After their brief tour of Iwo Jima, the team returned to their Saipanese base for an extended investigation of that island. Like so many other areas in the South Pacific, the vast number of reportedly haunted sites on Saipan had links to the bloody battles of World War II. But before these investigations could begin, Rune had some unfinished business to attend to.

“After our stay on Chuuk Lagoon,” she told us, “I was really bothered by the idea of the spirit of the Japanese pilot being trapped for all eternity on that little atoll. I really felt that there had to be something the team could do to release him for that place. There is a very old Shinto temple on Saipan called the Hachiman Jinja shrine, so I talked some of my compatriots into visiting the shrine with me to see if the monks could help us.”

This visit took place on November 1, 2006. Although the monks were unable to help the team due to the lack of bodily remains needed for a proper Shinto burial, the team did receive some new, albeit highly cryptic information.

“The temple had these cylinders filled with numbered sticks. This is called omikuji,” Cipher wrote in his journal. “You pull one of the sticks out of the cylinder and then take it to this guy who hands you a matching slip of paper with your fortune written on it. If the fortune is good, I guess you can take the paper home and frame it or something. If the fortune sucks, then you tie the paper to a tree nearby and the wind blows the bad fortune away...”

Team members who participated all recieved complex fortunes, but those of Cipher and Meridian were noteworthy. The former’s stated that he would live a long happy life but would be blown away by a great wind that would “darken” him and send him on a journey from which he would never return. Meridian’s fortune also had a storm theme, but was more ominous. The fortune stated that Meridian had once survived a “great typhoon,” but that storm was beginning to gather once again and she should be careful to avoid it. This storm, so the fortune read, would batter Meridian and the other OCE team members “against the rocks.” Also of curious nature on Meridian’s fortune was the image of a fly. Cipher quickly noted that Tahiki had warned of “enemies that would sneak into your midst like flies” when he mysteriously appeared to Ash on the Iwo Jima beach. It was Meridian’s fortune that would stoke the debate among the team members that they were living under a curse, although the nature and source of that curse remained unknown.

Following their visit to the Hachiman-Jinja shrine, the team began to tour the island in search of paranormal phenomenon. Their first stops were along the western coast to the northernmost tip of Saipan, areas that had a gruesome history. Here are three major sites from World War II: the last Japanese command post, Suicide Cliff and Banzai Cliff. The last command post (also known as Banadero) was the site where the Japanese commander of the island, General Yoshitsugo Saito, ordered his men to fight to the death then ritually disemboweled himself with a hara-kiri knife. Not far away, at the aforementioned cliffs, many of his men and hundreds of the locals followed suit by flinging themselves hundreds of feet onto jagged rocks or into the raging surf in order to avoid capture by the Americans. For years afterward, there was a concerted effort by the locals to scour the areas beneath the cliffs to collect the human remains there and provide them with proper burial. It was a depressing day for all.

More intriguing, however, were the stories of how the Japanese garrison on Saipan created a intricate labyrinth for the defense of the island using many of the native caves. The team immediately refocussed their attention on three areas of the island known for such caves. On November 11, 2006, Polaris happily noted that the team had found a cave suitable for exploration:

Much to everyone’s relief, we agreed upon a cave for our investigation. Kudos to Trespass who actually discovered it after nearly an hour of searching. It is located in the Lau Lau area of the island and is not on any tourist map. Some of the staff here at the hotel told us about it. We were able to drive part of the way up this muddy forest road and then we had to park and climb up this treacherous hill to reach it. Meridian’s going to figure out some kind of pulley system for getting supplies up to the mouth of the cave when it’s time to move in. The cave entrance is heavily overgrown, but once we cut away some of the vegetation we found that the opening was quite large and easy to navigate. It did not appear to be big enough for a gun emplacement and our sources told us it was a hiding spot for Japanese troops and some of the civilians on the island. Apparently, when the civilians inside chose to surrender to the American troops, they were massacred by the Japanese soldiers. This is a fairly common story on Saipan with numerous stories of snipers picking off civilians as they tried to surrender. Later, American Marines found the holdouts hiding inside and dropped in hand grenades and used flame throwers to burn them out. We don’t know if there were any survivors or even if any of the bodies inside were recovered. When we entered the mouth of the cave, there was a dark soot all over the roof and walls which looked like scorch marks. I assume these are left over from the war era. Unlike the other caves we’ve been to, there aren’t any signs that it has been visited at all. Our job now will be to assemble our camping and investigation supplies and move in.

After solving the obvious logistical difficulties, the team moved into the cave about a week later. “Being in the cave has been a very interesting experiment so far but I sure wouldn’t want to live in one,” Cipher wrote in his journal. “It’s damp and you feel claustrophobic in no time. Plus, which was the weirdest thing for me, you can never tell what time of day it is!”

Almost immediately, the team began to report unusual phenomenon. As with “Zero Atoll” at Chuuk Lagoon, the initial experiences were auditory. Trespass noted within the first day that several of the members had heard women’s voices rising out of the depths of the cave. Over the next two days, the team performed a variety of experiments to try and document that voices. They were in fact successful when Polaris was able to capture of digital video what sounded to be a woman moaning and a crying baby. [Click here to view this video.]

As the team wandered deeper into the cavern, they also began to uncover World War II-era relics which had laid untouched for over sixty years. At first the objects were ordinary, including glass bottles, tin cans, coins and pieces of clothing. But on November 25, 2006, the team members made a chilling discovery - a sink hole filled with unexploded Japanese ordinance. Saipanese officials regularly warned tourists to stay out of unexplored caves for precisely this reason. Even after all these years, the jungle and caverns are still littered with potentially deadly ammunition. The team hotly debated whether they should abandon their exploration, but heartened by their recent successes at capturing disembodied voices on tape, they decided to stay. It would prove to be a nearly disastrous decision.

On November 29, 2006, some of the ordnance found by the team mysterious discharged, injuring both Trespass and Cipher. Cipher was the more badly injured, having suffered first and second degree “flash burns” to his leg and arm. He also had metal shrapnel in his leg which had to be surgically removed. The doctors felt that most of the explosion must have been deflected away from the men by the rock outcroppings so the concussion and fire traveled parallel to Cipher's body rather than over it. In the end, the burns were not nearly as serious as the team had feared. Trespass suffered minor burns and damage to his hearing.

This frightening experience put a quick end to the Saipan investigation, as Cipher was transferred back to Hawai’i for additional care. He later had to resist serious pressure from his family to leave Outcast Earth, with his parents accusing Polaris of being incompetent and reckless. Following the experience, the team took a long respite in Hawai’i and the U.S. mainland to visit friends and family.