Pale Crawlers
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During my own career as a Marine, I heard all kinds of war stories. And not just from my peers, like the time an old Sergeant Major who'd fought on Iwo Jima during the Second World War told me how he still hadn't forgotten the stinging smell of gunpowder and death. Or the gentleman who'd been one of the first Marines to hit the beach on Peleliu in 1944. He told me he woke up one night to find his foxhole buddy had been killed, a bayonet in the chest.

He said he was never able to understand how he had survived, sleeping only a foot away from him. And then my own grandfather, he told me stories of his time in the Korean War, fighting in one of the worst battles in military history, the Chosin Reservoir. He said it was so cold that guys who'd lost limbs in battle survived because everything just instantly froze and kept them from bleeding out.

There's a lot of stories like that. Acts of valor, sacrifice, men who put themselves at great risk. And of course, there's the darker side of war, the horrible things men do to one another when anything goes. But if you spend any time in the military or around military folks, you may have also heard one or two stories that were much more difficult for people to open up about. And I'm not just talking about traumatic experiences. I'm talking about the

Things that service members encounter. Things that keep them awake at night. Things they just cannot explain. The kinds of stories that would get them red flagged by their command and placed on a drug test roster or sent for mental health counseling if they insisted on reporting it. And if they have some kind of security clearance, you're not going to risk losing that because you saw something. It's not hard to see exactly why these stories remain untold. Who in their right mind would believe them?

When I got out of the Marine Corps, even having a few of my own strange experiences that I never bothered to tell anybody about, I couldn't shake the feeling that there had to be more of these stories out there waiting to be told if only someone would listen.

I became obsessed with finding them, collecting them, and trying to decide what to believe. And by now I've heard stories from people serving in every branch of the military from all over the world. And I was right. Military folks have seen a lot of strange, dark, and mysterious things. And now, each week, I'm going to share their stories here with you.

But I'm not here to tell you what to think. Decide for yourself. Maybe these stories are just too incredible. Or maybe the world is just far stranger than we'd care to believe. I'm Luke LaManna, and this is Wartime Stories. When I enlisted in the Marine Corps, it took me a while to get used to being in the military because some of the most mundane things that we did as part of the job, well, initially they seemed very strange to me.

One of those things was the idea of going to the field. My first thought was that we were literally going to an actual field. Just setting up tents in an open grassy area and living outside for a few days. But since there would be work involved, it would be like camping with extra steps. I guess that's not exactly wrong, but we never had tents. Being recon, we spent the entire time doing patrols and just roughing it out in the jungle like Mowgli.

And even if we did sleep in tents at times, most people would pick nice, safe, dry spots to set up their tents when they go camping, right? The military doesn't do that. Well, maybe the Air Force does because, well, they go camping at the Hilton.

But when I reached my first duty station in Hawaii, going to the field meant packing up a week's worth of food, water, fuel, batteries, our rifles, all of our personal gear, radios, and so on. And then we would drive in military vehicles in convoy fashion on the highway or hop on a helicopter and go from our base to one of several military training installations on the island, most of which were covered in thick jungle.

Going to the field therefore means something different depending on where any given unit is located in the world. For instance, Hawaii was often windy, rainy, and miserable at night. But besides the centipedes, there wasn't much animal life out there in the jungle that would bother you. And they do bite and they're very painful. But other than that, there wasn't really much out there.

Going to the field on Camp Pendleton in California meant you might run into a rattlesnake or two and probably stick yourself with a few cacti when you're walking around out in the desert at night. But the following two stories, one from a Marine conducting training in the mountains of Northern California and the other from a National Guardsman training in the Wisconsin mountains east of the Mississippi River, well, I'm not sure I have any idea what they encountered.

Especially, as they indicate, if it wasn't human. And these are true stories about encounters that they had with something that is collectively known as a pale crawler, a rake. Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, Bridgeport, California. This story was emailed to me by a young Marine whose name I have chosen to keep anonymous.

Mostly because he is still active duty and I don't want his command or anyone else to catch wind of this and berate him for sharing this bizarre story and associating his command with it or to otherwise draw any unwanted attention on him publicly. He writes: "My name is Corporal Oscar with the United States Marine Corps and I have a story I'd like to share with you from our platoon's time in Bridgeport for a mountain training exercise.

A couple years ago, from September to October, our platoon Alpha-2 of 1st CEB Combat Engineer Battalion went to Bridgeport for a joint exercise with our Victor Unit, 2-1. Before we got there, we were briefed back on Camp Pendleton about things like high altitude pulmonary anemia, and how the oxygen difference with the altitude could cause hallucinations.

We also heard other strange stories about the training area, such as people sometimes waking up right as marine animal packers, Marines patrolling with horses and donkeys, would unexpectedly walk through the middle of the patrol bases at night because the animal packers course used the same training area. Anyway, when we got to Bridgeport's lower base camp, we were given two days to acclimatize our bodies to the altitude.

