November 10, 2025 • 62 mins
In this special episode of Broadcasting Seeds, hosts Bennett and Joel Matanos celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States Marine Corps by exploring the intersection of military history and the unexplained. They delve into ghost stories, paranormal experiences, and the psychological effects of war, highlighting the unique relationship Marines have with their environments and the unseen forces that may inhabit them. From the haunted barracks of Okinawa to the eerie silence of Vietnam, the conversation reveals how the experiences of Marines are shaped by both the physical and spiritual realms they navigate.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Yif jo straight from the broadcast studio, and then the stating,
this ain't no bet sime story, so as prophetic and
crypt the signals from the saddles of the garden we
did where the trop got secret snow parton likerophone alchemist
scriptures with a twist peak the frequency seeds in the
midst we drop fas like plagues, revelations in the catus,
(00:42):
broadcasting truth while they trapped in surveillans wisdom with a
watchman's blade, forth what sound while your whole system.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Fame, blood, moons, nephal love.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Echoes in the pond, sasquaarts stopping through the fault lines
of time.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
We ain't mainstream, we ain't just streams safer with the prophets,
the code, the dream. So with you tune in better
Gord to minus Broadcasting Seeds and we break in the.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, Jill.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Steady, all right, everybody, welcome back to another Well. This
is a special episode of Broadcasting Seeds. Today is the
two hundred and fiftieth birthday of the United States Marine Corps.
I am a marine veteran, and my buddy's here with me.
Jewel Matanos is a marine veteran, as well, if you
(01:44):
could jewel just you've been on other episodes, but tell people,
just give give them a quick rundown of who you
are in your background.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
Yeah, Joel Matanos uh So, I was in the Marine
Corps from twenty eleven to twenty fifteen. After I got out,
worked some odd jobs and then I ended up getting
into mental health. So I work in the mental health
field now, helping veterans with their mental health stuff. At
(02:12):
the end of the day, I'm not going to go
too much into that, obviously, But other than that, since then,
like long walks on the beach and going hunting for
bigfoot in right the allegating nation. Yeah, and just overall, man,
we're just trying to trying to live life and look
at things with a different lens or at least like
(02:33):
a sixty thousand foot view, give people some ideas of
what's going on out there, you know.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Absolutely. Yeah. So with that being said, today marks the
two hundred and fifty years since the United States Marine
Corps was born. On November tenth of seventeen seventy five,
YEP traced back to the Ton Tavern in Philadelphia, where
(02:59):
Captain and Samuel Nicholas Yet born in a bar where
Samuel Nicholas started recruiting the first Continental Marines. Semper I
Somber five? What did I just say? Somber A fucking buddy, Fuckercember,
I fucked the other guy, all right, Dember five to
every double dog listening. If you want the official receipts,
(03:26):
I'm gonna put some stuff in the You'll have a
whole bunch of links in the show notes for this.
So the Court the core zone page lays it out
in the anniversary hub. I'll put all that in the
show notes. But quick history fly over before we dive
into the weird. Okay, the original Continental Marines were disbanded
(03:51):
after the Revolution and then re established by Congress in
seventeen ninety eight. So yes, the Court technically has been
founded twice. But the motto that we all know is
simper fidels was formally adopted in eighteen eighty three per
(04:16):
the Marine Corps History Division, which fun Fact and Jewel
can attest to this. We had to actually pay pass
a history test to pass to complete boot camp. And
this is why Marines have such a crazy relationship with
their histories, because they actually know it.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, yeah, you would agree, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
They actually know they're taught. This is one of the
things that's mandatory. I remember like first phase and boot
camp was almost all Marine Corps knowledge, right is what
they get use and you had to give an eighty
percent on this. I can't remember how many questions it was,
but you know, covered all kinds of stuff and if
(05:03):
you we actually had people fail out of boot camp
because they failed the test, they got to retake and
then they failed again and then they were gone. Many
failed again because we had some real morons.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
But you know, smart enough to do this, So it's
you can imagine how hard it is.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
True. I mean, allegedly you have to pass a certain
point on the ASVAB to even get into the Marines,
but I don't think I don't think the barrier is
very high. I think it depends on the era. There's
waivers for that, yeah, exactly, but you got a pass
Marine Corps history to continue on to second phase. So
(05:48):
with that being said, uh, this podcast is broadcasting seeds
and we're not stopping at cake cuttings and birthday balls
for this episode tonight, we're stepping into that shadowy overlap
where Marines meet high strangeness war zones have always been
(06:08):
fertile ground for the inexplicable inexplicable. Call it stress, call
it fog of war, or call it something else. Moving
just beyond the tree line and Vietnam, for example, we're
gonna go over and talk about what are called the
(06:30):
rock apes, hairy bipedal figures seen by American gis and
marines in the central highlands of Vietnam. The evidence is contested, obviously,
just like Bigfoot or anything else, but the stories are
stubborn and they stick with us. So if you want again,
(06:52):
I'll put some. If you want to read about these things,
I will put some. There's a few links that I'll
have in the show notes to go over some of
the historic stuff. So here's the mission profile for this episode.
We'll honor the core as we're doing right, two hundred
(07:15):
and fifty years of grit, then roll into the first
hand marine lore from the jungle to the barracks, and
finally we'll ask the uncomfortable question when official narratives collide
with person persistent, well sourced anomalies, what gets filled, under filed, underclassified,
and what gets dismissed as imagination and what deserves a
(07:38):
second look? So if you're new here, welcome to broadcasting seeds,
where we will sift through the signal from noise and
without losing our sense of humor. If you've been here
a while, thank you for coming back. And you know
the drill like share and drop a review. It generally
(07:59):
helps the show grow and keeps these stories on the
map for folks who need them. So I guess into
it right. So where the unseen bleeds in the battlefield.
(08:19):
So let's talk about the terrain here, because the land
itself is one of the first places marines start running into. Strange.
If you've ever deployed, you know this. Not every place
on Earth feels the same. Some places feel crowded even
even when they're empty. Some places feel like they remember things,
(08:44):
and some places they feel like they're watching you back.
Marines have been sent into the thickest jungles, the oldest mountains,
the deepest forests, and the most war soiak patches on Earth.
You take a bunch of eighteen to twenty five year
olds whose day job is to fight, starve, sweat, freeze,
(09:07):
and not die, and you put them in the territories
that have been sacred, contested, or haunted for thousands of
years and things happen. Yep, you would agree.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Yeah, we've heard all kinds of story. We've had all
kinds of experiences as well.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
So I guess we'll start with okin now. Now, ok
now is part of the island hopping campaign of the
Marine Corps. It was the wasn't it the last island?
I think it was the last week.
Speaker 5 (09:39):
So and that's where, uh, there was a lot of
I mean from what I had heard from the stories
and every like looking at history, it was some some
of the most brutal fighting based on the weather, the terrain,
like just fighting in mud pits, climbing mountain It was
just a horrible I couldn't imagine I mean, trying to
(10:03):
walk out back when it's muddy without getting shot at
It's hard enough. I can't imagine fighting up a mountain
full of mud for days and days and weeks at
a time, you know.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Yeah, and just being undersupplied, not having you know, clean water,
clean Oh god, iturriz.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
We don't even that's the part that we don't ever
bring out, you know.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
So the aftermath of all this in World War Two
is that there's approximately thirty thousand US military personnel stationed
on Okinawa, which is like seventy percent of the US
troops in Japan are actually on Okinawa. I mean the
(10:47):
third Marine Division is in Okinawa, right, So yeah, it's
it's a presence, and there's the native Okinawan's and the
Americans haven't always gotten along, and they also a lot
of the Native Oakan Islands don't even consider themselves Japanese.
(11:08):
So it's a very different place. But the thing that
we have to consider is that it's it's been called
for centuries the keystone of the of the Pacific because
it's not in Japan. It's it's south right, so you
can jump. It's what its proximity is China and you
(11:32):
know the Philippines.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
It's it's a strategic stronghold very much. So yeah, so yeah,
so there's that.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
But it's not just a military base. It's layered history.
It's the site of one of the bloodiest battles of
World War Two, which Jewel alluded to. Tens of thousands
of Japanese soldiers, ok now and civilians and American marines
died there, many in caves, many by suicide, many in
(12:03):
total despair. So you can imagine the energy there.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, man, Now.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Try to imagine what it means to sleep in a
barracks built directly over tunnels where the entire platoons, where
entire platoons made their final stands, or to stand a
lonely firewatch shift. Let me tell you shift next to
the shuttered building that your sergeant casually tells you to
(12:34):
never look into the third floor window of blah blah blah. Right,
so window exactly so. Marines at Camp Hansen and Schwab
talk about apparitions and dress uniforms from nineteen forty five,
still marching their night patrols. Guys see figures walking right
(12:58):
past them, I mean solid clear and step and then
vanish at the corner of a hallway.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Dude, that I can't wait, I can't.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Doors slam when the wind is dead still right, Someone
whispers your name in Japanese when there's one no one
behind you? Yeah, could you imagine?
Speaker 2 (13:23):
No?
Speaker 4 (13:25):
I mean, dude, it's allegedly because I've never been there
to check it out, as it's my body. Allegedly, it's
so common that it stops, it stops being a ghost
story and becomes like a normal Tuesday, right, like just yeah, yeah,
and then, so let's move from there. You move into Vietnam,
(13:51):
and sure we'll get to the rockets later. Okay, But
before the cryptid show up, marines were noticing something else,
the silence. There are patches of jungle in the highlands
where even insects won't make noise. Anyone who's patrolled knows
(14:13):
that silence is bad. It's bad.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
One hundred. You know something's wrong.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Yes, So silence is not peace. It's a threat because
either something else is out there that's making everything be silent,
or it's just like that, everything around silent.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, stillness, the thickness of the air.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
Yeah, god, I actually got chills. Yeah, man, I actually
got chills. And I haven't patrolled ship in twenty years.
Speaker 5 (14:41):
I mean, just think about the small little the incident.
We me and you just standing at the I'm not
gonna not gonna go oh yeah, yeah, go ahead, tell
give the short the short. So there's a spot here
in upstate New York there sleepy hollow. Is that what
it's called again, the sleeping hollow.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Something like that, sleepy hollow roads. It's not sleepy hollow,
whiskey hollow.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Whiskey hollow.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
There we go.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Sorry, Whiskey Hollow Road.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
So we went. It's a kind of it's a known
kind of haunted, the Wacky Ship. Yeah, all kinds of
weird stuff. You're not allowed to drive through there anymore
past a certain time. A lot of people out there
after yeah, after sundown. Why do they do that, folks?
If there's no issues? So so not for nothing, we
(15:31):
drive out there, uh, and we want we we just
stop at this random little pullover site you can walk
off and go kind of up into the woods a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
And we stopped and we we both got out and
we both walked. Now, both Ben and I have hearing problems.
