Creeps, true stories from Reddit (Second book)

The cliff shadows in Africa

So I've posted a few story's of my encounters with the supernatural, and this one happened to me this year while I was deployed in Africa. This story is kind of long so I understand if y'all don't want to read it all.

I've been in the military for over 7 years and I've been to many places, but Africa was by far the darkest place I've visited. We were in the mountains conducting platoon base attacks against OP4 which are basically other soldiers in different uniforms being bad guys. My platoon was on night shift providing our camp security. In the mountains where we were at there was not a lot of coverage so with NVGs (night vision goggles) I was able to see kind of far. I was at my post just passing the time, smoking a cigarette trying to stay awake because of the missions we ran during the day.

I was sitting down with my weapon and gear all on, then I hear footsteps. My first thought was "oh shit here we go" our weapons didn't have real ammunition they were just blanks because this was training. So I drop my NVGs and start scanning the ridge line for the enemy but no one was out there, so I chalk it up to imagination because I was tired. Then I turn off my NVGs and relax, then I hear the footsteps again but this time it sounds like the person is in a full sprint. So I jump up turn on my NVGs and again no one was there, at this point I start getting paranoid. So I keep my NVGs in ready position but tuned off, the batteries die really fast so I didn't want to waste them. Now I'm just staring out into the darkness with little I can see with the naked eye and with the little bit of light from the moon. Then I see the enemy crawling over the side of the mountain in front of me so I'm ready this time. I draw my weapon and turn on my NVGs but then I don't see the person I was just looking at through my NVGs. I turn off my NVGs and look again and there he was just standing there off the side of the cliff. However this time there are more people with him. I say "fuck it " and start firing into the darkness thinking if these are our guys I would have killed them (simulated) and if not this will give whoever they are a scare. We were in the middle of nowhere and we would encounter locals and goat herders every now and again that would wonder into our training sight. But they have never came at night so this was odd for us. But these guys were just standing there , no more then 50ft away from me. My team leader runs up behind me and asked why the hell am I shooting. I point out the group of people on the ridge line and tell him that they crawled over the mountain so I thought they were the OP4. Then he tells me "the OP4 aren't attacking tonight." Then pulls out a flashlight and shines it on the people on the ridge line, but they disappeared. I just thought to myself I scared them away until my team leader walked away. I sat back down and I felt someone grab the back of my uniform and started dragging me towards the cliff. I started screaming and fighting back but for the life of me I couldn't find the hand that was pulling me. The whole camp woke up and started pulling out flashlights to see what was happening, when they spotted me and pointed there flashlights at me I was only 5ft away from the cliff. I told my team leader what happened and for the rest of the night no one slept we cracked open all our chem lights (glow sticks) and put them all around the camp. When the sun camp up we reported back to base and gave a debriefing to our commander on why wet cut training short. The look on my commanders face told me he wasn't surprised at all, then told us to go shower and get something to eat. We never went back out to that range and he never sent anyone out there again.

A few months later we were driving out there for day time training and we ran into some locals. Some of them spoke English so we asked them if anything weird happens at night. They said "no one goes out at night because of the shadow men." We ask them to tell us a little more he said "goat herders and kids walk and play in the mountains, sometimes the mountains will give way and the people fall to their death. So at night they look for people so join them." Then he told us something that sent chills down my spine. "If the spirts like you they will want to play with you, so they will drag you off a cliff so you can stay with them forever". Because of that I'd always carry a headlamp (flashlight) on me at all times.

Posted by u/Outrunpawn