In that time, we explore the surrounding mountains and we may or may not have climbed up mountains we weren't supposed to and taken some cool pictures. The strange activities though started around two weeks into Bridgeport. We'd always make jokes about skinwalkers coming by and grabbing us in the middle of the night, but something did actually show up. Yo, Rambo, put your damn knife away and help me get these tarps up. All right, but one, it's a bayonet.

And two, you gotta admit this thing is pretty damn cool. Look at this thing. How much you pay for that thing anyway? Eh, $250. Damn, bro. Seriously? What? Did it come with a Camaro and 29% financing? Whatever, man. This thing is awesome. I mean, it's a classic. Just help me get the Antares up, will you? All right, all right.

One night during an operation we called the COOL, C-O-O-L, I'm not sure what it stands for, probably combat operations something something. We were at Bridgeport's highest landing zone, LZ Owl. We'd set up shelter with our tarps for the night. I should mention this tree we hooked our tarps on was growing up against a large rock face.

I was a Lance Corporal at the time. I had with me one other Lance Corporal engineer and Lance Corporal water dog, a water specialist. And we used large rocks like small boulders and wooden stakes to anchor down our tarps to make a pyramid shape against the tree.

So one end of the tarps was attached to the tree and it was like a lean-to kind of built around the entire perimeter of this tree. So any water would roll off and keep our gear and us dry underneath. Another thing of note, the water dog we had with us would often be messing around with his rifle because he had a bayonet with him and he'd stick it on the end of his rifle. He liked playing with it. He liked showing it off.

So once night came and the freezing snow started falling, we went under our tarps and into our sleeping bags. This was around 9:00 PM. I woke up around 10:00 PM to the sound of someone racking the charging handle of their weapon back. It's dead quiet up there and we're supposed to be in a tactical environment. So making unnecessary noises like that is going to piss somebody off.

So I look around and me and my other engineers M4s were on the ground next to us and only the water dog's rifle was around the backside of the tree where only he could see it. It was dark and so I figure it's this guy. He must be screwing around with his bayonet again. So I asked him if that was him messing with his rifle. He gets up out of his sleeping bag and tells me that it wasn't him.

So now I'm thinking that someone, maybe one of the infantry guys that we're training with, has snuck up to our patrol base and is messing with us. So I pull out my K-Bar and I crawl out from under the tarps. I'm going to go threaten some poor guy who thinks he's going to scare us, right? But there was nobody else nearby. Oscar. Yes, Sergeant. What the hell are you doing?

So when I came out, my sergeant, he sees me coming up out of our lean-to, and he walks up to me and asks me what the hell I'm doing, you know, standing there holding a knife and all. And I asked if he'd heard the noise that we did.

And he said that he did, thinking it was one of us racking our rifles, which I told him it wasn't. So then he walks over to the nearby infantrymen on fire watch, and he asks if he or his guys were screwing around with their rifles. But that guy also knew nothing about it. So our sergeant comes back up and tells us that, and says to just go back to sleep. So I went back in my sleeping bag, and I forget all about it. Next time I woke up was 6 a.m., Reveille. But now...

Our tarps are all on the ground, like something had pulled them down off the tree. And the small boulders we used to hold them down, they are nowhere to be found. And the stakes, same story, gone. So as we're trying to figure out what had happened with our tarps, our sergeant comes back up and tells us what he saw earlier that night. He said he didn't mention it because he thought he was seeing things at the time.

But after he told us to go back to sleep and I had crawled back into my sleeping bag, my sergeant said something caught his eye up at the top of the rock face behind us. And so he looks up and he sees this bald, naked, human looking figure with shining eyes looking over from on top of the rock face. And as soon as he spotted it, he said he saw it duck away immediately. - Look, she heard it out of the room.

My first thought was a video I'd seen of a guy who was filming his house because he thinks there's a skinwalker rake around his house. And when he sees it on top of his roof as he's filming it, as soon as he saw it, this thing also ducks behind the house and disappears. So again, my sergeant thought he was just seeing things. So he said he just went back to bed as well.

But now, with the tarps being messed with, I guess he thought he should tell us about it. We don't know what it was. Maybe somebody was messing with us. But I think we would have heard them moving around if it was a person. Whatever it was, it was far more disciplined in silence than any infantryman or marine that I've ever met. Well, brother, I...

I don't know what your sergeant saw either, but at least all it did was just mess with your gear. At least it didn't steal any of it. I mean, imagine trying to explain that to Sif. What happened to your tarp? It was stolen by a rake. Uh-huh. Yeah, right. But as horrible as this is to acknowledge, you are not the only person training out in the field to see something like this.

