[Music] the boundaries which divide life from Death are at best shadowy and vague who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins that was written by Edgar Allan Poe and he poses a question which we hope to explore here considering the existence of what seems to be an everwing pile of stories to read through I think it's safe to say that the military and the supernatural have a very close and complicated relationship in the chaos of War where the life of every man woman and child hangs in the balance tales of the
extraordinary often emerge some speak of luck or coincidence but in the Eerie quiet of the aftermath something unexplained continues to haunt the survivors it's not so much a question of why they survived when others died but who or what was it that kept them alive during my time in the Marines particularly the more dangerous parts of it I certainly was able to recognize my own mortality in those moments and yes when I had time to think about it I sincerely hoped that there was some higher power waiting to intervene while I don't recall any specific
instances where my life was overtly saved by something I couldn't explain the following stories are from those who do from full-bodied apparitions disembodied voices and prophetic dreams these are just a handful of the many incredible stories of people who in times of War say that something Supernatural stopped them from [Music] dying the Mist which hangs before you offers you a choice to pass through or to escape Beyond it are stories which defy the explanation and fly in the face of what we know to be real it is a void of both reality and impossibility of
both fact and Superstition you alone are left to discern what to believe as you pass through what we call the fog of War like so many others we've read a couple of the stories in this episode were passed down by family members and speaking of family I wanted to thank this video sponsor my Heritage after my parents married they moved to a different country and so growing up I really had no connection with my extended family for years now I've been digging through other people's fames records for these stories and I started to wonder what
about my family fortunately my Heritage has made it super easy to find them I knew my grandparents' names and that was about it when I started my family tree looked like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree the instant discoveries feature did the rest which was insane to watch one click and my Heritage was able to trace both sides of my family back before the Revolutionary War and now I know where they came from Finland and Sicily I know that my family name actually changed a couple of times I've got a great great grandma who was Chickasaw I
uncovered a ton of documents with their handwriting their photos even military records I even found a few living family members I'm related with over a hundred years down our ancestral line and was able to contact three of them I'm just stunned if you have any family photos you want to share even old black and white ones you can upload them and my Heritage Will Repair colorize and animate them bringing your family history to life my Heritage has over 20 billion historical records to search making it easy to trace your Origins and find your relatives your
long-lost family doesn't have to stay that way click the link below to start your 14-day free trial with my Heritage you will be amazed at what you [Music] [Applause] find by late 1950 15 the first world war had been raging for little more than a year and yet it was already the most catastrophic conflict Europe had ever seen on the fields of Belgium and France British and French armies clashed with the invading Germans the two sides quickly getting bogged down in hellish trench warfare while Fierce fighting stretched all along the 400m Front Line the area
around the Belgian city of era proved to be especially deadly in the war's early stages surrounded on three sides the Allies had by the end of 1915 fought off two German assaults the combined casualties on both sides totaling over 200,000 in the second attack launched in April of that year mustard gas would be employed For the First Time by German forces despite the brutality of this new weapon as thousands of men died in horrible Agony the British forces still clung to The Battered City among the ranks of the exhausted British troops was a young Lieutenant
of the Third Battalion West Yorkshire regiment by the name of William Spate on a chilly December night in 1915 Lieutenant Spate found himself sitting in a Frontline Dugout trying to keep warm during his late night rotation on watch the young officer was in a particularly down mood having lost a good friend and fellow officer to enemy fire earlier that day since the name of Lieutenant sp's friend wasn't recorded in his account we will call him him Edward while silently mourning Edward's Death the young Lieutenant was caught off guard by another officer making his way into
the Dugout as the man walked into the dim glow of the dugouts one burning candle Lieutenant Spate was shocked to see the face of Edward staring back at him as quickly as the ghost of his friend had arrived The Apparition vanished leaving Spate greatly unsettled despite his fellow officers insisting that the Apparition was the byproduct of rattled nerves fatigue and the trauma of losing his close friend Spate was convinced that what he saw was not merely a hallucination it was Supernatural perhaps feeling sorry for him another officer agreed to stay up with Spate the following
night the young Lieutenant was hoping to catch another glimpse of his ghostly friend but this time things would take a far more chilling turn much to the surprise of both Spate and the officer standing watch with him Edward would return the following night the two stunned men watched as his ghost simply walked into the Dugout stopped at one place and then slowly extended his arm to point at the dirt floor then he once again vanished Into Thin Air after the men had composed themselves both of them in a State of Shock after watching a man
