**5 Military Paranormal Encounters That Defy Explanation — Transcript & Summary | SozAI** Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/military-paranormal-encounters-defy-explanation/ Former Navy SEAL Scott recounts a chilling paranormal military encounter in northern Iraq during the fight against ISIS. ## Key Takeaways - Military operations can intersect with cultural heritage protection in conflict zones. - Paranormal or unexplained phenomena have been reported by military personnel in combat zones. - ISIS targeted ancient heritage sites as part of their campaign of terror. - The strange injuries on ISIS fighters defy conventional explanation and suggest something beyond normal combat. - Such encounters leave lasting psychological impacts on soldiers. ## What the video covers - Scott, a former Navy SEAL, shares a story from northern Iraq during Operation Inherent Resolve against ISIS. - ISIS fighters were targeting ancient Iraqi heritage sites, including those protected by UNESCO. - Scott's team intercepted an ISIS group escorting a prisoner, Maryam, a former Mosul History Museum staffer. - They found Maryam dead and tortured inside a cave, with signs of partial decapitation. - The ISIS fighters were found dead in the cave with bizarre injuries: severely burnt skulls but minimal other wounds. - No ISIS fighters were present when Scott's team arrived, and no clear explanation for the strange deaths was found. - The cave had ancient inscriptions and a strong smell of blood and burnt meat. - The encounter left Scott and his team stunned and unable to explain the supernatural-like damage to the ISIS fighters. - The story highlights the intersection of military operations, cultural heritage protection, and unexplained phenomena. - The video is part of a series exploring military paranormal encounters. ## Chapters 1. 00:00 Introduction and Background 2. 02:33 ISIS Prisoner and Heritage Site Threat 3. 04:54 Discovery of Maryam's Death 4. 06:57 Exploring the Cave and Finding ISIS Fighters 5. 09:00 Unexplained Injuries and Paranormal Implications 6. 10:00 Aftermath and Reflection Answers ## Questions about this video Who is Scott and what is his military background? Scott is a former Navy SEAL who served in SEAL Team 1 during the mid-2010s, with deployments to Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and the Philippines. What was the mission involving ISIS fighters in northern Iraq? Scott's team was tasked with intercepting an ISIS platoon escorting prisoners, including Maryam, to prevent executions and protect ancient Iraqi heritage sites. What paranormal elements were reported during the encounter? Scott's team found ISIS fighters dead with severely burnt skulls but minimal other injuries, no enemy presence, and an eerie burnt meat smell, all defying conventional explanation. ## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown 00:10 Speaker A My name's Scott. I'm former Navy, and I had the privilege to serve in SEAL Team 1 for a while back in the mid-2010s. 00:18 Speaker A I spent time in places like Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and the Philippines, and I walked away from each place with a whole bunch of funny, sad, and scary stories. 00:29 Speaker A But the one that I got for you today is from northern Iraq, particularly during the fight against ISIS and what was then officially called Operation Inherent Resolve. 00:40 Speaker A Ever since the sick bastards started cutting those hostages' heads off, my guys and I had been itching to take a shot at them. 00:48 Speaker A But we had to wait about a year and a half to get that chance, and by then, the good guys were already starting to put the squeeze on them. 00:55 Speaker A ISIS was no longer a threat in Baghdad, and a combination of Kurdish Peshmerga and Arab militias were slowly forcing them back towards their regional capital Mosul. 01:07 Speaker A The caliphate's downfall was well underway, but the fanatical fighters still posed a serious threat to Iraq's people and the country's heritage. 01:16 Speaker A A lot of the time, that heritage came in the form of ancient places of worship, be they Christian, Jewish, or from even older religions like Zoroastrianism. 01:27 Speaker A And you got to remember that Baghdad is only 30 miles from the ruins of ancient Babylon, and that the country's modern name comes from the Sumerian city of Uruk, which was founded 7,000 years ago. 01:41 Speaker A All that history means a lot of their old ruins are listed as World Heritage Sites. 01:46 Speaker A Then, since ISIS made a hobby out of blowing that stuff up, command declared that any attempts to vandalize UNESCO-designated sites, and we had the green light to go after them. 01:58 Speaker A And so when intel came in that a platoon-sized element of ISIS fighters was headed out into the desert after checking a prisoner out of the Mosul jail, our collective spidey senses started tingling. 02:11 Speaker A There was a chance that they were about to shoot an execution video, in which case we were good to go on that, too. 02:17 Speaker A But this was summer 2016, not summer 2014. Cutting just one person's head off wasn't shocking enough to get the whole world's attention anymore. So a telltale sign that they were about to shoot one of their snuff movies would be seeing 15 02:33 Speaker A to 20 guys in orange jumpsuits, not just one. Ourselves and the Iraqis had tons of informants all over Mosul, some within the ISIS organization itself. So it was only a matter of time before we found out which prisoners their fighters were 02:48 Speaker A escorting. She was an Arab Christian woman named Maryam, who just so happened to be on the staff of the Mosul History Museum. 02:59 Speaker A Once we got direct confirmation that the fighters were headed to an Iraqi heritage site, it was go time. And then after loading up around dusk, we got airborne as quickly as possible. 03:10 Speaker A The flight took around 30 minutes, and in our two MHXs, or stealth hawks as you might know them, we were able to land within just a half a mile, confident that the enemy had no idea what was about to 03:22 Speaker A hit them. Now once we were touching dirt, we moved through a shallow dry gulch until we're within maybe 200 m. 03:29 Speaker A Close enough to see at least seven or eight flatbeds parked outside the mouth of the cave. 03:35 Speaker A The sun sets fast in that part of the world, meaning it was almost full dark by then. And since we were headed into what looked like some kind of cave system, we pulled down our NVGs and then pushed towards its mouth. 03:47 Speaker A The first thing we were looking for were any sentries, but since a lot of ISIS guys weren't anything approaching professional soldiers, it didn't raise any red flags to see that they hadn't posted any. 03:59 Speaker A We kept on pushing forward, covering each other as we moved, and then by the time we got to the mouth of the cave, we could all smell it. 04:07 Speaker A It might sound like a tired cliché at this point, but blood really does have a strong coppery smell to it when it's in high enough quantities. 04:15 Speaker A And on those warm desert evenings, when the cold's yet to set in, you can smell that metallic stink from a long way off if the air's still and enough of it's been spilled. 