Bodysnatchers in the Jungle

*Cambodia, April 1972 - The Depths of the Vietnam War.*

 Leaves brushed past the officer's face as he made his careful approach towards the suspected listening post. He and his special-ops group made the best efforts they could to prevent the leaf-litter underfoot from giving up their location as they closed around what they were certain was a North Vietnamese listening station which was actively intercepting classified US military signals. The order of the day was to destroy this enemy outpost quickly and ruthlessly - but this operation would never come to pass. Instead, as the soldiers entered a clearing in the thick jungle, they came across a space-age circular machine landed on the forest floor. This was going to be a truly horrific close encounter, far worse than anything the North Vietnamese troops could've subjected them to.

## The Cosmic Butchers

Leonard H. Stringfield had been interested in investigating reports of UFO activity since he had his own close encounter on August 28, 1945 while he was attached to the Fifth Air Force in the Second World War. He, and a group of 12 other specialised airmen, were approaching Iwo Jima in Japan when they were met by three teardrop-shaped glowing objects which played havoc with their navigation systems and even the engine of the plane in which they were flying - almost sending it crashing out of the sky. Since then, Stringfield decided to devote his life to tracking down reports of UFO crashes and apparent retrievals of the wreckage by the Government. However, one report relayed to him in 1989 by a '*wholly reliable individual*' who had been a high-ranking officer in the US military in the Vietnam War really stood out from the rest in terms of just how disturbing the implications of it were.

Stringfield had been in touch with his source for several years before he apparently decided to come clean about what had really happened in the jungles of Cambodia all those years ago. As I mentioned above, this allegedly took place in April of 1972, and involved a group of special-ops US soldiers moving through the Cambodian jungle towards the Vietnamese border in order to track down what they thought was an enemy outpost intercepting classified military signals. However, they were caught off-guard by the shocking sight of a circular object made of some highly-reflective material. The body of the bizarre object was so reflective that it effectively worked as a mirror. It was sat on the floor of the clearing in front of them using tripod-like landing gear, and was described as having a diameter of roughly 50ft.

A deep humming noise emanated from the landed craft, generating strange feelings of unease and nausea in the awe-struck witnesses. However, the craft would've likely not needed to emloy this ultrasound-like phenomenon to generate such a feeling in the soldiers, seeing as the full horror of the scene was sickening enough when the scope of it dawned on the witnesses. There were several humanoid figures milling around the object, which were described as having large, hairless heads and wraparound eyes of a deep black colouration. These ostensibly-alien visitors were engaged in the grotesque activity of systematically loading various human body-parts and naked corpses into what were described as large, metallic bin-like structures before sealing them tight.

The bodies seemed to have been from both sides of the conflict, with Stringfield's anonymous informant saying that they were '*a mixture of what were considered to be Vietnamese and white and black American troops*'. The men's military training came in seriously handy in this truly abhorrent situation, seeing as they instinctively moved behind some nearby foliage for cover and quickly opened fire on the alien entities. This, however, was mostly futile - seeing as the creatures appeared to be protected by almost armour-plated suits. Despite this, three of the spacemen died due to headshots, and another was apparently accidentally struck down by friendly fire from its fellow extraterrestrials. In the chaos, one of the human troops was reportedly killed, and several more of the special-ops men were quite badly burnt by some kind of nebulous beam weapon fired from within the saucer.

Now suffering from one death and several severe injuries, the special-ops men decided to beat a hasty retreat from the scene, whereupon the aliens took their chance to do the same. The bug-eyed butchers ran back towards the landed craft, and an opening appeared in its side - into which the critters quickly clambered while hauling the body-bins inside as well. The doorway closed swiftly, and the UFO suddenly took flight - passing through the jungle canopy before accelerating to insane speeds and totally vanishing within seconds.

Reeling from otherwordly trauma, the terrified team quickly radioed their camp and (presumably with voices shaken to their core with terror) explained what had just happened. It was almost as if some higherups in the military knew that similar events had already taken place, and the members of the team who had come away from the bizarre event without any injuries were quickly flown to a military base in South Vietnam. It was here that they were interrogated by a group of highly suspicious characters who seemed to be intelligence personnel of some kind, and warned of the potentially deadly consequences that they would face if they ever went public with their experiences. According to Stringfield's informant, some of the men were subjected to '*deep hypnosis*' for the purpose of creating false memories to bury their real recollections of the confrontation. Although this story may seem extremely sensational, Leonard Stringfield stood by its authenticity until he passed away in 1994.

## Source

'Close Encounters of the Fatal Kind' by Nick Redfern