it was december 1986 and most of our combat engineering battalion had been deployed to the small central american country of honduras to construct a new airfield just north of the rio coco a river which served as much of the official border between honduras and nicaragua although it was my first deployment outside of the u.s i wasn’t thrilled to be spending christmas in the jungles of central america but being in the army missing holidays away from your family just goes with the job i guess that along with some degree of risk but far from what amount of danger i could have ever anticipated going into a combat zone this lesser inhabited region of the honduran jungle appeared to be harboring something far more frightening than a few socialist guerilla fighters the truth is this is not a story i’m very excited to share with you because not only was it a terrifying experience the way my command treated me afterwards is somewhat embarrassing my name is robert i’m a us army veteran and this is my story of an encounter i had with something they called el diablo the mist which hangs before you offers you a choice to pass through beyond [Music] you alone are left to discern what to believe as you pass through what we call fog [Music] the 1980s was a turbulent time for central america the third world country of nicaragua had suffered a major earthquake in 1971 followed by an economic collapse extreme government corruption and a violent political revolution similar to the recent war in vietnam there were two sides to this fight the first being the sandinistas the socialist rebels who overthrew their corrupt government at the end of the 1970s and were ultimately being funded by the communist regimes of the soviet union and cuba the other side was the counter revolutionaries the spanish term being contras who wanted to overthrow the now equally corrupt and violent sandinista government the contras were being covertly funded by the u.s in its effort to prevent the spread of communism into central america essentially making this another proxy war between the u.s and the soviet union having been run out of their own country the contras had taken refuge north of the nicaraguan border in honduras the u.s was likewise providing support to the honduran military as the intense border fighting had created growing fears that a full-scale military incursion into honduras could happen at any time and that’s where my unit came in the 27th airborne engineering battalion out of fort bragg north carolina our construction of an airfield near the village of hamastron would not only bring us troops in and out of the country but its location only about 15 miles north of the country’s border sent a message to the nicaraguan government stay on your side of the border if you know what’s good for you but although our units had been issued live ammunition the us wasn’t officially at war with nicaragua so we couldn’t go around shooting up the place our orders were that direct combat with nicaraguan forces was expressly and officially forbidden except if they fired first so we were only authorized to return fire in self-defense i’d say this was very similar to the beginning of the war in vietnam while some of our guys worked on building the airfield a portion of our battalion along with a unit of honduran soldiers had also been assigned to conduct highly visible border security patrols and surveillance operations to both discourage and monitor any potential enemy activity being a radio slash com guy i didn’t have much to do as far as working on the airstrip being from tennessee i could have driven a tractor if they’d asked me but they just sent me out with the patrols most of the time as far as keeping an eye out for enemy fighters driving back and forth on the many winding dirt roads near the border really limited us to what we could see so our patrols would also receive various reconnaissance reports from overhead aircraft and from the sotokano air base some 200 kilometers driving distance to the west but it was rare that we ever got any actual real-time updates on enemy troop movements more often than not we’d receive reports of suspicious vehicles boats or groups of people cited in close proximity to the river so one morning while my patrol unit was already out driving the roads at about 10 30 hours we received a radio communication that a small boat or rather what might be a boat was moving upstream a few miles away from our location we were instructed to rendezvous at specific coordinates and then proceed on foot to the river’s edge in hopes of being able to identify the type of craft that was moving upstream using our radios we quickly coordinated with the other vehicles in our squad we usually had either three or four of them and worked out the meetup location on our maps then we loaded up into our vix and quickly sped down the dirt roads past the various village huts and local farms trying to get to the river to find some good concealed positions before the boat passed by erratically changing direction and speed as well as starting and stopping i’ll copy over moving dramatically the hell does that even mean uh interrogative any idea what it is over are there even people on it how big is it how many tangos on board over uh report doesn’t say doesn’t look like they can see any passengers over perfect roger that uh we are nearing our insert point uh we’ll radio you once we get eyes on over oh all right where am i going uh you’re gonna turn right once we get over this next hill arriving to our rendezvous point we hopped out of the trucks three squad members stayed behind to watch the vehicles while the remaining six of us double timed it down to the riverbank which was about a half a mile away this area wasn’t as dense with jungle most of it was actually open grassland so moving quickly through only light tree cover we made pretty good time we soon crossed onto a cattle farm and had to navigate across two sections of barbed wire fencing before we reached an open field like other areas in this region this field had also been cleared of brush and overgrowth to allow cattle to