04:27 Speaker A And in the first and largest chamber we entered, God help us, there was a lot of blood. 04:34 Speaker A The walls of the tunnel at the cave's entrance had been sanded smooth, possibly thousands of years before, but the inscriptions chiseled into them by long dead hands had survived. 04:47 Speaker A They were incredible to witness, and for a few moments I found it truly humbling to be in the presence of something so ancient. 04:54 Speaker A But what lay in the center of that first chamber made me sick to my stomach. 04:59 Speaker A Maryam, the ISIS prisoner and former employee of the Mosul History Museum, was dead. And she appeared to have been tortured. 05:09 Speaker A Her hands and feet showed signs of having been stabbed repeatedly. Her shirt had been pulled up to show that she'd been gutted via a deep wound to her side. 05:18 Speaker A But the cause of death appeared to be partial decapitation, something which had left a huge puddle of blood to settle and thicken on that stony ground. 05:28 Speaker A Someone had tried to make a spectacle of her death, clearly for the benefit of a nearby camera. 05:34 Speaker A But neither the executioner, nor the cameraman, nor any of the other ISIS fighters were anywhere to be seen. 05:41 Speaker A Not stationing a sentry outside was one thing, but there we were, standing right in the middle of their set, and no one had so much as given us a mean look, let alone shot at us. 05:53 Speaker A We figured that they were hiding down the tunnels that we could see to our left and right, but again, ISIS weren't the hiding type. 06:00 Speaker A So, what the hell was keeping them so quiet? We split into two teams of three and then advanced down either tunnel. 06:08 Speaker A We expected an ambush, and the worst-case scenario of being trapped in there was a very real possibility. 06:14 Speaker A But, within maybe a minute or two, we reached an empty chamber at the end of the tunnel, and then got the all-clear from our buddies in the other tunnel as well. 06:23 Speaker A Only, their chambers weren't empty, and I remember hearing one of them over the radio saying, "You'd better come see this." 06:31 Speaker A We just found our guys. And found them, they definitely did. Because after linking up with our teammates in the other chamber, we found what must have been 20 to 25 ISIS guys, and not a single one of them was 06:46 Speaker A breathing. They were all spread out around the edge of the cave. A lot of them were in the fetal position, but a couple looked like they'd tried to burrow their way through the rock while tearing off their own 06:57 Speaker A fingernails in the process. That was the only time we found hot brass, as in found a place that the ISIS guys had fired their weapons, but from what we could tell, they'd either been shooting at each other, very unlikely, or they'd been shooting at 07:12 Speaker A someone in the center of the room in such a panicked fashion that either it hadn't occurred that they might have hit friendlies or it seemed worth it to neutralize the threat. 07:22 Speaker A If that had been the case, whoever got them certainly didn't stick around until we showed up, but they did leave something behind in the form of the damage inflicted to each ISIS fighter. 07:35 Speaker A And in all my life, military or not, I've never seen wounds like it. Apart from tearing off their fingernails or the occasional bullet wound from friendly fire, the fighters' limbs or torsos had next to no damage to them. 07:51 Speaker A But their skulls looked like they'd been shoved headfirst into pizza ovens for 8 hours apiece. 07:59 Speaker A I'm not kidding. They weren't just burned. They were scorched, with bones so blackened that it looked almost glassy in places. 08:09 Speaker A But I swear to God, from the neck down, most didn't even have so much as a single scratch on them. 08:16 Speaker A All six of us just stopped and stared at these bodies for a few seconds. 08:20 Speaker A All in total silence. All just letting it process, I guess. The air smelled like bad barbecue, too. 08:29 Speaker A No word of a lie, and it was that stink of burned meat that got someone to break the silence. 08:36 Speaker A Not a single one of us had any idea what might inflict that kind of damage. 08:41 Speaker A And while we didn't particularly want to stick around to find out, there were no obvious threats anywhere in the cave system. The 08:48 Speaker A The only thing left was to call in what we'd found, set up a perimeter outside, and wait for the Kurds to show up to lock the place down and take away the bodies. 08:57 Speaker A I didn't get much of a look at the inscriptions on the walls on my way out. 09:00 Speaker A I was too busy looking at the bodies than down my rifle sights as we made our way outside. 09:07 Speaker A We then had to wait a couple of hours, but the Kurds showed up all right. 09:11 Speaker A And as our team leader completed his handover with the guy leading them, I got talking to one of their dudes. 09:18 Speaker A He had to be like 50 years old because he told me he fought Saddam back in the '90s after that piece of crap started gassing them in their homes. 09:26 Speaker A We talked back and forth for a while, and his English was pretty good. And so I took the opportunity to ask him what exactly was in that cave. 09:35 Speaker A The old Kurd knew the area well and told me it was a shrine to Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love who was later called Ishtar by the Babylonians. 09:48 Speaker A That meant it was literally thousands of years old. And there it was out there in the desert, completely unguarded. Just there. 09:58 Speaker A We took some pictures of the bodies, which as you can imagine our intelligence guys were very interested in. 10:04 Speaker A And then after we flew back to base, debriefed and showered, it all became just another war story. 10:10 Speaker A See, all those burned skulls isn't even close to the weirdest story that I got from my time in the SEALs. Heck, it's not even the weirdest thing I saw in Iraq. 10:19 Speaker A If the cops came across that same scene back stateside, it'd be all over the news. 10:24 Speaker A But in Iraq, with ISIS running around chopping off heads and setting folks on fire, finding those bodies was just Tuesday, you know? 10:34 Speaker A I thought about it a lot after and we talked about it amongst ourselves, but the only explanation was that someone just got to them before we did. Someone who managed to burn all their skulls and fast, too, before scooting so quick with 10:48 Speaker A that we didn't even see them from the choppers coming in. What and why weren't our business, and so we tried not to speculate too hard. 10:56 Speaker A And then a week later, it was onto the next thing and then the next and then the next until Mosul was liberated and we could all go home. 11:05 Speaker A Years later after I'd left the military, I went down a little rabbit hole reading about Inanna and found out that she wasn't just the goddess of love. 11:13 Speaker A She was the goddess of a whole bunch of other stuff, too, as those old pagan deities tended to be. 11:20 Speaker A Inanna was the goddess of fertility and political power, things that sort of line up with the whole love thing, as long, of course, as that political power is wielded benevolently. 