Psychological operations, or PSYOPs,
are often meant to demoralize the enemy
or convince local populations
to stay away from combat areas.
This usually takes the form of leaflets or posters
or the occasional loudspeaker message,
but sometimes these troops go full (bleep) spook
and go hard with the scare tactics,
like that time they became vampires and ghosts
to scare America's enemies.
The vampire mission was conceived
by Lieutenant Colonel Edward G. Lansdale.
He was sent to the Philippines in September 1950
to help dislodge communist rebels in the area.
The rebels, known as Huks, were known to be superstitious,
so Lansdale had his men study their local legends.
After the success of an early mission to convince locals
they would be cursed if they supported the communists,
Lansdale knew he was in business.
He then turned his attention
to a local vampire legend, the asuang.
The asuangs are malevolent spirits that come out at night
to perform a variety of evil activities,
including attacks against the weak.
They take many different forms,
including ghosts, viscera-suckers and vampires,
and they sound scary as hell,
although the ritual to banish
the angry spirits sounds terrible too.
A shaman writhes on the ground,
literally speaking in tongues?
I don't like it when people speak in tongues.
One tongue.
Lansdale was betting that
the communist rebels didn't like it either,
so he and his men circulated a rumor
that an asuang lived in the hills nearby.
They waited for the rumor to make its way up the hill
and then swooped into action.
A covert team snuck into the hills and waited for a patrol.
When it was nearly past, they snatched up the last man,
poked two holes in his neck and drained him of his blood.
Yeesh.
Seriously.
They held his body upside down by the heels
(pops lip)
until the blood drained out.
Wanna know how long that would take?
A University of Leicester study calculated
that it would take 6.4 minutes
for 1.6 pints of blood to drain from the body.
Now if my math is correct, and it is,
that means those dudes had to hold
that poor patrol bastard's feet for 44 minutes.
What do you think they talked about during that time?
I'm freaked out just thinking about it.
That's weird.
Anyway, once the deed was done,
they put the body back on the trail.
When the Huks found it,
they believed the rumors of the asuang
and fled from the area,
allowing government forces to take the region.
Soldiers tried a similar trick in Vietnam
by capitalizing on the belief that the souls of dead people
not buried are forced to wander the world.
Soldiers made a series of Ghost Tapes
that were commonly called The Wandering Soul.
One of the more widely known versions of the tape,
Ghost Tape Number 10, can be heard online.
Let's take a listen.
(ghostly voice speaking in a foreign language)
Hmm, weird.
We'll have a link for that down below,
in case you wanna download it and listen to it
while you're falling asleep tonight.
Creepy?
Yeah, it's creepy.
The audio tapes began with Buddhist funeral music,
followed by a girl's cries for her father.
A wandering ghost then responds,
crying with regret that he chose
to die on a far off battlefield
rather than staying with his family.
It's sad.
Soldiers with backpacks, ships and aircraft
all broadcast the message at different times.
There's little evidence that anyone believed
they were hearing actual ghosts
and the tapes seemed to have mixed effects.
While there were reports of communist forces
surrendering or deserting after hearing the tapes,
it also kinda backfired.
Some sailors and soldiers who broadcast the messages
reported coming under increased fire
when they started playing the tapes.
But friendly forces used this hatred to their advantage.
After a C-47 came under extreme fire
while broadcasting the tape,
the commanding officer of the plane
swore he'd never play it again.
He was sent back the next night to play it anyway,
but this time with an AC-130 flying in for support
and targeting everything that fired at the C-47.
So one way or another, it worked.
Play us out, ghost tape.
(ghostly voice speaking in a foreign language)
(August yells)
(woman laughs)