I understand this. I'll tell you what it sounds. It
sounded like I had ear plugs in like.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Exactly the latest I describe it.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
I can't even that is exactly what it was.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
And I walked and I looked at Bennett and we
it's like we noticed at the same time, and I
was like.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Dude, do you hear how quiet it is? It's right
in this one small area.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
As soon as we stepped out of it, it's like
all the sound started coming back.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Yeah. So like if you go off the road, that's
when I would not, but if you're on the road,
you could hear everything and everything. But it's like you
walked into the zone.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Yeah, there was literally no sound. There was no birds,
nothing was moving, there was no wind. It was not
freaking really.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Weird still, just pure stillness.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
And not only that, like the hair is on my
back of my neck started standing up. You it felt wrong,
it felt wrong to be there, and that that's that.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
That's kind I think where this and.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
I've and I've had this feeling in other places too,
absolutely historics and evidence, but yeah, unbelievable. And the bottom
line is it's a pattern, right, yeah, where war happens.
Because there's I've had the same thing happen in Gettysburg,
where war happens, where blood is spilled, where suffering stacks
(17:10):
and stacks on top of each other. The boundary between
worlds gets really thin, man. Yeah, it just does. I
mean even the Bible has language for this, high places, strongholds, gates.
Anthropology calls it liminality. It's the actual phrase, and Marines
(17:32):
call it. Yeah, something's off here because your head's on
a swivel. Yeah, yeah, sudden You're like wait, wait, wait,
what why is it like this. So before we talk
about creatures or entities or encounters, we need to understand
the ground itself. Right. Places bottom line is places remember things,
(17:54):
and sometimes they don't forget who walks on them. So
the encounters themselves that we're going to get into a
few stories, not miss not rumors, the things marines actually
talk about when the barracks lights are low and no
one's trying to look tough and we have these conversations
(18:17):
over and over again.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Right, should have called mister ballin.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Yeah, no shit, Yeah. So let's start where most of
these tales get their first breath among marines, and that's Vietnam.
I remember hearing about the rock apes from old like folks.
I knew some Vietnam vets. I still know some. And
if you ever talk to people about rock apes, it's
(18:42):
starting to get better, just like Bigfoot. Like people that
have had, you know, paranormal experiences or or supernatural experiences
are like UFOs or whatever. Right, people are coming out
more about this stuff, but they would if you said
the word rock ape, A lot of people would just
be like, you know, oh, I know about that, and
(19:05):
then they're like, no, I ain't telling you that story.
Because I'm it's like I'm crazy.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
So during Vietnam, go ahead, stigma stigma around absolutely, and
there's you know, that's I think that's breaking down culture
wide in the United States. So during the Vietnam War,
marines in the Central Highlands reported large, upright, muscular, hair
(19:31):
covered creatures that moved in coordinated groups and through rocks
with force and intention. And these weren't orangutans because it's
the wrong region, right, wrong behavior. They weren't macaqus because
they're too big, too upright, and frankly, they were tactical,
(19:54):
which uh, which is crazy to me. Multiple patrols report
to them, some fired warning shots, some returned fire after
they got rocks thrown at them. There are after action notes,
and I've got to find some, but I think I've
found a I've got some reports, but I'd love to
(20:17):
find some actual after action with and notes that have
this stuff. But who knows. But it's you know, notes
buried in long unit logs, and plenty of marines have
gone to their graves saying I know what I saw, right.
(20:37):
So there is a balanced summary of reports that I found.
I will put them in the show notes there's just
too much information to go over in one episode. But
it's literally on stripes dot com and it's the mystery
of the wood apes or apes in Vietnam. It's freaking
cool if you look.
Speaker 5 (20:56):
I mean it's all over like there's military history all
over about this, all over the place.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Is and not just the Marines, it's army too, yeah,
I mean all over Vietnam and and Frankly and Laos
and some of the other places that are, you know,
well adjacent to Vietnam.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
They also had the like, uh a nickname if you're
looking them up, but but.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Two two's it's b A t U t U t s.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Yeah. Is there any of those over the top of
them too?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (21:26):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I don't know how the local be a easy way
to say it.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Right, of course, there's no body, you know, but there
is decades of consistent marine eyewitness testimony period army as well.
And then I'm sure that there's plenty of folklore in
Vietnam from the indigenous folks that consistently report the same
(21:58):
type of thing, right, yeah. And the bottom line is
the VA did right, and so did you know, all civilians.
So the bottom line is is that what I've learned
through the years with stuff like this is consistency means something.
So if you consistently get these from different places that
(22:19):
have nothing, there's no congruency between Vietnam and and Oregon, right,
but they're still seeing the same thing that that should
peak your interest. Sure, so kind of cool for another
area of the world where you can think of, you know,
(22:42):
Sasquatch type creatures being so Sasquatch fans.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
For for anyone even looking into it like.
Speaker 5 (22:49):
There is actual There were actual expeditions, documented expeditions by
not us. I'm talking like the NVA, the and professors
of the Vietnam National University that went out to do
these things and tried to find the rock abes. But
again there was no and they never find a body.
(23:10):
They just elude them the whole time. And enough for
they are not going to think about it this way.
An organization is not going to put that much money
into an effort when they don't believe in it. I know, well,
I know that dumb things have happened in the past,
let's not say always, but.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You know it was enough.
Speaker 5 (23:28):
It was enough of a scare where they kept pushing
expeditions out to find this thing, and they couldn't.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
And this is the NBA, right that, yeah, not the Americans.
Speaker 5 (23:39):
General h Wangman Ta so h o A n g
m I n h Thha. He organized the mission in
nineteen seventy four. They found nothing. It was unsuccessful and well,
they didn't find nothing, but they found no hard evidence.
Professor and then professor Vou Kui it's v a Quy
(24:01):
of the Vietnam National University. I sent an expedition as well.
They said they had strange human like footprints.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
But that was about it.
Speaker 5 (24:12):
And that was done in nineteen seventy by Professor Tran
Hong Viette of Hanoi's Pedagogic University.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Okay, that's crazy. So you've got you have both sides,
yes saying the same thing.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Yes, yeah for crazy mm hm.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
That's amazing. All right. So now I guess we'll transitionally.
I just say, if you know, the sasquatch researchers and stuff,
just look into this. It's kind of cool for me
to like peel out from someplace that I don't normally
look into. Yeah, for sasquatch activity. Right, So and then
(24:52):
we move let's move back to Okinawa and the ghost barracks. Now,
if you've been stationed at Okinawa, you probably already know.
I never was, but I've heard story. Yeah, So basically
(25:13):
what you get though, is a combination or some you know,
marines describe footsteps and empty stairwells, doors unlocking themselves, voices
in Japanese whispering at night, full body apparitions in World
War Two uniforms still marching patrol routes, and so. One
(25:38):
of the most famous stories comes from Camp Hansen, or
a marine on gate guard reported a fully dressed World
War Two marine with helmet gear even blood on his uniform,
walking up and asking to be let in, to be
let back in. The guard turned to call his sergeant,
(25:59):
turned back, and the dude was gone, Yeah man, that's
and that's not a one time story. That story that's
been told over multiple decades by different marines at that
same gate.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
That's a tortured soul man.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (26:19):
Yeah, again, I report on Okinawa hauntings. I've got stuff
that's in the show notes. It's gonna you know, because
again it's so much to cover, and as we know,
marines don't really scare easy, Like I don't have a
lot of fear. I mean, I'm sure they're just like
every other person, but I just don't have a lot
(26:39):
of fear. Like we we go out in the woods
and it's.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
The middle of the night, no lights, nothing, bene myself whatever,
you know, Yeah, and just accept it.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
But as people will say that have been there, it's
Okinawa is one of those few places where they admit
when they go out in the woods, sometimes they get
they've been shaken, you know, and that's people say it
over and over again. Yeah, where are we anyway? Yeah?
(27:13):
All right, Uh, we're gonna move to camp? All right?
How do we want to say this? I'm saying La
June because that's what I am, a guy. The family,
the family or whoever. Somebody complains that it's Camp Lagerne.
But which makes sense too, And I've debated this on
a podcast before. It makes sense because he's from Louisiana,
(27:36):
so you get some weird pronunciations with things, and it's
a French name, so Lagerne. But I bet it's got
the French accent too, like line.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
You know, well that's the draw man.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
I mean, yeah, you know what I mean, Like, we
don't I'm not going to say, Uh, I'm trying to
think of words from the Bayou. That I mean, most
words from the Bayou sound different from most words I'm
saying from up here.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
We're like they're spelled totally weird too, Like like the
last name.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
Rova show Yeah, yeah, you know, come on.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Look at the name.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
It does not look like how it sounds at all anyway.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
So camp was June where I was stationed for four years.
Same here, uh, marines on firewatch and in some barracks,
not all barracks, but some barracks. And I can tell
you that where I lived, which the barracks where I
live don't exist anymore, but there's I'll tell stories in
the second and on rifle range, so out of Stone Bay, yeah,
(28:40):
rifle range reports. Shadow figures right, human shaped, solid, intelligent
and watching. They move differently than normal shadows. It's like
they have weight, yea. And some will stop and when
you look, and some will keep coming. And there's and
(29:03):
here's the part nobody likes to say out loud. They
only go away when you speak scripture or say the
name of Jesus. How about and in the core, that's
not superstition, that's experience, right, there, uh there are. There
(29:25):
may not be clean government link or academic study here,
but one comes from the lived testimonies across dozens of platoons,
across decades and patterns and strong and consistent you know,
fashion again consistency. So I've lived out on Onslow Beach
(29:45):
and those those barracks don't they don't exist anymore. But
when you would come across the bridge on the Onslow Beach,
which is Onslo Beach, is the beach on you know
Marine Corps based Campbell Joom and people go out there
and swim and spend the day at the beach and
it's actually pretty damn nice.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a nice beach.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
Yeah. They've got a little uh p X there called
the show Shop and you know, so that used to be.
But when you come over the bridge, you would come
to that main road and you would take a right
and the whole battalion used to sit right across from
the staff and c O Beach and that staph n
(30:28):
Ceo Beach. There there's a there's a building on top
of the dune and that was our the tian Aid
station was in the was in that building. That's awesome,
but across from there you had these I don't know
what you would call them. They were squad based. They
were like white elephants or whatever you like, kind of like,
(30:48):
and they were all situated in h and I want
to say there was one, two, three, four of them,
maybe three or four of them. Yeah, And then you
had like a boat locker farther out towards Risley Pier.
