You are now listening to Cryptid Cocktail Party Hey everybody! Welcome back to another episode of Cryptid Cocktail Party, a show where we have a few drinks, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown. I'm your host Dave, joined as always by my wonderful co -host Sarge. How's it going Sarge? I'm fucking doing great! Even though it's Memorial Day weekend and we're supposed to be sad, but I'm doing good otherwise. I feel like people don't understand what Memorial Day
is about. So I work with a couple veterans and... uh before the the weekend uh there's a lot of people saying like oh thank you for your service and then they'd be like what the fuck are you talking about like that's not what that's veterans day that's not what this day is uh because it's about people who have passed and or prisoners of war so right one of my son's teachers back in the day taught him the difference between memorial day and veterans day and uh so For like
the rest of the summer, my son just kept saying to me, I'm glad you didn't die in the war. And just like out of nowhere. And I'd be like, thanks, bud. Me too. Now, was he old enough to know that you went to war when you went to war? Was he even born at that point? Yeah, like he kind of had an idea of what a veteran was. And this teacher was like trying to do the right thing by explaining that, you know, what Memorial Day is and like
why you don't say happy Memorial Day. Yeah. So my, you know, he was like six at the time and he just like very serious face would like put his hand on my arm and be like, dad, I'm really glad you didn't die. Over and over again. I'm like, all right. That's the one time when I'd be like, all right, school, calm down. Like, yeah. Yeah. Well, like I also didn't do a great job of explaining it. Cause I'm trying to use
like age appropriate language. Like the last thing on earth I want is for my kid to know I could have died in a war, you know? But was he born when you were at war? No, he was born the year I came home. So I can't, well, he was born, like I came home at the end of 2010 and he was
born. uh in 2011 so he did never knew me so what the he's worried about nothing right he never knew about combat sarge you know he he just knew that i like to shout at traffic at times and that's because of combat okay so i guess that's a good segue into what we're going to be talking about today uh so i hope so it's memorial day uh or at least the day this comes out it will be memorial day so i figured we should do something military related Seems only... I like that idea.
It seems right, I feel. Now, I don't know shit about war or war zones, and I for sure don't fucking know about any of the tech he used during wars, so I'm sure that hopefully you can fill in any gaps. A lot of Xbox. Is it the drone strikes or just in general? It's a lot of Xbox in... Yeah. Yeah, for the most part. Drone strikes, Call of Duty. Well, all I'm saying is that you might be able to fill in any gaps. In my knowledge, as we navigate. I can probably help with that.
But what I do know about is demons, goblins, ghouls. And I know that the absolute worst place to potentially see a demon, goblin, or a ghoul would probably, it probably would have been like Vietnam, I'm assuming. Probably the worst place to see any of those things. Or anytime you attend a military ball and all of the privates have been drinking since noon. They all turn into goblins. Not great. Sounds bad. So, so I guess
Sarge. A lot of property damage. Yeah. So the first question of my episode of not my episode, but our episode to you would be, what do you know about night vision? Cause the only thing I know about night vision is ghost hunters and it's a green and it makes your eyes look spooky. Yeah. Yeah. I, I am. I had to wear nods a couple of times in real life. We had a one night mission. We were driving on the highway. And so I had my night vision goggles on periodically just
so I could like see out into a field. It is really fucking cool and weird. We played with them all the time. Honestly, I had a lot of fun with my night vision goggles. I feel like you, I feel like you would, right. You would, you would, you would play with them. Right. Like, I feel like, yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, the thing is like you soldiers, especially in a war zone, like you have your laptops, you can watch movies and stuff and you can play video games and stuff,
but like you eventually get to a point. Will you revert back to your, like, childhood years and you just start playing weird games? Yeah. Like, smacking each other in the balls for no reason. Well, obviously. You get bored, I would assume. Yeah. And we had, so we had night vision goggles, and I don't remember why we didn't always do this, but the base I was on, the lights were out all the time because at night they were worried if we had the base lights on, they would mortar
us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it was a small
base, so we didn't have, like, the... Counter defense when they would shoot the motors it shoots like these blast of shrapnel up And then the motors would hit that and blow up anyway like what Air Force one has kind of thing yeah So instead of putting on my nods to go pee at like 2 in the morning I would just wake up go stand outside until my eyes adjusted to the darkness and then walk to the toilet and one night I did that and I felt like something was near me like
a person was nearby, but I couldn't see anything Yeah, it was pretty scary for a minute. And then my eyes adjusted and I looked over to see the ass of a donkey. Who had snuck through the gate on the base, which didn't make me feel great because how did I was going to ask? I was going to ask how did the dog? It was a base donkey or did it show up unannounced? He just snuck through the gate. Like, I think probably what happened is like the guards didn't see a threat.
