I would like to start a military-themed "creepy thread."

Post creepy stories from your own military service or that of someone you know, or post stories you read about.

I will kick things off with this true story, which is fully recounted in the book SILENT STEEL about the fateful loss of the USS SCORPION in 1968.

***

Axel Christiansen, a Danish immigrant, was tired.

He lay down for a nap, and soon fell into a deep sleep, whereupon he experienced a vivid and haunting dream.

In the dream, he was standing in a snow covered field, and his son, twenty six year old Mark Christiansen, suddenly appeared to him.  There was
something very haunting about the look in Mark’s eyes, as he stared at him for a moment, without speaking.

And then, after the silence, Mark spoke.

“Take care of my children” said Mark, and then he turned and trudged off into the snow, and as Axel watched, he disappeared into thin air.

Axel awoke with a terrible start, his heart racing from the odd dream.  What was the significance of it?  Why had he dreamt of seeing his son in
a field, and then seen him disappear?  Why the ominous sounding request from his son?

He sat up, and gradually, his heart rate returned to normal.  He knew that his son Mark, a Machinist’s Mate in the United States Navy serving aboard
the nuclear submarine USS SCORPION, was away at sea, on an extended cruise in the Atlantic Ocean.

It was May 22nd, 1968, and Axel knew that his son was due home in a few days.

He tried to put the dream out of his mind, but the memory of it lingered on.

Not for merely for hours.

For years.

Unbeknownst to Axel Christiansen at the time, at nearly the same time he was having this dream, the USS SCORPION had sunk with all hands on board in the mid Atlantic Ocean.

IN SOLEMN MEMORY OF THE CREW OF THE USS SCORPION, SSN-589, MYSTERIOUSLY LOST AT SEA WITH ALL HANDS ON 22 MAY 1968.

Possible causes for loss of SSN-589:

- A hot running warshot in the forward torpedo room, which caused the skipper to put on an emergency turn of one eight zero degrees to try and activate the anti-circular run switch, with the sub failing to complete the turn
before the warshot detonated.

- A failure of a commode or waste removal valve, which caused a catastrophic flooding casualty that was unrecoverable.  Similar to the THRESHER disaster, this might have scrammed the reactor.

Those two were the most likely.

The horror...

the horror...

Okay, as bad as Marlon Brando's acting in that movie was, that isn't really what I had in mind.

I know, but I'm the FPNI king and it was yet another masterpiece.

Proceed sir

It was pretty cool for a first post.

A few buddies convinced a SPECIAList that a brand new guard tower was haunted.  He was legitamitly scared of that tower, and refused to pull a shift in.  Worked out well for them, since it had a working heater.

When I was NCOIC of a small Quick Reaction Force in Korea, I had some ROK Soldiers that swore up and down they could see shadow people near the fence where all of the guard towers were during an exercise. We searched forever with Nods, and the ANPVS scopes on the Saws. We even lit up the search lights, and none of us saw anything. They were genuinely freaked out.

I went through SOI (ITB..... Geiger) In 2009 and one story I remember being told by the instructors was of a homeless man who lives in the woods by the ranges...Apparently he hitched a ride with a construction crew truck to come through to gate..Some how made it out to the ranges......At night when your on a range and leave your shit in your tent, or even in your tent he comes and steals your MREs and other shit like fleeces to survive.

lol...One night during pre deployment for afghanistan I was standing around with a bunch of other guys just talking and whatnot...Something weird flew over head, kind of like a shooting star, but bigger..green and purple and more vivid though, it flew and then just kind of vanished...the next day it was all over the news how China shut down a bunch of their airports because of a UFO sighting.

Hardstand 21 aka the haunted hardstand at RAF Mildenhall.  Fairly well-known to the members stationed there and the Herk crews who pulled constant rotations out of Mildenhall for several decades.





