This Paranormal Life - The US Soldiers HAUNTED by Ancient Ghosts in Afghanistan

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

This week we dive into the incredible claims made by US marines deployed in the US-Afghan war in the early 2000s, that they witnessed real paranormal phenomena located at ‘Observation Point Rock’ — an area in the Helmand province that may not have meant much to the Americans outside of battlefield tactics, but to locals it holds much more mysterious significance… Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our Secret Society Facebook Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get access to weekly bonus episodes! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy Official TPL Merch!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Edited by Philip Shacklady Research by Ewen Friers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2015, a post appeared on Reddit that took the paranormal world by storm. The user who claimed to be an ex-marine detailed their experiences from the early part of the US-Afghan War, and what they revealed was shocking. The account was centered around one specific location in the infamous Helmand Province. It opened up a whole discussion about the supernatural in this region, and has made one particular feature on the landscape famous ever since. That feature is known as Observation Point Rock. an isolated mound in the desert.

But what happened there? Were the events described isolated incidents or is there a deep supernatural power located here? Why are McDonald's ice cream machines always broken? And how many fingers am I holding up in my mind? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Welcome back to This Paranormal Life.

This is the weekly comedy podcast where every Tuesday we dive into a different paranormal case. How are you doing today, Rory? Am I right? Was it 27? Because obviously if you're holding up fingers in your mind, I'm an octopus. You can have as many fingers as you want.

And arms famously. They don't really have fingers at all. Everyone knows that the perfect number of fingers a human could have would be 27, hypothetically. So I'm assuming that's what you went for? I'm not going to ask what situation Roy was in where he wanted more fingers that paused, but we'll keep it pushing.

I hope you're doing well, Roy, because we have a huge, investigation on today's podcast. Well, guess what? Your boy's ready. Spilled a little on yourself there. Oh, shit. Yeah, I did. Do we need a tile in here or something?

No, I'm all fine. I'm just, I'm cracking open a fresh energy drink. Because based on what you just told me, we're about to hear a paranormal story that's going to require every piece of my brain working at 100%. 110%. Yeah.

That's why I went online last night and bought a bunch of those pills from that movie Limitless that made Bradley Cooper almost die. I don't think that's a real pill. It is. It is. Yeah, it is.

It is a real pill. Really? Yeah. So how you feel it? I assume you're on them right now. I'm going to just assume that you thought day one do it for the podcast. Yeah, I wanted to try them on the podcast. And let me tell you, it was worth every $3,500 that I spent on it.

I was really hoping you're going to say penny, but no, $3,500, US. And I know that these pills will help me succeed because that's what. what the little S stands for on every multicolored tablet. Sorry, I'm just realizing. Yeah. I think they're Skittles. Right. I think I spent, I think I need my phone for a second. I need to call someone. I think I just spent three grand on a bag of Skittles. Was there at least a lot of them because there should be for 35.

Half a bag. For 35 large. I hate one Skiddle and started going four plus 4 equals 9 and 9 plus 9 equals 23. Every equation is wrong. You're talking to your GP. Is it normal if I'm tasting the rainbow kind of one to two hours after admission? Right, we're not here to talk about this. We've got to get into today's investigation.

Yes. Come on. Sorry, kind of close for just a second. You're fired. You're fired, Phil. You're done for it. No. Sorry, we had a flow going.

We had a good podcast going. And all of a sudden, I hear that there's a problem. and we need to reset. I think we should hear what the problem is. We've got a huge investigation. We're going to dive right into it. Today's episode takes us to a beautiful and misunderstood land rarely visited on this paranormal life.

I think the only other story we've looked at in Afghanistan was the giant of Kandahar. Yeah, yeah, which might have been a bonus episode. I don't remember. It was. Yeah, where it was a whole case investigating whether or not giants from the Bible were actual real creatures here on Earth.

I can't forget that bit. They were, really? Yeah, I think it was a double no. They're not in this. Don't worry. Keep listening. They're not in this. I didn't remember they were from the Bible.

That should have been a major red flag. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the legend that U.S. forces encounter giants, biblical giants during the war. Yeah, for that, absolutely mental bonus episode. Check out patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life. Another great episode. Rory, with that, kind of in the back catalog,

how are you feeling about heading out into Afghanistan again here? Excited to always explore a corner of the world we haven't seen a lot. Obviously, quite a complicated history taking place here. Tell us what you really feel, Mr. America. Yeah, you're to blame. That's right. Everyone pylon this guy. I don't think I'm personally to blame.

You were, well, what age were you at the time? You were an adult at the time, I assume. Eight? Nine? Old than that, I think. Maybe? I don't remember. Double digits.

Not old enough to serve. As Rory says, rightly or wrongly, Afghanistan is described as the graveyard of empires, and it is true that it has seen a hell of a lot of war over the centuries, partly thanks to its geographical location, located kind of in the middle of a lot of stuff between Eurasia and the Middle East, making it a gateway from both north to south and east to west. That means a whole country is like a graveyard for many soldiers, both foreign and native, ancient and modern over thousands of years. Ghostly legends about these lost spirits, exist across the land, but we're focusing on that one key location today.

Let's start with the Reddit post I mentioned earlier from 2015 about observation point rock. All right. Okay. The post begins. This is one of the few absurdly negative memories I have of being in the Marines. Look, in terms of opening, this doesn't get much more ominous than that. That line appears at the beginning of an extensive post on Reddit by the ex-Marine calling themselves isolation. detailing their three-month stint at OP Rock, otherwise known as observation point rock. The post begins. On our first night, I got third watch from 12 midnight to 4 in the morning.