11:32 Speaker A But Inanna was also the goddess of war, a justice, and most pertinently, divine retribution. 11:41 Speaker A In the myth of Inanna and Shukalitudda, after she's violated by a man who catches her while sleeping, Inanna unleashes a series of catastrophic plagues on the land. 11:52 Speaker A She turned the water in wells into blood and sent violent storms across Sumeria to drive her attacker out of hiding. 12:00 Speaker A When she finally found him, she killed him, securing her place in Sumerian folklore as, and this might be putting it clumsily, the goddess of revenge. 12:11 Speaker A This meant those ISIS guys had dragged off a prisoner to a shrine revering an ancient goddess of revenge, and then somehow after torturing and killing their prisoner, they ended up fleeing in terror from something that burned their goddamn 12:24 Speaker A skulls to a crisp. Honestly, I'd rather hear it from you. I'd rather know what the hell you think happened in that cave that night because personally, I can't say any of what I'm thinking out loud without feeling like I 12:37 Speaker A need a week in a psych ward. Even the other guys said things like, "Not my clowns, not my circus." Which is probably best translated to, "Don't think about it or it'll drive you nuts." But sometimes, it's impossible not to. 12:59 Speaker A [music] My father passed away some months ago and left behind an unsent letter. He lived in his native Russia until he was 29. Now, please don't be confused. I am French, so I've taken the time to translate it from 13:18 Speaker A Russian into English. And I've done this because although I've read it several times already, I cannot decide what to think about it. 13:26 Speaker A And perhaps you and your viewers can some light on it for me beyond what I already know and tell me if these are just the ramblings of an old drunk or an unheeded warning. 13:38 Speaker A November 19th, 2015. My dearest Vika, I'm writing to you from Marseille in France and in an apartment with a view from the old port. 13:50 Speaker A It reminds me of home and the view and while there is good wine here, tonight I am in need of something stronger. 13:58 Speaker A You once asked me why I never write about the navy in my letters. [music] I avoided answering your question for that I am sorry, but you must understand that I do not talk about it here either in my new life. 14:10 Speaker A Once or twice I have mentioned the collapse in 1991 and the chaos that followed, but I fled much earlier and not simply for a better life, but to preserve the one that I had and still have. 14:23 Speaker A And so now, because we are old, I shall answer your question so that you might understand. 14:29 Speaker A I was no mere sailor, my little son. I was a submariner, the pride of the Soviet navy and in 1988, I had the honor to serve on a Victor III, K-324 to be exact. 14:44 Speaker A We were sent on what was called a routine training mission in the Barents Sea up near the Arctic Circle to practice ice-breaking, diving tests, that kind of thing. 14:54 Speaker A Our captain was comrade Kirichenko, a good man with steel in his heart and he ensured that we carried out our orders, stay submerged, avoid detection, practice firing drills. 15:06 Speaker A I was the senior sonar operator then, but you must understand this is not the same as radar. 15:13 Speaker A Underwater we mostly listened, ears peeled for the sound of our American counterparts, but sometimes we use the sonar itself sending out acoustic pulses to determine the size and range of other objects in the water. 15:27 Speaker A That night we were deep and for hours and hours I did nothing but listen. 15:32 Speaker A The Arctic waters sometimes play tricks, but then I saw something. And right away I could tell it was different. 15:41 Speaker A It started as a shadow on the display. And then a return so massive the computer couldn't process it at first. 15:49 Speaker A I thought the array was damaged, so I recalibrated. But still the reading was there. 15:54 Speaker A Gigantic, like nothing I had ever seen before. It was stationary at first, this great mass under the ice shelf, maybe, but the size, Vica. My god. It was like a mountain before us. 16:09 Speaker A I tried to keep calm as I called the captain. He rushed to the compartment and when he looked [clears throat] at the screen, he turned pale. 16:16 Speaker A The whole watch gathered and I saw them terrified. These were men who hunted Americans, who laughed at ice cracking and scoffed at crushed depth warnings. 16:28 Speaker A Religion was frowned upon back then, but one young lieutenant openly crossed himself. The thing we were sailing toward was like a colossus, impossibly big. Not a sub, not a whale, but something else. 16:43 Speaker A We stayed there, listening for what must have been 10 minutes or more. There was no propulsion sound, no cavitation of any kind, just this great unexplainable presence. 16:55 Speaker A And then, it moved. The great mass shifted, causing the display to light up with new returns. 17:03 Speaker A We still had no idea what we were looking at and could be sure of only its size. 17:08 Speaker A And then suddenly, the passive array picked up a low frequency rumble, one that vibrated through the hall as it passed over and through us. 17:17 Speaker A It sounded deep, so deep I felt it in my bones. And then as it passed, the men muttered. 17:25 Speaker A Captain Kirichenko ordered us full astern and had us ascend as quickly and quietly as possible. 17:32 Speaker A In other words, we ran. Not like proud Soviet sailors, but like children from shadows in the dark. 17:41 Speaker A Whatever was in the water with us that night did not pursue us, thank God. 17:46 Speaker A But for hours after every creak of the hull had us sweating. I heard our political officer Gennady whispering in the control room about the importance of the mission. 17:56 Speaker A The captain looked like he wanted to shoot him. I'd never seen him so angry before. 18:01 Speaker A When we returned to port, we were quarantined and then some naval intelligence officers came around to ask us all the same questions over and over again. 18:10 Speaker A And then when the questions were finished, two men in civilian clothing came to see us and one by one, they sewed our lips shut. 18:18 Speaker A We all signed statements denying the encounter and the existence of any anomalies as they called them. Breaking the agreement meant Kolyma prison or even [clears throat] some place worse. 18:29 Speaker A For years I said nothing, even to my wife. I tried to forget, but the dreams wouldn't let me and in my dreams, I'd be down there alone in the cold and the dark, alone with the thing that wasn't 18:40 Speaker A Russian or American, but older than words, older than time. You remember the Kursk, don't you? In 2000? 