OT: My Hair-raising WWII Ghost Story from Normandy.

[ovs]

I know this is probably a bad time to post something like this with the release of our game, but I needed a chance of pace and needless to say, my daughter has a great way of doing that. No, I'm not fishing for attention either, so knock it off. It's just eerie, that's all... really eerie. I just thought some of you might enjoy this and a little change of pace as well seeing we're all war buffs anyhow.

Around this time last year, as some of you know already, I took a trip to France and drove cross country for 2 weeks, through Germany, and back around to France again. My goal was to see the Normandy area, and as many WWI sites as I could in East France before being forced to move on under the wife's agenda.

To cut to the point....our first stop was to the Pegasus Bridge, then on to the beaches and bunkers of Normandy to the west, all the way to St. Mere-gliese.

Well, the first area we actually were able to see German bunkers was Pointe Du-Hoc, which has remained as it was since the U.S. Army Rangers took it from the Germans on D-Day.

My daughter at the time was 7, now she is 8, a lifetime by any means for a child.... remember how long it took for Christmas to come again? So her memories are clear, and the images in her mind very fresh at this young age. We toured many bunkers, and escape tunnels her and I, while my wife watched, she doesn't like this stuff. Many times, the bunker was totally dark, with no light other than me taking flash pictues and lighting it up for a brief second. So we could not see anything specific. I guess they keep it dark to keep site-seers from sticking around. So long story short.. we saw a ton of bunkers and all kinds of old, blown-up stuff. But one thing I will point out now... my daughter has NEVER seen what a German soldier looks like, or the weapons they carried. I have no pictures of them, nowhere in my house is there anything that she could relate to the look of them, and when I play any WWII PC games, she is not allowed to watch me, or be in the room with me (wife's orders). You get the point here? NIL EXPOSURE!!

Onwards to last night.... over the past year, my daughter has often spoke of 'things' or 'men' that she saw looking at her, pointing guns at her, and following her while we were in the bunkers and around the Normandy area. She often described them as crouching down, hiding behind corners, holding guns and looking as if they were very mad. Finally, I decided it was time to prod her a little more, as she is 1 year older, and might be able to describe better what she saw. So I began to ask her about what she saw... mind you, stop here if you don't want your hair to stand-up.

Now... I am the ever skeptic, the non-believer, the 'prove-it' type of guy. I'll often tell you right to your face 'you're full of s&^t!', if I really don't believe a word you are saying... which is most of the time. So this was a challenge for me to believe as well, I kept an open mind. We were driving to go to dinner, just the two of us as my wife attends college classes on Tuesday nights. So it's our 'date night' so to speak....

So my questions in the car while driving:

Q: What did they look like?
A: They were mad, and wearing either grey or very darkish green... no definately some kind of greyish color, the helmets were even darker.

Q: Were there a lot of them?
A: Yes, hiding behind trees, and in the bunkers, in all the little corners or behind the walls. Crouched down, or kinda kneeling.

Q: Did they have nice uniforms, or were they loose?
A: The uniforms were nice, with lot's of buttons in the front and things on the shoulders.

Q: OK, how about any medals? Anything on the head, or chest?
A: Yes, something like a circle with a star in it. On the chest.

Q: Were you scared?
A: Yes, but I knew they weren't trying to hurt me. So I didn't think anything of it, but there were a lot of them. Everywhere I looked. They were moving around, like army men do. Kind of crawling, but bent over. When we would walk out of a bunker, I would see one in the grass, or behind a tree. Then when I was in the car, I could see them looking at me from behind a fence in a field. Sometimes a lot of them, sometimes only one or two.

Q: Why didn't you say something to me?
A: I couldn't, I didn't know what they were. I knew they weren't real, so you wouldn't believe me anyway.

Q: Were there different types?
A: Yes, some had different colors. Like a Dark color and and a greenish color.

By this time, I gave it a rest, grabbed a pen and paper, and went in for some food (Panera Bread for those in the US... great food!). As we settled down to eat... I asked her to draw some stuff and try to see what she saw in her head. What she drew scared the hell out of me.

