree we hooked our tarps on was growing up against a large rock face. I was a Lance Corporal at the time. I had with me one other Lance Corporal Engineer and Lance Corporal Water Dog, Water Specialist, and we used large rocks like small boulders and wooden stakes to anchor down our tarps to make a pyramid shape against the tree. So one at one end of the tarps was attached to the tree and it was like a lean to kind of built around the entire perimeter of this tree. So any water would roll off and keep our gear and us dry underneath. Another thing of note though the water dog we had with us would often be messing around with his rifle because he had a bayonet with him and you know he'd stick it on the end of his rifle. He liked playing with it. He liked showing it off. So once night came and the freezing snow started falling. We went under our tarps and into our sleeping bags. This was around 9 p.m. I woke up around 10 p.m. to the sound of someone racking the charging handle of their weapon back. It's dead quiet up there and we're supposed to be in a tactical environment. So making unnecessary noises like that is going to piss somebody off. So I look around and me and my other engineers M4's were on the ground next to us and only the water dog's rifle was around the backside of the tree where only he could see it. It was dark and so I figure it's this guy. He must be screwing around with his bayonet again. So I asked him if that was him messing with his rifle. He gets up out of his sleeping bag and tells me that it wasn't him. So now I'm thinking that someone, maybe one of the infantry guys that we're training with, has snuck up to our patrol base and is messing with us. So I pull out my k-bar and I crawl out from under the tarps. I'm gonna go threaten some poor guy who thinks he's gonna scare us, right? But there was nobody else nearby what the hell hey oh god yes are you telling you doing I heard a noise. Did you hear like a rifle or something? Yeah is that you guys? No sorry. What's with the knife? I came out because I thought it might be one of the infantry guys or something. Yeah okay I'm gonna go ask the firewatch to see if they're screwing around. So when I came out my sergeant he sees me coming up out of our lean-to and he walks up to me and asks me what the hell I'm doing you know standing there holding an knife and all and I asked if he had heard the noise that we did and he said that he did thinking it was one of us racking our rifles which I told him it wasn't. So then he walks over to the nearby infantrymen on firewatch and he asks if he or his guys were screwing around with their rifles but that guy also knew nothing about it. So our sergeant comes back up and tells us that and says to just go back to sleep. So I went back to my sleeping bag and I forget all about it. Next time I woke up was 6 a.m. Revolution but now our tarps are all on the ground like something had pulled them down off the tree. And the small boulders we used to hold them down they are nowhere to be found and the stakes same story gone. So as we're trying to figure out what had happened with our tarps our sergeant comes back up and tells us what he saw earlier that night. He said he didn't mention it because he thought he was seeing things at the time. But after he told us to go back to sleep, and I had crawled back into my sleeping bag, my sergeant said something caught his eye up at the top of the rock face behind us. And so he looks up, and he sees this bald naked, human looking figure with shining eyes, looking over from on top of the rock face. And as soon as he spotted it, he said he saw it duck away immediately. My first thought was a video I'd seen of a guy who was filming his house, because he thinks there's a skin walker rake around his house. And when he sees it on top of his roof, as he's filming it, as soon as he saw it, this thing also ducks behind the house and disappears. So again, my sergeant thought he was just seeing things. So he said he just went back to bed as well. But now with the tarps being messed with, I guess he thought he should tell us about it. We don't know what it was. Maybe somebody was messing with us. But I think we would have heard them moving around if it was a person. Whatever it was, it was far more disciplined in silence than any infantryman or marine that I've ever met. I have a few pictures here as proof of our time at Bridgeport if necessary. In the early 1980s, the Cold War, now simmering for the better part of 40 years, had the forces of NATO and the Soviet Union teetering on the edge of an all-out war. While looming, hypothetical World War III was largely thought to be determined by the thousands of nuclear warheads, leveled it one another across the Iron Curtain. The armies of the free world at this time deployed millions of troops to Western Europe. Working alongside regional and international allies, these troops prepared and trained for this coming war, intending to be the rock that would break the coming red tide. For a young British