Strangeness at Military Academies

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Wentworth Military Academy was already full of ghost stories, old buildings, abandoned halls, rumors passed from one class of cadets to the next, but in the summer of 2016, two cadets decided to test one of those stories out loud. And according to the account, something answered. I'm Luke Lamana, and this is wartime stories. Wentworth Military Academy is located in Lexington, Missouri, and the story was shared online by a former cadet. Wentworth is an old military school, and like a lot of old military schools, it has its fair share of stories, old buildings, locked rooms, rumors that get passed down from the older cadets to the new ones. And one of the buildings people talk about the most is Hickam Hall. By the time this cadet got there in 2016, Hickam Hall had already been closed off for years. Nobody was living in it, nobody was supposed to be going inside, but that didn't stop people from talking about it. There were stories about strange sounds, doors moving on their own, and a face that had somehow appeared in the dust in one of the upper windows. At first, it sounded like the kind of story upperclassmen would tell the new cadets because they know it'll mess with their heads. But according to this cadet, one night at Wentworth made those rumors feel, well, a little less like rumors, he writes. The following events took place over the summer of 2016 at Wentworth Military Academy and College. I attended the school for their camp lead program, that's leadership, education, and development. It's a three to five week long summer camp designed to introduce cadets to a military style structure. When I arrived at the campus, one of the older cadets gave me a tour of the place, so I would know where everything was. The first building he showed me was Hickam Hall, the oldest building on campus, and rumored to be the most haunted. We walked around the building, and then he points up at one of the windows. And I look up, and there, staring down at us, is this face. It's called the face, as it's known around campus, and it's drawn in the dust on the window, but the interesting part about this face is that it's drawn in between the paints of glass, not on the inside or the outside. So the school is located in the middle of the US, also known as Tornado Alley, so windows in this part of the country need to be double or triple thick to ensure they don't break. This face, apparently, showed up out of the blue around the year 2000, the turn of millennium, no one knows how it got there or who drew it. Hickam Hall is home to numerous rumors and stories of hauntings like this, for example, one night in 1995, around 3am. Every single door on the second floor of this hall is said to have flown open simultaneously, when it was still occupied at the time. The doors inside are the heavy-weighted kind that are designed to be hard to throw open. On another occasion, cadets saw these floating civil war-era officers and soldiers walking around the halls and through closed doors going into the closed rooms. Word on campus was that these were the ghosts of soldiers who fell, died, during the two battles of Lexington during the civil war, which the ground the school was built on. There was also a particular door in Hickam Hall that was known to open and slam shut on its own. Cadets heard it several times, but this door was apparently locked and hadn't been unlocked for many years. At a certain point, the activity apparently got so bad that cadets just started straight up refusing to live in the building anymore, and so the school built a new barracks. They locked the doors of Hickam Hall and no one has been in or out for 15 years. I had my own spiritual experience at the camp that I wanted to share. It is deeply based on my own Christian values and beliefs, but I had a bizarre experience with the infamous face. One night I was walking back to my room after I finished running on the track with my roommate and another cadet. As we were walking, we were about a hundred yards away from Hickam Hall and we looked up at the face and we see this very bright, white light emanating from that room. Our first obvious thought was that it was just like a street light shining through the building from the other side because all of the blinds and doors are open inside. And when we looked into it, we realized that that couldn't be the case for two reasons. First, the street lamps around the building are all tungsten, the kind of bulb that gives off that kind of distinct warm yellow glow, didn't match the light color. The second more prominent reason was that the light stayed in the middle of the room, even when we walked around to try and observe it from different angles. And building itself had no power because, well, why would it? It hadn't been used for two decades. And from what we could tell, there were no lights that hung in the center of the room that would do this and there's no shadows that would make it seem like there's somebody inside the room moving around, holding a light or something. The other cadet that was with us had been attending the school for three years by that point, so he was pretty familiar with the school and with this building. He had never seen or heard anything like that before, and that was the only time we ever saw anything like that for the rest of the time that we were at the camp. I have no idea what the light was, so if anybody's got any theories, I'd be interested to hear them, but that is not where the strange stories end. Another building I was shown on my tour was the academic building. The older cadets told me a lot of rumors about deaths and other incidents that supposedly happened inside the building. Most of them were probably just legends myths, but there was one. Around 1986, a cadet became very depressed, and he took his own life in the basement of the building, which at that time was being used as a dark room to develop photographs for the Academy's newspaper. He was reportedly found there hanging from one of the pipes in the ceiling. At his feet, they found his boots, neatly set aside, and a journal. A journal that was said to be filled with demonic drawings, poems, stuff like that. Instead of filling the room up with concrete, the school simply locked the door and just kind of forgot about it. For years after that, cadets would say that they could hear whispers coming from the basement. One day, the imprint of a hand was found embedded into the wall on the stairs heading [BLANK_AUDIO] basement. Now, some punk edad could have done that in the night to just mess with people, so I, I can't 100% say, was placed there by the supernatural. But this next story is a little more difficult to explain. At the end of our tour, my first roommate of which I had two came running out to me and saying, "Dude, you won't guess what Luke just did." Luke is another cadet. Apparently, Luke, for some reason, went straight up to Hickman Hall, banged on the doors and shouted, "Hey demons, if you're in there, come