I've got several more of these encounter stories from here in the US and even a couple from some active soldiers. I think one was a British soldier and I think a German soldier training in Germany. A hairless, decrepit Bigfoot, maybe? A curious alien?

Only God knows, since it's not in any of the science books I've read. But since you didn't mention having any theories about the source of the noise you heard, which you and your sergeant both seem to identify as the charging handle on someone's M4, I did have one theory about that. These things, when they are sighted, are occasionally said to be excellent tree climbers. And since the sound woke you up...

Rather than you, it's not as if you were sitting there listening and you heard it, it was a sound that woke you up. I thought maybe what you took to be the sound of a charging handle, which sounds like this, might have otherwise been this sound, which is the sound of a branch breaking. The two noises seemed close enough to me that if your sergeant's eyes weren't lying to him, maybe this thing was up in the tree above you.

and it scrambled down when it saw your sergeant or another marine walking closer breaking a branch in its haste to get out of the tree. Whatever it was, that's just one good reason that we still keep fire watch even when we're in training. Stay frosty out there guys. Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. All right ladies, let's go, let's go, let's go. Hurry up and plot your points. The faster you get out there, the faster you're going to get done unless you're not prior enlisted.

Then there's not really much hope for you. Officers are notoriously bad at land apps. This next story was submitted by a National Guardsman. He writes, I want to share an experience I had while training with my National Guard unit at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. I moved from enlisted to officer via ROTC and was attached to a unit in my prospective MOS while in the program. I don't really want to give specifics on my service as the community is small enough to identify me to my peers.

In 2014, my platoon decided to conduct night-time land navigation at Fort McCoy from 20:30 to 00:30 in the morning. While the Army is typically all about buddy pairs, night land navigation is one of the few cases we get to do things solo, because the whole point is to check that the individual soldier is qualified to do it without help. So, I step off on my plotted route, with my compass, my map, and headlamp in hand.

For those who do not know, land nav involves finding these engineering stakes, these markers, on a course by plotting their coordinates on a map and then walking from point to point using various map reading techniques, terrain association, and of course, a compass.

At night, this is typically done without light as much as possible. When light is used, your flashlight, it's a red lens. This minimizes the impact on our night vision. Ostensibly, these methods also keep you concealed in a tactical environment, you know, if you were actually doing this in a real combat scenario, along with practicing noise discipline. So it's all part of the training. So I was moving through the woods while making a token effort to be difficult to spot or hear.

The woodland I was in was part of a larger forest system, but was frequently traveled. That night we had some 15 soldiers clomping around in the woods. My source of light was a headlamp that toggled between a red and white light. I had it set up initially so that the red light was the first light to turn on. So you turn it on, it's red. You turn it off, you turn it back on. After a couple seconds, it's still red.

Because to cycle the white light, I would have to turn it off twice. So if you've used a headlamp like this, I don't need to explain it to you. But for those that are not familiar, when you cycle this headlamp, it starts on solid white. You turn it off. You turn it back on immediately. It changes to flashing white. You turn it off immediately. Right back on. Solid red. Off again. Back on again. Flashing red. And then off. And then if you turn it back on, it's back on solid white.

Now, I'm not telling you all this for nothing, but I'll explain shortly why that matters. During my initial planning, I saw that my assigned points would take me to the other side of the course and back, a good hour and a half distance, at least as the crow flies. A bit longer to actually walk because the terrain goes up and down and you're in the woods at night, you're meandering around trees, moving slowly, trying not to gouge your eyes out on low-hanging branches.

But the points I had were more or less in a straight line with one another. So I was just going to hit each one as I walked out into the training area. So I estimated maybe two and a half hours out and back. I was just going to walk out, hit all my points, and then just walk back after I was done.

But I knew if I came back too early, I might be given another set of points. So, I resolved to just walk out, take a break for an hour once I was done if I had time, and then mosey on back. The first half of this goes as planned. I get my points without much trouble and wind up sitting on a hillside at around, it's maybe now 10 at night. It's cloudy, but the moon is full.

but it's windy, so the clouds are intermittently blocking the illumination from the moon. So I can see pretty well when the sky is clear, but there is like no illum when the cloud cover is too heavy. Occasionally I see a red light bobbing in the distance below me. A pair of my platoon members pass down on the hill in front of me using a white light to read their map, and I startled them when I asked if they needed help, because, you know, you're not supposed to be using a white light out there.