In 1969 a crew chief had been having on-going marital issues with his wife, stateside.  On day he got drunk and caused some issues leading to arrest and confinement to quarters.  He sneaks out, onto the flightline, and cranks up a Herk and takes off for home.  Another Herk and several fighters were launched to try and contact him and get him back to land.  After multiple course changes he goes down in the English Channel.  Still some speculation he may have been shot down.  Some wreckage recovered.  His body was not found.





Over the years all sorts of strange shit has been reported at that hardstand.  Power units starting up by themselves, turning off by themselves, Herks with no power units and no one working on them with lights on, etc...  and the occasional sightings of a shadow person while working aircraft on that site.



 
 

This one time in boot camp........

Song to listen to while reading:

Stan Ridgway - Camouflage~Full Length


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgRXdozljRs


Lyrics Sample:

I was a PFC on a search patrol huntin' Charlie down
It was in the jungle wars of '65
My weapon jammed and I got stuck way out and all alone
And I could hear the enemy movin' in close outside
Just then I heard a twig snap and i grabbed my empty gun
And I dug in scared while I counted down my fate
And then a big marine, a giant with a pair of friendly eyes
Appeared there at my shoulder and said wait

When he came in close beside me he said,
"Don't worry, son, I'm here,
If Charlie wants to tangle now he'll have two to dodge."
I said, "Well thanks a lot."
I told him my name and asked him his
And he said, "The boys just call me Camouflage."

Ect.....

About 4 years ago...

A young NCO and soldier were pulling CQ.  It was a Friday night, so normal shenanigans ensued.  Your random naked drunk Joe running through the B's.  A fight or two.  Hell, even one guy who decided to use the floor as his toilet.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

Well, until the room across from the CQ desk started having grunts coming out of it.  It was about 4 am, so most of the drunks have passed out.  This particular room had its door propped open.  The NCO knocked, no response.  The grunts became louder.  The NCO then walks into the room.  Expecting to see some kind of fat chick getting railed...he instead sees....

One man, tied down to the bed post....the other man...Well...you get the picture.

Needless to say, this is why 13F's are gay.

Meh, I saw a UFO over Ramadi in 2004, does that count?

I pulled ICBM crew for close to 4 1/2 years.  The capsules were ancient, 60s vintage, and fairly noisy with motor generators running, valves clanking, etc.  When you got on crew and changed over, you'd take custody of the site and missiles and send the off-going crew on their way.  Once things get settled and assuming nothing is going on, you  fall into the standard sleep shift.  When I was new, I always got stuck working at night because you obviously don't want the new guy messing up something important like maintenance that takes place during the day.

I'm on another night shift at a site I hadn't been to yet, boring as hell.  The lights are off, I'm facing the TV with my back to the catwalk that leads into the enclosed portion of the capsule.  About 0230 local time I'm watching "Married With Children" when it happens.  I hear a bang so loud behind me that I immediately make myself small in my seat so whatever "it" was couldn't see me .  Turned out it was a shutoff valve out there that was sticky and make some racket, but it was creepy every single time, even though you knew it was going to happen.  Lots of other fairly creepy stuff, maybe someday I'll write a book
Obligatory pic:

One of my battalion's patrol bases was in a location where some shiites burned a bunch of sunnis to death, and the building itself was pretty sketchy. It never bothered me the nights I slept there, but there was talk of the place being haunted and the guys used to fuck with each other's heads during shifts.

until doing some research after reading your post, I always thought the "stolen Herk story" was a USAF urban legend. Turns out that C-130E 63-7789 was in fact stolen from Mildenhall by SSgt Paul Meyer in 1969

They ran out of hamburgers at the BAF DFAC and I had to eat a turkey burger.

The horror. The horror.

In Iraq at a failed ambush site, LSA something (Anderson?).  Dudes got f-ed up and never had a chance.  There was a rotten dead body smell since they were buried there.  I got a bad case of dysentery or whatever it was that was going around.  In my delirium I swore the brakes from the 7 tons were the wails of the dead.

