"_" "There was war." "We knew that there had been people killed up there." "But there was something just completely wrong about this place." "I never, ever believed in ghosts before." "Did we unleash something?" "Someone is trying to kill us." "It's gonna be them or me." "And it's sure as hell not gonna be me." "Let's go." "What do you do?" "I mean, you have this gun and all this gear." "But that's not gonna help you now." "Go, go, go, go!" "We're all about to die right now." "As commander in chief," "I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan." "_" "I do not make this decision lightly." "I make this decision because it is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak." "_" "In the marines, you live, you breathe with the guys you work with day in and day out." "Some of the guys had kids that were just born..." "Recently married, and this was their first deployment." "It was pretty hard on them." "_" "_" "O.P. Rock was my first assignment." "It was just a kick in the face, pretty much like, "hey," ""you're gonna do this training for a few months, and, boom, you're going straight to Afghanistan."" "I don't even know if I wanted to do this or not." "_" "The squad was led by Sergeant Green." "I was his second in command." "To be in charge of so many guys is a burden." "If there's a mistake or decision you made and they pay the cost, that's a hard break to swallow." "_" "All right." "One of the British soldiers came down to help us." "Welcome to O.P. Rock." "It looked like a giant rock, just a, you know..." "It was pretty much just a knoll." "Come on." "It was definitely a weird place, had a very strange vibe." "The British soldiers looked pretty rough." "They looked a little razzled, a little bit fried." "You can tell they've been there for a long time and they're just ready to go and go home." "You didn't have any beds." "You didn't have any cots." "You slept in the dirt." "It was just really bare." "Yeah, it sucked." "There was this dog that was up there." "Hey, buddy." "Hey." "And they said, "oh, that's ugly Betty." "We take care of her, feed her."" "He goes, "you won't ever find a more diligent sentry."" "Hey." "Always a dog person growing up, worked with animals, and I took it upon myself to take care of her." "She's cute." "Betty, come on." "Come on." "Finally it was time for the British soldiers to go." "One more thing." "The British soldiers told us something crazy." "If you dig anything up..." "Make sure you put it back where you..." "Back where you found it, all right?" "I was like, "we don't know these guys." "They're probably just, like, jerking our chain."" "You know what I mean?" "It made no sense to us at the time." "Later that night, I was on the machine gun post." "It was very isolated." "When you're in a small unit, there's always that fear of being vastly outnumbered." "Dragged away into the night is always a possibility." "Do you need anything, Corporal?" "Anytime Sergeant Green, you know, would come up on the post, he would do a very distinctive tap-tap on your shoulder just to get your attention." "No, I'm good." "I told him that everything was fine, he was good to rack out for the night." "It was a... it was a crackling, gurgling noise that kept fading in and out." "I immediately called the main base." "Golf main, this is O.P. Rock." "Did you send a transmission?" "Over." "They called back." "That's a negative, O.P. Rock." ""We have not sent or received any traffic at this time."" "Copy." "It was just very unusual." "I turn up the volume on it to see if I can kind of make out what's being transmitted." "It doesn't sound English." "My immediate thought, It was bad batteries." "I grab a fresh battery, hope that's the end of it." "This is our lifeline." "We can't afford to lose this radio." "If someone was to sneak up on us, we'd be done for." "O.P. Rock, this is golf main." "Radio check, over." "Roger, golf main." "This is O.P. Rock." "Loud and clear, over." "It was very unusual, but you can't really dwell on what happened." "_" "Observation posts are usually pretty safe 'cause you can see for miles around." "This was different, though." "You felt somewhat exposed." "Anytime your head was popping over the side, chance that a sniper is gonna get you." "There were trenches in place, but they weren't very deep." "The British had been here for a while." "We couldn't figure out why they had not dug in deeper." "We immediately knew that we needed to dig deeper and wider trenches." "_" "I'm digging." "I'm digging." "All of a sudden..." "Clang!" "I hit metal." "It's some kind of engineering stake." "I brush it off, and I see there's Russian lettering, very distinctive." "It made sense." "The Russians had been down here back in the '80s." "It wouldn't be surprising even to find leftover gear from their time here." "The ground was pretty hard." "It was like trying to break through rock." "I poked a shovel into the wall, and it collapsed on me." "I noticed there was, like, a little crevice." "Hey, Smith." "Lance Corporal Smith started digging around." "Oh." "We found little pieces of ceramic pots, little cups and stuff like that." "What is it?" "We went from being marines to archaeologists