The Haunted Barracks of Cerler

by Angel Briongos Martinez and Javier Garcia Blanco

"That night it was my turn to stand guard. It must have been two or three in the morning. I was facing the guardhouse and felt cold. There was a door whose padlock rattled noisily in the wind. Don't you suppose? Well, I imagine it was. Well, from the sentry box I could see squat-all up in the mountains. I had my Cetme rifle ready and with the clip loaded, I was so afraid. In other words, there shouldn't be anyone up in the mountains, but I could see a light up there--a light where there should be none at all. The light moved, descended, and suddenly rose again. I advised the corporal and he laughed. Well, I thought, I must be imagining things. But the event was recorded in the guard roster."

Experiences such as this one, recounted by Oscar Blanco Calvo, have been taking place in the Cerler military base since the summer of 1992. Since then, staying at the base has become hell for the recruits and subofficers stationed there.

While the impressive phenomena began in 1992, it all started a year and a half earlier, in March 1991, when an accident occurred at a nearby peak while maneuvers were being held. Nine persons died in the incident--seven soldiers and two subofficers.

A Tragic Accident

It was the morning of Monday, March 11, 1991. The Civil Protection Service at Huesca had issued a warning the previous Friday regarding the risk of landslides in the Aragonese Pyrenees around that time as a result of the recent thaw. Despite the warning, and expedition led by Captain Luis Silvera mobilized to perform its winter survival exercises. The groups as formed by a total of 133 individuals, divided into groups of ten or twelve soldiers. Tragedy was unleashed a few hours later, at a peak known as Tuca Blanca de Paderna in the Maladeta region: a tremendous avalanche buried a considerable part of the expedition under tons of ice. Luckily, most of the soldiers were able to escape on their own or aided by their buddies. After intensive rescue operations by the Guardia Civil and the Army, employing trained dogs, was it possible to recover the bodies. The corpses were temporarily guarded in the Cerler military base (where the expedition's elements were temporarily headquartered)--more precisely in the dry-off area where equipment used for winter maneuvers is thawed out. On the following day, March 12, a funeral for five of the dead soldiers was held on the base. Meanwhile, rescue operations continued with little success--the remaining casualties would not be found until many days later. After the tragic event, Benasque Valley and the Cerler military base would return to normal, but the peace would not last for very long.

The Soldiers Speak Out

From the summer of 1992 onward, strange rumors began to circulate around the town of Cerler and the nearby town of Benasque. If the rumors had any truth to them, some of the soldiers stationed at Cerler had been experiencing, for a certain length of time, a series of unexplained events that kept them in a constant state of fear. Quickly, recruits and local residents alike related the events to the still-fresh accident at Tuca Blanca. As if it weren't bad enough, the phenomena appeared to take place with greatest intensity in the dry-off area where the bodies had been placed, as well as the adjacent room, which was destined to lodging soldiers during certain times, particularly when maneuvers were being held. On September 28th of that year the news made it into the regional newspapers. The Diario del Alto Aragón featured on its cover a most curious and alluring story: Investigation of Strange Paranormal Phenomena Underway at the Cerler Base. The inside pages explained in detail the various strange phenomena which according to military sources, were being experienced by a number of soldiers stationed in this base in a tiny Pyrenean town. The newspaper also mentioned the commissioning of an investigation with the ultimate purpose of uncovering the truth to these events, as well as a request for assistance by the military to a team of parapsychologists from Barcelona. According to the story appearing in the Diario del Alto Aragón, the soldiers were faced on an almost daily basis with a plethora of incomprehensible phenomena, such as unexplained noises, doors that opened and shut by themselves, shadows darting hither and fro during the night, and objects that fell to the ground without any apparent reason.

An Official Cover-Up?

The more suspicious minds felt that a cover-up effort on the part of the armed forces was underway barely a day later, when the Heraldo de Aragón newspaper featured a communiqué issued by the Huesca Military Government, stating that no strange phenomena had transpired at Cerler. Commander Espinosa would add to this statement: "It is not true that there is a history of paranormal events at this base, and much less that the general would have enlisted the aid of any parapsychologist, nor of any person devoted to the study of such events, for the simple reason that nothing at all has happened there. Life is normal and uneventful, as ever. I would like to know the source of these stories." However, a number of persons who were on duty at this base during the dates in question did not seem to be in agreement with the official statements. A subofficer stationed at the base stated on that very same day to an Heraldo reporter: "Strange things happen at the base, such as sudden blackouts, noises from the doors and other phenomena. I myself have not seen anything, I only know what soldiers have told me. Of course there's something going on."

