Latest / Mystery Archives Episodes / 3 Hour MARATHON Of PARANORMAL UNEXPLAINED Stories

Transcript

3 Hour MARATHON Of PARANORMAL UNEXPLAINED Stories · Mystery Archives Episodes

• 0:00
  Can a soul or the essence of an entity become trapped inside of
• 0:05
  an object? Could one, channeling enough
• 0:08
  energy, dedication, and care into something allow an
• 0:13
  otherworldly presence to possess it, attracting spirits like
• 0:18
  moths to a flame? We have covered haunted objects
• 0:22
  here before, such as Akiku the Doll, among others.
• 0:27
  But this story is too infamous to not be given the time of day,
• 0:31
  and although it has been told many times, perhaps you will
• 0:35
  learn a detail or two that you've never heard.
• 0:37
  Before this is the untold story of Robert the Doll and the
• 0:42
  malevolent monstrosity that stares at the world from behind
• 0:47
  its beady little lies. At first glance, most people
• 0:59
  tend to agree that although dolls of all sorts can be creepy
• 1:02
  to say the least, there's something particularly unnerving
• 1:06
  about the doll that has become known to the world as Robert.
• 1:10
  But behind the initial feelings of unease at first glance lies
• 1:14
  many tales of accidents, tragedy, and misfortune, all
• 1:19
  supposedly at Robert's hands, far too many within his presence
• 1:24
  to just be a string of awful coincidences.
• 1:27
  But if an evil force supposedly lives within the confines of
• 1:31
  this century old child's toy, to come to recognize and understand
• 1:35
  just what it could be, we must first tell its story.
• 1:39
  And to tell Robert's story properly, we must first start at
• 1:42
  the very beginning. As with many legends, there are
• 1:46
  multiple versions of the origin story and how Robert the Doll
• 1:50
  came to be. Having read through most, if not
• 1:53
  all of them, I'll be sharing with you the most agreed upon
• 1:56
  origin for accuracy's sake in the beginning.
• 2:00
  We will explore other theories and origin stories later.
• 2:03
  In this video, the years 19-O four and a man named Thomas Otto
• 2:09
  is on a trip in Germany. Whether it was for business or
• 2:12
  leisure, we can't say, but during his trip, he decided to
• 2:17
  pick up a gift for his young grandson's birthday to take back
• 2:21
  home with him to the States. As he perused various shops
• 2:25
  throughout his time there, he stumbled across a toy that he
• 2:29
  believed would be the perfect fit for the young boy.
• 2:32
  Perched on display behind a pale glass window sat a doll.
• 2:37
  The doll was about the size of a young child and was accompanied
• 2:40
  by a small dog doll as well. Knowing that his grandson was
• 2:44
  lonely on the large family estate and was very fond of dogs
• 2:49
  as well, Thomas believed he had found what he had been searching
• 2:52
  for and quickly purchased the toy.
• 2:55
  In due time he would find his way back to the United States
• 2:58
  once his trip was over, bringing his precious cargo with him,
• 3:02
  making his way back to the family estate located in Key
• 3:06
  West, FL to greet his family after months abroad, Thomas and
• 3:12
  an act of innocence and excitement gifted the toy to his
• 3:15
  grandson Eugene for his 8th birthday.
• 3:18
  As soon as Eugene laid eyes on the gift he had received, he
• 3:22
  became ecstatic. With no other children his own
• 3:25
  age in the home or nearby, he now for once had his very own
• 3:29
  friend. His own best friend and one that
• 3:32
  could accompany him wherever he went.
• 3:35
  Sitting at around 3 feet tall with his little dog, Eugene
• 3:39
  named his new friend Robert. But Robert of course needed
• 3:44
  clothes to fit for years of adventures to come.
• 3:47
  So Eugene's mother Maria quickly found just what he was missing.
• 3:52
  A small sailor's outfit that had once belonged to her son but had
• 3:55
  long since been outgrown. After placing Robert in his new
• 3:59
  clothes, the two were off to play and soon became
• 4:03
  inseparable. Wherever Eugene win, Robert
• 4:07
  accompanied him from hours of play inside and outside of the
• 4:11
  house to the dinner table and bedtime.
• 4:15
  His new best friend was everything the young man wanted
• 4:18
  and much more. Besides constant companionship,
• 4:22
  Eugene began to confide in the doll, often speaking to him as
• 4:26
  if he was a person and his own right.
• 4:29
  His parents, who were first just as elated as their young son was
• 4:34
  at his excitement over his new toy, began to grow concerned
• 4:38
  over how close their son was to the doll.
