The Demon of Brian Rand

The Toll - 6/1/08 - The Demon of Brian Rand


by Dave McGill
June 01, 2008 08:25 PM EDT

You generally hear of multiple demons in the minds of those who are severely tormented, but there was only one ghost haunting Brian Rand as he held the rifle in his hands. He was sitting in a picturesque setting at the Cumberland River Center Pavilion in Clarksville, Tennessee, just a few steps from where he and his wife, Dena, had been married.

The shadows of twilight were lengthening as he wrestled with that one demon. He was undoubtedly also thinking of his pregnant wife and the joys and responsibilities of raising his as yet unborn child. But the ghost wouldn't go away, the ghost of an Iraqi man he had killed while on guard duty in the Green Zone during his first deployment.

According to an article published today by McClatchy Newspapers, that particular ghost wouldn't leave Brian alone. It choked him "while he slept in his bunk, forcing him to wake up gasping for air and clawing at his throat. It whispered that Brian was a vampire and looked on (during his second deployment) as Brian stabbed another (service) member...in the neck with a fork in the mess hall (the soldier was only slightly injured). Eventually, the ghost told Brian he needed to kill himself."

Brian's sister, April Somdahl, was quoted as saying: "The spirit of the man that he killed didn't leave him, it kept harassing him. He said 'this guy is following me around in the mess hall, he's trying to kill me. I told him to leave me alone but he says he wants to take me with him.' "

At first, like many soldiers afflicted with post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, Brian avoided asking for help, fearing the negative impact on his career. The McClatchy article quoted the Rand family as attributing the depth of his condition to this fear and the military culture that caused it, as well as to the Army's stop-loss policy which is designed to keep soldiers on the battlefield longer than one normal tour.
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