Every year, during a period from 1946 to 1952, the residents of a small town in western Germany heard what resembled a six-gun salute on the fifteenth of every March.
Some residents made frequent trips into the surrounding hills in hopes of finding the source of the noise, but to no avail. The townsfolk eventually named the area "Gunpowder Hill." The children of the town even created a legend about it, stating that soldiers, who in that time were missing, had been executed and were buried somewhere in the hill. The purpose of the six gun salute was to guide people to the location of the men. On the fifteenth of March every year, the children would gather at the edge of town, eagerly awaiting the six gun shots to be heard.
In late 1951, the hills on the outskirts of the small German town were surveyed for the future construction of a NATO military site. The military base was to consist of a series of deep underground bunkers and weapons supplies in the case of a Soviet invasion. In February 1952, construction began. Just four weeks later, the crew began digging a massive two-hundred foot deep hole for the future underground storage bunkers.
It was during this time that the crew made a morbid discovery.
As they neared the end of the digging operation, a human hand was seen sticking out of the bottom of the hole. Upon future examination, twenty-seven bodies were discovered at the bottom of the two-hundred foot deep hole, dressed in Prisoner of War uniforms worn by the allies in Nazi war camps.
A NATO officer ordered for the bodies to be exhumed immediately. As the medical team watched the bodies being carried out of the hole, they looked on in puzzlement. The bodies were remarkably well-preserved. Furthermore, the POW uniforms bore a strange insignia unlike any the men had seen before; an orange circle with a single black dash in the middle. However, the most unsettling characteristic was the faces. Their eyes were wide open, and their mouths were sealed shut with an unknown adhesive. The bodies were immediately dispatched to the local morgue for identification and pathological examination.
That night, the local mortician began his work. He found it difficult to concentrate on his task. The eyes of the first man he was to begin work on seemed to be staring back at him. The mortician took his scalpel and began his first cut.
Blood poured out of the incision with staggering force. The mortician backed away from the table in shock. The red liquid began running down the table, pooling on the floor below. The eyes of the body began watering, and streaks of tears ran down its face. Soon, its eyes rolled back into the its head. The bleeding ceased. In horror, the mortician ran to the door, but not before catching a glance at the twenty-six other bodies lying out on separate tables. Their eyes stared at him with hopeless fear. The men were still alive.