• 4:41
  But they would initially write off the behavior as most would,
• 4:45
  since lonely children with their imaginations still very much
• 4:48
  active will typically invent imaginary friends or adventurous
• 4:53
  stories. To fill the void.
• 4:56
  Or lack of friends and real adventures within their daily
• 5:00
  lives. But over the months since Robert
• 5:03
  had arrived, they noticed a bizarre shift in Eugene's
• 5:06
  personality. He began to grow extremely
• 5:09
  possessive and obsessive over Robert and would lash out at his
• 5:13
  parents, sometimes violently, if the doll was not in his sight at
• 5:18
  all times. It would soon.
• 5:21
  Appear that Eugene's obsession with his cloth companion and
• 5:24
  shift in behavior wasn't the only strange activity that was
• 5:28
  taking place. One night as she tucked her son
• 5:32
  into bed, Maria overheard Eugene whispering to Robert something
• 5:37
  that at this point had become a daily occurrence.
• 5:40
  But as she closed the door to his room and began to walk away,
• 5:44
  she heard a deep, guttural voice respond to her son.
• 5:50
  Shocked and terrified, she rushed back into her son's room,
• 5:54
  only to find him laying with the doll.
• 5:57
  As per usual, when she asked him just who was speaking, he simply
• 6:02
  answered Robert. This scary happening wouldn't be
• 6:07
  the last. About a year into Robert the
• 6:10
  Doll inhabiting their Key West estate, the Ottos noticed yet
• 6:14
  another shift in their son's behavior, but this time it was
• 6:19
  almost the exact opposite of what the initial shift had been.
• 6:23
  Eugene had gone from a quiet and shy but charming young man to a
• 6:28
  belligerent, angry, and possessive boy.
• 6:32
  But now he had become one that was meek, full of anxiety, and
• 6:37
  constantly seemed like he was walking on egg shells.
• 6:41
  He had now also taken to violent fits on occasion, as if
• 6:45
  something was trying to overtake his body and soul.
• 6:50
  The guttural voice that Maria had heard a year ago could be
• 6:54
  heard much more frequently now, and just as frequently, almost
• 6:59
  nightly, it became commonplace to hear what sounded like glass
• 7:03
  breaking and constant commotion coming from Eugene's room.
• 7:08
  Upon hearing the turmoil, his parents would rush to discover
• 7:12
  the source. Upon opening their son's door,
• 7:15
  they would find his furniture dumped upside down.
• 7:19
  Other toys of his would be smashed or in pieces, and Eugene
• 7:25
  would almost always be in the corner of the room in his bed,
• 7:29
  petrified, while Robert the doll would be in his usual space
• 7:35
  nearby. Upon asking just what had
• 7:38
  happened, they would be met with an all too familiar answer.
• 7:42
  At this point they would ask just who did this?
• 7:45
  Eugene and his answer would always be Robert.
• 7:51
  Noticing the activity becoming more and more intense and being
• 7:55
  a God fearing woman herself, Maria was deeply disturbed by
• 7:59
  what was taking place in her home and what was taking place
• 8:02
  to her family, particularly her son.
• 8:07
  Besides the nightly terror that now plagued them, she was very
• 8:10
  much disturbed by this guttural voice that she kept hearing.
• 8:14
  Knowing that her son had not yet matured, she knew that there was
• 8:18
  no way his voice could reach that deep level of tonality and
• 8:22
  malice as she often heard. At times, the voice would even
• 8:27
  shout and speak over Eugene, and unless he was exceptionally good
• 8:32
  of ventriloquism, something was horrifically wrong.
• 8:36
  It was if the devil himself now occupied the walls of their home
• 8:40
  like a stain or a liquid, the presence had slowly seeped in
• 8:46
  and permeated throughout their lives.
• 8:50
  One night, as per usual, the family settles down to sleep.
• 8:55
  As the clouds spiral and the moon now haunts the sky above
• 8:59
  them, gleaming down overhead, the family's peace is shattered
• 9:05
  by the horrific screams of their son and the echoes of the sounds
• 9:11
  of things being broken. Wide eyed and terrified,
• 9:15
  Eugene's parents rushed to their son's aid, Lantern in hand.
• 9:19
  The closer they get to his room, the louder the low and horrible
• 9:24
  voice becomes, and the louder the screams of Eugene become as
• 9:29
  well. The deep voice that had been
• 9:32
  growing louder suddenly was silent like the winter's snow as
• 9:37
  hands touched the doorknob. Quickly overcoming their fear
• 9:41
  for the sake of their boy, the couple throw the door open to
• 9:44
  find their son huddled underneath his sheets.
