Chapter 40 : A Terrifying Encounter While in Iraq

I was a sergeant in the U.S. Army and ETS'ing (getting out) from the military when President Bush ordered more troops into Iraq in 2003. I had just returned home to Austin, Texas, when I was summoned into my local National Guard unit at Camp Mabry and told that I was being recalled to the Army, but the unit was already tasked out to deploy to Iraq. I was not part of their unit yet, so the commander offered to give me a waiver to deploy with a government contractor, Halliburton, in Houston. I knew that I would make more money as a contractor, so I took the offer.

Not long after arriving in Kuwait at Camp Doha, I began working with the operations team overseeing logistics affairs. We would oversee the daily convoy of supply between Kuwait and Baghdad, a route riddled with I.E.D. incidents, small arms skirmishes, and almost constant breakdowns of Army and civilian vehicles. Because I was a SAW gunner in the 1st Infantry Division while in active duty, and was technically still in the Guard, I was often in the convoys manning a mounted weapon that accompanied the mostly civilian convoys. During these "runs" we had a few strange encounters in an area south of Baghdad known then as Camp Babylon.

Occupied by French troops, but then designated an archaeological site for obvious reasons, Camp Babylon was set up in the area that was said to originally be inhabited by the famous Tower of Babel. Indeed, there were ruins there that did look like a massive structure once stood at that spot. I had two strange incidents happen to me while passing through there.

The first incident seems a bit benign, but sets the mood for the second. We were passing through Camp Babylon in the afternoon one day when our convoy took small arms fire. The S.O.P. at the time (standard operating procedure) was to stop the convoy and return fire. This was because, in the past, such incidents ended up being a long gunman attempting to scare the convoy into running in to I.E.D.'s on the road. Because of this, the S.O.P. changed to stop the convoy, dismount, and return fire.

While engineers looked for explosive devices on the road, we scanned the horizon for enemy. Nothing. They most likely fled immediately. However, the ruins around Camp Babylon were alive with "shadow figures" that seemed to move about the area. Several times we would spot the figures, but they would immediately disappear. A contractor, lying beside me with his weapon, commented, "How odd that we are in the shadow of Babel and fighting the supernatural." I didn't respond, but knew he was a 32nd degree Mason who was really into the arcane aspects of Babylon, etc. I didn't feel, at the time, that much was supernatural, but certainly DID see the shadowy (and bizarrely small) figures dart about the structures. Once the road was deemed clear, we continued on to Baghdad.

The second incident occurred about a month later. At this point the weather in southern Iraq and Kuwait had turned quite cold at night. During this encounter, we had just completed the supply run to Baghdad and were returning back to Camp Doha in Kuwait when a vehicle in our convoy broke down. Once again, we found ourselves right at Camp Babylon. While the Army mechanics took a look at the vehicle, and the rest of us took up fighting positions around the area, strange things began to occur.

It started with a strange light bobbing in the desert. Thinking it was a person with a flashlight, we used NVG's (night vision goggles) to watch. It was simply a glowing ball of light moving towards a set of ruins. After initial contact with the light, a few of us had moved forward away from the convoy to see what the source was; after seeing it was self contained, and not a person, we were a bit alarmed. Then we heard a sound that I will never forget. A long wailing began from one of the ruined structures/foundations not far away. It sounded like a woman in agony, mixed with loneliness.

On and on the sounds went while we huddled in the cold and dark, wondering what the hell we were listening to. With our NVG's equipped, we used our flashlights to spotlight the ruins. If you've ever done this, you will know that a normal flashlight with NVG's looks like a massive beam of light. We scoured the area, but no source of the wails, or the ball of light, were seen. About this time we were told via radio that the vehicle was repaired and ready to roll, so we decided to return to the convoy. I was slinging my SAW over my shoulder when I noticed my contractor partner was staring at the ruins in horror. He was frozen. I shook him and he snapped out of his stupor, quickly leaving the area with the rest of us.

Once we were back at the camp, and it was pleasantly daylight the following morning, several of us were chatting about the encounter at Camp Babylon before our daily operations briefing. It was then that I remembered the terrified expression on the face of the contractor. So I asked him about it. He was still obviously traumatized by the event, but managed to explain that, as we were leaving our position on the sandy hill, he saw a tall, black figure standing beside the ruins. It was watching us as we were looking for him/her/it. He said that he felt an instant wave of despair hit him and thought that he was going to die. He didn't remember leaving the area. His next memory was in the humvee headed back to Kuwait.

I now write nonfiction books about haunted places for Llewellyn Publishing and have visited hundreds of reputedly haunted spots. But I'll never forget the wailing figure at the ruins of Babel. It's also worth noting, that when I related this story to some of our Pakistani employees at Camp Doha and Camp Arifjan, they also were quite horrified. One of them, a translator we called "Ardi," said that we had encountered a djinn--or a damned spirit--and that we were lucky to be able to tell the tale. I agree.