Last weekend, I was with a group of friends, and we were (of course) discussing paranormal phenomena. One of them brought up the story of the Kandahar Giant. I’d never heard the story, so I thought I’d do a little research and share what I found with you.
According to the All That’s Interesting website, this is the basic story: “In 2002, a group of soldiers went missing while on patrol in a remote mountain region of Kandahar in the south of Afghanistan. When they failed to make radio contact for some time, the military sent in a special ops unit to investigate, though the branch of the armed forces they belonged to was never confirmed.
Then, high up in the mountains, the unit came across a cave with scattered Army equipment around but no sign of the missing soldiers. And that’s when they chanced upon the Kandahar Giant.
Though the tale grows with the telling — with some reports suggesting that the humanoid grew as tall as 15 feet — this red-headed giant with six digits, leather moccasins, and smelling like “dead bodies” suddenly emerged from the cave and impaled one of the soldiers with a spear.
And that’s when the soldiers opened fire, ultimately felling the giant with 30 seconds of continuous fire.
“Between them, the squad was armed with full-auto M4 carbines, “recon carbines” (semi-automatic), and M107 Barrett anti-materiel rifles firing .50 BMG,” reads one report. “This much firepower concentrated on one target for one second, let alone thirty, would be extremely destructive.”
After the troops killed the giant, they loaded it onto a Chinook helicopter, which carried it to a transport plane, where no one ever saw it again. The soldiers were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements, so the government could keep them all quiet.
But eventually, the soldiers broke their silence because, as one of the men would later say, “the people have a right to know the truth.”
Of course, the government denied that this ever happened. And we all trust the government for its transparency and willingness to tell the public the truth about everything, right?
So, I decided to investigate a little further. The following information was found on the website Havok Journal, and it was republished there with Nick Orten’s permission.
Nick Orton, an active-duty Soldier with an interest in the paranormal, created Tales From the Grid Square (TFTG), whose main purpose is to collect, document, and share anonymously the “not normal” experiences of those who serve. (I just bought his Volume 1 on Amazon.)
This is what he reports:
“Afghanistan, for all intents and purposes, is an ancient place. Blood has been spilled into her soil for countless generations. Afghanistan still bears the scars of war from when Alexander the Great stepped foot on her soil, and that’s recent history for her. For those who fought in her impossibly high mountains and decadently beautiful poppy fields; Afghanistan is a place of incredible harshness and beauty that will be forever seared into their minds.
Plenty of war stories abound from the war; what we often don’t hear about is how mysterious Afghanistan really is. Afghanistan has been described as a place out of time. It is a mystery to even those who call it home, Islamic and tribal lore and myth swirl in her long history. Legends take on a whole new definition to the people in the forgotten corners of Afghanistan. There are places so remote, that no living Afghani or any interloper has ever set foot in. During the war, many members of the US Military and Coalition would encounter activity that would defy normality: UFOs, cryptids, and ghosts. Many bore witness to the immense and immeasurable mystery of Afghanistan. What they witnessed is often kept close to the heart, be it terrifying or truly something incredible. There are many secrets within the border of the “Graveyard of Empires.”
What you are about to read are several instances of the high strangeness encountered by members of the US Military and Coalition in Afghanistan. All of these stories were submitted to Tales From The Grid Square anonymously by those who had fought in the war. As per the nature of this project, those identities are kept anonymous, to encourage others to come forward. What you will read about are accounts of giant humanoids, Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs)/Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP), and paranormal activity on the battlefield.
Maybe there is an explanation, maybe not. I am not here to convince you otherwise, keep an open mind and see the words from those who lived it. They say there are no atheists in war, but I would argue that there are fewer skeptics who emerge from it. These are the stories of those who left their disbelief behind in Afghanistan.
The Giants of Afghanistan
Giants are a storied tale of myth and legend. Almost every culture has a tale of massive humanoids who predate man by a long shot. A story made famous on Art Bell’s Coast to Coast: AM was the account of the “Giant of Kandahar.” The story revolves around a “special force” team encountering a giant, redheaded man, with six fingers on each hand and double rows of teeth (details which I might add, are shared by many stories and accounts of giants from dozens of cultures in history). I will let you decide on the validity of that story. From my own opinion, I believe it’s a made-up tale. It’s too convenient, too Hollywood. It sounds like it was conjured up with the barest understanding of “special operations” and military jargon. But… consider this: what if it is true (or parts therein)?
There are many accounts of Soldiers who have reported seeing massive humanoids that tower over the normal man in Afghanistan. These stories are out there, albeit hard to come by. Not many are going to come forward and claim they saw a massive man running around in the mountains of Afghanistan. But perhaps there is something truly massive out there.
The Giant Of Kunar
I was deployed as an infantry team leader with the Army in the Kunar province of Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009. One night we set in on an observation patrol to overlook a village that we suspected IEDs were coming out of due to a successful IED recovery a few weeks prior. My lieutenant gave me a new thermal imaging system called the Recon3 that none of us were familiar with and told me to figure out what I can and pass along that information to the other team leaders. I started messing with the Recon3 to see its capabilities and was surprised at the clarity of the zoom on it. I spent most of my time messing with the different functionalities and watching the village.