soldier named Francis, all of this only meant countless hours of overnight drills, in preparation for a mighty struggle that would ultimately never come. On one such night in 1981, Francis then stationed in West Germany tells us that he found himself in an open field, some 60 miles south of the city of Dettmode. With the help of another soldier, these two men were tasked with establishing an HLZ, a helicopter landing zone, in order for their units squadron to practice some routine night touch-and-goes, landings and take-offs. That afternoon, they arrived at this field, which was commonly used for military exercises, and went about the procedures as they had done dozens of times before, without incident. As it got dark and the crickets came out, the stillness of the night was only occasionally interrupted by the comings and goings of the helicopters, with little else to do but to stand by the field and observe these helicopter exercises until they were concluded. Francis and his friend did what "all true brits do" when they had a bit of downtime. They made tea and casual conversation, something to keep them warm against the chilly night air. As yet one more helicopter touched down and lifted back off into the sky, the sound of its rotor blades rippling off into the distance, the two Tommy's were once again left alone on the desolate landing zone, or so they thought. Around 1.30am, as the two men eagerly awaited for the arrival of the final helicopter so they could pack up and leave, one of the men spotted something on the far side of the landing zone. Francis recounts what he saw. I looked to where he was pointing and standing on the edge of the woods about 80 meters across the clearing was a figure. It was a full moon, so it was quite bright and stood out easy to see. It stood on two legs, about 7 or 8 feet tall. It had yellow eye shine and the body kind of shimmered in the moonlight. It made no sound and it just really put the shits up us. It just stood there watching us. We then heard the last cab getting closer to us coming in for landing, and at that point, this thing then dropped onto all fours and backed back into the woods. As soon as that cab left, we packed up and we're out of there. We had a track to drive down to get back to the main road, and we must have done that at 60 miles an hour to get out of there. We never said anything to anyone as it's not the thing to do. Brave soldier fighting the Russian hordes but being frightened of the woods is not the image you want to give. But after that night, I avoided doing night landing sites and never felt comfortable in the woods on exercises doing night stacks. We both know what we saw and didn't imagine it. I know Germany has a lot of werewolf encrypted stories, but that night I got well and truly shit scared and can remember it like it was last night. Out of all my paranormal experiences, this is probably the most compelling I had simply because I was not alone when this happened, and I was not with just the average kind of people, either. I'll put in as much details exactly as I remember them. To protect the persons involved, I will change their names. I also cannot state the name of my company, but it is one of the largest telcos, telcomedication companies in the Philippines, which is synonymous to world. I currently work as one of the senior IT network and server engineers there. I usually get assigned to work on priority repairs on various cell sites and server data center sites, mostly in far-flung provinces. This happened in mid-December, 2016, in Nuevo Vescaea, a mountainous province in the northern region of the Philippines. It was a priority service call, Severity One, the highest of priorities where even the CEO of the company received status updates. Since the cell site in question also services various military communications devices. As soon as I got to the office, I was dispatched immediately, caring with me the very equipment to replace the existing ones at the cell site. It was a six-hour drive north of Manila. I was asked to go to a specific meeting point in the town nearest the cell site to rendezvous with my escort, an eight-member team from the Philippines' first Army Scout Ranger Regiment. The area of the cell site is a place where the local communist movement, the New People's Army and PA, is highly active. Apparently, the NPA carried out an operation earlier in the morning of that day, which is what caused some of the equipment to be damaged. The scout team was actually led by one of my former high school classmates, I'll call him Lieutenant Ramirez. He specifically asked for me, knowing that I worked for the telco. He had his men transfer the equipment to their truck, and we began to travel to the cell site. It was already dark by this time. I also during the long uphill ride, first Lieutenant Ramirez and I did some catching up when they received a call. I don't understand military speak, so I could not tell exactly what was being talked about, but he updated us accordingly, saying that a