JumpinJesus

Okay, this is quite a long story, which is why I posted it as a separate thread. I’ve debated posting this for some time, and finally decided to go ahead and put it out there for you to read and contemplate.

Everything I’m about to write happened in July, 1989. It took place just outside Bitburg Air Base in Germany. I’m using different names – just in the very off chance that one of those present is actually here on TFP.

This is a ghost story, and I still get chills today when I think about it. So, I’ll try to make it interesting and hope you stick the whole story through.

Here goes.

In July, 1989, we were undergoing some ground combat training. Training lasted one month. During the last week, we were on bivouac a few kilometers off base. Some visiting Green Berets had agreed to participate in our training as OpFor and were going to try to penetrate our line sometime during the week, to see if our defense was strong enough.

During our training, I was the 60 gunner, which meant I had the pleasure of carrying the heaviest weapon and got to dig the largest DFP (foxhole) in the field. I was thrilled. We reached our bivouac site and spent the first day digging our holes. We were in a heavily wooded area that had foot paths for hikers. An agreement had been made with the local government that closed off the paths to civilians during the week we were there so there wouldn’t be any confusion among the locals. Our site was at the intersection of two of these paths. Our DFPs were dug along one of the paths, with my DFP where the 2 paths met.

Here's a drawing of what the site looked like.

<img src='http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-9/831739/ghoststorymapcopy.gif' >


There were 2 people per DFP. This allowed us to take shifts at night keeping watch, waiting for OpFor to try and make it through our line. However, we pretty much spent the nights smoking and making jokes to deal with the boredom. We also had field phones connected between each DFP and all connected to the command center. These field phones were the kinds that had the cranks on the side that you turned to call the other field phones. Instead of ringing, they made a kind of buzzing sound. We spent our nights prank calling each other.

On the last night, everyone was tired as hell. We’d pretty much been up for 5 days and were ready to go home. It was somewhere between 2:30 and 3 when Jim, my assistant gunner, shook me and said, “They’re here.”
“Who’s here?” I asked.
“OpFor.”
I looked out into the woods and told him I didn’t see anything. He told me to keep looking. At this point, our field phone buzzed. I picked it up. Bill, who was in the hole across the path from us, was on the phone.
“I see them,” he said. “But they’re cheating. They’re coming from behind us. They were supposed to come from the front.”

At this point, Jim asked me if I could see them yet. I couldn’t.
“But they’re right next to us!” he whispered. I looked around but I still couldn’t see anything. The overhead cover on our hole prevented me from seeing anything on Jim’s side of the hole.
By now, more people started picking up their phones as Bill kept telling us they were cheating. Suddenly his voice changed and he started talking more quietly.
“I don’t think these guys are Army.” He said. He sounded a little scared.
At the same time Bill said this, Jim said, “Can’t you see these guys?? They’re HUGE.” I still couldn’t see a thing.
Other people on their phones started joking with Bill. They were telling him he’d been up too long and he was seeing things. I said that Jim was seeing them, too. So far, though, they were the only two who could see them.
Jim nudged me. “I don’t like this,” he said. “These guys aren’t Army. They’re, like, 7 or 8 feet tall, and they’re all dressed in white.” I was starting to get nervous, too, listening to Jim in the hole with me and Bill on the phone describing the same thing.
A few minutes went by with Jim asking if I could see anything yet and people joking about Bill’s hallucination. Finally, Bill said, “What’s wrong with them? They just keep staring at us??” I could tell that Bill was really scared now.

Eric, who was at the far end of our line, said, “Wait! I think I see them, too. They’re all dressed in white and they’re tall. I mean, really tall.”
I still couldn’t see anything.
Another voice came on the field phone. It was our Lt. He told us to quit fucking around on the phone or we’d double-time it back to the base the next day.
Bill responded, “Sir, I’m not lying. I see about 20 or 25 individuals, dressed in white in a single line coming down the south path. They’re just standing there watching us.”
All of this was being said in whispers, which added to the eerie feeling of it all.
Jim nudged me again. “Can’t you see them?” he asked me again.
“I can’t see anything, Jim.” I was trying my best to see what the hell they were talking about.
“I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all. They’re staring at us! I don’t know who they are, but I know they’re not OpFor.”
More and more people on the phone started claiming to see them, too.
Our Lt. said, “All right, this exercise is over. I want everyone at the command post in 30 seconds.”

