Red Web
The Story of How An Army of Angels Helped Turn the Tide of a World War I Battle | Angels of Mons
19 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What was the significance of the Battle of Mons in World War I?
During World War I, battle was ruthless, and many fell to the innumerable German forces. Among the fighters was the British Expeditionary Force who made their first appearance in the Battle of Mons. Largely outnumbered, they were sure to be defeated until, as legend has it, a phantom army reigned from the sky, aiding them in the battle and saving many of their men.
Was this a case of hallucination, or did these ghostly visitors save a multitude of lives? Today we're investigating the very interesting Angels of Mons. This is Red Web. Welcome back, Task Force, to another episode of Red Web, the podcast all about unsolved mysteries, true crime, and the unknown.
I am your resident mystery enthusiast, Trevor Collins, and joining me, hearing about this really fascinating topic, this very intriguing case for the very first time, Alfredo Diaz.
I mean, it kind of feel like we're just talking about Return of the King here.
Yeah! Oh, yeah, buddy!
The army of the dead and the oath breakers. I was like, what do you mean Ghost Army came in and saved them? I've seen this already.
I have a piece in this episode that I actually, I was like, I'm going to shoehorn in my Lord of the Rings references right here. You're not wrong. In fact, when researching this particular story, this comes from Christian who has known about this for a few years. I'll talk more about that in a second. But like when reading about this, I was like, did Tolkien use any part of the stories here?
to inspire what happened in Lord of the Rings. And I don't think I actually Googled that. So Christian, if you don't mind taking a dive into that to see if there's anything that comes up, we can resurface that as the time comes. But yeah, the Angels of Mons, a very interesting topic because we know everything about it.
On a rare occasion, we'll talk about a solved mystery, and I think that's kind of what's happening here, but very much like some of the paranormal episodes we've had before, some of the folklore episodes, some of those kind of interesting gray area episodes, we're going to watch the origins of a ghost story in real time.
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Chapter 2: How did the legend of the Angels of Mons originate?
And so, you know, for this story to be like, you know, I don't know. It just seems like such a fun story, such a grand story. And I'm very intrigued to, like, learn all the details because. You know, you don't like to usually use the word fun, but this is something that's just, like, piquing my interest, right? Because it seems like this grandiose, supernatural story.
The German army and everything that they're doing, and then out of nowhere, you know, this insurmountable odds and the supernatural communist army. Like, what does that look like? Does anyone have any, like...
stories like also if they're assisting an army then did everyone was everyone on board with this right right you know is everyone's like we all saw it or someone people are just like i don't know what y'all saw i didn't see that right shut up dave dave damn it we all agreed to this dave we all said we saw it right yeah dude you're totally right and i think i get what you're saying when you say fun i'm not taking the malicious interpretation i understand that a lot of these topics are really really fascinating there's something drawing about them and
I think what, you know, now that we've done this for five and a half years, I think there's, we've identified the deeper layers of intrigue in a lot of these topics. Of course, the stories are all fascinating. The theories, the what ifs, the what could be. Yes. All of that is so deeply fascinating. But now you see the undercurrents of like, well, what really motivates something to really go?
Get into the zeitgeist. Why is spiritualism such a big thing during the time of the turn of the Victorian era into the 20th century, which is kind of where we're at? Why is like, what makes that tick and what stories kind of sparked any of that? So we've explored, you know, like the Brown Lady of Rainham Hall, one of the first original ghost pictures.
Yes, we debunk it, but at the same time you explore why it's there. Why are these things so fascinating? Even if it's a true crime case that's unsolved, sometimes, like last week, it's exploring how, even in modern times, the truth can be lost in just a simple, short period of time.
And so I think that's also part of exploring this, is what happens in the zeitgeist to kind of change things or spark intrigue in something else? I don't know. This is going to be a really, really fun exploration, I think, of an otherwise very heavy topic, right? World War I.
Also to clarify something I said earlier, we have the German Empire here in World War I. A lot of conspiracies mostly revolved around the Nazi Germany's experiments and things of World War II. So before we dive in, I do wanna say lots happening on Red Web. This Wednesday we have a poll exclusively for you guys on the elite tier and up. So if you wanna kind of come decide our futures,
Sometimes it's a movie club, sometimes it's which episode are we gonna cover or cover first or what have you. Or sometimes it's just us kind of scratching at your brains and seeing what makes it tick. And it all goes back into our giant pot of stew as we stir up the old, you know, knowledge juice.
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Chapter 3: What were the psychological factors influencing soldiers during the battle?
We'll describe those outfits a little bit much more specifically, actually, and where they come from. This is like old British.
Yes. Army helmets, right? Is that what that is?
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Pretty much right on the head of the nail there. So this is a visual as like the story unfolds. This is what kind of the visual was made for. Now in life, you know, we're talking about calling down St. George, asking for help in that moment. St. George is a revered Christian martyr known for his bravery as a Roman soldier. And in the Christian faith, St.
George is the patron saint of many countries, including England. but also of soldiers, knights, fencers, archers, and much more. So you can see the relevance at hand, you know, retreating soldiers calling down their patron saint, essentially. So again, coming back to Macken's story, as it continues, after he's called upon for help, St.
George then appears on a white horse to help them win the battle. He is surrounded by bowmen, but not just any bowmen, as you described them, you know, with their, I want to say, old-timey kind of hats, Specifically in this story, they are bowmen from the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, which was part of the Hundred Years War, my history buffs would know.
The story goes on to say that 10,000 Germans perished with the help of these archers, and the British then went on to win the battle. Obviously a little bit more of a departure from reality, but not so much as to rattle the believability for people susceptible to it. I'm laying some groundwork.
We know that Macken might have taken some inspiration from the Battle of Mons itself after hearing how well the British held on their own and maybe pulled from some of that to work on this admittedly work of fiction. But Macken claims that he didn't notate as such, right? He said the work was entirely crafted in his head.
And much like any movie that's ever been made, you see at the end of the credits, like any resemblance to true people or events or places is all coincidence, right? So that's kind of his claim is that he's not necessarily imbibing all of this truth into it. He might have been inspired by it. And he's kind of saying that any sort of truths amongst the fiction are just kind of being stumbled into.
But this leads us to a very interesting conversation when we talk about the aftermath of this story hitting the world and being published. But that's the story. I want to give a pause for a second. If you have any thoughts or questions before we move into how this story then was broadly accepted and what people responded with it.
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