village, on the way to the cell site, requested assistance with a possible NPA member harassing a household. Apparently, the man was up on the roof of this house and he was still in the area. Being the nearest, first Lieutenant Ramirez responded that his team will be handling it, so instead of continuing to the damaged tower, we drove towards the village mentioned, now with our headlights turned off. The countryside, especially the poor places, are very dark. Soldiers aren't allowed to smoke at night in places like this, since the light from their cigarettes could be clearly seen, even from a distance, giving away their position. It was that dark here. I was hesitant to be riding along since I'm not exactly a soldier, but Ramirez brushed it off, saying, "It would be a good chance for me to become a soldier for at least one night." First Lieutenant Ramirez, I can say, is a battle-hardened junior officer, he's been to a number of dangerous situations before fighting in many encounters, both high profile and low-key. He's the type to jump in quickly, then ask questions later. That's how he's been ever since we've been kids, very cocky individual, but not entirely without cause. He did receive a medal recently after all, although I don't. I wasn't sure for what action. Either way, we're going in, it's part of the job. He casually said to me, "Now, you have to understand, the Philippine army usually does the police work in the areas where communists, Muslim insurgents, or bandits are active, and when you send in the scouts, the best the military has to offer, you can get an idea of how bad the situation is in the place that they're being sent. Even other countries recognize the abilities of the Philippine scout rangers. All the more so in this case since the scouts came from the first regiment, there the best the scouts have to offer from what I've been made to understand. Anyway, we get to the place, maybe five minutes later, with me still having second thoughts, and Ramirez looks at me and he says, "Dude, make up your mind. Either you shadow me, or I leave you in the truck. If you stay here, you're free dinner for them commies, though. I can't spare a babysitter for this one." So he made the choice easier for me. I had no plans of being abducted that night, and I was pissing myself already. I'm not cut out for this danger stuff. I just wanted to repair the cell site and go home. I wished he had never taken me, and I was wishing I had never ended up in this situation, and I planned to get his wife to kick his ass once he goes home on vacation for this. Here, he said, handing me a loaded nine-millimeter pistol and two clips. He goes, "I know you're used to this one. Safety's on." I sat there thinking, "I am not getting paid enough for this job. And I recall my company, insurance policy, doesn't even cover sports-related injuries, let alone firearms-related ones." Well, I didn't have time to waste, so I stuck with my friend instead of waiting in the truck for someone to drag me into the woods and hold me for ransom, which nobody's going to pay for. The plan was for six of his men to break off into three pairs to surround the house in question. Me, first lieutenant Ramirez, and his sniper, PFC Santiago, were going to go up to this water tower about 50 to 60 meters out. I guess he had planned to snipe the guy and have his men stand by on the ground in case the sniper missed. As we moved to the water tower, he was telling me, "You're too stiff. You're wearing dark clothes. No one will see you. We'll be in and out. 10 minutes tops. You're a VIP. That's why I came and had my sergeants stay with the platoon at the cell site." I didn't know VIPs had to join in responding to these types of calls, but scouts were undermaned, as it was already, and that's why my friend needed to multitask at the moment. Well, we get up to the water tower. PFC Santiago immediately positions himself, and first lieutenant Ramirez sat beside him while I positioned myself behind them. And I was thinking, "Yeah, this wasn't so bad. I'm far from the area, and pretty safe, as far as I could tell." Until PFC Santiago said, "Sir, you need to see this." First lieutenant Ramirez brought out some type of binoculars. I guess they called them night vision scopes. I couldn't see his reaction because it was dark, but he was silent as he put down the binoculars. He swears under his breath. He then turns to me and asks me to look in the direction, and he pointed and asked me to tell him what I see. Of course, my initial concern is that there were more NPA soldiers, and that we were outnumbered. A reaction like this from a seasoned scout didn't exactly paint a nice picture in my mind. But what I saw was definitely something that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. I wish I hadn't taken those binoculars at all. I wish I even wish I saw more communists instead of what I did see. The image was green. I saw someone on the roof of a house. It was a man. He didn't have a shirt on, nor did he have any sort of fire