Possession, Shadows, Orbs, Car Bombs

Shit man it's dark as hell now. Do you remember where the house was eh? Dude you're going too fast man, I'm not going to be able to see shit in the dark. Can you slow it down a bit? Hey, great, what are you doing? I'm, I'm not driving. What? I'm not driving the car. Great, what are you talking about? Shit, I can't move. They hit the brake. It wants you. What? I can't. Green? Stop the car. Green, stop the car. Green, stop the car. A few hours earlier this was just a board group of soldiers messing around with a Ouija board. I'm Luke Lamana and this is War Time Stories. We've talked about the results of using Ouija boards before. I think the most prominent story in my mind is the story of the Gulf Breeze 6 where 6 soldiers defected from their listening post in Germany and came back to the States and it was this whole scandal, this real story. And the story they told after they were arrested was one of the most strangest and most phenomenal things that the Department of Defense had ever heard. And it all began with a Ouija board. This story was posted online about 12 years ago by a soldier using the handle, long story. His account begins the way many other stories involving Ouija boards do with curiosity, boredom, and a group of people looking for something to entertain them on a military base. But again, what started as harmless entertainment quickly became something else. Because whatever they believed they had contacted didn't seem interested in simply answering questions. It seemed to want one of them. He writes. I wanted to start out by saying that this story is 100% true. I know people will say that to add immersion, but it really is. And this is the only place I knew where to post it. Do I believe everything that happened actually happened? Not necessarily? I'm as skeptical as you will be, and I welcome any explanation as to how the events that occurred were not supernatural. It could have been an elaborate prank on behalf of my friends, but there are several reasons why I find that hard to believe. Mass hysteria maybe? Who knows? Anyway, here is the story. I enlisted in the Army in 2009 and had my AIT advanced individual training in Fort Machuka, Arizona. Pretty much any soldier stationed at Fort Machuka often nicknamed Fort Wigaccia has above average intelligence. Most of the MOS's require the military occupational specialties. Require a very high ASVAB score. The ASVAB is the test you take when you're enlisting in the military. I had to look this one up, but it was the armed services vocational aptitude battery. And based on your exam results, they assign you a range of different MOS options. Needless to say, the friends that I made while at Fort Wigaccia were a unique bunch. Many of us gaming nerds. Wichuka is about 20 minutes from the Mexican border and about 40 minutes from a very infamous town in Arizona called Tombstone. They made a movie about it. One day we were bored and swapping ghost stories. One of my buddies had bought a Ouija board at Walmart for us to mess around with and we'll call this guy Jackson to protect his identity. I'm not sure Jackson believed in the supernatural, but when your disposable income to free time ratio is skewed horribly in the wrong direction, you buy stupid shit to entertain yourself with. Jackson and I attempted to use the Ouija board in our barracks as the base is extremely old and said to be rife with hauntings. Unfortunately, the building we had recently moved into was brand new, so the Ouija didn't work. Tired of strip clubs and flirting with the Mexican border, we hungered for a more unique adventure. And it was then that I brought up the idea of traveling to nearby Tombstone. Jackson lit up when I mentioned this as he had just heard a story of a haunted house in Tombstone that he wanted to check out. We came to a quick ghost hunting census and invited our buddy Thompson along for the ride. Now, if you're not familiar with the place, Tombstone was one of the most infamous towns in the Old West. Back in the late 1800s, silver deposits were found nearby, which drew in thousands of people looking to make their fortune off one of the many mines popping up in the area. And back in the Old West, money often went hand in hand with violence and death. There were shootouts in the streets, guys killing each other over backroom poker games, cattle rustling, stagecoach robberies. You know the Ok Corral? Story, a famous shootout where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday gunned down those outlaws. Now, happened in Tombstone. You name it and chances are someone in that town killed someone over something. Anyway, we arrived at Tombstone shortly after dark, and honestly it wasn't quite how I expected it. I had pictured a literal ghost town with a few dilapidated Wild West buildings, you know, tumbleweed blowing through the street. This was not the case at all, even at night. It's basically a normal town with a few historical buildings and tourist traps. In addition to the downtown stretch, they have a residential area, just like any other small town in America. It was in this residential area that we began hunting for the supposed haunted house. We got to the area that we thought it was in, but we weren't exactly sure which house it was. We'd been driving for a while, so after a few minutes of circling the block, the group decided to take a piss break. I was the second person back in the car. I climbed into the back seat and asked Jackson, "Where's Thompson?" "I don't know. He's been gone for a while. I'll text him," said Jackson. All of a sudden, Thompson, looking wider than he normally does, comes sprinting towards the car, and frantically is trying to open the passenger door. Jackson calmly unlocks the door, lets him in and asks, "What happened?" "Dude, you're not gonna believe this shit." Thompson gasps. I was in this house that looked abandoned, right? So I go in, look around, and I decide to have a smoke. I looked down at my phone to text you guys and tell you about it when all of a sudden something touched my shoulder. Pumped with adrenaline, curiosity, and stupidity, I suggested that we go full mystery machine and park in and nearby lot to use the Ouija board from inside a car. As soon as we parked, roughly half a block away, we anxiously pulled out the Ouija board and put it in our laps. As the person designated to ask questions, I began. "Is there anyone here?" "To my disbelief, the planchette started moving, slowly but surely towards, yes." "Follow up question. Were you the thing that touched Thompson?" "Yes, it replied again. Are you the ghost in the haunted house? We were going to visit." "No," it answered. Now this is what took me by surprise. If this was one of the others trying to scare us, why wouldn't they take the obvious bait? It was claimed to be the ghost we saw and commenced scaring the shit out of us. At this point I thought about every creepy Ouija experience I had ever seen or read about. They always started to think I was a ghost. with some cliché questions like, you know, LOL, how did you die and ended with OMFG in a flurry of telekinetic activity. But I wanted this session