It was just a donkey. They were like, fuck it. We'll worry about it later. Like, that's pretty fun. You can't just shoot it, you know? And so I am standing waiting to pee and I look over. And I see, like, the tail swish. I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm standing right behind a donkey. I, like, ran out of the way real quick because I didn't want him to kick me. But then I just couldn't stop laughing that there was just a donkey hanging out next to my hut. That's pretty funny. And
so I woke up my teammate. I was like, Murphy, Murphy, you got to see this. And so we're standing in the doorway where there's, like, a little bit of light kind of eking out. And he's like, is that a fucking donkey? Like, how the fuck did that get through the gate? And I'm like, I don't know, but I'm sleeping with my rifle tonight because I don't know who's coming behind it. Yeah, so no one checked this donkey to make sure its ass wasn't, like, jam -packed with C4.
They were just like, eh, well, you know, that one thing happened, so why, like... You know, it's funny you say that, again, derailing the show, but we were driving across a bridge one day, and the Iraqis had been known to put IEDs inside of dead animals. And so one day we're driving down, we're driving across this bridge and there's a dead, I think it was a goat, a
dead goat on the bridge. And for some reason we had to stop and I looked down and realized that there's wires sticking out of the goat's mouth. Well, to be fair, goats are known to eat. It's pretty rare when they eat debt cord, though, you know? Yeah, but they eat almost everything. So maybe, hear me out, maybe there was an IED exposed on the ground and the goat was like, what is this? And then died immediately. Exactly. It's got to be toxic. I can't imagine that explosives
are. Yeah, it's not good for you. So we determined that they probably were trying to set up an IED. And then they saw us coming and they like ran away. But yeah, there was a goat with wires like red wires hanging out of its mouth. So we called the the Iraqi army's explosive ordnance people, because by that point in the war, they were kind of handling all that shit. And we just took off. We were like, I'm not sticking around for this thing. Now, not to be gross, but did you snap
a photo of that? Can I have that photo? Because that sounds funny. No, no, I didn't think to take a picture of it. I probably should have. We were just trying to get out of there at that point. Cause I'm like, uh, guys, it's got wires. Like we should go. And then we just drove off. I feel like if you're in any, any high stakes danger area and you go, there's wires out of something that probably shouldn't have wires coming out of it. You should probably just slowly
back. Yeah. Yeah. You get to a point where you kind of recognize that things might not be great. Like we had a, we had a mission where we, Got a lot of really shady Intel right before we, we left. And I think we got to the gate and we were like, no, fuck it. We're not going out. This is bad news. This has got bad news written all over it. You kind of get the spidey senses and you don't want to go anywhere anyway. Anyways. So yeah, I've used night vision goggles. That's
what we were talking about. This whole episode is about that. All right. So have you ever heard of a red night vision goggle? Like not, not infrared, but red. No. Oh, Sarge. This is the song that every veteran loves, just to be clear. Like, this is our music. We're going to be a non -baby today. We're going to fucking be a non -baby! Oh, God, I'm just already picturing the helicopters
flying overhead. is that a good how do you shoot women and children easy you just don't lead them as much all right so for years pretty much ever since i have been on the internet there's been rumors or i guess like the best way to describe it is like urgent urban legends uh that in 1965 during the vietnam war the u .s government designed and built red night vision goggles for use during
the war So why red? Well, the theory was that, or at least according to Mark Anthony, an Oxford -educated attorney slash self -proclaimed world -renowned psychic medium slash and guest on Coast to Coast AM, he said that the red night vision goggles allowed the soldier's eyes to maintain daylight sensitivity, and it would be easier for them to switch from day to night vision because red light doesn't force the eyes to have, like, it doesn't. it doesn't force them to have to
like adapt to low light conditions. Can confirm. I use my red light all the time. And I, and again, I assume it's the same reason that they use these red lights, like in, in military, like helicopters. I, you see like a, you watch a movie. I think like even like in a, what's my favorite movie of all time. Predator. Maybe I was thinking like the rock. Yeah. Yeah. Like, no, but like, I think in predator, there was a scene where they were in the helicopters at night and they did the