have grazing opportunity 100 yards on the other side of the field was the river we were able to find cover behind some trees but most of the vegetation had also been cleared away along the riverbank probably to give the cattle easier access to the water so we moved across the field into the tree line staying back about five to eight yards to remain out of sight of both the approaching boat and anyone that might be on the opposite side of the river which was nicaraguan territory come on let’s go take cover robert hello yes sorry you come with me see you stay here wallace you go down that way roger we couldn’t see anything on the water upstream from us toward the west and our last radio update confirmed that the boat hadn’t passed by yet and was still moving in our direction so we waited i should ha should be here in a few minutes solo whiskey four should be coming from your direction let us know if you see it yet can you tell me what the hell just passed by me someday coming your way in the water roger yeah i see something a dark thing that’s it that’s what they want us to look for looks like a log or something thought it might be a crocodile pretty big for a crocodile too big submarine oh don’t move do not open fire hey man no names over the radio don’t open fire at all holy yo this is mental [Music] oh god look at those teeth man what’s it doing i think it’s he’s picking which one it wants look come on [Music] open cheers god the entire cow is heading back to the water wartime stories will continue right after this and now back to the story what the hell man well you were wrong about one thing sergeant huh what’s that that sure as hell wasn’t a trash bag it uh it all happened very quickly once the snake had left the water it just darted straight for a group of four cattle rammed right into them with its head it was so big it just knocked three of them over considering how big it was it was it was fast and just as the cattle started to panic it darted towards the second group and rammed into them as well and then it lifted its head off the ground about the height of at least two men maybe 10 to 15 feet and after seeming to select which of the injured cattle it wanted it just slammed its massive head down onto it crushing it i mean i guess it was too big i mean it didn’t need to constrict the animal it just we heard the sounds of the cow’s body being crushed like bone snapping it probably killed it instantly at that point wallace had raised his rifle and can’t blame him but sergeant perez had signaled him to drop it immediately because i mean something that big no doubt uh our gun fire wouldn’t have done anything but to just piss it off i’m not sure how intelligent snakes are certainly not one that big but i was fairly certain it had seen us before leaving the water but it was clearly more interested in the cattle and after crushing one of them to death snake just picked its head back up opened its mouth and i mean practically picked the entire cow up in its mouth with the head dangling out of one side and the rear legs out of the other it just just carried it back into the water just slid right back past us once it had gone we just stood around quietly for a few moments staring at the riverbank my next thought was that i wanted nothing but to go back to the trucks and leave the country really i couldn’t i mean i could not have imagined that something like that could could have possibly existed what an absolute nightmare but you know how guys are a sick curiosity got the better of us and we began discussing well arguing really about how big it had been nobody seemed to agree with our estimates ranging from between 50 to 100 feet so three the guys decided to pace it out walking the distance from the riverbank to where its head where we remembered its head was when the tail had left the water 31 steps 33 steps and 34 steps by our pace counts we knew that roughly put its length at approximately 75 to 80 feet the only cattle left in the pasture at this point were the injured ones probably having had their legs broken someone mentioned that the snake might come back for them so we agreed then that it was time to leave on our way back to the trucks i received a radio call asking if we had spotted the boat before responding i first checked with sergeant perez he said to tell them that we’d report what had happened after we got back to our vehicles but when we did and sergeant perez radioed back to sotokano before he could finish his report of what had happened he was interrupted we were told then to maintain complete radio silence about the incident and were ordered to return to base immediately for debriefing and that we could each file individual reports when we got back to soto kano it was a long drive back not only because of the distance but i’d say we all seemed to have a sort of bad feeling about what was going to happen when we got back to the base the only reason we were being called back was clearly because of what sergeant perez had said before being interrupted in his radio report you know maybe they thought we were just screwing around on the radio trying to be funny or something when we arrived we were met by a large group of uniformed men fewer officers the highest rank was a major two hispanic men wearing honduran army uniforms were also present as was an apparent honduran civilian sure enough the major did not look happy neither did the three hondurans all of the other men just kept their bearing and seemed to avoid expressing any emotions we’d all had ass chewings before and by the concerned glances we then shot at each other i’m pretty sure that’s what we were expecting to get here we were called out by name and one at a time taken away when they called my name i was led to a car and instructed to get in a lieutenant and two enlisted men got in as well all of this just felt very ominous i was driven to well to the rear area of the base the area furthest from the main runway not that it was that large of a base in the first place and we stopped at a small nondescript building which would actually describe most buildings there and