out and suck my." You know what? Lovely, right? Well, shortly after, Luke comes running up and I look at them and I was like, "Hey, you know, maybe we don't do that." But they just kind of laughed it off. After a while, we all went inside the dorms and we chilled in Luke's room. And I left after a few minutes and it was just Luke and Ashton, his roommate, that were in the room. The two of them were just sitting on their beds and we're apparently talking about what had just happened when suddenly Ashton's chair moved a solid two and a half feet across the floor, all by itself. They just stared at the chair in this stunned silence like, "There's no way that we just saw that happen." And then Ashton's backpack, which was hanging on the back of the chair, slid off and fell onto the floor. Paranormal or not, they panicked and just got up off the bed. They scrambled out of the room as quickly as they could into the hall. We went back to investigate and we found that all the windows and doors were now closed. The air conditioning was off when the chair moved so there could not have been some kind of a draft and to think that the draft could move a chair like that is kind of ridiculous. Ashton's backpack had some good weight in it so the only way that chair was moving is if someone had pushed it or pulled it. I don't remember how it happened but I ended up looking under Luke's desk. And when I looked up on the underside of the desk drawer, in permanent marker was quite obviously somebody had drawn a Ouija board, perfectly detailed as if it had been traced, letters, numbers, the yes, no, everything. Luke and Ashton freaked out at that point. The cadre, the staff in the building had chemicals and stuff they could remove marker with so we went, we got cadre and we demanded that they remove what they could from the underside of this desk and they did. But for the rest of the night, I mean that was the room they had to sleep in there. These guys are totally on edge and when word got around the other cadets you could tell that everyone in the building was just a little more unsettled than they used to be. One of the other cadets even asked me if he could borrow my Bible, I guess he wanted to just hold on to it and walk around with it because he got real nervous. So of course I gave it to him and let him do that. A week later I moved the rooms so now I'm moving down to the other end of the hall with my second roommate and he was the guy that I had seen the light in the the face room in Hickman Hall previously. And one night for God knows what reason. I guess maybe with all the fervor around the Ouija board and everything that was discovered, these two older cadets decide to draw another Ouija board on the lid of one of those plastic tub containers. So they draw this Ouija board and they just and they start using it and I guess nothing happened at first and they'd spent about 30 minutes with it and then they gave up and they put it away and they go to sleep. But at 3 in the morning they were woken up to these two very loud very distinct knocks on their door. Now first they just thought it was the night watch doing the nightly checks. It's a military camp so they have a member of the cadre who walks up and down the halls around 2 in the morning with a red lens flashlight and they would they simply go to each of the doors and they shine a light through the window that's on the doors to ensure that both cadets are still in bed. Make sure no one snuck out kind of saying accountability. But after a few seconds after they woke up these cadets seem to realize that the knocks they heard didn't come from the door to the hallway. They had come from the bathroom which was inside their room. So now they're freaked out and the way they told the story they said they got out of bed and they kind of inched their way over the bathroom and they pushed the door open kind of prepared for whatever they're about to find inside. But it's completely dark there's nothing and the door that led out to the hall was locked tight. They tried to rationalize the whole thing as being like mice or rats in the walls but with the amount of force they described hearing the door being hit when it was banged on it doesn't really seem like a likely explanation mice or rats. These are just a few of the strange stories I personally heard during my time or encountered myself at Wentworth Military Academy in college. Unfortunately I was told the school had since closed for lack of funding so I can't go back and visit the campus but if I had any advice for younger cadets gearing up for the school year going to any such old school. Don't go messing with things you shouldn't and please stay the hell away from Ouija boards. This next story was sent to me by an officer in the Philippine Marine Corps film arts. He goes by the name Lenby and this account goes back to when he was a young cadet at the Philippine Military Academy. The PMA is basically the Philippine's version of West Point. A lot of its traditions, uniforms, regulations, and academy culture were modeled after the United States Military Academy. And just like West Point oddly enough it has plenty of ghost stories but Lenby isn't the type of person who was out looking for one. He was just injured during an academy-wide judo competition. He was then sent to the PMA Station Hospital. He was placed in a ward with several other beat-up cadets. And for the first few nights something happened. But then one night, sometime after midnight, Lenby wakes up and he sees this little boy moving around the ward. And little boy's laughing, opening drawers, crawling under beds, acting like a kid who's supposed to be there. So at first Lenby isn't terrified, he's just mostly confused as to who's child is this. Because there's no obvious reason for a child to be wandering through a military hospital in the middle of the night. And come to find out? Well, he was right to assume that. He writes. I entered the Philippine Military Academy in the mid-2000s. Historical accounts differ on its early history but one fact is certain. In 1947 the academy was transferred to its present location in Lokon, Baguio City, in the northern Philippines. Nearly every aspect of PMA was modeled after the United States Military Academy at West Point from its honor system, uniforms down to its traditions and culture. By the time I entered the academy PMA was already rife with ghost stories and tales of the supernatural. At the time however I knew very little if anything about them. Sometime in August I participated in that year's intramurals as a reluctant and very inexperienced judica. It was never a good time to be a fourth class cadet during intramurals. Like every other plebe I had neither training nor the slightest knowledge of judo. But alas I had very little choice in the matter. Everyone took part and nobody wanted to be that cadet who opted out. During my final match which was on a Wednesday an overzealous classmate threw me onto the mat so hard that I badly sprained my right ankle. It swelled to the point that I couldn't