I asked about the gun the soldier was carrying... She proceeded to draw what resembled the MP40. She then tried to draw the helmet but she couldn't get it right. I then drew the front view of a standard German helmet. She said that was it. "it was pointy on the sides when you looked straight at it". I asked her about boots, she said she thought so, but could not tell as they were never standing up... which is true, most German combat poses are crouched down, and running.

Next was the camoflage... which was insane. I asked her first to draw what she thought the soldier was wearing. She drew a German Tunic. She said it was tight, and looked very nice. Not sagging, and had buttons. She drew the 'medal' right where is should be, on the right breast. Next she bagan to describe the colors and shapes of the Camoflage.

"He looked different than the others". He was in the bushes, and had a very dark helmet, a really big gun, bigger than the others, and his clothes were funny colors. Like something green and a dark color, with different shapes. I don't know, I can't describe it."

After this, we left. I kept the paper, and we went to the library. I found a WWII book with a lot of pictures in it. I showed her pictures of British, American and German soldiers. She pointed out the German soldiers right away... 'that's the helmet, that's the jacket... and that's the gun!' I showed her a color drawing of the MP40, amoungst a bunch of other WWII weapons on the same page, she immediately picked it out of the page. Now it gets better...

We went home, and I went on the internet... I found a picture of a 12" doll of a Fallschirmjager. What I forgot to mention was when she described, then drew the helmet of the 'other' solder, the one that looked different. She said the helmet was very dark, and had a chinstrap that was easy to see, and wrapped around under the chin very tight. When she drew the picture of it, it looked different that the other helmet. She said it was not pointy on the sides, it was flat, small and tight to his head. I showed her the picture of him. She said 'that's what he looked like', that's the helmet Daddy, and his jacket looks the same'.

I'll stop here, there is more... especially about the 'medal'... it was the unit designation badge that all German soldiers wear. She pointed out that the 'circle' was the oak leaves when I showed her pictures of the unit badges.

Again, my daughter has never seen pictures of WWII soldiers, other than her Great Uncle's 82nd Airborne Mess uniform. She has no idea what these men look like, nor do I watch anything related to war on the TV when she is home. She is a fun-loving, goofy, energetic kid that always has a smile on her face, and is very happy to simply be alive. Even when we talked about this, she was happy to tell me, and gave as much detail as possible. She was not afraid, and never once thought twice about describing what she saw.

I have nothing else to think but everything she says and saw is 100% true.

Crazy huh? I'm planning on going back again next year, for a longer period time. Maybe I should learn some German?

OvS

[norm]

i dont know if im crasey, but i would love to se that!:faint:

[Creaghorn]

wow. i often heard children have some sort of sensibility for things like this, which they lose when getting older. is it pure coincidence, or did she maybe picked it up in school? did she see those soldiers in real, cause her young mind is not infected by logic and reality yet? who says things like this are not possible? there are a ton of stories like that. people who saw soldiers on ancient battlefields like the failed invason in dieppe or verdun. so who knows? a lot of things happen between heaven and hell we don't understand or don't understand anymore. whether or not, great experience.

[Siggi]

A theory I once read said that it was maybe possible foir 'events' to leave an imprint on the fabric of time and space at some sort of sub-atomic level, a bit like a recording on a tape or disc. There's the famous story here in the UK (least it was 'famous' when I was a kid) of the place where Roman legionnaires could be seen walking, but up to their waists in the ground. When the ground was eventually dug a Roman road was found at the level the 'ghosts' feet were at.

I've been in those German bunkers, where the original art/graffiti of the German soldiers is still in pristine condition. They're very odd places.

[ovs]

It was just chilling. I never lead her through the conversation, other than the shape of the helmet. I asked if they had a chin piece, or if they were tight, or maybe if the straps were hanging down.

The really crazy thing was the MP40 she drew. I never asked her what it looked like, she just drew it. She said that the man held it like this, where she put her left hand upright, like she was holding the clip. In the drawing however, she had the clip 'insert' on top.

