The Campfire Thread

[Kestrel]

Oh hell yeah, I remember this thread on the original boards!

Well, I spent a lot of time living in Okinawa, Japan. If you know anything about the island, you'd know there was a massive battle that took place during the tail end of World War II. An estimated 150,000 troops were killed, and around an equal number of Okinawan civilians. This coupled with the Marine Corps' ravenous appetite for naval tradition and superstitions made the entire island a breeding ground for ghost stories.

Around the November 10th Marine Corps birthday celebrations, we'd throw big events where Marines would dress the part, just as we had looked in 1945, and throw a parade commemorating the lives lost during the Battle of Okinawa, of a way of us paying our respects to the Marines that came before us, and the tens of thousands of Okinawan slaves who were massacred by the Japanese. I was one of those Marines that got lucky enough to play dress up.

Spoiler:

Here's a photo of me from one of those years ^

Anyway, back to the superstition surrounding this jungle island. The base I had been on, Camp Hansen, was neatly placed right over the land where Marines started to take their first losses, and much of the base's infrastructure even today is based off of the locations of forward operating bases and dugouts that Marines had hastily but together during the battle. Many intersections, guard shacks, and gates were placed 70 years ago, paved over and rebuilt time and again. Legend has it that if you find yourself at one of the old closed down guard shacks at night, a Marine, dressed in 1940s dungarees just like the photo I posted will come ask you for lighter. Mind you, the Marine Corps is a cult, and extremely superstitious.

As a joke, a friend of mine suggested I dress myself up for Halloween one year and go stand by one of the old guard shacks at night, waiting for the PMO (military police) cars to come by to make their rounds in the hopes I'd scare the shit out of them. And so I did. Four about 4 hours between 11pm to 3am I stood at an abandoned, rotting out guard shack on the east side of base, waiting for someone to show so I could spring the trap on them. No one ever came. During Halloween night, when I expected everyone to be partying and drinking, it was completely dead. I nearly fell asleep a few times, and the last time my head and eyes bobbed back up from the brink of sleep, I saw him. Just across the gate from me, in the opposite guard shack, was another Marine, dressed exactly as I was, the sparks from his lighter illuminating his face as he lit a cigarette. A skinny white kid, short, with a real pointy face Helmet looked too big for him almost. Like flesh and blood, not ghostly looking at all, like I could walk over and touch him. He noticed me, giving me that "what the hell are you looking at?" face. I dropped my cigarette out of my mouth in disbelief and bent down to pick it up. When I lifted my head again he was gone.

Naturally, I told all of my friends about it, trying to figure out if it was real, or just a dream from being half asleep and (frankly) a little drunk. They all seemed to come to the conclusion of "if you go to the haunted guard shack at night of course you're gonna see a ghost".