This dry wind and dust wind could drive a person mad, the marine thought. Private John Swanson stopped and wiped his brow. There were three marines assigned to dig this trench, and the two others appeared as miserable as he was.

“Hey! What’s this?” yelled one of the marines, Zeke.

The three of them look at where Zeke was pointing. Through the dust, they could make out the outline of a human skull lying in the sand.

That was almost a year ago. The first incident of many that fallowed, the marines learned to rebury the bodies in proper graves. Once they found three bodies close together - one of the skeletons was wearing a pair of reading glasses.

Nicknamed “The Rock”, Observation Point Rock is a lonely and bare outpost. It was captured from the Taliban last year, and groups of 2-3 marines are posted to guard it for 2-3 months at a stretch. American troops have learned to refer to it as “the haunted Observation Point”.

Life here is tedious at best. The blast-furnace like heat, months peering out of sand bag firing pits, and round the clock guard duty can wear on a soldier. Yet as Sergeant Josh Brown briefed his successor, he warned of the mysterious atmosphere and perplexing phenomena that they found on The Rock. “The local people say this is a cursed place,” he told the Times of London, who originally broke the story. “You will definitely see weird-ass lights up here at night.”

Others in his unit told similar stories. “It is weird what you hear and don’t hear around here,” he added. The soldiers talk of Taliban soldiers entombed in the caves beneath The Rock, but the bodies buried near the peak are dead Russian soldiers from their last incursion, over 20 years ago.

Corporal Jacob Lima was woken one night by the sound of blood curdling, hideous screaming. Runing out to investigate, he found Corporal Zolik. “He was yelling and begging me to go up to the firing point he was guarding,” Corporal Lima told the men taking over from him. “When I got there he said that he was sitting there when he heard a voice whisper something in his ear. He said it sounded like Russian. He begged me to stay in there with him until he was relieved from guard duty. “

Before the Marines took over the outpost, the Welsh Guards, who also experienced the phenomena, manned it. “The Brits claimed to see weird things, hear noises,” Corporal Lima said. “Lots of them said it’s creepy at night, especially from midnight till 4am. You see a lot of unexplained lights through night-vision goggles.”

The Rock’s relative elevation has made it a defensive stronghold throughout recorded history. Medieval arrow slits are still visible and the locals say it dates back to Alexander the Great. “This place really sucks,” said Lance Corporal Austin Hoyt, shouldering his pack. “The Afghans say it’s haunted. Stick a shovel in anywhere and you’ll find bones and bits of pottery. This place should be in National Geographic — in the front there are weird-looking windows for shooting arrows. You know, they say the Russians up here were executed by the Mujahidin.”