We hung up the field phone and crawled out of our holes and headed back to the command post. When we got there, I turned and looked toward the path where Jim said these people were standing. I didn’t see them.
“Look up in the trees,” he said, pointing to the trees that were in front of our line.
I looked.

The trees were old and tall, possibly around 15-20 meters tall. As I looked at them, it seemed as if there were people up in the trees. They were sitting on the branches and looking down at us. Jim was right, they seemed quite large, and they were all wearing what looked like white robes. It was dark, though, and somewhat hard to make out any details.
We all stood at the command post looking out at the trees. A few of us started saying that we should pack up and leave right now. A few of us were pretty freaked by what was going on. How did they get that high up into the trees? Who were they? Why were they watching us?

Our Lt. told us that OpFor had cancelled and there wouldn't be any exercise.
He told us we were all tired and seeing things, that was all. He told us this happened a lot during bivouacs, but I noticed that while he was telling us this, he was looking up in the trees, too.

The sun comes up early in Germany in July. Usually around 4 or 4:30 in the morning, which meant that by 3:30, it was starting to get light.
We all stood there for a good half hour, staring up into the trees and scaring each other to death with stories of strange things we’d seen and heard while working midnights in faraway corners of the base. As it got lighter out, the figures in the trees faded away into the light, until it was dawn and the figures were no longer visible.

By 8 am, we had our gear packed up, our holes filled in, and were on our way back to base. No one said anything about what we saw on our way back. We had 3 days off before going back to our regular work as cops.
On our first night back, Jim and I were on patrol together. We met up with Bill’s patrol. We started talking about what we saw on bivouac. Bill refused to talk about it. No matter what we said, he would not discuss it. I was stationed with him at Bitburg for another 2 years and for those 2 years, he refused to talk about it. One time I asked him privately why he wouldn’t talk about it.

This is what he said:

They were looking right at me. They came walking down the path, got right beside our holes, right between us, and stopped. They looked at your hole, then over at mine, and stared at me. They just stood there and stared at me. It scared the hell out of me. They were all dressed in white robes and they must have been at least 8 feet tall, every one of them. But they just kept staring at me for about 10 minutes. They could see me in the hole and they just stared. They started walking into the trees just before the Lt. called us back. I don’t ever want to talk about it again.

He never did, as long as I knew him.

A few of us would talk about it, especially with new troops who just got stationed at Bitburg. After some time had passed, a few of us started conceding that maybe we were hallucinating; we’d been up for 5 days with hardly any sleep. People see weird shit after so little sleep; it’s true, but what no one ever explained was, how did 23 people hallucinate the same thing? During the first 10 minutes of this hallucination, 4 different people who were not talking to each other directly saw the exact same thing, not knowing that anyone else was seeing it, too.
I also remember the look in our Lt.’s eyes that night. He was telling us that we were seeing things, even as he was looking into the trees himself. He looked as if he were trying to convince himself of this more than he was trying to convince us.

I later learned that, during WW2, Patton had come through where our base was and had nearly wiped out the town of Bitburg. I was told that over 500 German soldiers were left dead on the piece of land where the base was built.

That's it. That's the one time in my life that I've seen what I believe are ghosts.

I witnessed a lot of other strange things at Bitburg, but this is the only one that I would consider a ghost story.

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"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

Dostoevsky

Wow, great story Jumpin. I've never heard of ghosts appearing larger than they were in life, wearing all white, traveling in packs, hiding in trees, or picking a person out of a group and staring at him. Do you have any insight further insight into these behaviors? I wonder why Bill refused to speak about the event other than the 1 conversation you had with him. What are some of the other strange things you saw at Bitburg? I hope some of the others who frequent this forum will have more constructive feedback for you, all I have is curiousity.