i was escorted inside i was led down the main hall to a room at the end on the right it was plain nothing out of the ordinary just some type of meeting room but the room only had one door and no windows and a light fixture holding a single bulb was mounted in the center of the ceiling it was just a very appropriate setting for what was clearly going to be an interrogation i thought there was a table with chairs around it and at the far end sat a different major he likewise did not look very happy the lieutenant instructed me to sit in the chair opposite the major as i sat down the other men sat down on each side of the table and then no one spoke everyone just looked at me [Music] i was wondering if i shouldn’t say something but it was the major that spoke first all right what happened soldier tell me everything well sir um my patrol as i recounted the story the major was very concerned with the details from the time we’d left our vehicles until the time we’d returned to them later i was instructed to leave nothing out so i did as i was told and detailed everything i remembered as i spoke no one else said a word no one moved hell i don’t even think anyone blinked i finished recounting everything i’d recalled and i glanced around at everyone in the room just hoping for the best well the major’s facial expression hadn’t changed he glanced towards the door behind me or to someone standing behind me and then back at me tell me what happened son i want to hear it all again i think i missed something for anyone who hasn’t been in the military or maybe the police i i had only been in the army for two years at this point but it was my experience that the senior enlisted guys you know the staff ncos were usually the ones to yell at you you know the ones that chew you out but when a senior officer is acting like this well i hadn’t done anything wrong and i just didn’t understand why they were treating me like this you know this major had a way of making me wonder if what i was saying was even true even though i knew it was it had literally happened just a few hours earlier and now he was asking me to retell the whole story and now i’m starting to wonder if he was trying to tell me to change my story or that he knew something that i wasn’t telling him or was this some kind of psychological pressure to try and get me to lie and then if i lied would they punish me you know they’d compare my story with the other guys i i couldn’t think of anything else to say other than what i saw so for a second time i told him everything exactly as it had happened again no one else in the room spoke while i was talking and there was complete silence when i finished major then leaned back in his chair folding his arms and i noticed he kept glancing at the door behind me as did the other men in the room as well as shooting glances across the table at each other but they looked more worried the major just looked even more pissed and once more major repeated tell me what happened i want to hear it all again sir no that’s an order tell me what you saw i was getting genuinely scared and i still wasn’t even sure if he believed anything i was saying i almost wish we’d never said anything about the damn snake in the first place but now that i was already here i i couldn’t change my story i mean because then it wouldn’t match up with what everyone else was saying and i reasoned that this thing could pose a danger to our men and they needed to know about it so i repeated my story for a third time this was followed by another long period of silence as the major just continued to glare at me he then stood up and walked out of the room pulling the door shut behind himself i could hear him talking loudly out in the hall with someone i couldn’t hear everything of what was being said but i could tell it was him he was speaking spanish now not fluently but fairly well he was clearly talking to a honduran officer or other official of some sort my spanish wasn’t any good but i did catch things like rio coco agua and comer those were easy uh water and eat i thought maybe the other person was referring to the snake eating the cow or maybe he meant that the snake could have eaten us i don’t know i had some small hope that this whole interrogation had actually gone well and i had been right not to change my story then i heard the honduran officer say el diablo i knew that meant the devil and then muertos which i knew meant dead muertos was said a few times the other person did most of the talking the major just seemed to be responding most of the time by saying see i heard el diablo mentioned several more times wishing i knew more spanish and finally the major came back into the room and he returned to his end of the table but he didn’t sit down he stayed standing leaning over the table and putting his hands down on it and he began to talk and boy did he talk loudly and angrily wartime stories will continue right after this and now the conclusion of our story [Music] for the next 10 minutes or so he let me have it he told me that i was wrong about everything that had happened he said we’d only seen a large anaconda maybe 20 feet long at most he said that i’d been mistaken and it was probably a dog that we’d seen in the serpent’s mouth he assured me that it was not a fully grown cow he laughed at me for saying that we’d encountered a giant snake he ridiculed me over everything i’d said he accused me of fabricating the entire story he said we hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary nothing except probably a large clump of leaves and branches floating in the water he accused me of telling a ridiculous story that would hurt the us’s developing diplomatic relationship with honduras he informed me that if i continued to insist that the snake was over 75 feet long that i would face consequences adding that i could be charged with falsifying an official report or worse he never actually mentioned an article 15 or court martial but i knew where he was going with what he was saying i felt pretty terrible because i knew i was in no position to argue with him and he made it very clear