Fright Night in Baghdad
Kanika Grant, Georgia, USA
August 2006
Hello everyone.
I am a 28 year old civilian contractor working at the embassy in Baghdad. I've had several experiences with "ghosts" in my lifetime, but this one I found to be particularly interesting being that i'm in another country.
I arrived here in November of 2004, and was immediately assigned a "hooch" as we call it here, or a trailer for you folks back home. As soon as I walked through the door, I got an uneasy feeling about the place, but just blew it off as being nervous about being in a dangerous country at the time, so I proceeded to unpack and settle in.
I started unloading everything out of my suitcase and putting it on the bed so I could sort through my things to put them away, and I stepped into the restroom for a few minutes.
When I came back out, all of my clothes were thrown about the room onto the floor. Needless to say, this freaked me out completely, but I just looked around for any sign that someone might have been in my room, but my door was locked and the windows were shut.
Later that night, about 10:30, I was getting tired and decided to try to get some rest. I left the bathroom light on, being that I was still a little freaked out from earlier.
I got under the covers and was facing the bathroom, just beginning to close my eyes when I looked in the corner and saw someone standing there. To me it looked like a dark shadow of a man, about 6 feet tall, I couldn't make out any facial features. He just stood there not moving or making a sound, I guess he was staring at me, I know I was staring at him, I couldn't help but to. I was so scared I couldn't move. It couldn't have been more than a few seconds, but it seemed like hours passed while he just stood there.
All of a sudden he turned to his left, ran past the bathroom, jumped in the air and through the wall. I was so scared I just balled up under the covers and stayed there until morning.
As soon as I got up, I went to the billeting office and told them I needed to change rooms immediately. The woman asked me why and I just told her the generator made too much noise outside where I was staying. She just looked at me for a second and said, "You saw him too huh?" I just nodded my head and she gave me a new key.
I got some friends to help me move out and one of the guys that helped me told me that one of the firefighters that stayed in that room before me was killed by a mortar round when he was out on an emergency call. I don't know if that was him, but I hope that it finds some peace, whatever it was.