Military Ghost Story

The story begins in late 2011. I had just completed basic training at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina and was living at Fort Eustis, Virginia. My wife Nicole lived in apartment off base while I stayed on base during the week, finishing up my military job training at the Army Aviation Logistics School on base.

I completed my training after several months and found out, to my astonishment, that the Army would be stationing me in Hawaii with the 25th Infantry Division. It was very short notice and there was little time to prepare but luckily we didn’t have a lot of stuff to move at the time.

Nicole was a little stressed to move across the world on short notice, especially never having lived so far from family and home, but she was also very excited at the thought of living in Hawaii of all places, as was I. Hawaii is an exciting place to be at any age but Nicole and I were both in our early 20s and ready to hit the beach.

Preparing to leave Virginia, we shipped out our furniture, took a road trip to visit some family and say goodbye, then upon our return to Virginia we shipped our car out as well. The Army provided us each one way airline tickets to Oahu, Hawaii and we were on our way.

It seemed too good to be true. We had only seen Hawaii in postcards and on TV or in magazines. It was a place where rich old people went or couples went for a short honeymoon. It was hard to imagine what it was going to be like when we looked out the airplane window and saw Waikiki Beach, Diamond Head volcano, and Pearl Harbor. I closed my eyes and slept.

A long flight later we finally heard the Captain call over the intercom system that we were approaching Oahu. Minutes later we arrived over Oahu during the daylight. It was unbelievable to see from the sky. The water was so clear and blue. We exited the plane.

It was a little while before Christmas and it was in the 70s (F). We rented a car at the airport, checked into our hotel and started to drive around exploring Pearl Harbor and the rest of the island before heading back to our hotel for the night.

I checked in at the Army base and began a long process of paperwork and immunizations, introductory briefings and so on. The process took multiple days and in a few days or a week I was done and heading to my new unit where I was assigned.

My wife and I had found the perfect spot to call home. A decent-sized rental in the town of Kapoei, just down a short road from the beach. The neighborhood was peaceful, quiet and always well kept. All our personal property, as well as our car, arrived to the port in no time. We were soon set up and settled in.

My unit was ramping up for a deployment to Khandahar Afghanistan with lots of work and lots of training. I began spending very long days at the base and weeks at a time on another island for training drills. The long hours at the base also meant I had our only vehicle most of the day.

My wife, being alone all day, finally decided to adopt two dogs from the ASPCA which was very nearby. In fact, it was within walking distance at the time. Our dogs are both Pitbull mixes and, despite the reputation of the breed, they are more friendly and loving than most dogs I’ve ever known. The dogs kept my wife company and kept her busy. She began to train them and take them for long walks at the beach. It helped to pass time during the long days I worked at the base and the many weeks at a time I spent away at training off the island.

When I was home we liked to spend our time together exploring the trails and other interesting places around the island. One day we started to explore the wooded area near our house. The surrounding area was called Barber’s Point.

We stumbled upon what seemed like sprawling flat level areas taken back by the vegetation. Upon walking around one could barely make out the ground underfoot was actually closer to a parking lot than soil. Grass had simply shot up through the broken aged and cracking surface which was once asphalt. We saw railroad tracks leading toward the beach with trees grown up through the wooden beams.

The place had a very creepy feeling. It was still and silent but you could almost sense that the place was once booming with hustling, bustling work crews and noisy equipment whirring and grinding. There was once a lot of motion here. A lot of work took place here and it echoed with the voices of people long since passed.

Researching the area later that night, we discovered that this was a staging area for WWII supplies to be used in island battles against the Japanese. It was used to prepare for battles like Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Tarawa in the bloody fight to storm beaches and take heavily fortified positions on Japanese islands. We had heard about many haunted areas around the island and brushed it off as people trying to be interesting, but something about this place really made the hair on our necks stand up. There was an energy still present behind that silent breeze, motion far beyond the gentle silent sway of the grass. Although desolate, there was the feeling of many eyes upon us from all around when standing in that place.

The Hawaiian locals seemed to have a real understanding of spiritual phenomenon throughout the island and it’s sometimes bloody history. There were many stories about the night marchers, the long dead warriors who roam the island. Ghostly drums and chanting have been heard on many occasions with no explanation as these ghostly groups pass through the night.