or anthropologists or something." "There was something else down there..." "Just didn't know exactly what it was." "Hey, Lena." "Make a wish." "From the shape of it, it's a femur bone." "It was definitely, definitely human." " You sure?" " Positive." "Like, this is kind of creepy." " Ooh." "Oh." " Stop." "Hey, put it back, man." "Lance Corporal Smith was definitely the practical joker." "You know, he always wanted to say something crazy and cruel." "Oh, could you check..." "Check my arm?" "I think something's wrong." "Guh!" "Ooh!" " Come on, man." " Oh." "Ooh." " Come on." " You got something..." "You got something." "Seriously, man, put it back." " Yeah, yeah." " We're here to work." "All right." "We were kind of superstitious about things like that, so we just put it back where it belonged." "But you couldn't dig anywhere without digging up bone after bone." "What the..." "There's another one." "They were everywhere." "Now it became very clear why the British did not dig in deeper." "There were bodies buried underneath here." "We're on top of a graveyard." "_" "It was my 20th birthday." "I was the most junior marine on O.P. Rock." "Being up there alone with nothing to do just mentally drains you." "It's an eerie silence." "I grew up on a farm, so I was used to the country, but it was deathly quiet." "And I'm sitting there, and all of a sudden," "I just get this unnerving feeling that I'm being watched." "And it just sent chills through my entire body." "Aah!" "And I hear this bloodcurdling scream." "It's not good, guys." "It's not good." "_" "_" "I thought someone got grabbed." "This is our biggest fear, someone sneaking into camp, grabbing us at night, and carrying 'em off." " Jeez!" " Hey." "He was like, "man, what was that?"" "And I was just like, "I don't even know, man." "It was just, like, really creepy."" "Move." "Go." "I assumed that it was a person that had got caught in the wire." "But I look around, and there's nothing to be seen." "I saw something move across right outside our perimeter wire." "We immediately went, guns on ready, straight to the little front entrance where our razor wire was, shined a flashlight out there, looked." "And I thought someone is gonna try to either take a potshot at us or throw a grenade into the O.P." "I don't have a visual." "So I grab the thermals." "Thermal optics would very clearly show anybody that was hiding behind brush or hiding in the dirt." "You can very clearly see the shape from the body heat to tell if it's a person or an animal." "You sure you saw something, Hoyt?" "With all the assets and gear at our disposal, there was no way that someone could have hidden from us and not be seen." "I saw something." "You're trying to put together what you just heard, what caused that, and, you know, you just don't have an answer." "We'll take a look in the morning." "We just shrugged our shoulders and went back to the post and acted like nothing happened." "Good night." "I assumed that it was just my mind playing tricks on me because I was so tired." "_" "So early next morning," "I took Lance Corporal Parker down with me." "You always have a battle buddy watching your back." "Being outside the wire, you feel very exposed for any kind of sniper attack, so we didn't want to spend a whole lot of time out there." "I immediately started looking for some kind of rationalization for what had been there." "An individual, or even an animal, for that matter, would've left footprints." "I could not find any kind of prints, you know, man or beast, indicating that it had been there previous night." "So you start to wonder," ""well, what was it?"" "_" "It was quiet out." "It was still, and I was just reflecting about, you know, life stuff." "It would get so hot at night." "It was very uncomfortable." "Put your helmet on." "Some hours pass after that." "All of a sudden, I feel, like, this cold chill move across me." "There was no, like, breeze." "There was no reason why I would feel, like, cold all of a sudden." "And then..." "And I feel this breath on the side of my face." "And I hear something whisper in my ear." "I spun around." "Nothing was there." "The whisper..." "I mean, it sounded like Russian." "I thought, "I'm just tired." "You know, I'm just stressed out."" "So I gaffed it off as being that." "I hear, like, a crunching noise." "Sounded like footsteps above me." "There's definitely somebody walking above me." "And I thought, "okay, it's probably Smith."" "So I ran around real quick to catch him on top of the post." "Nobody was there." "And that's when I started getting spooked." "And I'm looking around, and I'm, like, scanning around, on top of the base." "And nothing was there." "And I see this figure in my sight." "_" "_" "It looks like his fists are balled." "I was ready to shoot." "I needed to make sure it wasn't one of my boys." "But when I looked back through it..." "Gone." "Just gone." "So I was like, "are you kidding me, man?" ""I got to deal with the Taliban," ""all the insects, the IEDs," ""the heat..." "And now I got to deal with, like, spirits?"" "That's when I felt that chill again." "But what do you do?" "I mean, you have this gun and all this gear and