even wear the regulation footwear anymore so I couldn't march properly during the weekends parade and review. My squad leader, a hardened upperclassman who thought I was just malingering, reluctantly referred me to the PMA station hospital otherwise called P-Mash. The first three nights, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, past, but eventually the hospital staff were overwhelmed with the steady stream of injured cadets who had been compelled to compete in their various combat sports. By Sunday afternoon, six of us plebs occupied the cadets ward on the second floor of P-Mash. One had broken those from boxing, three of us were nursing severely sprained ankles. I can't remember what injuries the others had sustained but we were a pretty rough looking bunch, to give you the layout, the Kitette's ward was a moderately sized room with three beds on each side facing one another. And we were required to observe taps every night at 2,200 hours. But the more tired plebs, they rarely made it that far. Most of us were asleep long before then. But one night I found myself waking up sometime past midnight. I knew it was past midnight because the television at the nurse's station just outside our ward was loudly playing one of those late night texts to win game shows that were popular in the Philippines at the time. And what woke me up was the sound of these light footsteps running around the room. So I opened my eyes and I didn't really move. I just kind of looked around this very dimly little ward. I'm still kind of half asleep. And there in the middle of the room was a little boy, maybe six to eight years old. He was wearing a loose white tank top, black shorts, and a pair of flip flops. Look like any ordinary Filipino child. And this boy is just completely absorbed in his own amusement. He's laughing softly, he's skipping around from bed to bed. He's crouching to peak underneath the beds, he's crawling underneath them, and then popping out the other side. He started opening each bedside cabinet as though looking for something, then he would close it again. And at one point he opens the cabinet beside my bed, where my uniforms and personal belongings were kept. He glances inside, looks kind of disappointed, and then he casually shuts it before running away. He paid absolutely no attention to any of us in the beds. He moved around very quickly, but despite the darkness I could clearly make out everything he was doing. And then, as suddenly as he seemed to have appeared, he skips towards the door and out into the hallway, his laughter gradually fading until both he and his sound were gone. And at the time I remember feeling more irritated than anything else, like who on earth would allow their child to just wander around a military hospital after midnight. The officer's quarters and enlisted personal housing, they're nowhere near this hospital. So who did this kid belong to? Moreover, because several plebs were confined to the hospital, an upper-class cadet guard had been posted outside our ward specifically to prevent anyone from wandering off, become going AWOL. Of surely, somebody would have noticed a young boy wandering freely through the building, and they would have done something about it. So I convinced myself that it must have been one of the hospital staff's children. They just hadn't, you know, they had no babysitter they had to bring them to work that night. So I saw no reason to get myself into any unnecessary trouble by asking questions I simply rolled over, I went back to sleep. The next morning, as they always did, the doctors started doing their rounds, which started around 0800. The physicians and nurses were military personnel, and much like our upper-classmen, they weren't particularly sympathetic towards us plebs. Many believed we were exaggerating our injuries to avoid training, that kind of thing. By the time they reached our ward, they all had the same expression on their face, they were just like, let's just get this over with, they looked pretty tired with all the excuses. My ankle was still pretty badly swollen and painful, but curiosity got the better of me instead of asking about my injury, I asked one of the nursing attendants about a little boy who had been wandering around the ward previous night. In much of my surprise, everyone in the room, the doctors, nurses, attendants immediately stopped what they were doing, and they all look at me, and they paid no attention to my ankle, they started asking me questions all at the same time, like, what did he look like, what time was it, what exactly was he doing, what did you do, and I answered exactly as I have told the story to you here. When I finished, they kind of exchanged uneasy glances with one another, but offered no explanation. They ended their rounds, they finished up, and left the room. So I was left completely curious, and later that day, one of the nursing attendants quietly came back and sat down next to my bedside and she starts talking to me. She told me that before the hospital, the PMASH was built, the area had been the site of a tragic accident. This steep road that runs in from the hospital, it goes down from the camp's Catholic church towards the main academy grounds, drivers, it's a steep hill, so drivers would need to break carefully when negotiating this hill, because it's very easy to lose control, and you can't see if anyone or anything is just around these blind corners. Years before, an officer's young son had been playing somewhere along that road with several of the children, when a vehicle had come barreling down the hill far too quickly, it struck this boy. The impact, I guess, fractured his skull, and he was killed instantly. When the nursing attendant walked away, what she said made me remember something, that I hadn't really given much mind to the previous night at the time, and I barely noticed this, but it sent chills down my spine. That cheerful little boy, who was running around our room, playing, had what looked like a faint, reddish stain across its forehead. This next account comes from an airman who, at the time he sent it in, was a cadet in the United States Air Force Academy, and this one is also less of a single story and more of a small collection of strange things he either experienced himself, or heard from other cadets while he was there. The academy sits up against the Rocky Mountains, and according to him, the cadet area is almost like a base within a base, with a dense forest hiking trails, these long stretches of quiet terrain surrounding it. So it makes sense that some of the stories start outside in the woods, but others happened in the dorms. And one of them started during his freshman year, after he spent the evening with his sponsor family, and had to walk back to the cadet area alone, it was already dark, there was snow on the ground, and as he makes his way down this trail, he gets the feeling that something was waiting for him, up ahead. He writes, "The following is a short collection of accounts, two of them are mine, while another which