Supernatural Encounters in a War Zone
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The subject of the paranormal is a fascination to many, no less those who have experienced it. Soldiers fighting on the front lines of any war are clearly no stranger to these experiences. Why this is such a commonality across the documented wars throughout humanity is up for speculation. Perhaps where there is much death and suffering, there are often strange and unexplained happenings.

But it cannot otherwise be denied that wherever you go in the world, there exists a variety of localized beliefs. So when soldiers with their own set of beliefs and experiences from one part of the world find themselves in a distant country unfamiliar to them, is it really that surprising when these soldiers then encounter things that the locals have long considered ordinary and routine?

Of course, to them, the experience can be terrifying. It's not something they would have ever expected to see. Whether you believe in spirits or not, seeing is believing. And for these soldiers, they are the ones telling us they saw something. And these are true stories from service members serving in Iraq about their encounters with something the locals would collectively identify as jinn.

I'm Luke LaManna, and this is Wartime Stories, the Baghdad Mall. Hey, hey, stop. What's the matter, man? See somebody? Freaking kid, man. Scared the shit out of me. Which way did he go? He ran into this back room over here. Hey, come out of there now. Do not make me come in there and get you. Come out now. Stupid kids, man. Hey, kid. I said, come...

What? Everything alright, man? Dude, I just saw a kid run in here. Did you see him come out? Uh, bro, I didn't see anybody. Are you sure? You weren't just seeing things? Fuck you, man. I saw a fucking kid. As much as I'm looking at you right now, I saw a fucking kid run in here. Alright, well, maybe you should be the first to go down for a sleep shift tonight, huh? To hell with this place, man. Gives me the creeps.

This first story was submitted by an army veteran using the handle @blackjeepconvertible. He writes: "In Iraq, we lived in a war-torn four-story shopping mall, which means we also pulled our own security. Solo.

One of the rooms we used to pull security became infamous for paranormal activity, which started around midnight with eerie, unexplained noises, the activity then peaking around 3:00 AM with crazy, unexplainable stuff. In that room, we sat in a corner staring out the windows. We would hear feet shuffling and footsteps behind us the entire shift, so we all got used to it. It's not like we had a choice anyways.

Then around 3:00 AM, the witching hour, crazy stuff starts happening. One of my friends had a giant black trash bag that was lying next to him. It was full of empty rip it cans and water bottles that got flung into the air, throwing trash everywhere. He got so scared he threw his chair across the room and called SOG to spend the rest of his shift with him.

We had sergeants chase kids into empty rooms when there was only one door in and out. We were supposed to be the only ones inside the mall. No local civilians, especially not kids. Another one of my friends ended up literally frozen in fear when he saw a grayed out, transparent Iraqi soldier walk up and sit next to him during his shift.

He said he just froze the entire shift and tried not to look at it. The entire exterior of the mall was riddled with bullet holes and craters, so we figured a bunch of people died there before us. But we later found out the one room we experienced the most activity in was formerly a discotheque, a party room, club, where Saddam's two sons tortured and killed people.

That room also led to the roof where they had apparently tossed people off of the building. My worst witching hour experience wasn't as bad as others. My shift that night was midnight to 0400. It started with feet shuffling behind me for hours, which wasn't too bad to get used to. And I was trying not to look away from the windows where there was at least some ambient light coming in because when you're wearing night vision...

All you see is a green circle through one eye and complete darkness through the other. It gets really creepy when you turn your head because if you do see something scary, it won't show up until it's directly in front of you due to the loss of peripheral vision looking through the night vision lens. So after maybe three hours of staring into nothingness, it's now about 0300 and all of a sudden I hear and feel

a whisper next to my ear as if someone had their lips half an inch away from my ear. Don't fuck with me. You know I'm scared of this shit. I will shoot. I have never moved so fast in my entire life. I simultaneously stood up, turned around, gun up, light on, ready to shoot a ghost.