disappear in front of them Lieutenant Spate stood up he immediately called a few other soldiers over with their trench shovels and told them to start digging in the spot where the ghost of Edward had just pointed to ignoring the sheer strangeness of the whole situation Spate just couldn't shake the thought that Edward was trying to tell him something very important there was a reason he had been pointing to that spot on the ground as they dug deeper he realized what that was after digging down about 3 ft into the floor of the Dugout the men
uncovered something shocking the Germans it seemed had been tunneling their way beneath the British lines and planting large amounts of explosives right under their feet to their horror the explosives appeared to be fully wired and could be detonated remotely possibly at any second the alarm was raised immediately and the section of trench was quickly evacuated the explosives were then disarmed and removed without incident everyone wanted to credit Lieutenant Spate for discovering the explosives and saving the lives of the men but Spate knew differently in spite of all his reason and logic his military training and
experience as a leader all of which told him to think rationally and not give in to Superstition and hysteria Lieutenant Spate never doubted once that the ghost of his friend Edward was the one who had saved them what do you think sir we will stick to the usual path Sergeant I don't think command wants us wandering too far on these patrols yes sir understood not from here H what was that Sergeant huh didn't you say something just now oh no no sir must have been the wind all right let's get the men moving sh not
from here ah Sergeant Perhaps it is best if we do not move from here but sir if we go back that way tell the men to move back while the Great War played host to many cases of what some would consider divine intervention this phenomenon is by no means unique to European battlefields or Western militaries Wars have been indiscriminately fought across the globe in every country and region of the world and it would seem that protecting Spirits do not discriminate between one war and the next this next account was written by an Indian man named
rishikesh and was shared online in a forum discussing wartime paranormal experiences in it he tells two stories one of his grandfather a former soldier in the Indian Army's maratha light Infantry Regiment and another from his grandmother both set during India's border scuffles with China during the early 1960s he writes I heard this from my grandfather on my mother's side he served in the Indian Army's maratha light Infantry Regiment and fought in the Indo Pakistan war of 1965 5 and 1971 as well as the Indo China war of 1962 these two instances happened in 1962 he
was leading a plon for a patrol they were somewhere in Northeast India where they were to meet a returning Patrol party who had been long overdue there were Chinese hidden in the dense forest waiting to Ambush the unsuspecting patrols there was a shorter route that went through not so dense forest with good visibility and then a longer route with dense forest that was rarely used oblivious to the Chinese trap the platoon led by my Grandpa took the usual route suddenly he felt a tap on his shoulder and a commanding voice whispered not from here he
just ignored it and marched forward this this time it was even stronger and the command boomed in his ears I said not from here he stopped in his tracks and was reconsidering what to do when the Chinese saw that they were not falling for the Ambush and started firing on them immediately the returning Patrol also joined them in a retaliatory fire and the Chinese fled being outnumbered the other platoon Commander reported there were uncon form reports of an ambush but they could not come back on time as their only Jeep had failed on the way
their radio had also failed so they set off on foot to reach the base them fending off the Ambush saved not only his platoon but also helped in defending that sector of land for quite some time M this is pack at one Chinese have taken the post I say again Chinese have taken the post we are going down the second half of rishik kesh's post details another account from his grandfather's service during the indo-china Border War this time told from the perspective of his grandmother after being saved by the direct intervention of Supernatural forces krishak
kesh's grandfather would find himself aiding with supply drops to the Army's most remote outposts scattered around the vast Northern mountains during one of these flights he would be shot down over enemy territory when they received the news his family believed that he had died in the crash however kesh's grandmother knew something they didn't while everyone around her started to mourn the loss of her husband she said that something or someone was telling her that he was still alive a while dropping food and Supplies on the Indochina border post my Grandpa was in a small plane
called the packet they had been flying low to facilitate the drop the Chinese had captured the post and were waiting for the supplies to arrive they had not removed the Indian flag from the post so no one knew that the post had been captured after they dropped their cargo the Chinese began firing on the plane and hit the rudder the plane lost control and crashed in some dense forest below the pilot managed to report that they had been hit but searches of the area yielded no result assuming that the plane fell over the Chinese side
and all four occupants were dead they sent my grandpa's belongings back home my granny was in shock when family and neighbors gathered they all started the rituals of cracking her Bangles and removing the Vermilion on her forehead she stubbornly stopped them and said that I'm not a widow yet he will come back and after a couple of days the unit sent a telegram saying he had indeed been found and was safe my granny said that she heard the voice of Her deceased mother saying you are not widowed yet don't allow them to treat you as
