Spectral Forces: The BANQUO Dossier

"At midnight, all the agents and the superhuman crew come out and round up
everyone who knows more than they do."
-- Bob Dylan, "Desolation Row"

Presented for your approval: some tales dead men tell, when they're between jobs,
collected up and presented as the skeleton of an organization. The notion of Project
BANQUO came to me a while back, popping in there as a possible campaign frame.
The basic seed was almost certainly the Clockwork Games RPG Spookshow, by
Aaron Rosenberg ("You live. You die. You go to work as a spy."), although watching
too much X-Files (assuming there is such a thing) certainly helped. Other
ingredients in the pot include the mostly-awful Necroscope series by Brian Lumley,
a cool headline about a CIA retiree in the New York Times a while back (Weiner, Tim.
"Master Creator of Ghosts Is Honored by His Kind." New York Times, 19 Sep. 1997,
A11 (N)), the various exposes of the CIA "psychic spying" fiasco (especially Jim
Schnabel's well-researched Remote Viewers), and whatever I was eating while
reading Cryptonomicon. Let's open the dossier, and if you enjoy what you see there,
who knows? Perhaps more documents will surface in the future.

"The Army Materiel Command learned of CIA interest in the paranormal. We

discovered the Army interest was generated by data which emerged from Vietnam."
-- Dr. Kenneth A. Kress, "Parapsychology in Intelligence: A Personal Review and
Conclusions," Studies in Intelligence (Winter 1977)

Although the relevant files are still very much classified, an article in Dezerter, a
leftist underground paper, in 1971 gives the basic details. During the Vietnam War, a
number of reports of "ghost soldiers" and "phantom patrols" began to filter back to
theater command. At first put down to reports of Green Beret and Project PHOENIX
operations, careful cross checking by the DIA determined that no U.S. or friendly
force was involved in over 65% of the reported cases. Concerned that the military
bureaucracy would bury the reports, Col. Paul Fox decided to investigate on his
own. One of those maverick figures that Vietnam produced, Fox was also
descended from the Fox Sisters, the famous mediums who began the spiritualist
movement in the 1840s. Fox somehow made contact with these "ghost soldiers" and
began using them on concerted operations against the VC and NVA. After the
withdrawal of American troops in 1973, Fox somehow convinced two or three
powerful figures in the Army brass (one of whom committed suicide immediately
afterward) to green-light his "Spectral Forces" team, keeping it code-word
classified as Project BANQUO. Colonel (now Lieutenant General) Fox is still listed as
Project BANQUO administrator, and looks the same as he did 25 years ago.

"The camps around Utah and Arizona are the spookiest ones we've photographed.
These are very clearly camps for the undead. All the full-service camps have rail
spurs and landing strips adjacent to them."
-- Don Bradley, "Commentary on the Concentration Camps"

Project BANQUO shows up on very few tables of organization, even the supposedly
"complete" ones shown to Congress when the Black Budget comes up for approval.
BANQUO is likely attached in some manner to the Psychological Warfare Group
under the 1st Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, although General Fox is
officially stationed as a U.S. Army liaison at Williams Air Force Base near the
Superstition Mountains in Arizona. From pay records and supply requisitions through
Fox' office, one can estimate BANQUO is roughly battalion strength. Watchdog
groups like Covert Action Bulletin occasionally note obscure line-items such as
"underground construction -- Arlington National Cemetery," "global shortwave
Spiricom transmitters -- Williams AFB," and "barbed wire (rustproof silver coating)
for military biohazard facility -- Beryl, Utah" but even they miss things like the
exhibit of Apache Ghost Shirts that the Smithsonian "lost" in 1988, or the addition of
PK monitor and containment systems to four Black Hawk helicopters and an AWACS
jet after some "training exercises" in Iraq in 1995.

"A specter is haunting Europe -- the specter of Communism."

-- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Fox was nearly certain that Great Britain had a similar operation, or so one can
deduce from his 22 trips between Vietnam, America, and the U.K. during 1969-
1971. Inquiries among the British peace movement prove fruitless, and the one
tabloid which had begun investigating the odd connections between the Earls of
Glamis and the Royal Marines -- connections which went back to the Napoleonic
Wars -- suddenly fell under the a punitive Official Secrets Act lawsuit in the last
years of the Thatcher government. The fall of the Soviet empire has proven to be a
boon for investigators, however (and, no doubt, for Project BANQUO); a dubious
translation of Lithuanian GRU office memoranda which surfaced briefly on a Swedish
website contained lengthy details about the Soviet Narodny Prizrachii Polk ("People's
Ghost Regiment") -- most of it, sadly, detailing various crimes perpetrated against
Lithuanian cemeteries and "thefts of sacred relics from churches." The commander
of the NPP, General Yuri Akhromeyev, is now an influential member of the Russian
mafia guarded, rumor has it, by the men sent to kill him for the past decade. The
Kaunus Memorandum also gives hints of "fedayeen from behind the Mountain" (who
gave the NPP trouble in Afghanistan and, apparently, presented BANQUO with
several challenges in Lebanon, Iraq, and Libya) and some unpleasant speculations
about the contents of a legendary Taoist gloss on the Tibetan Bardo Thodol and on
its whereabouts since the Chinese invasion of 1959.