I had night vision and I was just watching out over the landscape. I start to see flashes of light about 400 meters from my position. Looks like incoming small arms fire, but I don't hear any gunfire, nor the distinctive snap of around going past in close proximity, nor any distinctive Tracer. They pop up all over the place, then disappear. Then show up again a few minutes later. Hmm. I wake up one of my butt buddies and he too notices the flashes. The what buddy? The butt buddy? What's a butt buddy? From what I gather, I think being in the Marines, there's a lot of terminology. Oh, okay. Yeah. That we're not familiar with. Although that one does feel like there's absolutely no kind of hidden meaning or I've taken that one fully at face value really. It's just one of those

army terms. But buddy. Hand job homie. He wakes up one of his butt buddies, and he too notices the flashes, so it wasn't just my imagination or malfunctioning gear. Eventually, some other lights showed up in the sky, significantly brighter, and they seemed to float to the ground, like a really dim flare. Taking off the NVGs, I'm on the fly, night vision goggles, I want to say. All we could see was dark. It was unsettling to say the least. This happened a few times, not just to me, but to the other guys. on the hill as well. So we're starting off with a kind of strange, luminous phenomena.

Now, this kind of account would usually be part of kind of a UFO case or something. Sure. But OP Rock is definitely more associated with spirits or hauntings. Why, I hear no one ask, because as we'll see, Mr. Isolation's experiences would escalate significantly. All right. You know, this isn't the first time that we've had a paranormal case set in, in a war zone. We've investigated a lot of paranormal cases that took place during World War I, World War II, even Vietnam. And it's always this weird thing where it's like, obviously, you know, something like this is a very unique experience seeing strange orbs in the sky. However, war, you see a lot of crazy things. You see a lot of weird shit that you really shouldn't

be seeing in a day-to-day basis. So it's good to bear that in mind because the flip side of that is that these are men in war who have seen crazy things. So if this is also something that's still standing out to them, it must have been pretty unique. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you throwing me a lifeline there, because you were about to decimate the entire case, apparently. No, no, no, we're on the same team here.

Team paranormal. Let's get it out of the way. We all remember the Gremlin's case. We all remember it. We were all there. We investigated the Gremlins of World War II. World War II? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. The pilots of World War II for the Allies, and I think the Axis as well. I actually think everyone saw Loki the protagonists of the Frilein's movies, those little green goblins, no Peter Parker, climbing on their playing,

you know, rippant, sticking their hands into the engine, throwing out screws and stuff. Yeah. And entirely just with them. Something that's just been never proven, no evidence really, but everyone claims it's convinced they saw them.

Yeah. I think the lowest point in this podcast history when we've investigated the paranormal during war times was a case that I did, where I said that the military once brought in a secret weapon, which was a pair of goggles that allowed soldiers to see the demon world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was fire. And they were putting these red vision goggles onto soldiers

and they were going insane and just shooting machine guns at the sky, thinking they were fighting demons floating around. But, you know, when did we investigate that? Because I haven't gone through all the latest Epstein files. It's probably in there. It's probably, there's, I think, a million emails. Might be in there somewhere.

Like, I think that's always the thing with, like, U.S. military stuff is that, ha, ha, ha, that sounds really funny what you just said. That's really close to shit they actually did. Yeah. Really close. This is earlier than I thought in this podcast that we would bring up the Epstein files. I got to admit. I thought we were maybe make it like 10 minutes.

Sorry, who had, yeah, like 12 minutes, 13. But you did bring a briefcase with you to the podcast, which you usually don't do, so I should have known something was up. Yeah, the briefcase actually just contains two suicide pills that we have to take when the podcast is over because we're going to have released so many documents, which is going to be at red dot. Phil is going to have to just personally murder us at the end of the show.

Was the Gremlin's real? No. Was the demon goggles real? Maybe. We don't remember. Yeah, I don't remember. I'm assuming no. It's definitely a plot point to Neo-Yokio on Netflix. Yeah. Probably. The post goes on. The worst event at OP Rock, and probably my most terrifying moment I have experienced in my life,

happened about three weeks after we posted up. I was sitting on another late-night watch. It had been a few days since anyone had seen any of these strange lights. However, immediately, they came on in force. I swear they were muzzle flashes. I saw the dim flares again. It seemed like the entire position was being lit up. At first I ducked for cover because there was no physical or auditory evidence, just the lights.

Then almost as abruptly as it started, it ended. And I was back to looking at the land through a fuzzy green lens. Then a whisper in my ear. Bro, I stark. I flopped to the ground like a fish trying to bring my weapon up to bear and turn to my right and there's nothing there, nothing at all. Send this man home. Your watch is over.

He's done. Your watch is ended. And all the fucking on Game of Thrones. Your watch is ended, Sire. So he does what any normal person would do. I wake up my butt buddy and I tell him he needs to take watch. Okay. Okay.

That's a smart move. Before you just start firing rounds into the, onto the horizon. this is probably a smart thing to do. Get another witness. Or be self-aware enough to know that you need a break. You need a time out. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

You need a nap. Wake up your butt, buddy. Let him deal with it. What are you saying? What are you saying? What are you saying? I don't know. What was that?

Russian? What did you hear? How did you know it was Russian? Because I saw you on Google. Translate. Don't move. I've got PTSD now. You, how do you know?

Yeah, I kind of f***ed up. Let me see. Let me get a better pronunciation of this right here. Brose your own arm. Slightly better. Whoa. If I heard that in my ear, if I'm in the middle of the desert. Yeah, you're damn right.

I'm waking up my butt, buddy. I think we can all agree as well. Whispering in general, completely uncalled for. All right. I think, like, look, do your little ghost thing. Fair enough. Walk around, undisturbed, but whispering in my ear, like flipping 21 Savage.

Nah, no, no. We've gone from lights. to a fully disembodied voice, a spine-chilling whisper of Brage-Rugier. Now, unfortunately, the only language this Marine spoke was American, maybe followed by a little Spanish he picked up on Duolinko to help him get around Florida, but it wasn't Spanish. And it also wasn't one of Afghanistan's 40 distinct regional languages, as Rory has correctly identified, this was in fact Russian. Hmm. Essentially translating to,

your weapons. Okay. Pretty cool. That is pretty cool. Is there any chances could have been like a radio transmission or anything? I mean it's entirely possible that was just a psychotic break of some kind. It could be anything really. If we're just going to start thinking of stuff it could be.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, no. I mean, it depends on much we trust this guy. You know, and sure as the story goes on, maybe we'll hear from other potential witnesses, anecdotes. Right now we've just got this guy. Yeah, so far, there's not really much you can do when you see lights in the sky.

when you see lights in the sky. That's not even something that you think if you did shoot it with a gun, you would even hurt it. Yeah. I think the best thing you can do is just go to bed and assume nothing else is going to happen.