I was hoping it was someone pranking me, but there wasn't anyone around me. I went and checked all of the adjacent rooms, but they were clear. So I broke an entire box of chemlights and tossed them all over the room, thinking I'm going to be able to see anything coming now. But that just gave the room a really eerie green glow.

Before, I couldn't see a single thing. Now, I think I'm seeing things moving because it's so dimly lit. I ended up spending the rest of my shift facing the room with my back against the window. I couldn't give a damn what was happening outside anymore. They could have had a VBID drive right up to us. I was more scared of the ghosts than anything.

Another subscriber with the handle @goodytiger57, another army vet who visited the same location, responded to his comment and his story with the following: "The very first day we got to that mall, we were all like, 'Holy hell, this place is really creepy.' Like, Shaun of the Dead times a hundred, and we were either late teens or barely old enough to drink, so obviously the first thing we did was go straight into the basement to check it out.

It was pitch black and really creepy. Didn't matter if we had guns, it still felt really scary. Out of our group, me and a few guys were the first to run out of there. Seen too many scary movies to stay there any longer. The last ones to leave kept saying they saw stuff, but we figured they were just messing with us because we chickened out and it was only month one out of 15 of our stay. Never really went back down there as OP6 and the surrounding hallways were scary enough.

Footsteps in the gravel. Let's see, uh... What's the creepiest thing you've seen while you've been out here? Dude, okay, so our Terp, right? Uh-huh. He told me this story the other day. So he was... He was standing on the inside of these T-walls right here, right? And he said... I mean, like, he saw a disembodied shadow, like a person, but, like, only from the waist up. Bro. Just go right through the wall. Damn, really? Yeah, yeah.

Creepy, man. And there was one of my corporals told me a story. You hear that, right? Yeah. Hello? What the hell? Dude, where the hell is that coming from? I don't know. Towards the Humvee? I don't see anybody.

This following submission was also submitted in the comment section from another one of your fellow viewers, who goes by the YouTube handle @JonathanGriffith7759. He writes: Iraq 2011. We were at a patrol base no more than half a mile from the Iraq-Iran border. We'd black out the base at night for security with a single light at the smoke pit in the middle of the camp.

The area surrounding the base had one of the highest casualty rates during the Iraq-Iran war in the 80s. First week there, I'm doing base security at the ECP with the Alpha guy from the outgoing unit. It's 2 or 3 am and we get on the topic of ghost stories. He tells me how our Terp saw a waist up apparition disappear through a T-wall.

how they started experiencing paranormal things after bringing back a piece of gear they found out on a patrol and a few other stories. But so the base was covered in gravel to keep the dust down. And as he's telling me about all these things, about all these entities and these stories, we both hear footsteps walking across the gravel toward the Humvee. We can't see anything. We turn on our nods. Nothing.

there's nobody around. Just a super creepy place. Especially walking around at night in complete darkness with just your headlamp. Also had a constant feeling of being watched when we'd go out on night patrols. Demonic children. Alright, keep going straight back. Yep, keep going. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Stop.

This next story was emailed to me in April of last year by a soldier named Tyler. He writes, I was with Bravo 2506 101st Airborne. We were stationed in southern Baghdad in Fob Falcon, but were sent out to this little hole in the wall that we called the doghouse. Down route Senators, off on route Red Wings, which was southeast of Fob Falcon.

The house, or doghouse, which it was called, was an IED makehouse that was taken over and made into a base run by our Delta company. Route Red Wings was this long, twisting road that finally split into a Y right at the doghouse, and we would have static patrols on this road just to have overlapping views along the whole length of the road.

At the Y of the road we had blocked it off and we weren't allowed to drive farther south beyond OP Red. So we had these jersey barriers set up on the roads to keep traffic from coming up from the south. And one night we were being relieved from our static positions and from there we would go on QRF, a quick reaction force. We would back up our trucks into this driveway and I was always the last truck to back in so I would pull security down the two roads that were blocked off.