to be different, so I took a moment and started thinking, "What would I want to know about a ghost? What questions can I ask that aren't cliché?" So the first question I asked was, "Name one thing the building you touched Thompson in was used for?" The planchette slowly started to spell something out, and honestly nothing could have prepared me for what it said. S-L-A-U-G-H-T-E-R. Slotter. Pucker factor level 9. And, you know, I realized that this probably wasn't one of us joking around because Slotter has not been used as a common term since like the 1800s. If my friends were pulling a prank, the easiest verb would have been something like murder or butt sex. Anyway, intrigued I decided to ask why it touched Thompson. H-E-L-P. It replied, "Help." Thinking this would lead somewhere creepy, I instead asked when it died. 1867. I again started thinking of questions I could ask that no one ever thinks to ask a ghost. I remember hearing on some website that you were never supposed to ask a Ouija board about God. So, I did the only logical thing in atheists would do at that point. Why aren't I supposed to ask you about God? The reply was a quick, "Turse?" No. So I tried to be more creative, I asked it. If you were playing World of Warcraft, what class would you play? No, it snapped again. It was weird, despite being an entity that couldn't really talk to us, you could almost sense its tone of voice through how it moved the planch at. At that point, I wanted to continue asking questions, but one of our phones started buzzing and it was our first sergeant who was interrupting our session with a frantic phone call. He ordered all of us to head back to the base, someone had lost their weapon and they were doing a 100% accountability. So disappointed, we packed up and we drove back. The next day, we were telling the others an Arplatoon about our experience. After many bullshit and eye rolls, another soldier named Green showed interest. So we decided to talk to the ghost again and we would take Green with us. He had an SUV which would give us way more room to set up the board. As a soldier, my first instinct was not only to plan our arrival and departure time, but safety contingencies as well. This was especially on my mind after the previous night. I briefed the group in advance that if anything creepy happened, we were better off with a pre-identified plan on what to do in case things got hairy. Our ghost-sunting SOP standard operating procedures was as follows. At approximately 200 hours, we will depart for tombstone. This will allow us to arrive after dark. We will take two vehicles, Green's SUV and Jackson's Coop. Jackson and Thompson will ride in the coop while Green and I will ride in the SUV. We will set up our session in the SUV so as to allow for a quick departure if anything spooky happens. We will leave any weapons or sharp objects back at the base. Spirits can only harm others by proxy, I think. So if there are no objects around to throw or possess someone into using, then the only physical danger will be us soiling our underwear. In the event one of us is feeling scared shitless, we will give an obvious signal to the others to quickly pack up and leave. Each soldier will return to the vehicle they traveled in and take off back to the base. Upon leaving the scene, the vehicles will immediately establish contact via cell phone to ensure safety and share in a moment of holy crap what the hell just happened. So it was settled. We had our plan and we were feeling pretty confident. We parked in the same lot we had the night before and eagerly took out our Ouija board. There were four of us now but not gonna lie, I was jittery as hell. Literally everything I knew about life in the universe at this point had been challenged by what we had seen the previous night. It was surreal, like something straight out of a movie. Green was especially nervous about being with us as he was raised Catholic. He wasn't religious anymore but I guess the idea of using a Ouija board still kind of freaked him out so he opted to just spectate as we placed the planch head on the board. So there are three of us controlling it. We start by asking if anyone was there and received a very slow, strained yes. I asked if it was the same being we talked to the previous night and it said no. Going off the same theme as last night I wanted the ghost to answer questions. No one would think to ask. What is one thing you want that you cannot have? L-I-F-E. It answered life. I wasn't sure whether to feel like an ass, an idiot or a little bit of both. It was then that the interior light in green's brand new by the way SUV flickered. Holy effing shit. That doesn't just happen. The only time I've ever seen a light flicker in a car was when it was being started and we are sitting here and the car is off. This was getting a little too real. Thompson chimes in and he's like you've been asking all the questions let me give it a try. So I gave him the floor. What do you want from us? He asked in his strong George accent. S-T-E-V-E-N. Steven. At this point I wasn't curious. I was terrified because no one there knew my first name was Steven except for Thompson. Before I could even react the center console which was about five inches open kind of a jar closed by itself. With that I calmly invoked our military plan of action and said I wanted to get the hell out of there. No one said a word or hesitated for even a second. Thompson and Jackson scrambled out of the SUV back into Jackson's eclipse. Green and I piled in the front seat of his SUV. Green immediately shifted the drive and peeled out of this dusty parking lot. It was a Ford escape that he was driving and I'm not sure if one of those has ever been used in such a literal fashion. Green was in shock and so was I. My atheist brain was questioning if God might actually be real and Green's devout brain was probably thinking the opposite. Our trance was broken by Green's alt-rock ringtone. His phone was going off. Green answered it was Jackson and Thompson. Their car wouldn't start. They had never left tombstone. So Green slams on the brakes. He bangs a U-turn that would have put Vin Diesel in diapers and he floors the gas and we're going about a hundred miles an hour heading down the Arizona 82 back towards tombstone. We knew the general direction back to tombstone but the town isn't as tiny as you'd imagine and in the general chaos of all this we couldn't quite remember the lot that we had parked in. So as I'm trying to figure out where we are, Green just starts freaking out. He grips the wheel and he says I'm not driving the car anymore. I can't move. At this point I'm thinking two things are possible. Either Green is possessed by an angry ghost that basically wants to kill me or Green is experiencing some kind of nervous or psychotic breakdown and honestly I'm not sure which was worse. So I just started shouting at him with simple commands if he was possessed or simply psychotic simple instructions seemed to be the best way to go. Green stop the car. Green stop the car. Green stop the car. Eventually The logic and reason seemed to fight off whatever had taken hold of him and he pulled over. I