Were night vision goggles used in Vietnam that made people see demons?

​

Again, no.​​​ 

This claim originated with one person telling a lie on a podcast. That lie has been amplified countless times through the idiocy of social media. 

​

On the July 30, 2018 episode of the Forum Borealis podcast, a man named Clif High told a story about Vietnam which he claims to have heard from his father. Supposedly the US military was testing mysterious night vision goggles in Vietnam which had the unintended side effect of allowing users to see demons in the jungle. He claims:

​​​

• His father allegedly learned about experimental red-output night-vision equipment used by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War.

• The devices supposedly allowed soldiers and helicopter crews to see strange, hostile, nonhuman beings that were normally invisible.

• High characterized the beings as demonic or interdimensional entities, sometimes described as flying around the aircraft.

• Some personnel allegedly panicked, suffered mental breakdowns, became suicidal, or fired weapons at what they saw.

• He claimed the problem was connected specifically to the red light or red phosphor output of the early equipment.

• The military supposedly abandoned or altered the technology and adopted green-output night vision partly to prevent users from seeing these entities.​​​​​​​​

​

(Forum Borealis podcast July 30, 2018 - Clif High - Antarctica Unveiled (Pt. 3 of 3))

​​​

Clif High makes several claims and offers no proof for any of them.

​

There is no evidence that the US military ever produced or tested red night vision during the Vietnam War era. ​The earliest red night vision patent (US 3,987,299) was granted in 1976 to Hendrik Mulder of N.V. Optische Industrie de Oude in Delft, Netherlands (see document here). This wasn't even a US company, and the Vietnam war ended a year before.

​

The earliest red tube tested by the US military was the Chromatic PVS-5 a product of the US Army Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD) of Ft. Belvoir, Virginia and manufactured by Litton. It was tested in 1987 by the US Army. The device contained red and green phosphor night vision tubes combined in the hope that it would allow for color night vision, but those tests were unsuccessful at producing repeatable color night vision results (see document here).

​

Red phosphor night vision tubes still exist though they fell out of use due to subpar performance when compared with green and white phosphor tubes. Tested devices using red tubes failed to give steady, reproducible results for color night vision. ​Though these tubes still exist, no one still using them reports seeing demons. 

​​

We have seen that Clif High's claims about red night vision are not accurate, so where did his "demons" come from?

​

Early night vision in Vietnam did not consist of goggles or head gear, but rather specialized large, heavy night vision scopes such as the AN/PVS-2 "Starlight scope".

These early scopes used green phosphor and produced a distorted green image with coarse electronic noise and poor contrast. Because of this, soldiers DID report anomalous visuals using these green starlight scopes.

​

Reported effects included:

• Landscapes appearing to shimmer, move, or “snow.”

• Bushes and other stationary objects seeming animated.

• Rats, monkeys, rocks, plants, and snakes being mistaken for people or fantastic creatures.

• References to “dragons” and supernatural-looking forms.

• Human figures appearing ghostlike, semitransparent, or surrounded by a pale-green aura.

• Glowing eyes.

• Visual vertigo and the impression that the entire countryside was moving.

• A feeling among some long-term users that the scope revealed a separate or otherworldly realm.

​​​

A former combat medic recalled looking through a starlight scope after a particularly intense firefight and seeing what appeared to be hundreds of dead enemy soldiers. When daylight came, he discovered that the bodies were not actually there and that the scene had been a hallucination or severe visual misinterpretation.

​

Now does this sound familiar?​

​

The above list was taken from a 2017 document, "The Secret of Seeing Charlie in the Dark: The Starlight Scope, Techno-anxiety, and the Spectral Mediation of the Enemy in the Vietnam War" by Richard A. Ruth a historian at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD.​ Ruth pulled the medic story above from John W. Bennett’s memoir, Killing in Action—Struck by Lightning: A Viet Nam Combat Medic’s Story (2009). 

​

So here we have two sources which give a paranormal twist to the use of night vision starlight scopes in Vietnam and apparently there were quite a few more in popular novels going back several decades such as: 

​

Tim O’Brien "If I Die in a Combat Zone" (1973)

A soldier looking through the scope describes:

• “Dreamland”

• a “fairy-tale land”

• a circus

• Viet Cong dressed like clowns

• the possibility of seeing the Grim Reaper

​

Scott Ely "Starlight: A Novel" (1987)

The novel centers on a sniper named Tom Light and a starlight scope believed to possess extraordinary powers. The scope gives visions of:

• skeletons dancing

• dead men moving

• distant people or places appearing in the viewer

• foreknowledge of who will die

• the supposed ability to raise the dead

• dragons and other supernatural forms within the phosphorescent landscape

​

Clif High claims he heard about Vietnam night vision and demons from his father.  We have no way to verify if that's the case. ​We have no way of knowing whether Clif High genuinely heard this from his father, whether his father had any actual secret firsthand knowledge from Vietnam as Clif claims or whether he read it in a Vietnam novel, or whether Clif High himself read it in the novels and articles that predate the podcast where he made these claims. Was his assertion that his father told him just a way to give his stories an air of perceived social legitimacy?

​

Based on all available evidence the "trust me bro" stories about flying demons and interdimensional entities seem to have been fabricated by Clif High himself in 2018 and based on the verifiable paper trail of night vision development the story he claimed about red phosphor night vision is completely wrong. 

​

Claiming that you were told something by a whistleblower, anonymous source, or family member who was an insider, etc. is a well-known tool of the professional conspiracy theory con artist. It's how liars shirk responsibility for their lies. 

​

Earlier spooky Vietnam night vision stories are nothing new but are much more conservative. They don't try to oversell the demonic angle because Vietnam vets don't tend to be looking for likes and views. There is still no evidence that these visons were objectively real or that soldiers using starlight scopes were interacting with anything more than visual hallucinations caused by poor first generation technology. 

​

Starlight scopes are still available on the secondhand market, as are red phosphor night vision tubes. No one who has them today reports seeing demons. 

​​​​​​​​​​​​​

There is also no evidence that demons actually exist.​​​