I don't know if that's an option, though, if you're like a mid-mission. Sir, do I have permission to take a nap, sir? Requesting sleepy time, sir. Sleepy time denied, sir. Soldier, get back in the field. Yeah, I've never obviously served in any kind of military,

but I think that would be really hard. part for me is being told that I can't have a nap. That would really suck. You in basic training. So wait, when the fuck is hot milk and cookies? Yeah. There's none? In the whole day, in the 24-hour day, no milk of cookies, no nap time. Yeah, sorry, one second, Sergeant. I know that you said that it was time for me to try and charge the front line and take over the bunkers. But honestly, I just got a Switch 2. And I just got that new Donkey Kong game. I'm having a blast with it. I just want like 30 more minutes, 40 more minutes, and then I can catch up with everyone else. I don't know if you know this, Sarge, but you can't pause modern games. Because I'm in a live called lobby right now.

Yeah. I'm like, you want me to jump out of the plane? My iPhone is on 14%. All right? I need to stay in this plane for at least another 30 minutes. What about my snap streak? You really want me to end my snap streak? Also, we've been on this plane altogether for three hours flying into enemy territory. I haven't got a drink or a snack once. I think that's actually against the rules. I've been pushing the button so that the air host test comes and nothing. He's like, you've been dropping bombs for the last hour. Come on, I want a bag of chips.

Firing missiles in every direction. Launching the parachutes of every other man. You stuffing your face with granola bars. I was like, have a decent drink or snack. You just ate four days worth of the rations for the entire platoon. Those are dry rations. You're about to inflate to the size of a balloon. I would agree.

I haven't really served other than the kind of six-month tour I did on the front lines of Star Star Wars Battlefront 2. Yeah. But I did normally get to kind of pause the game to have chicken nuggets and ketchup. Right. cooked by my mom and dad. Look, I know a lot of speculation over a whisper in the ear of this here Marine.

Of course, we're kind of, look, we're long on the tooth row. We've seen this a number of times. We've covered a lot of cases. We've seen all the patterns before. Could it be some kind of hysterious? Could it be some kind of misinterpretation of some other auditory evidence?

All of that, of course, is possible. We need to persevere for more of the story. But I would say, combination of lights that have been ratified by multiple other people. They've seen it cross corroborated. And I think one thing to kind of feel a breath on your shoulder or something that you know, you might hear in like a ghost TV show, oh, I felt like a touch on my shoulder.

A little different to not only hear a voice, but be able to be like, yeah, it said these words that I didn't know. And they're Russian. I looked them up and they mean drop your weapon. Yeah. It's a few weird things. Yeah. But then again, we're in a war zone.

Don't that again, me. I was about to move on. I was about to move on with the story. I was making a really good segue. And now you're about that again, go on, then. Kachoo, Kachoo! Trying to kill me. Obviously, saying this is a very dramatic, loud, explosive,

literally, literally, place. Not that night. It's quiet. It's quiet. It's quiet. So I'm going to need some explosive paranormal evidence in today's case. Rory, do you want to see what O.P. Rock looks like?

Sure. You can't. Okay. There's no publicly available images. Classified. Yeah. I appreciate it. Okay.

I know. Seems weird, but like totally makes sense, man. I assume all the video and photo evidence is classified as well. Um, mostly, yeah. We do have... You used up all the ink in our printer just printing a giant black square in the middle of your sheet. I have, instead, two kind of, I guess you could say, a great, read upon interpretations of like this would be a kind of equivalent structure.

Cool. You know, a kind of similar type situation you might be looking at in the desert. All right. You know what we're talking about here, guys. It is a big pile of rocks, a kind of fort on top of a mountain peak. So just a good point for a height advantage looking out over this kind of mountainous terrain. Yeah. Almost like an Alamo-esque fort built on top of this mountain.

But yeah, there's not a lot around here. Not a lot of bushes, not a lot of vegetation, just empty space. Got it. Empty space and darkness. So we've heard about what happened to this guy and we've seen an example location. But why Russian? Why Russian, Rory, as you correctly pointed out? Well, it turns out the Americans weren't the first to occupy OP rock.

Far from it. During the late 1970s and throughout the 80s, the Soviet Union battled Afghan militants in a brutal conflict. And strategic outposts like OP Rock were hard fought over. In fact, legend has it that the Soviets had a small camp at OP Rock that was completely wiped out by Mujahideen fighters. Could that explain the ghostly Russian whispers? As this infamous Reddit post suggested, quote, every single last one of them was slaughtered and the captured were executed. Yikes. It seems like some of those men are still fighting that war.

Wow, you're saying the ghosts of the soldiers that died there years ago are still there in some form. This is what we want to hear. This is like if you're sailing over a part of the Atlantic Ocean and you hear the ghost of like an old English bloke being like, tell you who, gents, are we doing, boys? Then you look into it. You're like, oh, the Titanic sunk right over this spot. Maybe this location carries the remnants of those specific people, you know, who were here. I like it. I like it a lot. You know, as we said, usually ghosts are linked to traumatic and horrible events. Sometimes the more horrible, the stronger the ghostly presence is. This sounds like a pretty horrible event.

We call that the silver lining of the paranormal world when something god awful happens. That's kind of what we normally say to console people. Well, the silver lining of all this is that we're going to have some really awesome evidence in like 200 years, actually. It's not really instant. That's what I said a couple years ago when I accidentally hit my uncle with my car. The whole family was obviously devastated and I was like, yeah, I know, listen. It's hard for everyone, you know, losing someone so close to all of us. But it's going to be a pretty strong presence

in a couple years. I honestly start getting the microphone set up now. I think we'll have something pretty soon. We might actually end up talking to him more as a ghost. Like, this is crazy. Hey, Greg wasn't much of a time. talker, right? So get out. Okay. All right.

