Strange Sightings and Paranormal Activities

By Nick Orton

With Halloween around the corner, we thought our readers might enjoy a paranormal-themed article! This first appeared in Tales From The Grid Square (TFTG) and is republished here with Nick’s permission.

Nick is an active-duty Soldier with an interest in all things strange, unexplained, and paranormal. Based on personal experiences while wearing the uniform and conversations with other Soldiers; Nick created TFTG. The goal of TFTG is to collect, document, and share ANONYMOUSLY the “not normal” experiences of those who serve. Everything is anonymous, so people can tell their stories freely without ridicule or judgment.

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As was mentioned earlier, Afghanistan bears the scars of violence and war that predate many of the modern-day warfighters who set foot on her soil. Ghosts, echoes, and spirits abound the many towns and battlefields across Afghanistan. From tribal conflict to the Russians, to finally our twenty-one-year adventure: Afghanistan has death weaved into her history for countless generations. Negative energy abounds, and with it, things that cling stubbornly to the world of the living. Maybe they are unable to move on past their violent demises or simply moments of intense emotion captured like a snapshot for all eternity. Or perhaps they are encounters with forces that truly were never human to begin with, such as the demonic and dangerous entities known as the Djinn. There is something truly unsettling to consider when the most terrifying things you can face as a warfighter are the things that DO go bump in the night.

THE ONE-ARMED MAN

This was back in May of 2010 KAF, Afghanistan.

Background, this was my first “deployment” KAF being one of the largest bases in the area not super high threat being an intel guy, but we go a bunch of 107s lobbed at us and suicide bombers occasionally.

Anyways, I was there for Project Liberty which was a push to get more ISR in the area using twin prop MC-12s. Was the first crew in KAF to stand it up so the first few weeks there we had nothing to do but wait for the planes to hop from the U.S., so I had the glorious job of driving these old Chinese busses around the airfield perimeter acting as a glorified bus driver.

Around the beginning of summer is usually the fighting season for TB so we started to receive a lot of IDF more frequently.

So one night after eating at one of the DFACs and hanging out we got a ground attack alarm, the first one since I had been there. It was a huge coordinated attack on the north side of KAF with IDF and a bunch of people on foot. It went on for several hours and we finally got the all-clear. I just smoked a few butts and went to bed.

In the morning I checked in with my shop to see what the details were and apparently, most of the guys on the ground had suicide vests and basically rigged a tractor as a VBIED in order to breach the perimeter. In the chaos, the guys ended up getting the tractor stuck and detonated it and then detonated themselves sending legs and arms everywhere.

After I checked with my shop I resumed my temporary bus driver job and had to drive past where they had tried to breach, and saw what looked like an arm drying on the concertina wire on the fence, absolutely brutal. Didn’t think much of it and went on with my day.

Fast forward a week or so and we get most of our aircraft in and can actually work doing ISR support for base defense and other things. Where the paranormal starts to happen. The BDA pictures came in from the attack with pictures of the exploded bodies and all the equipment they were using. It was pretty gnarly stuff and noticed one of the guys wearing traditional garb still had a pristine white dish dash and a stump where his arm should have been. Maybe this was the guy who had his arm launched onto the wire, just something unsettling about the picture, he seemed so untouched minus the arm.

A few days later during a base defense mission, we were following a guy on a motorcycle who we thought was a facilitator and I kept seeing a guy with one arm at intersections on my feed. At every intersection, I would see a one-armed man dressed in all white. When I said something about it the sensor operator said yeah it was weird but in this area of the world men with one arm are a common sight… but at every intersection?

I asked them to switch to IR instead of standard DTV, or color view, and the guy was giving off a cool signature. Literally cold compared to everyone else as we scanned by. We couldn’t really stay on it because we were in the middle of following an important guy, but WTF was that, extremely weird.

A few days after that while walking to work at around 20:00, I noticed a silhouette of a man in traditional clothes in one of the concrete bunkers walking by.

This wasn’t out of the norm, local nationals would be all over the base and would often hang out in the bunkers to smoke butts. But when I looked closer he was just standing straight up, not moving, and had one arm. I got a real feeling of dread and felt shivers and ‘noped the fuck out of there to work. I told my shop and they laughed at me saying I was crazy and poked fun for the remainder of the shift.

The only person that wasn’t laughing was my OIC who pulled me aside after shift. He said he had seen the same thing at a different bunker on the opposite side of base. Truly creepy shit and after that one instance never saw him in person or on my feed again.

            -Anonymous US Air Force Airman

AMIR AGHAH

This was in 2010, 2/2 Marines Golf Company. We relieved 2/8 and 3/1 relieved us. Battalion tasked us with guarding a school outside of a village called Amir Aghah. We recently lost a Marine near the school, pretty sad. We rotated squads from 3rd platoon. We would guard the school and maintain a relationship with the local nationals.

The School layout was walled all the way around with two buildings running long ways north to south with all of the doors facing inward. The locals told us this school was open during the Taliban takeover in the 90s. They claimed that the Afghan teachers were beheaded there and the school was just closed.

