Growing up on a military base isn’t a typical childhood for most of us. But for some, it’s considered to be completely normal. This was the case for one family, who spent most of their time at an air base belonging to the United States Air Force but which was far from American soil.
Aside from the father, who was rarely home owing to being in active service, the rest of the family started to notice odd happenings around the house. There were often similarly strange stories told by our neighbors, although little of it would seem like much more than gossip among families. Yet, one of the family's children would later recall some of these unusual happenings in a post on Reddit in 2019 titled ‘I Lived in a Haunted Air Base.
’ The original poster remembers being young, between six and eight years old, when their family lived there. Few of us retain more than a select handful of vivid memories from our childhood, but the poster was still able to recall certain specific details about the strange things that occurred at this supposedly haunted base. One of the girls in a neighboring family once told the original poster that she had a habit of speaking to other fellow children growing up on the base by communicating through the air vents.
Sometimes, this girl would even drop coins or keychains down into air conditioning ducts for her fellow children to find. Strangely, these “friends in the walls” would never show their faces to the girl anywhere else on the base… and only adding to the unnerving nature of the story, the older sister of the posters’ family claimed to have once seen a black, goo like mass oozing out from one of the vents while babysitting at a neighboring house. On a separate occasion, the Reddit poster recalls playing with dolls in a shared bedroom with their sibling.
The door had been shut, but they remember hearing and seeing the door knob… twisting by itself. Every few minutes, it would turn and rattle as if someone on the other side was about to open the door. Eventually, they told whatever was trying to get inside to stop… and it did.
The entire family expressed that they were wrought with feelings of extreme discomfort in various places around the base. In the bedroom the poster and their older sister shared, neither of them felt safe sleeping on the top bunk of the bunk beds they had, instead sharing the bottom bunk. There was an unsettling presence in the top bunk that both had seemed to sense.
They felt the same walking up or down the stairs in their house, constantly feeling like someone… or something was watching them. Even their mother admitted that she used to sprint up and down the stairs, constantly checking behind her for the eyes of whatever was watching. At the time, the siblings would express their concerns to their mother, telling her about all the bizarre and inexplicable experiences.
Much like any parent in a horror movie, she would often just dismiss them, seemingly talking the stories at little more than her children’s overactive imaginations. However, as they would later find out, their mother believed what they had told her… because she had experienced the same things too. Once the family had moved away from living on the air base, their mother told them about her experiences.
She claimed she hadn’t admitted to any of it earlier because she did not want to scare her children. On one occasion, one of them noticed that a stuffed animal was missing. Their mother had told them then that they had thrown it away.
What she hadn’t explained was why. The mother later recalled her child telling her that this stuffed animal had been whispering to them and preventing them from sleeping. While they didn’t remember any of it, their mother had disposed of the supernatural stuffed animal just to be safe from any potentially paranormal plushies.
Perhaps strangest of all was the story their mother told them next. She and her toddler, another of the original poster’s siblings, had been lying down to take a nap. Her other children were playing at a friend’s house at the time.
Nobody else was in the house except for the mother and her toddler. Yet, almost as clear as day, she heard someone in the room saying: “I love you, mommy. ” The original post, unlike much of the content on Reddit, was met with skepticism.
Instead, it received a number of comments that shared similar experiences… with a number of stories coming from the same military air base. No matter how you slice it, life in the military is spent constantly under a shadow, one that remains ever present, be it during the day or at night. This might not be a supernatural specter or shade from the great beyond, but instead, the shadow of death looms over all parts of serving in the armed forces.
No matter where you train, end up stationed, or what you specialize in, death is an ever-present part of military life. Soldiers deal with it whenever they’re deployed on missions and risk facing it in return from enemy combatants. Heck, even the chefs back at bases and barracks help keep fighters fed for the task of war.