that if i didn’t change my story he would follow through on what he said he finished by saying that i was stupid and that i shouldn’t throw my career away over something like this he sat back down in his chair i then realized that instead of me everyone was now staring at him and they all looked kind of shocked at what he had said to me but nobody said anything for probably another good minute the major then leaned forward and again he repeated what he had said three times before one last time tell me what you saw [Music] with all eyes on me i quietly told him that we’d only seen logs and brush floating in the river that before leaving we’d seen a regular snake carrying off some small animal maybe a rabbit or unlucky dog that it had managed to catch as much as i knew i was saving my career i felt sick i finished the story which was a complete lie and then sat there staring at the table the major finally seemed relieved he almost smiled the tension in the room seemed to immediately disappear though the major stood up again thanked me for my time and strolled right out the door like it was any other day as he turned down the hall in the direction of the front entrance i heard him say something like don’t forget the audio tapes or get the audio tapes something like that the lieutenant finally spoke he said now don’t you feel better specialist i just shrugged wondering what was going to happen next what was going to happen to me next i was escorted back outside and driven back to where we first stopped on the base i was told that i’d be returned to our camp at the airfield we were building i was ordered not to discuss the incident with anyone not even amongst the men i was with if i ever happened to run into any of them again soon a vehicle arrived and i was instructed to get in it the fact that i was being brought back alone and the guys who arrived with me weren’t going back in the same vehicle [Music] i don’t want to sound dramatic but i was 21 and with the entire experience up to that point some pretty dark thoughts crossed my mind as i got in the truck like uh i wondered if i was ever gonna see my mom again i sincerely questioned whether they were actually going to take me back to the camp or somewhere else so but fortunately they did just take me back to the airfield i was met by a sergeant and escorted to my quarters and for the next three days i slept i ate i showered that’s it i was no longer allowed to perform any work or ever leave the camp three very long and boring days later i was driven back to sotocano and put on a plane they were sending me back to fort bragg on this flight out of honduras there were only a few people on board with me one of which was a honduran soldier in uniform he had three chevrons and a rocker on his rank sergeant he was seated a few rows behind me and after takeoff and reaching cruising altitude he got up from his seat and came up to my row he leaned down slightly and on a hush tone asked if he could sit beside me i nodded not knowing what to expect so you uh you’ve seen the devil and he has seen you you must be a good man cause he did not eat you that day you’re lucky many men disappear along with coco when the devil is hungry well i didn’t expect that part of me hoped this guy was being serious but after the less than friendly treatment i’d received at that point i had my guard up but then again i guess i wasn’t surprised that people would have heard about the incident and spread it around i was still paranoid that this guy was maybe trying to trick me into talking about it and you know violating the orders i’d been given so i stayed quiet he didn’t seem offended he just made the sign of the cross over his chest then he got up and returned to his seat and the rest of the flight was uneventful i wasn’t sure what to expect when i got back my return to fort bragg was likewise uneventful but something was different somehow i’m not saying i was shunned but things just felt different as if something had been communicated to my command about us about me and only a month later i was transferred to fort campbell in kentucky which happened to be very near my hometown in tennessee i’d only served two years with my first command and this sudden transfer to a new unit was unusual it’s the kind of thing you might expect in cases of harassment or assault or something sending someone away to a new unit to get a fresh start and i thought it was a bit odd don’t you think sending me to the closest military base near my hometown i thought so i still think my command might have done it as a favor a sort of thank you for doing what i was told and staying quiet and i certainly didn’t rate it but when they put me up in my own small apartment alone rather than in the barracks with a roommate i also wondered if that wasn’t another favor or maybe a reason to avoid having a roommate to swap crazy stories with i dare say my time at fort campbell would eventually offer up a number of other strange experiences well for me that’s just the world we live in strange things happen and can’t always explain them as for the giant snake el diablo they apparently called it well you can imagine i certainly looked into it over the years there are of course rumors and other stories like mine but aside from the odd 30-foot anaconda being found alive they have since found fossils of massive snakes in colombia and even that was a fluke because they were strip mining digging for coal when the bones were found and i believe the archaeologists only had so much time to look for fossils before they continued excavating for coal possibly destroying any other fossils they didn’t find skulls or anything but just a few bone fragments vertebrae i believe so they had to estimate the prehistoric snake’s original size after doing a comparative analysis to living snakes they estimated these snakes grew to about 40 maybe 45 feet long and they also estimated that they lived 60 million years ago i’m not a scientist what they found probably was that size and lived that long ago but i know what we saw only a few decades ago and if that honduran soldier on the plane