Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

There are a myriad of strange stories to have come out of the warring in the Middle East concerning a range of strange creatures sighted and confronted by troops that defy explanation and run the gamut from the odd to the downright bizarre.

In 2005, a member of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigations (CID) was embedded within an Army infantry unit deep in the rugged mountains of a region of Iraqi Kurdistan called the Sulaymaniyah Governorate, in northeast Iraq near the Iranian border. After being briefed on the general situation, he learned of some decidedly bizarre activity that had been occurring in the remote area concerning a mysterious creature haunting the locals that no one was able to identify.

According to villagers of the isolated wilderness region and the Kurdish military, people were being stalked and hunted by a beast known locally as the ghool, which was described as being a very tall, humanoid creature with disproportionately long arms and legs, and which purportedly had a taste for human flesh. The witness was ordered to the area for an in-depth investigation, accompanied by an infantry squad, and at this point it was thought that the bizarre story perhaps came down to a crazed soldier who had gone AWOL and was going around killing people. It was thought that they may be basically dealing with a serial killer, a man who had perhaps snapped and gone mad from the stresses of war. Yet after several days of surveillance and searching they had come up with no trace of who or what could be behind the strange activity. They began to suspect that this was all just spooky stories and nerves, but villagers were adamant that something was hunting them and killing them, to the point that many were afraid to leave their homes even in the daytime. Then things took a turn for the weird.

According to the witness, one evening he was going over some reports with the squad leader when when they reported hearing a shrill, unearthly scream echo through the air outside, which seemed to come from the direction of a nearby mountain pass. When they went outside to investigate, some of the villagers were hurrying to their homes for safety, and they claimed that this was the scream of the very thing that had been terrorizing them. The armed soldiers mobilized and decided to head into the pass to investigate the eery, otherworldly scream, and whatever it was howled again several times, standing everyone’s hair on end. It was an alarming, bloodcurdling sound unlike anything any of them had ever heard before, like no animal known to live in the area, and these heavily armed men were actually scared of what they might find out there in the dark. Slowly and warily they fanned out into the dark pass to conduct a search, and the witness would describe what happened thus:

“Within the hour the squad and I were slowly entering the pass. It was night but the moon was very bright so we were able to see around a bit. We searched the entire area for several hours using night vision and high-intensity lights. We found nothing – not a footprint or remnant from any creature fitting the description.

I have always wondered what we heard that night. I have asked a few learned people for their opinion but with little satisfaction. There were many strange instances in Iraq that just never made the light of day. I heard of some but I’m positive most were just filed away.”

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