But when she saw the drawing, she knew what it was.

OvS

[Siggi]

999 times out of a 1000 there's a prozaic explanation. She might have seen an ad for a WW2 shooter in a game-shop window, or seen a brother of a friend playing one on a console at their home. Imagination could do the rest. I remember telling my dad when I was about eight that we'd found a bunch of nazi flags and a radio in a derelict house, and by the time he came with us to see I almost believed we were going to find them. I don't even know/remember why I told him such a bunch of crap.

:isadizzy:

[ZoomZoom]

Doubtfull Siggi. I've been witness to too many of these types of accounts from credible and honest adults and children. You simply cannot explain them away that easily.

ZZ.

[Cameljockey]

Hey OvS, The missus is very into ghost stories and the paranormal. She reads lots of books on the subject, watches "Ghost Hunters" "Paranormal states" and the like, so I read her your story. As Paul Harvey always says, she wants to hear "the rest of the story", if there is one. Ya done got her all worked up.........and left her hangin'!

CJ

[Siggi]

Doubtfull Siggi. I've been witness to too many of these types of accounts from credible and honest adults and children. You simply cannot explain them away that easily.

ZZ.

Well, that's why I said 999 times out of a 1000. In a universe made out of strings, and with so much empty space between the atoms that make up solid reality, anything's possible.

[Rickitycrate]

We don't know or understand much, IMHO. We have a lot to learn about such things. I think this should be investigated by Yvette Fielding and the Most Haunted crew. It is said the very young can remember heaven before this worlds influence drives off the memory. I don't know.

[Siggi]

That might explain why babies and small children cry so much. "Oh no, not here again!"

[FritzFraghof]

Good story. Your daughter is lucky that you take her subjective experience seriously. Most adults don't, so no wonder children end up suppressing such sensitivities.

I'd be interested to know what it meant to her, from her perspective. It sounds like she wasn't frightened. Did she feel they were just acting things, unaware of her, or did any notice her presence?

[ovs]

Good story. Your daughter is lucky that you take her subjective experience seriously. Most adults don't, so no wonder children end up suppressing such sensitivities.

I'd be interested to know what it meant to her, from her perspective. It sounds like she wasn't frightened. Did she feel they were just acting things, unaware of her, or did any notice her presence?

I've always thought it best to try not to snuff everything a kid says. It's not that I don't believe her, I do, but to see her draw it out in front of me was insane. Maybe I'll scan the paper in and post it for you to see.

She felt sorry for them more than anything else. But she was scared, not a frightened kind of scared, she said more like an 'I don't know what they are' kind of scared.

What do I make of it... nothing. And it'll stay within our bond as Father and Daughter. But it was something I never expected her to say or explain is such detail that a child would know. The gun is what really got me. The way she explained the soldier was holding it was just too damn accurate.

I hear the same ghost stories around the US Civil war site. Guys walking around at night, then there's the 'orbs' in photos... it's all BS to me. I don't believe it. Seems it's always the same stories, just altered to fit. But this was different. Too much detail.

What's funny is that she asked me if they are dead, how do they carry guns? So I knew what she was saying was true.

I'll keep prodding her now and then to see if there is more. But between the look of the badge, the guns, the colors that she stated without ever seeing any color phots of them before... it puts a lot of fact into play in what she saw.

OvS

[NCGent]

OVS

Little story of my daughter.
She was around 2 years old when my father died, she used to call him Pa Pa. 1 week after his death the baby sitter came to my then wife place of employment and I was there eating lunch with her. We had lunch and were standing at the front of the building (inside) next to some large glass windows saying good bye and my daughter kept bending around in the sitters arms trying to get a better view of the road that went by my ex's work. She became very agitated and squirmed in the sitters arms to the point where she almost fell. My ex took her and tried to talk to her to figure out what was wrong but she just kept looking at the road outside and attempting to get a better view. Finally the ex held her to the window, pointing towards the road and as she placed her little hands against the glass she kept repeating, "Pa Pa, my Pa Pa". There was a sidewalk but no one was on it, only cars driving by on the road.
Needless to say, this brought up a lot of emotion in me and as we all stared out at the road I took the opportunity to once again say good bye to my father. It amazed us all how many times she repeated Pa Pa and how long she stared out at that road. Finally she looked away and settled into my ex's arms and seemed to be satisfied that she had seen her Pa Pa and could now take a nap.

