“While serving in the Philippine Marine Corps, I was deployed in the south of the country, to a place that has seen countless battles. I was initially assigned administrative work at our battalion HQ but was rotated to a company that was often on patrol. It was on one of these patrols that I saw something that still weakens my knees even to this day.

We often received intelligence report of enemy sighting. This time my squad was ordered to verify the report. As is often the case, the patrol took 3 days of humping in the bush following any leads and updated reports. It was the second day of our patrol when intelligence came in saying that the enemy has moved out and is possibly en route to another island. We were ordered to report back to company HQ. As it was already evening when the report was received, our squad leader decided to pass the night in the bush and move out early. We were setting perimeter when one of us spotted a faint figure moving slowly at about 70 yards away. With only our squad leader having a night vision goggle, the location was pointed out to him. He had difficulty locating the figure through the NVG. So he sent two fire teams downrange. I was in one of the fire teams.

The figure was quite visible even with only the moon illuminating the otherwise pitch black surroundings. As we slowly approached and at around 50 yards, the figure seemed to me to be gliding rather than moving and I thought it was strange. Closing in at around 20 yards, we saw that the figure was not only gliding, it was actually floating, about two feet off the ground. It was gliding erratically sometimes passing close to our crouched bodies. By this time I was really scared, my heart was beating so fast I thought it would pop out of my chest. What made it worse was that we all saw it.

The figure was dressed like a normal living person but he had no face. The best I can describe it is as if the face was ‘erased.’ Its skin was very pale, as if drained of blood. It seemed to have bullet holes across its chest. At one point it stopped gliding. I looked through my rifle scope and I had the fright of my life when I saw it looking back at me with its featureless face. Every hair in my body stood and I had to fight the urge to run and scream like a girl. Suddenly the figure just vanished in front of us. I think every one of us was too scared to move. We were eventually ordered to withdraw and return to the perimeter. How I didn’t soil my trousers is beyond me.

We reported to our squad leader what we saw and he said he believed us. He ordered us to prepare to move out as he radioed for transport. Everyone was quiet in the truck on the way back to company HQ, no one spoke a word. We later found out that each of use who were sent downrange had the same experience of being looked at by whatever it was. Our squad leader ordered us to keep the experience to ourselves. I was silent about this until I got out of the military.”