I don't think Riseley Peer. I think they got swept away,
but maybe they reboat part of it. I don't know,
(31:09):
but Riseley Pier used to be a fishing pier farther
down the beach. But anyway, they had a boat locker
out there too, and a motor pool. So that's where
second recombation was, and now it's all gone. I think
they replaced maybe some of the stuff with like like
(31:31):
rental like trailers and stuff that you could rent or
something like that. I don't know, but either way, I
had more than one, on more than one occasion, some spooky, spooky,
spooky stuff, like especially late nights on because we still
had a firewatch, yeah, and we had duty, you know,
and a couple times on when you're awake on firewatch,
(31:54):
and weird shit would just start happening, like like you'd
hear doors opening or things like that, especially in the
cross the breezeway between squad bays Man and you would
go check and there'd be nothing there, and you're just like, dude,
what the hell, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
I got a I Actually it's not my own story,
but it's a story I can speak on behalf of
someone else's similar on on Base on Lejune, not not
in that, not in Stone Bay area, but in condemned
barracks that eventually got shut down. So when we first
got there, we were in barracks that were known to
(32:34):
be condemned. They were getting ready to shut them down.
And then they moved this into another set of barracks
on F Street.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
When they moved to H yeah, F Street.
Speaker 5 (32:44):
And when they moved this over, a bunch of we
had some guys like, as you do after doing two
years and security forces, you come over to the infantry.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
So we were already there. I was a new guy
in the.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
Infantry at the time, with three two kilo company h
and we got a group of security for worse guys
who come in, they're there, they've already been in for
a couple of years. So they they're not new guys anymore.
They're kind of just they get a little treated like
new guys. But regardless, they show up. One of my
best friends, God rest his soul, was there with another
(33:15):
buddy of mine as well. I'll keep his name out
of it because he's still around and I don't want
I don't want things to kind of jump in him
if he doesn't want to.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
But I'll call the other buddy G and so.
Speaker 5 (33:28):
G and the other guy were at in the suicide
barracks as we knew them. So, suicide barracks is a
barracks where they put all the guys that were suicidal
or they thought they were suicidal or mental health issues. Absolutely,
and we just as marines called them obviously the suicide barricks.
It's because we're not the most sentimental and yeah, no,
(33:52):
not at all, just a little broken all of us,
you know. So at the time, so and in those barracks, unfortunately,
a lot of suicides happened, so hence the name. Yeah,
we call it what it is, I guess. So, my
buddy and his buddy were there. So they're sleeping in
(34:13):
the middle of the night, the other guy in the
other bed wakes G up and goes, hey, dude, or
may have been the other way around. Regardless, they wake
up to this figure at the end of the bed.
And in the barracks rooms it's literally one bed one side,
one bed on the other side.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
And then a bathroom in the sink. That's it.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
There's no more there's no space more than that. Really,
it's smaller than like a college dorm. So these two,
I mean, they see a figure standing there what looked like,
from what he said, long hair and a like a
trench coat looking thing. They said, he resembled like a
eighteen hundreds era like Civil War era troop, but and
(35:01):
as if he had been like away from the fight
for a while, if that makes sense, like just beaten
and done, brutal looking, and it just stood there, and
he said, as my buddy G was getting up to
go jump, they both like went to tackle this thing
and it just disappeared into thin air. They dove through
(35:22):
it and both looked at each other and were like,
what the hell just happened. So and that these two
the next day were literally came there and my buddy G.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Came right up to me.
Speaker 5 (35:34):
He's like, dude, udere never gonna believe what happened, Manuh,
And it's uh. And that's one of like fifty stories
we'd hear about the barracks, especially guys on duty that
would see again doors opening and closing by themselves, lights
turning on and off by themselves, and it was just
common practice to look at it and just go all
(35:55):
right and just keep moving because again, it's just another Tuesday,
you know, Like these things were happening so frequently that again,
people die on base all the time, whether it's training
accidents or you know, unfortunately mental health stuff, things of
that nature.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
But it's gonna happen.
Speaker 5 (36:13):
And like you said, the place remembers when it remembers,
those things stick around. Yeah, energy's got to go somewhere, man.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Absolutely, dude. Yeah. So next we'll move on from le
June to Afghanistan. And what I guess can only be
called the wolf headed thing.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Is that crazy star.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Yeah. This Soune's harder though, it's like because because it
moves into the realms of the ancient stuff and or
you know, some of the cross religious stuff where people
will say it's a it's a type of gin, you know.
So but either way, we're not going to get too
deep into it at the end of the day, right,
(37:01):
we're just gonna we're just gonna kind of gloss through
it real quick. And because it moves into the realm
of the ancient, uh, you know, it gets a little
biblical to So marine and army units operating near abandoned
the abandoned villages of uh Nuristan and Kunar. Now, I
(37:25):
don't know where those are and I didn't look too detail,
but you know, some people might so reported a tall, muscular,
upright creature with the head of a wolf or a
dog sounds like dog man, right, or were wolves. There's
slightly Locals called the entity cha Tan of the past
(37:49):
or the demon of the mountains. And I don't even
know if that's a good uh what would you call
that translation?
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yeah? No, can I give a location real quick? Of years?
Speaker 5 (38:04):
So Kunar is to the east, it's the mountains to
the east of Kabul, and it's north of Jalalabad. So okay,
it's it's a little farther nor so it's northeast of
Kabul and pretty much north of Jalalabad. It's actually directly
north of Aside a bad So if you're thinking like
(38:28):
near the Kaiber Pass. You just keep going north, follow
that up you'll see the mountains and that's where Kunar is.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Just to give people more of an idea.
Speaker 5 (38:38):
Yeah, close, kind of closer to the the border of
Pakistan and Afghanistan, so probably a lot of move like
trade routes probably moving through there and whatnot.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
Okay, so some descriptions matched the American dog man phenomena,
but but some also match like ancient Mesopotamian depictions of
like an Anubis, like Guardian, right, which is the jackal
head the jackal headed god. Yeah, a marine account similar
(39:15):
to this is spoken about. Uh and I'm going to
actually put the show. I'll put it in the show notes.
But it's the Confessionals podcast, episode three thirty five. So
Tony Merkles had somebody, I don't talk to somebody about it.
So not everyone saw it, but the ones who did,
(39:40):
their voices changed when they talk about it.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
So you've got then you if you look a touch
just a little deeper into like Arabian folklore, it's a
type that people will say it's a type of gin
or demon likened to an Arabian werewolf. But then it
twists a little bit, and it says similar to a ghoul, right,
(40:09):
but what the heck because it is said to haunt
graveyards and eat corpses. Now, with that being said, there's
there's a lot of reports in the US of dog
men around graveyards. So I don't know, man, I'm just
saying that's that kind of gave me. This is the
(40:31):
only reason I brought that up is because I was like, what,
there's a.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Little similaruency there.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
Yeah, so, yeah, that's kind of wild. So these encounters
aren't random, they follow patterns. Again, remote areas, war soaked ground.
I mean, wars in Afghanistan have been fight fought for
thousands of years, so high psychological intensity, ancient territory, and
(41:02):
longstanding local legends, which leads us to the real questions
why marines? Right, So there's this and I don't know why,
I've got to I've got to find where I read
this statistic because for some reason I didn't put it down.
But there's a statistic out there that says that Marines
(41:24):
are more likely to encounter things in places like this
than any other branch and a cult. So maybe, but
why these encounters? Why the Marines and that's actually what
we're going to talk about next.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
I don't know any of this, all right, Yeah, so
the question is.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
Why marines, why many Marines see these things? And you
know what, I don't know if it's an over the
marines course, small guys. Yeah, I don't think you have
to understand, Like, so when you hear like it's it's
crazy that in certain sex that's not the right word either.
(42:12):
Certain I can't think straight. No segments, certain segments of society,
the Marines are way overrepresented, Like entrepreneurship is one of
those places. Right, I've actually got more Marines doing stuff
like I'm doing than I have anyone else either as well.
(42:32):
So it's it's kind of weird, like there's congruency there.
I don't know if it's just because it's like the
the the theory of when something becomes you know, I
see all the Marines because I am a marine, or
it's like because I own a because I own a
brand new Forerunner. I see Forerunners everywhere, right, you know
what I mean? It could be a case of that.
(42:54):
But either why does this branch out of all the
branches keep showing up in the stories about shadow figures?
Haunted barracks, ancient spirits, and creatures in the jungle that
just shouldn't exist. There's a few reasons, none of them
mystical on their own, but when you stack them together,
(43:18):
the picture kind of comes together. Yeah. So you've got
first marines go where the map fades out. The core
gets spent into the edges, the forgotten corners, the territories
nobody else wants to step into. First bottom line. They
(43:39):
land on beaches that have no names, yet they patrol
valleys where even local tribes say, we don't go there.
Yeah yeah, I mean, dude, how many times I've heard
story after story of that in Afghanistan where they're or
even in like Iraq, and then places where oh man,
like yeah that I dealt with in South America and
(44:02):
stuff like that, you did, Locals are like, we don't
go there.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah, yeah, why would? What do you got? You're going there?
Speaker 4 (44:10):
Okay, right, okay, Well you can have fun on your own. Yeah. Yeah.
So the Corps has always been the tip of the spear,
and people complain and people whine, and they and they'll
be like, oh no they're not, but just by the shear,
but just by the sheer. Uh, nature of their job,
(44:34):
they're usually the first in so many situations, they are
the first ones there, period. And no, I don't look
at the Marine Corps as a special operations unit even
you know, some people think, oh, well we can you know,
and that's whatever, dude. The Marines are the Marines, and
as an entire force. What I've seen and what I've
(44:59):
done in myri search alone too, if you put a
Marine Corps and I'm just going to say this, it doesn't.
So when whenever you set a you take a marine
extraditionary unit, right, or it would it be AMU. Yeah,
(45:19):
a MEW a Marine extraditionary unit, which is about a
regimental size large. Yeah it's a it's a big, but
it's a regimental size force. And stand it up against
a the army uses the brigade system, not the regiment system, right,
So you've set it up against a army combat brigade
(45:42):
or what do they call them now, combrat basically an
infantry brigade or a combat team, a brigade combat team.
When you put them head to head, Marine Corps wins
nine out of ten times. Period.
Speaker 5 (45:58):
Wait every before we keep going, you were also in
the Army infantry.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
I was a Marine Marine infantry.
Speaker 5 (46:07):
Yeah, so he has both sides, ladies and gentlemen. I
did not coming from nothing.
Speaker 4 (46:13):
So but you know, when you do that in a
simulated system, the Marines win every single time. And I
say nine out of ten, but I actually mean ten
out of ten. Yeah, And it's just because of the
way they're trained to fight, period. And that's what I've
said to people. It's like, yes, the Army. I like
the Army too. It was it was cool, it was good,
(46:34):
we went to cool places, we did great people I
met there. But the Marines just trained to fight differently
with our only purpose and in the Marines trained to
fight at a disadvantage. Period. The Army always trains to
fight at an advantage. They just do.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Sorry, it's doctorate, god, it was. It was a different
like a ratio of.
