Operation Wandering Soul

The Pulse of Arizona.

We are back with Norman, a Green Beret who oversaw Operation Wandering Souls, who claims to have created a previously unheard of ghost tape number 12.

Norman, begin at the beginning.

Tell me what happened.

I made my report, and that was that.

Okay, so I gotta ask.

You said this was Operation Wandering Souls' last mission, it sounds like, and I'm sorry if I sound in any way insensitive, but in terms of the mission, I would think that the brass of that program would see it as at least some kind of success? I mean, the point of the op was to disrupt the enemy positions, and it sounds like you unequivocally did.

Did the next day's operation not go as planned? It was

That were conspiracy theories for a while and then came out and proven.

Things like MKUltra and Operation Wandering Soul.

You know, things like that.

We get into a lot of the more supernatural conspiracy theories in the show.

Whether it actually worked is still debated, but the mind war tactics it used are still very much a part of present day warfare.

This is the story of Operation Wandering Soul, arguably the spookiest PSYOP ever deployed by the US Army.

In traditional Vietnamese belief, a bad death is worse than dying itself.

The dead are supposed to be buried in their homeland, near their family, so their descendants can tend the grave and perform the appropriate rites.

It sold well in Haiphong.

Lansdale later said the profits went toward refugee relief.

By the late 1960s, the success of his work had found its way to the MACV who used his playbook to develop Operation Wandering Soul.

And one of the results, and today probably the most famous, was ghost tape number 10, sometimes called No Doze.

Stationed in Binh Cat and the village of La Ky, he directed PSYOP teams for the 1st Infantry Division.

He would create one of the tapes used in Operation Wandering Soul, one of the biggest PSYOP operations during the war.

The local Vietnamese customs required the dead to be buried to prevent their departed souls from becoming trapped on the earth, cursed to wander eternally while being tormented by demons.

Obviously, burial for fallen soldiers was largely impossible, and in an attempt to exploit this belief, the US would fly helicopters over the cloud layer during intense storms and play a series of horror tapes, designed to sound like the supernatural torments of fallen Vietnamese soldiers.

And it led to their, like, certain group's eventual surrender in 1954.

So, this was all under Operation Wandering Soul.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

And apparently their plan worked.

It worked so well that they sent the same unit to Vietnam during Operation Wandering Soul, where they broadcast ghostly voices-

Mm-hmm

... and screams into the jungle at night.

Okay.

Have you ever heard of Operation Wandering Soul?

No.

Okay.

And I need to limit how horrific it is, okay?

Okay, got it.

Okay, Operation Wandering Soul.

So like most cultures across the globe, Vietnamese culture has beliefs and rituals that show respect for the dead.