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00:00Tonight on MonsterQuest, from training grounds to war-torn battlefields, a
00:05growing number of soldiers report encounters, not with enemy combatants, but
00:11with something unknown. There have been more than 700 sightings in Washington
00:15State alone. I was just hoping and praying it didn't rip the shelter off the top of
00:21me and take me. Soldiers trained to face known enemies, human threats, and the
00:26chaos of war. I've never felt anything that hateful in my entire life. But what
00:33happens when the threat comes from outside the known world? I was just
00:38staring at me. I could feel my heart hit my stomach. For many centuries, people have
00:46reported strange and sometimes terrifying encounters with what they describe as
00:51monsters. Its eyes just lit up in the moon and we're like, that is nothing I've ever
00:58seen. If I try to run, I'd be dead. Now, for the first time, some are sharing their
01:05experiences. Is there a pattern to their encounters? It was just terrifying. And if
01:13so, what could it mean?
01:21The desert sands of Hilah, Iraq, some 60 miles due south of the country's capital, Baghdad.
01:31It's here that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein built a sumptuous palace during the mid-1980s,
01:37on the ruins of another palace, one created by famed Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar the
01:44Great. Hussein wanted to link his regime to the glory days of Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled
01:50an empire here from 605 to 562 BCE. Nebuchadnezzar is also known for having destroyed Jerusalem
01:58and forcing Jews into exile. Nebuchadnezzar is a prominent character in the Old Testament
02:05of the Bible. He's the king who put Daniel in the cage with the lions.
02:10Hussein believed that rebuilding Babylon would place his name among the great rulers in history.
02:15He even had murals carved with his face, along with symbols connected to the ancient kings.
02:24Following the death of King Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon falls to a Persian force. And the Bible explains
02:31that God is responsible for its destruction.
02:34In the Bible, both New and Old Testaments, and particularly in Revelations, Babylon was
02:41described as a city of great human accomplishments. But it was also a city where vanity ran wild,
02:46and because of this, God destroys it.
02:50According to the book of Revelations, after Babylon falls, it becomes home to all sorts of demons.
02:56And the book actually reads, and he cried out with a mighty voice,
03:00fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. It has become a dwelling place for demons,
03:06a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.
03:09In 2003, after Saddam Hussein's forces are defeated during the second Gulf War,
03:18one young Marine sergeant is deployed here, and encounters what he believes is one of these
03:23biblical monsters.
03:24My job in the Marine Corps, I dealt with ammunition and explosives, and we got sent forward for the
03:33initial invasion into Iraq, all the way to Baghdad. The hectic moving around from battle to battle to
03:41battle was so hard. There was a group of us that went forward to go and help secure Saddam's palace.
03:49We rolled up. It was huge.
03:54It's an imposing, cold, heartless structure in the middle of brutal desert.
04:02The palace is grand, but empty, and has been looted by the locals.
04:06When you first walk into the foyer, there's this grand staircase that goes up,
04:11and that leads to Saddam's office. He had his 24-karat gold-plated AK still on the wall,
04:19and his huge desk. I guess it was so heavy that it couldn't be taken.
04:24From the balcony, Brandon says he could see an archaeological dig site
04:28and a building project that Saddam had not finished.
04:31We were told that it was the site of the ancient city of Babylon, so I was a little excited. I liked
04:37history. Saddam Hussein built his palace there so he could stand out on his office balcony and look
04:44down on the city of Babylon. Once we got inside the palace and realized how cool it was, then our
04:51officers were like, you know what? Relax today. We'll hit it tomorrow. I was like, when do you
04:57get to go to Saddam's palace and take it over? I'm never going to be back here again.
05:01Some guys were throwing the football. We were swimming in Saddam's pool. It was amazing. We had
05:10so much fun. I kind of wish we could have just stayed in day one. So day two, we went down in the
05:18damn basement. Brandon's orders require him to go down to the sub-basements to sweep for movie traps.
05:27Generally, you just look for like wires that are out of place or fresh paint or like a fresh patch of
05:35concrete. This is what I've trained for. In the second Gulf War, Iraqi insurgents were known to
05:43leave hidden explosive devices in abandoned buildings to ambush troops conducting searches.
05:49IEDs were hidden everywhere, in cars, along roads, and even in building walls.