your training, but that's not Goa he you now." "What's up with you, man?" "When I got up to relieve Damian on post, he started telling me about strange things going on that night." "There's something bad here, man." "I saw something." "I took it with a grain of salt 'cause it's late, you're tired." "One of your senses plays tricks on you." "It's a lonely feeling knowing that this place is haunted and you're the only one that sees these things or hears these things." "I'd rather, you know, take my chances against something I could actually, like, fight against." "So after that, I requested a transfer." "We didn't know what quite to make of it." "If he wasn't strong enough to be there, then I didn't quite want him watching my back because then that's something I can't trust." "At the same time, you're down one man, now that sucks for everybody else." "He's playing the crazy card, man." "Copy that, golf main." "All clear here." "How's your boys doing?" "Kickin' ass, O.P. Rock." "You know it?" "Hoorah." "A few days after Zolik had left O.P. Rock," "I was on the machine gun post." "It was about 1:30 in the morning." "I hear Ugly Betty barking, and instinctively," "I throw up my night vision goggles to see what she's barking at." "I see something in the distance." "First thing that goes through my mind," "It's a scout for the Taliban." "It was unnerving." "I felt this figure was staring right at me and knew I was staring right back at it." "At that distance, your eyes can kind play tricks on you." "I switched over to my thermal optics." "There's no animal activity, no creatures, no people out there." "So thinking that I had made a mistake somehow," "I switched back over to my night vision goggles." "I figured that it had moved a hundred meters closer in just a few seconds." "It was teleporting to me." "I thought I must have gone crazy." "Still nothing." "Field's cold." "There's no body heat signatures." "This whole time Ugly Betty is still barking in that direction." "So I look back to where the figure is." "And just then," "I felt Sergeant Green's signature double tap on my shoulder." "Green?" "I know I felt that double tap." "It was so precise." "Ahh!" "_" "And there's nobody there." "They just vanished." "I know I'm not crazy." "Ugly Betty was barking at it." "It's not just me." "I realized Zolik, you know, was onto something, and he got out of there, and we're still here." "What is my next step?" "You don't go running to your command saying," ""I've got ghosts playing tricks on me on post"" "because that's gonna get you a one-way ticket to the loony bin." "You all right, sir?" "Yeah." "Part of me kind of wished that someone else might have the experience too." "_" "It was the dead of the night." "Everyone else is asleep." "There's one other marine that's awake," "Lance Corporal Smith, who was 15 to 20 meters away on a different post." "I could hear, like, footsteps behind me." "Hey, Sarge." "And there's nothing there." "It was probably just loose gravel falling." "Ugly Betty was just standing there with her hair up, teeth bared, growling." "So I scanned with the thermals." "The only heat signatures up there were the dog and the other marines sleeping." "Smith." "You see anything?" "And he said no." "Try to shake it off." "Do your job." "And all of a sudden, I just hear this crunch again." "My body is telling me that something just breathed on me." "My skin is icy." "I couldn't see anything, and it was like my eyes were just lying to me because every other sense in my body was sing," ""no, there's something there."" "It was then that I really accept the fact, that "You know what?" "Damian was right." "We were not alone up there."" "_" "I never, ever believed in ghosts." "There's no way, man." "There's no way that happened." "Like, I don't believe any of that stuff." "And then out of nowhere, it was just like this weird, cold chill." "And then that's when I heard the whispering." "At first, it was just, like, faint, like..." "Like, you can barely hear what was going on." "There was no one there." "The voice came back again," "That's Russian, but no Russians are here." "And then it just got louder like the person was actually touching me in the ear." "And it was just so loud in my head, and it just terrified me." " _" " Spades." "Ha." " _" " Spade." "Pick up five." "Did something happen to you?" "We couldn't deny that these things had happened to us 'cause it happened to all of us." "I see them things too, man." "Everybody was just like, "yeah, man," "I know exactly what you're talking about."" "There's some weird stuff going on." "This is not something that we can just write off as being heatstroke or being exhaustion." "It was too many things happening to all of us too many times." "Felt breath on the back of my neck." "Heard whispers." "It just became common knowledge." "There's no rationable explanation here." "I mean, at this point, you have to look to the supernatural." "Ghosts." "You can't shoot it." "You can't stab it." "You can't blow it up." "You just have to accept the fact that these thing are happening and we need to continue to do our job." "How are you?" "The one person that seemed most unaffected by it