shared with me by another cadet. For context, I have been a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy for the last three-and-a-half years. The cadet area functions as, essentially a base within a base, it's relatively isolated, it's situated against the base of the Rocky Mountains, the rest of the base which houses a bunch of other functions and some tenant units, sprawls out until he hit the interstate. The western half of the base, where us cadets are, is covered with dense forest. This first story is from freshman year, freshman year we were called dolies or slaves. It's particularly rough that year, you're essentially in training mode 24/7 for 9 months. You have very few passes to go off base, and you are in some sort of uniform at all times. On the weekends, if we were leaving the squadron area, we were still required to be in OCP's operational camouflage pattern, our utility uniforms. There are also these things called sponsor families, which are various families in the local area, who basically adopt cadets usually freshman, to give them something that vaguely resembles an actual home. My sponsor lived on base, which was super handy, not only could I visit her without using a pass and changing into service dress, which freshmen were required to wear when they went off base. But I could also walk to her house basically whenever I wanted. I had done this multiple times in the fall semester of freshman year, and I took this usual route along these hiking trails, roads, walking alongside roads, and through the woods. And as winter approached, due to the mountains, it would get dark very quickly, and the sky would be pitch black by maybe 1830, 630pm, at the latest. So it's mid-October, I'd spent the late afternoon and evening at her house. And at about 1930, 730pm, I decided to walk back to the cadet area, so there's snow on the ground. It's completely covered. There is moonlight dimly illuminating the forest around me, and I start walking back. As I approached this one spot on the trail, I got this weird feeling of dread, like, something was waiting for me, somewhere up ahead. But you know, I gotta get back, and since that's the way I had to go, I just kept trudging along, kind of shook this feeling off. The trailhead was on a dirt accent. road on top of a small ridge, opposite 10th medical group hospital. The trail took me down the ridge and straight into an even denser forest. But this feeling of dread just got stronger and stronger, the deeper I'm walking into the woods. It's hard to explain, but I could just tell that something was there in a thicket off to my left watching me. There was this vague shape in the undergrowth just out of the corner of my eye, but everything in me, as I'm walking along, it's just screaming, don't look at it, just keep walking, ignore it. And as I pass through the thick area and into something like a small clearing, I could just feel this thing's eyes still on me. And that's the first time in my life that I actually began praying out of fear. So I kept walking until I went up and over a small hill and I'd broken line of sight with where I believed this thing was. And then as soon as I felt like I was at a sight, I just hauled ass. Well, as quickly as one can haul ass through a snowy forest down the side of a hill at night. And I just kept going until I reached the checkpoint into the cadet area, which is completely basked in white LED streetlights. I did not look behind me until I had scanned my common access card, my cat, and then slammed the gate behind me. Now, could this have been a case of my imagination getting the better of me? Absolutely. Dark creepy forests tend to do that. But at the same time, the spot where all this went down had it had always given me the creeps. Like even in broad daylight, I never wanted to stay around that area. I have yet to go back to that spot. After that night, I stopped going that route when I walk home from my sponsor family's place. I always opt to take the long way, just to avoid that stretch of trail. This second story is from my sophomore year. So there's this mandatory PE class physical education called water survival. That's a graduation requirement. It's affectionately known by us cadets as water hazing. The class is exactly what it sounds like. They throw you in the water for hours on end and teach you how to not drown. I was a swimmer in high school and thought I was very comfortable in the water, but the class was just awful. I was exhausted every time I dragged myself out of the pool. And one day, after finishing up a session of water haze, I shambled back to my room I showered and then crawled into bed for a much needed nap. At around 1600 for him, I heard the door open and I saw someone walk in before getting into the other bed and I assumed that it was my roommate who often came in at some point to take an nap. But when I eventually glanced over at his bed, I saw that it was still empty. Pillows fluffed, blankets all neat and tidy. And that's when I felt it that all two familiar jolt I got the moment I slipped into. Sleep paralysis. Hard to describe, but it's almost like I can feel my motor functions disconnecting. And I know I was no stranger to this kind of thing. I've been dealing with this for most of my life, so I knew I just kind of had to ride it out. But this time, it was different. I couldn't see anything, but I could hear footsteps. These slow, heavy footsteps approaching me from my roommate's empty bed. And when these steps reached the side of my bed, I felt this weight come down onto my back and side. And it was like something had just walked right up and then sat on top of me. I still couldn't see anything. My chest felt tight. And I felt very distinctly something warm and wet, breathing on the back of my neck. And I could do nothing but just lay there. Even in my paralyzed state, I'm trying to rationalize this. And I'm telling myself that the breath on my neck was because I'd left the window open. I could see the curtains moving. Yeah, it's like, yeah, that has to be it. And after what felt like several minutes, this weight lifts off of me. I blank, took a breath, and all of a sudden I can move again. And I sat up and I just took a moment to process what it just happened. And then I looked at the window. The window was closed. There's no draft, no breeze shaking the curtains. Just stillness. Under normal circumstances, I would have just written this whole thing off as just a weird, extra creepy episode of sleep paralysis. But I'm telling you, something was off with that room. I just could never shake the feeling of being watched whenever I was in there. And in addition to that one experience, I would regularly see something standing in front of the closet, a figure, let's say. And as it turns out, I wasn't the only one to experience some strange stuff in that room. My roommate and I moved into a different room on the opposite side of the squadron the next school year. And in that room, I never experienced anything weird. And one day I asked him if he'd had any weird