18:50 Speaker A We remember, but the youth do not. They said it was a torpedo accident, leaking fuel, but I recognized the coordinates they gave and how they were less than a day's travel from the exact spot we found the blip. 19:03 Speaker A Same depth, same ice edge, everything. Now, I was in Paris by then, no doubt watched by KGB agents or FSB or whatever they're calling themselves these days. 19:16 Speaker A And as I sat in my little apartment watching the news on the TV, I remember my hand shaking as I poured myself a drink. 19:23 Speaker A They said the Kursk sank after an explosion in the forward compartment, but I knew the men who served with me would be thinking the same thing as I. 19:32 Speaker A Some said the rescue efforts were blocked by Putin himself. Others talked of strange readings on the surface ships. 19:39 Speaker A One old comrade who since escaped the submarines told me they found pieces of the Kursk hull bent outward like something had grabbed it from below. 19:50 Speaker A I left Russia soon after, and France was far enough. The sea here is warm, blue, no ice, but sometimes at night when the mist comes in from the Mediterranean, I still hear that low rumble in my head. 20:03 Speaker A And you must think I'm a crazy old man telling these ghost stories, but I was there, and so were 20 other men. 20:10 Speaker A All heard it or saw how big it was on the screens, and when it moved, it was like an entire city shifted below us. 20:18 Speaker A Something that size would make short work of even the largest submarine, and perhaps not even through hunger, but by mere accident of its size. 20:26 Speaker A And I read once after the internet came along about old sailor tales from the Arctic. 20:32 Speaker A Many echoed the legends of the Pomors, the old Russians, when they spoke of gigantic sea beasts, things which slept under the ice for generations at a time. 20:42 Speaker A The Soviets laughed at such things. Science, they said, would open the way from the Earth to the stars. 20:48 Speaker A But science does not explain a return that big with no engine noise. Science does not make trained men piss their pants or vomit in the passageway outside the sonar compartment. 20:59 Speaker A My little son, I'm old now, and the doctors say my heart and liver are bad. 21:05 Speaker A I should be thinking of happier times while I still have the breath in my lungs, but instead I keep thinking about those boys on the Kursk. 21:13 Speaker A They were good men doing their training mission like we did. Did they see the blip first? Did their sonar man try to warn them before the lights went out? 21:22 Speaker A These are the things I wonder late at night before I reach for a bottle. 21:26 Speaker A I keep a map, an old naval chart. I mark the spot with a red pen and when I cannot sleep, I look at the map. 21:34 Speaker A They say the Arctic is melting now and that the ice is retreating. Bah enough. 21:40 Speaker A My bottle is empty. Maybe I should not have told you, but you asked why I left, why I never came back, and why I use a different name, and now you know. 21:50 Speaker A And I shall grab another bottle because tonight I do not want to dream. In a quiet Texas town Erin Caffey seemed to be living an ordinary teenage life. But behind closed doors, growing tensions and hidden influences were quietly reshaping 22:08 Speaker A everything around her. When the silence finally broke, it left behind a case that challenged assumptions about family, trust, and just how quickly an ordinary life can descend into something unimaginable. 22:24 Speaker A Listen to the full story over on my true crime channel, Saturn Soul. Link down below. 22:41 Speaker A I was going to start this by telling you my name, but I guess names don't really matter. They sure as hell didn't in SOG, and we never really used our real names much anyways. 22:51 Speaker A Officially speaking, SOG was the most classified special operations unit of the Vietnam War. We operated under the cover of being a Studies and Observations Group, but you learn fast that observation meant cutting someone's throat before they could alert their friends. 23:08 Speaker A We ran black ops into Laos, Cambodia, and even North Vietnam itself. They were the kind of cross-border missions that Washington would never officially admit to. 23:18 Speaker A Meaning, if we were captured, we were captured as mercenaries, and no one was coming to save us. 23:26 Speaker A Most people back home never heard of us. No medals, no glory, just survival. Mission by mission survival. 23:34 Speaker A And what follows is what happened on one of those missions [clears throat] over the border in Laos. 23:41 Speaker A We were inserted by either chopper or PTF boat in small teams, usually three Americans and a handful of Montagnard strikers. 23:50 Speaker A And then after long, exhausting marches through the jungle, we'd gather intelligence, sabotage supply lines, or snatch prisoners. Or in the case of this story right here, try to bring back down pilots before the enemy could get them north and make them disappear forever. 24:07 Speaker A Our chopper flared low over the jungle at around 02:30. I was jammed in the door with the rest of the RT Viper. 24:14 Speaker A Me, Cowboy, Boston, and four Montagnard scouts. We fast-roped into a small hole in the jungle, boots hitting mud that smelled of rot and cordite from bombs that overshot Uncle Ho's trail. 24:29 Speaker A The Montagnards moves like ghosts, and they hated the communists more than we did, and they were better than any American at moving through the jungle. 24:38 Speaker A And the mission was simple. Recon a suspected NVA way station rumored to hold a downed American pilot. 24:45 Speaker A And if the opportunity presented itself, bring him home. Intel said Chinese advisers had been seen moving heavy equipment onto the site, something beyond the usual anti-air missiles. 24:57 Speaker A And so a closer look at whatever that was would be considered a bonus. We humped for 6 hours, avoided trails, and then setting up a cold camp a few miles from the way station. 25:08 Speaker A By first light, we were in position on a ridgeline overlooking the objective. It didn't look like much from the outside, just another camouflage NVA logistics camp with bamboo huts, fuel drums, and a few guards with AKs. 25:22 Speaker A But deeper in, under netting and cut branches, we saw the concrete bunker. It looked too fresh, too permanent for Laos. 25:31 Speaker A Cowboy, our team leader, blasted with his binos for a few minutes and then said that that was our target. 25:37 Speaker A Whatever was in there, pilot or not, we were bringing it home. After sneaking back in the camp, we ate cold LRRP rations and checked over our CAR-15s and suppressed pistols before taking turns catching some shut-eye. 25:52 Speaker A And then, once the sun was down, it was time to work. The plan was one we'd thought of a while back, but never had the guts to try. 26:00 Speaker A Two Montagnards in captured NVA uniforms would approach with a bound and hooded prisoner. And they'd explain that they picked up a prisoner and needed a place to put him. 26:11 Speaker A And then, once they were nice and close, they could take out high-value targets without anyone realizing what was happening. 26:18 Speaker A Now, the rest of the team could then sweep in and support the forward guys as they grabbed whatever or whoever needed grabbing before we all got out of there in one piece. 