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Bosnian War – Broken Radios, Trenches And Night Time Visits From Bigfoot
The first Bosnian War story I’m covering has a shroud of mystery surrounding it even before strange things start happening, as the exact time and location of this encounter are unknown. The man who shared it – a Bosnian soldier, never brought those details up.
Many other things he said though, were detailed and terrifying. This man – whose name is Muha, was in a trench at the time. This wasn’t an area of constant combat – things were incredibly peaceful.
What makes this strange is that there was an enemy trench dug out there as well – two hundred of so meters away from theirs. The reason as to why they weren’t shooting each other – Bosnians and Serbs – is that their commanding officers weren’t present – making any act of aggression basically treason.
A commanding officer didn’t need to be right there on the spot to give the order of course – but an order had to be received from one, whether it was in person or by other means. Both trenches had a radio, one in each, but they were of no good use to either side.
The radio reception was so bad in that area that they couldn’t establish contact with anyone, expect the enemy trench. Another important detail is that neither of the trenches were low on soldiers or weapons.
The only thing that was stopping them from going at each other was a shoddy radio set up – and at any minute, this issue could resolve itself. The side that established the connection first, would be the first one to strike.
Even though the other force would be able to fight back in defence – that first strike advantage put everyone on edge and at immense stress. To relieve the stress, among other things, soldiers from opposing sides talked with each other on the radio.
Some of them fought and insulted the ones on the other line – while some were friendly and joked around. No matter how much everyone joked though – there was no escaping the tense atmosphere of the predicament the two sides were in. These two radios play a huge part later in the story.
One night, Muha woke up in the middle of it – but unlike most Bigfoot stories – it wasn’t a loud noise that had awoken him, but something much simpler, a bad dream. Muha looked around his surroundings – everyone was peacefully sleeping, even though some men slept on cardboard – with only it in between them and the mud.
While he tried to go back to sleep, Muha heard something – a strange weep coming from his left. At first, he thought one of the soldiers was crying. As this wasn’t something uncommon, he ignored the noise and went back to sleep.
The next morning, Muha felt a bit guilty over his actions last night – because he knew almost everyone in the trench and considered them good people, and yet he didn’t bother to check up on the crying man.
He spent the day talking with people, asking if anyone heard the weeping or saw who it was – but his search was unfruitful. After talking with pretty much everyone in the trench – he was left confused.
A few other soldiers heard the weeping, the same one he did – but the way they described it didn’t make sense to Muha. Some of the words they used to describe it were “inhuman”, “animalistic” and “scary”.
What the strangest thing for Muha was, is that so many of them said it scared them. Getting scared by someone crying? That’s a bit strange. When it was close to night – hours after his search was done – something dawned on him.
As he saw the men heading to sleep – he noticed all of the ones that heard it besides him were much further to the left than he was. Maybe he wasn’t close enough to hear the noise clearly the first night? Muha was intrigued – and fuelled by it, he exchanged places with one of the men – hoping he would hear the noise once again.
Muha was lucky – but that’s not a word he used to describe his feelings at the time. The weeping was much closer to him this time – and now he knew why the others used those words.
It wasn’t weeping that he was hearing that first night – it was growling. Disturbing, animal- like noises is all he could hear throughout the whole night. He didn’t even consider falling asleep – even blinking for a second sounded like a bad idea to him.
The growing noise persisted through the night, but it wasn’t always the same. At some points, it sounded more or less far away. Whatever was making the noise was moving, and it wasn’t one of the men in his trench, Muha was sure of it.
Was it an enemy scout? No, why would a scout be so stupid and strange to be making such noises? It didn’t make sense to Muha – which scared him the most. If it were the enemy, he would have woken up the others, but it obviously wasn’t.
It was something else, and Muha didn’t want to wake everyone up over growling and then be made fun of for the rest of the war – so he stayed put, holding his rifle close to his chest.
Soon before the sun came up, Muha heard mud getting splashed around right above his head, like someone was walking on it – but the steps didn’t sound human, as the rhythm of them was off and it sounded like a huge animal was making them.
The noise got louder and louder, inching closer to Muha and after it stopped for a while, he heard it again – only this time, it was going away from him...
He didn’t dare to share what he experienced that night with anyone in the trench, not even his closest comrades, as he knew they would call him insane and tell him everything he heard was due to the stress of war.