Now, like most places, the Iraqi homes, the buildings, they had these privacy walls around them, which are block walls with broken glass on top of them. And the area between the road and the wall was often this low scrub brush. So I sat there watching out over the roads and this brush. Now, mind you, it's about 03 in the morning. So we're back in the truck sub. I'm sitting up as the turret gunner with my 240 Bravo mounted on the Humvee.

Complete darkness, using our nods, and we're acting as ground guides telling the driver which way to go. Otherwise, we would drive off the driveway and there was about a three-foot drop. So you had to pay particular attention while doing this. And suddenly I spotted some movement in my nods. And I looked over to this wall in the scrub brush and I saw this kid, about maybe 12 years of age, staring down at the ground. What immediately struck me was that

He seemed to be glowing. There was this aura of white light all around him. Of course, I thought that was strange. So I immediately, I lifted up my nods and I couldn't see him anymore. So I put my nods back down and there he was, about 30 yards away. And as I stood there looking at him, couldn't help but think, you know, wow, this kid's almost angelic. There's no blemishes in this shitty war-torn area at BFE.

Now, these people were dirt poor, but this kid looks, like I said, angelic, especially with this white light, this aura around him. And about this time, it was almost like this kid could hear what I was thinking, and he looked straight at me, meeting my eyes, and he smiled, and then it happened. As I was looking at him, his face twisted completely.

The only thing I can and have ever been able to compare it to was in the movie, Passion of the Christ, where Judas betrays Jesus and all of the little kids' faces are all twisted and looking evil. That's the only thing I could think of. I have no other way to describe this child, if I could call it that. It turned and started to walk towards me. And I'm just thinking, what the hell is this?

And then, as if it could tell I was frightened, it began to jog and then went into a dead run right at me. And I'm thinking, I'm going to have to shoot this thing. So I immediately bend down and pick up a sight picture through my nods and click the safety off and start to put pressure on the trigger. Now this thing is only about five feet away from my truck. And so the trucks that were backing up are having trouble maneuvering. So at that moment, they all turned on their headlights.

So this white light floods the whole area and my nods, so I'm blind for a second. And when I regain my picture through the nods, it's gone. So I click the safety back on the gun, and I lean back into the turret. My medic heard me sigh, and he asked me what was wrong. And I told him that I thought I was going insane. Obviously, this all happened very quickly. We finished backing our truck into the parking location for QRF, and...

That's it. But for the next three consecutive nights, when I was on a sleep shift and had some kind of dream, I would have these recurring nightmares of this angelic boy demon. And a few days after seeing this, we were coming back down that road. We would be out at OP Red for four days at a time and then move back to Fob Falcon for a day and a half for refit.

So now we were traveling back down the road in a convoy and I was feeling lucky to be in the middle of the pack. I had my turret at the three o'clock position and as we were driving I see a group of people with a young girl standing apart from the rest. She was about 20 yards to their right back against this privacy wall and as we drove by I had always made a habit of making eye contact with anyone I saw.

But something just felt strange about this girl with her back against the wall. As we got closer, I noticed two things. One, she had jet black eyes. And two, where she was standing, there was a canal that ran right next to the wall. I realized there was nowhere for her to be standing. This black-eyed little girl was hovering at ground level, staring a hole through me.

And as this tree came between us, breaking my eye contact with her, and she had disappeared by the time I could see around the other side of the tree. I don't know if anyone else saw this particular girl or the demon kid, but other guys in my outfit later told me about seeing similar things. I'm convinced that that land is cursed. This story really still freaks me out, and I still get chills thinking about it.

The Winged Gin. Hey, Doc. I did just want to say I'm real sorry. I heard about your family. I hope you have a safe trip. Damn, bro. IED? The hell's going on? Hey, radio him up. See what's going on. Here you go. Hey, what's up? Why'd you stop? Something flew in front of the HV. What the hell did he just say? Flew? In front of the HV? Yes. Did you guys see anything? No. We didn't see anything.

This last story was shared online in 2020 by an Army medic serving in Iraq in 2006 under the user handle Havaducky81.