immediately switched seats with him and I began driving. But right after I got back behind the wheel, Jackson called and let us know that he and Thompson were safe and their cards started they were on their way back to base. Green was still in some kind of trance, but once we maybe got like a quarter mile from ground zero, whatever triggered him seemed to have left. Throughout the ride, we struggled to comprehend what had just happened. Green said that the ghost, whatever was in him, it wanted me like. He was saying stuff like it wanted me bad. It was apparently telling him to drive down an alley, but he said that he kind of came to his senses in time and that's why he pulled over. I asked Green, you know, why didn't it just kill me itself like why it possessed him? He shrugged and said probably because I'm bigger than you and more emotional, plus I was in control of the car. This was pretty chilling here and even worse to think about. If this thing had succeeded, the news would have just been soldier murders, other soldier in tombstone, PTSD suspected. To this day, I still consider myself a skeptic, but I do wonder about the paranormal as it could very well be, science not yet discovered. In the days that followed, I did a little more research on the location and ironically, the parking lot we did our Ouija session in. It was the one for the Ouija Corral, which is infamously haunted due to the shootout that happened there in the 1800s or so people say. From what I can gather, that gunfight happened well after 1867, but keep in mind that we talked to two separate spirits. I can't help but wonder if the second one was one of the outlaws who got gunned down there. Just still, royally pissed off after all these years. This next story comes from a former British soldier. In 1999, he had just returned from a six-month tour in Kosovo when an injury sent him to a military hospital for treatment, and like a lot of military hospitals, especially when you're stuck there for a while, the days got boring fast. So one night, he and a few other soldiers made a Ouija board, just something to pass the time. But after hearing there was an old, unused morgue in the basement, he decided to take the board down there by himself. No real plan, no idea what he was doing, just a lighter, an empty morgue, in a very large amount of boredom. At first, nothing happened. At least that's what he thought. He writes. So my experience with the Ouija board happened back in 1999. I was in the British Army and had just returned from a six-month tour in Kosovo. I sustained an injury while on tour, so when I got back, I was sent to a military hospital for treatment. I was there for a while. Being sat around in a hospital, things became extremely boring very quickly, so one night, mean a few lads put together a makeshift Ouija board. We didn't really know what we were doing, it was literally just something to pass the time. Not long after that, I found out that there was an old morgue in the basement of the hospital. It was a part of the building that was no longer in use. So one night, on my own, I went to the morgue because what better place to talk to the dead, right? It was empty and pitch black. Even the corridor was leading to it, we're unlit. I sat in the middle of the main room, flicked on my lighter, and began saying out loud, show yourself. I know this sounds odd, but boredom really drives you to some strange places and maybe I was trying to spook myself. Also I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I had never read any spellbooks or books on conjuring, talking to the dead, etc. I had no idea if I was even using the board right. I was just sitting there with a cigarette lighter asking the spirits of the room to show themselves. Nothing happened, so after a while I packed up and snuck back to my room. Well, at least I thought nothing had happened. About a week later, I was placed on the leave to travel home for a weekend, which is about 200 miles from the hospital. One night while at my mum's house, my mum and I got into a heated argument. I forget what it was about, but at some point I disengaged and went to blow off some steam. I left the living room and passed through the kitchen to the back door. I opened the back door, stepped into the yard, and I saw it. This large luminous blue orb just hovering there was about 80 feet in the air and was maybe the size of a large SUV or a transit van. I instantly thought I was seeing things, so I called into the house for my stepfather. Bearing in mind, he had just witnessed me and my mum arguing. I think he could hear the urgency in my voice and he came right out to find me in the garden. I said to him, "Can you see that?" To which he looked up and replied, "Yes." As we watched it, it seemed to drop about a meter and then it accelerated off at incredible speed. This orb was so close, I felt I could have easily hit it with a stone. And then we saw another one, and while observing this second orb, we had what I can only describe as an episode of Missing Time. Well, it felt more like added time rather than Missing Time. It was because we watched the orb perform a maneuver in the air. And then at some point a few seconds later, like deja vu, we realized that we were rewatching what we had just seen, like time had looped back a few seconds to repeat itself. It was very, really, really odd. That same orb then accelerated vertically upward and disappeared into the field of stars. This took about half a second and made absolutely zero noise as it did so. We then witnessed the third orb. This final orb looked like it was going to pass by us, but then it executed a 90 degree turn and came right toward us. It stopped directly above our heads, again at an altitude which I could have possibly hit it with a stone. My stepdad told me that he'd seen enough and runs back into the house, and I stuck around for a little while longer, it's morbid curiosity. But that was when I noticed that the air around me was becoming charged, like you know what you could tell. It was a full of static electricity and I also decided that that was enough and I bolted back in my mom's house on the heels of my stepdad. And at this point I don't think I connected what I just witnessed to that night in the morgue with the Ouija board or rather not witnessed, but me being in there. But what happened when I got back to the hospital convinced me that something was very, very wrong. So a few days after I returned to the military hospital, something came to visit me. I was in my room that I shared with another patient and was just about to turn in for the night. I just laid down in bed, but was still a ways from falling asleep. As soon as my head went back and touched the pillow, this entity around seven feet tall appeared next to my bed. And when I say against my bed, I mean it was really against it. It was so close to my right that I could have easily reached out and touched it. It was draped from head to toe in a black hooded cloak. I couldn't see any skin or facial features, I was totally scared shitless. But even through my terror, two things really stuck out to me about this thing. Firstly, its hood was