experiences in our old room. And as soon as I mentioned sleep paralysis, he just paused and he kind of recoils in what I thought looked like horror. And he tells me that he had, yes, he had experienced multiple, very similar, terrifying events in that room as well. Just never wanted to mention it. And I later asked a female cadet who I knew had moved into that room after us if she ever experienced anything strange. And she looks at me. And she tells me that, yes, she constantly keeps seeing something standing in front of the closet, just like I had. The more I asked around, the more it seemed like everyone had some kind of weird paranormal encounter. Someone in the class of 24, now a lieutenant recounted how she had placed a mug she washed under desk. So she walks out of the room and she hears the slot crash. Moments she leaves the room. It was during a school day when our doors were required to be open for morning inspection. So she immediately runs back to now find the mug, smashed into pieces in the middle of the hallway. She was all alone in the room. And for context, the desks are always on the side of the room furthest from the door. And the floor inside is carpet, so whatever just up and hurled her mug, had to have done so with some serious force with how it had shattered. Another friend of mine claimed she was in a squadron where one girl was a satanist who occasionally do rituals of some sort. I don't really know what it means to be a satanist, but she do these rituals. My friend had the dubious pleasure of living in the dorm room directly next to this girl. In our multiple occasions, she said that she witnessed something like a black shadow or cloud hovering about in her room and this same friend also told me about and encounter her friend had while hiking out in the woods. So there he was, just hiking along a forest trail when he encounters a group of cadets, some of which he recognized, gathered in the woods a little ways off this path. And he thought about going over and saying hi to them, but what they were doing made him completely change his mind. I guess they were standing around in a circle, around a fire. And quote, chanting hypnotically. So yeah, he decided not to investigate. He just turned around and booked it out of there as quickly and quietly as he could. Hey guys, real quick. I'm going to take a moment to thank some of the folks who helped make these episodes possible, our sponsors. I've said this before, but one of the things I sincerely miss about the military is the simplicity of it being told where and when to be and when you can leave, including medical appointments. Now as a veteran, that responsibility falls to me. I have to maybe sometimes find a doctor, find out if they're going to take my insurance, find out if they have any openings, if they're even taking new patients. And with all of the complexities around that, you know what ends up happening. I just don't do it. I procrastinated. I've done that at times in the past for months. And then I end up waking up in a lot of pain. And that forces me to then make an appointment. But then sometimes. What if it's delayed? Enter "Zachdach" who is graciously sponsoring this episode. "Zachdach" lets you search and compare high quality in network doctors. You can see actual appointment openings and click to instantly book a visit. The site is super simple and it's super convenient. And what's even better is it's free to use. Your health matters and taking care of yourself shouldn't be complicated. Are you ready to be seen? Head to zachdach.com/wartimestories to get started and check that appointment off your to-do list. That's zocdoc.com/wartimestories. Speaking of things I put off, sometimes it's eating, but that one's intentional. I'm now pushing myself into these multi-day fasts and sometimes I just want something besides water. I have this bad habit of just making a coffee just to have something to do. It's something to taste, but then that ends up being too much caffeine. So what do I do? Ultra pouches. Zero nicotine, zero caffeine, the energy boost and the focus comes from new tropics and adaptogens. I keep these things literally everywhere. They help me stay focused when I need to keep my mind on work and certainly off of the food cravings when they hit. Tropical is still my favorite. It's got this sweet 2D foodie vibe to it that also helps kick those sugar cravings. If this sounds like your thing, check it out. Upgrade to ultra-new tropic pouches. Ultra is the ultimate guilt-free pouch delivering instant focus and mental clarity without nicotine or caffeine. New customers can use code wartime stories to get 15% off at takeultra.com. That's takeultra.com for 15% off with code wartime stories. 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 sent to me by a recent graduate of the Virginia. Military Institute. BMI is one of the oldest military colleges in the United States and according to this former cadet. Some of the stranger stories are tied directly to old barracks, the honor code and traditions that cadets still talk about long after they leave. During his third class year, most of what he experienced centered around a section of old barracks called Sally Port. At first it was just that feeling of being watched, movement in the corner of his eye. Footsteps that seemed to stop whenever he turned around. The kind of thing you try to explain away because you're tired, stressed, living in an old building full of stories. But one winter night, while walking the hallway alone, he said he felt something get close enough that he couldn't write it off so easily. He writes. Before I came to VMI, I had heard rumors about all the spooky things that are said to happen at the school. Honestly, I've always had at least a little bit of belief in the supernatural and given the school's history, the idea of being haunted wasn't far fetched. During the Civil War, students and officers from VMI fought at the Battle of Newmarket on May 15, 1864. It was a Confederate victory, but ten of the school's cadets were killed in a fighting. Of those ten, six are buried at VMI in front of the engineering building. And there are countless rumors of people seeing their apparitions wandering grounds. Most of my own spooky experiences happened during my third class sophomore year. That was when I started living in old barracks. It's called old barracks because, well, it's old as hell, one of the oldest structures anywhere on the grounds. And given its age, it's no surprise that there are countless ghost stories associated with it. As a third class cadet, you live on third stoop, the connecting third floor that spans all three barracks. One of the institute's most infamous ghosts is say to haunt third stoop in old barracks and is known to cadets as yellow peril. According to cadets, old yellow peril hangs around the corner staircase in old barracks, which is known as Sally Port. He said to present himself as the spirit of a man with a large gash torn across his yellow jaundice-ridden face. And he wanders the halls and follows