Speaker 4 (46:56):
Three to one were we were. The Marine Corps was
taught to fight at a three to one disadvantage. Yes,
so that's why you have violence of action and the
whole nickname of Twofolhundon and des that's where that came from. Period. Right.
So anyway, anyway, people don't go there. So the core
(47:20):
has always been tip of the spear, and when you
stand at the tip, you hit things before anyone else
even knows they exist. Second, sleep deprivation and adrenaline sharpened
perception instead of dulling it period. And many of us
have been so sleep deprived that we see all kinds
(47:44):
of entities walking in the woods, period, whether they're there
or not. It doesn't mean yeah, shadow people and ghost soldiers.
Anyone that's been a ranger, score people that have been
to these they see these things constantly. Right, maybe they're
not just some figment of their imagination. Maybe maybe when
(48:05):
you get so sleep deprived, the veil drops a little
bit because because you are more like a child at
that point, because your brain's not working correctly. So maybe
the part of your brain, the reasoning part that like
fills in gaps for you, is so twisted at that
point that it actually could see the beyond the veil.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
You know, I've always thought about that.
Speaker 4 (48:29):
That's a theory I've always had.
Speaker 5 (48:31):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean, dude, I totally understand like when
look after if you're not sleeping for four or five days,
you're you're going to actually start You're going to lose
your mind, and you're going.
Speaker 4 (48:42):
To see some you're going to see some people say
it's a hallucination, and sometimes I say maybe, but maybe
it's not.
Speaker 5 (48:49):
Yeah, maybe it's just a change of perception. And now
because of that we can see different things.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
It's not just exhaustion.
Speaker 5 (48:57):
I know that for sure, right, because I know what's different,
you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (49:04):
And this is exactly what I've been saying. In combat environments,
your brain stops filtering.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Yeah, it just doesn't.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
You're not training, You're you are trained to notice movement, shapes, silence,
breathing pattern, change period. You are trained to notice movement,
changing shapes, changing silence, breathing pattern, change period.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Right, stop your man.
Speaker 4 (49:33):
Your awareness spreads out like a radar dish. This is
the opposite of hallucination. It is hyper perception. So when
when something's watching you from the tree line, a marine
can feel it before they can see it. And I'm
I go to my grave saying that, and I'm not
(49:58):
saying that doesn't happen to army guys. It's either today's
the Marine Corps athist. So give me, give me some
grindea exactly, yep. And how often have you and I
have been out there and you're like, man, I just
feel something is off.
Speaker 5 (50:14):
I can't even tell you. Man, Yep, exactly. You know
you've noticed it. It's help palpable for sure.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
And that's and it's gotten to the point where people
that we go do research with look at us and go,
what are you feeling?
Speaker 6 (50:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (50:31):
Yeah, yeah, so because we've been right so many times. Yeah.
The battlefield, this is third battlefield is a spiritual place
where you believe. Whether you believe in religion, energy, psychology,
or anthropology, the conclusion is all the same places where
(50:53):
suffering has pooled. Right, holds in prints. Human beings sense
things that are not visible because trauma and death and
death do not simply just vanish, because the ground remembers.
Structures also remember, and those memories don't always stay quiet
(51:17):
period right yep. Fourth, Marines spend long periods in stillness.
People imagine marines as constantly running and firing and yelling,
but deployment is mostly waiting. But you track, observe, stay quiet, listen.
(51:40):
Silence changes you. It just does. Silence makes you hear
the things most people have never been still enough to notice,
because when you're out in the freaking shit and you're
sitting in a patrol base. You're not you're not you're
not sitting, are you know? Listening to on your ears? Now,
(52:04):
we have such an active, you know, culture where there's
always something going on, but you better get fucking comfortable
with the quiet.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
Yeah. Yeah, I'll learn a lot about yourself.
Speaker 4 (52:16):
Man. Yeah. So and you hear, you get to a
point where you hear everything, so.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Here see any anomaly. And that's I think that's the point.
Speaker 5 (52:27):
It's to you're out there for so long that it
creates this baseline of what you're seeing every single even
and it's a new baseline every day obviously, but once
a little shift in that baseline happens, you will notice
it before anybody else. And I think a lot of
that is we we just we have to observe and
(52:48):
we become so observant over It's like solitary confinement.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
Man.
Speaker 5 (52:52):
You're up there alone with your thoughts and you can't
You also have to push those thoughts out so you
can stay focused on, uh, analy the environment.
Speaker 4 (53:01):
Yeah, and that kind of comes into this party. The
court teaches you to trust your senses. It absolutely did
more than an army could have ever taught me. I
didn't I didn't go through Army boot Camp. I didn't
do any of that. I remember sitting in Blue Camp
boot camp and literally doing exercises where you would sit
(53:22):
overnight in an l pope and you had to stay awake,
and that's what it was. It was for you to
trust your senses. And at that time too, the Marines
didn't have night vision, so you know, we had to
do everything in the dark. And we still did night operations,
but we didn't do them with nods. So do you
(53:46):
do that because I have to do it. You have
to get used to that. And I feel like we
kind of I don't know about the Marines anymore, but
I think as a force total, we rely way too.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
Much on night visionality. Yeah yeah, but either way, so.
Speaker 4 (54:04):
When you hear a twig snap behind you, that is
not something to rationalize away. That is something to act on.
And civilians talk themselves out of what they perceive all
the time. Marines they lock in. You are trained that
your instincts are not random, they're sharpened. This is why
(54:26):
Marines always feel like they're better than other people. That's
all part of it. But I am Finally, there's an old
idea that warriors are doorkeepers. Every culture that has ever
existed believe that the ones who walk into danger are
the ones who stand closest to the invisible world. Samurai
(54:51):
wrote about this. Vikings wrote about this. Native American warriors
spoke about spirits who walk with fighters into battle. This
is culture. It crosses all cultures and aral things. Warriors
have different experiences, and the Bible even talks about angels
and watchers on the walls. Right, the presence of conflict
(55:15):
has always been tied to the presence of the unseen.
Speaker 5 (55:19):
It's this lighter actually you can see it. It's from Vietnam.
It was a marine that carried this in Vietnam. My
brother got me for my birthday and on the back
has this print that says when this marine dies, he
will go to heaven because he has spent his time
in hell. And that was like a comment of like
the we are the gatekeepers to have it, like we
(55:42):
were the and it was it was just talked about
all the time, even within like the.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
The lore the marine lorst.
Speaker 5 (55:50):
It was like, yeah, you you don't go to heaven
until you get permission basically type of thing. But that's
very much like the marine that means thick of the
songs we sing.
Speaker 4 (55:59):
Just a warrior culture. Yeah yeah, and that's what they
foment there.
Speaker 5 (56:04):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely, because it's a just cause, at least
in our minds at the time.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (56:11):
So when a marine says I saw something or I
felt something, or we we were not alone out there,
that does not make them delusional. It makes them a witness.
So they are stationed where history, violence, memory, and spirit
(56:33):
all overlap. They are awake when most of the world
is dreaming and they're they are quiet in the hours
when the boundary between the scene and the unseen gets thin.
The fourth watch Man and talk about this all the time,
right yeah. So uh, and that is when the veil
(56:53):
is thinnest. Period in the world that hides from most
people does not always hide from the warrior. It just
doesn't share it period.
Speaker 2 (57:07):
It's almost like it knows you can you can bear it,
you know.
Speaker 4 (57:11):
Yeah. Absolutely, So, as we mark the two hundred and fiftieth,
two hundred and fifty years of the United States Marine Corps,
we're not just honoring the battles. We can talk about
the flags that were raised, the hills that were taken,
the missions completed, we're also honoring the battles that live
(57:36):
in the quiet places, the ones marines carry without the metals,
without the citations, without the speeches. There is a visible war,
right yeah, Yeah, absolutely, and then there's an unseen one.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (57:55):
And whether you believe these stories are spirits, cryptids, ancient entities,
psychological echoes, or something else, entirely, what matters is that
the experiences are real to the ones who live them. Right,
Marines do not have the luxury of fantasy. I use
(58:19):
that as a big point. We didn't have the time,
nor the nor the inclination to make ship up while
you're on watch. Everything gets filtered through survival. If the
if a marine says something was there in the dark,
then something's probably there in the dark. So everything, that ship, everything.
(58:49):
If you're on some you're out on some fob and
you know you see something like moving behind a rock
or something like that, you're going to tell the guy
that relieves you. Yeah, dude, I think I saw something
over there, and I feel like there's something over there.
How many times did you do that? On freaking turnover?
Speaker 2 (59:10):
Almost every other time?
Speaker 4 (59:11):
Right, Something's out there, something and I can feel it
or I can see it, or I saw a glimpse
of it. Boom. Just keep an eye out over there, yeah, man,
all the time. So this episode is for every marine
who has ever stood fire watching silence, For every squad
that felt something watching them beyond the tree line, for
(59:34):
every devil dog who saw a shape where they shouldn't
have been one where there should not have been one,
For every warrior who came home with stories he never
told because he didn't want to be laughed at or
didn't have the words for it. The Corps has a
long history of fighting on Earth, but maybe it has
(59:59):
also stood guard on the edge of something deeper. So,
whether you're active reserve veteran or someone who just respects
the Marines, happy birthday in semper fidellas semper fidlas brother,
So in this episode. If this episode meant something to you,
(01:00:20):
if it opened a thought, spark the memory, or plan
to a seed, I need you to take the time,
just the second to like, share, and review the podcast.
This show grows because of you, because you share it,
because you keep these conversations alive. You can also find
all episodes, merch and updates at broadcasting seeds dot com.
(01:00:45):
Until next time, stay watchful, stay grounded, and never assume
the world is only what you.
Speaker 7 (01:00:53):
See from the halls of Montazoma, So the shores of
Triple We fight our country's battles in the air, land.
Speaker 6 (01:01:03):
And sea first, to fight for right in freedom and
to keep bar on our clean.
Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
We are proud of.
Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
The clean exile of United States.
Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
Were well.
Speaker 6 (01:01:24):
All fights nfur to every breeze from down de City Son.
Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
We have fought in.
Speaker 6 (01:01:31):
Every climbing place where we could take a gun, in
the snow of far off northern live and in sun
each something seas you will find us awas on the job.
Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
The United States were.
Speaker 4 (01:01:47):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
United States were.
Speaker 4 (01:01:59):
United free.
Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Here's helping you.
Speaker 6 (01:02:06):
Went to work hard, which.
Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
We are proud to serve many drife.
Speaker 8 (01:02:11):
We fought for life and never lost on the Army
and the Navy. Never look one haven't seence. They will
find the streets at Garden.
Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
By United States Moround
Speaker 4 (01:02:40):
Fou
Yif jo straight from the broadcast studio, and then the stating,
this ain't no bet sime story, so as prophetic and
crypt the signals from the saddles of the garden we
did where the trop got secret snow parton likerophone alchemist
scriptures with a twist peak the frequency seeds in the
midst we drop fas like plagues, revelations in the catus,
(00:42):
broadcasting truth while they trapped in surveillans wisdom with a
watchman's blade, forth what sound while your whole system.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Fame, blood, moons, nephal love.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Echoes in the pond, sasquaarts stopping through the fault lines
of time.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
We ain't mainstream, we ain't just streams safer with the prophets,
the code, the dream. So with you tune in better
Gord to minus Broadcasting Seeds and we break in the.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, Jill.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Steady, all right, everybody, welcome back to another Well. This
is a special episode of Broadcasting Seeds. Today is the
two hundred and fiftieth birthday of the United States Marine Corps.
I am a marine veteran, and my buddy's here with me.
Jewel Matanos is a marine veteran, as well, if you
(01:44):
could jewel just you've been on other episodes, but tell people,
just give give them a quick rundown of who you
are in your background.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
Yeah, Joel Matanos uh So, I was in the Marine
Corps from twenty eleven to twenty fifteen. After I got out,
worked some odd jobs and then I ended up getting
into mental health. So I work in the mental health
field now, helping veterans with their mental health stuff. At
(02:12):
the end of the day, I'm not going to go
too much into that, obviously, But other than that, since then,
like long walks on the beach and going hunting for
bigfoot in right the allegating nation. Yeah, and just overall, man,
we're just trying to trying to live life and look
at things with a different lens or at least like
(02:33):
a sixty thousand foot view, give people some ideas of
what's going on out there, you know.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Absolutely. Yeah. So with that being said, today marks the
two hundred and fifty years since the United States Marine
Corps was born. On November tenth of seventeen seventy five,
YEP traced back to the Ton Tavern in Philadelphia, where
(02:59):
Captain and Samuel Nicholas Yet born in a bar where
Samuel Nicholas started recruiting the first Continental Marines. Semper I
Somber five? What did I just say? Somber A fucking buddy, Fuckercember,
I fucked the other guy, all right, Dember five to
every double dog listening. If you want the official receipts,
(03:26):
I'm gonna put some stuff in the You'll have a
whole bunch of links in the show notes for this.
So the Court the core zone page lays it out
in the anniversary hub. I'll put all that in the
show notes. But quick history fly over before we dive
into the weird. Okay, the original Continental Marines were disbanded
(03:51):
after the Revolution and then re established by Congress in
seventeen ninety eight. So yes, the Court technically has been
founded twice. But the motto that we all know is
simper fidels was formally adopted in eighteen eighty three per
(04:16):
the Marine Corps History Division, which fun Fact and Jewel
can attest to this. We had to actually pay pass
a history test to pass to complete boot camp. And
this is why Marines have such a crazy relationship with
their histories, because they actually know it.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, yeah, you would agree, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
They actually know they're taught. This is one of the
things that's mandatory. I remember like first phase and boot
camp was almost all Marine Corps knowledge, right is what
they get use and you had to give an eighty
percent on this. I can't remember how many questions it was,
but you know, covered all kinds of stuff and if
(05:03):
you we actually had people fail out of boot camp
because they failed the test, they got to retake and
then they failed again and then they were gone. Many
failed again because we had some real morons.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
But you know, smart enough to do this, So it's
you can imagine how hard it is.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
True. I mean, allegedly you have to pass a certain
point on the ASVAB to even get into the Marines,
but I don't think I don't think the barrier is
very high. I think it depends on the era. There's
waivers for that, yeah, exactly, but you got a pass
Marine Corps history to continue on to second phase. So
(05:48):
with that being said, uh, this podcast is broadcasting seeds
and we're not stopping at cake cuttings and birthday balls
for this episode tonight, we're stepping into that shadowy overlap
where Marines meet high strangeness war zones have always been
(06:08):
fertile ground for the inexplicable inexplicable. Call it stress, call
it fog of war, or call it something else. Moving
just beyond the tree line and Vietnam, for example, we're
gonna go over and talk about what are called the
(06:30):
rock apes, hairy bipedal figures seen by American gis and
marines in the central highlands of Vietnam. The evidence is contested, obviously,
just like Bigfoot or anything else, but the stories are
stubborn and they stick with us. So if you want again,
(06:52):
I'll put some. If you want to read about these things,
I will put some. There's a few links that I'll
have in the show notes to go over some of
the historic stuff. So here's the mission profile for this episode.
We'll honor the core as we're doing right, two hundred
(07:15):
and fifty years of grit, then roll into the first
hand marine lore from the jungle to the barracks, and
finally we'll ask the uncomfortable question when official narratives collide
with person persistent, well sourced anomalies, what gets filled, under filed, underclassified,
and what gets dismissed as imagination and what deserves a
(07:38):
second look? So if you're new here, welcome to broadcasting seeds,
where we will sift through the signal from noise and
without losing our sense of humor. If you've been here
a while, thank you for coming back. And you know
the drill like share and drop a review. It generally
(07:59):
helps the show grow and keeps these stories on the
map for folks who need them. So I guess into
it right. So where the unseen bleeds in the battlefield.
(08:19):
So let's talk about the terrain here, because the land
itself is one of the first places marines start running into. Strange.
If you've ever deployed, you know this. Not every place
on Earth feels the same. Some places feel crowded even
even when they're empty. Some places feel like they remember things,
(08:44):
and some places they feel like they're watching you back.
Marines have been sent into the thickest jungles, the oldest mountains,
the deepest forests, and the most war soiak patches on Earth.
You take a bunch of eighteen to twenty five year
olds whose day job is to fight, starve, sweat, freeze,
(09:07):
and not die, and you put them in the territories
that have been sacred, contested, or haunted for thousands of
years and things happen. Yep, you would agree.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Yeah, we've heard all kinds of story. We've had all
kinds of experiences as well.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
So I guess we'll start with okin now. Now, ok
now is part of the island hopping campaign of the
Marine Corps. It was the wasn't it the last island?
I think it was the last week.
Speaker 5 (09:39):
So and that's where, uh, there was a lot of
I mean from what I had heard from the stories
and every like looking at history, it was some some
of the most brutal fighting based on the weather, the terrain,
like just fighting in mud pits, climbing mountain It was
just a horrible I couldn't imagine I mean, trying to
(10:03):
walk out back when it's muddy without getting shot at
It's hard enough. I can't imagine fighting up a mountain
full of mud for days and days and weeks at
a time, you know.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Yeah, and just being undersupplied, not having you know, clean water,
clean Oh god, iturriz.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
We don't even that's the part that we don't ever
bring out, you know.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
So the aftermath of all this in World War Two
is that there's approximately thirty thousand US military personnel stationed
on Okinawa, which is like seventy percent of the US
troops in Japan are actually on Okinawa. I mean the
(10:47):
third Marine Division is in Okinawa, right, So yeah, it's
it's a presence, and there's the native Okinawan's and the
Americans haven't always gotten along, and they also a lot
of the Native Oakan Islands don't even consider themselves Japanese.
(11:08):
So it's a very different place. But the thing that
we have to consider is that it's it's been called
for centuries the keystone of the of the Pacific because
it's not in Japan. It's it's south right, so you
can jump. It's what its proximity is China and you
(11:32):
know the Philippines.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
It's it's a strategic stronghold very much. So yeah, so yeah,
so there's that.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
But it's not just a military base. It's layered history.
It's the site of one of the bloodiest battles of
World War Two, which Jewel alluded to. Tens of thousands
of Japanese soldiers, ok now and civilians and American marines
died there, many in caves, many by suicide, many in
(12:03):
total despair. So you can imagine the energy there.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, man, Now.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Try to imagine what it means to sleep in a
barracks built directly over tunnels where the entire platoons, where
entire platoons made their final stands, or to stand a
lonely firewatch shift. Let me tell you shift next to
the shuttered building that your sergeant casually tells you to
(12:34):
never look into the third floor window of blah blah blah. Right,
so window exactly so. Marines at Camp Hansen and Schwab
talk about apparitions and dress uniforms from nineteen forty five,
still marching their night patrols. Guys see figures walking right
(12:58):
past them, I mean solid clear and step and then
vanish at the corner of a hallway.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Dude, that I can't wait, I can't.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Doors slam when the wind is dead still right, Someone
whispers your name in Japanese when there's one no one
behind you? Yeah, could you imagine?
Speaker 2 (13:23):
No?
Speaker 4 (13:25):
I mean, dude, it's allegedly because I've never been there
to check it out, as it's my body. Allegedly, it's
so common that it stops, it stops being a ghost
story and becomes like a normal Tuesday, right, like just yeah, yeah,
and then, so let's move from there. You move into Vietnam,
(13:51):
and sure we'll get to the rockets later. Okay, But
before the cryptid show up, marines were noticing something else,
the silence. There are patches of jungle in the highlands
where even insects won't make noise. Anyone who's patrolled knows
(14:13):
that silence is bad. It's bad.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
One hundred. You know something's wrong.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Yes, So silence is not peace. It's a threat because
either something else is out there that's making everything be silent,
or it's just like that, everything around silent.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, stillness, the thickness of the air.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
Yeah, god, I actually got chills. Yeah, man, I actually
got chills. And I haven't patrolled ship in twenty years.
Speaker 5 (14:41):
I mean, just think about the small little the incident.
We me and you just standing at the I'm not
gonna not gonna go oh yeah, yeah, go ahead, tell
give the short the short. So there's a spot here
in upstate New York there sleepy hollow. Is that what
it's called again, the sleeping hollow.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Something like that, sleepy hollow roads. It's not sleepy hollow,
whiskey hollow.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Whiskey hollow.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
There we go.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Sorry, Whiskey Hollow Road.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
So we went. It's a kind of it's a known
kind of haunted, the Wacky Ship. Yeah, all kinds of
weird stuff. You're not allowed to drive through there anymore
past a certain time. A lot of people out there
after yeah, after sundown. Why do they do that, folks?
If there's no issues? So so not for nothing, we
(15:31):
drive out there, uh, and we want we we just
stop at this random little pullover site you can walk
off and go kind of up into the woods a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
And we stopped and we we both got out and
we both walked. Now, both Ben and I have hearing problems.