26:27 Speaker A Walking towards the enemy with nothing but a cloth sack over my head and a knife in my boot was one of the most asshole-puckering things I ever did over there. 26:36 Speaker A But luckily, our scouts knew enough Viet to sell the story to their sentries, and it worked like a charm. 26:43 Speaker A Inside the perimeter, all I could hear were diesel generators humming as we walked. And then, after hearing the sound of that bunker opening, I was shoved into a dimly lit corridor. 26:55 Speaker A Further down, another door opened and that's when the smell hit me, like antiseptic and burnt plastic mixed with something metallic. 27:04 Speaker A Now, the Montagnards started to untie me in a side room and then on the count of three, out came the knives and suppressed pistols and we dropped the two guards with us before they even realized what was happening. 27:16 Speaker A Now, one of the Nards went out to signal Cowboy, Boston and the rest of the team and then a minute later, we were all inside. 27:24 Speaker A We knew we only owned that bunker for maybe 10 minutes, so we moved room to room grabbing what we could. Charts on the walls, electrode placements, files with Chinese characters I couldn't read. 27:36 Speaker A One room had jars but nothing in them. But then we found the operating theater. 27:41 Speaker A Surgical lamps buzzed over a steel table and on it, Jesus God. He was strapped down, buck naked, body intact but his head was it was open. 27:55 Speaker A The left side of his skull had been sawed away with a flap of bone removed and set aside. 28:01 Speaker A What remained of his brain looked shiny under the lights. All that gray pink tissue was exposed but maybe a third of it looked cut away. 28:10 Speaker A In its place, there was this mess of fine silver wires and a small black device about the size of a pack of cigarettes. 28:18 Speaker A It looked screwed into what was left of the right hemisphere. Tubes right into his nostrils and a heavy rubber breathing mask covered his mouth and nose. 28:28 Speaker A The man's dog tags lay nearby and it was the missing phantom pilot that we've been looking for. 28:34 Speaker A His eyes were open but empty. Kind of milky and confused with no recognition, just wet meat in a ruined case of bone. 28:44 Speaker A I'd seen men burned by napalm, shredded by claymores, even impaled alive on bamboo booby traps. 28:51 Speaker A But this was different. The Shau Kaungs had turned him into a goddamn prototype of something that was never meant to be. 28:58 Speaker A Wires trailed from the device to a console, and something was flickering on it. Weak brain activity, maybe. 29:06 Speaker A I wanted to believe that there was a flash of something in those eyes when I leaned close, some sort of recognition that he knew that we'd come for him. 29:15 Speaker A But there was nothing. Just the wet click of the respirator and this faint electrical hum from all the junk he was hooked up to. 29:23 Speaker A The Montagnards were muttering prayers to themselves, and we decided to get him out or die trying. 29:30 Speaker A I cut the straps, and then the pilot's body twitched as I started disconnecting the leads. 29:35 Speaker A Blood and clear fluid leaked from the open skull as I worked, and then when the last wire came free with a wet pop, his body arched violently, and then went limp. 29:47 Speaker A He was gone. By the looks of things, whoever he was had long since died on that table. 29:54 Speaker A We wrapped the body in a poncho liner, grabbing the small black device as we did. 29:59 Speaker A It felt warm, alive almost, but there was no time to focus on it. We knew exfil would be tough, but it turned into a running gunfight. 30:10 Speaker A Once they figured out who exactly was booking it from their way station, the NVA pursued us through the jungle. 30:16 Speaker A One of the Nards took a round through the shoulder but kept moving. It was that or die. 30:22 Speaker A We dragged the pilot's body for about two clicks to the LZ, trading fire the whole way. 30:27 Speaker A And then once we were in position, a Cobra lit up the tree line behind us as the evac choppers came in hot. 30:34 Speaker A I sat beside the poncho-wrapped shape on the chopper ride back. Some of the wires were sticking out of the poncho, and I remembered the way that they moved in the wind. 30:43 Speaker A But I wasn't in the chopper, not really. I was still back in that bunker seeing the half skull under the surgical lights and the pilot's empty eyes. 30:52 Speaker A What the hell had they been trying to build? Some remote-controlled soldier? Now, that thought makes my skin crawl even all these years later. 31:02 Speaker A After landing on a forward strip, the debrief was brutal. The S2 spooks took the device away in a sealed case like it was worth its weight in gold. 31:12 Speaker A That night in the hooch, I drank and the other guys didn't talk about it, but that suited me fine. Some things you just carry in silence. 31:20 Speaker A They told the pilot's family he died in combat, made it out to be heroic. 31:25 Speaker A It was obviously a lie, but I guess that's mercy of a sort. Sometimes I wonder if that black box is just sitting in some lab and if the white coats have unlocked its secrets yet or are still trying. 31:38 Speaker A I hope not. Because if you saw what I saw, you'd know that man ought not to play God. 31:56 Speaker A My name is Jane and I work at the National Archives here in the UK. 32:01 Speaker A Now, we're home to the largest collection of First World War diaries in the world and since 2018, the 100th anniversary of the war's end, we've been busy digitizing the archives and ensuring the soldiers' words outlive the materials they were written on. 32:16 Speaker A However, while working with diaries from the 1916 Arras Vimy sector, my team uncovered a particularly striking personal account belonging to a Lance Corporal Edward Wilson of the Royal Fusiliers. 32:30 Speaker A And to say his account is striking would be quite the understatement. On a personal level and having read thousands of harrowing accounts, Wilson's diary stands out as one of the most visceral and disturbing I've ever come across. 32:45 Speaker A It also includes testimony that has puzzled historians ever since, and while being of great interest to your audience, I believe you can present it in a fashion which pays tribute to the memories of the fallen, rather than exploit them. 32:58 Speaker A And so, with that in mind, may I present a transcribed selection of his entries, delicately edited for the purposes of clarity and readability, which offer an unflinching glimpse into the horrors of the Western Front. 33:11 Speaker A Yours sincerely, Jane Gillespie. 12th October, 1916. They've got us in Gangrene Alley, not far from Albert. 33:22 Speaker A All we do is wait, and I hate waiting. The guns keep firing and men complain, but I prefer it to the quiet. 33:29 Speaker A Jerry's been acting right strange for a week now. We hear them at night, but it doesn't sound like the usual sentries or work parties. 33:37 Speaker A Sergeant Lowe said that they might be mining, but I've been on the listening post twice now this week, and sometimes it sounds like they're arguing amongst themselves. 