Chris

[UK_Widowmaker]

I often think that young children are much more tuned into life than we adults are.
It's a fact, that kids live in the moment..or 'In Time' as the psychologists would say.

I honestly feel, that your daughter has received a 'snapshot' of a past event.... Not 'ghosts' in the true sense of the word...but almost a photograph of a traumatic time gone past in history.

Fascinating stuff..thanks for posting.

[cptroyce]

OVS- I am an open minded sceptic on most things as well. BTW, the incident is a terrific story.

I have read that children especially can be very sensitive, psychic, whatever..far more then adults.
This however was much, much more then just "I thought I saw a man in a uniform.." or something of that nature. It was as if she was watching the events unfold..like a film.

I have a daughter the same age. My first thought was, why she didn't say anything to you. A bit unusual. But as with my own daughter, if she wasn't scared or felt it was not real, then she may not have thought any more about it, other then as if she was watch a movie or TV show. Maybe she thought you were seeing the same things as well.

What is also very striking, is that she could describe in such detail the uniforms, weapons, stances etc. I have seen hundreds of pictures (films) of WW2 weapons, uniforms, Wermacht et al. I don't think I could describe items in that detail off the top of my head..especially if one was not familiar with them in the first place.

Why don't you "test" her at home, yourself, with other things and see if she really is prescient in that way.

Regards,
Royce

[Gousgounis]

OvS your daughter is sneaking into your room and shoots Jerries for recreation :faint:. CoD is very addictive ya know..
Seriously now, maybe your daughter DID see some things that day in the bunkers..

A good friend of mine told me a "paranormal" story once:
He was like 4 years old, and had visited his grandfather. At the end of the night he told his mother: "Grandpa is going to die tomorrow". His mother got a little shaken and told him to stop the nonsense.
The next day...his grandfather died.

[Siggi]

Scientists believe it possible that animals pass on survival-traits via DNA-imprinting, effectively passing a memory of some traumatic event directly into the physical DNA. I guess that might be true for humans too in some similar way. Maybe kids have fuller access to DNA-imprinted memories and see stuff in that way (adults too on occasion). Past-life regression hypnosis might be explained similarly.

On a similar note, scientists doing deep-sea research recorded the sounds of battles. Their explanation for the anomoly was that the noises of WW2 sea-battles had somehow become trapped in the water, going around the planet endlessly. More likely they picked it up off a TV channel, but then I'm a sceptic like the OP.

I wonder why there were no Foo-Fighters in WW1?

[Olham54]

Hi, OvS
I'd like to offer a less "hair-raising", but nevertheless "more than meets the eye" explanation.
I think it's proofed, that our energy goes out further than the body's limits; and people sometimes caught up "mental waves" from a person, they are closely related to.
So: perhaps you were thinking of these soldiers and imagening their weapons and uniforms very strongly down there; and in the isolation of the bunker, she caught them up like pictures? The "antennas" of children are set much more to "receive" than to "send".
Olham

[ZoomZoom]

"Behold, we are encompassed about by a great cloud of witnesses."

ZZ.

[ovs]

Hi, OvS
I'd like to offer a less "hair-raising", but nevertheless "more than meets the eye" explanation.
I think it's proofed, that our energy goes out further than the body's limits; and people sometimes caught up "mental waves" from a person, they are closely related to.
So: perhaps you were thinking of these soldiers and imagening their weapons and uniforms very strongly down there; and in the isolation of the bunker, she caught them up like pictures? The "antennas" of children are set much more to "receive" than to "send".
Olham

Funny you see it that way, I often wonder if that was the case. It's like Cappy said about being too precise in description. It was just too exact, like it was real to her. My daughter and I are very much on the same wave-length, and often I hear her saying things that I am thinking. Not so much as a test, but like an instant thought, as if I have thought to myself aloud.