05:56It's estimated that over 21,000 U.S. service members were wounded by IEDs while serving in Iraq.
06:05For that reason, Brandon works in a buddy system.
06:09It was always me and another guy. We always stayed together.
06:13He would back me up, hand me tools, whatever I needed. So we ended up going down 35.
06:20As many stories as you can see above ground, there's that many below ground.
06:27So we found the boiler room.
06:36Off to the side was a smaller door. There's something that's just not right.
06:42When you get that sense, it's usually somebody in an ambush. To this day, I'm terrified of that door.
06:51I reach and I open the door.
07:01The temperature dropped 30 degrees. It took just a split second for our eyes to adjust.
07:07In the darkness was just like a figure. It's approximately six foot tall.
07:23It was so black.
07:26You could tell that that just was not a person.
07:33I looked at my friend.
07:35He looked at me.
07:36Just as soon as we looked back is when this thing crushed us.
07:45It went through my body.
07:50Knocked us back to the ground.
07:51It felt like if ice were injected with a needle straight into the bone.
08:01I've never felt anything that hateful in my entire life.
08:06It knocked me on my ass.
08:09And I was a brain, not afraid of nothing.
08:13Terrified.
08:16Me and my friend, we look at each other.
08:18That was the first time I'd seen fear in his eyes.
08:22He saw what I saw.
08:24Almost like we had released something.
08:29I closed the damn door.
08:31We went upstairs.
08:33We sat on our sleeping bags.
08:35And then we never said another word about it.
08:40I did not sleep at all.
08:42I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there.
08:48The next day, Brandon receives orders to leave Saddam's palace and head to the battlefront.
08:56When we were finally leaving, I was actually happier to go out and face real combat and get the
09:04hell away from that palace.
09:06When I came back home, I was looking through the pictures that I had taken in Saddam's palace.
09:14And I saw this wooden sculpture and realized that it looks exactly like what I saw.
09:22And that still sends chills because I had no idea.
09:28That is the same shape that I saw in the basement.
09:35I was terrified in firefight, sure.
09:38But, you know, I knew that I could rely on the Marines to my left and to my right.
09:43This was a new type of terror.
09:46Coming up, an airman and his wife stationed in England are barraged by things they cannot explain.
09:53She was visibly, visibly shaken.
09:56It was absolutely terrifying.
09:59And later, a young officer unknowingly enters a remote wilderness with the most sightings of Bigfoot in the United States.
10:06This thing did not go down on all fours to walk.
10:10My heart, I thought, was going to stop.
10:12Across the globe, soldiers report encounters with creatures that some believe are tied to dark ancient legends.
10:26Consider a case from the Royal Air Force Base in Lakenheath, England, some 25 miles north of Cambridge.
10:33It's in East Anglia, once the home of fierce Anglo-Saxon warriors who lived here in the 6th and 7th centuries AD.
10:43That's where a young American air traffic controller is stationed with his wife and new baby in 2002.
10:50Lakenheath was my first assignment talking to million-dollar aircraft with the world's best pilots flying around England.
10:57Lakenheath is home to the 48th fighter wing of the United States Air Force.
11:03Today, 16,000 active duty service members and their families live here.
11:09Housing was a little hard to get.
11:10Right away, there was a waiting list.
11:12And then when we got pregnant, that allowed us to move on to base fairly quickly.
11:17The houses on base were really old, built around the 1940s.
11:21When construction began on Lakenheath back in the 1940s as World War II was ramping up, speed took priority over everything.
11:28There was no time for archaeological surveys, careful excavation.
11:34The goal was simple, get Lakenheath operational and fast.
11:39Elliot and his wife also have limited time to get things ready for their new arrival.
11:44We were very happy. We were preparing for the arrival of our son.
11:49We got a crib and we got all the stuff for the nursery.
11:52And it really was just an exciting time for us.
11:56In the summer of 2002, Elliot and his wife Jamie bring home their son, Elijah.
12:03As soon as we brought Elijah home from the hospital, the atmosphere changed quickly.
12:14We started noticing stuff that hadn't been going on before, stuff that didn't make sense.
12:23One morning, I came downstairs and in the dining room, there was all the books stacked in the middle of the room.
12:32I figured my wife was trying to clean up the bookshelves, maybe.
12:48And so I went to work, not thinking anything of it.