arm or weapon on him. He had very short hair, maybe a shaved head. He was barefoot. He had jeans on, but the lower part was ripped. And from what I could tell, he had dark skin. He seemed normal at first glance. But then I noticed his arms. His arms were very long. His hands were almost too passed down his knees. His fingers were also very long and pointed, much longer than normal, and they had tips which looked like long nails or even claws. The first thing on my mind was this thing isn't human. And then I hear a PFC Santiago say, "Sir, it's moving." I did not expect what happened next. As soon as he said that, as I'm looking through this binocular, this thing, whatever it was, looked at me through the lens. It looked at me. It was unmistakable. He or it had its head now turned in my direction. And I could see it had white eyes, at least at the green. It looked white like eye shine in a cat's eyes. I dropped the binoculars. It had not been strapped to my wrist. It might have fallen straight through the grated flooring of the water tower. Ramirez looks at me, asking what I saw. And all I could say was it looked at me, man. It knows we're here. And at the same time, PFC Santiago said, "Sir, orders." My friend gave the order to put two in its head. I think the first shot hit its mark because a scream then echoed through the valley. Sounded like a mix of a high-pitched male shout and a cornered or dying animals cry. Not sure how to describe it because it was the first time I had heard such a sound, but I am sure all of us heard it because how loud the sound was. Santiago never got off a second shot. I don't know if he did so on purpose or if he was caught off guard by the screen. We then heard automatic rifle shots in the distance. Ramirez then tells us, "We got to go." PFC Santiago went down the ladder first, followed by me, then Lieutenant Ramirez. Once we hit the bottom of the tower, we ran to this house. These guys run fast and Ramirez is having to drag me along so I don't get left behind. Honestly, I was very reluctant to be running where we were headed. I wasn't as hardcore as these scouts. I could barely even keep myself from wetting myself, right? One of the guys was still shooting in the direction towards the tree line when we got to the house and near the front area was one of the soldiers sitting up against the wall. His buddy seemed to be applying first aid and I saw that his left forearm now had a long, bloody gash which was bleeding freely into the soil. He reported to Ramirez that something jumped from the roof, landed right on top of him, right after PFC Santiago had shot. And while he didn't get a good look at the thing, his attacker, due to the darkness, he specifically refused to call the thing human. I noticed even his buddy seemed to indicate that he didn't think it was human at all. The other four soldiers come back over to us saying that whatever this thing was, it got away. My friend decided to talk to the people in the house. We found out that a young couple lived in this house and that the woman was seven months pregnant. They were the ones who had texted their local village official who in turn requested the military to check on the situation since he suspected this thing was an NPA soldier. The three of us, me, personal Lieutenant Ramirez, and PFC Santiago never told anyone even this couple what we saw that night. We simply stated it was a machete swinging communist trying to rob them. NPAs were known to resort to banditry so they believed it. We eventually made our way to the cell site where I immediately began to do the necessary repairs. I was even dropping as I was working and I heard Ramirez and Santiago stick to their story when they were asked by the rest of their platoon regarding the recent encounter. But they never mentioned anything about the man's description nor the strange animal sound that we heard. After working an all-nighter and making sure the cell site operation was stable, Ramirez and his men minus the injured one took me back to the town where I'd parked my car as soon as daybreak came. As his men loaded the damaged equipment that I'd replaced into my car, Ramirez came to talk to me. At first he was joking around saying I could probably enlist in the regular army now that I'd had my firsthand experience of what it was like for them. And I went along with this hoping to forget about this strange incident. But before I was able to drive away, he said, "Dude, Santiago, me, we saw the same thing you did." You know what it was, don't you? I never responded, inside. I knew what he was talking about. The Asuang, a creature from Filipino folklore, this stuff of a Filipino child's nightmares, the description, the sound. It was the only thing that made sense, explaining what that thing was. During the Spanish era, 1500s to about 1890, these creatures were said to be once human, who were blessed by the moon prestis of old called Babylon, so these people could have power to fight the Spanish colonizers who had done them wrong. The