cadets back to the rooms. Now, I never saw yellow face, but I did have an experience near the Sally Port that made me think that his existence is more than just a story meant to scare on suspecting freshmen. I lived on the front side of old barracks directly above the arch, and the closest bathroom to my room was the one beside Sally Port. I studied a lot with my room mate because he was also an engineering major, so we'd often walk back to barracks together around midnight. Neither one of us went to bed right away after getting back. He would usually walk around the stoop for a while, listening to music through his headphones, while I would make one last trip of the bathroom before turning in. The walk wasn't far, maybe 30 or 40 feet from my room, but it always felt much longer because whenever I was in that hallway, I constantly had the feeling that I was being watched. I'd catch movement in my peripheral vision, but whenever I turned around, the barracks would be completely empty. I'd get that same feeling when leaving the bathroom to head back to my room. Sometimes I'd join my roommate on his walks, and I'd still get that same feeling, but it always seemed strongest near the staircase. One winter night, I was walking to the bathroom when that feeling returned, and only this time it just felt much stronger, much worse. It didn't just feel like I was being watched, it felt like I was being followed. And I swear I could hear footsteps behind me, but every time I looked back, the footsteps would stop, and nobody would be there. The closer I got to the staircase, the stronger this feeling became. Almost as if whatever was behind me was getting closer. Just as I was about to round the corner, I suddenly felt like something was right behind me. I felt what I thought was a hand, rest, on my right shoulder, and I spun around, expecting to see either my roommate or another cadet who just had to be up late. But there was nobody there. Now completely freaked out, I ran into the bathroom, did my business, and ran back to my room as fast as possible. Oddly enough, after that night, I never felt that same unnerving presence again. Whatever ghost I encountered or thought I encountered was strange, but it wasn't the only creepy recurring experience during my third class year. So the Virginia Military Academy has an honor code, and it's held in the highest regard. Violating the honor code is a major offense, and there's an entire trial process for anyone accused of breaking it. If someone is found guilty for whatever they're charged with cheating, lying, stealing, they are dismissed from the institute. Even mentioning their name can get you into trouble, and anything associated with that cadet at the school is blacked out or removed. The final mention of them is the announcement that they have been dismissed, which happens during what's known as a drum out. Drum outs are something every person who has attended VMI never forgets. At exactly 0333, the core is awakened by the sound of rolling snare drums, and everyone reports to their respective stoop in old barracks to observe the announcement ceremony. There were two things about drum outs during my third class year that have always stuck with me. I remember the first drum out because I was sleeping peacefully when I suddenly felt like I was falling. The sensation stopped abruptly as if I slammed into the ground and I was jolted awake at the exact moment I hit it, and I was still lying in my bed. And I woke up in complete shock, especially because at that exact moment that I hit the ground, something felt off. It might sound strange, but it felt as if I was impaled, like someone just took their finger and pushed it through my chest straight to my heart, just really unsettling. As I gathered myself, I noticed that everything was completely silent, and then several seconds go by and I hear three sharp taps of drumsticks, the signal or the drummers to begin, then the snares were to life and the drum out began. At first, I dismissed this as a bizarre coincidence. You know, I had this weird dream of falling and waking up, and then the drum out starting, like I woke up before the drum out even began. But then it happened again, and again. Every drum out that happened during my third year class followed this exact same sequence, falling, hitting the ground, the strange feeling of my chest, silence, three taps, and then the drums. And after the third or fourth time, I finally told my roommates about it. Only one of them believed me. The other two thought I was just delirious from being waking up in the middle of the night. The The honor code at VMI is nearly as old as the school itself, so naturally there are plenty of stories surrounding it. I've heard that drummouts in the past are much more dramatic, such as the entire cadet core lining both sides of the road by the academic buildings, and then as the cadet is walking down the road, being dismissed, they turn their backs on him. But there's one story in particular that stood out to me. According to the legend, in the early days of VMI the honor court operated out of a room at the top of one of the towers on Washington Arch. Supposedly, when a cadet was found guilty of violating the honor code, they were given a choice, take their own life in the old honor court room, or leave the institute in dishonor and disgrace. The story basically claims that this is where the famous phrase "death" before dishonor originated. Outside the room, a lone Sentinel would be posted. If the cadet chose dismissal, the Sentinel would be the one to escort them out of the school. Now do I believe cadets were ever actually forced to choose between dismissal and taking their own life? No. Do I believe there was once a Sentinel posted outside that room during trials? Yes. When I was a rat, a freshman, my dikes, mentors that were assigned to each of us rats, they told me stories about seeing a Sentinel dressed in a cotie guarding the room during drum outs. And they weren't the only ones saying this. Several other cadets told me they had seen someone standing there in a similar dress. Or had heard of similar stories. One drum out during my third class year began just like all the others. I woke suddenly before the drums gathered myself, I put on my robe before walking out onto the stoop. And as I stepped outside, I caught something to my right, out of the corner of my eye and I turned and I saw it, a cloudy, blurry figure wearing a cotie. I could clearly make out the uniform, but I couldn't make out of face. And I stared at it quite a while and it never moved. And eventually the drum stopped and the dismissal announcement was made. And I looked down at the courtyard to watch the announcement, but once it was over, I looked back towards the tower door. The figure is still there, standing motionless and I'm watching it and then I start to head back to my room and the guard team turns some of the stoop lights back on. And as my eyes adjusted this brighter light, all of a sudden this figure is now simply gone. The strange waking