12:53So I got back from work that day and I said, why did you take off the books out of the bookshelf?
12:58And she goes, well, I thought you did it. I thought you left them like that.
13:04It definitely stuck in our mind as unusual.
13:09That December, Elliot takes his family to Indiana on family leave.
13:14When he returns to Lakenheath, he's stunned by what he hears from his neighbors.
13:18He's like, how was your holidays?
13:20I was like, oh, we went to America for two weeks. We just got back.
13:23He goes, that's impossible.
13:24He goes, I heard you guys the whole time for the last two weeks walking up and down the stairs,
13:30doors opening, shutting. He goes, I heard conversations going on inside your house.
13:34The walls were so thick that it had to be something going on for them to hear it through the wall.
13:42Then there are other odd occurrences.
13:45Strange noises on the stairs, doors opening and closing, and one experience his wife wouldn't soon forget.
13:52My wife come downstairs, and we got into an argument. And then so she goes upstairs,
13:58and she goes back to bed. And she hears what she perceives as me to walk up the stairs,
14:06open and close the bedroom door. We sit down on the bed.
14:09And she leaned over to tell me, just go away. And there was no one there.
14:21So she was freaked out.
14:24We started thinking, maybe this was something paranormal.
14:28We didn't tell anybody what was going on, because we didn't know how we'd be accepted by others.
14:36If we'd be called crazy, and how co-workers would kind of view us.
14:41Jamie is so shaken by the experience that she takes the baby and leaves.
14:45Elliot is now alone.
14:47And after that, I went to my first sergeant, and I told him, I was like, listen,
14:51something's going on in the house, and I'm almost to the point where I don't feel
14:54safe having a family in this house. So what would it take for me to move?
14:59Really, the military didn't want to move us for a ghost story. So we were pretty much just stuck there.
15:09It was tough to be there by myself. And so every night, I would read the Bible
15:13and put it on the far side of the dresser.
15:15One night, I woke up.
15:23It felt like hands on my shoulders pushing me down to the bed.
15:30I was almost paralyzed. I couldn't talk. I couldn't move my body. And I started repeating the Lord's Prayer.
15:37And my hand went down next to me, and I felt something.
15:40And it was the Bible.
15:47There's no way that book could have moved five feet on its own.
15:55It was absolutely terrifying.
15:57What Elliot says he experienced may seem strange.
16:01But others at the base have reported similar oddities.
16:05A 2006 article in the Stars and Stripes military publication featured interviews with service members
16:10who claimed that they had seen clocks fly off walls and also photos of ghostly figures.
16:17There was even an incident in 2001 where two airmen monitoring security cameras claimed that they saw
16:22a woman dressed in white running along the perimeter inside the base.
16:28Security forces, including a dog team, were even scrambled to try and find the intruder.
16:32But they found nothing.
16:33One morning, while alone in the house, Elliot reaches his breaking point.
16:40I was in the shower. I felt like someone was staring at me.
16:46So I looked over.
16:48And there was a man standing there, just standing there staring at me.
16:52I looked away. I looked back.
16:58And it was gone.
17:01And something caught my eye on the window ledge moving, and it was the lighter.
17:05And the lighter was just kind of spinning in circles.
17:07It moved across the window ledge and then shot across the room and hit the sink.
17:11I was just super freaked out.
17:16Grabbed the towel. I walked out.
17:20And I stepped into the nursery and looked around.
17:23And as soon as I stepped into the nursery, the closet had the wooden sliding doors on it.
17:27And they just started banging together.
17:29Boom, boom, boom, boom.
17:32I could feel my heart hit my stomach.
17:35I grabbed my clothes, hopped into my car, and left.
17:41I went right over to a buddy's house, and I stayed here the rest of the time.
17:44I just couldn't be there anymore.
17:47After this last encounter, Elliot requests to transfer and moves back to the U.S.
17:54But years later, he gets shocking news from one of his former Lake and Heath neighbors.
17:59They tore down the houses just a few years ago.
18:01And as they're digging, they found an Anglo-Saxon cemetery underneath the houses
18:06where they had a horse and the people buried with them.
18:08Lake and Heath went through a big redevelopment starting in 1997.
18:14And there was already foreknowledge that this was an area where there were some Anglo-Saxon burial sites.
18:20But as construction was underway, they discovered this very, very complex system
18:25of cemeteries that dated all the way back to the 5th century.
