Haunted War Tales: True Military Encounters with the Bizarre, Paranormal, and Unexplained
“Haunted War Tales is good reading, made all the better that so much of it is different and unfamiliar to even the niche reader of strange history and tales, but also of military and war stories.”
War is an exceptional field for strange encounters. Death, fear, and life among the darkness, smoke, and the chaos of fighting creates circumstances for strange, unexplained experiences. Some military “ghost stories” have become famous, but not these, although they would make great campfire stories.
R. C. Bramhall was a soldier, and although he had no such bizarre experience during that service, the author heard more than a fair share of stories. A subsequent personal encounter at Gettysburg and an interest in military history resulted in this collection: Haunted War Tales: True Military Encounters with the Bizarre, Paranormal, and Unexplained.
This short and odd work is part memoirs and insights from a military career and a life of interest in the exotic. Bramhall, “a passionate military historian,” adds research in the background, however. How the supernatural affected the witness is often mentioned.
Often, the stories are built around “chilling reports of weird and unexplainable events and encounters happening at bases.” Veterans will often relate to what they would read in this book, bringing back memories of what they knew or heard. The fact that these outposts are often old, legendary, and in desolate areas encourages tales of the supernatural but, because of security, witnesses.
The author writes, however, “I offer no explanation, and we didn’t go searching for the answer,” no drugs, hallucinations, natural phenomenon, etc. Modern warfare technology described in these stories confirms that “apparently, there are things that go knock in the night.”
Haunted War Tales is good reading, made all the better that so much of it is different and unfamiliar to even the niche reader of strange history and tales, but also of military and war stories. Bramhall is an entertaining, very personal storyteller, although he digresses a lot. The book wanders and the reader may have to go back and forth to the Internet for more information on points raised but not fully explained.
The short book is divided into types of encounters. These include chapters on ape-like humanoid creatures; dangerous animals in the deserts and jungles; the occult, including cannibalism and vampires; monsters by air and sea, including “Gremlins, Snakes Seen from a Plane, and Attack of the Crab Monsters“; ghosts; and domestic disturbances (incidents on military bases in the United States).
Almost all the encounters discussed in Haunted War Tales are based in modern conflicts and wars, especially World War II, although with common background from the author’s experience in Vietnam. The ghost stories in Iraq are especially compelling and include a battle in one of the world’s largest cemeteries. Haunted War Tales includes annotation.