same thing. I can't, I think nowadays they all wear night vision, but I think back then they did. They did use red light. So the red light's not like a movie thing. That's like a whole. No, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. I mean, I didn't fly in helicopters at night, but I'm pretty, I'm almost 100 % sure they use red lights because I know that they use them in airborne. When the airborne troops who do night jumps, I'm almost certain they use the red lights. Just
got to finish watching Black Sails. The other thing I can think of is that it's like pirates when they do the eye patch thing where you put a patch over one eye and then you switch it when you go below deck so that way you can see. I heard that too. Yeah, it protects. Because your night vision is a finite resource, it takes some time for your eyes to adjust, and so it's much
easier to just cover the eye. And a special forces guy that I met who was big, who, like, was in SF in the 70s and 80s, he told us stories about going behind the lines in another country that we're not allowed to talk about. Russia! And he said that he used to keep one eye closed when he would see, like, white light or, you know, any other colored light. he would keep one eye closed to protect his ability to see, uh, when ambient light, when the lights were gone. Okay.
That makes sense. Yeah. So, so anyways, it's, it seems legit. Like I'm not an optometrist and I totally legit. Yeah. I don't want to be bothered to learn how different lights affect the eye. So I didn't look at any of it up. I use it when I go night hiking and I can see great after I turn off the red light, I can still pick up the ambient light. So I can promise you it works. All right. So, so these new goggles, supposedly, were issued to soldiers in Vietnam in 1965. It
was mostly to newborn... Newborn? The newborn brigade. It was mostly to airborne troops, special forces, and recon units. And the thing about these goggles is that just... Just after a week of this new technology being in the field, shit started to get really weird. I can only imagine. Yeah. In the July 8th, 2023 episode of Coast to Coast AM, Mark Anthony went on and talked about how after the first week, the men who were issued these goggles started acting pretty strange.
They started talking about things that no one else but them could see. And for some reason, they were fixated at staring at the jungle canopy and the treetops. Then they started having behavioral and discipline issues and eventually started fighting amongst themselves. Well, Charlie's in the trees, so you have to be careful about that. So it's not like a great first week or two that this whole new thing was being rolled
out. I feel like this exact thing happened right after the release of the Nintendo Virtual Boy.
Do you remember that thing? yes yes he was like all red lights wasn't it yeah so real quick for those too young to remember this the Nintendo Virtual Boy was basically a pair of goggles that sat on a tripod and it had a like a controller connected to it and it was supposed to be like the 1995 version of virtual reality kind of like it was fully 3D rendered like characters and shit yeah but it was like Tron yeah but the display was like a monochromatic red it was red and black
so it was like a bright red light beaming onto your corneas and i i don't know if this is true but i genuinely remember like i think like i fucked up some people like i know yeah some reviewers said that it said like it like caused them to have like nausea vertigo i think it fucked up people's eyes I went to a Sears back in the day. I was a little kid and I remember playing on one that was on display and I stuck my face in there and I literally was so enthralled with
what I was seeing that I actually drooled. I felt the drool come out of my mouth and drip. I remember the Walmart near me had it on display and I played it and I'm pretty sure I died. Like none of this is real. I think this is just like my, it's a fever dream. You're actually in a coma. It wasn't great. Like, and it sucked to look at dude. It was so bad. Yeah. It was, it honestly, like looking back on it now, I just
remember it being a series of red lines. Like it was not, it was not a 3d rendering by any stretch of the imagination. It was just angled lines. Yeah. But anyways, we're getting off track. So soldiers, recap, soldiers got red night vision, started slowly losing their minds, started fighting with each other. And this is all in the first week. Then the helicopter incident happened.