sharply pointed out. up in a triangle-like shape. I don't know, that just seems strange to me. Secondly, this being was leaning over me in this really odd fashion. If we were to lean over someone, we would do it with an arch in the back, right? But this entity's back was straight as a board. It was almost as if it was hinging forward from the pelvic region in a sort of bowing motion with its arms held straight down by its sides. That's all to say that its posture looked very unnatural and awkward, which made the whole thing even that much more unnerving. As soon as this thing appeared, I was unable to move, totally paralyzed, except for my eyes. I remember scanning it up and down, seeing folds in its dark cloak. Let me tell you, I've experienced sleep paralysis all my life. This was unlike anything I'd ever suffered through and I never want to experience it again. For this next part, I never told anyone at the hospital about that encounter. And the next night, I had just gotten out of the shower. I was heading back towards my room. And as I rounded the corner, I could see my roommate, the other patient that I shared the room with, standing in the hallway just outside the room in his box of shorts, talking to some nurses. He had his back to me. But when I walked over to them, I could see that something wasn't right. Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen anyone look as frightened as that guy looked right at that moment. His face just totally drained of color. His eyes were wide, his pupils were blown out, and he's trembling uncontrollably. He's muttering something I can't really make out. I asked the nurses, what's going on? They told me that he said that he had just seen a tall, cloaked entity leaning over my bed, while I was in the shower. So my empty bed, that is. For years after all this, I would experience all kinds of strange stuff. Electrical phenomena, orbs flying around the house. At one point, the energy company even told me I owed them thousands of pounds, and this was impossible as I had a pay-as-you-go meter, and I was actually in credit. They sent someone out to check, said meter, and couldn't find the problem. Neither day nor I could understand how or where this energy was coming from or how it was being used. These last few years have, thankfully, been pretty quiet. But every so often, I think back to that night in the morgue. And I wonder if I actually made contact with something that I should have left alone. [MUSIC PLAYING] This next story was posted online by an American sailor writing under the handle, airship Cannon. At the time, he was living in an old Navy barracks building, which was built in the 1950s, condemned full of asbestos, still being used anyway, because apparently the military looked at that and said, good enough. And for the most part, nothing too strange had happened there. At least not in his building. But one night, while he was standing roving watch, he and another sailor walked into the head and found two drunk shipmates doing something incredibly stupid. They were using a Ouija board in the bathroom at 3 in the morning. And according to him, whatever answered them didn't stay on the board. He writes, this bit is pretty damn creepy. Since stuff got messed up a while back, all I really can say from it is, well, eff Ouija boards. Don't ever mess with that stuff. I'm currently on a Navy base, living an old building that's from the '50s. It's already condemned, but it's been that way for a long while, because-- well, still in use, because they can't keep up with the demand for new buildings. The building's pretty shitty. It's got asbestos in it, not cool. Anyway, to be blunt, some of my shipmates messed up. Not with alcohol, like the CO is always hammering into us with speeches and competitions. Or other stuff like, we hear a chiefs call every week, no. What these guys did isn't the kind of stuff that gets you chewed out by the LPO leading petty officer or anything like that. Now, these dirt bags brought a frickin Ouija board into the barracks and don't ask me how, but they managed to summon some shit. It was a few nights ago, but that, I mean, a couple of weeks ago. Everyone's on liberty, but I was on duty, so couldn't do jack squat. I was roving watch, which basically means that me and a partner are walking around and doing nothing for a while. Nothing ever really happened here. I mean, I was the guy who reported the black mold in the head that's the Navy Turnover bathroom on the far side. That was about the most exciting thing that happened. Other ships, barracks, namely integrated ones with both male and female personnel had interesting stuff happening all the time. Like, I don't know, catchin' a couple people banging each other behind the vending machine or something like that. But alas, none of that here. Well, at least until this night, now for a little backstory. Yeah, it's a base, but this one's pretty storied. It's old, really old, opened in 1905. Thing is, this base has seen quite a bit of death. There's a lot of rules here that are written in blood. Some kid got hit by a snow plow, so now we have to wear PT belts after colors, that kind of stuff. The buildings right next to ours have had deaths in training accidents, flying objects, killing people in the GM building. Some sailors getting shocked by electrical components then dying in their sleep the next day. The second deck floor of one of the buildings is said to be haunted by a chief from the 1980s and I've heard stories of dark ominous shadows being seen in one of the other barracks. But our ship, our building, nothing. At least until all this goes down. Well, this was balls to four watch, or rather midnight to four AM, yeah. It's tiring, it's not fun being up at O240. But nothing out of the ordinary, everything's fine. Too cold to row out doors, so we kind of had the rotation of picking one of the decks and checking the head. And by that, I mean, we'd go in there and waste time. Nothing unusual, barely, anyone was up. So, nothing was happening anyway. We were just looking for anything to pass the time, really. We ducked into the head on the first deck and found a couple guys in there. So, of course, despite the 11 general orders, talked about not talking to anyone while you're manning your post. We started talking to them. But there was one issue. These guys were hella drunk and decided in their wisdom to bring a freaking Ouija board back from wherever the hell they'd been. And they were using it in the head at a damn near three in the morning. Like, what the hell, right? Like, what were they planning? Getting their ass chewed by that cheat from the '80s, maybe talk to Simon Jimmy, who pointed at the electron tube in the SPS-64 and got zapped by an arc over 9,000 volts. Didn't matter how I told him that they really shouldn't be doing that kind of crap in the ship, as we called it. But, of course, they didn't listen. And honestly, using a Ouija board wasn't against any of the rules. So, I was technically out of jurisdiction despite being a watch standard. I told my partner that we should just find another head to waste time in, but he was too intrigued by the board. Like a moth