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It’s Halloween weekend, which means all the worst people you know are about to start pounding Buzzballz dressed as zombie looksmaxxers, Diddy’s baby oil, or, in the case of a couple, Chris Hansen and a 15-year-old. The other option is to stay home alone and scare yourself shitless with horror films and ghost stories. So if you’re friendless and/or pushing 40 and the only thing more terrifying than a vengeful poltergeist is the prospect of waking up after five beers, then you might be interested in this collection of real life X-Files entries from people in the military. 

Tales From The Grid Square is a project devoted to anonymously documenting paranormal or otherwise unexplained experiences reported by members of the U.S. Armed Forces. Compiled by Nick Orton, an active-duty soldier and writer, it’s full of bizarre encounters on military bases, training grounds, and at war. From ghost girls in Okinawa to mountain giants in Afghanistan, these accounts occupy the gray area between folklore and reality within military life—a unique position that brings people into closer proximity with unusual experiences, while also offering more “rational” explanations such as chemical exposure, poor nutrition, stress, and PTSD. As a result, most of these kinds of accounts are passed around the barracks, fated to urban legend. Nick writes:

“The witnesses themselves often know how absurd their stories sound. That is why many keep quiet. Military culture is comfortable with certainty and familiarity. There is a vocabulary and response for enemy contact, equipment failure, injury. But there is no official language for seeing something eight feet tall standing in the wood line.

Official military history records battles, campaigns, commanders, and casualties. Unofficial history records what people saw while everyone else slept or scanned for danger. So these stories move underground. Into hushed whispers in the smoke pit, the late nights in the barracks, and into the unofficial unit folklore. They become conversations that begin years later, when somebody finally admits what happened:

‘You’re going to think I’m full of shit.’

‘I don’t, because I saw the same thing.’”

Read a selection of stories submitted to Tales From The Grid Square, and illustrated for VICE by Terror Crusade, behind the paywall below:

The Terrifying Secret Ghost Stories of U.S. Military Folklore

The veil between reality and dreams is never thinner than when you are in bed on day three of a raging fever. Sheets damp, hands clammy, the room reeking of stale breath and Olbas Oil. In an essay for the latest issue of VICE magazine, THE SELF-DESTRUCTION ISSUE, Sean Thor Conroe finds himself on his sick bed, thoughts racing with self-destructors from throughout literary history. Biblical figures, Roman poets, and English wartime novelists abound in the Fuccboi author’s delirious contemplation of recklessness, fate, and, ultimately, purpose. Sean writes:

“Today, self-destruction abounds. It’s all around us, ever imminent, totally logical seeming. We can’t romanticize it like we did in Lowry’s time, in Hemingway’s, even as recently as DFW’s. There was a clear enemy then: the fascism of progress. In 2026, the lines are all blurry, and the ground shakes—”

Read Sean’s full essay in THE SELF-DESTRUCTION ISSUE or behind the paywall below:

A Restless 72 Hours in Bed With Sean Thor Conroe

Emma Garland
Deputy Editor, VICE Magazine

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