-Dost

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Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned.


It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

JumpinJesus

For awhile, those of us who talked about it decided that maybe there was some sort of cult ritual going on and they didn't know we were there. That would explain them all being dressed in white robes. When they saw us, they watched out of curiosity, trying to figure out what we were up to. We explained their height by saying they only seemed that tall because we were sitting in holes in the ground looking up at them and had misjudged their height. The only things we could never explain was:

1. How did Bill and Jim both guess their heights at 8 feet independently?
2. How did they get up into the trees without climbing up them? The were standing on the path one instant, and the next instant, they were in the trees.
3. They never came down from the trees, they just faded away as the day got brighter.

Aside from those 3 things, our explanation seemed to make sense.

As for why Bill wouldn't ever talk about it, my guess would be because he felt singled out by them. Jim never said anything about them staring at him, just that they were looking around. If Bill was around when we told this story to new troops, he would just leave. He wouldn't say anything about it. He'd just walk away.

I'm not sure exactly what it was that we saw. There could very well be a rational explanation. After all, we had been up for about 5 days. Maybe we had all taken on attributes of what others were claiming to see and convinced ourselves that we were seeing it, too. What makes me believe that it could be paranormal was that there were so many other strange things we witnessed during my 4 years there which seem to defy logical explanation.

I'll share some of them soon.

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"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

weapon26

Great story told with great detail. You really seemed to capture the mood. As I was reading it, I kept thinking this could make a great movie.

RelaX

Good post... as I was reading the end the dog heard someone outside and jumped up barking... nearly scared me half to death.
I always love a good ghost story.

Anyway, now for the not so fun part, let me attempt to answer the remaining 3 questions:

1. How did Bill and Jim both guess their heights at 8 feet independently?

They were at a similar height, weren't they?
Or they may have worn platform shoes or something like that as part of their ritual.
You know, druid cults are known to be active in Germany... and wear white robes.... and some of those guys can be pretty tall...

2. How did they get up into the trees without climbing up them? The were standing on the path one instant, and the next instant, they were in the trees.

Were you sure they were the same people/things?
Couldn't they have been similar people/things that you just hadn't noticed, or that just put their robe on?

3. They never came down from the trees, they just faded away as the day got brighter.

I guess they waited until the light was bright enough to disrobe without being noticed climbing down.

Okay... so maybe some of the answers sound as ludicrous as stating that they were ghosts... but who knows... just food for thought....

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Dostoevsky

Jumpin'...Please share some of your other stories when you have time. This one is awesome!

__________________
Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned.


It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

blixz

cant wait for your next post !

Manuel Hong

Great tale and well told. Thanks for sharing. I look forward to more of them.

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Believe nothing, even if I tell it to you, unless it meets with your own good common sense and experience. - Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha)

JumpinJesus

Thanks! I'll post a few more of them this weekend, when I'm up late and start hearing some noises that creep me out; it puts me in the mood, so to speak.

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"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

Bauh4us

Great story man, looking forward to more.

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"I aint got time for pain! The only pain I got time for is the pain I put on fools who don't know what time it is!" - Terrible Terry Tate

drakers

That was a great story and detailed. Keep 'em coming.

Hain

Blows my faint phantom story out of the water, but whatever, I might as well post the only "ghost" experience I have had. I have some filler detail before I get to that which even scares me, the logical type that doesn't believe in that which I don't encounter.

I had this vivid... vision that mascaraded as a dream and ended as something else. A dream is a random series of events that seem normal as your brain presents them.

I am in an airport, crossing the metal detectors when I see soldiers running towards me. I know that they aren't soldiers since no one else runs as they take this death run at me. The dream passes as my frightened sub-conscious mind wisks me out of harms way but leaves the soldiers' fearful presence in my memory... however I am running away through the parking garage of the airport. Yet, I am running with these new "people" that aren't people. More like ackward bulky people. Not muscled but with large exaggerated joints. A white flash happens, something that I have never had in a dream to transition to something else.