At your own uncle's funeral. I guess we don't have to listen any more of his crappy jokes, am I right? All right, I'll leave. Boo. Shucking stuff at me. I mean, why the fuck never wear deodorant? I mean, all right. Yeah. He stink.

But look, I understand. We've been talking a lot about our Reddit post, and I know some of you are screaming at your iPods. Kit, this is just one Reddit post. One witness isn't enough for a story like this. You've always been a failure and always will be. And to you, Dad, I would say, Reddit is not the only place we can find out about OP Rock.

Tom Much, a Kiwi writer for Atlas Obscura, maybe it's Much, I don't know, took up the story in 2023. He described how soldiers at OP Rock regularly suffered from sleep paralysis and near constant nightmares, end quote. There were also claims of sudden, unexplainable temperature changes

and bizarre radio interference connected with the site. Okay. That's a good escalation right there. We have a better resource than Reddit, for sure. We've had an actual journalist look into this. Interview soldiers. And we have multiple people saying,

these are very classic hallmarks of hauntings, temperature changes, EMF, interference. And that's pretty cool, too, sleep paralysis. I'm just going to say, keep your eye on the mother fuck who isn't having nightmares on the battlefield. Right. Keep your eye on the guy that's having a good time. Who's stone cold. You know, this journalist is saying like, yeah, all of the soldiers described stress, bad dreams, feeling an uneasy presence in the air.

War! Huh! That's what it was! That's just the feeling of being in a combat zone, you know? If there was one guy that was like every morning, like up cooking the sausages being like, wooey, ready for another day, boys? You'd be like, send him home. But he's too keen for war.

But, but, look, it was an illegal war. True. It was bad. Millions of people killed innocent civilians. As I say, the people of the nations and the soldiers themselves sold a lie in many cases. But, look, if you want to make it out of the desert alive, Who you're taking with you? Oh, the guy who was a barista two months ago in Portland,

who's having nightmares about the whole situation? Or the guy up at 6 a.m. cooking sausages and going, woo. It's like, let me go in his car today because he's going to be the guy who gets me out of this alive. Maybe. He also might be the guy that just drives 90 miles an hour into enemy lines. He's like, what's that? There's six of us and there's 165 militants on the other side of the hill.

we could take them. Nice. He's like, no, dude, we can't. We cannot take them. He's like, it's a good day to die. It's like, okay, I want a different car. I want a different car.

You've talked me out of it, actually. You've completely talked me out of it. Now you mention it. Okay. I want a different butt buddy. I want a different butt buddy. My guy seems very okay with the possibility of ending his life today.

And I don't want that to be my butt buddy. I want a butt buddy that like nudges me and he's like, hey, I brought some weed with me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, no one even, when everyone yells, hurrah, and runs, no one even looks back. We could just stay here.

You know, when we all, like, do that shit in the movie where we, like, jump out of the plane and activate our parachutes in this big row, let's just, let's just pretend to jump. Last two, yeah, yeah. 100%. Dude, if that was, if that was me, I would wait till the very last person,

and then if the pilot still made me jump, I would jump, activate the shoot immediately and then like a game of Fortnite just see how far I could drift in the opposite direction. Right. And I just tell them like, hey, look, a gust got me. Like, I know we chain for this, but I got an updraft.

And I actually ended up in Hawaii. Sorry. It's like, I can't control this thing. They're like, yes, you can. We taught you how to control that thing. That's one hell of an updraft, taking from Afkelman province to Honolulu. Hey, gone are the days when you could just,

Jimmy Hendricks famous to just said he was gay and they were like, get the fuck out of the army. You're not going to Vietnam. You're gay? You are not qualified to be a butt, buddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely not. We only need men who can stare down the juiciest rump and feel nothing. Do you hear me?

Look, our journalist friends, much. Described how the Marines had adopted a stray dog. affectionately named Ugly Betty, which is, I will say, a very pleasing early 2000s reference. Yeah. The elder millennials listening will remember the TV series Ugly Betty starring America Ferreira, but the dog Ugly Betty displayed strange behavior, barking at a presence only she could see. And even the New York Times investigated this story, which is great because we get a bunch of other soldiers' testimonies like this. quote, it's a conduit for paranormal activity, says Jose Herrera.

Then, a lance corporal and one of the Marines that spent time at the Rock in 2009. When he was there, Mr. Herrera said he saw mysterious lights, heard strange static on the radio, and had the creeping feeling, much like several Marines, that someone or something was watching them. Whoa. Okay. He went on, the smells were like something was dying, said Corporal Herrera, who is since left the Marine Corps. It was really bad at night.

It would come and gusts with the wind. Oh, that's unsettling. Very. Again, though, the stench of death, a feeling of being watched, unsettling vibes, you know. I will give you that this is, this is what I'm saying. This needs to be a pretty awesome movie. Maybe a satirical one, like Apocalypse. What's it called?

Apocalypse Now? I don't think that's a satirical movie. What's the, what's the, what's the, yeah, the one about the Vietnam War? Yeah, and it's like darkly humorous. Oh, to be fair, I haven't seen it. Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. Oh, okay. I'm off. I'm off.

Right. What's the, what's the star? What's that? Charlie Sheen. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's like, it's serious and it's dark, but it's like the whole point is it's like highlighting the obscurity, the, the, the absurdity.

It's highlighting the absurdity. There's men completely losing their mind. you know, being on acid, shooting into the jungle. It was dark and evil, but also absurd. These are almost like Shakespearean motifs, the stench of death, the whispers from the dead. Yeah. To kind of be a metaphor for the actions of the military, right?

Somebody better see a ghost real soon. That's all I'm going to say. Roy, one, this isn't exciting because you set me up. You've actually just done me by saying that. But the next bit is still pretty cool. One Marine, Dutch Perkins. You want to stand behind a motherfucker called Dutch Perkins. Yeah.