Without casting any moral aspersions on those who do, the reality of serving is that it’s a career path haunted by the threat of and the delivery of death. With that in mind, it’s a wonder there aren’t more stories about military installations and past battlefields being haunted. For those who believe in the supernatural, it almost seems like it’d be evident that the sites of conflicts would be littered with spirits who lost their mortal lives fighting.
And sure, ghosts are no strangers to war. There are certainly more than a few stories scattered around here and there, particularly related to the wars of the past. One of the most popular wartime ghost stories comes from the First World War, commonly referred to as the Angel of Mons.
In 1914, just outside of the Belgian town of Mons, the British Expeditionary Force was being pushed back by the German Army, facing a brutal defeat. Just as all hope seems lost, supposedly, the British soldiers suddenly became aware of a shadowy army fighting alongside them. To their surprise, they witnessed entire regiments of bowmen who had perished over five hundred years earlier during the Battle of Agincourt.
The soldiers swore they overheard voices crying out that were honoring Saint George, a soldier venerated as a saint in English Christianity. Apparently, another disembodied voice was rallying the troops under a thunderous medieval battle cry, and there were even a number of German soldiers captured in the ensuing fight who were left dumbfounded that their British enemies had changed their tactics so dramatically and started shooting arrows. It’s quite an incredible story… or it would be if any of it actually happened.
If the tale of the Angel of Mons sounds a little far-fetched to you, that’s because it is. In actuality, it was a fabrication derived from a piece of short fiction titled The Bowmen, written by author Arthur Machen. The British press and soldiers fighting in the First World War quickly appropriated the spooky tale into a piece of wartime anti-German propaganda, which, at the time, would commonly reduce the German people to over-the-top villainous caricatures that often drew from folklore, depicting them as murderous villains who spent their time pillaging villages and killing babies.
But what if there was a place where that really haunted the military? Could there be somewhere so steeped in the shadow of death that the very buildings remain restless to this day? What is the most haunted location in the US military?
Is it also the result of many overblown spooky stories, or is there some terrifying truth to these tales? Welcome to Kadena Air Base, located four hundred miles off the coast of China, between the Japanese towns of Kadena, Chatan, and the city of Okinawa. The largest and most active US Air Force Base in this part of the world, over twenty thousand American service members, their families, and local Japanese employees live or work at Kadena Air Base.
Kadena’s history began back in the Second World War. Initially, it was a little more than four thousand six hundred feet long runway built by a local construction firm. Known as Yaya Hikojo back then, the airfield near the village of Kadena was intended for use by the Imperial Japanese Army and their air force.
At this time, April 1945 to be precise, the Battle of Okinawa was underway, which saw the United States Army and US Marine Corps invading the island, with their initial landing at Okinawa being the largest amphibious assault in the entire Pacific Theatre during World War Two. Having pre-emptively secured the surrounding Kerama Islands, the island-hopping invasion of Okinawa was intended to establish the larger landmass as a forward base for American forces that could then be used to launch the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands just under three hundred and fifty miles away. So, in order to successfully capture Okinawa, the Yara Hikojo became one of the first targets attacked and taken by the US, specifically the Tenth United States Army Seventh Infantry Division.
Once they had seized the area, the United States forces were left with a badly damaged coral runway and not a whole lot else. Construction and maintenance units were tasked with making the area usable, and by nightfall on the fourth of April, 1945, the runway could accept emergency landings from US aircraft. Considering the invasion commencing the Battle of Okinawa had taken place only days earlier, starting on the first of April, that was quite an impressive turnaround.
By the time eight days had passed, on the twelfth of April, the newly established Kadena Air Base was operational and put into immediate service, allowing planes to take off to spot Japanese artillery from above. Since its construction, Kadena Air Base has seen operational use in conflicts far beyond the last year of the Second World War, including allowing United States Air Force tactical fighter jets to take off and provide support during the Vietnam War. Over the years, it has been home to a variety of units, including primarily the United States Air Force’s Eighteenth Wing, the Three Hundred and Fifty-Third Special Operations Wing, the First Battalion and First Air Defence Artillery Regiment, along with additional associated reconnaissance units.