Oh, snap. Allegedly, well, during a routine helicopter patrol over a somewhat quiet part of Vietnam, a gunner who was wearing the red night vision goggles just fucking started open firing at something.
oh no then he just started screaming that he was shooting at demons and he just kept screaming about demons over and over again while just lighting up the jungle not great not great nope now the strangest the strangest part about all of this is that apparently officers and pilots specifically had been ordered not to wear the red night vision goggles but an officer aboard the craft tackled the man ordered that the gunner remove his goggles and he put them on himself. And then according
to Mark Anthony, who seems... I'm going to say this. It seems like his only source is like, trust me, bro, kind of thing. Yeah. The officer, quote unquote, saw several grotesque winged humanoid creatures flying up from the treetops below towards the helicopter, end quote. Oh. And... This wasn't an isolated incident. According to Mark Anthony Esquire, again, he is a lawyer. Over a period of several weeks, reports flooded in from soldiers who had seen these flying creatures while wearing
the goggles. Even officers who had disobeyed their orders and decided to put them on described seeing gargoyles and or demons. Not great. How are we feeling so far? I don't like this at all, but I am not shocked in any way because night vision goggles already kind of make you look like a demon. And then you're going to put on red night vision goggles. Fuck that. Yeah, not
great. I don't want it. It was also reported by people who wore them that the creatures would immediately come at you as soon as they noticed them. Like, you know that they know that you could see them. Well, here's the thing. So I don't know if that means that, like, as soon as the person wearing the goggles noticed the demon or if the demons noticed the person or if the demons noticed that the person wearing the goggles are now aware of the demons. Like,
I don't know what that means. Like, I don't know if it, like you said, like. do they only attack if the demons notice that you notice that you can see them? Or if it's like, as soon as you just even make eye contacts in general, like what is, how would you interpret what that means? That's my interpretation is that you put on the night vision goggles and they're red and now you can see fucking hellfire demons. Yeah. And the demons are like, oh shit, we've been spotted.
Let's go get them. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. As well. But there was no clarification. So I didn't know if it meant like. Of course not. It's coast to coast AM. You're lucky that they were speaking English. But like, yes. So again, I don't know. I don't. That would be my first assumption is that once the demons notice that you are able to notice them, that's when they would attack. But people are saying they.
if that's the case and they said that like this happened, how are they, how, how was there no other witnesses to you being torn apart by a invisible demon? Well, maybe they're not, maybe it's not like they're, they're going to come and tear you apart. Maybe they're going to like, maybe they, they're going after you internally. Like they're going to take your soul instead.
Maybe, but also not going to lie. If I saw a demon that I could only see with red night vision goggles, And they knew that I could only see them with red night vision. When I started running, I'd take them off. I feel like they would stop. Okay. So I hear what you're saying, but I, but no, let me throw in a little combat knowledge here. This is the reason why I wanted to do this episode. Cause you will set me straight, but also would you not just immediately take them
off? I would. Yes. But at the same time, that's me talking to you right near, right here now in Massachusetts. When I went on mission, I was amped up. Well, I mean, you have a machine gun. But you're also so amped up on caffeine and nicotine. Dude, my blood could have powered Vegas for a week. I was constantly in a state of fucking manic violence. Dude, we are two violently different people. Yeah. I was inches away from murder constantly.
because like you go out of mission you need to be alert especially like i was a gunner so i was in the turret of the truck and if you're a door gunner it's same thing you have to be constantly alert for for threats and so you take a lot of caffeine and you've got you know ripping cigarettes like you fucking read about and so you're just ready to destroy anything in your path And the only thing that stopped me from like opening fire on everything is knowing that
like I had to account for my ammunition. So I couldn't just fucking randomly shoot anytime something looked threatening. I had to have a good reason to justify, you know, shooting at something. So you're saying the helicopter gunner who was wearing the red night vision, the red night vision, I saw the demons. He was well within his right to just start unloading into trees. I'm telling you right now, I 100 % would have fucking opened up. an entire magazine. That's
fair. All 200 rounds, whatever was flying towards me while being a door gunner in Vietnam. Absolutely without question. Okay, but we got to this because we still don't understand what they mean by it was also reported by people who wore them that the creatures would immediately come at you as soon as they noticed them. Well, that I can't explain. I mean, other than that, I think that, you know, because the creatures noticed you looking at them and watching them, they were like, oh
shit, better go get that guy. He knows we're here. So what you're saying is that, which is a theory that we might get into, is that they're interdimensional. They don't, we shouldn't be able to notice them and they won't attack us if we don't notice them. Well, yeah, because the way night vision works is that it's picking up a different kind of light. It's picking up light that isn't visible with the human eye ambient.