to the flame. Well, shit. These two guys started talking to whatever, I guess, and quickly got a response. I can't remember what they asked, but stuff got weird, quick. First, the lights in the head went out. That's not normal. The head always has lights on. There's no light switches in there, either due to safety and security reasons, and they're not on any kind of motion sensors or timers. The only way to shut the lights off is by the breaker. The issue here was that I had checked the gear locker just moments before and there was no one in there. So, it wasn't manually flipped, and I'd been watching the P-way, the passageway, so there was no way anyone could have slipped in there to mess with it. Of course, the breaker might have just tripped on its own since that's what breakers are meant to do. I took note of that and then checked again. Nope, breaker was fine. Shit. The lights in the head slowly came back on. So, what, brown out? Maybe. But they stayed real dim and flickered. At this point, the drunk guys were really. pretty freaked out. Being that my room was right next to the head, I asked the other rover to hold while I cut in there to grab a notebook and pen. Stuff was starting to get weird, and whether it was paranormal or not, I felt I had a responsibility to at least log it. You know, keep a record of it. Well, when I came walking back, that is when things got freaky. As I was walking back to the head, I hear this loud crash, which made me run over there. The drunkards had bolted, and the other rover was just, you look petrified, and I asked him what happened, and what he told me was just insane. Apparently, after I had left, they had all heard this deep, guttural voice coming from the 1MC, which is basically the PA system. A voice, clear as day, that said one of the two drunk guys' names. I didn't hear it, so at this point, I'm assuming that they're just messing with me. But you know, it's hard to fake the look of absolute horror those guys had on their faces. I couldn't get the name, that the voice had said out of the other rover he wouldn't say, but shit was only getting started. At this point, all of the lights on the entire ship, the building, went out. I logged this, but didn't catch the exact time since I don't wear a watch, and I didn't have my phone on me. The breakers were still good, because the lights came back on after maybe five seconds. We went to report the incident, which was good, because now the POW, petty officer of the watch, he was looking pretty freaked out. When we asked him what was up, he said that he saw something on the camera's monitoring the second deck above us. So he sent us up to check, and nothing's up there. But when we went out the ladder well, the stairs, I swore I heard someone talking from somewhere outside. The problem here is that there were no windows or open doors anywhere near us, just a solid brick wall on all sides, and the other rover heard it too. We just went back and reported all conditions normal. I mean, at this point, they were anything but normal, but who the hell were we going to go to with that kind of thing? So we hung out on the quarterback and watched the cameras with the petty officer. But as we watched the screens, we noticed that something's wrong. We see this, it's like a dark shadow that came out of the head on the first deck, and we're just staring at the screen and silence as we watch this thing head towards the back, before turning towards the ladder well. We all saw it, and it didn't look right at all. There was no way it was a bug on the lens or anything, like the way it moved and the shape of it, it looked vaguely human, then we all heard it. There was a loud scream coming from the head where those idiots had messed with that damn Ouija board. We ran back there, we checked, nothing. And where we were, there was no way anyone could have gotten in or out of that head without us seeing them. We've had buds basically seals who aren't seals yet, the basic underwater demolition school trainees on the ship in the building, and not even they could have been fast enough to avoid us. Let me tell you, that watch could not have ended sooner. I was so done with that shit. I left a log of the events for my relief, which I'm sure they thought I had just lost my mind, and then to my horror remembered that the head where all of this had been happening was right next to my room. I got in my rack like normal and heard some, I swear I heard some strange noises coming from the direction of the head, and honestly I just, I was laying there trying not to think about them. I just tuned them out the best I could and eventually I, I did fall asleep. It's now been a couple of weeks since all this went down, and I've been having trouble sleeping. Got my ass chewed for dodging leadership, was told to see a counselor, I went and I'm fine. Just a couple more weeks here and then I, done with it. To hell with Ouija Boards man, this place is stressful enough, like I don't need to worry about a haunting on top of the other stuff I got going on. As a side note, I stepped away to take a shower while writing this, it was just me in the head. Liberty just dropped and almost everyone dipped out, I didn't. And while I was in there, I swore I heard something say my name, but this voice it said my first name, and this, this is the Navy man, like no one around here ever called you by your first name. Ouija Boards, you guys, gotta stop messing around with those things, and it's, it's, it's like the guy says in one of these stories, it's creepy to me that you can go to like a Walmart or a target. You, you should, you know, it should be one of those things maybe that you have to kind of go out of your way, that if you really wanted to do this, like make it, but like it's, and I, I suppose by the order of just putting it in a store, it would go in the board game section, but it's so weird to see like monopoly and sorry and Ouija Boards, and you, and I've seen them display like on sale, like the $5 deal at Target or something like that. So it's just, where have we gone as a country? That's what's, that's what's on the Christmas stocking stuff or list. Before we get to the next story, I just, I also wanted to take a minute to thank someone, the sponsors who helped make episodes like this possible. This one is brought to you by the makers of Ouija Boards, you imagine? So every once in a while on the, the Mew, the 31st Mew when I was deployed on ship, you would, um, middle of the night you'd wake up sweating to death in your rack and you immediately knew what would happen. 