Quote, he heard some detached voice speaking and what he described as Russian while he stood guard in his lone machine gun position from midnight to dawn, saying, quote, just thinking about it makes my hair stand up on my arm. It was real faint at first, but eventually sounded like someone was standing right next to me.

Ooh. That's crazy. That's crazy. That's crazy. I'd have multiple people. And like, as you say, these guys, you know, this might not be their first tour or, you know, certainly not their first time being,

they've at least gone through training and all the rest of it, some of the stresses. Yeah, they don't prepare you for that in training, hearing ghostly Russian voices whisper in your ear at night. Right. Yeah, if you pass basic training, they show you the ring videotape. They're like, that might happen also. Yeah. Well, we really don't know what's out there.

In your kind of official gear, they load you out with, you got your bulletproof helmet, bulletproof vest, tactical garments. pistol, knife, rifle, also several crystals, several crystals to protect from the nightmare dimension. I'm telling you, this is why we need to bring back the days where every military force would also be accompanied by a wizard. How far back are you going? Medieval times. Yeah. Medieval times, I think. I think King Arthur really was the last motherfucker to have a wizard on staff. His right-hand man was a wizard. Yeah, exactly. But even I think, think like if you go back to the days of even ancient Greece, I think a lot of the leaders and the

pharaohs would have worked closely with kind of magic men, people that kind of could kind of predict the future. That's kind of true actually, yeah. So I just think we need more of those people in the front line. No one's going to say no to having a wizard. If the option is we can also have a wizard, then it's like, yeah, because the odds are we don't need the wizard. The wizard is a liar and the lizard, the lizard also doesn't actually possess any capabilities that can keep us safe. But there's a 0.001% chance that when you guys are pinned down by gunfire, he's going to go, he could just be it just consume. And a force field could appear stopping the bullets and sending fireballs back up into the mountains. You just don't know. We saw it. Had your

bets. The angel, no, what was it? There was the, there was the, the angels of Mon? Yeah, Mon, yeah. I thought it was the hound. That's a different one. That's a different one. Yeah. There was the angel at Mon in, like, Austria or some shit. Anyway, and yeah, that was it. They said that, like, heavenly angels came down and, like, were like, like, like, shot the, shot arrows. Yeah, they, like killed a bunch of guys. Yeah. Pretty crazy stuff. Honestly, you know, you just got to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, you know, recruit wizards, train up a bunch of monkeys and give them guns and see what happens. Just drop them out of a plane. Well, we, right. Well, we saw this with, of course, looking into Uri Geller, the psychic. And, you know, it really seems to be the case that some high-profile psychics like him in, say, the Cold War were hired. by three-letter U.S. governmental organizations to just be like, look, we've tried everything.

Can you just mentally travel, astral project to the KGB headquarters, get the nuclear codes for us? They tried it all. Yeah, they really did. Is that a sign that none of it worked, that we don't have wizards on the front line? Possibly, possibly. But I still, if I'm serving, I would like a wizard beside me. Look, as I have alluded to this point, the top theory for what was causing these hauntings was the Soviet soldiers killed there in the 80s.

But are there other theories? Well, it's worth pointing out that observation point rock is not actually a natural feature in the landscape. It's in fact an ancient man-made mound. A network of tunnels is not to have once existed through its core, and legend has it, it has been the site of many bloody battles for centuries. In fact, the US Marines made some gruesome discoveries of their own when they dug into the defensive position in the 2000s. One Marine described, quote, we started digging and as we were digging, we started to find bones.

Not one bone, not two bones, tons of bones. Bones for days. We could have built our whole observation point out of bones. We found really driving at home. We found relics too, pottery, tin and helmets. Wow. Whether some kind of ancient funeral mound amass grave or just a reflection of the war-torn history, it's clear this location is the final resting place of many souls.

Such a bad place to set up camp. It's getting late, boys. Let's set up the tents here on Sacrifice Hill. We should be safe for the night. Jenkins, any luck drilling for water in the nearby well? We tried, sir, it's coming up with nothing but blood. That'll do. Drink it up.

Just use twice the coffee. And I guess this is part of the problem of trying to pinpoint exactly who these souls were, is that you really can just infinitely go back far in time. You know, go back 800 years and Genghis Khan himself invaded this part of the world. Go back 2,000 years and you're back to Alexander the Great. People have been fighting over this thing like goddamn toddlers and Pokemon cards in the 90s. Hey, go back a couple million. We're talking about dinosaur ghosts.

Right. The oldest bones of all time. Yeah, not really whispering in your ear at that point. Just kind of... Yeah, you're going to hear that one. Yeah. Go back even farther than that. Probably some kind of intergalactic Power Rangers megazords.

Like from another planet or galaxy, just they left no record on Earth because they left. Probably when the Earth's atmosphere heated up too much. I don't know if we're ready for that theory. Okay. But even though it does feel very intuitive in this paranormal lifestyle to say, look, there you go, someone died, here's the ghost. We shouldn't say case closed because local spiritual beliefs seem to also suggest this site holds

supernatural power in its own right, nothing to do with the bodies buried there. As our journalist friend at Atlas Obscura writes, the experience of the supernatural was not limited to the invading forces. Locals believe that this area is both sacred and cursed, owing to the presence of a shrine in the nearby village of Amir Agha. The small single-room shrine in the town remains, though it is clearly neglected in the center as a tall marble tablet with verses from the Quran scribbled around it. It's enclosed in a green metal cage to deter would-be thieves. Here's a slightly grainy image, Rory, but you can get an idea. It's kind of crazy to see how, yeah, they've had to like defend these things throughout

wars. So it's kind of caged in there, but it still exists. That's very cool. So what you're saying is this shrine may not be cursed, but it definitely is another place nearby with an increased potential spiritual energy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, well, I don't know. See, I don't know the ins and of how they would view these things in Islam. But he does say sacred and cursed. I mean, if I had to make an educated guess, I know that in the Western world and the predominantly Christian world, you know, we always say it, you know, religion kind of adopts even more ancient things

into it and absorbs them. Yeah. And recontextualizes them. So in the same way that we've talked about how Ireland is full of, let's say, ancient and important wells. And then these became like, you know, pilgrimage sites for religious people. But actually, they pre-exist religion in any recognizable form. And this might be a similar kind of thing.