• 9:48
  His room was almost completely destroyed.
• 9:51
  Most of his belongings were in pieces or tatters, from what was
• 9:57
  left of his toys to his furniture to even his clothes.
• 10:02
  Poor Eugene was shaking in the corner of his room opposite his
• 10:06
  bed, and Robert, along with his beady eyed companion were in his
• 10:11
  bed staring at them all silently.
• 10:15
  By this point, Maria knew that whatever Robert was, or whatever
• 10:20
  inhabited him, was truly evil. But unsure of how to.
• 10:24
  Handle the situation or what exactly they were dealing with
• 10:28
  and a fit of rage. She grabbed the doll and rushed
• 10:32
  to the attic, casting Robert and his canine companion into the
• 10:37
  darkness above. This would remain his home until
• 10:40
  a better idea presented itself as to what to do with him.
• 10:45
  The low groans and screams and breaking ceased in Eugene's
• 10:50
  room, but would frequently be heard in the attic.
• 10:54
  With having such a large estate to care for, the family did have
• 10:58
  a team of servants to care for the property, but their loyal
• 11:02
  crew, having experienced the strangeness themselves, up and
• 11:07
  quit. The servants soon became a
• 11:10
  revolving door with new faces almost always coming and going
• 11:15
  just as quickly as they started, despite his banishment to the
• 11:19
  attic. Alongside the occasional
• 11:21
  crashing sounds and yelling, the family said that they would also
• 11:26
  hear Robert walking around, the pitter patter of his small feet
• 11:30
  often being heard echoing all throughout the house, especially
• 11:35
  at night when he seemed to truly come alive, so to speak.
• 11:41
  As the years passed, and despite all of the childhood trauma and
• 11:45
  fear inflicted on him by the demonic doll, unbeknownst to any
• 11:49
  rational mind, after his parents passing, Eugene would choose to
• 11:54
  take Robert back into his possession as an adult.
• 11:59
  Perhaps he did this to ensure that Robert wouldn't inflict
• 12:02
  terror upon anyone else. Maybe he felt like he had the
• 12:05
  most experience dealing with him and therefore he was the most
• 12:09
  equipped to handle anything that could possibly happen as a
• 12:13
  result of his presence. Eugene, in his adult years,
• 12:16
  became an artist and would later marry and have a family of his
• 12:20
  own. He kept Robert propped up in the
• 12:23
  window of his art studio, known as the Turret Room, which
• 12:27
  overlooked his front yard. Annette, Eugene's wife, was said
• 12:32
  to disapprove of Robert's presence in the house and
• 12:35
  demanded that he be gotten rid of or banished into the attic or
• 12:39
  basement. For a short time this took
• 12:42
  place, but naturally Robert didn't take kindly to this and
• 12:47
  apparently began to make threats towards her by visiting her in
• 12:51
  her dreams and verbally telling Eugene that if he was not moved
• 12:56
  back, horrible things would happen to his family.
• 13:00
  So eventually Robert was placed back in the turret room.
• 13:04
  Aside from this, I couldn't find any additional information on
• 13:08
  the happenings that took place during those years inside the
• 13:11
  home. I would hope and imagine that
• 13:13
  perhaps Robert had gone dormant during this time, especially
• 13:17
  since Eugene did eventually have children of his own and
• 13:21
  hopefully didn't allow them to be compromised by having such a
• 13:24
  thing in the house. There were, however, reports of
• 13:28
  passerby's, school children and neighbors feeling a strange
• 13:32
  presence when passing by the house on a daily basis.
• 13:36
  Others would say that they could see Robert move, but in the
• 13:40
  blink of an eye, he'd be back to where he was sitting.
• 13:43
  Eugene Otto will continue to spend the rest of his life
• 13:46
  painting in the turret room with Robert the Doll until his death
• 13:50
  in 1974. However, this bizarre legend
• 13:54
  does not stop with his death. Upon Eugene's passing, his
• 13:59
  family sold the house to a woman named a Myrtle Reuter.
• 14:03
  Upon moving into the home, she noticed sitting in the window of
• 14:07
  the turret room was a small doll with a sailor's uniform.
• 14:13
  She thought this to be strange since the Otto family had not
• 14:16
  left any other belongings behind when they had moved, but
• 14:20
  regardless she decided to keep it.