Yeah. So if these demons are there, maybe these demons are there all the time and we can't see them, but then you put on these night vision goggles and it gives you the ability to see light on a wavelength that we normally couldn't see as human beings. But what if, hear me out. Okay. It doesn't, it's not. Well, either way, the use and testing of these goggles was abruptly canceled
after 60 days. It seems too long. Yeah, it seems like after the first fist fight between two guys wearing these goggles, maybe you don't do that anymore. But again, I'm not a military man, so maybe that's just like the standard length of time. Like maybe like two months is like. I mean, back then, yeah. Nowadays, no, that is not normal. I mean, nowadays, if you've got two guys that go kind of crazy and start fighting each other. You're probably going to cancel that experiment
real quick. Maybe. At one point in Iraq, we had to wear high visibility vests when we were walking in front of our truck to go from my base to the motor pool. Oh, so you mean you're just way more visible to the enemy than you should be? Yeah, because they didn't want us to accidentally get run over. And I'm like, I don't know. I feel like my driver would notice me. I feel like I would trust the driver more than a sniper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But even after the program ended,
there were some short -term effects. Soldiers who had worn the goggles were mentally unstable for months after the experiment, according to Mark Anthony, world -renowned psychic medium. And what they suffered from exactly, I don't know. Full disclosure. I did not listen to this episode of Coast to Coast AM. You're probably better off for it. Well, because if you claim to be a lawyer and a world renowned psychic medium, I don't want to hear a word out of your fucking
mouth. I do not care what the fuck you have to say about anything. He practices ghost law. So how true is this story? Well, let's be real. It's not. uh it's not no and uh thanks to the website uh the website dawnshift .com we can kind of work out why i didn't really go into a lot of detail but i think sarge you have some more experience with night vision than anyone that i would even know For one actual Vietnam
vets have completely demolished the rumor. According to the website, I just mentioned several pilots from this time have confirmed that there were absolutely no red night vision goggles at the time and definitely not enough night vision goggles for an entire unit. Yeah. In fact, there weren't really night vision goggles at all until like the night. I don't think there were, it's like the late 1960s. And in, it was like 1969 that the arm, the army had like prototype night vision
goggles and it was like very limited. And anyone who got them was, it was on a very limited basis and it was crazy top secret and super huge. They had to be huge. Oh, these things were heavy. Yeah. Bulky. And they were never adopted officially into the Vietnam war. In 2009, the fucking night vision goggles that I wore were really small. And they just flipped down off your helmet. And the fucking mount for them was like half a pound. Yeah. And then the goggles themselves are hanging
off your helmet. So you had to tighten the straps really tight in order to keep the goggles from dragging your helmet down. Yeah. So in 1965, the idea of giving full units of men. No way. It just makes no sense. You can't. No. And the thing is, while, yes, red is easier on the eyes, as we learned with the Virtual Boy, it's not great for a display. Green is always the way to go from both a spectral efficiency and also a human visual sensitivity standpoint. Red light
isn't great in low light conditions. As we said, if you're in fog, the taillights of a car, it's not great. Uh, red light isn't great in low light conditions and would basically cause like a loss of contrast and detail. What I read is as basically like, if you were looking through red night vision goggles, you almost colorblind. Like, yeah, we were specifically told not to wear, um, protective eyewear that had red lenses because a lot of people who wear shooting glasses, their lenses
are either yellow or red. And we were specifically told not to because you wouldn't be able to tell if sometimes if there were wires when you were looking for IEDs and stuff because the wires would blend in. Yeah, but green on the other hand is much better and it gives like a smoother, clearer image of what you're looking at. Like the glow lasts longer, so you have a much smoother, clearer image. I honestly didn't know that about