18:29There were 427 people buried there.
18:33Six of them had swords, or they had other armaments with them.
18:37And then two were with their horses.
18:40They were ready for battle.
18:43Excavations revealed that the base housing, hospital, police station, and officers club
18:49were all built over the bones of the tribes who once made their home there.
18:55I haven't really told this story to many people.
18:57It's kind of an unbelievable story to tell somebody.
19:01I don't know if it was a spirit or something darker than a spirit.
19:05And I don't know if it had the power to take my life.
19:08I just know that it did not like us being there.
19:13Coming up, a young officer encounters a mysterious beast on a remote ridge.
19:19I was hyperventilating, just hoping and praying it didn't rip the shelter off the top of me and take me.
19:31The Pacific Northwest.
19:32The Pacific Northwest.
19:34Over the last century, no place in America has had more reported sightings of the massive,
19:39hairy, bipedal creature known as Sasquatch.
19:44Or Bigfoot.
19:46The local Native American population has been
19:49telling these stories of these creatures for hundreds of years.
19:52But since the 1920s, the Bigfoot Field Research Organization has been keeping track of local sightings.
19:58There have been more than 700 sightings in Washington state alone, going back to the 1920s,
20:06when they started the modern count.
20:07While Bigfoot has never been accepted by mainstream science,
20:12sightings of this controversial creature continue to this day.
20:15In 2020, a logger working in the Colville National Forest described seeing a creature he described as
20:22nine feet tall, ape-like, and weighing about a thousand pounds.
20:27Motion cameras nearby capture an image that some believe may be the elusive Bigfoot itself.
20:34Colville National Forest is over one million acres of rugged land,
20:38where deep wilderness overlaps with working ranch lands.
20:43It's the kind of remote territory Sasquatch allegedly favors.
20:48Among the tribes of this region, the Colville and the Spokane,
20:51there are oral traditions of hairy men in the mountains.
20:54He isn't just a legend or a lost primate. He's a warning, a reminder that the wilderness isn't
21:00ours to take for granted. Typically shy or reclusive, Bigfoot would prefer to keep its distance.
21:07But when someone trespasses and enters an area they shouldn't, that's when they're said to appear.
21:11And that's when it can take action to defend the forest and its home.
21:18It's in this National Forest in 1980 that 26-year-old Second Lieutenant Gil Sherlin
21:24finds himself having what he says is a terrifying encounter.
21:29I was from Alabama initially. I joined the Air Force because I love flying and I wanted to serve in some way.
21:38As a young officer, Gil is sent for survival training conducted deep in the Washington wilderness.
21:46The military has what they call a seer school, short for survival, evasion, resistance and escape.
21:55It's meant to train anyone who could find themselves alone behind enemy lines.
22:01During the survival portion of the training, airmen are required to build shelter and to find food and water
22:07in an area of the forest so remote that they're very unlikely to encounter anybody else.
22:11They separated us into groups of like maybe four guys and we had like an instructor.
22:19He tells us to pick up compass heading and he wanted it all for us to walk in different directions
22:26and to spend the night there alone. I had my parachute, a couple of cans of water, granola bars,
22:34first aid stuff. I had my knife. That's all you have with you when you when you eject out of a plane.
22:41I found a place to build me a shelter. I took part of my chute and built sort of like a lean-to.
22:56What we were supposed to do was then hunker down in that shelter and stay there.
23:00That's where I didn't actually follow my instructions. It wasn't dark yet. I wanted to go look around. So I did.
23:11I had only walked about 30 yards. The tree line stopped and I stepped out on this big bald-faced rock.
23:27It's stunningly gorgeous. It looked like you could see forever and about four or five feet from the edge
23:36was an old rotted stump. I sat down in this thing and it was so comfortable you could lead back.
23:43I was saying to myself, whatever you do, don't sit here and fall asleep.
23:54And then the next thing I remember was waking to a start.
23:58I wasn't sure where I was, you know. And then I kind of came to my senses and I realized
24:12I'm in the middle of nowhere and I've got to figure out how to get back to my shelter.
24:18I stand up very carefully and I start to move around this stump.
24:28I step around the edge and I look up.
24:36And that's when I saw it.
24:40These two eyes, they're sparkling almost from the moonlight.
24:45My heart, I thought, was going to stop.