I understand this. I'll tell you what it sounds. It
sounded like I had ear plugs in like.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Exactly the latest I describe it.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
I can't even that is exactly what it was.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
And I walked and I looked at Bennett and we
it's like we noticed at the same time, and I
was like.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Dude, do you hear how quiet it is? It's right
in this one small area.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
As soon as we stepped out of it, it's like
all the sound started coming back.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Yeah. So like if you go off the road, that's
when I would not, but if you're on the road,
you could hear everything and everything. But it's like you
walked into the zone.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Yeah, there was literally no sound. There was no birds,
nothing was moving, there was no wind. It was not
freaking really.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Weird still, just pure stillness.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
And not only that, like the hair is on my
back of my neck started standing up. You it felt wrong,
it felt wrong to be there, and that that's that.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
That's kind I think where this and.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
I've and I've had this feeling in other places too,
absolutely historics and evidence, but yeah, unbelievable. And the bottom
line is it's a pattern, right, yeah, where war happens.
Because there's I've had the same thing happen in Gettysburg,
where war happens, where blood is spilled, where suffering stacks
(17:10):
and stacks on top of each other. The boundary between
worlds gets really thin, man. Yeah, it just does. I
mean even the Bible has language for this, high places, strongholds, gates.
Anthropology calls it liminality. It's the actual phrase, and Marines
(17:32):
call it. Yeah, something's off here because your head's on
a swivel. Yeah, yeah, sudden You're like wait, wait, wait,
what why is it like this. So before we talk
about creatures or entities or encounters, we need to understand
the ground itself. Right. Places bottom line is places remember things,
(17:54):
and sometimes they don't forget who walks on them. So
the encounters themselves that we're going to get into a
few stories, not miss not rumors, the things marines actually
talk about when the barracks lights are low and no
one's trying to look tough and we have these conversations
(18:17):
over and over again.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Right, should have called mister ballin.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Yeah, no shit, Yeah. So let's start where most of
these tales get their first breath among marines, and that's Vietnam.
I remember hearing about the rock apes from old like folks.
I knew some Vietnam vets. I still know some. And
if you ever talk to people about rock apes, it's
(18:42):
starting to get better, just like Bigfoot. Like people that
have had, you know, paranormal experiences or or supernatural experiences
are like UFOs or whatever. Right, people are coming out
more about this stuff, but they would if you said
the word rock ape, A lot of people would just
be like, you know, oh, I know about that, and
(19:05):
then they're like, no, I ain't telling you that story.
Because I'm it's like I'm crazy.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
So during Vietnam, go ahead, stigma stigma around absolutely, and
there's you know, that's I think that's breaking down culture
wide in the United States. So during the Vietnam War,
marines in the Central Highlands reported large, upright, muscular, hair
(19:31):
covered creatures that moved in coordinated groups and through rocks
with force and intention. And these weren't orangutans because it's
the wrong region, right, wrong behavior. They weren't macaqus because
they're too big, too upright, and frankly, they were tactical,
(19:54):
which uh, which is crazy to me. Multiple patrols report
to them, some fired warning shots, some returned fire after
they got rocks thrown at them. There are after action notes,
and I've got to find some, but I think I've
found a I've got some reports, but I'd love to
(20:17):
find some actual after action with and notes that have
this stuff. But who knows. But it's you know, notes
buried in long unit logs, and plenty of marines have
gone to their graves saying I know what I saw, right.
(20:37):
So there is a balanced summary of reports that I found.
I will put them in the show notes there's just
too much information to go over in one episode. But
it's literally on stripes dot com and it's the mystery
of the wood apes or apes in Vietnam. It's freaking
cool if you look.
Speaker 5 (20:56):
I mean it's all over like there's military history all
over about this, all over the place.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Is and not just the Marines, it's army too, yeah,
I mean all over Vietnam and and Frankly and Laos
and some of the other places that are, you know,
well adjacent to Vietnam.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
They also had the like, uh a nickname if you're
looking them up, but but.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Two two's it's b A t U t U t s.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Yeah. Is there any of those over the top of
them too?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (21:26):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I don't know how the local be a easy way
to say it.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Right, of course, there's no body, you know, but there
is decades of consistent marine eyewitness testimony period army as well.
And then I'm sure that there's plenty of folklore in
Vietnam from the indigenous folks that consistently report the same
(21:58):
type of thing, right, yeah. And the bottom line is
the VA did right, and so did you know, all civilians.
So the bottom line is is that what I've learned
through the years with stuff like this is consistency means something.
So if you consistently get these from different places that
(22:19):
have nothing, there's no congruency between Vietnam and and Oregon, right,
but they're still seeing the same thing that that should
peak your interest. Sure, so kind of cool for another
area of the world where you can think of, you know,
(22:42):
Sasquatch type creatures being so Sasquatch fans.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
For for anyone even looking into it like.
Speaker 5 (22:49):
There is actual There were actual expeditions, documented expeditions by
not us. I'm talking like the NVA, the and professors
of the Vietnam National University that went out to do
these things and tried to find the rock abes. But
again there was no and they never find a body.
(23:10):
They just elude them the whole time. And enough for
they are not going to think about it this way.
An organization is not going to put that much money
into an effort when they don't believe in it. I know, well,
I know that dumb things have happened in the past,
let's not say always, but.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You know it was enough.
Speaker 5 (23:28):
It was enough of a scare where they kept pushing
expeditions out to find this thing, and they couldn't.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
And this is the NBA, right that, yeah, not the Americans.
Speaker 5 (23:39):
General h Wangman Ta so h o A n g
m I n h Thha. He organized the mission in
nineteen seventy four. They found nothing. It was unsuccessful and well,
they didn't find nothing, but they found no hard evidence.
Professor and then professor Vou Kui it's v a Quy
(24:01):
of the Vietnam National University. I sent an expedition as well.
They said they had strange human like footprints.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
But that was about it.
Speaker 5 (24:12):
And that was done in nineteen seventy by Professor Tran
Hong Viette of Hanoi's Pedagogic University.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Okay, that's crazy. So you've got you have both sides,
yes saying the same thing.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Yes, yeah for crazy mm hm.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
That's amazing. All right. So now I guess we'll transitionally.
I just say, if you know, the sasquatch researchers and stuff,
just look into this. It's kind of cool for me
to like peel out from someplace that I don't normally
look into. Yeah, for sasquatch activity. Right, So and then
(24:52):
we move let's move back to Okinawa and the ghost barracks. Now,
if you've been stationed at Okinawa, you probably already know.
I never was, but I've heard story. Yeah, So basically
(25:13):
what you get though, is a combination or some you know,
marines describe footsteps and empty stairwells, doors unlocking themselves, voices
in Japanese whispering at night, full body apparitions in World
War Two uniforms still marching patrol routes, and so. One
(25:38):
of the most famous stories comes from Camp Hansen, or
a marine on gate guard reported a fully dressed World
War Two marine with helmet gear even blood on his uniform,
walking up and asking to be let in, to be
let back in. The guard turned to call his sergeant,
(25:59):
turned back, and the dude was gone, Yeah man, that's
and that's not a one time story. That story that's
been told over multiple decades by different marines at that
same gate.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
That's a tortured soul man.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (26:19):
Yeah, again, I report on Okinawa hauntings. I've got stuff
that's in the show notes. It's gonna you know, because
again it's so much to cover, and as we know,
marines don't really scare easy, Like I don't have a
lot of fear. I mean, I'm sure they're just like
every other person, but I just don't have a lot
(26:39):
of fear. Like we we go out in the woods
and it's.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
The middle of the night, no lights, nothing, bene myself whatever,
you know, Yeah, and just accept it.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
But as people will say that have been there, it's
Okinawa is one of those few places where they admit
when they go out in the woods, sometimes they get
they've been shaken, you know, and that's people say it
over and over again. Yeah, where are we anyway? Yeah?
(27:13):
All right, Uh, we're gonna move to camp? All right?
How do we want to say this? I'm saying La
June because that's what I am, a guy. The family,
the family or whoever. Somebody complains that it's Camp Lagerne.
But which makes sense too, And I've debated this on
a podcast before. It makes sense because he's from Louisiana,
(27:36):
so you get some weird pronunciations with things, and it's
a French name, so Lagerne. But I bet it's got
the French accent too, like line.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
You know, well that's the draw man.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
I mean, yeah, you know what I mean, Like, we
don't I'm not going to say, Uh, I'm trying to
think of words from the Bayou. That I mean, most
words from the Bayou sound different from most words I'm
saying from up here.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
We're like they're spelled totally weird too, Like like the
last name.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
Rova show Yeah, yeah, you know, come on.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Look at the name.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
It does not look like how it sounds at all anyway.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
So camp was June where I was stationed for four years.
Same here, uh, marines on firewatch and in some barracks,
not all barracks, but some barracks. And I can tell
you that where I lived, which the barracks where I
live don't exist anymore, but there's I'll tell stories in
the second and on rifle range, so out of Stone Bay, yeah,
(28:40):
rifle range reports. Shadow figures right, human shaped, solid, intelligent
and watching. They move differently than normal shadows. It's like
they have weight, yea. And some will stop and when
you look, and some will keep coming. And there's and
(29:03):
here's the part nobody likes to say out loud. They
only go away when you speak scripture or say the
name of Jesus. How about and in the core, that's
not superstition, that's experience, right, there, uh there are. There
(29:25):
may not be clean government link or academic study here,
but one comes from the lived testimonies across dozens of platoons,
across decades and patterns and strong and consistent you know,
fashion again consistency. So I've lived out on Onslow Beach
(29:45):
and those those barracks don't they don't exist anymore. But
when you would come across the bridge on the Onslow Beach,
which is Onslo Beach, is the beach on you know
Marine Corps based Campbell Joom and people go out there
and swim and spend the day at the beach and
it's actually pretty damn nice.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a nice beach.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
Yeah. They've got a little uh p X there called
the show Shop and you know, so that used to be.
But when you come over the bridge, you would come
to that main road and you would take a right
and the whole battalion used to sit right across from
the staff and c O Beach and that staph n
(30:28):
Ceo Beach. There there's a there's a building on top
of the dune and that was our the tian Aid
station was in the was in that building. That's awesome,
but across from there you had these I don't know
what you would call them. They were squad based. They
were like white elephants or whatever you like, kind of like,
(30:48):
and they were all situated in h and I want
to say there was one, two, three, four of them,
maybe three or four of them. Yeah, And then you
had like a boat locker farther out towards Risley Pier.