the green light. Because when you were first talking about it, it kind of made sense to me. But yeah, that makes total sense because red light is not great for distinguishing contrast. And again, to your point, it doesn't go far. Red, yellow, and orange, if you're looking at it through a red light, you kind of get lost in it. But the green light picks up all those different contrasts. So that way you can easily determine shape. all that stuff. It's way more
like quote unquote high def. I don't think in the sixties it was very high def, but you, you understand what I'm talking about. Yeah. That's why all of those highly efficient websites use green and black, green lettering on a black background. Exactly. Like I'm not going to go into any more detail about, there you have it. Like that, this is like a fun urban legend that people fucking love to believe. it's been on the internet longer than I have even been alive. I feel like, you
know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's one of those things where I just randomly get a bunch of tech talks for some reason about this fucking story. And I remembered this story and I was like, Oh, I want to learn more about it. And then I realized that like, I don't know how we just did a half hour to 45 minute episode on it because all the information that I got is from four minute, like two minute tech talks. It's cause we're drunk. That's because we're both drunk. Yeah, it's Memorial
Day weekend. And honestly, what better way to remember all of my friends who are no longer with us than drinking a beer. Yeah. Especially if it's an Arrogant's Lager. Yeah. Because it's local, and I was in the Mass National Guard, so fuck all you people. Drinking a goddamn Yingling or Budweiser. Whoa, hold on. All right. Let's all just contact it out. You were from New England first, okay? Never forget your roots. And arrogance is better than ying -ling. I don't care what
anybody says. I just did one of those peas from, like, remember the Austin Powers movie where he eats asparagus and peas in the fountain? It just lasts forever. Yeah, dude, that was... It was the... What were we talking about? Yeah, it's Memorial Day. Can't believe we could do 30 minutes on like two minutes of TikTok videos, which is crazy. This is the first time I've ever heard this story before. I think you brought it home. All right. So how do I end this episode?
Hey, regardless of the work that you did, regardless of your war, we appreciate the vets. We appreciate those who made the ultimate sacrifice. And fuck Donald Trump. Fuck Donald Trump. And Sarge, I appreciate you. I'm glad you didn't die in the war. Me too, buddy. Me too. I mean, like this show wouldn't still be going. I probably would have gave up a long time ago. So this is the most fun I have every week. So I appreciate you too. Thanks for listening and listen Memorial
day. Don't, don't spend the whole day being sad. Those guys didn't die for you to do that. They want you to have a good time. They want you to celebrate just to have a drink for them. I don't think most people know what. Memorial Day is they celebrate the same way Veterans Day is celebrated. Most people, again, at my work, thanks all the veterans for their service before the weekend. At least they didn't say Happy Memorial Day because nothing sets off my rage more than when people
say Happy Memorial Day. And when I was working in retail, nothing would make me angrier. Then when people say, what's your sale for Memorial Day? And I just wanted to be like, how about you just enjoy the fact that you're free, you fucking idiot. Sarge, here's the thing, though. I can get a Toyota right now for like 50%. I know. Nothing says thank you for making the ultimate sacrifice like 50 % off a mattress. Yeah, you know, Raymoor and Flanagan have some pretty good
deals this weekend. I'm so glad I don't work in that industry anymore because every Memorial Day was a rage struggle for me. Oh, for sure. But I'm just going to say, like, I can go to Wayfair right now and get a dresser for like $4. Which makes no sense. I might get a child with it because remember that whole thing? Don't start that fucking conspiracy theory. That fucking conspiracy theory made me so angry. All right, we should wrap this up. We're both a little too
drunk for this. All right, Sarge, do you want to plug your coloring book or no? Yeah, buy the fucking coloring book. SargesSuperNormal .com. SargesSuperNormal .com. $9 .99. Celebrate Memorial Day by coloring Donald Trump. A better color of orange if you can do it. You can find us on Instagram. Just Google Cryptid Cocktail Party. We pop up everywhere. I did that recently. We're everywhere. We're amazing. And you can Google Sarge the Destroyer. You can find me that way.
You can find all of our links on our Instagram page. Sarge was out of the way. Do you want to say goodbye and love you? Guys, I love you. Have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend and have a beer for those who can't be with us. And I love you.