I started to look across the valley to what I could see and that led me to look along the spur we were set in on and saw a very large heat signature at the top of one of the false peaks. I did everything I could to get as clear of an image as I could, suspecting that it was a group of Taliban huddled together around a light as they tend to do in the mountains. All of the sudden, the heat signature stood up as one being. The trees in that area grew up to about 10 to 12 ft tall, and this thing was at least as tall, if not taller than the trees that surrounded it. It started taking steps parallel to my position and was covering ground quickly with ease. Its stride was slow and relaxed, yet it moved with incredible speed. That led me to believe that this creature was gigantic.
It very quickly traversed the landscape, and I lost sight of it along a neighboring spur. I did not believe what I saw initially, assuming I had imagined it. I never had seen anything like that in my life.
I didn’t tell many people about it, while I was in and even when I got out. I kept it to myself, thinking there was no way I saw what I saw. But then in 2010, I listened to a story on Coast to Coast… specifically the story about the Giant of Kandahar. That made all the memories of my time in service come flooding back and made me consider other things I saw during that deployment.
For instance, the creature was described as having fire-orange hair and it reminded me of a tradition the locals in the area of my sighting would do. They would dye their hair a bright orange color and even would dye their goats the same color. They never gave any explanation why. It seemed like it was every once in a while they would do this, and then all of a sudden those orange-dyed goats would be gone, and the local’s hair would also no longer be dyed orange. I assumed maybe it was a cultural thing I didn’t understand, but now it makes me wonder if that was some kind of gesture to the creature/Nephilim or if the goats were sacrificed to it.
I am a Christian, and the bible briefly discussed the “Men of Renown,” aka the Nephilim. I think that’s what I saw, a member of an ancient race of giants that descended from fallen angels. Or it could be something like Sasquatch. I’m not sure.
-Anonymous US Army Soldier
Giants on the Feed
I was a sensor operator on the Reaper. Heading up to work a tasking in the northern parts of the country. Scanning around doing my thing and looking at stuff. There are small villages up high in the central mountains that I’ve scanned probably a dozen times.
Found a super small mud hut, which is where I saw the giants. They were 3ish maybe even 4 meters tall. There’s a ruler tool that tells you how wide your crosshair is, and the people were as tall as the crosshair was wide.
The few mud huts were extremely rudimentary, like just a mound with some holes for a door and windows. They didn’t do anything crazy, just normal people things, tending fires and other chores. I wish I could say they did something exciting, but really just mobbed around their small clearing. There were a few goats tied up, and a fire that one person was tending.
Hard to tell details, but they seemed to wear rugged clothing. I would guess similar to Afghan traditional from how they moved but they seemed heavily cloaked.
The only interesting thing was the size. The goats looked like cats next to them.
This was all in mid-wave IR at night, so they showed up as black humanoid heat signatures. I wish I could have used our daytime camera. I always wonder if they had red hair lol. I only monitored them for like 10 mins before we were too far away to see.
-Anonymous Air Force Reaper Operator
Giant of a Man
I was an FMV analyst from 2012 -2018. We were doing pre-OP soak NE of Korengal, getting patterns of life on damn near every warm body.
We saw some dudes around a fire which is completely normal but watched to see if we could ID any weapons.
After about 20 minutes what we thought were two dudes huddled together under a blanket stood up. I mean this guy made the rest of the dudes look like children in terms of height. He stood up and walked over to a mud hut that he had to bend way over to get in. We were IR so I couldn’t say if he was red-haired or not but I just know that he was a big MFer. At least 8-9ft.
-Anonymous USAF Airman
Giant of Uruzgan
I was an LT in the Australian Army at the time and deployed to Uruzgan province. I was on picquet (what you Yanks would call security or sentry) in my LAV in the early hours one morning and was scanning across the valley with the Thermal Imager looking for threats and saw a large human-like figure that looked different from normal because it didn’t have the usual clothes the Afghans would wear.
It looked like a person, but lankier. Not much detail through the TI and due to distance. It walked behind a few compounds and I could see it from the chest/armpits up. I lased the compound walls to confirm distance a few times because I knew I would get a good return off the walls.
I thought it was around 500-600m away but when I did a more detailed scan (it was also unusual to see individual people out at that time of night) I realized it was further away, so I used the LRF to get the range and was shocked to see it was 1800m away.
It wasn’t in any hurry and I followed it for about 5min before it went out of my FOV. Just looked like it was walking. Wasn’t in a hurry at all but was aware of what was happening around it. Kept looking around, especially near the compounds. No idea what it was but it would have been at least twelve feet tall. I don’t know of anyone else who saw anything like it. Never told anyone about it before but it has stayed with me over all these years.
-Anonymous former member of the Australian Army”
What do you think?
Fee-fi-fo-fum!!
Happy Friday!!!