33:47 Speaker A The lads are jumpy. Rumors of a big push coming. I keep my head down and try to keep my spirits up, but my feet are just about rotten from all the damp. 33:56 Speaker A 15th October, 1916. It rained all day again. Gangrene Alley is almost shin deep. Jerry was making noise last night, so we sent up a flare about 2:00 in the morning and caught movement in the forward trench. 34:12 Speaker A They were running back and forth shouting, possibly in preparation for a dawn attack, so our artillery put a few rounds over just in case. 34:20 Speaker A Usually they answer with their own guns quickly enough, but this time there was no reply. Very strange. 34:27 Speaker A 18th October, 1916. Quiet day. No one likes the quiet ones. They mean something's about to happen and Jerry's quite clearly up to something. 34:38 Speaker A Their line looked half abandoned at dawn. Sandbags shifted, wire uncut in places. We think they're pulling back for a counterattack someplace else. 34:47 Speaker A But we can't be sure. On last night's patrol, one of the younger lads said that he saw a rat the size of a terrier skittering off towards German lines. 34:57 Speaker A We see more than the odd rat, but they're not [music] that big. The lads laughed at him and said it was his mind playing tricks, but to me he doesn't seem the type to tell tall tales. 35:08 Speaker A 20th October 1916. Something's definitely wrong with Jerry. And last night we heard the most godawful noises. We stood for an hour expecting an attack that never came, listening to the screams from across no man's land. 35:23 Speaker A We heard shots, too, though none aimed at us. At dawn we could see Jerry moving about in their trench. 35:31 Speaker A It sounded like they were digging. Dead quiet after that until mid-morning when the shelling started up again from our side. 35:38 Speaker A Some of the lads are saying it's mutiny and that we could take their trench if we attacked. But for now, we carry on waiting. 35:47 Speaker A 22nd October 1916. It happened. Just after stand-to at 4:30, the sentry raised the alarm. German attack incoming. 35:58 Speaker A It was a ragged mob, maybe 30 or 40. We gave them hell. Lewis guns, rifles, bombs, the lot. 36:05 Speaker A Some fell early, others kept coming. But when I looked down my sights at this poor bugger, he wasn't even holding a weapon. 36:12 Speaker A None of them were. We didn't hear them shouting "Comrade, comrade" in English until Sergeant Lowe called ceasefire. And by then, most of them were cut down. 36:23 Speaker A It made for a terrible sight. The man carrying the white flag was one of the first to die. 36:29 Speaker A And in the morning haze, no one had seen it. Only six of them survived. Me and four others went out with a covering party to bring them in, all in a dreadful state. 36:40 Speaker A They looked half mad with torn uniforms and wild eyes. One had bites all over his hands and face, and they kept pointing back at their own trenches and saying things we didn't understand. 36:51 Speaker A The medical officer patched them up as best he could, and now they're being questioned. 36:56 Speaker A 23rd October, 1916. Spent the day on fatigues, but couldn't stop thinking about those Germans. 37:04 Speaker A Another lad managed to speak to one through an interpreter, and what he told us has left the whole dugout quiet. 37:11 Speaker A He said about a month before we arrived at the front that they'd been digging to expand their ammunition bunker when a soldier found something like an old toy animal carved out of wood and packed deep in the soil. 37:24 Speaker A They tried it out as best they could, then tried using it for firewood, but the thing wouldn't burn. 37:30 Speaker A And then after that, the trench rats started to behave differently. They stopped running away when threatened, and then at night, they bite little chunks out of men as they slept, and soldiers would wake up screaming to find their fingers or toes bleeding. 37:46 Speaker A They set traps, poisoned bait, and shot them by the dozen, but more showed up, bigger ones. 37:53 Speaker A At one point, one of their runners took a piece of shrapnel and was dragged back paralyzed from the waist down. 37:59 Speaker A It must have been a grim wound, but their MO thought that he had a chance of getting the feeling in his legs back, and so the next morning when it looked like they were moving under his blanket, they were pleased as punch. 38:11 Speaker A The runner woke up confused, but when his comrades pulled back the blanket, they saw it wasn't his legs that were moving, but rather the big, fat, blood-soaked rats that had been feasting on paralyzed flesh. 38:25 Speaker A The corporal crossed himself three times telling the story, but it didn't stop there. Bigger rats started appearing, all deformed like the ones you see near the matchworks. 38:35 Speaker A Some had extra limbs or two heads. Others were blind and hairless with milky eyes and honed in on the soldiers using the sounds of their screams. 38:44 Speaker A The German said that on the night before their surrender, the rats seemed to swarm the whole trench and then in the morning, the survivors broke and ran towards us preferring British bullets to the things that they were hoping to 38:56 Speaker A escape. We thought that those men were mad at first, but we've all seen the shell-shocked and this is not that. 39:05 Speaker A 24th October 1916 More details are leaking out now. Another prisoner confirmed the mutated rats, said one was the size of a small dog with a snout like a pig. 39:18 Speaker A He said the ground itself seemed to move at night. Tunnels would collapse, new holes would appear. Their chaplain had called it the work of the devil before he himself disappeared. 39:29 Speaker A The men are scared and they've come to our trench, too. Sergeant Lowe said that that's impossible, that they're too far away. 39:36 Speaker A But last time I was on watch, I happened across a big one that hissed at me like a cat would. 39:42 Speaker A I've never seen that before. The captain didn't report any of it up the chain, probably put down as enemy morale collapsed due to sustained artillery, but we know different. 39:53 Speaker A 25th October 1916 It's gone quiet again. We've reinforced our wire and doubled the listening post, but everyone is still nervous. 40:03 Speaker A The captured Germans have been taken rearward. One of them grabbed my sleeve before he went and said, "Sie haben Hunger." They are hungry. 40:12 Speaker A I can't get the look in his eyes out of my mind and I I my boots before I sleep. 40:18 Speaker A Maybe the land is really cursed. We buried so many here, British, French, and German. 40:23 Speaker A Maybe as the rats ate what remained of them, they ate their anger, too. God help us if they ever turn on us the way that they turned on Jerry. 40:32 Speaker A 28th October, 1916. Relieved at last. The new battalion moving up gave us funny looks when we warned them about the rats. 40:42 Speaker A I pray they don't learn the way that the Germans did. If I don't make it home, perhaps someone will read this and understand that not every horror on the Western Front came from German guns. 40:52 Speaker A Some came from below. And I still hear the screams in my sleep. [music] My name's Simon. I'm from the United Kingdom, and I'm a research fellow at Durham University. 