Passchendaele, Belgium
The Third Battle of Ypres was an operation during the First World War in which the Allies attempted a major offensive in Flanders to disrupt German railroad supply of their troops at the front. The battle was fought from late July until mid-November 1917. Progress was slow, resistance was heavy, the weather was unusually wet, and Allied casualties were heavy. So were German casualties and as a result an accurate accounting of the dead and wounded of both sides has remained a matter of debate since the operation was ongoing. Estimates and assigning casualties to other operations created a window of casualties of between a quarter to a half million men for each side.
The results of the campaign have remained controversial as well, with some contemporary analysts claiming that the attack all but crippled the German ability to continue the war, a statement given the lie when the Germans launched their Spring offensive in 1918. David Lloyd George described the battle in his 1938 memoirs as, “One of the greatest disasters of the war.” The countryside of Flanders and its towns and villages were devastated by the extended campaign, and little was gained other than further weakening both the British and German Armies, a bloodletting which the British were better able to recover from as the American troops were beginning to arrive in large numbers.
Two major actions were fought in October for possession of the Belgian town of Passchendaele, the first occurring on October 12. The heavy rains and clinging mud prevented artillery from being brought forward to support the advancing infantry, and the British and their allies lost 13,000 men in the failed assault. After waiting for the weather to clear the British tried again on October 29, and this time succeeded in gaining control of the town, despite again enduring heavy casualties. By early November the Allies, spearheaded by the Canadian Corps, held control of the town and its outlying areas.
In Paschendaele today, locals and visitors report encountering spirits and other paranormal activities to a large degree in the town and in the fields and woods which surround it, speaking several different languages. Figures dressed as World War I soldiers, German and Allies, have been seen wandering through the town, on streets and alleyways, and have been encountered concealed in woods and along nearby streams. The sounds of gunfire, including automatic weapons, have been reported. Also reported have been the sounds of screaming and the issuance of orders in multiple languages. The reports are so commonplace locally that they no longer generate much interest.
Passchendaele is just one of several World War I battlefields on which extensive paranormal activity has been claimed. The Somme, Cambrai, and around Verdun have had occasional reports of ghosts or ghostly figures appearing, dressed in the distinctive garb of the First World War soldier. But none of these areas report the intensity or sheer number of occurrences as the Belgian town of Passchendaele, where the reports have become so common that it is said that it is easier to find someone with personal experience of them than to find someone without.