24:50It was about seven or eight feet up off the ground and it was staring straight at me.
24:56I had no idea what type of humanoid animal thing this was.
25:03And then I heard it, this woofing sound. I felt completely helpless.
25:11I wanted to get the hell out of there.
25:14The only thing I could think was, let's just start walking back towards my shelter.
25:22With no light, Gil must navigate blind back to his shelter.
25:28When I started to walk, it turned to fall on me.
25:35The eyes were still seven or eight feet off the ground.
25:38This thing did not go down on all fours to walk.
25:48I could hear it, you know, trouncing through the woods and it sounded like something big.
25:53All of a sudden I fell when I literally ran right over my shelter.
26:06I was on my stomach and I was just scrambling and kicking with my feet and clawing with my hands.
26:13And I just literally crawled into the shelter.
26:16The next time I heard it, it sounded like it came right up to the back of my shelter, you know, within two or three feet.
26:24I was hyperventilating. I remember putting my hand over my mouth to try to make myself stop doing that.
26:35I just laid there as quiet as I could.
26:41I didn't move an inch.
26:43My heart almost just quit. It stayed there probably three or four minutes.
26:51And then it circled my shelter.
26:57It would take its time like it was thinking almost.
27:02I don't know if it was playing with me.
27:06And I was just hoping and praying it didn't decide to grip the shelter off the top of me and take me.
27:13I laid there terrified the whole night listening.
27:24The next morning, Gil steps out of his shelter and is relieved that the creature is nowhere to be seen.
27:31When I got enough daylight, I climbed out of that thing and got the hell out of there.
27:36I hiked back to the trail and then met up with the other guys at the base camp.
27:40I just decided I was never going to talk about it because I didn't want people that know me saying,
27:47hey, you know, you sound like a kook or whatever.
27:50I was a young 26-year-old guy that had been in the woods all his life.
27:56But I had just seen something I'd never seen before and it had put the fear of God in me.
28:01I still see those eyes just like it was yesterday.
28:07Coming up, a decorated Air Force pilot chases a different kind of monster, a massive metallic disc that could be a UFO.
28:15All of a sudden, Mantell's plane does something unexpected.
28:19It begins to nosedive.
28:25July 1947.
28:27Headlines make a phenomenal claim.
28:30U.S. military captures a crashed flying saucer in Roswell, New Mexico.
28:34A media frenzy ensues with stories of aliens and even of alien bodies hidden by shadowy government forces.
28:45Although officials claim the crash was really weather balloons, concerns about aliens intensify.
28:53And six months later, a second incident occurs that again captures the nation's attention.
28:59According to now declassified government documents, the commotion starts about two in the afternoon
29:08when the state police in Kentucky start getting calls from anxious citizens that there is a very large disc-shaped object hovering over the skies near Fort Knox.
29:20The police contact the air traffic control tower at the nearby Godman Air Force Base, hoping that it's one of their craft.
29:26But the tower doesn't have anything that fits that description going in or out of the airfield that morning.
29:34The craft is unidentified.
29:37According to the declassified documents, the ranking technician working in the tower at Godman Field confirms that they see it too.
29:46Just off the coast, there are four P-51 Mustang fighter planes on a training exercise when all this is going down.
29:54So the tower radios them asking if they can help identify this object to the south of Godman Field.
30:02Get close and report back what they see.
30:07Three of the pilots accept, including their squadron leader.
30:11A 25-year-old highly decorated World War II vet named Captain Thomas Mantell.
30:16Thomas Mantell flew a C-47 transport aircraft during the invasion in Normandy, dropping paratroopers and also resupplying troops.
30:25He had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his bravery during the D-Day invasion,
30:29and also an air medal with three oak leaf clusters for his aerial achievements.
30:33A military report filed on the day of the incident states that the planes start to climb to 15,000 feet, with Mantell in the lead.
30:56Mantell radios to the tower, telling them what he is seeing.
30:59He describes it as a metallic object of tremendous size.
31:06He tells them he's going to try and close the gap between him and it and get a better look.
31:14Mantell informs his wingman, Lieutenant Albert Clements, that he's going up to 20,000 feet and level off.
31:21Captain Clements and the third pilot break off and they head back to Standiford Field ahead of Mantell to go refuel.
