War has always been a place of bold innovation and wild gambles. But every now and then, a plan comes along that is so truly bizarre. It sounds more like a joke than an actual military strategy.

In eighteen sixty two, during the early days of the American Civil War, one union officer came up with an idea that was as daring as it was unconventional.

It involved a night time operation. A group of unsuspecting mules and a whole ton of explosives.

The Berlin Airlift was one of the defining moments of the early Cold War, but hidden inside the story of cargo planes and blockaded Berlin is something much stranger.

American pilot Gail Halvorsen began dropping chocolate and chewing gum to children below, attaching the sweets to tiny handmade parachutes so they could float safely to the ground. The idea caught on, and Halvorsen soon became known around the world as the “Candy Bomber of Berlin.”

In the 1950s, the CIA helped the Philippine government fight communist rebels known as the Huks. But instead of relying only on bullets and bombs, one American operative turned to something far stranger: vampire folklore.

This episode tells the bizarre true story of Edward Lansdale, the Aswang legend, and one of the CIA’s most disturbing psychological warfare operations.