In addition, nearly four thousand housing units for military personnel and their families are on the base, including apartments, townhouses, and single-family homes available to all active service members assigned to Okinawa. Some have taken to calling Kadena Air Base the ‘Keystone of the Pacific,’ given its highly strategic location—it is within less than five hundred miles of Shanghai, a major economic hub in East Asia. To others, though, Kadena goes by a different nickname thanks to its reputation for supernatural phenomena, accidents, and other unexplained occurrences: the Most Haunted Place in the US Military.
There have been a lot of stories over the years about hauntings and paranormal activity happening all around Kadena Air Base, especially among those who have found themselves stationed there or the families that have lived there. Sightings of spectral samurai or rumors about long-dead soldiers asking passers-by to offer light for their cigarettes have been rife for decades. Perhaps the most infamous dwelling on the base is—or rather, was—Building 2283, which now stands with its windows boarded up, completely and utterly abandoned.
While there are several rumors stating that the house was demolished in 2009, others have since claimed that the small house is now used for storage. Whatever stories may or may not be true, they all agree on at least one thing: there is something very strange about Building 2283. Why abandon a perfectly good home when it could be used to house a military family?
Apparently, it’s because hardly anyone in their right mind could stand living there. Building 2283 is said to be noticeably smaller than the other residential buildings in the area and has one room that is so cold that no one can sleep inside. The building – if it hasn’t been torn down as some have suggested – is thought to be located just behind Kadena Air Base’s USO – the United Services Organisation, a nonprofit organization that provides entertainment and social events for military service members and their families.
It has been rumored that USO employees are the ones using the abandoned house for storage. However, it is said they are only ever seen entering 2283 during the daylight hours or in groups for safety. Building 2283 has become infamous among those who have lived on the base; most have heard of the building’s notorious reputation as the most haunted house in the entire United States military.
Of the few residents to have lived there, not many have stayed in 2283 for long. According to some, sometime in the seventies, the place was the site of a grizzly murder, when an Air Force officer supposedly killed his entire family inside the house… and then himself. So the story goes, the next family to move into Building 2283 started feeling restless and wrapped with paranoia… until, once again, the father of the family stabbed them all.
The story is unsubstantiated, with there being little recorded information about any murder taking place at Kadena Air Base during the seventies. In 2011, an Air Force Technical Sergeant by the name of Curtis Eccleston was found brutally murdered nearby, having been stabbed to death in an apartment he lived in off base. Eccleston was responsible for a unit that oversaw cargo and air traffic at Kadena Air Base.
However, his death wasn’t the result of anything supernatural – it was something arguably scarier. A fellow airman, Staff Sergeant Nicholas Cron, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, premeditated murder, and obstruction of justice in relation to Ecclestons’ murder. When brought before a military judge, Cron was unrepentant and had reportedly fantasized about killing Eccleston for months.
It was discovered that Barbara Eccleston, the slain airman’s widow, had been engaged in an affair with Cron as well as with several other men and had discussed ways to kill her husband with Cron. Adding to the supernatural reputation of Kadena Air Base, Barbara Eccleston allegedly claimed that her discussions about the murder had been the result of witchcraft, having carried out spells suggested to her by a Brazilian fortune teller to make her husband treat her better. Whether true or not, arguably the scariest thing about the story is that two people Curtis Eccleston would have trusted – his spouse and a fellow airman – conspired to take his life without him knowing.
While gruesome in its own regard, as far as anyone is aware, Curits Eccleston never resided at Building 2283. However, that hasn’t stopped the house from haunting people at the station or living in Kadena. Some that have passed by 2283 have reported overhearing the disturbing sounds of children crying or screaming, sometimes hearing strange laughter.
