How ghosts, superstitions, and vampires have been used for psychological warfareS







It is worth noting that Jasper Maskelyne did have a penchant for embellishment. The US military however pulled a similar tactic in the 1950s, when Major General Edward G. Lansdale spearheaded the rumor that an asuwang was loose in the Philippines. In Filipino mythology, the asuwang is a winged, vampiric witch that has a hankering for unborn fetuses. The US military was battling Communist Huk rebels and concocted possibly the only covert operation in human history to stage a vampiric attack. Lansdale recalls:

To the superstitious, the Huk battleground was a haunted place filled with ghosts and eerie creatures. A combat psy-war squad was brought in. It planted stories among town residents of an Asuang living on the hill where the Huks were based. Two nights later, after giving the stories time to make their way up to the hill camp, the psywar squad set up an ambush along the trail used by the Huks [...] When a Huk patrol came along the trail, the ambushers silently snatched the last man of the patrol, their move unseen in the dark night.

Similarly, the US military imitated ghosts when fighting the Vietcong. Operation Wandering Soul was an attempt to rattle Vietcong by playing tapes of "ghost" soldiers who had fallen in battle. This propaganda campaign relied on the Vietnamese belief that if a body isn't interred near its corporeal home, the soul will wander the earth. US forces blasted eerie recordings of disembodied souls on the ground and air. A February 1970 account in The Tropic Lightning News described the recording as an effective means to shake up Vietcong forces:


The Wandering Soul is a tape about the soul of a dead Viet Cong. It describes the wandering of this soul about the countryside. The dead VC tells his comrades to look at what has happened to his soul and that he will never be at rest, always wandering,' said Captain William Goodman of Philadelphia, the battalion S-5. ‘Buddhists believe very strongly that if they aren't properly buried and properly mourned, their soul will wander through eternity,' added First Lieutenant Peter Boni of Boston, the officer in charge of the Sixth PSYOP Team. ‘We play upon the psychological superstitions and fears of the enemy. The method is very effective," Boni said.

Those actually playing the tape were less sanguine about its efficacy. In fact, helicopter crews reported receiving heavier fire when playing the Wandering Soul tape and would even use it goad Vietcong ground troops on. One swiftboat reserve lieutenant even recalls how the Wandering Soul tape got their boat pelted with rockets, so they opted to blast Tina Turner instead — their boat didn't take fire when blaring The Queen of Rock 'n' Roll in the middle of the night. For a fascinating history of the Wandering Soul initiative, check out Sergeant Major Herbert A. Friedman's article on Psy Warrior.

[Asuwang anecdote Mania via Boing Boing. Top photo from Weird War Tales 12 via Fantasy Ink; middle photo via Manananggals.]