This might have always been a revered location for one reason or another. And then when kind of religion emerged a couple of thousands years ago in the organized sense, they were like, yeah, let's also put a religious shrine here. Right, right, right. I don't know. I don't know. But I know that's in some parts of the world. That's how it's worked. So it might be going back a really,

really long time. And in fact, that cage surrounding the shrine gives you a hint of something else that might be going on. Thieves have been a big problem. And it said that during successive invasions of this area by the Soviets and the US, soldiers were said to have stolen from the shrine, you know, carving off bits of marble, stealing parts of tablets and stuff like that, which has angered the spirits. And in fact, during the Soviet invasion, it said that tanks rolled in within shooting distance of of this shrine. In fact, one local that was interviewed by Atlas Obscura said, when the Russians attacked Amir Agha, we remember that the tanks that came to attack the shrine got stuck in the mud where they could be quickly destroyed by the Mujahideen fighters. To this day,

they're still there. No one can get them out. This is because of the power of Amir Hamza and the holy land of Amir Agha. Oh, hell yeah. That's awesome. I like that. We do. It is. It's a, man, it must be a crazy place to visit and check out because you can see there are just tanks in the ground. Tanks just still there abandoned many, many years later. Let me tell you, these holy sites, these temples and shrines, they can be temperamental places. You know, I recently just last year got to visit a bunch of cool holy sites and important

places when I was doing a bit of traveling. And one of them was this incredible place in Thailand where they have the longest lying Buddha in the world. You go visit it and it's this enormous. My Kermis Golden Buddha lying on its side, stretching all the way down the hall. And one of the cool things you can do is buy all of these coins and do the, it's like a 172 coin blessing where you walk the entire length of the Buddha and put a coin in the bucket as an offering for in like a hundred or like 200 different pots.

And I did it with my brother, you know, saying prayers, asking for blessings the entire time. finished, bowed, put my shoes back on, showed my respect, and then immediately dropped my iPhone and it smashed on the floor. I was like, must have missed a bucket. Must have missed a bucket or something, Buddha, because, wow, sorry, did I miss speak or something? Because I'm pretty sure I asked for blessings and wealth. And immediately I left and lost $200. It couldn't have been a shorter amount of time to lose such a substantial amount of money. This is Rory to the guardian of the shrine, the per old man who lives nearby. He doesn't even speak English. It's like, sorry, I'm just asking where I get a refund. Roy's raiding the donation box. I'm going to take my coins out of the

bucket then because I actually... Because I'm looking it up. If I'm scratching the shit out of my finger trying to look up the price at the Apple store. But oh yeah, oh yeah, 375 pounds to replace the screen. So, yeah, I'm going to need that. Guess what other blessing I don't have? Apple care, all right? So your boys, this was day one into like a 10 week trip phone obliterated.

Nice. I do, I do understand the story is accurate, but it does also sound like, yeah, you were just rinsed by these locals who were just telling you a lie. They're like, oh, you're going to want the 172 pound blessing.

Oh, yeah. I mean, because most people, you know, two pound blessing, one pound blessing, but a guy like, like you? A guy like you who wants to live mass? Needs a 172-pound blessing. Yeah. Hey, it's pricey, but it gets the job done. I'm like, okay, sounds good. I do every 172 pot come out. I'm like, all right, I'm finished.

They just break my legs and take my wallet. Awesome. Awesome. It didn't cost that much money. It's just the pots. You put coins in that minute. It's a very cool thing. You should do it. Watch your phone. Buy a case. Do buy a case for your phone. Like I said, one of the locals was explaining what happened to the Soviets whenever they rolled their tanks into town. And it just goes to show even some of the locals are aware of the Marine stories and believe them. You know, this guy said, we heard many stories about the US and British Marines who were hearing voices and or noises and felt the presence of someone near them. Hmm. This is what was going on.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that, look, times have moved on. the U.S. Afghan war has ended, but the local legends persevere and are still revered. Another possible explanation for what is going on could be the presence of what, sorry? I can't say it. We talked about it back in episode 208 about a famous Iraqi cemetery. We're going to have to bleep it.

I'll say it and you bleep it out in post, Phil, the j-h. Oh, right. Yes. Because you're not supposed to say it. Someone emailed us and was like, You did a whole episode about it and you shouldn't even be talking about it, bud. Right, we won't say what it is, but you might have it with tonic. That's all we'll say.

Spelled a little differently. Sure. Yeah. That's a good way. Putting it. A paranormal creature, an entity. Yes. With deep lore, scary lore.

Yes. One that people take very seriously to the point in which you're not supposed to say its name. Which I will say makes them even more believable. the fact that someone had to make up a rule. Yeah. You know? Yeah, it's serious stuff. There's Voldemort levels of seriousness.

Don't say this. That was the word all along. We're not talking about Voldemort. Yeah, these are spirits in the Islamic world. They are known to interact with the physical world for both good and ill. At their most terrifying, they can be malevolent and tormenting, known for shape-shifting possession and untold misfortune. They can hunt people for a number of reasons.

They may be summoned or employed through black magic. But perhaps most relevant to us, quote, They are believed to occupy uninhabited places like ruins, bathrooms, graveyards, or places where the Quran is not recited. Bathrooms? That was weird. You snuck that one in there. Hey, don't look at me.