one this next story takes place thousands of miles away and nearly 40 years later but it Bears an uncanny resemblance to the events described by rishik kesh's family this account shared online by a man named Roland bartco describes a similar instance in which someone unseen evidently saved the life of his friend the story finds us in the 1999 Kosovo War a regional conflict that saw the Serbian forces of Yugoslavia clash with the ethnically Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army while the war was small in scale it was defined by its brutality and ethnic violence prompting NATO forces
to intervene with a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia as Roland's friend a young woman named spressa fled her hometown in Kosovo alongside other refugees he describes the events that followed When The War had come to her small village in the north of Kosovo she and her family packed a few belongings and left their home she had become a refugee like more than half of the population everybody wanted to get out of the country as quickly as possible uh her family's neighbor had a tractor and invited her family to put their bags their small children and the
elderly on the tractor's trailer at the time my friend was 18 and uh therefore she had to walk alongside the tractor they soon met more refugees and formed a long column in the late afternoon she suddenly Heard a Voice shouting her namea get down and againa get down she let herself fall to the ground at this moment a Serbian machine gun started opening fire on the the refugee Convoy she heard the bullet sipping over her head and uh hitting the tractor and trailer there were screams everywhere around her people were dying after only a few
seconds the the machine gun fire had ebbed down the few survivors got up and started looking for their loved ones every person that had been sitting on the tractor or the trailer was badly injured or dead my friend was the only Survivor of her family it was the voice that had come out of nowhere that had saved her life she was never completely sure who had been shouting her name and told her to get down uh but she told me that at the critical moment she thought that it was her grandfather who had called her
she had always loved her grandfather and felt very close to him however the uh the old man had died 2 years before the outbreak of the war I just don't understand how anyone can believe in these kinds of things Miracles divine intervention doesn't make sense people put all this faith in things that can't be logically proven it's just blind belief but that's where you're wrong moo you say Miracles can't be proven but sometimes the proof isn't written in a textbook Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham had faith in God's promise to give him a son
he didn't just believe blindly his wife was 90 and he was 100 when Isaac was born he saw with his own eyes what God had promised to do and from that it says that he reasoned that God could do anything reason you're saying this Abraham guy reasoned but what do you mean by that his reasoning was that he believed in something that was completely outside of logic and what proof do we have that Abraham even existed sounds like a fairy tale to me H what is it that makes you trust the men whose books you
read that's easy the difference is that these men these philosophers these scientists they base their ideas on evidence they don't ask you to blindly accept things that can't be proven they use logic reason and observation to make conclusions their theories are tested challenged and refined over time you can't just accept something because someone says it's true so you believe these men are wise and truthful because even if one textbook had more than say 40 different authors their wisdom remains consistent and you can see that wisdom is true no matter who is teaching it exactly these
men aren't asking for blind trust they provide Frameworks that can be questioned debated and refined they put their ideas to the test through experiments through logic and we the students are encouraged to challenge them even the disciples asked questions when they did not understand something tell me Francis do you think anyone could simply pick up your textbook and understand the wisdom it contains by reading it well no of course not it's taken me years to study it and I asked my professors loads of questions took exams wrote reports but Maria even you could understand it
if you just took the time to read it and study with teachers like I have that is very true Mio wisdom is something God calls treasure proverb says that it is something that you have to earnestly search for like silver you have found one kind of wisdom but even your reasoning and logic must tell you that there are different kinds but there is only one that gives life huh well Maria I may not agree with you on everything but you sure know how to carry a conversation this final account was written by a Vietnam Veteran
by the name of Francis e kazmc not long after his Tour of Duty in the early 1970s despite being what he considers a man of logic and reason he has no explanation to offer for a vivid dream he had while deployed a dream that he believes was a message from a departed friend a dream that offered him both comfort and Assurance during such a brutal conflict and one that he says he owes his life to he titled his story my friend [Music] Maria I attended the University of the Americas in Mexico City during the 1967
to 68 school year I was a junior majoring in philosophy logic and dialectic were the tools with which I proved and examined all statements and beliefs I believed Man's power indeed his very Humanity revolved around his ability to reason accordingly I scorned anything that smacked of the irrational including religious experiences of extraordinary nature psychic phenomena and outof body experiences during the Christmas Vacation of 1967 some friends and I rented a villa in the seaside town of pla aul this Pacific Ocean town is approximately 200 Mi north of Acapulco our Livin maid and cook was a
woman named Maria Sanchez a Charming although quiet and serious woman of about 55 years because of a severe sunburn I spent most of the vacation relaxing in the villa and I got to know Maria rather well although she had little formal schooling she possessed a quick wit and and Keen sense of observation our long talks ranged freely from topic to topic she was deeply religious and told me many stories of Miracles and Visions I dismissed these tales as local folklore she firmly maintained that she herself had seen Visions I laughed and told her she had