episodes continued, like I said, through every drum out during my third year class. Until one night when I woke the same way as always, I gathered myself, I waited for the silence to be broken by the three taps of drumsticks, but nothing happened, there was no drum out that night. There was only one more drum out after that, and this time it was completely different. I wasn't jolted awake before, like I usually was. Instead, I woke up only after the snares had already started. I never even heard the first three taps. And from that point on, the sudden wake up for drum outs had never happened again to me. I guess whatever had been waking me up finally decided that it was done with me. I lived in old barracks for the rest of my time at VMI, and never experienced anything nearly as strange while living on the, when they moved me down to the lower stoops. Maybe I was just a dumb third, misinterpreting things, but even now, as I write this, I still believe that what I experienced was something supernatural. Military academies are strange places for stories like this because, on paper, they're almost the opposite of haunted houses. Everything is supposed to be orcally controlled. There are schedules, formations, inspections, rules, watchstanders, locked doors, duty personnel, a hundred different reasons why something out of place should be noticed and explained pretty quickly, but that's also what makes these accounts stand out and what makes them stick in my mind because when something strange happens in that kind of environment, it doesn't just feel creepy, it feels like it slipped through a system that was built to keep things in order. Military hauntings are just a very interesting and unusual sort of space. It went worth what did we see, it starts with the kind of rumors you would expect in an old military school, Hickman Hall, the face in the window, old stories about doors opening on their own and cadets daring each other to mess with something they probably should have left alone, but then a chair moves in a dorm room, a backpack drops to the floor and suddenly the whole thing feels a lot less like upper-classmen trying to scare the new guys. At the Philippine Military Academy, Lenby isn't looking for anything strange at all. He's injured stuck in a hospital with a bunch of other beat-up cadets and wakes up to see what looks like a little boy moving around the room after midnight. First, doesn't bother him, he's just confused, but there really shouldn't be a kid wandering around a hospital and then once he starts asking questions, the story takes on a very different feeling. Air Force Academy, the stories are even more scattered, but that makes them feel more like the way these things actually get passed around, a bad feeling on a snowy trail, a dorm room, that multiple cadets seem to have problems with objects moving in ways they shouldn't, like the coffee cup, strange activity on the woods. One story by itself might be easy to dismiss, but once people start comparing notes, it gets harder to know what to do with all of it, and at VMI, the experiences are largely tied to old barracks, Sally Port, the drum-outs, and the kind of old academy traditions that are there, they already carry a strange weight on their own. Maybe some of this was stress, lack of sleep, just the atmosphere of these places, but seeing what looked like a sentinel, standing near the tower door during a drum-out, that is definitely something that will stay with you. And I'm sure there are normal explanations for some of these accounts as all of these cadets, former cadets, acknowledged. Old buildings make noise, cadets are tired, people under stress can misread things, especially in places where ghost stories are already part of the culture, and at schools like these where rumors get passed down year after year and probably take on a life of their own, it's easy for a strange moment to get folded into a larger legend of the place. But I also think that's part of why these stories stick. Every academy has its official history, the version written on plaques and archives and alumni books and its speeches, but then there's the other history. The one cadets tell each other late at night in the barracks on watch, in the hospital, or walking back across campus when nobody else is around. The stories that don't end up in the brochures. Maybe that's all these are, old buildings, tired minds, stories that grew in the retelling. Or maybe there are some places where the past never really clears out, where every class moves on, but something else stays behind. War time stories is created and hosted by me, Luclemana, written by Jake Howard and myself. Audio-editing sound design mixing and mastering by Alex Carpenter, with additional audio work by me. Animation and motion design and production coordination by David Williamson, research by Jake Howard and myself, artwork by Pekata and Radomir Isgarovic. Hey guys, thanks for sticking around here for the after-action in the credits. So there was something I wanted to talk about, but real quick, something interesting happened that I thought during the recording of this episode. And that was specifically when I was recording the opening scene, and I was, I did Luke's lines funnily enough. And there was just one section of this, so I, I've had some issues with this microphone before, where it was like a latency thing and I had to make adjustments to the settings, but I haven't had a problem with this microphone in a long time. And so I sit down, I record all of my lines, and then I go out to edit on the other side of this box where I have my PC set up. And I'm listening through and there was just one section of the lines that did not record properly. Okay, and then what? I said, "Hey demons, if you're in there, come out." So this is the section, I said, "Hey demons, if you're in there, come out." Now what you just heard is the second time I recorded it, because the first time I recorded it, this is how it came out. I set out. But just for some unknown reason, it just basically cut out, it stopped according like the mic glitched on that particular part. I just thought it was kind of a weird coincidence, just my thought to me. I tend to do that now whenever something bad happens. I'm like, Satan. But anyway, I did just want to point out that this reading these stories made me very aware that I really have never given any thought to what it's like to be an officer and to join the military as an officer and not go to basic training or I went as an enlisted marine but to go to like an academy. So if you're not familiar, which I only recently, after the stories and I looked into it became familiar. Well, I did know that you have to be, you have to have a college degree to become an officer. So if you join and you don't have the degree, well, they send you to get a degree. So you're going to spend four years in school. And I guess that's what the academies are. It's like a military college environment where these cadets, these not yet lieutenants are going to school for several years, maybe