• 14:24
  Myrtle soon began to realize that there was something
• 14:26
  different about this doll. Upon house cleaning, she would
• 14:30
  typically notice that he moved around the room, seemingly by
• 14:34
  himself. At night, she would hear what
• 14:38
  she described as small footsteps all throughout the house.
• 14:44
  Guess who would visit her? Claimed, too, that Robert would
• 14:47
  move of his own volition, and that his blank expression would
• 14:51
  change to one of rage if anyone discussed him in a negative way.
• 14:56
  Myrtle would eventually. Reach out and speak with the
• 14:59
  widowed Annette Otto. Who would confirm her worst
• 15:02
  fears that something otherworldly inhabited Robert
• 15:06
  the Doll? After dealing with his antics
• 15:09
  for years, she finally decided to reach out to a local museum
• 15:14
  and would donate Robert in 1994 to the Fort E Martello Museum in
• 15:20
  Key West, FL, where he remains today.
• 15:24
  But as with each previous relocation, his story does not
• 15:28
  end here either. Placed inside his own glass
• 15:31
  display for the public to see him each and every day, one
• 15:35
  would think that perhaps Robert's antics would cease.
• 15:38
  He was of course a natural source of curiosity and would be
• 15:42
  seen and admired by many people daily.
• 15:45
  But you would be very wrong. Staff at the museum have claimed
• 15:50
  to find Robert in various positions within his case, as if
• 15:54
  he was attempting to break out of it or had been out of it
• 15:57
  prior and had just re entered it.
• 16:00
  The Phantom Footsteps is previously claimed by all three
• 16:03
  families has also been reported, as well as the dolls expression
• 16:08
  changing from neutral to nasty in an instant.
• 16:13
  The afflictions first started with the staff themselves, from
• 16:18
  horrible bouts of rare diseases to relationship breakdowns and
• 16:23
  marriage failures, as well as unique instances of psychosis.
• 16:29
  Over the years, the Curse of Robert the Doll began to take
• 16:33
  shape and become a well known phenomena, but it would soon
• 16:37
  spread to many others besides the staff themselves.
• 16:41
  Many people upon visiting Robert's exhibit, finding him
• 16:46
  strange to say the least, would often mock him, berate him, or
• 16:51
  just laugh at his appearance. Little did they know that they
• 16:55
  would be inviting the wrath of something otherworldly.
• 16:59
  Shortly after their visit, droves of people began to
• 17:03
  experience shockingly similar happenings to that of the staff,
• 17:08
  varying in intensity, almost as if their punishment was being
• 17:12
  tapered to fit their crimes. From less serious experiences
• 17:17
  like paranormal activity beginning in their home,
• 17:21
  horrible luck and job loss to name a few, to much more serious
• 17:26
  experiences like exotic disease diagnosis, rare cancers,
• 17:32
  relationship disintegration and others, car accidents, falls,
• 17:39
  and even untimely death. Eventually, a warning would be
• 17:44
  added to Robert's exhibit explaining the alleged curse and
• 17:48
  the proper etiquette to approach him with, whether that's to
• 17:52
  observe or take a photo is to not offend whoever or whatever
• 17:58
  inhabits the doll itself. Over the decades, an entire wall
• 18:03
  has been dedicated to the letters people have dropped off
• 18:06
  or sent the museum if they weren't able to come in person,
• 18:10
  begging for Robert's forgiveness, hoping to end
• 18:14
  whatever horrible situation they found themselves in after their
• 18:18
  visit. To this day, there are over 1000
• 18:21
  letters, with more continuing to be added each and every year.
• 18:26
  But could there be more to this legend?
• 18:29
  As I mentioned in the beginning of the video, there is another
• 18:32
  origin story that could explain just what inhabits the doll and
• 18:36
  how it got there. I will also add several elements
• 18:40
  that I found interesting relating to the case itself.
• 18:44
  The alternative origin story says that a young woman of
• 18:48
  Bahamian descent gave Thomas Otter the doll as a retaliation
• 18:53
  for a misdeed. As to why this would have taken
• 18:56
  place is not known, but speculation has led many to
• 19:00
  believe that the girl, or perhaps a relative, had been a
• 19:04
  member of staff at some point or another at the family's Key West
• 19:08
  estate. The retaliation was that the
• 19:11
  doll had been imbued with a spirit that had been conjured
• 19:14
  using voodoo, and by trapping the entity within the doll,
• 19:18
  making it its vessel, it became aware of its surroundings and
• 19:23
  knew what it was sent there to do.
