Uploaded January 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
On a humid July evening in 1990, Officer Kenneth Hicks spots a van with a broken taillight on Shoreline Drive in Gulf Breeze, Florida. Inside, he finds nineteen-year-old Michael Hueckstaedt – an NSA intelligence analyst who should be seven thousand miles away at his post in West Germany.
What began as a routine traffic stop would expose one of the strangest military desertion cases in American history: six NSA analysts, a Ouija board, and supernatural messages that reached the highest levels of the Pentagon.
Days earlier, Hueckstaedt and five colleagues had abandoned their posts at Field Station Augsburg, the National Security Agency’s largest listening station outside the U.S.
These weren’t ordinary AWOL soldiers; they were elite analysts with top-secret clearances, trusted with some of America’s most sensitive surveillance operations.
Authorities quickly rounded up the remaining deserters: Sergeant Annette Eccleston, 22, the group's senior-ranking member; Specialists Kenneth Beason and Vance Davis, both 25 and seasoned intelligence analysts; and Privates First Class William Setterberg and Kris Perlock, both 20.
They were found scattered between a local apartment and a nearby campground, carrying thousands in cash and extensive handwritten notes detailing communications with supernatural entities.
How did six of America's most trusted intelligence analysts come to abandon their posts for messages from beyond? The answer began on a winter night in 1989, with a Ouija board session that would change their lives forever.
On a humid July evening in 1990, Officer Kenneth Hicks spots a van with a broken taillight on Shoreline Drive in Gulf Breeze, Florida. Inside, he finds nineteen-year-old Michael Hueckstaedt – an NSA intelligence analyst who should be seven thousand miles away at his post in West Germany.
What began as a routine traffic stop would expose one of the strangest military desertion cases in American history: six NSA analysts, a Ouija board, and supernatural messages that reached the highest levels of the Pentagon.
Days earlier, Hueckstaedt and five colleagues had abandoned their posts at Field Station Augsburg, the National Security Agency’s largest listening station outside the U.S.
These weren’t ordinary AWOL soldiers; they were elite analysts with top-secret clearances, trusted with some of America’s most sensitive surveillance operations.
Authorities quickly rounded up the remaining deserters: Sergeant Annette Eccleston, 22, the group's senior-ranking member; Specialists Kenneth Beason and Vance Davis, both 25 and seasoned intelligence analysts; and Privates First Class William Setterberg and Kris Perlock, both 20.
They were found scattered between a local apartment and a nearby campground, carrying thousands in cash and extensive handwritten notes detailing communications with supernatural entities.
How did six of America's most trusted intelligence analysts come to abandon their posts for messages from beyond? The answer began on a winter night in 1989, with a Ouija board session that would change their lives forever.