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After you purchase, they will ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them who sent you. This next story was shared online by a woman riding under the handle. Eternity 666. It's a bit shorter than the others, but honestly, that might be what makes it worse. Because this is in a story about a board spelling out something creepy in a barracks room and then everyone walking away scared. This is about a group of soldiers in northern Ireland during the troubles, which was a 30 year violent political conflict in the UK and in Ireland. Regarding who was going to take ownership of northern Ireland, whether it was going to be a part of the UK, United Kingdom, or if it would become part of like a united Ireland. So during this turbulent period, these guys are messing around with a Ouija board one night in the barracks. At first, it probably felt like nothing more than board soldiers trying to creep each other out. But then the board gave them a warning. One of the men in that room was going to die in a week. No name, no explanation, just a rank. And seven days later, there was a car bombing. She writes. So I've tried Ouija boards a few times, and as far as I can tell, nothing's really happened. But this story I'm about to tell you happened to my late uncle. My uncle was a master corporal in the British Army and was stationed in northern Ireland sometime late 70s or the 80s. If you're not familiar with the time northern Ireland, especially the city of Belfast, was an incredibly dangerous place. I think it was actually dubbed the terrorist capital of Europe at one point. Irish Republicans and loyalists on the side of the British were killing each other basically any way that they could. Pubs were being blown up, assassinations were carried out car bombs every other day. And British troops were constantly wary of ambushes and sniper attacks. But one night in the barracks, my uncle and some of his squaddies decided to mess around with a Ouija board. From how he told it, the session started off normal enough until the spirit told the master corporal to leave the room. Well, there were two master corporals in the room. My buddy and his uncle, who I'll just call Eddie. So the two of them step out as per the board. And about ten minutes later, the guys called him back in. But when Eddie and my uncle asked them what had happened, the other guys were kind of cagey, like very hesitant to share their experience. And after a lot of digs and jokes, the others finally yield and say that the spirit said that the master corporal would die in a week. No naming or no explanation, just master corporal. Everyone, including my uncle and his buddy, just kind of brushed this off his squaddy banter. Exactly seven days after their experience, there was a car bomb. Eddie, the other master corporal, he was killed in the blast. And between the loss of his friend and a Ouija board for shadowing his death, I don't think my uncle ever got over that. I can't say I blame him, especially when everything you thought you knew about how the world worked has now been brought into question. As with all episodes that we do on the subject, I think the obvious takeaway from this episode, despite the fact that they are sold as a children's board game in all major outlet stores, in America, the takeaway is probably pretty simple, don't mess with Ouija boards. And I know, to a lot of people, it's just cardboard, it's toy. You can buy it a Walmart, you can make it out of paper, you can pull it out of sleep over because you want to scare each other for a few minutes. Maybe that's all it is. Maybe every story in this episode has some normal explanation. There's probably a lot of Ouija board experiences that result in nothing. But what stands out to me about these stories is how casually all of them started. None of these people were setting up candles and trying to summon demons in somebody's basement. They weren't reading information books and performing elaborate rituals. They're just bored. That's it. Group of soldiers that for Wichuka got tired of playing video games wanted something interesting to do, so they bought a Ouija board, drove to Tombstone, started asking questions at a car. I thought it was interesting that there was a Mitsubishi eclipse I personally own an eclipse. Maybe I'll talk about that later in the credits. In a first it sounds almost like the kind of stupid thing that young service members do all the time. Until the board started answering, until it knew details that it shouldn't know, like it spells out Steven's first name. It's pretty uncommon in the military from my experience, you don't always know everybody's first name. You're on a last name basis. Unless you're good friends, and you happen to talk to them, you know, mono-emano a lot. That is very verifiably accurate. The console in the car closing by itself, Jackson and Thompson couldn't get the Mitsubishi eclipse started, which I have had those problems and rats chew through the wires, that kind of thing. But the part that changed the whole story from creepy to dangerous is green is now driving through Tombstone at night, suddenly saying he's not the one driving anymore, that he can't move, and that whatever is in him wants Steven dead. And if you strip away the supernatural part for a second, that's still just terrifying, because if green had lost control of the car, playing a prank, or doing whatever, or he turned down that alley, like he said, that this thing wanted him to, you know, no, but like what Steven said, nobody's going to write it up as a ghost story, it would just look like some sort of accident or one soldier killing another one in the middle of the night for, you know, as an accident or a prank. And then you have Tommy, a British soldier in the military hospital, very strange. And that one starts the same way, he's bored, which bored him. He makes a makeshift bored in his boredom, bad idea, takes it down into the morgue, with a lighter sits in the dark and starts asking things to show themselves. And then he goes back home and starts seeing blue orbs in the sky around his mom's house, and verified by a stepfather. Then he goes back to the hospital and now he's, you know, having a sleep paralysis issue with this strange bending entity, which reminded me very viscerally of the Mr. Ballon story that we covered that when John said he had something bending over him or his friend in the cabin in the woods. And then the next night, the guy in the hospital is roommate, sees the same thing. Hospitals are notorious for these kinds of things, by the way, my brother, who is the most straight, forward, non-paranormal type person told me stories that just absolutely creep me out. Things they saw on cameras, things he heard from other nurses, things he heard himself from patients who refused to stay in certain rooms in the hospital he worked in because they'd wake up and they'd multiple people in the same room would see, like, A child running through the room and then going through the wall, that kind of thing, so hospitals. Then there's the Navy barracks, and that one might be the most frustrating because the guy telling the story wasn't even the one using the board. He's on roving watch, and it's always, it's always the thing with the military, it's never it. The guy's goofing off of the ones that get somebody else hurt, kind of thing. Till he walks into the bathroom and he sees these two drunk sailors crouch over a Ouija board on a toilet seat at three in the morning. Lights go out. I mean, if you're used to the lights always being on, why in that moment do they go out? A voice comes over the intercom, says one of the sailors name, apparently. Camera picks up some sort of shadow figure, which