But by the end of my break, I don't see any more motion in my area. Most people had likely walked out and back, they found all their points, or they were too lost and ended up taking one of the roads to get back. So I'm feeling pretty at one with my surroundings. Having sat in the same spot, eating stale Skittles for a good long while, there's owls hooting, trees are swaying, it was nice. I trot down this hill and I step through some brush and I'm now in a clearing

where this prairie land intersects with forest. There are some dead trees in the area and one of them is split. It's still standing and it's split halfway up. At the top of this broken tree about 15 feet up off the ground, I can make out a distinct head and shoulders silhouette.

against the clouds which were backlit by the moon. There's enough light coming through that I can still make out this silhouette of this person. So I walk up to ask how the hell they got up there, and if they're stuck, and they need help. When this shadow twitches, and I get the distinct impression it's now turned toward me, I stand there looking at it, and maybe it's looking at me,

The situation definitely feels off, but I wasn't about to let a battle buddy punk me, so I asked if they needed a hand. But mid-sentence, the moonlight comes back, and it's immediately clear to me that the thing on that tall stump was not a soldier. This moonlight glimpse is the best look I get at the thing. It looked like a stretched-out bald person.

Its long arms are clutching the stump. I can't make out the face, but it looks pinched. And by that I mean I couldn't see its eyes or mouth, like they were very small and in the middle of the head. It's skinny, like it hasn't eaten, but it's tall and obviously strong enough to have made such a vertical climb on this tree. It was definitely looking at me. Probably was the whole time I was in the clearing, maybe even since I came down the hill.

So I swear loudly. And then it rapidly scurries down the trunk. I flick my red light on and I catch it on all fours moving toward the brush line in the direction I'm heading. And automatically I keep toggling the lamp to be in the white light. That means it goes off, then to flashing red, then to back on, then finally to white. So in the flash, as I scramble to get my damn headlamp working, I see the thing at the wood line.

but I think it's flipped itself around and is backing in to the tree line, probably to keep its eyes on me. And in a few seconds it takes for me to get to the white light, it's gone. I scan the tree line, which is now silent. When it moved, there was a scraping noise. Plus the woodland brush was dense. If it was still running, I would hear it. So I reasoned that it must have stopped moving and it must still be watching me.

So I fumbled to get my knife out and I keep looking around the woods in front of me. And after what felt like ages, I start inching along a perpendicular path to my initial route of travel. An angle that will link me up with the hardball road that runs up and down the side of the training course. And once on the road, I figure I can just take that road back to where my platoon is parked.

My major problem is that the road is 10 minutes of walking from my current position and it's mostly woodland. That can't be helped. I have to get out of this clearing first. And my progress on that front is painfully slow because I'm just trying to keep my eyes on where this, where I think this thing still is. And the whole time I am fighting this kind of natural urge to just freeze in place and not move.

After sidestepping about a good 10 meters, I hear a corresponding rustling and I think I see movement. That was enough to get me to just turn and bolt right into a downed log, which trips me. I scramble back up to my feet and I look back to the wood line where there is an audible commotion. I glimpse an emaciated leg and an ass moving back into the woods.

And at this point I am done with the whole situation but I don't want to run again and keep tripping so I start power walking to the road trying to look as much as I can over my left shoulder to see what this thing is doing. And over the movement of my own kit I can hear it moving alongside me, parallel. And as I near the end of the clearing I think I hear it picking up pace as if to cut me off before I enter the tree line.

I made the decision to sprint. And when I enter the woods, my path is clear, but I'm pretty sure I can still hear it moving along with me in my periphery. I don't stop. I'm just running hard until I hit that paved road. And I ate it pretty hard a few times, tripping over stuff in the woods, but I just kept frantically getting back up and running. And once I'm on the road, I just ran until I couldn't hear it. I didn't think I could hear it anymore.

So now I'm winded from this dead out run for I don't know how many minutes. And from the middle of the road, I had pretty good visibility, so I decided to walk and try to catch my breath. It's quiet for a while, and then I hear a branch move about, had to be about 30 feet in the air from the woods on the side of the road that I had just run out of. I snap my gaze up.

and I see this pale, oval-shaped face, this ovular face, half in shadow, peeking at me from around the trunk of a tree, way up on the tree. I took off again, and I did not stop. And after what felt like way too long, I finally make it back. I see the headlights of our LMTVs, and I check my watch, and it was 12.15 a.m.

What happened, cadet? Did you get lost out there? Why are you... You're covered in mud. Did you fall down? Why are you out of breath? I got lost on my way back. I got lost. You, uh... You gonna be okay? I knew better than to tell them that I saw what I saw. A monster, basically. In the years since drilling at FMC, I have never experienced anything like that again. McCoy...

It does not have a history of disappearances as far as I know, neither do the two closest towns, Sparta and Toma. I've done night land navigation alone a few times since without issue, but this is less from courage and more from me just deciding to think that, you know, maybe I just misinterpreted the situation and what I was seeing. But then again, maybe the world is weirder than I previously thought.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke LaManna. Executive produced by Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Written by Jake Howard and myself. Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Lacascio, and Whit Lacascio. Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stidham. Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone. Production coordination by Avery Siegel. Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden. Artwork by Jessica Clarkson-Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picotta. If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartimestories.com. Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.