I was a sergeant in the US Army and getting out from the military when President Bush ordered more troops into Iraq in two thousand and three, and I just returned home to Austin, Texas when I was summoned to my local National Guard. It told us being recalled to the Army, but the unit was already that was tasked out to deploy to Iraq was already out. I was not part of the union, so the commander offered me a waiver to deploy with the government contractor Halliburton. I knew that would make more money as a contractor, so I took the offer. Not long after arriving at Kuwait Camp Doudoha, again working with the operations team overseeing logistics affairs, we would oversee the daily convoy of supplies between Kuwait and Baghdad, a route riddled with ied incidents, small arms skirmishes, and almost constant breakdowns of army and civilian vehicles. Because I was a saw gunner in the first Infantry Division while inactive during duty and was technically still in the Guard, I was often in the convoys, manning a mounted weapon that accompanied the mostly civilian convoys. During these runs, we had a few strange encounters in area south of Baghdad known then as Camp Babylon, occupied by French troops but then designated an archaeological site for obvious reasons. Camp Babylon was set up in an area that was said to originally be inhabited by the famous Tower of Babel. Indeed, there are ruins here that did look like a massive structure once stood at that spot. I had two strange incidents happened me while passing through there. The first incident seems a bit benign, but sets the move for the second. We're passing through Camp Babylon in the afternoon one day when a convoy took small arms fire. The standard operating procedure at the time was to stomp the convoy in return fire. This was because in the past such incidents ended up being a lone gunman attempted to scare the convoy into running into id's on the road. Because of this, we are drawers changed to stop the convoy dismount return fire. While engineers look for explosive devices on the road. We scanned the horizon for enemies. Nothing. They most likely fled immediately. However, the ruins around Camp Babylon were alive with shadow figures. They seemed to move about the area. Several times we would spot the figures, but they would immediately disappear. Contractor hing beside me with this weapon commented, how odd that we are in the shadow of Babylon fighting supernatural. I didn't respond, but knew he was a mason high up one at that it was really into the arcane aspects of Babylon. I didn't feel at the time that much was supernatural. Sudden, these shadowy and bizarrely small figures did seem so, and they darted about the structure. Once the road was deemed clear, we continued on to Baghdad. The second incident occurred about a month later. At this point, the weather in southern Iraqi Kuwait I turned quite cold at night. During this encounter, we had just completed the fire on to Baghdad and we were returning back to campd Ah and Kuwait when a vehicle on our convoy broke down once again. We found ourselves right at Camp Babylon. While the army mechanics took a look at the vehicle and the rest of us took up fighting positions around the area. Strange things began to occur. Started with a strange light bobbing in the desert. Thinking as a person with the flashlight, we used night vision gog to watch and check it out. It was simply a glowing ball of light moving to where a set of ruins. After the initial contact with the light, few of us had moved forward away from the convoys see what the source was. After seeing it was self contained and not a person, we were a bit along. Then we heard sound that I will never forget. A long wailing began from one of the ruined structures foundations not far away. It sounded like a woman in agony, mixed with loneliness. On and on the sounds went while we huddled in the cold and dark, wondering what the hell we were listening to. With our goggles equipped, we used our flashlights to spotlight the ruins. You've ever done this, you'll know that a normal flashlight with night vision goggles looks like a massive beam of light. We scoured the area of a those source of the whales or the ball of light were seen. About this time we were told via radio that the vehicle was repaired and ready to roll, so we decided to return to the convoy. I was slinging my soul over my shoulder when I noticed my contractor partner was staring at the ruins in horror. He was frozen. I shook him and he snapped out of a stupor, quickly leaving the area with the rest of us. Once we were back of the camp and it was pleasantly daylight the following morning, so several of us were chatting about the encounter Camp Babylon before our daily operations briefing. It was then that I remember the terrified expression on the face of the contract so I asked him about it. He was still obviously traumatized by the event, but managed to explain that as we were leaving our position on the Stanley Hill, he saw a tall, dark figure standing beside the ruins. It was washes. As we were looking for it, he said that he felt an instant way of despair hit him and thought he was going to die. He didn't really leave in the area, His memory was in the humpy heading back to Kuwait. I now write non fiction books about haunted places for Luin Publisher, and visited hundreds of reputedly haunted spots. But I'll never forget the wailing figure at the ruins of Babbel. It's also worth noting that when I related this story to so our Pakistani employees at Camp Doha and Camp are Found, they were quite horrified. I want them a translator we called Artie. So we had encountered as gin or a damned spirit and we were lucky to be alive to tell the tale. That's intense. Yeah, worst scary than you have that. Yes, you have shallary figures. You have you know this this gin or whatever it was. Yeah, that would be very difficult to deal with, just just to see looking over the landscape and seeing all these shadowy, shadowy shadow figures. They got to be terrifying. Yeah. I think what makes even worse is he described them as being very small, like almost like a childlike size, darting between the structures. I'm sure they're like stuff like this happens all the time, but a lot of people just don't come forward with it. In war, seems like it would like, you know, if these things are true, it would be like a definitely something that would manifest these sort of things, you know what I mean. Yeah, this would be like a location that would attract negative energy or evil spirits. I mean, why that would be like a place to go if it was if there's some sort of war or battle that's happening, that would be where they would end up. It's also you know, it makes sense that like you know, military like soldiers would dismiss these things or not tell, though we still end up finding out these stories, like you know, you know, even going back to you know, stories from like Vietnam and things like they would hear there there are there are some soldiers who had supernatural experiences as well. Also, this is an area just filled with any traditions and magics and stuff that date back millennia. The very cradles with Babylon, and so there's definitely if there's gonna be a place where something old and ancient and dark exists, it would be somewhere out there, just something that's been around for a long time, feeding on war energy or despair and waiting. Yeah, the translator said it all like I think a lot of times if you have like shadow people, I don't know if people always associate that with something so dangerous, because the translator said, like you're lucky to be alive. Yeah, but you definitely seemed like he knew that this was something they should not have been near. You're just going about your normal route, doing your normal things, and it's that's terrifying. Or I had like several stories tonight where I've got Now I've gotta check. I'll check all the locks. We gotta get new locks from every week he gets new locks. This is a gatting expensive. The fact that he mentions that he now writes books about huntings and stuff like that. I need to track down his books. Actually, I believe he linked it in one of the comments, so I'm wanting to check that out at some point. What was his name again, you don't know. He did give his real name in the threatitus. It's on the book. So once I looked at it, finally, yeah, this seems like a ghost writer. I really did me to do that. Jeff Townsend. Media sees you good night, and the question is do I stay here? Will you be back? Are you gonna come back? Will you be back? Are you coming back