Most men did notice he was acting more tense than usual, but he wasn’t sharing it. The next night was getting closer and as it did, it made Muha more scared – he feared his next encounter with the creature wasn’t going to go that well. But Muha got lucky, he was informed that it was his turn to stay up and keep watch over the radio.
This string of good luck calmed him down, as he got ready for a long night of radio static. The first thing he heard when he walked inside the radio room was the usual heavy static, but as he got closer to the radio, the more he could distinguish the words.
But there were no words coming from the enemy trench, only screaming. Muha got on the radio and asked what was going on and seconds later, both the static and the screaming – stopped.
Muha was in awe. There was no attack, it was impossible, everyone in his trench was sleeping. An ambush possibly? Did another Bosnian unit plan an attack on the enemy and due to bad reception Muha’s trench didn’t know?
But that couldn’t have been the case either, as everything was silent. If there was gunfire everyone would be able to hear it, leaving only one possible explanation in his mind. That the creature that haunted his thoughts for the whole day was the reason behind those screams...
Sitting there, in the tiny room, Muha wasn’t sure how he felt, but he knew what he was thinking about – him and his comrades marching to the enemy trench tomorrow, only to find all of the men there slaughtered and torn to bits.
When the radio came back on, Muha spoke into it as fast as humanly possible, asking what happened to their camp and if they were okay. The man on the other line, a Serbian soldier called Nikola, sounded genuinely shaken – as he told Muha all the details of what just happened to him...
Nikola – just like Muha – was assigned radio watch that night. While he searched for a signal, he heard someone bash the wooden top of the radio room. Almost instantly he grabbed his rifle and hid in the corner of the room – screaming the whole time, while also knocking down the radio.
He stayed in the corner – shaking out of fear the whole time, but pounding wasn’t the only thing he heard. There was also heavy breathing, that didn’t sound human to him, and also growling.
After he heard the creature growl he was certain it wasn’t Bosnian soldiers attacking their trench in the night, but that didn’t calm him down much, as he couldn’t, for the life of him, explain what that thing was without also driving himself insane.
The mixture of strange sounds, pounding and breathing lasted for only a few minutes, but to Nikola, it felt as though he was in that corner for at least an hour. After Nikola finished telling him his part of the story, Muha shared his.
They both felt relieved and actually laughed about the situation, it felt good that someone else was experiencing something terrifying and strange, even though it was the enemy. For the remaining duration of the night, they talked and got to know each other, even describing how they looked like, promising they wouldn’t shoot each other if it came to that in the heat of battle.
After Nikola left his post, Muha turned the radio off and turned around to get a piece of chocolate out of his bag. What he didn’t expect or want to see is a huge, hairy, brown colored creature standing right outside the trench...
It was looking straight at him – for who knows how long. He didn’t waste one second after realising the danger he was in, he went for his rifle and clumsily aimed it where the creature was.
It was gone. The giant who haunted both sides vanished into the night, never to be seen or heard by Muha again – who of course didn’t know that at the time. This put him on edge more than ever, he even wished for combat to start, as he would rather die in the mud than live through another week of sleepless nights filled with inhuman sounds.
After less than a week, Muha got his wish. One of the radios, the Serbian one, started working. They got their orders, but it wasn’t to attack the enemy trench but to retreat, as their numbers were more needed elsewhere.
Serbian soldiers shared this with the Bosnian trench and asked them to not gun them down while they retreated. Bosnian soldiers, still having no authority to fire upon their enemy, let them go their way, which also meant that the Bosnian troops would also be leaving the area.
They stayed there for a few days after the enemy troops left, just to make sure they weren’t tricking them. Muha spent those few remaining days there panicked, but also happy, for two reasons.
That for one, he would soon be leaving the mud and the strange creature behind and two, that he didn’t have to shoot Nikola. What would you do in their shoes? If you were Nikola or Muha, would you have kept your word and not shoot the other one if it came to that?
Would you have shared what you experienced in the second night with others? Would you go into the night, after the creature?
There are so many elements to both of their stories that it’s near impossible to put yourself in those kind of shoes – shoes of mud, of blood, of war and fear.
A story that ends with the war still being on can't really be called one that has a happy end, but at the very least, this experience brought two people on opposite sides close together. What’s really incredible about it is that out of all the things in the world, a Bigfoot would bring people together.
Misery loves company they say – well, it looks like fear does as well...
Chapter 4