Whatever the situation, the fact is that strange goings-on were occurring at the base--events as inexplicable as those which had been experienced by Oscar Blasco, for whom there had been no end to the surprises on that night. After his unpleasant encounter with the enigmatic light, he would experience, together with another soldier, an incredible experience that he would never forget: "When sentry duty was over I went to sleep. Later I had to go on patrol with another kid, and it involved going around the base in circles."

The two young servicemen began their patrol of the base feeling ill at ease due to what Oscar Blasco has seen earlier. "We started to walk. Looking at the trucks and at all that, already scared shitless with what I'd seen. We started inspecting the façade to make sure all the windows were shuttered. Well, we kept walking, and in the time it takes to walk the loop around the base--some 7 or 8 minutes, we noticed all that all of the windows were unshuttered." Stunned, the soldier told his companion. "Did you see that?"

Upon hearing the latter's affirmative reply, they agreed to walk around the building once more in hopes that it could all be ascribed to their imaginations. Unfortunately for them, the mystery was waiting for them upon their return. "We walked another round and then, we found the windows were shuttered again! We were really shitting ourselves."

The experience must have indeed been disquieting. When we visited these scene of the events, we were able to ascertain that this event could not have been a practical joke. The façade consisted of 36 windows on 3 separate floors. And as if this weren't enough, the shutters are equipped with locks to keep them from banging against the structure due to the wind. For this reason, it is very hard to open or close them in a short space of time without making any noise whatsoever. Certain that what they had witnessed was clearly out of kilter, they decided to notify the corporal of the watch.

"We informed the first corporal and he laughed. He said we were in bad shape, but the next day, we noticed that the logbook included a report of what we had seen. They were treating it as something completely normal." As this witness would tell us himself, other companions had told him experiences they had lived through which were even more chilling. Apparently, many reported seeing the deceased returning from skiing all dressed in white, falling down on the bunks and disappearing.

In some cases, such as that of recruit P.B.B. and his companions, the fear they withstood was indeed considerable, so much so that one way of releasing their fear consisted in getting drunk almost every day. According to the young soldiers, who were stationed there to fulfill their compulsory military service, the doors to their lockers would open and shut by themselves, and some of them would even appear the next day covered in scratches of an unexplained nature. "It was horrible. While we were in bed, we could clearly hear the sound of the locker doors opening and closing noisily, as if by magic," stated P.B.B. As if all of this weren't enough, the sound of mysterious footsteps and the vision of sinister shadows added to the length of their stay in the military.

"On certain occasions, at night, we could clearly see human shadows moving through the bedrooms, accompanied by the sound of footsteps. It was too rough. We couldn't take it."

Another soldier, B.J.C., had the misfortune of experiencing a horrible situation. One night while on sentry duty, sheltering from the cold within the sentry box, he could hear the sound of footsteps closing in on his location. "The sound of the steps grew closer each time. I was very scared, since it felt I was being surrounded by those things. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't see anyone."

This recruit, who will recall this harrowing experience the rest of his life, was not the only one who could hear the sound of sinister footsteps within the base. Angel Civera, a young man from Zaragoza who served at the Cerler base during 1994, was also witness to another distressing event: "I heard footsteps sometime after midnight. That day I was that last one to go to bed and I closed the two doors, knowing that no one else was up. I heard footsteps out in the hall. No doors were opened or anything. Of this I'm certain. If there had been anyone else, I would have heard the door to another dormitory open up.

This young man also told us of the existence of a large crack that ran along the building's façade from the floor to the roof. According to what older soldiers had told him, the enormous fissure had been formed shortly after the death of the mountaineering soldiers. During our investigation, we noticed that the base was built on a slope, which could have contributed to the natural formation of the opening.

An Apparent Sense of Tranquility

It would appear that the strange phenomena at the Cerler barracks have died down over the past months. The fact is that aside from the magnificent view offered by the entrancing Pyrenean landscape, we witnessed nothing else during our visit to the location. Perhaps this silence is due to the fear of some young soldiers who prefer to remain silent in the face of events which caused them to feel fear. Who knows? Perhaps after reading these lines, some of them may change their minds and choose to share their recollections and experiences.