Maybe you're right. I'm just glad you guys can identify with this. It was very bizarre, and although a year later, still rings in her memory. Thankfully, she does not have nightmares, it wasn't like that at all. It wasn't something that scared her in that way. But she has made reference to it a few times since last year, so I thought I'd get it out on the table and see what she was talking about.

Man was I amazed.

OvS

[shunkan]

cool story

never heard such a descriptive narrative come from my daughter, but I have to agree that those times when kids seem to have eye contact with thin air, and say Hi or reach out as if to get something; that alone is enough to make the hairs on your arm stand up.

[Crankpin]

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet Act1 Scene5

[DMW_NZ]

Well, seems everyone is happy to accept that children can pick up mental waves from the past, or are tuned into things that adults aren't, and that scientists say it could be so.

Well, sorry, no disrespect to OVS or the rest of you but someone's got to stand up for science here.

Of course, not having first hand experience of the event, I can't really criticize it too much but a few points do occur.

Q: What did they look like?
A: They were mad, and wearing either grey or very darkish green... no definately some kind of greyish color, the helmets were even darker.

Why "mad?" Scared, focused, confused maybe, but mad. Anger isn't the look I'd expect to see on a general basis on German soldiers faces at Normandy. Some of em maybe, but all of em?

Q: Were there a lot of them?
A: Yes, hiding behind trees, and in the bunkers, in all the little corners or behind the walls. Crouched down, or kinda kneeling.

Well let's be fair here. You say you daughter had no knowledge of Germans in WW2, but you'd just taken here all through a battlefield AND she didn't tell you these thing s at the time.

It's no great wonder that if she was imagining that battle ground filled with troops, she'd imaging them crouching behind the obstacles.

Q: Did they have nice uniforms, or were they loose?
A: The uniforms were nice, with lot's of buttons in the front and things on the shoulders.

You led the answer. Your question implies that the opposite of “nice” is “loose”, for starters, thus priming her to mentally think of a more dressy uniform than “loose” by which you were I assume fishing for a description of a GI’s uniform.

You say your daughter is not allowed to watch you play WW2 games and that you have no pictures of German soldiers in the house. Can you guarantee that? What about the box art for those PC games you play? Has you daughter seen splash screens for the games before you’ve told here she can’t watch?

Do you have any WW2 movies on DVD? More box art.

Can you really guarantee that she’s never seen at least a few shots, either game/movie or real of a German soldier, including outside your house. At school?

Q: OK, how about any medals? Anything on the head, or chest?
A: Yes, something like a circle with a star in it. On the chest.

Ditto for above. You gave her two choices, the head and chest. She chose one.

Q: Were you scared?
A: Yes, but I knew they weren't trying to hurt me. So I didn't think anything of it, but there were a lot of them. Everywhere I looked. They were moving around, like army men do. Kind of crawling, but bent over. When we would walk out of a bunker, I would see one in the grass, or behind a tree. Then when I was in the car, I could see them looking at me from behind a fence in a field. Sometimes a lot of them, sometimes only one or two.

“Yes, but I knew they weren't trying to hurt me. So I didn't think anything of it”
This just doesn’t make sense if what she is describing really happened to her (and with your description of her personality at the end of the original post). She’s scared, but doesn’t think anything of it?

“They were moving around, like army men do”

So she knows how “army men” move. So she’s seen some type of soldiers, either current or historical, in movie or stills perhaps.

Q: Why didn't you say something to me?
A: I couldn't, I didn't know what they were. I knew they weren't real, so you wouldn't believe me anyway.

A child is seeing ghostly soldiers all around her for what seems like an extended time, and you did not pick up a hint of discomfort from her at the time?

At the time she made no mention of it, yet did she seem at all disturbed, or just interested?

