These Men Had No Trouble Staying Awake on Watch -- They Were Terrified

0:00 – Introduction
01:04 - Canadian Army, Kandahar
07:14 – U.S. Army, Kunar
10:02 – U.S. Marines, Camp Dwyer
22:58 – Credits/SERE Story

ABOUT THE CHANNEL
For all things strange and unusual relating to war and the military, Wartime Stories covers the most chilling cases of crimes against humanity, bizarre tales, unsolved mysteries, espionage, deception, creepy encounters of the paranormal, as well as feats of valor and ultimate sacrifice.

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MUSIC
“Left Alone”, “The Shadows in the Dark”, “Deep Distress”, “What is Going on in His Mind”, “Halloween Ghosts in the Old Abandoned Hospital”, “Scared to Cross Over”, “12 Rooms 12 Vacancies”, “Facing the Spirits” and “Be Still Now” used by kind permission of CO.AG


Looking for more great stories? Be sure to check out Bedtime Stories and Unclassified Encounter:

[brunneng]

It’s funny how you can be alone in your house at 1am and completely comfortable. Then you start listening to something like this and all of a sudden you’re checking rooms, closing doors, thinking you’re hearing noises and afraid to go to sleep. 😂😂

[wht-rabt-obj]

The being able to see someone through the night vision, but then NOT seeing them with binoculars or the naked eye is something I have heard several times from many different service members that served in Afghanistan.

[tonys]

In January 2010, I was a First Lieutenant serving as the acting commander of a company from the 101st Airborne Division in Afghanistan. One morning a Sergeant came to me, clearly shaken, and blurted at me “sir, I’m not standing guard in Tower 10 ever again. You can bust me, punish me, I don’t care; but I’m never pulling guard there again.” Surprised at the lack of decorum, but recognizing as a former enlisted man myself that everyone deserves a chance to be heard, I asked what happened. Had he been shot at? Did the possibility of a night engagement freak him out?

“No sir…it’s haunted!”

I looked at him trying to decide if he was crazy or telling a bad joke. I dismissed what he said and later found out that he asked the unit chaplain to do an exorcism on the tower. We found him a clerk position the rest of the deployment and then, in 2023 I watched this video. Goosebumps……….

[mnabi]

I'm an afghan born & raised in Pakistan. It was always very strange for me when my parents tell me about the ghosts and supernatural things in their hometown back in Afghanistan, until I personally experienced them in 2019 during my Trip to my village there, where I saw the shadows walking and disappearing, clearly whisperings and sometimes shower of stones upon my room & my running car from evening 7pm to morning 4am.

[ronin]

I was in Kandahar in 2012. I never saw anything supernatural personally, but some of my buddies claimed they did. I always believed them; I never saw any ghosts or apparitions, but it always felt like we were being watched (not just by the Taliban or locals). With a country so constantly plagued by warfare, Afghanistan is probably one of the most haunted countries on Earth.

[AGJ]

The scariest thing I've ever seen in Afghanistan, was an Army Soldier running down the street butt naked at night. It was because of a crazy bet he lost.

[parsrampernanand]

I remember our tower 1 was haunted. I told everybody to watch their back and everyone thought I was crazy. Then slowly but surely everyone else on camp starting experiencing what I was living through every night. That 9pm-4am shift really sucks. Watching the sun rise on the longer shifts felt like the biggest relief cause I knew once we had light all the bad shit left.

[dobertjowneyrunior]

Had a homie who spent close to 6 years in Iraq/Afghanistan in Army infantry. Every time we go camping I ask him about spooky paranormal shit he saw in the mountains and around Baghdad. His quote was always along the lines of “think of how much trauma has happened in those god forsaken places since war was invented, why wouldn’t there be ghosts.” Always got me thinking about what if you’re watching the spirit of a fkn Akkadian or some fuck whose been trapped in that form for literally thousands of years and they’re lookin at Abrams roll through. No wonder they act up

[warpdrivefueledbyinsomnia]

As a non-smoker, I took every chance I could to go with my buddies to smoke pits. The best stories were told there, and since the pits were out in the open, the smoke never got too bad.

[Fox]

I served as an LAV crewmen in the US Marine Corps and I can’t tell you how many times I felt someone climb onto my vehicle but there was no one there. Another night I was on watch and scanning with the turret. I saw what looked like a big fire on the side of a mountain only visible through our thermals and NVG but not through our naked eyes. We saw a few things on that deployment to which our LT told us to keep quiet about.

[WhatAboutU.S.]

I was in Afghanistan 2x and I experienced some VERY VERY creepy stuff. That place is a hotbed for paranormal stuff, and it’s been I disturbed for 1000s of years. It’s a spooky place to be in the middle of the night. I still get chills thinking about that place sometimes.