As I said, places where the Quran is not recited. O.P. Rock. I'm not Muslim, but I don't need to be to know that whatever the U.S. Marines do in their downtime is not halal. There is a couple of haram activities going on. These are working overtime to hunt these guys just drinking, smoking, gambling and jacking off. Yeah, it's going to piss them off for sure. Yes. You know, when I do think of all the holy, unholliest places that exist, yeah, probably a military set like this. And as you said, men's toilets. Top of the list. Right, you were confused to begin with with the bathroom thing, but now you're

actually like actually, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I've been to some public toilets before where I feel like I slipped through an interdimensional rift and I've ended up in hell itself. Yeah. It's bad. Bad stuff. Yeah.

A toilet so destroyed, it could only have been the work of a demigorgon. And by that I mean basically every public bathroom I visited in the United States. Oh, really? They're pretty bad. Because even I won't get into it, but even America, you don't realize you have a problem. Okay? Even the nicest American bathrooms have gaps in the cubicles so large I could shake hands with the man on the other side. Yeah, I guess I know what you might be talking about.

There should never be a gap in a cubicle so large I can make eye contact with an actively shitting individual. Uh-huh. And I can do that in almost every American bathroom I've been into. Let me quiz you right now, just off the dome. Worst bathroom you've ever witnessed. Oh, actually. Because I've got mine. I think I have mine.

Go on. Which we were into, well, it's maybe one of the worst bathrooms I've been to. And I mean, you must know I mean situation. Bathrooms, like as in, like, just the state you found it in. There's the one that we went to in San. Don't implicate me in something. You've got to at least just say, there wasn't Kit, didn't do it. Well, we didn't do it.

But there was a one that we went to in San Francisco where, I believe there was a man just actively smoking crack in the bathroom toilets. That was pretty cool. just down by like a shipyard. Yeah, it was on the docks for sure. And it was like every cubicle door, or every cubicle didn't have a door for this very reason. It was really funny.

We got to use the toilet at least. But we had to like, you know, whenever you're with friends and then you enter a kind of sketchy situation and you have to silently lock in, where you both are just like, right, head down, let's walk out of here. Just don't look at anyone. Don't say anything.

Yeah. It was just completely, it felt like a horror video game where you have to walk around a room and there's just someone standing there and you're trying to make like not too much noise and you're peeing obviously so you're like facing a wall

and I was like oh this is cool at any moment I'm going to get a rusty screwdriver in the side of my neck like this is where I die saw your smashed iPhone and was like oh this guy isn't worth robbing boom the Buddha saved you

the Buddha saved me all along There you go. I think we figured that. All right. For me, the Sainsbury's toilet in New Cross Gate around 2017. It was like a fucking Jackson Pollock. Oh, no. It was... A Jackson Pooleck.

Let me tell you. I'm not talking the bowl. I'm talking the walls. That's so grim. It was... So, at the end of every... Ha ha ha ha. What do you?

we think is happening here? Delete that for the episode full. What do we think is happening, Rory? Delete the whole section, because I'm not, I'm not proud of Jackson Pooleck. I don't want that to be recorded. I don't like it. All right, that's a bonus on Patreon. Okay, here we go.

I don't like it. This is a serious case, guys. What do we think is happening? Rory, these modern soldiers were clearly a little bit too busy working, literally surveying their environment, you know, what do they call it? Your own kind of rotation where people are taking turns to stay up at night. Da-da-da-da-da. Too busy doing all that shit to bust out an EMF reader or start recording paranormal evidence.

So we don't have any recorded evidence. What we do have is multiple eyewitness accounts and testimonies. Fact-checked and written about and journalistically read into by New York Times and Atlas Obscura, that stands for something. Sure. I think it's clear something was. happening here, or at least these people believe something was happening. It's not just hokom-pokum on Reddit, but we don't know if it's, is it in people's heads? Is it divine

protection? Is it burn Antonic or magic? I don't know, man. I just think there are so, the one thing the world is lousy with is US military bases and soldiers. There are US military people in every country on earth, bases all around the world. There have been, you know, other conflicts in this time or in living memory, let's say, that don't have a haunted mountain in their lore, right? It seems kind of crazy that so many people agree on this coming out of Afghanistan. Yeah, I mean, it's got all the recipes to create a haunting. You're in the middle of a very stressful, awful situation. You know, residing in a place where people have died, you've decided to build a military base on bone mountain. You can't be surprised when the ghost.

show up. You know, it all makes sense. I guess what we have to decide today is if there really is enough proof to say that this is definitively paranormal, which I'm a little disappointed we didn't get that one step further. We heard, we saw the lights, we heard the voices, but I was waiting for the next thing. You know, especially in a situation where this didn't happen that long ago, these motherfuck up probably had smashed iPhones. No, no, just like me. What I say, 2001 or some shit? To be fair. Herrera was there in 2009. So look, the first iPhone had just come out. In 2009? Really? Yeah, it was like 2008, maybe. That's crazy. I didn't know that, to be fair. But don't we have surveillance? Don't we have drones, military cameras? If this is a base? Yeah, but man, they're all

looking for, they're not looking for spirits on the drones. But look, let me put it another way. Okay. I think this is dope and I just thought of it. Is they actually, I did my, actually, I did my myself this time. No, is that I think low-key, sending the military to kind of survey this station, this outpost in Afghanistan, which is a historically haunted spiritual location, was kind of like accidentally sending the team from like a most haunted TV show. They accidentally sent a bunch of guys to stay up all night with night vision goggles looking around to the desert. And guess what? They saw lights after lights after lights. They've heard voices whispering in their ears. They felt the presence of people watching them. They came up with all the stuff that we would think was awesome

if it was on a ghost TV show. Yeah. You know, they just fell short of admittedly the video evidence and the photo evidence. Which is pretty crucial to even the TV shows that are trying to do this. Sure. But come on. If I had had an orb video to show you, you're really telling me that would have got you across the line. I don't know. You got to show me. You got to show me the orb. I would have had to see the orb. At the end of every episode of this paranormal life, we have to decide whether our given case is paranormal or not Rory. In the case of Afghanistan's observation point rock, what are you saying today? A unique story, a very interesting one. I'm sure this isn't the last time we will go to this corner of the world, but I do think

we're falling short a little bit today with what we need to decide that this is a double yes. I think it's going to be a note from me this week. I think Rory just doesn't like go cases when they come around and for me it's a yes it's a yes today we have lots of people cross corroborating the same descriptions we have historical accounts going back decades with multiple wars being scuppered by the ghosts and the spirits I think it's a yes okay okay it's a hung jury it's a hung jury Phil you got to be the decided no I don't want to ask you because he'll say no no no oh f*** off oh Phil come on now

Let us know in the comments. Actually, don't. Actually, don't. You'll all say no. Comments disabled? Comments disabled? No. I feel like the listeners are usually believers, because they've invested an hour of their day into this horse shit. And they're like, I need something to show for it. Let's call it a yes.