In at least one instance, somebody reported seeing a woman washing her hair in the house's sink… long after it had been abandoned. Other reports of ghostly activities from within the house have included phones ringing despite there being no phone line attached to Building 2283, faucets that seem to start running water by themselves, curtains opening when the house is unoccupied, and even at least one sighting of an ominous otherworldly glowing emanating from the building. One former tour guide and some of 2283’s former residents claim that one of the rooms inside the house is always ice cold, no matter the weather or time of year, even at the peak of the summer heat.
And, no, it’s not because someone left the AC on; Building 2283 lacks any kind of air conditioning. Others have also claimed to have seen blood stains covering the floor and splattered all over the curtains, even several years after the last residents supposedly met their untimely end. Although the story surrounding it is also unverified, there was also allegedly a Halloween séance held at Building 2283 in October 1994.
Strangely, and where this story seems to lose a lot of credibility, the goal of the séance was to attempt to contact, of all people, Harry Houdini, famed escapologist, illusionist, and stunt performer. Why anyone thought that trying to contact Houdini from a haunted Air Force base would work is unknown. Surely determining who or what had been haunting Building 2283 would have been a more pressing matter?
Or even communing with the spirits of those who had fallen during military service? But no, Houdini. I guess we’re going with that, the escape artist who rose to fame in America and Europe in the 1900s, nowhere near Japan.
Naturally, if you weren’t already taking this story with a pinch of salt – if not a fistful of salt – then you’ll be surprised to hear that those involved in the séance didn’t have any luck contacting Harry Houdini as they had planned. What a shocker. However, according to some reports, they apparently made contact with a pair of ghosts in the house at midnight.
They were supposedly the spirits of a girl and a boy, who both loved playing together, but neither one had any knowledge that they were dead. All they seemed to know was they were both afraid of “the man on the horse. ” Unfortunately, this supernatural event caused the batteries in several of the cameras that were being used that night to suddenly fail, losing their charge.
As a result, no footage of the séance exists. What a shame; we’re sure this totally real and not at all bogus séance would’ve made for some exciting and illuminating viewing. If the rumors of Building 2283 being demolished were, in fact, false, then you might be justified in wondering why exactly the Air Force hasn’t just torn this haunted house down to get rid of any spirits still lurking there.
This is certainly a valid question, but according to some reports out of Kadena Air Base, there have been numerous attempts to destroy 2283, but each time, workers attempting to demolish the house have been thwarted by severe headaches, strange and rapidly onset hallucinations, as well as suffering injuries at a much higher rate than usual. It’s a long-standing and well-known fact that children are inherently creepy. And the kids growing up on Kadena Air Base are no different; well, actually, they might be a whole lot worse.
According to some reports made by teachers who have worked there, there have long been rumors of children making unnerving statements or behaving unusually. The Kadena base’s daycare is next door to Building 2283 because the safest place for daycare is right next to the ghost house. Teachers complained that, on one occasion, children had been throwing toys over the fence while out on the playground.
When asked why they were doing this, these terrifying tykes claimed it was because “the little kids on the other side” had asked them to. To reiterate, children are just plain creepy. But perhaps the potential risk of hallucinations and sudden urges to single-handedly murder your entire family just aren’t enough to dissuade a tough guy like you from settling down at Building 2283.
Maybe the idea of having a ghostly apparition who washes her hair in the sink as a roommate is just something you could learn to live with. And living next door to a military runway and a daycare? Sure, that doesn’t sound like some hellish noise nuisances.
Still, we suppose that every home is bound to have its quirks, after all! Still, few houses offer the added selling point of having the spirit of a Samurai living in the house with you – and not paying his share of the rent. Some who have previously lived at Building 2283 claim to have seen this spectral warrior riding a horse in the vicinity of 2283.
Although, while you might expect a Samurai on horseback to be more of an outdoorsy apparition, this one seems to have no qualms about home etiquette and, for some unknown reason, will ride his noble steed through the living room. Moving away from Building 2283 – and aren’t you glad for it – to other areas of Kadena Air Base. Oh, it’s not just the abandoned house; this is the most haunted place in the entire United States military; of course, there’d be more than one spot for spotting specters.