41:12 Speaker A I've had a fixed-term salaried position for a couple of years now, and I specialize in researching the English Civil War. 41:19 Speaker A Basically, the King of England at the time was a man named Charles I. First. 41:23 Speaker A England also had a parliament at this time, but Charles wasn't a fan and canceled it on four separate occasions for varying reasons. 41:31 Speaker A Well, the people who supported parliament got pretty sick of this, and there were a lot of them, too. So, in August of 1642, a great many of them took up arms against the crown. 41:42 Speaker A 3 years in, pro-parliament rebels set up the New Model Army, the first centrally funded and professionally military force in England. 41:51 Speaker A It proved unstoppable, and within just 16 months later, the King of England was a prisoner of war. 41:58 Speaker A But, things didn't stop there. After a lengthy period of imprisonment and negotiation, the King still refused to make the concessions demanded of him. 42:06 Speaker A The rebels therefore refused to release him, which caused those still loyal to the King to begin a sort of counter-revolution. 42:14 Speaker A And so, realizing that they had no choice but to put the king to death to end any hope of returning him to the throne, Charles I was beheaded at the Palace of Whitehall on the 30th of January, 1649. 42:28 Speaker A His final words to the gathering of onlookers were reported to be, "I shall go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can be." And what followed was complicated. 42:42 Speaker A A bloke named Oliver Cromwell took the king's place, canceled Christmas, and then attacked his former allies in Scotland just to bring them to heel. 42:51 Speaker A He then sailed over to Ireland, started a war in which hundreds of thousands were lost to disease and famine, and then 2 years after his death and after all the country had been through, the English monarchy was restored. 43:04 Speaker A It makes for an incredibly confusing and complicated period of English history, and researching it is not for the faint of heart, especially when it comes to incidents such as the one I'm about to tell you about. 43:15 Speaker A And so, in September of last year, I was researching rebel companies raised primarily from the West Riding of Yorkshire. 43:24 Speaker A People joined up with uh Parliamentarians for a variety of reasons, but some joined out of sheer religious zealotry, believing Charles I was a representative of the literal Antichrist in the form of the Roman Pope. 43:38 Speaker A Now, these men were often called Puritans, and in contrast to the long ringlets worn by Royalists, they wore hairstyles so short that they were nicknamed Roundheads. 43:50 Speaker A Many a Roundhead joined up to fight the forces of the Antichrist, including a man by the name of John Graves. 43:57 Speaker A Graves was born in Leeds in 1618, and as the son of the prosperous merchant, he was educated at local grammar school. 44:05 Speaker A Now, it was here that he developed his Puritan belief system along with a deep knowledge of scripture and prior to the war he earned a living working with his father. 44:15 Speaker A And yet when the Earl of Manchester declared war against the crown, John saw his chance to rid England of royal tyranny and joined a regiment on foot or what would now be called the infantry. 44:29 Speaker A He distinguished himself with courage under fire as well as his ability to maintain troop morale using nothing but shouted prayers. 44:37 Speaker A And then by the time the New Model Army was formed, Graves' commanding officer personally selected him as a captain and gave him command of a newly raised company. 44:47 Speaker A Nicknamed the preacher for his habit of vociferous intercessions to God, contemporaries described Captain Graves as stern but fair, physically imposing and utterly fearless in combat. 45:00 Speaker A Yet in the spring of 1646, just 6 weeks before the king's capture, Graves approached his commanding officer, confessed to murdering four of his own men, then requested he be executed by hanging. 45:14 Speaker A Graves' confession was a shocking one as was his request, but after reviewing the evidence, his CO signed his death warrant and he was hanged by the neck until dead on the 27th of April 1646. 45:28 Speaker A Graves' death warrant survives until this day and written on it are the names of his victims. 45:34 Speaker A All soldiers in Colonel John Bright's regiment of foot. And so it was through Bright's regimental archives that I was able to find out much, much more regarding Graves and his company. 45:47 Speaker A And based on the dates present on the death warrant, I discovered that the same day Captain Graves murdered his men, his company attempted to occupy a village called Barnby on the Marsh. 45:58 Speaker A And from what I could tell, they were met with fierce royalist resistance. Over the 118 men that advanced on Barnby that morning, only 14 managed to escape alive, including Graves himself, his lieutenant, and a dozen pikes and handgunners. 46:14 Speaker A The rest lay dead or dying among Barnby's muddy lanes and the marshes which surrounded it. 46:21 Speaker A Despite inflicting five times the casualties upon their enemy, the company's attack had been an unmitigated disaster. And such were the extent of their wounds that three of these walking wounded failed to survive the night, even after being taken to a nearby field 46:36 Speaker A hospital. Regimental death tolls described their wounds as horrific. Some missing arms, some missing legs, and some disemboweled. 46:46 Speaker A But it wasn't these soldiers that Captain Graves murdered. No. It was four others who, according to hospital records, had promising prognoses resulting from only light injuries. 46:58 Speaker A To try and further unravel the mystery of what had happened to Captain Graves's company, I began searching through royalist archives to find out which unit had been stationed in Barnby at the time of Graves's attack. 47:10 Speaker A But to my surprise, there were no records whatsoever of any such royalist companies being stationed there at all. 47:18 Speaker A In fact, the only reference to Barnby in any of the royalist archives was in a letter one officer had written to another mocking the Roundheads for not only attacking a place with no royalist presence, but one which had been 47:30 Speaker A quarantined for plague. And the letter notes with disgust that the Barnby occupants were cruelly put to the sword and its buildings burned to the ground. 47:43 Speaker A But while its mention is the only one I could locate within royalist archives, the letter isn't the only contemporary source which mentions Barnby on the Marsh. 47:53 Speaker A After looking up everything I could find which mentioned the village, I found a series of letters written between two members of the Yorkshire clergy. 48:01 Speaker A I learned that a church tithe collector had been dispatched to Barnby to collect contributions, but had since failed to return. 