ETA: Any room that had a hook in the ceiling was generally bad.

I always get sucked into these "creepy" threads.

IN for the good stories.

Have never heard the part of the story about the haunted hardstand occurences.  But I did hear a story about an F-4 out of RAF Bentwaters that same date and time that came back to base and had to fill out a report about the missile that fell off the plane while it was in flight over the English Channel.

Ft. Indian Town Gap, PA...

No shit there I was.  Serving as a proctor for the land nav portion of the EFMB.  For days the crew marked out the course adhereing to the standards.  We found the foundations of an old town throughout the woods.  All is going well until the first night of the night portion of the land nav.  Never had a problem the days leading up to this.  As proctor, we had to roam throughout the woods to ensure compliance of the canidates.  We had a rendevous point for cadre which was the hardball road north of the course.  I am walking through the woods and theat creepy feeling creeps in.  I truly beleive I am seeing shit.  I justify it as light from the moon reflecting throught the trees and shit.  As I press on I get more and more creeped the fuck out.  I decide I am a pussy and head for the hard ball.  ALL THE CADRE ARE THERE.  They ask me what took me so long and we all relate as we describe seeing shit and felling creeped out.  Mind you we all have been there for days setting the course up with no issue.  An MP pulls up after seeing us gathered on the side of the road, asks what unit we are with and wants to know what we were doing.  I tell him land nav for the NARMC EFMB.  He laughs and states, and I shit you not "I don't know why you guys chose this course, its haunted as hell."  He proceeds to tell us the story of The Blue Eyed Six and their murder in the old town there (hence the foundations).  He then says a women took her kids here and killed them and then herself.  A hiker fell down a ravine and died and on and on.  There is a grave of one of the blue eyed six murders as they hung them all on the property.  Google it and you will see.  Crazy!

Ok ive thought of something


During a COP build in AFG i was laying down on my cot, after finishing my 2200-0200 shift.  It was summer and i was sleeping outside and refused to sleep in a tent we had up because it was too hot.

I took off my glasses (im blind as a bat with out them) and laid on my back and stared at the stars as best as i could see them.  When all of a sudden i noticed a light in the sky grow brighter and brighter until it was almost blinding.  The light was a bright, yellowish, so my first thought was a flare from an aircraft, but it was static, all it did was grow brighter.  At this point my curiosity its peeked so i scramble for my glasses and by the time i get them on the light was gone.  Once i had my glasses on i listened for an aircraft, or anything but nothing.  They flew by often enough to notice when they are flying around and when they arent.

At this point i assumed it was a meteor or something, but freaked myself out by believing the only way i wouldnt notice it moving is if was heading straight for me.
That or a distance star going super nova, which if it was i kick myself for having bad vision or not getting my glasses on for witnessing such a rare event.

Personal knowledge or scuttlebutt?  C'mon man, details.



 

I kid I kid..... I always thought that was a tall tale till I looked it up. Boy had some balls, not much in brains though. What did he think he was going to make it all the way across the pond in an E model with full headwinds without refueling on the eastern coast? I bet he didn't even have the aux tanks topped off.

Ft Lewis during a STX....my turn to pull shift in the turret of the stryker. I swear to fucking God I saw Sasquatch that night. I SWEAR IT

The Blue Eyed Six were hanged at the Lebanon County Jail in Lebanon, not at the Moonshine Church which is on Ft. Indiantown Gap. Now that murder of the old man by the Blue Eyed Six did happen on what today is FIG land.....aside from that though, cool story

Not really "creepy" but heart-stopping.......

Woke up one day, went to the bathroom and saw a bunch of Police/yellow tape surrounding a bunch of trailers but didn't think about it much.  My roommate and I were leaving our trailer and walking by some others when we stepped into this open area between trailers and saw what was taped off.  A mortar round had come in in the middle of the night but hadn't exploded and was taped off.   The mortar was about 30-40m away from our trailer, thankfully it went over our trailer and would have exploded away but still.