I don't think Riseley Peer. I think they got swept away,
but maybe they reboat part of it. I don't know,
(31:09):
but Riseley Pier used to be a fishing pier farther
down the beach. But anyway, they had a boat locker
out there too, and a motor pool. So that's where
second recombation was, and now it's all gone. I think
they replaced maybe some of the stuff with like like
(31:31):
rental like trailers and stuff that you could rent or
something like that. I don't know, but either way, I
had more than one, on more than one occasion, some spooky, spooky,
spooky stuff, like especially late nights on because we still
had a firewatch, yeah, and we had duty, you know,
and a couple times on when you're awake on firewatch,
(31:54):
and weird shit would just start happening, like like you'd
hear doors opening or things like that, especially in the
cross the breezeway between squad bays Man and you would
go check and there'd be nothing there, and you're just like, dude,
what the hell, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
I got a I Actually it's not my own story,
but it's a story I can speak on behalf of
someone else's similar on on Base on Lejune, not not
in that, not in Stone Bay area, but in condemned
barracks that eventually got shut down. So when we first
got there, we were in barracks that were known to
(32:34):
be condemned. They were getting ready to shut them down.
And then they moved this into another set of barracks
on F Street.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
When they moved to H yeah, F Street.
Speaker 5 (32:44):
And when they moved this over, a bunch of we
had some guys like, as you do after doing two
years and security forces, you come over to the infantry.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
So we were already there. I was a new guy
in the.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
Infantry at the time, with three two kilo company h
and we got a group of security for worse guys
who come in, they're there, they've already been in for
a couple of years. So they they're not new guys anymore.
They're kind of just they get a little treated like
new guys. But regardless, they show up. One of my
best friends, God rest his soul, was there with another
(33:15):
buddy of mine as well. I'll keep his name out
of it because he's still around and I don't want
I don't want things to kind of jump in him
if he doesn't want to.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
But I'll call the other buddy G and so.
Speaker 5 (33:28):
G and the other guy were at in the suicide
barracks as we knew them. So, suicide barracks is a
barracks where they put all the guys that were suicidal
or they thought they were suicidal or mental health issues. Absolutely,
and we just as marines called them obviously the suicide barricks.
It's because we're not the most sentimental and yeah, no,
(33:52):
not at all, just a little broken all of us,
you know. So at the time, so and in those barracks, unfortunately,
a lot of suicides happened, so hence the name. Yeah,
we call it what it is, I guess. So, my
buddy and his buddy were there. So they're sleeping in
(34:13):
the middle of the night, the other guy in the
other bed wakes G up and goes, hey, dude, or
may have been the other way around. Regardless, they wake
up to this figure at the end of the bed.
And in the barracks rooms it's literally one bed one side,
one bed on the other side.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
And then a bathroom in the sink. That's it.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
There's no more there's no space more than that. Really,
it's smaller than like a college dorm. So these two,
I mean, they see a figure standing there what looked like,
from what he said, long hair and a like a
trench coat looking thing. They said, he resembled like a
eighteen hundreds era like Civil War era troop, but and
(35:01):
as if he had been like away from the fight
for a while, if that makes sense, like just beaten
and done, brutal looking, and it just stood there, and
he said, as my buddy G was getting up to
go jump, they both like went to tackle this thing
and it just disappeared into thin air. They dove through
(35:22):
it and both looked at each other and were like,
what the hell just happened. So and that these two
the next day were literally came there and my buddy G.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Came right up to me.
Speaker 5 (35:34):
He's like, dude, udere never gonna believe what happened, Manuh,
And it's uh. And that's one of like fifty stories
we'd hear about the barracks, especially guys on duty that
would see again doors opening and closing by themselves, lights
turning on and off by themselves, and it was just
common practice to look at it and just go all
(35:55):
right and just keep moving because again, it's just another Tuesday,
you know, Like these things were happening so frequently that again,
people die on base all the time, whether it's training
accidents or you know, unfortunately mental health stuff, things of
that nature.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
But it's gonna happen.
Speaker 5 (36:13):
And like you said, the place remembers when it remembers,
those things stick around. Yeah, energy's got to go somewhere, man.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Absolutely, dude. Yeah. So next we'll move on from le
June to Afghanistan. And what I guess can only be
called the wolf headed thing.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Is that crazy star.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Yeah. This Soune's harder though, it's like because because it
moves into the realms of the ancient stuff and or
you know, some of the cross religious stuff where people
will say it's a it's a type of gin, you know.
So but either way, we're not going to get too
deep into it at the end of the day, right,
(37:01):
we're just gonna we're just gonna kind of gloss through
it real quick. And because it moves into the realm
of the ancient, uh, you know, it gets a little
biblical to So marine and army units operating near abandoned
the abandoned villages of uh Nuristan and Kunar. Now, I
(37:25):
don't know where those are and I didn't look too detail,
but you know, some people might so reported a tall, muscular,
upright creature with the head of a wolf or a
dog sounds like dog man, right, or were wolves. There's
slightly Locals called the entity cha Tan of the past
(37:49):
or the demon of the mountains. And I don't even
know if that's a good uh what would you call
that translation?
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yeah? No, can I give a location real quick? Of years?
Speaker 5 (38:04):
So Kunar is to the east, it's the mountains to
the east of Kabul, and it's north of Jalalabad. So okay,
it's it's a little farther nor so it's northeast of
Kabul and pretty much north of Jalalabad. It's actually directly
north of Aside a bad So if you're thinking like
(38:28):
near the Kaiber Pass. You just keep going north, follow
that up you'll see the mountains and that's where Kunar is.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Just to give people more of an idea.
Speaker 5 (38:38):
Yeah, close, kind of closer to the the border of
Pakistan and Afghanistan, so probably a lot of move like
trade routes probably moving through there and whatnot.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
Okay, so some descriptions matched the American dog man phenomena,
but but some also match like ancient Mesopotamian depictions of
like an Anubis, like Guardian, right, which is the jackal
head the jackal headed god. Yeah, a marine account similar
(39:15):
to this is spoken about. Uh and I'm going to
actually put the show. I'll put it in the show notes.
But it's the Confessionals podcast, episode three thirty five. So
Tony Merkles had somebody, I don't talk to somebody about it.
So not everyone saw it, but the ones who did,
(39:40):
their voices changed when they talk about it.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
So you've got then you if you look a touch
just a little deeper into like Arabian folklore, it's a
type that people will say it's a type of gin
or demon likened to an Arabian werewolf. But then it
twists a little bit, and it says similar to a ghoul, right,
(40:09):
but what the heck because it is said to haunt
graveyards and eat corpses. Now, with that being said, there's
there's a lot of reports in the US of dog
men around graveyards. So I don't know, man, I'm just
saying that's that kind of gave me. This is the
(40:31):
only reason I brought that up is because I was like, what,
there's a.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Little similaruency there.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
Yeah, so, yeah, that's kind of wild. So these encounters
aren't random, they follow patterns. Again, remote areas, war soaked ground.
I mean, wars in Afghanistan have been fight fought for
thousands of years, so high psychological intensity, ancient territory, and
(41:02):
longstanding local legends, which leads us to the real questions
why marines? Right, So there's this and I don't know why,
I've got to I've got to find where I read
this statistic because for some reason I didn't put it down.
But there's a statistic out there that says that Marines
(41:24):
are more likely to encounter things in places like this
than any other branch and a cult. So maybe, but
why these encounters? Why the Marines and that's actually what
we're going to talk about next.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
I don't know any of this, all right, Yeah, so
the question is.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
Why marines, why many Marines see these things? And you
know what, I don't know if it's an over the
marines course, small guys. Yeah, I don't think you have
to understand, Like, so when you hear like it's it's
crazy that in certain sex that's not the right word either.
(42:12):
Certain I can't think straight. No segments, certain segments of society,
the Marines are way overrepresented, Like entrepreneurship is one of
those places. Right, I've actually got more Marines doing stuff
like I'm doing than I have anyone else either as well.
(42:32):
So it's it's kind of weird, like there's congruency there.
I don't know if it's just because it's like the
the the theory of when something becomes you know, I
see all the Marines because I am a marine, or
it's like because I own a because I own a
brand new Forerunner. I see Forerunners everywhere, right, you know
what I mean? It could be a case of that.
(42:54):
But either why does this branch out of all the
branches keep showing up in the stories about shadow figures?
Haunted barracks, ancient spirits, and creatures in the jungle that
just shouldn't exist. There's a few reasons, none of them
mystical on their own, but when you stack them together,
(43:18):
the picture kind of comes together. Yeah. So you've got
first marines go where the map fades out. The core
gets spent into the edges, the forgotten corners, the territories
nobody else wants to step into. First bottom line. They
(43:39):
land on beaches that have no names, yet they patrol
valleys where even local tribes say, we don't go there.
Yeah yeah, I mean, dude, how many times I've heard
story after story of that in Afghanistan where they're or
even in like Iraq, and then places where oh man,
like yeah that I dealt with in South America and
(44:02):
stuff like that, you did, Locals are like, we don't
go there.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah, yeah, why would? What do you got? You're going there?
Speaker 4 (44:10):
Okay, right, okay, Well you can have fun on your own. Yeah. Yeah.
So the Corps has always been the tip of the spear,
and people complain and people whine, and they and they'll
be like, oh no they're not, but just by the shear,
but just by the sheer. Uh, nature of their job,
(44:34):
they're usually the first in so many situations, they are
the first ones there, period. And no, I don't look
at the Marine Corps as a special operations unit even
you know, some people think, oh, well we can you know,
and that's whatever, dude. The Marines are the Marines, and
as an entire force. What I've seen and what I've
(44:59):
done in myri search alone too, if you put a
Marine Corps and I'm just going to say this, it doesn't.
So when whenever you set a you take a marine
extraditionary unit, right, or it would it be AMU. Yeah,
(45:19):
a MEW a Marine extraditionary unit, which is about a
regimental size large. Yeah it's a it's a big, but
it's a regimental size force. And stand it up against
a the army uses the brigade system, not the regiment system, right,
So you've set it up against a army combat brigade
(45:42):
or what do they call them now, combrat basically an
infantry brigade or a combat team, a brigade combat team.
When you put them head to head, Marine Corps wins
nine out of ten times. Period.
Speaker 5 (45:58):
Wait every before we keep going, you were also in
the Army infantry.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
I was a Marine Marine infantry.
Speaker 5 (46:07):
Yeah, so he has both sides, ladies and gentlemen. I
did not coming from nothing.
Speaker 4 (46:13):
So but you know, when you do that in a
simulated system, the Marines win every single time. And I
say nine out of ten, but I actually mean ten
out of ten. Yeah, And it's just because of the
way they're trained to fight, period. And that's what I've
said to people. It's like, yes, the Army. I like
the Army too. It was it was cool, it was good,
(46:34):
we went to cool places, we did great people I
met there. But the Marines just trained to fight differently
with our only purpose and in the Marines trained to
fight at a disadvantage. Period. The Army always trains to
fight at an advantage. They just do.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Sorry, it's doctorate, god, it was. It was a different
like a ratio of.