Fascinated by these stories but bored at home one night, we decided to pull out our Ouija board and see if we could possibly contact a spirit on this ancient and historic island. “Is there a spirit here who would like to communicate?” We asked. The planchette moved to yes repeatedly. We asked “Are you good or evil?” At this point the planchette moved to the image of the moon on the board. “How did you die?” we asked. At this question the board spelled out a number. Just to make sure we weren’t misreading, we asked again. It spelled out this same three digit number over and over again every time we repeated the question “How did you die?”

Next we asked, “Can you give us a sign if you are here?” Suddenly our floor lamp flickered on, illuminating the dark room like a flash and then turned back off immediately. All questions afterward only moved to the moon over and over again with each question we asked. Getting nowhere we said goodbye and called it a night.

Things were going great for a while but as time went on that all started to change. The dogs began to act strange in the house. Maybe they are just adjusting to life in our home, we thought. But as the days went by their strange behavior turned to downright creepy behavior. One night we awoke to the low sound of growling in the darkness, coming from the foot of the bed. I initially figured one of the dogs must be having a bad dream or hearing some off noises outside. With the light of my phone I sat up and peered down to find one of the dogs sitting up tall, fully attentive, ears perked and eyes staring straight ahead into the darkened hallway. He was staring with such focus and intent that I could swear there was someone standing just outside the doorway looking back at him from the dark hall near our stairway. He appeared to be staring up as if looking into the face of this invisible entity. A quick check with my phone light revealed no one there. This behavior became a common occurrence at night.

One night I awoke to an especially horrible growling. This time at the left foot of the bed near the closet. I sat up and again, using the light of my phone, realized my dog was glaring straight up toward the attic door this time. The attic door was really just a wooden access panel on the ceiling of my walk-in closet. Birds? Maybe mice? I thought. I had to be up early so I calmed the dog, petted him and went back to sleep.

Every weekday, in the early mornings around 4:30 AM, I would walk downstairs, start some coffee and begin to get ready for morning exercises at the base. I always let the dogs outside while I got my bag packed and lunch ready. Once ready I’d let the dogs in, lead them back up to the room, kiss my wife goodbye for the day and head off to the base.

The growling continued to occur from time to time until one weekday morning as usual I woke up at 4:30. The dogs stood up, yawning and stretched and shook off in excitement to go outside. I walked downstairs with the dogs following close behind me like always. We got to the bottom of the stairs, turned left and started down the hallway toward the dark living room when all of a sudden both dogs froze dead in their tracks on either side of me. I said, “Come on, boys, let’s go outside” and patted my thigh three times, but they didn’t budge. They looked paralyzed with fear, staring at something across the room. I followed their gaze and it led straight into the darkened far corner of the living room. It was too dark to see anything but I could feel a presence there in the shadows glaring back at me with an antagonistic and laser-like focus that sent chills down my spine.

In a split second both dogs turned and bolted for the stairs, frantically running up the hard steps with everything they had, paws slipping, claws scratching and elbows knocking wood as they desperately tried to scramble back to the safety of the bedroom. I quickly flipped on the living room light and found myself staring straight into an empty corner. There was simply nothing there.

As I prepared my lunch in the kitchen I could feel something standing an inch behind me. Staring blankly at the back of my head. Like the dead breath of some sort of corpse making the hair on my neck tingle. It was an unnerving feeling and I knew for the first time then and there that something definitely wasn’t right. When I got back upstairs the dogs we’re hiding under the bed shaking. They absolutely refused to budge. Whatever they had seen in the living room had really scared them.

As time went on my wife began to experience terrifying sleep paralysis. My dog Milo, who normally awoke us growling, was now glued to her bedside at night. He refused to move. He would no longer even leave the bedside to go outside in the mornings. Maintaining his position and guarding her as she slept, even standing guard outside the door anytime she was in the bathroom. Despite all this, many nights she would awake in horror unable to move her body or speak in any way.

