Ghillie in the Mist - Frank Sarnelli

Ghillie suits, the modern day invisibility suit, camouflage on steroids, ghosts in the grass… err, I’m running out of analogies. Yes, growing up I played a lot of Call of Duty. The absolute best level they did of all the games is All Ghillied Up. In that level, cliche as it sounds, it really felt like you were wearing one. The best segment is when a patrol made of 20 men and tanks show up out of nowhere on your way to your target. All you can do is hit the dirt and pray they don’t notice you. Literally walking only a couple feet around you, its a real nail biter.

The Science Behind the Ghillie

Ghillie’s do a lot more than just make you look like Chewbacca. They truly let you become the environment around out. For example, humans excel at pattern recognition. A person wearing regular camo walking through waist high grass or on a mountain side, their human shape stands out a lot more. Wearing a ghillie you break up that silhouette. You don’t jump out on the mountain side and you’d be near impossible to see crouch walking through the grass.

As for becoming your environment, I meant that literally. One of the major benefits of a ghillie is because of its bushy material and netting, its easy to embed parts your environment. Leaves, twigs, moss, grass, whatever you can find, you can stuff into your suit and blend in even more. Again, with pattern recognition, its harder to distinguish a ghillie from a bush if part of your suit is actually made of real bush.

So, what happens when you have a love for that kind of stealth and have a ton of free time? Well…

Origin Story

It’s 2AM and I’ve been going down the YouTube rabbit hole. Back when the related videos were actually related videos. I somehow jumped into videos about ghillie’s and came across this one.

I was instantly hooked. Seeing the stealth in video games is one thing, but seeing it for real was really incredible. It’s like those pictures where if you look at it long enough you see.. OH SHIT!!

I went into full research mode and watched a ton of tutorial videos. The suit in itself is actually very basic.

It consists of three main components. The base layer, some form of camouflage clothing, a jumpsuit or a hoodie with pants. The mesh layer, some kind of netting, sewn or glued onto the base layer. Finally the “bush” layer, the part the makes it a ghillie. The picked material is woven onto the netting making layers of colors, layers of different materials and lengths.

Throwing together a laundry list of things I need, I started gathering materials. I had an old camo hoodie and some army green pants. I went out to ACE and nabbed some netting and some burlap rolls. Also some Shoe Goo to glue the net to the clothing. The key to the materials is to get items that won’t rot over time. This suit is going to withstand mud, rain, gravel, rocks, dirt, anything outside really. And there is no such thing as washing a ghillie suit. It would defeat the purpose actually. The more rugged and dirty the suit is, the better it blends in.

Having everything I need to make the suit, I went to work.

Cue the build montage!

You would think that a suit that is simple to make wouldn’t take long right? Oof, the trap that I fell in. The first thing that I had to do what cut up the plastic netting into segments. I needed parts that fit around the torso, arms, head and legs. Then I’d glue the segments into place making sure there was enough netting for each limb. That only took me about a day and it really wasn’t that hard.

Where I spent a majority of my time was pulling apart the burlap sheets. I actually don’t remember how much burlap I went through, but I do remember going through way more than I thought. Each sheet of burlap was made of individual strands woven horizontally and vertically onto each other. Once I had a sheet pulled apart, I would randomly cut different lengths of segments. When I had a good pile of segments ready, I would knot it into one of the square holes in the mesh.

I didn’t want the knots to be too complicated or come loose over time, so I did them like this.

It’s also really important that you knot your suit bottom to top. If you work top down, the line you just finished above will get in the way of the next line. That’s all there is to it. Make a pile, knot the pile onto the suit, rinse and repeat.

The end result!

Coloring the Ghillie

Now maybe if I was going to be in a desert environment I could have called it a day. But I live around prairies and forests, so I was going to really stick out. Your color pallet is really going to depend on your surroundings. In my case, I picked up lots of spray paint. Colors consisting of blacks, browns, greens and tans. It was important to really randomize the color scheme, and not over do it with one color. Although green did end up being the most dominant. It is also really important not to get any glossy colors. There really isn’t any shiny objects in the woods, everything is very matte.

So after a few cans of spray paint, dragging my suit around in the dirt and mud, we have a fully constructed Ghille suit.

Hanging up the Ghillie...

It had a good run. That summer I did take it out to do some testing at the woods around my house. Did a little hide and seek with my buddy and it worked just as it should. Just like in Call of Duty and one point he got 5 ft away from my and I scared the shit out of him 🙂

So for now, I bust it out around Halloween or if I need to pull a prank on someone.