Unexplained Mysteries

Okay, so I was head of security at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) one night back in ’99. One of the strangest occurrences in my life happened that night. I still cannot explain it.

SHAPE is in Mons, Belgium, just about twenty minutes north of the border with France. It is the headquarters for the Commander-in-Chief Europe, usually a US Army or Air Force Four-Star General.

Each of us, Senior Non-Commissioned Officers (SNCOs), came up for the duty eventually. It rotated through all the SNCOs there. At that time, there were 17 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries and 22 Partnership for Peace countries at SHAPE, so the chances of you getting the duty more than once a year was rare. Some never got it at all.

What’s more, you usually didn’t do much of anything but sit in an office, answer the phone if it rang, and dispatch the guards in two-person patrols every hour. They really hated it, but it was only for one hour, and then they could sleep or talk, and they got the next day off. It rained or snowed all the time in Belgium, mostly rain, but once it got cold, it would snow instead of rain.

I remember the night I was on duty very well, it was the 23rd of June, so the temperature was quite mild. It was foggy, and there was a mist like it wanted to rain, but there was no rain that night.

I was getting another patrol ready to send out, when the previous patrol, came in with a stranger in odd-looking clothes, almost silver but not shiny. The patrol, a boy and a girl, who looked like teenagers to me, said they were walking along the perimeter, and he just popped up in front of them, literally. They said they were walking side-by-side talking, and he just appeared there in front of them. I asked if perhaps he had come out of the fog, and maybe they were distracted. But they insisted he just popped up.

When I asked where he was from, he answered in a language I had never heard before. Although he looked perfectly normal, otherwise, he had what looked like active gills on his neck. Several of the other guards and patrollers said they did not understand him either, even though there were representatives from several countries there.

The girl said when she stuck her hand out and introduced herself, she felt extraordinary when he shook her hand. She said her entire body suddenly warmed with his touch even in her loins. Therefore, I was not interested in shaking hands with him or even touching him.

I had the patrol put him in a holding cell and lock him up. I called the Military Police (MP) and waited for them to take him. However, when they came in, the holding cell was empty, still locked, and no one saw him go out. Furthermore, I had the only keys to the cell on the keyring, which had been attached to my belt the whole time.

There were a lot of innuendoes thrown around by the MPs as if we had all imagined it or something. They pointed a lot of fingers at me since I had the only key. One even accused the girl patroller and me of letting him escape, which we both denied.

No one knows what happened to that stranger, where he came from, or where he went. We were told it was best if we just didn’t talk about it and forget it ever happened. Easy enough for me and the others, but the girl patroller was pregnant after that night. Some said she was promiscuous and slept around. I often wondered how much of that was because she was suddenly pregnant. She gave birth to a baby boy seven months later. The doctors said he was premature, but no one could explain the gills on his neck.

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Stephen Dalton is a retired US Army First Sergeant with a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and a Certified US English Chicago Manual of Style Editor. He is a freelance journalist currently living in the Philippines.

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