was serious about what he said the honduran locals living along the rio cocoa might still live in fear of el diablo even today i really can’t blame them incidentally only the cool kids stick around after the credits so thanks for that as for closing statements um as this is the final personal story from our friend robert out of respect for both him and you i just thought it would be appropriate to maybe offer my closing thoughts on kind of the total summation of his encounters most of you have been nothing but kind and but i have been accused of being a clickbaiter you know telling stories that are clearly you know just too extreme and um far beyond the scope of reality and i guess that’s what i want to address not that most of you probably think that but when robert first approached me with these stories with the exception of just wanting to organize his writing a bit no it didn’t take much convincing for me to want to share them with you because one they are anything but boring and of course i started this channel with the intent of telling stories that i expect a lot of people would want to listen to i mean who’s nobody wants an empty stage or an empty chairs right they want a full audience and and these are also stories of roberts which aside from the trauma that robert experienced by living through them you know they’re fairly benign for the rest of us to listen to i mean they’re not hurting anybody i mean by by retelling them but perhaps like you i did have to acknowledge that this is a man and i did tell robert this at the start of our conversations whose experiences in the military were nothing less than unusual certainly at least compared to my own eight years of service you know i never saw anything like that and i make no claims to understanding the mysterious nature of paranormal encounters whatsoever i am by far the most uneducated person when it comes to these things i’m more like you guys i’m just kind of a a consumer now i obviously do the research but um i’m pretty juvenile in my understanding of these things so for me and probably for many of you seeing it remains believing seeing is believing for many of us i expect and while i will continue to stand by my fog of war intro in that i encourage everyone to keep an open mind with these types of stories but to otherwise you know make your own decisions on what you’re willing to believe is possible the last thing i want to say is that i have spoken at length with robert over this last year after he first contacted me and you know we started talking and then he shared this first story with me the the fort campbell story and while robert has always remained courteous if not unnecessarily humble you know when he went in addressing me and treating me like i’m you know he he’s 20 years older than i am and he treats me like i’m some sort of authority figure and it’s it’s it’s almost embarrassing for me because i’m not i’m just a guy making youtube videos i do have to admit that at times i was worried about insulting him because he would send me his scripts you know he would write out his stories and then i would come back with like a beleaguering number of questions asking him to clarify certain points about his encounters and give me the additional information for the animations and what did this look like and what did this look like and so on and so forth well in that questioning was i looking for inconsistencies and reasons to disbelieve his stories at times honestly i’d be lying if if i said i wasn’t yes um i’d imagine most people wouldn’t just hear a story like this and take it at face value you know you’d have some questions right um and and even robert has expressed concern you know that that you know if i don’t think that this story is passable and that people are going to ridicule me for telling it then you know just don’t bother with it and he’s you know he’s fine with that you know so he’s always been he hasn’t been really eager to have the story shared he just you know he told them to me and i asked i said would you mind if i share these stories you know i started this channel thinking i was a rational person and who knows you know maybe i am just the most gullible person in the world i don’t think so but it’s possible but the point is when i look back on my communication with robert what is somewhat unsettling for me to acknowledge is that i cannot name a single instance where robert has given me a reason to question either his integrity or his credibility so think what you will but in my mind either robert has had several very interesting and somewhat terrifying experiences or he truly missed his calling by not becoming a creative writer in other words honduras was never on my bucket list but now i would personally think twice about taking a swim in the rio coco i’d probably be okay with visiting kentucky but my goodness the stories you guys have shared with me so far most of which if not all of which will be in future smoke pit episodes have convinced me of things that i never thought i’d believe in but man your state is wild robert it has been nothing but a pleasure my friend thank you for taking the time and the energy and everything it took for you to share these stories with me and really with us with this audience and as always on behalf of both myself and the entire audience all 60-something thousand of them um and then the people who don’t subscribe a sincere and heartfelt thank you to my patrons and youtube channel members for going above and beyond the call of duty and allowing me to spend more time creating these stories than i could without your incredible support if you would like to also contribute to the growth of the channel and join the patreon there is a link here as well as in the description of this video while i do try to invest everything back into the channel there are at least a few small tokens of my appreciation like physical tokens that i can offer you for your support along with of course producing more and more stories for you to enjoy i thank you all for your time thank you for watching god bless and i will see you in the next episode you