an overactive imagination after I returned to the United States I occasionally wrote Maria a short letter or postcard she answered regularly with long carefully written letters then in 1970 I was drafted into the army and said to Vietnam my faith in reason was shattered by the hell I found there this is what rational men do I asked myself in September 1970 I was wounded and sent to the regimental hospital I was in a state of deep depression and knew that I would never survive my Tour of Duty I was certain I would be killed or
crippled or that I would freak out one night I had the most Vivid dream of my life in the dream I was sitting on the beach in my uniform with my rifle by my side Maria Sat by me silently and brushed the top of my head with her hand her cool soothing Palm on my forehead filled me with a wonderful peace I woke the next morning feeling calm and somehow confident that everything would turn out for the best I immediately sat down and wrote Maria a letter I later returned to duty strangely purged of my
depression a few months later in late December I received a letter from Maria's daughter graci Moes she apologized for not having written sooner she said that her mother had been very fond of me and had often spoken about me her mother she told me had died in September which would have been around the same time that I had that very Vivid dream I am certain that our friendship somehow transcended those barriers of time and space in a manner that cannot be explained logically or rationally I still think about Maria often because she is the reason
I survived [Music] [Music] hey guys thanks for sticking around for the after action here in the credits these stories I found to be both a mix of very what very compelling incredible kind of heartwarming but also very eerie in a way I always try to share a personal story when I can I just don't have anything that comes to mind that's anywhere close to what these stories were but I will say that especially during my military career for me it was always about water there were several times where I really needed water I didn't have
any water there shouldn't have been any water nearby but through a strange series of circumstances I was able to get water it just it we never seemed to not have what we needed when we needed it if you like these stories uh make sure that you are keeping up with the wartime stories podcasts uh side of thing Spotify Apple podcasts uh we do have exclusive episodes coming out on there um if you haven't been looking at the podcast at all you've probably missed a handful of them so far U but we've got another one coming
out soon and speaking of podcasts we also have the redacted podcast if you haven't checked it out we we launch a new episode every week so if you haven't been keeping up with it you've got a lot of episodes to catch up on but here is a snippet uh from one of the upcoming episodes check it out a few minutes later Bob and the inside crew made their way through the front door of the FBI building he usually resorted to some funny remark when he was feeling nervous but tonight he couldn't utter a word he
and the others silently climbed the stairwell then squeezed through the hallway office door carrying two bulky suitcases once inside they split up to search the rooms some cabinets and drawers were locked so they used screwdrivers to pry them open Bob used a taped over flashlight to provide minimal light being careful not to let the beam show from the windows he occasionally checked the street outside to make sure no police were around working mainly in the dark they took every piece of paper they could find except for some blank Personnel forms it was time to get
out but they couldn't just leave the group had decided it was best not to have cars parked nearby drawing attention so they needed to call the getaway drivers who were back at the motel one of the team members picked up a phone from a desk and dialed the number when Keith heard the shrill ring he picked up the receiver all he heard was a cryptic okay then the line went dead that was the signal Keith had been waiting for he glanced over at the other getaway driver and they both sprang into action hurrying to their
cars they drove towards the FBI office ready to execute the next phase of the plan but a few minutes later Keith breathed a sigh of relief as he watched his friends emerge from the FBI building their overstuffed suitcases bounced side to side as they ran towards Keith's car and the other getaway vehicle he waited anxiously as they loaded the suitcases into the trunk of the cars now that they were out in the open he couldn't help but feel nervous Keith surveyed the deserted neighborhood there was a courthouse across the street that always had a guard
posted that's when he nearly out of gasp the guard was looking right at them as they loaded up the vehicles Keith turned to see how the rest of the group is progressing with the baggage he silently willed them to move more quickly as soon as the group finished packing up the car Keith drove off heading to their safe house out in the country on the way he told everyone that a guard had seen them the only thing they could do now was hope that he wouldn't report them if you like what you heard make sure
you go check it out it's called redacted Declassified Mysteries with me Luke lman you can catch it on Spotify Apple podcast or anywhere you listen to your podcasts we' really appreciate you checking it out and helping support it otherwise thank you for listening thank you for watching thank you for subscribing liking commenting and a huge shout out as always to my patreon and YouTube channel members as well as anybody who's purchased a t-shirt or supported the channel through donations or any other me thank you so much your support has gone such a long way in
keeping the channel going I really appreciate it all the team here appreciates it may God be with you no matter what you are dealing with and I will see you in the next episode