31:29The P-51 has an unpressurized cockpit, and what that means is that it has to carry a certain
31:35amount of supplemental oxygen if it's going to fly for over 12,000 feet for more than 20 minutes.
31:43Despite the risks, Mantell presses on, following the mysterious object higher into the sky.
31:49All of a sudden, without warning, at approximately 26,000 feet, Mantell's plane does something unexpected.
32:02It begins to nosedive.
32:04Mantell's plane falls five miles toward the ground.
32:09And because of the rapid descent, at about 2,000 feet, Mantell's P-51 Mustang breaks apart
32:14and crashes into a tobacco field.
32:25At the crash site, Mantell is still strapped into his seat.
32:28His watch stopped at the exact time of impact, which was 3.16 p.m.
32:34Pieces of the P-51 Mustang are strewn as far as two miles away.
32:37The press swoops into Franklin.
32:42Mantell's tragic crash captures headlines all over the world, many reporting he was a victim of a flying saucer.
32:50Shortly after the incident, the official statement is released by the Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
32:58They put forward the possibility that he suffered from hypoxia,
33:01a condition where the body and brain are deprived of oxygen.
33:04They estimate Captain Mantell passed out and lost control.
33:09Coming up, shocking new information comes to light surrounding the mysterious death of Captain Thomas Mantell.
33:17Mantell had requested hot guns, weapons that are loaded and ready to fire.
33:30It's 1947.
33:32The military has never released all the documents related to Captain Mantell's fatal incident.
33:38Officially, the cause is listed as pilot error.
33:42But 60 years later, his family learns something new
33:46that makes them question that claim.
33:50Flash forward to 2009.
33:54The technician who had been working in the tower that day in 1948,
33:57tells the Mantell family that Mantell had been in control of his senses during their communications.
34:02That he wasn't suffering from hypoxia.
34:05The technician also tells the Mantells that the transcripts of the communication had omitted a crucial detail.
34:12Mantell had requested hot guns.
34:16That's a military term used for weapons that are loaded and ready to fire.
34:21This means that he had an immediate need for armed backup.
34:24We may never know what Mantell thought he was up against when he chased the alleged UAP,
34:32or why the transcript may have omitted important details.
34:35Did he really encounter an alien life form from outside this world, or was it something else?
34:41Maybe someday we'll know for sure when all the documents are declassified.
34:50Long before modern ghost stories or alien encounters, tales of otherworldly monsters were already part of many cultures.
34:58In the Middle East, one such being is the Djinn.
35:03The word Djinn is essentially the origin for the word we know as Djinnian.
35:07Although they're unlike the wish-granting figures of Western popular culture,
35:11in Middle Eastern and Islamic mythology, these supernatural creatures are essentially made of smokeless fire.
35:18And they can shapeshift, and they can also be either good or evil.
35:22According to legend, Djinn means hidden being.
35:25They can take human form, and even impersonate the dead, appearing to some as ghosts.
35:31Djinn's are mentioned in the Quran, and also in a religious text called the Hadith.
35:36According to the Quran, the Djinn were created from the smokeless flame of a scorching fire.
35:42The Quran actually puts this at a point that predates the creation of humans from clay.
35:48Djinn are also said to have much longer lives than humans,
35:51although to be clear, they are not immortal beings.
35:54In 2003, while serving at Balad Air Base in Iraq,
35:58one man has a chilling encounter with something he believes could be a Djinn.
36:04I'm a retired United States Air Force Senior Master Sergeant.
36:07I did 26 years active duty. I loved serving my country.
36:12I would do it again because it meant that much to me.
36:15Blaine is deployed to work at the base as an air transport specialist,
36:21soon after it is captured by U.S. Armed Forces at the start of the second Gulf War.
36:25We got to Iraq. It was hot every day.
36:31Unless you've experienced that kind of heat before, it takes you about to take your breath away.
36:36I think our lowest temperature was 100 degrees, and that was at midnight one night.
36:41We still work through it.
36:44You might work four planes in a row and not see anything for three hours.
36:48We take advantage of that.
36:50So sometimes I go sit in that hardened air shelter.
36:54We call them HAZs.
36:55The Iraqi military had the hardened air shelters, or HAZs, built in the 1980s when they were in conflict with Iran.
37:04Their rounded walls and roof are made of a foot and a half of concrete and a massive four-foot-thick steel door,
37:12which keeps them at a consistent 62 degrees Fahrenheit inside.