We guarded the school for the rebuild. One night the whole squad was up, had a post at the gate, and one of us was to be in full kit to rove the grounds. We saw some movement toward the south wall of the school ground. We immediately responded, even running a white light over the field, but saw nothing.

Afterward, we began back clearing the rooms, all corner-fed rooms with large glass windows. We wanted to make sure no one got into the camp. Another Marine and I cleared the southeasternmost room first. This is where it got really poltergeisty.

Upon entry, one of the desks on the opposite end falls over and moves about 10 feet toward the door. At the same time, a window just shatters–not like from anything ballistic. We white-lighted that entire room. Our squad got no sleep that night.

The next day our relief showed up with an interpreter and we talked with the mullah about what happened. The mullah claimed that a Djinn was attracted to all of the death surrounding the school.

We legit thought at first it was a Taliban scout trying to off us. Until the chairs, and desks move on their own. Apparitions appeared near walls and recurring dreams were shared across multiple squads about being chased by a dark figure chasing. All of us had the same dream. I assume that’s what the movement we saw at the southern end of the compound was, the same dark figure that haunted our dreams. I wish I was pulling your leg, but I’m not.

            -Anonymous US Marine

ECHOES

Back in 2012, I was lucky enough to be a private in the Army in Afghanistan. I won’t bore you with details, but I meddled with the radios of a small team in a pretty remote area on a combat outpost.

We conducted 24-hour operations and one night, we got this very weird transmission. It came in pretty strong and we couldn’t determine from what direction it was coming in. However, what truly made it odd was what was being said.

Now, I’m no linguist but I know enough about different languages to know this wasn’t Pashtun or Dari, or even English for that matter – it was straight-up Russian. This is when red flags start going up and we began to make phone calls to our operations center and wake people up. We had a recording device and managed to catch most of the broadcast before it stopped completely.

We didn’t have any Russian linguists with us. We had no idea what was going on. We sent a copy of the recording over high side to get the information translated. I knew one of the Warrant Officers in my unit was also a Russian Linguist back from the Cold War era and had him have a listen as well.

He was rusty but got the gist of the message. It was a distress call asking for help – that their base was being overrun and being attacked. This was even more confusing as there hasn’t been a Russian base in AF since their occupation. We schemed a lot over what caused it. He said maybe it was a pre-recorded beacon that may have just randomly gone off after all these years, who knows?

The only thing that bothered me with that explanation was that the whole thing didn’t sound like pre-recorded audio. There was an obvious level of distress in their voice. Albeit, there was no background noise to it.

            -Anonymous US Army Soldier

THE RUSSIAN

I was deployed to Afghanistan for a year. My job had me traveling all over the country, so I could never really settle in for too long. We stayed a few weeks in Bagram at one of the many camps around the airfield. As soon as I settled into this room, I was uneasy. It looked as if whoever previously lived there had left in a hurry with a few personal belongings left behind scattered throughout the room. There was a negative vibe in general. I just shrugged it off as post-mission jitters and figured that person was sent home early for something.

That first night, I couldn’t help but feel something was watching me, and that’s not a feeling you like when you’re all alone in a strange room inside a warzone. I finally forced myself to sleep and had a strange dream over and over again. In the dream, I walked into a dark room dimly lit with candles laid out in a circle surrounding this podium. On the podium sat a ledger book with a quill and ink bottle.

I walked up to the podium and began writing something. It was then that I felt a large hand press down on my right shoulder as if it was a person trying to wake me up. I woke up from that nightmare so quickly that I almost hit my head on the unoccupied bunk above me. I looked over, and a large man was wearing a soviet Russian uniform with an AK standing next to my bed.

His head was obscured from view (due to the bunk just above me), and he looked as if he was trying to pull me out of bed. I reactively swung at him, thinking that I was about to go hand-to-hand with an AK-wielding man in my bedroom, only to throw myself onto the floor in a gasping panic. He had disappeared into nothing. I immediately thought I was going crazy and went back to bed.

Over the next few days, I saw things thrown across my room, heard voices speaking at night (Russian and Afghan), and continued having the same dream over and over again. The worst part was that no one believed me until my LT saw a Febreze bottle fly across my room.

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“Nick” of Tales From The Grid Square is an active-duty member of the US Army and logistics officer. He has had a long-standing interest in the paranormal and is a self-proclaimed “paranormal military historian” (a term he made up). Several of his own experiences and experiences of his peers inspired him to start “Tales From The Grid Square,” where he collects and anonymously documents the paranormal stories of military service members. He hopes to elevate veteran/military voices and bridge the gap between the civilian and military. He has authored the book “Tales From The Grid Square Volume I,” a collection of 240 such stories from across the branches of the US Armed Forces as well as foreign militaries. You can share your own stories to the Instagram Account @Tales_From_The_Gridsquare or email: TalesFromTheGridsquare@gmail.com.