[angrymonkey]

I was in Afghanistan in 2010-2011, my unit was in Logar Province at Baraki Barak where a Soviet army unit slaughtered an entire village and dumped the bodies into a well. That well was in the middle of our COP (Combat Outpost) and at night it felt like we were being followed around on our COP. My platoon sergeant told me that he was terrified of that well. He said when I would walk near it my eyes would glaze over and I would seem like I was possessed. To this day when I think of that place my skin crawls and I think that place is haunted.

[phenomagator]

This is the kind of content I love finding online. The modern day version of sitting around the campfire with your tribe as travelers from far away lands recount tales of wonders and horrors beyond imagining.

[johnmurray]

I was stationed at Dwyer in 2009. We didn't have the ANA at the time and not many towers were manned. It was definitely a quiet and eerie place. With the bloody history of Afghanistan, I'm not surprised there are ghost stories. Kudos to Wartime Stories for bringing these stories to life. I look forward to more from Afghanistan.

[jakemensik]

Another State Trooper and myself were working one stretch of road for about 2 weeks. On this road there was an old little barn. Not decrepit or anything like that, just an old sitting barn. We stopped by one night to sit and talk bullshit as it was a cold winter night and nobody was out on the road. While we’re sitting there we start hearing what sounds like a horse approaching with horse shoes slowly. Startled by this we turned around and saw nothing. We then heard a gate open and a man clear his throat. At this point we think someone is there so we announce ourselves as not to startle him in case he didn’t see us. We heard nothing back but got this ominous feeling of just get the fuck out of here energy. Neither one of us said anything but at the same time we ran back to our cars and sped off. One of the weirdest fucking things I’ve ever experienced.

[moonstoneblast]

My grandmother is from Abbottabad in Pakistan, with her home being rural behind the mountains. There was a specific pathway through the mountains that everyone was warned of. It was completely empty but at certain times of the day/night you would hear bells and dancing, as if hundreds of people were celebrating a wedding. My grandma not believing this as a young girl, took off to explore, and stood between trees curiously away from the large majority of civilization peering through the path seeing nothing but greenery and trees. And then she heard loud drums, bells and jingles of anklets that dancing women wore, moving towards her along with laughter with absolutely NOTHING in sight ahead of her for kilometers . She turned and simply ran.

She used to recite a lot as a child and once as she set by a stream near the beginning of a forest and was reading Quran loudly. She was all alone as her mother was working in the fields behind her. She then heard voices hovering around her speaking in tongues with an accent very similar to Hindko/ Urdu. She only managed to catch, "what a cute girl" with other voices saying "we want her...". This would mark the beginning of her possession which exorcists claimed to be 'not one person, but an entire family of djinn' that would then be exorcised, however, she would run into one the members of this family time to time.

She remembers seeing a tall lady with thick black hair and in a yellow sari smiling and hovering above ground like one admires their child. Even now it's interesting that women in that region didn't typically wear Sari's at the time. Her skin although was fair was still slightly more tan then the woman in that region, it was almost as if she were from a more warmer part of the country? This was also in winter time so her light sari would've caused her to freeze

(what's interesting is that she doesn't remember the conversations with these *things*? and only vaguely remember encountering them, she only remembers what the woman in the sari looked like)

[craigcarlock]

This may be one of YouTube's most binge-worthy channels! Every single video is so well done, from narration to artwork. Great content!

[matthewskinner]

Never forget one of the older Sgt’s casually telling a few of us when having a smoke one night, that when he was deployed on Op Herrick in 2009 that after a particularly heated shura that the elder had placed a curse on his platoon. No one really thought anything about it until people started seeing things at night, a lot of the time it was put down to lack of sleep and stress due to being deployed. Soldiers would see shadowy figures, standing facing towards to whoever would be on watch. He also said shortly after they started having people be injured or killed, and a few of the newer guys started to get spooked about the curse that elder had placed on the platoon was real. The older guys viewed it with typical sense of dark British humour, so didn’t take it seriously.

[Jan]

I lived in an army quarter that was once used as an emergency morgue after a disaster in WW1. We lasted just over a year there until we moved across the street to get away from all the 'goings on'! Hall lights coming on when returning from work, (kind of helpful), doors opening for our toddler son, (who would see 'people' in the house), swinging light shades, bangs and thuds upstairs, footsteps dragging around our bed in the night, (as loud and real as you like, only to quickly turn the lights on to nothing there, then lying to ourselves it was just the curtains swishing😳) The nursery, very warm instantly turning frigid cold, (on several occasions), constantly feeling you are being watched. The estate warden knew before we moved in...we weren't the first family to demand a house move!!

[EnigmaG]

This was some time ago. My wife's best friend's ex boyfriend was a sergeant in the British army. He served a few tours in the middle east and killed people in combat. Every time my wife's dog saw him he barks so badly as if he saw something we couldn't see, that dog never barks and always very chilled. This make me wonder the guy propably brought something back during his tours.