"Nettie was in a trance for about an hour. When she awoke, she found herself
standing at a long table, looking down on a map of the Southern states. She was
holding a pencil in her hand, and the three men were looking down on the map. She
heard Lincoln say, 'It is astonishing how every line she has drawn conforms to the
plan agreed upon.'"
-- Martin Ebon, They Knew the Unknown

Intriguingly, Project BANQUO may not be alone. Leaving aside the well-documented
reports of CIA "psiwar" and "channeling" projects such as SUN STREAK and
STARGATE, informed speculation suggests that the U.S. Army once had a similar
project created during the Civil War, probably under similar circumstances. The so-
called "30th Delaware" vanishes off the military rolls after the Wounded Knee
Massacre in 1890 and the defeat of the Ghost Dance movement. However, G.A.R.
records show 34 members of the "30th" without proven death certificates -- or with
death certificates predating 1863, the date of the unit's formation. If the 30th still
operates, sub rosa, its agenda is unknown, although it may be connected with the
shadowy "Mortuary Study Group" founded in 1892 in Baltimore, Maryland -- the
group which has published a number of the works of the elusive "Job Frager" since
1939. A similar unit may have formed during World War One, but the records of
"Detachment 446" vanish completely in the confusion of Operation Overlord.

"BAD MAGIC . . . LEST MEN BELIEVE THE WORST, LIGHT A CANDLE FOR TRUTH.
MAKE A FILM ABOUT WHAT I AM ABOUT TO TELL YOU . . . DEMONS LIVE IN THE
PENTAGON. THEY RULE ADVERTISING . . . TO DEVELOP FORCES TO IMANENTIZE
THE ESCHATON . . . THEY VIEW THEMSELVES AS FORESIGHTED. YOU ARE THEIR
ANTITHESIS."
-- JFK, during a seance October 25th, 1997, held by Lori Ravage

The question of BANQUO's current field of operations is fraught. They certainly

undertake foreign missions -- the accidental declassification of Williams AFB's
mid-air refueling logs makes that plain. However, every piece of available data
points to numerous domestic operations as well -- until its ISP was bought by
Pacific Bell, the Kirlian WebCam Page carried photos of a number of verifiable
Vietnam-era MIAs/KIAs in numerous locations throughout the South and West. FBI
Behavioral Science Unit specialists who publicly scoff at tales of a nationwide
"Satanic serial killer network" will privately confirm that many seemingly-unrelated
cases involve "hauntings" or "vengeful ghosts" which force the killer to reveal himself
-- and name confederates in cases still listed as "unsolved." In addition to what
author Maury Terry has referred to as a "Church of Evil," there are the speculations
among some groups that a rogue "Shadow Government" (metaphor or simple truth?)
has been turning American policy to evil ends reminiscent of fascist Germany since
the late 1940s. Some theorists go so far as to connect the two groups, and whether
BANQUO opposes both, serves one against the other, or is part of some as-yet
unguessed structure must remain an enigma.

"Should the central government successfully use occult methods to defeat a

movement based upon such methods, the very concepts of sorcery and magic
which lend impetus to the insurgencies of the moment may gain strength and
acquire even greater trouble-making potential for the future."
-- James R. Price and Paul Jureidini, "Witchcraft, Sorcery, Magic, and Other
Psychological Phenomena and their Implications on Military and Paramilitary
Operations in the Congo," Special Operations Research Office, August 8, 1964

In your game, BANQUO can be almost anything you want -- the data above support
BANQUO as opponents or villains, as mysterious NPCs, or even as the sponsors of
a PC group of undead. (The inverse, perhaps, of the Investigators campaign on p.
117 of GURPS Undead -- the "average" BANQUO PC is a roughly 250-point Ghost
with heavy military skills.) The Spectral Forces can be the iron fist behind the velvet
glove of the Cabal from GURPS Horror; either a rival to, or an elite unit of, the
Psiberocracy in GURPS Psionics; or a perfectly normal and aboveboard part of the
U.S. military intelligence community in GURPS Technomancer. BANQUO could also
have somehow "traversed the Veil" between Merlin and our world, or be based in
some military Heaven such as Valhalla and operate on many worlds.

Changed to Strike Force Banquo, they become the Black Ops "retirement plan;" and
a suitably badass version could be a rival org, or even a third force battling the more
supernatural part of the GURPS Black Ops bailiwick. Similarly, in GURPS Voodoo,
BANQUO could be a positive force in the Shadow War, an important liaison between
the Roman-Enlightened military and the Rada bizongues -- or a tool of the In-
Betweeners nestled in the corridors of power. Evil BANQUO can include Shades,
Spectres, and Wraiths -- General Fox is, no doubt, a Lich. GURPS Old West games
could center on the activities of the "30th Delaware" in a campaign, and Detachment
446 can show up in a ghost-breaking GURPS Cliffhangers game with no trouble --
even as an ally. Truly, BANQUO is a welcome ghost at any roleplaying feast -- so
dig up and dig in.

Past Columns

Article publication date: June 4, 1999

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