Q: Were there different types?
A: Yes, some had different colors. Like a Dark color and and a greenish color.

We’ve established she knows what soldiers look like, so saying they wore “dark” and greenish” is not exactly startling.

I asked her to draw some stuff and try to see what she saw in her head. What she drew scared the hell out of me.

I asked about the gun the soldier was carrying... She proceeded to draw what resembled the MP40. She then tried to draw the helmet but she couldn't get it right. I then drew the front view of a standard German helmet.

You drew a helmet. So you led her response again at that point.

She said that was it. "it was pointy on the sides when you looked straight at it". I asked her about boots, she said she thought so, but could not tell as they were never standing up... which is true, most German combat poses are crouched down, and running.

Sorry, but that’s really a stretch. Because she can’t describe the boots, you decide it’s because German tactical doctrine is to be crouched down? To me this really seems like you’ve bought into her imaginings so much you are now constructing explanations around them.

Next was the camoflage... which was insane. I asked her first to draw what she thought the soldier was wearing. She drew a German Tunic. She said it was tight, and looked very nice. Not sagging, and had buttons. She drew the 'medal' right where is should be, on the right breast. Next she bagan to describe the colors and shapes of the Camoflage.

Again, your previous prodding above could be seen as implying there are loose uniforms (not nice) and not loose uniforms (nice). So she mentions this isn’t “sagging”.

"He looked different than the others". He was in the bushes, and had a very dark helmet, a really big gun, bigger than the others, and his clothes were funny colors. Like something green and a dark color, with different shapes. I don't know, I can't describe it."

After this, we left. I kept the paper, and we went to the library. I found a WWII book with a lot of pictures in it. I showed her pictures of British, American and German soldiers. She pointed out the German soldiers right away... 'that's the helmet, that's the jacket... and that's the gun!' I showed her a color drawing of the MP40, amoungst a bunch of other WWII weapons on the same page, she immediately picked it out of the page. Now it gets better

You showed her the pics. Given her description, which you could be seen as having led with the whole “loose not loose” thing, she was bound to pick the German soldiers out.
And that without examining the whole point of whether you can actually guarantee that she has NEVER seen them before.

And if you ask her up front, she’s going to say no she hasn’t because by this stage she’s definitely alert to the fact that Daddy is awed and pleased by what she is saying and will respond accordingly. She’s an 8-year old after all.

The same argument goes for you points that follow on from this about the Fallschirmjager, and the medals. You believe she has never seen any of this so it is miraculous. But again, you took her to Normandy and showed her a battleground, you must have told her what it is she was seeing there. And yet you can guarantee tat she has never seen the imagery that would go with this? After the fact as well, since she mentioned nothing at the time?

Again, my daughter has never seen pictures of WWII soldiers, other than her Great Uncle's 82nd Airborne Mess uniform. She has no idea what these men look like, nor do I watch anything related to war on the TV when she is home.

Again, how can you guarantee this?

She is a fun-loving, goofy, energetic kid that always has a smile on her face, and is very happy to simply be alive. Even when we talked about this, she was happy to tell me, and gave as much detail as possible. She was not afraid, and never once thought twice about describing what she saw.

And finally, this seems to me like a child explaining her imaginings and aware that she is pleasing her father in the process.

At 8 years old she’s old enough to know that seeing soldiers all around her when no one else can is not usual, and yet she treats it as something that doesn’t frighten her?

Again, no disrespect to anyone who wants this to be a supernatural experience, but isn’t there far more human and likely explanations than that?

[FritzFraghof]

Some very well reasoned points DMW_NZ. I was waiting for someone to offer another perspective.

We do tend to see evidence in thew world around us for what we believe - and want to believe - materialists often no less. That is not to say I personally firmly believe one thing or another in the case of OVS daughter. From a psychological perspective I am most curious about what it meant to her, not whether it was 'real' or not. Trying to define 'reality', when you get down to it, is incredibly difficult. I am much more interested in the relationships between people and things.