All CG cutters - and I'd guess Navy ships as well - have a creepy-as-all-fuck space somewhere on the ship.  Something about that place will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up every time you have to make a round at 0200.


It doesn't help when a smartass Boatswain's Mate hangs the man-overboard dummy in the corner so it swings back and forth when the weather picks up...

There used to be several reports of bigfoot sightings northeast of Golf 3 range on LeJeune.

Was using google earth to show somebody at work what the area looked like and started finding people had put reports out there behind Golf 3 towards 173.

You wouldn't believe the land-bound sea creatures I saw IVO the DFAC at FOB Loyalty during my visit there.

Ohhh shit, reported Sasquatches living not more than an hour north of my AO...



 

One of my old platoon Sargent's got drunk and banged some national guard major that looked like she was molded from 180 pounds of silly putty and spam.

Thanks for that.  Stichler was buried on the southern boundry of the land nav course we were on.  Made it even more disturbing.

I never found any spaces to be creepy, there were just isolated areas where shipmates were rumored to have sex; Bow Prop Room, the Quartermaster chart room on the bridge, the lookout area on the Flying Bridge, etc.


 

Back in 97 I was stationed in Germany. I had to go record the miles and hours off our 2 maintenance team tracks (an M88 and M113) which were parked on the far end of the motorpool. All the battalion's M1A1 Abrams were parked on the line between the shop and where our tracks were. I was the only one in that part of the motorpool at the time and as I was walking back to the shop, one of the tanks on the line just started up all by itself. (made it extra creepy the way the Abram's turbine spins up) The tarp was tied down and the driver's hatch was closed so there was no way someone was inside as they would have been unable to open the hatches with the tarp on.

I sprinted back to the shop and told everyone that a tank had just started up on the line so everyone ran up to see what the hell was going on. Sure enough, the tank was still sitting there buttoned up with it's engine running. We pulled the tarp back and the the loader's hatch was still closed and padlocked. (the only way inside a tank once you secure everything) The tankers were nowhere nearby and they had the keys so we grab a bolt cutter and cut the lock. We get inside and shut it down and everyone is kind of spooked on how this thing got started up. So we poke around for a few minutes, find nothing else out of the ordinary then put our own lock on it to secure it. As we're walking away, the damn thing starts up on it's own again. From totally powered off to engine running all on it's own.

We got the BMO, Maint chief, A Co. CO and a few other people up there and all of them were able to witness the same behavior. Fucking creepy. In the end it turned out to be a bad power distribution box but from that time on, Alpha 23 was always branded as being the haunted tank. The crew changed the name on the gun tube to "Apparition".

From the ass end of LeJeune...Was headed off to the ramp one morning and listened to some broad on NPR (I think I left it there after listening to Car Talk on the weekend) start talking about how she lived in Courthouse Bay back years ago, and how the only way to get there was by taking the ferry across New River.  She started talking about how things would turn up missing at the house, how things would move, and how the area was known to be inhabited by poltergeists.  Then she dropped that topic and yammered on about how her cat followed her after she moved, as if that was interesting to anyone but ... oh, wait, it was NPR.

While ramp extensions and water treatment/containment stuff was being built in 2003-2005, we were told that bodies from the 1600s were being dug up by the ramp.  The whole reason it was called Courthouse Bay was because there was a courthouse there back in the 1600s.  Apparently they'd buried people back there as well.

Guys who were assigned guard sometimes reported seeing ghosts walking around.  Specifically a spectral woman.  Never saw any myself.

There were some freaky noises that came out of the swamp and the bay sometimes, in particular something that sounded like a woman screaming for help.  A buddy of mine passed on to him what a salt-dog had told them years ago - it was some kind of critter that makes that noise.  I'd guess a fox, given their penchant for making weird-ass noises.