finishing their bachelors or spending the full four years there. And so they're living in a military environment. It's like Hollywood, it's basically like uniforms and showing up to classes and eating in the in the great hall and all these wonderful things. I'm sure getting your mail by owl. But anyway, so that's that's the gist of it. So and then every school has its own little culture and its own traditions and things like that. So everybody gets a unique experience wherever you go. So it was pretty interesting. I didn't know all about all that. But one thing that really caught my attention was the drumming out ceremony because of all the differences between going through basic training and going through an academy environment. And I know officers also have other follow-on or maybe preschool, like pre trainings that they go to before they go to this academy. They're OCT, Officer Canada training. I guess is what it's called, but all of all the differences to look at the drumming out is something that was just completely blew my mind because I just never knew about such a thing. And maybe it was only at VMI that one school that was mentioned here in this episode, but maybe other schools do it. But it's just very interesting tradition that they have there to have everybody turn their backs on you or watch you leave the school and disgrace kind of thing, very embarrassing thing. So I guess it really instills that sense of not wanting to screw up and wanting to be an honest person. In Marine Corps basic, obviously we had guys that got, they didn't make it. They didn't finish the training. I mean, some guys just slimed their way through. So you had to be kind of messed up, kind of jacked up on all levels to it. But it was things like they didn't pass the rifle qualification. They just couldn't hit the target, their PFT for whatever reason their scores weren't high enough. Maybe written exams, other things like that. But a rifle range was the big one, I think, for a lot of guys that got dropped. And what happens then is you get recycled into another training company, which kind of stay. I mean, if you get injured, that's another reason. And I'd see guys in like crutches and broken legs kind of hobbling around the base, whether it down at MCRD San Diego. And these guys look so sad. Because now you're not in bootcamp for three months. And then you graduate, you're in bootcamp for what seems like ever, like six months, nine months. However long it takes till your leg heels, you're just stuck there in the limbo. And other guys just get recycled. Which kind of stinks. Because then you're going back to a previous point in boot camp that you already completed. But because you failed the rifle range, now you have to go back and redo all of these other things. That was like a nightmare that I did not want to participate in. So I did the best I could. Some of these guys, the drill instructors, were just happy to see go. Because I guess they were just a drain on their energy. Those sort of cruts that just were just not getting it. And it just took so much out of them to try to train these guys. But there was one instance I remember. There was guys who tried to jump off the third balcony or just refused to train. I remember one guy just standing there was like refusing to train. And he's being yelled at. And they're like, OK, come this way. And basically, I think you go to the break at that point if you refuse to participate. And you're just like, I want to break my contract. I don't think you can do that. But we came back from the rifle range one day. And one of the other platoons was just had gotten back to the squad bay. And they're all circled up around their senior who's standing on like a wooden table thing they had outside to give presentations and stuff from. And he's yelling at them about something we don't know. We come up, my platoon, we're platoon number 21-01. And he's, oh, come here 21-01. Like, I got something. I got something to tell you. What do you think about this, your one? We got a recruit in my platoon that thinks it's OK that if somebody else does something to piss you off, you could sneak over to his rack in the middle of the night and piss in his canteen. Because every morning, when we got online, one of the first things he did was hydrate. So you had a full canteen of water and you would drink it. And then you would get dressed and do all the other stuff. Well, this guy apparently upset at another recruit and snuck over and urinated in his canteen and the guy woke up and what do you think happened? Well, I'm sure he spit it out. He just tasted the different, whatever. But that was a really awful thing to do. And so the seniors trying to get this guy to come forward, like admit who did it. And this guy, obviously, is probably pretty concerned about his sticking around. So he's not. So the senior tells my platoon to go upstairs into their squad bay and destroy it. And you never get that chance as a recruit. You're always worried that your drill instructors are going to make you destroy your own squad bay and open your foot lockers and dump everything out and make a big mess. And then you lose all of your stuff and you have to go find it and people steal it. And it's just like this horrible mess. You know, your picture of your girlfriend is gone now because somebody took it or whatever. So that was the incentive that the general instructor was going to get this guy to fess up. So we went upstairs and we had an absolute ball. We regretted how badly we messed up their squad bay later because then our general instructors held it over our head that we took the beds apart. There were shaving cream foam everywhere on the blankets, on the pillows, on the mattresses, the bare mat, we just destroyed everything. There was guys taking pictures of girlfriends and taking sharpie markers and drawing on their faces and tearing pages out of books. And I mean, we ripped that place apart. And by the time we started throwing things out of the window, I think that's when they told us to stop. And the guy came forward he fessed up and pretty sure he got kicked out. I'm pretty sure you don't get to stay in the military doing something like that to another recruit gone to the days of sock parties and getting away with that sort of hazing amongst each other. But yeah, but probably completely different experience there from getting drummed out in an academy setting. Much more formal. It felt like in the academy everything was done with a much more air of grace and formality. But apparently, neither basic training or these academies are safe from the spookier stuff. So interesting on that note. But anyway, thank you guys for listening, for watching, subscribing, liking, sharing, commenting, anything and everything you guys do that helps support this show. We really appreciate it. As always, a huge shout out to both our patrons, our YouTube channel members for your incredible support. May God be with each and every one of you, no matter what you're dealing with. And I will see you in the next episode.