Spaniards decided to persecute these prestices for witchcraft, then spread tales that Asuang's attacked locals and foreigners alike. The Asuang is a creature said to be able to shapeshift into either a human or an animal but is never able to correctly imitate one or the other. As a human, it has leathery black skin and disproportioned limbs. As an animal, like a dog or a cat, for example, it's always black and three times the normal size. It can never speak or do animal calls. It can only growl, shout, or scream. They usually eat the flesh of recently deceased humans and animals, but also have a preference of targeting very ill people or pregnant women, pregnant women like the one that was in the village. They can never become human again, and being an Asuang is hereditary. No one will turn if attacked by one, although the wounds they inflict can be fatal. This is, of course, all true if the folklore is to be believed. I've never been back to the general area after this. First Lieutenant Ramirez and his whole team were recently dispatched to the south to deal with the ISIS terrorists there. And before he left, before writing this, I asked him about that night. It's hard to imagine a soldier of his caliber believing in those kinds of tales, and I find it even harder as I write this to believe what I saw was real. But no matter how hard I try to come up with an explanation, I couldn't come up with anything else other than the legend passed down, you know, by our forefathers. One of the last things Ramirez said to me was, "I told you before, you and I both know what that thing was." And then he said, "I go with what I see, and oftentimes I don't have the luxury of time to doubt whatever's in front of me. I don't know if I'll ever know the truth. I don't even know if I want to." When the sun rose over Chikamaga on September 21st, 1863, the once-picture-esque landscape of rolling hills and forests was now one of complete devastation. The Union Army had just captured a vital railway hub in Chattanooga, Tennessee, just over the nearby state line. They then launched an offensive into northern Georgia. On September 19th, they were met by the defending Confederates near the small town of Chikamaga. What followed over the next 48 hours was an appalling bloodbath, even by the standards of the already brutal civil war. By the time the northern troops retreated, leaving the Confederates victorious, over 36,000 men laid dead or wounded on the battlefield. As the war moved on, the citizens of the nearby town, as was so off in the case, flocked to the battlefield in an effort to aid the wounded, and, more strenuously, bury the tens of thousands of corpses. Looking to help in any way they could, the nuns of a nearby convent, volunteer their services. The sisters offered spiritual support, and even pitched in with carrying the bodies, and helping to dig the graves. The whole ordeal was a lot to take in. It was unlike anything these women or the local townspeople had ever experienced. The disturbing scene was especially hard on one of the sisters. She had gone from living a quiet, sheltered life of prayer and religious study, and now, this. While attending to the bodies of the men, the young nun wanted to pause for a moment to rest. She excused herself from the group and walked away to find a more secluded wooded area, possibly to pray, her motions being somewhat overwrought. But as she tried to collect herself, she heard something moving in the forest a short distance away. This woman is the first known witness to the thing that has stalked the area since the battle concluded, so perhaps she can be credited with the birth of the legend. But whatever it was she saw, it was nothing short of horrifying. Hunched over the body of a dead soldier was what she described as a demonic-looking creature, what terrified her even more was when she realized it was eating the corpse, tearing pieces of flesh away with a mouth full of sharp-looking teeth. Thinking at first it might be some kind of wild animal she knew she wasn't safe and tried backing away from it. But then she stepped on a branch and the noise caused the creature to look up at her. That's when she saw its eyes. They were bright green, and in the shadow of the trees, it looked like they were glowing. She had never seen it demon, but this sure as hell looked like one. She instinctively grabbed the crucifix she wore around her neck and began calling out to God, commanding the creature to leave. To her astonishment, it actually seemed to work. The creature still staring at her with its massive green eyes, suddenly screamed, and then faded into nothing. It would be the last time she saw the creature, but far from the last time it was seen. This next story is often referenced in articles and message boards discussing the legend of old green eyes. Its centers around an anonymous young man will call him Mark. Sometime in the 1970s or 80s, Mark was heading to see his new girlfriend just over the Georgia state line. His night already wasn't going