Over at one of the northeast entrances, Gate Three, you would be forgiven for expecting to see some security standing watch or for wondering why there doesn’t seem to be anyone around. Well, that’s because some of the reports from those ordered to stand guard at Gate Three have been creepy enough to make US Marines refuse to take the post. You might immediately shrug that off as superstition from the United States Armed Forces, most often mocked corps, or as just another unsubstantiated rumor.
But unlike a certain probably fictitious séance, the ghostly encounters at Gate Three actually have some credibility; for one, there’s an actual link to the military and not a Hungarian stuntman in sight. For another, there’s actual footage for this one, too… Imagine you’re a Marine, told to take the dog watch from night to morning, standing guard at the gate, waiting for the sun to gradually start peeking over the horizon. It’s long tiring, and while it’s still dark, you can feel exhaustion creeping into your bones.
Then, someone beside you asks for a light so they can smoke. You’ve got a lighter in a pouch on your tactical vest, so you unzip it and hand it to your fellow Marine… only to see a figure covered in a bloody, Second World War era uniform… That’s what was reported to have happened at Gate Three, and more than once at that. On several occasions, security guards and active service members claimed to have encountered the same ghost.
All the sightings agreed that they saw a bloodied World War Two soldier approaching them and asking them for a light for his cigarette. The sightings of this spectral soldier became so frequent that they were happening almost weekly, and there has even been some speculation that it led to Gate Three falling into disuse for a time. Not using the gate seemed a little bit pointless as, according to all the stories of those who encountered him, it was unnecessary; the blood-covered smoking soldier would immediately disappear once his cigarette was lit.
However, Gate Three appears to still be in active use today. It also seems that the ghostly Marine wasn’t the only spirit of the Second World War seen hanging around by Gate Three either. According to some American troops, sightings of Japanese soldiers from World War Two were also frequently reported at the same gate.
One night, an Air Force security officer took a patrol of the grounds of Kadena Air Base, coming upon a supposedly haunted grassy clearing within a secure area. He’d been trying to determine whether or not the base was truly haunted, and it seemed that he very quickly found an answer. He reported seeing an entire regiment of the Japanese Imperial Army, hundreds of soldiers’ ghosts marching in formation toward his car.
Seeing the reanimated regiment naturally startled the security officer, and he even struggled to get his car started. Once the engine growled to life, he ended up accidentally driving directly through the ghostly World War Two-era enemy before speeding away to safety. After that point, he subsequently refused to ever patrol that area of the base again.
As if the stories of enemy troops coming back from the dead and a ghostly, blood-stained soldier asking for a match weren’t enough to urge Marines to think twice about standing guard there, what likely adds to their fear is the fact that security cameras on Kadena Air Base were actually captured… something. In 2008, surveillance footage of the area near Gate Three seemed to show what looked like a dark, humanoid figure. The supposed ghost rushed out from behind a sign, making a beeline to the other side of the road.
Even within the video’s audio, two security guards can be heard speaking to each other in disbelief about the ghost, trying to confirm with each other that they had both just witnessed the same thing. The footage doesn’t appear to show just anyone crossing the road, although, as with any video or photo, there’s the possibility of editing. However, if the footage hasn’t been doctored in any way, then it certainly seems to serve as evidence for the numerous stories that have permanently kept Marines away from Gate Three.
The next stop on the tour of Kadena Air Base’s most haunted places is the Banyan Tree Golf Course cave. When the base was still under the control of the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War, this particular cave was used as the site of a field hospital. The opening to the cave itself had been covered in vines, providing excellent cover for a mounted machine gun that defended the wounded troops being treated inside.
According to a story that many Okinawa locals widely believe, seventeen nurses worked in the cave field hospital during the war. Perhaps overhearing the soldiers talking about the advances of the American troops or possibly just seeing the sheer number of injured troops whose injuries they were having to treat, these nurses got some sense that things weren’t looking good for the Japanese army. So, to avoid being killed or captured by the American forces, these seventeen nurses took their own lives within the cave.