Now the dream's unclarity ends and this new segment begins. I know I am asleep for I am in my neighborhood and it isnt covered in snow. I instantly know that its night and this is the dream. I look around and I see the tops of the trees in my neighborhood are charred. A man suddenly appears infront of me talking about what has happened.

I know its a dream... but I can't make him stop or wake up. He says to me, "Be aware of times in your life that seem to dissappear. These momentary lapses will give you better insight to what is truly happening to the world around you."

I woke more frightened than I ever had in my life, and I couldn't logically figure out why. The man that I created seemed ambigous enough and was not threatening. But his meesage played over and over and I couldn't think of anything else that night.

But later that week, I was sitting at my computer, just shooting the breeze with some pals on IM like I do. I just am typing and typing when I notice that I don't remember exactly what anyone was talking about. I look up out the window (the computer is in the basement, which is raised partially above ground) when I saw something that still makes me shut my eyes.

I wish that this had been a dream.

An absolutely pale face stares in through that window at me. Just stares and looks at me. I froze for an instant. It was horrible, this face absent of color... except these dark holes of eyes... with even darker pupils that paradoxically were brighter than the surrounding blackness. I couldn't explain those eyes if I tried. They caught me staring at them and I was in their sights... I was petrified for the instants it hung there. These black smudges like a wiped tears of tar streaked across its face to contrast the whiteness of the face. It peers in with this completely ambivalent expression as it stares.

Just as details became apparent to me that, "I NEED TO GET THE CROWBAR NOW!" (I keep some sort of large blunt instrument near my bed since my house has been broken into before), it dissappears backwards like a car smashed it away.

I bolted to my room and grabbed the crowbar which is the only trusty sentinal I have and dashed outside. I searched the snow with a complete "Must beat that which scares me" autonomy. Nothing looked to be there.

To this day, at night I get this horrible mind shrinking fear that something is happening, not going to happen but presently happening that I need to be fleeing from when I remember that face. I am not an easily scared person. But thinking of that dream combined the fact that I saw whatever it was puts these hot angry tears behind my eyes. I get this burning in me that something is here and is unnoticed. I sink into this pit of unwelcomed and unaccounted fear and wait it out as it passes.

What do you think? My mind invented something there for me to fear so that I can satisfy some deeper unseen need to be part of something I cannot comprehend? I imagined some face to fear to generate some kind of self purpose? I don't know other than that still scares me to hell and I most know that I don't scare, not even of dying. Yet this makes me shake when I am not cold, and cold when I have nothing to fear.

Anyone else ever see a face in nothingness and never again only to be haunted by its cursed and embarrasing memory?

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Hain

Not as scary as yours J.J. but switch places and anyone else would be frightened about a trivial and mediocre hallucination if it was that :laughs ackwardly:. I hope it was a hallucination because I am fed up to hell with this unwanted fear that has no premise, no bearing, nothing to envoke it.

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*Nikki*

Wow Jumpin and Augi both those stories gave me chills. I am eager to hear more!!

Hash_Browns

JJ that sounds like a pretty wild experience for sure! I have to admit that I have a few questions, things to think about.... What do you think are the chances they were feeding you guys some kind of hallucinagen/drug and there really was something there but not as paranormal as you might think? Maybe it was a drill of some sort that you weren't allowed to know the truth about because then it would effect your performance?

I would never even consider these questions had I been in your shoes, as I believe in ghosts tho I've never seen one myself...only family members have, if I were you I probibly would have taken it for what it probibly was....(or was it?? )

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JumpinJesus

Augi,

That's a very unsettling story. Even without the preceding dream, it's scary. I'm not like you in that sense. I'll bolt downstairs if I hear an intruder. But a pale, ghostly face in the window? No thank you. It's under the covers and fingers in my ears time after that.

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"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

JumpinJesus

Your theory would certainly make it fodder for Tilted Paranoia. I would never put it past the government to do something like that. But us as guinea pigs? They could've picked much, much more "ideal" candidates.