well. Right as he finished work, his car broke down, and it was about to rain. Not wanting to miss his date, he talked his older brother into lending him a beat up old pickup. Since he was now running late, he decided to take a shortcut down Lafayette Road, which ran right through Chikamaga. Now driving with thick woods on both sides, the heavy rain had finally stopped, but a thick fog had rolled in across the old battlefield. As he drove the old truck through the fog, he then saw something weird coming towards him in the other lane. At first, he thought it was just another car's headlights, but then he noticed they were green. Mark thought it was odd. He had never seen green headlights before. He figured maybe they were some kind of special bulb. As Mark got closer, he saw the green lights were very bright. Then they started moving back and forth on the road ahead. Still thinking they were headlights, Mark tapped his horn, wanting to tell this crazy nut to watch out. But that just made things worse. At the sound of his horn, the lights seemed to swerve right into his lane, lining up his truck for a head-on collision. Mark started to think this driver must be drunk, so he leaned even harder onto his horn. The lights were approaching fast, the collision was going to happen at any second. Mark slammed on his brakes and tried to swerve out of the way. As the old truck creamed off the side of the road, Mark suddenly saw that the green lights weren't attached to another vehicle. They weren't attached to anything at all. It was just two large, green, floating orbs of light darting back and forth across the road. When Mark came to after the crash, the first thing he saw was that his brother's truck was completely wrecked. The front end was now firmly wrapped around a large tree stump. Luckily, from what he could feel, the only injury Mark seemed to have was a bump on his head. But that might just have been his adrenaline. Unfortunately, the headlights were now smashed, and he couldn't see. Everything around him on Lafayette Road was pitch black, except for a faint green glow. Turning his head, the next thing Mark saw were the orbs, like two glowing green eyes hovering in the fog over the road. Mark began to feel an inexplicable sense of terror as he watched them then. Then they suddenly faded away. Now even darker than it was, Mark felt another jolt of fear. Something was moving around, just outside the truck. Turning to look toward the trees, Mark spotted a figure moving through the fog, only dimly lit by the moon overhead, enough for him to make out an outline. He looked like a man with long dark hair hanging all the way down to his waist. As he was staring at it, he then heard it. The figure started moaning. As it paced around the truck, clearly watching him, he was making these low, ominous, somber noises. Mark had no idea what was happening, but it was sending chills down his spine. And then, as quickly as the green orbs had vanished, the figure seemed to disappear into the surrounding darkness. It was quiet. Mark waited a while to see if anything else would happen, before then trying to open the door to get out. In an instant, the creature had pounced on the hood of Mark's truck. Now sitting just feet from him behind the cracked windshield, Mark could see it. It wasn't human. The creature had long, dirty hair, a wide mouth full of razor-sharp fangs, and two glowing green eyes. Mark said at that point he wanted to scream, but for some reason he couldn't. If Mark's story couldn't get any more strange, it does now. According to Mark, staring at the creature's eyes, somehow lulled him into a hypnotic trance. Looking around them, the road, the trees, seemed to melt away. When the vision came into focus, Mark was shocked to see bodies lying around him. The ground was covered with the bodies of men in dark navy and gray uniforms. In the distance, he heard the sounds of explosions, cracking sounds. The ground was scorched. The air had an odor to it, Mark couldn't describe. He could hear men screaming in pain, moaning. The blurring sound of a carhorn was what snapped Mark out of his vision. A park ranger patrol vehicle was now approaching Mark's wreck truck. The last thing Mark remembered seeing was the creature leaping off of the hood and vanishing into the fog. Two rangers jumped out of the truck and approached him. As they helped him out of the truck, Mark, visibly shaken, could only ask the rangers if they had seen the green-eyed creature that was just there. The rangers exchanged clanses. Clearly, they thought this poor kid was probably suffering from a concussion. The rangers tried to assure him nothing was there, but Mark was adamant. So much to the point that they decided to at least search the area just to humor him. They found nothing. But these two men wouldn't be the last of the park rangers tangled up in the story of old green eyes. War time stories is created and hosted by me, Luc 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 Piccata and Ratamere is Gauravik.