• 19:26
  Although with many details in this case, lots of details can't
• 19:30
  be corroborated due to the age of the story itself, but there
• 19:34
  are a few details that I managed to dig up that are interesting.
• 19:38
  The doll itself appears to have been manufactured by the Stife
• 19:41
  Company, a German family company that was headed by German
• 19:45
  designer Richard Stife, the original designer of the beloved
• 19:49
  teddy bear. And the original design of the
• 19:51
  doll in particular, and others that were similar to it were not
• 19:55
  designed as toys, but rather stage props for the time.
• 20:00
  So it's hard to say if Robert was ever intended as a toy in
• 20:03
  the 1st place. The family tree of the Ottos
• 20:06
  also has conflicting information in regards to birth and death
• 20:10
  dates as well as names, but I did my best to corroborate this
• 20:15
  information and I'll be linking the info in the description
• 20:18
  below. Today, Robert continues to be on
• 20:22
  display and his antics continue to persist.
• 20:26
  He seems to be just as powerful as he was all those years ago.
• 20:30
  The museum keeps a catalogued record of all ailments that have
• 20:34
  been reported as a result of offending him for future
• 20:38
  reference. His reach also continues to
• 20:41
  expand as his legend grows and becomes more and more well
• 20:45
  known. Across the world.
• 20:47
  Robert the doll has been the inspiration behind many books,
• 20:51
  movies and podcasts as well as a local legend in Florida and this
• 20:57
  lesson truly applies to anyone and everyone.
• 21:01
  Have respect when you meet someone because you never truly
• 21:05
  know who or what you could be dealing with.
• 21:09
  And please, if you find yourself at the East Martello Museum in
• 21:14
  Key West, FL and you happen to come into contact with the
• 21:18
  entity known as Robert the Doll, be respectful, because if you're
• 21:23
  not, you may just pay the ultimate price.
• 21:29
  They say that one man's trash is another man's treasure.
• 21:33
  While many people accidentally purchase a haunted home without
• 21:37
  knowing it was haunted, this story partially is about a man
• 21:41
  who did the opposite. But the home in which he
• 21:44
  purchased was way more than he bargained for.
• 21:47
  Not for him, but for a family whose experiences made it
• 21:52
  infamous with a one-of-a-kind strange past and a present day
• 21:57
  nasty and demonic reputation. Known as Pennsylvania's
• 22:01
  Amityville Horror, this is the untold story of the Wells House
• 22:06
  and why it's considered one of the most haunted places in the
• 22:10
  state, let alone the country. To properly tell this story, we
• 22:22
  must first start at the beginning.
• 22:24
  The notorious home on Wells St. was built by industrialist
• 22:29
  Augustus C Laning. But despite his future.
• 22:32
  Success Laning had not LED such an easy life.
• 22:36
  After arriving in the Wilkes Barre area to work for his
• 22:40
  grandfather at age 14, he would soon experience tragedy.
• 22:45
  His younger nephew, shortly after his arrival, would pass
• 22:49
  away when the barn he was playing in was struck by
• 22:52
  lightning and caught fire, trapping him inside.
• 22:56
  Shortly after this happening, one of his grandfather's
• 22:59
  factories would also mysteriously catch fire and burn
• 23:03
  to the ground as well. Despite a series of unfortunate
• 23:07
  events, the Laning's enterprises would eventually thrive,
• 23:11
  allowing Augustus to inherit land from his mother on what is
• 23:15
  today Wells St. Eventually, he would build a
• 23:19
  home at 46 S Wells St. in 1861 and lived there until 1865, when
• 23:27
  he eventually sold his home and business.
• 23:31
  He would take his last breath in 1875.
• 23:36
  The land in which Laning built the home on as many locals would
• 23:40
  say, was soaked in turmoil and blood, having been the site of
• 23:45
  numerous wars and conflicts between Native American tribes
• 23:50
  as well as European settlers and Native tribes from the late 19th
• 23:55
  century to the mid 20th century. The house went through a series
• 23:59
  of sheriff sales which were a type of public auction and would
• 24:04
  eventually sell for just $1.00 at auction and May of 1939, a
• 24:09
  little over $20 in today's money.
• 24:13
  Although tragedy befell the Laning family, especially early
• 24:17
  on in Augustus's life, any happenings within the home
• 24:21
  weren't documented. If they did occur, as far as we
• 24:24
  know, no death had taken place up until this time, but it
• 24:29
  certainly starts to snowball as the years progress.