was Lance Corporal Smith." "He used to give us a bit of a hard time about it." ""The sun fried your brain."" "But there was something just completely wrong about this place." "It's not the sun, guys." "And it wasn't a matter, you know, if something would happen." "Again, it was a matter of when." "_" "This was our last night." "We were so close to our goal of getting out of there..." "We were all on edge." "Lance Corporal Diggs calls me over." "Something going on with the radio." "There is a problem here." "Well, I've changed out the battery twice now..." ""And both of them have gone dead within a ten-minute period."" "It just made no sense." "So I grab the last good battery we have." "It's all we have left." "Seems fine to me." "Thanks." "Corporal Lena." ""Corporal Lena, radio's dead."" "The system is dead." "Our means of communication have now bee completely severed." "We're on our own." "This is gonna happen again, and I'm sitting here, waiting for that whisper." "Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang." "Holy hell, we're all about to die right now." "Someone finally got in." "Someone is trying to kill us." "We've been shot at before, but this is..." "this is close." "Time to go to work." "It's gonna be them or me." "And it's sure as hell it's not gonna be." "My heart was pounding really hard-core." "The machine gun fired right next to my ear." " Wilson!" " Ah!" "What's going on?" "It wasn't misfire." "What happened?" "It was very clear that no rounds had been recently expelled from the machine gun." "Wilson." "You okay?" "Then out of nowhere..." "Oh!" "Down!" "Definitely an RPG." "You can just hear the thump-thump, thump-thump of your heartbeat." "I thought this was it." "I thought I was done for." "What's happening?" "Everyone started to try to figure out where we were taking fire from." "Diggs, check the trenches." "Let's go." "Check every trench." "The only thing going through your head is the next step Th have to take." "Move forward." "Find the enemy." "But there was no enemy to find." "Clear." "Clear." "Go, go, go, go!" "Whatever it was was actually, like, holding a gun next to my ear and just opening fire." "I'm gonna die on this God forsaken rock out in the middle of Afghanistan." "_" "All I remember was hearing the noise." "Ah!" "All of a sudden, it was completely silent like there's nothing even there, and I couldn't even explain what was going on." "What's going on?" "Everyone heard it." "Everyone knew it was a machine gun." "At that point, we realized there was no one there." "We felt helpless." "It's too much for your mind to process." "Lance Corporal Smith gets mad." "He throws off his helmet." "Friggin' O.P. Rock!" "We are all so ready to get off that God forsaken piece of rock." "Finally we heard from the main base that we're no longer gonna be there." "It was amazing." "We were packed up and ready to go within five minutes of getting the order." "The moment we actually did step foot off the rock, it was the greatest feeling of all time." "Like, I felt really happy like it was like my birthday." "Was Christmas to us, and we're finally on our way out the door here." "Someone else's problem now." "So you chaps see any ghosts?" "Yeah, that place is proper haunted." "This one time, early on when we first got here..." "Eventually, I found out the true recent history behind O.P. Rock." "Back when the Russians first invaded, the Russians killed all the Mujahideen up there, took it over for themselves." "Later, the Taliban rolled in force." "In the middle of the night they snuck up into the top of O.P. Rock, and stylistically beheaded all the Russian soldiers up there." "Finally when the marines rolled through the area, they buried a number of Taliban underground." "It all started to make sense with the Russian stake, all the broken and shattered bones, the voices we heard..." "And the images, the screams." "Aah!" "This little piece of rock was one giant tomb." "As silly as it might sound, you start to wonder, did we unleash something when we first started digging up those bones?" "Hey, Lena." "Make a wish." "Some curse?" "I thought we were safe from whatever was up there and we'd be able to move on with our lives." "We didn't realize what was to come." "_" "I just curled up in a ball and just, like, cried, 'cause he was a good friend of mine." "Really sad." "It made no sense." "You know, you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than what happened with him." "_" "We had been told going in marines are gonna die, but we didn't expect that many that fast." "I mean, this is like... was some Final Destination thing." "What the hell's going on?" "_" "Yeah, you thought you were done with O.P. Rock when you left, but in some ways, it wasn't done with you." "_" "You could tell it." "Man, we went on patrol..." "It just went bad." "He didn't make it." "I mean, it's just..." "I mean, that... that..." "That brother, he just..." "There's no words that can describe it." "Really isn't." "There is just this really strange feeling." "That was my family." "And there are only three of us left." "I'm hoping that the curse is over." "I hope nothing happens to me, I mean..." "Hopefully not."