The version of the story does change slightly depending on the person telling it, with various discrepancies as to how or why this group may have died. Some claim that when the United States troops took control of the airfield in 1945, the nurses had been made to be so afraid of the Americans, thanks to Japanese propaganda, that this prompted them to end their lives. However, as a result of the self-inflicted deaths of these nurses, the cave itself is regarded as a spiritually impacted location.
Many Okinawa locals will outright refuse to get close to the cave itself, especially the entrance, which has been sealed shut since the end of the Second World War. People who live nearby are warned to be respectful of the space and encourage any visitors to the area to treat the land and those who may have died on it with consideration. Despite these reservations and calls for respect for locals, because the nurses’ spirits are said to still haunt the surrounding area, the cave has been part of Kadena Air Base’s annual Halloween ghost tour.
Tasteful, the deaths of seventeen women who didn’t want to become prisoners of war get made into a tourist spot. Speaking of untimely demises and places it’s best to avoid, there’s one particular location not far from Kadena Air Base that you should not approach if you value your continued existence: Maeda Point in Okinawa, which is nowadays home to some of the best snorkeling sites in the world. Much like the cave near what is now the Banyan Tree Golf Course, Maeda Point was similarly the site of an Imperial Japanese Army field hospital used during the Second World War.
In another tragic shared similarity with the cave, the point has also apparently been the site where many have ended their lives by throwing themselves off the cliff. Some have reported seeing an elderly man walking around near the water. Those who see him, especially if they’re members of active service, are advised to return promptly to shore, retire from service altogether, and fly back home to the US.
According to local rumors, the elderly figure isn’t an old man at all but is actually yet another ghost haunting the area. Apparently, any time this is he is observed by someone, a body ends up washing ashore nearby within a few days… Additionally, men from the United States are advised not to walk alone at night near Maeda Point. Even walking alongside a fellow serviceman might not guarantee your safety.
There have been numerous reports of male American soldiers being harassed by hauntings from spectres of Okinawan women. These ghosts always appear in traditional garb that was worn by locals during the Second World War era and are apparently consumed with rage and hatred for the US forces that invaded Japan, seeking revenge on their modern military counterparts. It’s even been reported that these ghosts will attempt to hurl US troops off of the nearby cliffs to their doom.
An author, Jayne A. Hitchcock was formerly a resident at Kadena Air Base, living there as a military spouse between 1992 and 1995. During her time there, she became fascinated with the local history of Okinawa and the various ghost stories that seemed to be abundant both on the base and throughout the surrounding countryside.
As a result, she documented her research into Kadena’s strange goings in a number of books she wrote about her time as a resident there. While searching for the answers to the supernatural goings-on at Kadena, one of the other families living on the base consulted Hitchcock for her help. They had been living in a third-floor apartment in the Kadena Towers and had started noticing the unusual, tell-tale signs of some paranormal activity.
Parts of the apartment ran inexplicably cold all year round; objects would move seemingly of their own volition and at times, were even flung or dropped on their family’s children. The last straw, though, was when the parents of this family found their daughter having a conversation with another child… who wasn’t even there. This invisible ghost child had apparently just walked through a wall.
Looking into the history of the building, Hitchcock was able to ascertain what she felt could be the root of the problem – or rather, the foundation of it. You see, underneath the Kadena Towers building was actually an old tomb. It had belonged to the Kamisei Shimosei clan, a family who had inhabited the island around two hundred and fifty years earlier.
The remains were no longer present underneath the building, which is worth mentioning; prior to construction, they had been exhumed, and Shinto priests had even blessed the grounds for good measure. Still, it seems to have done little to prevent the former residents from trying to make their way back inside their old homes. For more terrifying ghost stories, check out “World's Most Haunted House.
” Or watch “World's Most Haunted Doll (Not Annabelle).