Right. I mean, I think this might be a hard sell to even them as well. Come on. All right. Drop a heart in the comments if you believe in the observation point, Rock ghosts. If you're Team K or Team Rory, let us know. We do, actually, I should say,

we've never really mentioned it. But every week on Patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life we release the after party, the behind the scenes kind of extra episode in the week. We have Tuesday episodes which you're listening to now and we have the after party behind the scenes. And in that we usually do

as part of that dive into the comments of that week's episode, comments from Spotify, comments from YouTube. Yeah, yeah. If you are watching on Spotify or watching on YouTube, drop a comment that if it is outrageous enough, I guess there's a chance for reading. it out. Please be nice.

But so you can really let us know and we might read it. I don't want to hear this slander that Rory doesn't like ghost stories. He doesn't think. The Rory doesn't believe ghost stories. If you want me to put on my glasses and pull up the unofficial Ashley Stevenson created spreadsheet of every case and every conclusion and then go to cross-reference ghosts versus Rory's yes or noes. I think the record would probably show that Roy doesn't like ghosts very much.

All I'm going to say is if my calculations are correct and next week episode is the episode that I think it is. It is a ghost case that I am betting is going to be a double yes. One of the most convincing and thrilling ghost stories I've ever investigated before in my life, in my professional career. So you've got that to look forward to next week on the podcast. Well, that would be cool. But it's not a surprise to hear that, I mean, this is just like a, you're like rigging the boxing match.

You're like, oh, I'm actually going to give a yes to a ghost case soon because it's my case. and I'm writing it and it's awesome. It's like, well, yeah, I guess. Well, you'll see. I think the audience are going to like this one. Let me tell you. Well, I can't wait for the 4K GoPro footage that Rory would require for every ghost case.

I can't wait to finally get it. That'll be awesome. I do have footage. I've got a lot more than footage, buddy. Don't worry. What could that be? Is it in a jar? Is the ghost in a f***ing jar?

A lot more than footage. I'm going to put a 172 coin curse on you. What? What did I do? That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put a coin in every bucket and say, kill him. Kill him tonight. Kill him.

Smash his iPhone. Please put a... All this talk of US military aggression is making Rory very aggressive. It is. And the monster energy drink. And the pills that we discussed at the top of the show. Yeah. As we said, patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life.

Best way to support the show. Best way to get in touch with us and get a bunch of cool rewards in exchange for as little as $5, $5 pounds, five euros, whatever your local currency. And there's a ton of stuff over there. Monthly bonus episodes, weekly after party episodes, giveaways every month. It is all to play for over there. We've actually got a really cool new Raffle Prize,

which I didn't tell a kid about, so I'm revealing it to you right now on the podcast. As Kit said, every month we do a giveaway where we give away something in the studio. And I picked up something really cool while I was on holiday recently in Japan. It's actually behind you kit right now on the desk. Huh.

On that shelf right beside the buzzball. Oh, I see it. Wow. You can take it down and take a peek. I went to an antique trading card shop in Japan, and I managed to find a sealed pack of X-Files cards. Awesome idea, man. That's really great.

I think this was like a limited card collector's card thing that they released for the original X-Files cards. File series. This is from like the 90s or early 2000s, super old. This pack is sealed. It's never been opened. You have a chance to win it over on Patreon. Phil Delete all that from the episode I'm having them. That's what's happening there. So, but otherwise, yeah, Patreon.com, no, we will give them away. So better keep them safe up here on the shelf. It's really stimulating some memories. Just that packaging of trading cards. Really cool. So, so, so cool. Good job. Wow. Awesome.

I'll just reimbursed myself later. How much do they cause? Well, I bought them as part of like a bundle, so it came with like three packs. Yeah. So I was basically getting paid to tank them. With savings like that, that'd be crazy. You don't need to reimburse yourself then, yeah. What's 16 million yen in US dollars?

Like a fiver? No, quite a lot. I think I think like the rule is like divide by a hundred. Okay. Which would still take it down to like, I'm being, I'm being dumb right now. But so what, like $16,000? What? Okay.

Yeah. Which would be like, you know, 12,000 pounds. It's like the price of a car. Okay. Uh, shit. Yeah. All right. Is that really how much it cost?

16 million yen? 16 before tip. 3 million. He thought it was pennies. I'm starting to realize I spent a lot more on that vacation than I thought I did. Oh boy. He tipped a million yen, every bite of food you had. I'm just giving this stuff away.

You were thinking of like the Weimar Republic. People wheelbarrows full of cash. Patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life. Links in the description of this episode. Also find the link on our socials. We never shout out our socials, but Instagram.com forward slash this paranormal life. Let's face it, all the other platforms have shite the bed. I think that just about wraps it up, Rory.

But thank you for your patience with a pretty deep and dark case. No, I loved it. I thought you did a great job. You and Researcher Ewan. Very interesting case. Shout out of Researcher Ewan. It's fun to tackle these modern ghost stories. And I think you did a great job today.

And you know what? You've just given me even more energy to finish off writing the script for my case for next week. It's not done? No, it's absolutely not finished. Oh, my God. It's going to be the best case of a lifetime. It's not even done. All right.

It's not done yet. We're excited. We're ready for it. That's next Tuesday. Back on Friday with the after party. Back at the end of the month with the bonus episode, thank you for tuning in. We'll see you the next time. Bye-bye.