At the time we did not fully attribute this to anything paranormal but it soon became clear that there was a presence in that house and it was focused directly on her. She started to get strange feelings like she was being peeked at from around corners or from dark rooms. Like someone staring, looking out at her from the corners with only the smallest portion of one eye from the darkened rooms of the house or the stairwell. It seemed to happen more when I was not there or when she was distracted. Seeing shadows move out of the corner of her eye. The dogs could often be seen barking and growling at something or someone just out of sight. Looking upward as if into the face of a person just around the corner.

The paranormal activity intensified. I awoke to growling again one night as usual but suddenly my eyes shot open and I sat up realizing that it was not a familiar growl. It was not coming from the doorway or foot of the bed this time. In fact it was not a dog at all! It was clearly coming directly from the empty space between my wife’s pillow and mine! It was unlike any dog growl. It was deep and demon-like. I knew something unseen was there.

The next few days only brought worse. My wife filled the dogs’ food bowls for breakfast and set the bowls down on the floor of the dining room. A moment later the bowl she had just set down flew across the room hitting the wall with a metallic crash as dog food rained down onto the hard tile floor and the bowl noisily whirled to its final resting place upside down.

I was past the point of fear of it and well into anger at it. We’d close our eyes to go to sleep, it was standing over us like a dark shadow. We’d close our eyes to wash our faces, it was breathing down our necks. We’d close our eyes to wash our hair in the shower, it was peeking in from the edge of the curtain. We would be talking while doing random tasks such as washing our faces and we would hear a metallic-like voice mimic us from a foot away.

“I’ll turn on some warm water,” I’d said one night getting ready for bed. A second later a robotic voice next to us simply said “WARM WATER”. I had had it. “Yeah yeah WARM WATER… Shut up” I mocked it.

This brought a new era of intensity. My wife was laying on the bed with the cat next to her when suddenly the cat stood us and went stiff, hair standing on end, the cat suddenly began freaking out and staring into the hall. She followed the cat’s eyes and could see a large black mass come up the stairs, sort of roam around the hall and then enter the bathroom outside our bedroom door. We started hearing blaring voice phenomena, the decibel levels of which nothing in our house was even mildly capable of producing. It was louder than a concert speaker and sounded like a distressed male voice yelling frantically through static at the top of his lungs but we could never make out what he was saying.

The first time we heard this we literally ran outside and looked out expecting the whole neighborhood to be outside their houses scratching their heads and looking puzzled into the sky like we were, but nobody else seemed to hear it at all. Not even our neighbors who shared a wall! Impossible! It was unbelievable! This happened many times over. My dogs would freak out at this sudden noise. The intensity of it would cause us to grit our teeth and squint our eyes as we would nearly jump out of our skin because it was so sudden and deafeningly loud. How were the windows not shattering?

The insanity with Nicole’s sleep paralysis was still occurring as well. I sat near her while she drifted off to sleep on the couch one night. The dogs were sleeping. The lights were on. Suddenly I felt that old familiar presence again. I snapped my eyes up and there stood a shadow figure with red eyes against the wall behind my wife. Rage shot from me and straight into its face as it crouched and darted into my dark laundry room. I had finally seen it! This entity was a coward and wanted to creep around at night and then scamper away in fear when confronted.

The next morning I made a point to walk down stairs without turning on a light. “It likes to hide in the shadows, well I’m going to confront it in the safety of its little shadows. I will give it no space to hide,” I thought. I immediately sensed it hiding, crouching in the furthest corner of the dark living room. I could sense its gaze and I stared straight back hoping to see its cowardly face. It scampered again to the dark laundry room as I power-walked in and, for the last time ever, saw this black crouching figure against the far wall curled up with its knees to its chest sitting on the floor cowering and staring up at me as I were about to beat it.

“YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE. YOU ARE DEAD! NOW GET OUT!” I said angrily with my stare burning a hole into it. I watched it sink backwards into the wall as if falling over the edge of a cliff. It did a backward somersault and was gone.

After that we never saw it again. My wife’s sleep paralysis finally stopped. Our life slowly returned to normal and the dogs calmed down with time. We no longer live there but I will never forget the strange and unexplained experiences of that house in Hawaii.