48:09 Speaker A Fearing the man had absconded with the tithes, the church sent a pair of bailiffs down to Barnby to track the man's movements. 48:16 Speaker A They returned with no collector, no tithes, and some deeply chilling news. As they approached the village, the two men broke from a section of allowed them a full and clear view of the village and its occupants. 48:32 Speaker A The fields were empty, but the village's narrow lanes were full of people, hundreds of them, and they appeared to be dancing. 48:41 Speaker A Yet, as bizarre as it might sound, the sight was not an altogether unfamiliar one for the two men, and allow me to explain why. 48:50 Speaker A Between the 14th and 17th centuries, there came to exist a phenomenon known as dancing mania, or as it was sometimes referred to, St. 49:00 Speaker A Vitus's Dance. This was a bizarre sort of choreomania that took over entire cities in medieval Europe, whereby people in their hundreds and sometimes thousands began dancing wildly and uncontrollably, and in some cases for days at a time. 49:17 Speaker A Some of these incidents, like the French city of Strasbourg in 1518, were started by only a handful of revelers, but the condition spread so fast that sometimes within just a day or two, the crowd of dancers swelled from 49:31 Speaker A dozens to literally thousands of people, and some of these people danced until they died. 49:38 Speaker A They'd collapse from exhaustion, dehydration, or heatstroke, and since their fellow citizens were unable to stop dancing, they were also unable to render aid. 49:48 Speaker A Hundreds are reported to have died this way, and the phenomenon caused such a panic that people blamed everything from curses and witchcraft to demonic possession or heavenly punishment. 50:00 Speaker A In modern times, these outbreaks of dancing mania are believed to have been caused by mass hysteria, which in turn was triggered by things like war weariness, famine, or even outbreaks of disease such as the Black Death. 50:13 Speaker A Later, the name St. Vitus Dance became the common name for Sydenham's chorea, a very real medical condition which causes jerky involuntary movements, usually following a strep infection or a bout of rheumatic fever. 50:28 Speaker A But as you can probably guess, that's not what was affecting the people of Barnby. 50:33 Speaker A It's also not entirely clear why Captain Graves' company was given the order to attack the village, as existing records state only that the orders were given and not why it was given. 50:46 Speaker A And yet I suspected that given the nature of the affliction suffered by the villagers, Captain Graves' reputation as a lay preacher might have singled him out for selection. 50:56 Speaker A I imagine that at least in the minds of his commanding officer, Graves was sent to remind the villagers of God's word. 51:02 Speaker A And yet it seems that in his efforts to prepare the village for a larger garrison of Roundhead troops, Graves and his men were set upon by the frenzied villagers in a viciously violent fashion. 51:15 Speaker A And what followed was a massacre. Not just of the 500 or so villagers that called Barnby home, but of Graves' soldiers, and without access to any military-grade weaponry, it seems the soldiers were killed using little more than household implements, 51:30 Speaker A farming tools, and the villagers' own bare hands. And they were eventually overcome, all 500-plus of them, but as I've already mentioned, almost 90% of Graves' men were killed or so gravely wounded that they were unable to be evacuated. 51:47 Speaker A And the only thing they didn't destroy was the church. And then once all other buildings had been set ablaze, the survivors of Captain Graves' company retreated to their garrison near Leeds. 51:58 Speaker A Regarding what I've learned about the nature of the village's strange affliction I believe we're forced to entertain a very frightening theory pertaining to Captain Graves' supposed crimes. 52:09 Speaker A And to me, it's quite clear that the soldiers he killed either outwardly exhibited symptoms of the mania or he at least believed this to be so. 52:17 Speaker A There's no record of him mentioning anything of the plague or its symptoms during his confession, but I can think of no other reason why Graves would slaughter four of his own men while sparing other much more critically wounded soldiers. 52:30 Speaker A Part of me believes that in his request to be hanged, Graves wasn't only seeking to atone for his crimes. 52:36 Speaker A I think he wanted to die unblemished while his soul was still free of the devil's clutches. 52:43 Speaker A Now, I've no doubt in my mind that as a fanatical Puritan, Graves believed that exposure to demonic possession would put his own soul at risk. 52:52 Speaker A And having preferred to shed his own men's blood rather than see them overcome by unholy revelry, I think he sought to follow them into oblivion while there was still a chance of him entering heaven as a repentant sinner. 53:05 Speaker A Obviously, I believe there's entirely rational explanations for what happened to Graves and his men and while I understand his zealous regard for the health of his own soul, I believe it's entirely misplaced. 53:19 Speaker A I posit this to be yet another unfortunate misunderstanding in in a war that is full of them. 53:25 Speaker A But I don't believe the same can be said for Captain Graves and his men who no doubt will have believed themselves to be set upon by screaming, dancing, frenzied children of the devil himself. 53:38 Speaker A They must have killed them without mercy and the manner in which their comrades were torn apart before their very eyes must have done nothing to dispel the idea that their enemies were in the service of Satan. 53:50 Speaker A And thus we bid our farewells to a man whose story is almost like a singular piece in a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. 53:57 Speaker A On its own, one might be mistaken for thinking it's senseless, perhaps even confusing. But united with its kind, it helps paint a picture of a brutal civil conflict and in the world where the devil himself was considered to be both very real 54:12 Speaker A and very dangerous. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday and Thursday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time and there are super fun live streams on Sunday and Wednesday 54:31 Speaker A nights. If you got a story, be sure to submit them over at my email letsreadsubmissions@gmail.com and you might even hear your story featured on the next video. 54:41 Speaker A And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations and bonus content over on Patreon or click that big join button to hear about the extra perks for members of the channel. 54:53 Speaker A And check out the Let's Read podcast where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations located anywhere you listen to podcasts. 54:59 Speaker A I also have a true crime channel called Saturn Soul. All links are in the description below. Thanks so much, friends. And remember, sleep in the night so well. 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