Town Point was a freaky place.  It's at the ass end of the ass end of LeJeune, and there was a town there back in the 1600s.  1660s, IIRC.  A bunch of settlers stayed there and their ship turned back to England.  A couple years later, the ship returned, and the town was gone - wiped out by a hurricane.  Wasn't quite Roanoke-style, because they moved to other surrounding communities, but still weird.

--
Apricots are the fucking devil.

Another report from nearby, not the one I was thinking of.  Full report at the link:
http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=32444

Yep.  Some stories/ legends/ myths have a background in fact.  Not sure I believe all of the "haunted" stories however.



 

I remember one Arfcommer finding a body during a training exercise.

Alright I'll play along.

Back when I was stationed in RAF Mildenhall in the UK, one of my Electrical and Environmental systems buddies was telling me a story about a KC-135 he'd worked while stationed in Fairchild AFB, Washington. According to him, the jet was always quirky and was always hard broke for one reason or another. He was working mid shift (11pm-0700) one winter and was stuck working on an instrument panel dimmer in the boom pod. Shitty thing about the boom pod is that you're in a hole about 80 feet back down the end of a long metal tube that has hollow floors and no windows except for the boom operators window. Anyway, Joe was back working this dimmer when all of a sudden power shuts off in the jet. There's only two was to do that, kill external power or shutdown the power unit. So Joe climbs outta the boom pod and makes his way to the front of the jet. He said he could hear the -86 still running so he new he "should" have power. He reached up to cycle the external power toggle switch and boom, power comes on before he even touches it. He apparently thought that was weird but didn't get off the jet so he proceeded back to the boom pod to finish up. Once he climbed down back in the hole and started closing up panels, boom, power shuts off again. He's thinking WTF. Someone has got to be messing with me. He climbed back outta the pod and made his way back to the cockpit. Same shit except once he got to the Nav seat, power came back on again, what...the...hell. Well at this point he's pretty freaked out (I woulda left the first time) so he decided to turn this crap over and let dayshift deal with it. He made his way back down the cargo bay to the boom pod and started grabbing his tools and T.O.s. Boom, power goes out a third time. At this point he said it was pretty much fo time and he needed off the jet NOW. That's when he heard footsteps running down the cargo bay towards him as he was standing next to the APUs. He said he started screaming like his hair was on fire and he felt this cold chill go through him. Suddenly the cargo lights came back on.  Scariest shit I've ever heard about a plane. He got off there and refused to work it alone during the time he was at Fairchild. He found out later that apparently a boom operator had been killed on that jet by being sucked out a sextant observation windows and was beat to death on the jet. We no longer have those windows on the jets since they were capped via a modification...

I was staff anesthesiologist at David Grant Medical Center, Travis AFB, CA, circa 1998.  Patient arrives for routine elective surgery in the preop holding area.  I notice that he's from Nellis AFB, NV, so I say, "Hey, it must be pretty cool to be stationed at Nellis.  Probably see some interesting things there."

"I had no choice."

"What?"

"I had no choice.  My father was stationed at Nellis, and I was told from a young age that I had to join the Air Force and be stationed there also.  I had no choice."

"Um...So that...never mind..."

Freaked me out, to say the least.  This was while "The X-Files" was still on TV.

We even passed around that story on the 100th side!!

As I remember it he wasn't ever actually pointed in the correct direction to get back to the States.  Something like going over towards London, then to the NW, then back over the Channel...  
Yeah - unauthorized canning was a possibility for some of it.  Some of the cases of power units turning off at random intervals, being replaced and the same happening with the replacements all night... one unit a few times I could see as another crew chief screwing with his buddies.  The multiple units all night?  Not sure what to think about that one.  As I mentioned to beamy - not sure I buy the "haunted" stuff, but there was some weirdness that happened once in a while.





 
 
 

Why are they (you) wearing seatbelts?   I have zero experience or knowledge of the space/missile career field.  Just curious.

Recon did enjoy doing side straddle hops in the wastewater ponds.