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"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

Hain

Sorry to say, you werethe ideal candidates. You are men, of above average build and health, strong sense of purpose, determination, and special training to restrain from temporary fits of nervousness. If this were a test of some sort, say test psychological warfare in combat, you'd be perfect. Your reaction was probably anticipated. Your team did nothing but watch the intruders... while anything could have slipped by unnoticed.

Fear is the most powerful weapon you can use on a battlefield. If your enemy is afraid: hesitation, anxiety, all will break down the chain of command. How it was created to allow them to appear to some and not others.... My only guess is either a mild hallucinogenic or psychologists somewhere have figured out how the brain dissects the input from your eyes and figured methods of interfering with the recapture of the separate images via.... hypnosis? Beats me. I am soon-to-be engineer with some rather radical visions. The brain is outside my calling.

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kurtisj

coolest ghost story ive heard in a while...

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Fourtyrulz

Thanks Augi, I was planning on sleeping tonight but it looks like that'll have to be moved back to tomorrow...you know...when it's LIGHT OUTSIDE! GAH!

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the·o·ry - a working hypothesis that is considered probable based on experimental evidence or factual or conceptual analysis and is accepted as a basis for experimentation.
faith - Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
- Merriam-Webster's dictionary

Hain

Sorry about that. I dont sleep like I should. I sleep maybe a couple hours at night... then after classes I sleep a little more, work... repeat.

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Hain

What the man said in the dream scares me more than that face. The face was more secondary to what that man said.

"Be aware of times in your life that seem to dissappear. These momentary lapses will give you better insight to what is truly happening to the world around you."

I saw that face in the window only after that message came to me when I couldn't remember doing anything for the past... how ever long I blanked out. And the tone of impending... doom is the only word I can think of. Just the notion that I am being warned of something terrible to happen, but I know not of what, when, how or even who.

Because that man terrified me so much, I gave him a name: Sam Hain. If you pronounce it you have "Hain" like that of heinous. Look at the name and you have Samhain (pronounced sow-een in the Celtic dialect) which is same as Halloween only this is a time when the sides of the otherworld (afterlife for you and me) and this world clash (so the story goes).

EDIT: And I'd prefer it if no one uses that name Sam Hain, he is currently part of a series of stories inspired by that dream, which I hope can soon be published. Yeah I know it's cool sounding and has some darkness to it when you say it but, com'on I made that up in 8 seconds while describing that dreams to my friends. If you want some other bizarre scary names, I'd be glad to make some up for you.

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crxforum

I dont want to thread high jack but Im reading this book now called "The Worlds Biggest Secrets" and when you said 8 foot tall people in white robes it instantly reminded me of that book. In there they talk about 'Human-Reptilian Hybrids' (I think its bullshit) that are 'known' to wear long white robes and stand about 7-9 feet tall.

This book is WAAAAYYY out there and talks about lots of crazy shit. But maybe you should read it Jumpin. White robes and 'giants' or tall 8 foot beings are talked about through out it. Maybe something in that book might spark your memory or something.

Hain

Actually now that it's been mentioned, Chariots of the Gods is a non-fiction research into the paranormal and mysteries of the past--specifically with the technological advances of ancient cultures: the Egyptians, the Celtics, Chinese. Then how various mysteries can only be solved by some kind of alien presence. It described the construction of the pyramids, the extremely accurate star charts inside the pyramids, and even the map of our solar system that included not only the planet Pluto (which wasn't even discovered till the 1930's because it is impossible to see from Earth with the naked eye!) but also another planet that was distanced from the representation of the system, where certain gods came from. If you have seen the movie Stargate, Roland Emmerich was inspired by that book to create the movie. It was real interesting to read about how all these ancient cultures knew certain things about our universe that could not have possibly been known without the aid of modern technology.

The reason why Crxforum's post reminded me of this, the God's that the Egyptian's described from this distanced 10th planet "Heaven" were 8 to 10 feet tall. Now you may say that that isn't unusual since diafication usually requires the god to be have enlarged proportion, but these gods were all sitting. Usually a commanding god in the Egyptian depiction stand above their worshipors. Thesem their feet and eyes met those of the Egyptians in the glyphs, even though they [the Gods] were sitting.

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