again, I just said, hospitals, cameras, shadow figures. This was in the way he described this was similar to a story my brother told me, which was that the nurses had a patient come to the nursing station in the middle of the night saying that there was a child in the women's bathroom who looked scared, lost, and it was a children's ward. They were near children's ward, so not uncommon to have children, but the nurses immediately responded because we can't have kids wandering around hospital at night, but there was nobody in the bathroom. They went back, checked the cameras, nobody entered or exited the bathroom before or after the patient, the woman who had come to report it. So I've hurt, you know, similar situation here. So they see this dark figure moving up the stairs and then a scream comes from the same bathroom where the Ouija board was used. And then Andrew says he's later alone in the shower and he could swear, he heard someone say his name. Which, again, military, it's not a common thing to hear and everybody else was gone. He didn't see anybody else in the shower. And then finally there was Belfast, a group of British soldiers in Northern Ireland during the troubles messing around with the Ouija board, the barracks, and the board tells them that one of these guys is going to die and he does. The guy who survives that spends the rest of his life with that at the back of his mind. That's what bothers me about these stories. It's not just the planch head moves on the board, people get scared, it's that in every account there seems to be a line that gets crossed at first, it's like a game and then something starts answering. Then it seems to know something, it wants something, it follows someone, it affects the room. It goes up again, after the board is put away, that's kind of the primary issue here, it's the game doesn't end, it's like Jumanji, the game does not end with the board apparently. And that's the part people are really afraid of, not the Ouija board itself, but the idea that if you call out into the dark, something might actually hear you, or worse, it might answer. So, no, nobody's going to be able to prove what happened in any of these stories, regardless of how sincere these men and women sounded. Maybe Tombstone was just fear, group psychology, maybe Tommy saw something that can be explained by sleep paralysis and stress, not whatever his stepfather's role in that. Maybe the Navy barracks had electrical problems, bad cameras, drunk sailors, people primed to see something after hearing somebody go to stories, and maybe the Belfast story was just a really awful coincidence. Maybe, but I also think there's a reason almost every culture, religion, and every old tradition has some version of the same warning, be careful what you invite in, be careful what you speak to, be careful what doors you open just because you're bored. Because maybe nothing happens, maybe it is just a game, just a plan shed, just a few people scaring themselves in a dark room, but if even one of these stories is true, then maybe the real danger isn't that the dead won't answer. Maybe the danger is that something else will. Other time stories are created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana, written by Jake Howard and myself, audio editing sound design mixing and mastering by Alex Carpenter, with additional audio work by me, animation and motion design, and production coordination by David Williamson, research by Jake Howard and myself, artwork by Pekata and Radomere Isgarovic. Hey guys, thanks for sticking around here for the after-action in the credits. I had to, after I saw the artwork for this episode, I missed seeing it in my initial read-through of the script because it was only mentioned once because it talks about, in the first story it talks about the, one of the guys had a, had a coupe and I saw Pekata's depiction of the car and it was my car and I've talked about this in a previous episode about attachments to vehicles and things like that, it was like, you know, like, strange things happening around like planes and ships and other things like that, stories, anyway. I was looking for relatability and I mentioned that I have this car, it's a 99 Mitsubishi eclipse that I've had for 20 years now and I'm emotionally attached to it so I've, I thought Pekata was pulling a prank on me because, you know, he's very astute, he pays attention and I was just, just very weird, it's not a very common car, right, and I, with all of the stories I have surrounding that car, I just, um, yeah, it, it, it kind of jumped out at me, I was like, it's my car. Oh, that's his story, I could tell you. Okay, okay now, first deployment I did, one of the team leaders got sent back. My next, my first technical team leader who lasted the whole time, Sarge and Jackson, nice guy, little intense at times, he got a car now getting a car in Okinawa because you're deployed there unless you live there and you have, you got to get a license, a sofa license, a status of forces agreement license, to be able to drive as an American military person to drive a car in the foreign country because they drive on the other side of the road and plus the vehicle itself not just buying it but like getting it properly registered and all of the, the, the, the, the, the, license fees, taxes, and then maintenance like it's, they're very stringent on like making sure the vehicles aren't abandoned, vehicles aren't like falling apart, they're going to break down on the side of the road, so like the vehicle has to be thoroughly inspected, no broken windows, all of these safety, all these kind of things. So it's kind of a pain in the butt, but he did it and we had it and that became like our team car because we're recon, you got a bunch of gear and stuff, you get a slip all over the place so it was nice having the car and then sometimes you know we'd go off, we go on little excursions, go to the aquarium, do stuff off base that you couldn't do otherwise because taxis are very expensive and your base could just stuck on a Marine Corps base. So it was kind of a junk car like it was purchased with the intention of running this thing into the ground but the second deployment while the gas gauge is broken, I don't know if it was always broken but the gas gauge is broken and we were kind of chief skates, we never filled the whole tank up because nobody's going to put that on their credit card so we kind of just topped it off like and we had always we always knew, we always had enough to get around the base, but one day my team leader is now Matt. We decided to pull some skullduggery and we told our lieutenant Matt was usually a straight shooter but I guess he got a little like. We're not doing anything today so and I'm just gonna sit around and just stare to wall. So he said hey let's just dip out, let's go out somewhere and get some food and just enjoy the island on a Thursday, you know, do what the Air Force does every day. So we go to work, we dress in our camis and we tell you know lieutenant and we're like hey so the recon guys because we're radio recon so we worked with the amphibre recon guys like the legit, legit recon guys. We're