Like many who have shared similarly strange and unbelievable stories, she did say she expects people to disbelieve her. She said that in addition to not reporting this incident for obvious reasons, she and her fellow soldiers avoided sharing this story to avoid the ridicule. But she insists this story happened exactly as she describes it. She writes...

My unit in the US Army was deployed to Iraq in April of 2006. We were in Ramadi. It was 123 kilometers, 77 miles outside of Baghdad. I was in a Humvee heading to Baghdad for emergency leave due to a death in my family.

It was close to midnight. The Humvee I was in had three others and a turret gunner. The two other Humvees with us had the same, five total people in each, with one truck in front of mine and one in back, so we're the truck in the middle. I didn't have my rifle, due to having already been checked out on leave. So all of a sudden, the Humvee in front of us slams on the brakes hard, and we all figured it was a possible IED or VB IED. The team leader and our HV radioed the lead HV.

Just then, in the desert, off the highway, all of us saw what looked like a black figure. It looked like a huge bird, and it looked like smoke was emitting from it. A blackish, greenish smoke with a bit of a blue tinge.

So we're all trying to focus our nods on what we're seeing. And the two troops in our truck that had better nods than anybody else said they could see something but couldn't make out what it was. The smoke was distorting the view. And within a second or two, a rock was then thrown at one of the HV. And it was a big rock, like the size of someone's head. And we all froze. So due to rules of engagement, we couldn't just light it up. So we used a spotlight on it. And in that light, whatever this thing was,

it just flew straight up and simultaneously we heard a loud screeching noise all of this happened very quickly we all sat there in a state of mingled shock curiosity and what panic and what the hell was that thing when we got to baghdad we rendezvoused with there was an iraqi translator that they were picking up to bring to the marines that were with us and he told us quite plainly

"It sounds like you encountered an efreet." One of the team leaders responded, "A what?" "An efreet," this guy said. "A winged djinn." We were all a bit speechless, and we chose not to disclose to our command this winged thing that we saw. Battle fatigue, now more commonly known as PTSD, that was a career killer at this juncture.

It's been 13 years since this happened. I met my now husband in 2015, a fellow soldier, and coincidentally he had also been deployed to Ramadi with my sister unit, 2-6 Infantry Division at the time. He had also passed down this particular stretch of highway on his mid-deployment leave. He eventually recounted a story to me about something he saw, which completely shocked me because it was very similar to my story.

With the exception that they never stopped. They just said screw it and they just boogied on through. They didn't stop their vehicles. I was a medic, so death was my daily norm. Especially considering the time we were there was very deadly. Including an aid station manned by soldiers that was ambushed and blown to bits. I still can't wrap my head around this. But it didn't end in Iraq. I think something followed me home. Not sure what.

Although I've often wondered if it might have been a soldier, one of the ones I couldn't save. Because now, the last two places we've lived in, something has followed us from each place. For the living, death is an awful thing to bear witness to. And certainly that is much more the case when it is to the degree that an army medic or any of these soldiers encountered it. It weighs heavy on the mind, long after the experience has ended.

Sleep deprivation and hallucinations are often attributed to many stories like these, along with combat trauma. And of course, that is within the realm of possibility when it is something that only one person is seeing. So what about what these soldiers saw? What comes to my mind is what the character Hamlet once so eloquently put it to his obstinate friend: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Whether from the creative and abjectly curious mind of Shakespeare more than 400 years ago, or from the minds and memories of the soldiers who have lived and breathed these strange experiences in much more recent years, the subject of death has long remained a question mark for mankind. As the aggrieved figure of Hamlet stated while contemplating his own demise with a sharp bodkin in hand,

He called death an undiscovered country from whose born no traveler returns. But had Shakespeare encountered what the soldiers have described, creatures that can sometimes be seen and sometimes not, perhaps he would have reconsidered that possibility, that of something traveling back and forth between the veil that separates us, the living and breathing from the unknown.

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.