Speaker 4 (46:56):
Three to one were we were. The Marine Corps was
taught to fight at a three to one disadvantage. Yes,
so that's why you have violence of action and the
whole nickname of Twofolhundon and des that's where that came from. Period. Right.
So anyway, anyway, people don't go there. So the core
(47:20):
has always been tip of the spear, and when you
stand at the tip, you hit things before anyone else
even knows they exist. Second, sleep deprivation and adrenaline sharpened
perception instead of dulling it period. And many of us
have been so sleep deprived that we see all kinds
(47:44):
of entities walking in the woods, period, whether they're there
or not. It doesn't mean yeah, shadow people and ghost soldiers.
Anyone that's been a ranger, score people that have been
to these they see these things constantly. Right, maybe they're
not just some figment of their imagination. Maybe maybe when
(48:05):
you get so sleep deprived, the veil drops a little
bit because because you are more like a child at
that point, because your brain's not working correctly. So maybe
the part of your brain, the reasoning part that like
fills in gaps for you, is so twisted at that
point that it actually could see the beyond the veil.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
You know, I've always thought about that.
Speaker 4 (48:29):
That's a theory I've always had.
Speaker 5 (48:31):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean, dude, I totally understand like when
look after if you're not sleeping for four or five days,
you're you're going to actually start You're going to lose
your mind, and you're going.
Speaker 4 (48:42):
To see some you're going to see some people say
it's a hallucination, and sometimes I say maybe, but maybe
it's not.
Speaker 5 (48:49):
Yeah, maybe it's just a change of perception. And now
because of that we can see different things.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
It's not just exhaustion.
Speaker 5 (48:57):
I know that for sure, right, because I know what's different,
you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (49:04):
And this is exactly what I've been saying. In combat environments,
your brain stops filtering.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Yeah, it just doesn't.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
You're not training, You're you are trained to notice movement, shapes, silence,
breathing pattern, change period. You are trained to notice movement,
changing shapes, changing silence, breathing pattern, change period.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Right, stop your man.
Speaker 4 (49:33):
Your awareness spreads out like a radar dish. This is
the opposite of hallucination. It is hyper perception. So when
when something's watching you from the tree line, a marine
can feel it before they can see it. And I'm
I go to my grave saying that, and I'm not
(49:58):
saying that doesn't happen to army guys. It's either today's
the Marine Corps athist. So give me, give me some
grindea exactly, yep. And how often have you and I
have been out there and you're like, man, I just
feel something is off.
Speaker 5 (50:14):
I can't even tell you. Man, Yep, exactly. You know
you've noticed it. It's help palpable for sure.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
And that's and it's gotten to the point where people
that we go do research with look at us and go,
what are you feeling?
Speaker 6 (50:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (50:31):
Yeah, yeah, so because we've been right so many times. Yeah.
The battlefield, this is third battlefield is a spiritual place
where you believe. Whether you believe in religion, energy, psychology,
or anthropology, the conclusion is all the same places where
(50:53):
suffering has pooled. Right, holds in prints. Human beings sense
things that are not visible because trauma and death and
death do not simply just vanish, because the ground remembers.
Structures also remember, and those memories don't always stay quiet
(51:17):
period right yep. Fourth, Marines spend long periods in stillness.
People imagine marines as constantly running and firing and yelling,
but deployment is mostly waiting. But you track, observe, stay quiet, listen.
(51:40):
Silence changes you. It just does. Silence makes you hear
the things most people have never been still enough to notice,
because when you're out in the freaking shit and you're
sitting in a patrol base. You're not you're not you're
not sitting, are you know? Listening to on your ears? Now,
(52:04):
we have such an active, you know, culture where there's
always something going on, but you better get fucking comfortable
with the quiet.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
Yeah. Yeah, I'll learn a lot about yourself.
Speaker 4 (52:16):
Man. Yeah. So and you hear, you get to a
point where you hear everything, so.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Here see any anomaly. And that's I think that's the point.
Speaker 5 (52:27):
It's to you're out there for so long that it
creates this baseline of what you're seeing every single even
and it's a new baseline every day obviously, but once
a little shift in that baseline happens, you will notice
it before anybody else. And I think a lot of
that is we we just we have to observe and
(52:48):
we become so observant over It's like solitary confinement.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
Man.
Speaker 5 (52:52):
You're up there alone with your thoughts and you can't
You also have to push those thoughts out so you
can stay focused on, uh, analy the environment.
Speaker 4 (53:01):
Yeah, and that kind of comes into this party. The
court teaches you to trust your senses. It absolutely did
more than an army could have ever taught me. I
didn't I didn't go through Army boot Camp. I didn't
do any of that. I remember sitting in Blue Camp
boot camp and literally doing exercises where you would sit
(53:22):
overnight in an l pope and you had to stay awake,
and that's what it was. It was for you to
trust your senses. And at that time too, the Marines
didn't have night vision, so you know, we had to
do everything in the dark. And we still did night operations,
but we didn't do them with nods. So do you
(53:46):
do that because I have to do it. You have
to get used to that. And I feel like we
kind of I don't know about the Marines anymore, but
I think as a force total, we rely way too.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
Much on night visionality. Yeah yeah, but either way, so.
Speaker 4 (54:04):
When you hear a twig snap behind you, that is
not something to rationalize away. That is something to act on.
And civilians talk themselves out of what they perceive all
the time. Marines they lock in. You are trained that
your instincts are not random, they're sharpened. This is why
(54:26):
Marines always feel like they're better than other people. That's
all part of it. But I am Finally, there's an old
idea that warriors are doorkeepers. Every culture that has ever
existed believe that the ones who walk into danger are
the ones who stand closest to the invisible world. Samurai
(54:51):
wrote about this. Vikings wrote about this. Native American warriors
spoke about spirits who walk with fighters into battle. This
is culture. It crosses all cultures and aral things. Warriors
have different experiences, and the Bible even talks about angels
and watchers on the walls. Right, the presence of conflict
(55:15):
has always been tied to the presence of the unseen.
Speaker 5 (55:19):
It's this lighter actually you can see it. It's from Vietnam.
It was a marine that carried this in Vietnam. My
brother got me for my birthday and on the back
has this print that says when this marine dies, he
will go to heaven because he has spent his time
in hell. And that was like a comment of like
the we are the gatekeepers to have it, like we
(55:42):
were the and it was it was just talked about
all the time, even within like the.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
The lore the marine lorst.
Speaker 5 (55:50):
It was like, yeah, you you don't go to heaven
until you get permission basically type of thing. But that's
very much like the marine that means thick of the
songs we sing.
Speaker 4 (55:59):
Just a warrior culture. Yeah yeah, and that's what they
foment there.
Speaker 5 (56:04):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely, because it's a just cause, at least
in our minds at the time.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (56:11):
So when a marine says I saw something or I
felt something, or we we were not alone out there,
that does not make them delusional. It makes them a witness.
So they are stationed where history, violence, memory, and spirit
(56:33):
all overlap. They are awake when most of the world
is dreaming and they're they are quiet in the hours
when the boundary between the scene and the unseen gets thin.
The fourth watch Man and talk about this all the time,
right yeah. So uh, and that is when the veil
(56:53):
is thinnest. Period in the world that hides from most
people does not always hide from the warrior. It just
doesn't share it period.
Speaker 2 (57:07):
It's almost like it knows you can you can bear it,
you know.
Speaker 4 (57:11):
Yeah. Absolutely, So, as we mark the two hundred and fiftieth,
two hundred and fifty years of the United States Marine Corps,
we're not just honoring the battles. We can talk about
the flags that were raised, the hills that were taken,
the missions completed, we're also honoring the battles that live
(57:36):
in the quiet places, the ones marines carry without the metals,
without the citations, without the speeches. There is a visible war,
right yeah, Yeah, absolutely, and then there's an unseen one.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (57:55):
And whether you believe these stories are spirits, cryptids, ancient entities,
psychological echoes, or something else, entirely, what matters is that
the experiences are real to the ones who live them. Right,
Marines do not have the luxury of fantasy. I use
(58:19):
that as a big point. We didn't have the time,
nor the nor the inclination to make ship up while
you're on watch. Everything gets filtered through survival. If the
if a marine says something was there in the dark,
then something's probably there in the dark. So everything, that ship, everything.
(58:49):
If you're on some you're out on some fob and
you know you see something like moving behind a rock
or something like that, you're going to tell the guy
that relieves you. Yeah, dude, I think I saw something
over there, and I feel like there's something over there.
How many times did you do that? On freaking turnover?
Speaker 2 (59:10):
Almost every other time?
Speaker 4 (59:11):
Right, Something's out there, something and I can feel it
or I can see it, or I saw a glimpse
of it. Boom. Just keep an eye out over there, yeah, man,
all the time. So this episode is for every marine
who has ever stood fire watching silence, For every squad
that felt something watching them beyond the tree line, for
(59:34):
every devil dog who saw a shape where they shouldn't
have been one where there should not have been one,
For every warrior who came home with stories he never
told because he didn't want to be laughed at or
didn't have the words for it. The Corps has a
long history of fighting on Earth, but maybe it has
(59:59):
also stood guard on the edge of something deeper. So,
whether you're active reserve veteran or someone who just respects
the Marines, happy birthday in semper fidellas semper fidlas brother,
So in this episode. If this episode meant something to you,
(01:00:20):
if it opened a thought, spark the memory, or plan
to a seed, I need you to take the time,
just the second to like, share, and review the podcast.
This show grows because of you, because you share it,
because you keep these conversations alive. You can also find
all episodes, merch and updates at broadcasting seeds dot com.
(01:00:45):
Until next time, stay watchful, stay grounded, and never assume
the world is only what you.
Speaker 7 (01:00:53):
See from the halls of Montazoma, So the shores of
Triple We fight our country's battles in the air, land.
Speaker 6 (01:01:03):
And sea first, to fight for right in freedom and
to keep bar on our clean.
Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
We are proud of.
Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
The clean exile of United States.
Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
Were well.
Speaker 6 (01:01:24):
All fights nfur to every breeze from down de City Son.
Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
We have fought in.
Speaker 6 (01:01:31):
Every climbing place where we could take a gun, in
the snow of far off northern live and in sun
each something seas you will find us awas on the job.
Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
The United States were.
Speaker 4 (01:01:47):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
United States were.
Speaker 4 (01:01:59):
United free.
Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Here's helping you.
Speaker 6 (01:02:06):
Went to work hard, which.
Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
We are proud to serve many drife.
Speaker 8 (01:02:11):
We fought for life and never lost on the Army
and the Navy. Never look one haven't seence. They will
find the streets at Garden.
Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
By United States Moround
Speaker 4 (01:02:40):
Fou
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