like hey we're gonna go do some stuff with them today and that was one of our, it was the easy excuse. So she he bought it, he I think was he, the lieutenant bought it and we left and then we back to the barracks change and just feeling close. Topped off our little our gas tank with some extra gas and went left the base. We get on the toll road and we're driving down Naha and we get some lunch and we kind of checked out downtown, spent the whole day out and the afternoon we're driving back and we kind of get off the highway again and we're kind of exploring and we found this sports complex and it was a indoor batting cages arcade and an ice rink like a hockey rink and it was a funny thing because our lieutenant called us because we never came back. So now it's like getting towards going home time three, four in the afternoon he calls and he's like hey are you guys still with the recon guys and Matt is literally wearing ice skates. There was an expression we used to use when you were just gaffing off and you weren't we call it skating so I'm just skating you know or he's skating you know he's just he's he's skipping out on work and so it was a funny thing to watch my very professional staff sergeant team leader on the phone with the lieutenant and the lieutenant asking him where are you and he's like we're skating and the lieutenant just laughs and he's just okay so you guys just screwing around and he must First of thought, we're back on the base somewhere, just goofing off, but we're literally in ice gates. So that was one part of it. And the Japanese kids wear these, like, curse words on their clothing, like the English words, we put Japanese words on our go, like, kids have these F words, it's the funniest thing to see, like, an eight-year-old with, like, the F word, there's some crazy thing on the back of his sweater and it's just like, it's nobody cares. Anyway, we get dinner or something like that. By the time we're driving back to the base, it's getting late. And I think the curfew is, like, 10 p.m. or something like that. You got to be back on the base by 10 p.m. on weekdays. And the car runs out of gas and middle of the highway. And I think we had enough to just coast off into a rest stop. And Okinawa is not like America. You don't have every turn-off the highway is an Exxon mobile or, you know, some sort of gas station, convenience store 7/11, that kind of thing. It was just, it was just a rest stop and that's it. And pitch black. There's no lighting, there's no signs in the distance that say, like, there's a McDonald's and a gas station over here, none of that. It's just middle of nowhere. So we're stranded. We, we've won, weren't really supposed to leave. And so we're kind of like, uh-oh, like, this is going to ruin our, our, our plan for getting away with this. If people find out. And then, too, we don't know how to speak Japanese and we don't have any sort of translation ability on our phones or anything. So we're trying to like, mime to the Japanese people who were just pulling up here at late at night to go to the bathroom and they're terrified of us. We're just these big white guys that are basically asking them if we can siphon gas out of their car, which is probably super sketch. They did call the cops. Somebody called the cops because two of our guys left the rest stop area to go want the literally cutting brush in the jungle. They get to like a residential area somewhere off in the distance and they, they left some yen on the windshield of this car, but they did try to siphon gas out of this local Japanese person's car. We were just totally pulling recon stuff right now. And Jeremy, the guy who was siphoning the gas and we didn't really like him that much. Anyway, he got so sick because he swallowed the gasoline. He came back with a gatorade bottle that he found that had mostly his spit with a few ounces of gasoline in there and we poured that into the thing. Apparently, he fell into a hole on the side of the road as well. So the cops show up. They come back with this ill-gotten gasoline in a gatorade bottle. They poured it. The cops are talking to us. And it's this really nerve-wracking thing because they don't speak that good of English and we just, we know we look totally sketch right now and the gas gauge is kind of stuck around like a quarter tank. It's broken. So the police, they're not buying the story. They're like, oh, you have gas and my team leader's like, no, we don't. We literally ran out of gas and that's why we're here. So the police officers miming, like, start the car. Start the car. Try to start it. And Matt's like, it's not going to start. I've been trying. Maybe this, the saliva gas helped because the car starts and now we just look like idiots. So we all get back in the car. And the police are basically telling us to leave, get on to the highway and my team leader's like, I'm going to do it, but we're going to run out of gas again and now we're going to be in the middle of the highway. And so the police kind of indicate that they're going to follow us and they do. And sure enough, within like a quarter mile, half mile, we run out of gas again. And now the funny thing is because we're still stuck on the road, now four of us have to get out and push this tiny Japanese car off of this highway and there's cars going to buy us and the police have kind of blocked off stop cars from like coming up behind us. It's probably like a few hundred meters to the next exits and we push this car up this ramp and then down. Now, as I mentioned earlier, Okinawa, all the roads are like toll, like all the highways are toll highways. So you get on and then when you get off, you have to pay a toll. So it's just the funniest thing. I'm in the back of this little Gisilver Japanese, little kind of van-shaped box. And we pull up to the toll, the car is completely silent and I'm just wondering what is this nice Japanese lady who works the toll through thinking because she doesn't see the four of us behind the car yet. She sees the cop car and she doesn't see us though, she sees my team later pulling up. He pays the toll. It's the funniest thing to pay the toll, she opens the gate and then rather than him accelerate, we push this disabled vehicle through the toll gate and the woman is just like, she had the most confused, sort of expression on her face, like, "Oh, she's like, what is happening?" So we push it off into this little parking lot that was behind the toll booth and the police believed us finally and they put us a couple of us in the back of the squad car. They drove them to get gas and came back and yeah, so we made it back to base. I don't think they ever found out that we dipped out and skated that day but that was our little sneaky excursion that ended badly and put gas in your car, fixed your gas gauges. But that car, because the following team leaders, I never saw it again after that deployment because another team leader just, he drove it on the base one time and the gate guards were like, "Hey, give us your paperwork." When's the last time this vehicle was serviced and it was years out of service by that boy, so they just impounded it and we lost the car. [Music]