37:17Well, I go sit down in there every day because it was like one of the coolest spots.
37:22I call it my little tranquil time.
37:23According to Blaine, one hot January day, he is lured to the welcome chill of the HAZs.
37:32We had just unloaded a 747, reloaded it, and uploaded a C5, which is a big cargo plane.
37:41I only had about 30 minutes or so before I had to go do other stuff.
37:46I remember getting a bottle of Gatorade, and I went and sat down in a hardened air shelter.
37:51There's light in there, but it takes your eyes a minute to adjust to the low light.
37:58When Blaine can finally see inside the HAZs, he says he begins to witness something he can't explain.
38:04I first saw the shadow figures.
38:10It's weird seeing shadow figures because there's not much light in there.
38:15My logical mind is trying to say, okay, your mind's playing tricks on you.
38:19Then the shadows slowly turned into human figures.
38:26And then you can actually tell details on the uniforms.
38:28They had emblems on their shoulders and medals on their chest or ribbons hanging off of their sleeves.
38:37I realized that they were Iraqi soldiers.
38:41So I'm actually trying to get my brain to process what I'm seeing.
38:44These are real life spirits.
38:48Like, okay, I'm actually seeing ghosts.
38:53Coming up, Blaine says he is assaulted by a supernatural force.
38:58It hit me like a freight train.
39:01I could not breathe, and I'm gasping for air.
39:08Air specialist Blaine Rohan is sheltering from the blistering heat at Joint Base Ballade
39:13when he says he's confronted by an inexplicable scene.
39:18The appearance of ghosts of Iraqi soldiers.
39:22I knew that they were Iraqi soldiers because we had been schooled on them before we even went over.
39:28What their uniforms were, what their rank structure was.
39:32My first response was, okay, that's my enemy there.
39:36That's who we're fighting.
39:37I was amazed, petrified, nervous all at the same time.
39:46And then I realized, it's like, wait a minute.
39:48These people can't fight anymore.
39:51Their fighting days are over.
39:53They're just now spirits.
39:55But in their eyes, they thought they were still alive.
39:57Probably been in there maybe five, six minutes when I smelled like a metallic smell.
40:10Like I'm grinding up the metal.
40:12And then on the back end of the wall, I seen this thing move.
40:18First thing I noticed was it had poking through.
40:25Then it came through the wall.
40:26It's like, holy crap.
40:29What the heck is this thing?
40:32This thing was about 12 foot tall.
40:35Purple color.
40:37It was not translucent at all.
40:39It looked as real as another human being standing in front of you.
40:44It was solid muscle, muscle, muscle, muscle up.
40:49Huge head.
40:50I'll never forget the head.
40:51And it had these little beady eyes.
40:54Thinking in my mind, what are my options here?
40:58I really can't run from this thing.
41:04I sat there dumbfounded.
41:07And the only thing I could do was keep my eyes on this thing.
41:11And then it saw me.
41:13And then charged.
41:19It hit me like a freight train.
41:23I landed on my butt, then hit my back.
41:26And the wind just disappeared out of my body.
41:28I could not breathe.
41:30And I'm gasping for air.
41:34As I'm watching this thing, going, oh god, please don't let this thing attack me again.
41:38And it went through another wall.
41:40And that's the last I saw of it.
41:43I mean, I got lucky and survived it.
41:45I'd say the whole incident probably lasted no more than 15, 20 seconds.
41:52But it's 15, 20 seconds that I'll never forget the rest of my life.
41:54A few days after the incident, Blaine looks into what it could have been that he encountered.
42:02My research and what I physically saw, I concluded that this thing was a gen.
42:06A mythical creature that had been a part of their legend and lore for thousands of years.
42:14There's not a book out there in the military that says, okay, this is what you do if you see a spirit and the spirit attacks you.
42:23You had enough trauma of being shot at every day.
42:28You didn't know if the next time you walked outside you were going to hit with a rocket or a mortar.
42:34The gen scared me more than that did.
42:40The military trains you to identify your enemy.
42:44To track, engage, and survive.
42:47But what happens when the threat isn't in the briefing?
42:53When it doesn't follow orders or even lodging?
42:57These soldiers confronted an enemy beyond their understanding and lived to tell the story.
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