Claims about Vietnam War Night Vision Devices

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iwantmoresources

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I saw a video about the history of night vision devices, (
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9uuGkTgetk
) and someone in the comments claimed that soldiers using red NVD devices saw demons. Does this idea have any merit or can this claim be explained by hallucinations, reflection artifacts,drug use etc. ?

I am asking this with the intent of finding out if early night vision had image artifacts that could look like demons or similar things from folklore/religion, not to start a conspiracy thread.
 
These stories are old, and can continue. Numerous such tales came out of Iraq and Afghanistan as well... "ghosts" marching to execution pits, that sort of thing. I would mark the great majority of such stories to:
1) PTSD
2) Makin' stuff up.

The #2 group are of course lies of various kinds, to entertain or to puff up egos; the #1 are the sad results of people being subjected the the horrors of not just war, but crappy cultures that do unspeakable things as a matter of course.

My Dad was in Viet Nam relatively early; they were issued a single Starlight scope. They lost the thing in the course of trudging through the jungle; when they got back to base without it, they were sent *back* out to retrieve it. Which they did, but they weren't happy about it. No tales of ghosts or demons visible through it, however.
 
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg_L3jmvu6M



Some comments:
“We have deemed your PTSD non-service related”

Something about the Middle East is just spooky. Being out there amongst the ruins of countless civilizations would be eerie, especially at night

I talked to a veteran that told me about weird soviet radio traffic and vanishing thermal signatures of humans, etc stuff relating to that. He told me that its believed those lands are cursed, and when you look into the history of all the armies who went there to die it makes sense. Something in the soil there drives men mad.

Living in the prisons in AbuG there is no doubt in anyone mind that that shit was haunted. You would be laying there on your cot looking up at the metal butcher hook in the ceiling in your jailcell (the hardest points for defensive safety). The pinacle of the ceilings had these little windows that you could pull a chain to open and vent the rooms. Well during the night they would randomly open and close. You would hear walking in the stairwells. You could hear people mumbling and talking in cells that were plainly empty. The number of light globes that shoot around the place was the norm. It was truly hell on earth there.
 
Couple thoughts.

First, the red color. Red lights are used to preserve night vision in general, since rod cells don't react to red light at all. What this means is that you're still using your color vision (cones) as if it's daytime, but if you stay in red illumination for half an hour or so you're allowing your rods to start to adjust to night-time light levels (takes about 2 hours in total) while still using your normal color vision. Which functionally speeds up your dark adaption by 25% or more.

So I suspect that the NVGs started off using a red color as the basis of operation. Except that your rods are actually most sensitive to green light, not red. So anyone looking through a red-tinted NVG would be using their daytime color vision.



Ignoring outright hallucinations caused by drug or chemical exposure or sleep deprivation, I would expect that the helicopter crews saw large bats and owls at night for the flying creatures, and monkeys in the treetops.

Not to mention that NVGs really mess with your depth perception, so a Giant Demon could have easily been a small bat 25ft away.
 
iwantmoresources said:
I saw a video about the history of night vision devices, (
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9uuGkTgetk
) and someone in the comments claimed that soldiers using red NVD devices saw demons. Does this idea have any merit or can this claim be explained by hallucinations, reflection artifacts,drug use etc. ?

I am asking this with the intent of finding out if early night vision had image artifacts that could look like demons or similar things from folklore/religion, not to start a conspiracy thread army pt score calculator.
Click to expand...
The claim that soldiers using red NVDs saw demons is likely a result of visual artifacts, hallucinations, or psychological factors. Early night vision devices often produced distortions like halos, ghosting, and color distortions that could resemble figures or shapes. Additionally, fatigue, stress, and even drug use could contribute to hallucinations, causing soldiers to misinterpret these visual anomalies. There is no evidence to suggest that night vision technology itself caused any supernatural phenomena.
 
I believe certain products of a recreational nature may be involved in ALL of those deployments and that can have an effect on perception/sensitivity and awareness levels.
 
A video? Seriously? The Germans pioneered nightvision during the war. There are no "theories," only facts. Aside from stress induced or sleep deprivation induced, that's it. Anyone caught doing it wrong is subject to disciplinary action.

Image lag is a defect of some devices.
 
"Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball".

I try not to mate, it's the tea wot makes me do it guv'
 
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Scott Kenny said:
I would expect that the helicopter crews saw large bats and owls at night for the flying creatures, and monkeys in the treetops.
Click to expand...
Spider monkeys have an otherworldly cast to them…which lends their remains some use as a Jenny Haniver/jackalope:
historyofgeology.fieldofscience.com

De Loys' Ape

Louis François Fernand Hector de Loys, (1892-1935) was a Swiss geologist pioneer of the young science of oil fields prospecting; he travelle...
historyofgeology.fieldofscience.com historyofgeology.fieldofscience.com

These are likely the “demons” folks saw:
en.m.wikipedia.org

Red-shanked douc - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

Vietnam ghost stories

9 Ghosts And Demons In Vietnamese Folklore That Scared Us As Kids

Legends of these 9 ghosts and demons are passed down from one generation of Vietnamese people to the next, intriguing thrillseekers.
thesmartlocal.com thesmartlocal.com
 
Foo Fighter said:
I believe certain products of a recreational nature may be involved in ALL of those deployments and that can have an effect on perception/sensitivity and awareness levels.
Click to expand...
Besides those sorts I've got to assume the officially sanctioned stimulants can have a similar effect after extended use. I think the last time the US Army officially used "Go" and No-Go" pills on a widespread basis was during WWII, but I'm sure they've seen some limited use in later wars.
 
Numerous tablets and jabs were issued to various groups during the deployment for Op Granby, we had little or no clue outside of the Naps and Baps, Some were Malaria pre treatment but others no advisory was available for.

In my reduced sensitivity periods these would seem to be stimulants, should folk want them to be. My pet theory was unofficial study props, My own favourite is for suggestion over fact and as with the sugar pill morphine etc, which has basis in fact, it would be vary handy to have incresed alertness through suggestion over chemical additives.

The Malaria medication is the same one most nations deployed used apart from (IRC) the Singaporeans who were on something they brought over, is the same one canned later through association with paranoia etc. Still waiting for acknowledgement. Ha and indeed HA. Sorry, borrowed that one.

As a paramedic and theatreanaesthesia specialist, I would have expected the truth to be in the documentation but, we were denied the basics not to mention batch numbers etc. They did know what was happenning, no wool pulled over eyes at all.
 

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