Reader Submissions: Afghanistan Lights, Driverless Car and Another Manta-Ray UFO

Strange Lights Over Northern Afghanistan

Lon,

Hi, long time reader first time writer to you. I'm prior service from the military and I served in the Army for five years, during those times, I never saw or heard or experienced anything out of the ordinary or unexplained during my time in service except for one incident which I will describe.

After I was honorably discharged in early 2009, I worked as a defense contractor for a small company out in Virginia, my job entailed deploying overseas for several months at a time. After being hired on I deployed to Northern Afghanistan to one of the Forward Operating Bases there. Ironically I ran across the story on your site about the alleged haunted outpost the Marines took over in December of 2009, a few days before the incident.

This was close to New Years in December of 2009. I was in the office and monitoring message traffic when I noticed a peculiar email and attached report. One of the Forward Operating Bases reported seeing lights near a valley adjacent to a nearby mountain top. One of the soldiers had reported seeing a series of lights during the evening hours as the sun was setting. According to him he thought they were possibly Coalition Aircraft and didn't pay too much attention to it. What ended up catching his attention was the fact that they were perfectly stationary and unmoving for several minutes as darkness approached. According to him the lights had a steady clear white glow to them.

Helicopters can be ruled out as the lights were near a mountain peak, and the strong wind currents as well as altitude would have made it pretty hard to keep a that sort of vehicle stationary let alone hovering safely. The terrain itself is very rugged and rough and the weather can be especially brutal at higher altitudes during the Afghan winter.

It was not an airplane either as the soldier could not make it any distinguishing characteristics or markings. After a few more minutes, according to the soldier as the sun had finished setting, the lights dimmed a bit and could not be made out as well so the soldier grabbed his night vision goggles to get a better look. (He didn't say specifically which ones he took, but most NVG gear will pick up near infrared light/heat sources if they are strong enough) He stated that the object was glowing almost "red hot" through his night vision goggles, and had an elongated cigar shape to it. Size was difficult to estimate but at least 200 feet in length.

There was no more description or detail of the incident as the report itself was spartan and the preceding emails to it were almost poking fun of the story (I honestly thought it was a prank at first, but the report had indeed gone through all the appropriate channels and was disseminated throughout the email chain). I have heard incidents similar to this before from other soldiers, but this is the first time I actually came across a real report that documented this. Please feel free to email me back with any questions you might have but this is the gist of it. Thanks...

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No Driver

Hi - In 1983/84 (?), when I was sophomore at Westwood High School in Austin, TX, I was in a car with 3 students and 2 teachers, coming back from a field trip with my Home Economics class. We were driving down Hwy 183 in Cedar Park, when we saw a gold sedan next to us with NO DRIVER in the car. We of course all crowded around the right passenger window, in amazement. We could clearly see through all the windows & could see the floorboards at all the seats in the car. There was NO ONE in that car. At all. We drove next to the car for 10-15 minutes. It turned with the road, slowed down & sped up, as if there were someone driving it. We looked for a remote control device, but the floorboards and what we could see of the outside of the car, were clear. Plus, to be remote controlled (at that point in technological history) it would have had to be controlled from another car nearby. And there were no other cars on the road with us. I wasn't afraid, I was amazed and excited. We were all trying to figure it out, it was fun! Eventually, our teacher told us to quit looking at it (???), then sped up and left it behind. I've never heard of another instance like this until today, online, when I found this - Human Enigmas

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Another Manta-Ray UFO

Lon - One evening last year around dusk, with a fair amount of twilight still in the sky, I stood out in my well-lit driveway waiting to be picked up to go eat dinner. As I stood looking around, watching the sky as airplanes flew in and out of the Charlotte, NC airport (30ish miles away), something caught my eye that was much, much lower in the sky than the airplanes I had been watching. Flying directly over my head, was a translucent/transparent manta-ray shaped figure whose speed and size would suggest an extremely low altitude, maybe a little higher than a telephone pole, and maybe an 8ft wingspan. This manta-ray flew and moved in a fashion that suggested to me that it was a living creature as opposed to an aircraft. I could see directly through it but was easily able to see its shape/figure. I watched it fly directly overhead in a straight path for maybe 10 seconds, then it completely disappeared, long before it flew out of sight.

I was very shocked to find other eye-witness accounts of this creature on your site, matching what I saw down to every little detail. What are these things?

Truly an incredibly surreal experience.

War Report: Ghool

The following narrative was forwarded by a friend who owns a security company. The witness is one of his employees who started working for him after several years in Iraq and Afghanistan. He states that he worked for the U.S. Army Criminal Investigations (CID) before and during the conflicts. He left the service for unspecified reasons. This account is second-hand but I believe the witness' sincerity though he wishes to remain anonymous. The anecdote was written by the witness and has not been edited except for some spelling:

I was an investigator with CID from 2004-2009 and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of my work was related to various schemes (bribery, money laundering, theft, etc.) by enlisted personnel.

In 2005 I was informed that I would be embedded with an Army infantry unit in a mountainous region in the Sulaymaniyah Governorate (northeast Iraq). Once I reached my assigned location we were briefed on strange activity that had occurred in a particular area just a few miles from the Iranian border.

We started the investigation by reading reports that came from a few local villagers who stated that people were being hunted in the mountains by an unknown creature. One man told me that the Iranians called it a 'ghool'. He had never seen it but it was described as a tall man-like creature with long arms and legs who fed on human flesh. I reported the information I gathered to my superiors after returning to the unit HQ.

A few days later I was ordered to return to the area of the strange activity and investigate further. An infantry squad with squad leader was assigned to accompany me. The general consensus was that it was likely a soldier who left his post (AWOL) and went batshit and started causing problems. Armed conflict can induce the worst in people to surface. If this was the case and the individual was killing non-combatants our job would be formidable.

After a few days of surveillance and searching we had no clue of what we were dealing with. If this was indeed a soldier or other civilian man we would have seen him or gathered some evidence. I was starting to believe that this was a wild goose chase but the villagers were animate that there was something hunting them.

One evening the squad leader and I were going over a report when we were alarmed by a god-awful scream that came from the direction of a mountain pass that we had just searched a few hours before. A few local people who had been outside quickly made their way home. It was obvious that they had heard this scream before.

Within the hour the squad and I were slowly entering the pass. It was night but the moon was very bright so we were able to see around a bit. We searched the entire area for several hours using night vision and high-intensity lights. We found nothing - not a footprint or remnant from any creature fitting the description.

I have always wondered what we heard that night. I have asked a few learned people for their opinion but with little satisfaction. There were many strange instances in Iraq that just never made the light of day. I heard of some but I'm positive most were just filed away.

NOTE: interesting story...there have been humanoid claims by the Persians for almost 900 years. There is a Persian story about Ameen and the Ghool and the 'Valley of the Angel of Death' as well as other folklore. I do hope that some of the strange phenomena experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan are disclosed at some point...Lon