• 24:33
  In 1940, the person who had purchased the home so cheaply at
• 24:37
  auction would breathe their last breath by their own hand, as
• 24:42
  would the next person who purchased the home via auction
• 24:46
  in 1950, almost exactly 10 years apart, to the day after these
• 24:52
  mysterious deaths, there would be.
• 24:54
  Four more that would take place on the premises.
• 24:57
  The other three I was unable to dig up additional details on.
• 25:01
  However, the most notable was the 4th.
• 25:04
  A priest who was 54 years old and in relatively good health
• 25:09
  have been walking past the home in passing when he glanced at
• 25:13
  the home and we don't know exactly what he saw or
• 25:17
  experienced, but he fell to the ground and died almost instantly
• 25:22
  from a heart attack right in the front yard.
• 25:26
  The home would be a revolving door for quite some time,
• 25:29
  sometimes vacant, sometimes with occupants, but only for a short
• 25:34
  time. In March of 1975, a 27 year old
• 25:39
  radio DJ by the name of Walker Bennett and his wife Mary Ann
• 25:44
  purchased the home and then moved into the house from New
• 25:47
  Haven with their two daughters. Almost as soon as they moved
• 25:51
  into the house, bizarre activity began to manifest.
• 25:57
  The family began to hear banging and scratching sounds coming
• 26:00
  from inside the walls. Thinking at first they had some
• 26:04
  kind of a rodent problem, Walker followed the noise and traced it
• 26:08
  back to a particular bedroom wall.
• 26:11
  He then knocked the wall down, but instead of being greeted by
• 26:15
  this supposed rodent problem, he instead saw a small glimmering
• 26:20
  tin box instead. After removing the box, he felt
• 26:24
  a strange presence upon opening it.
• 26:28
  Its contents were very weird to say the least.
• 26:32
  It contained a red ribbon, a cross made of tied together
• 26:36
  chicken bones, and a human molar.
• 26:39
  The first thing that struck him was that this looked like some
• 26:43
  kind of a hex or curse, but not wanting to alarm his family, he
• 26:48
  would dispose of the items, but the activity nonetheless would
• 26:52
  continue to persist. By 1976, the scratching and
• 26:58
  knocking had continued, but soon the family began to see
• 27:02
  otherworldly beings as well. On one particularly cold
• 27:06
  February morning, Bennett would hear a series of bangs and
• 27:11
  scratches on his front door. Upon slowly opening it to see
• 27:16
  just who was there, he would be shocked.
• 27:20
  Standing at the front door was the translucent figure of a man
• 27:24
  with a cane with a vicious and crooked smile.
• 27:29
  Freaked out with his heart racing, he quickly slammed the
• 27:33
  door and tried to make sense of the interaction.
• 27:36
  Within seconds, he reopened the door, only to find that there
• 27:40
  was nothing there. As the days ticked by, the
• 27:44
  activity intensified. The scratches and banging noises
• 27:49
  now seem to be originating from the attic.
• 27:52
  They now were also joined by disembodied screams, some
• 27:58
  seeming to be male, others female, and some were a mix of
• 28:02
  both. In the months to come, the
• 28:05
  activity would be coupled with moaning and groaning sounds,
• 28:09
  whispering voices, and the sounds of weeping coming from.
• 28:13
  Inside the walls. All still tracing back to the
• 28:17
  attic. Coupled with these new
• 28:19
  developments were the sounds of heavy footsteps on the wooden
• 28:23
  floors. The entire family would also see
• 28:26
  several apparitions. Notably, they would experience
• 28:30
  the ghostly figure of a young woman in a night dress drifting
• 28:35
  throughout the house. Her dress seemed to be old, like
• 28:39
  those of the Victorian. Era.
• 28:42
  Whenever she was seen, following her would be drips or spots of
• 28:47
  blood either on the floor or on the walls.
• 28:52
  Once she began to be seen, there was a putrid rotting type of
• 28:56
  stench that became present in the house, traveling from room
• 29:00
  to room. It was, however, usually the
• 29:03
  worst in the kitchen and living room.
• 29:07
  Not wanting to further frighten the girls, the Bennetts met with
• 29:11
  each other to discuss all of the bizarre happenings, and they
• 29:14
  finally had to admit that they had purchased a haunted house.
• 29:18
  Haunted by what exactly? They couldn't be sure.
• 29:23
  Shortly after this revelation, the family began to suffer from
• 29:27
  an unexplainable physical illness, one that left them
• 29:31
  drained at all times, exhausted and aching.
• 29:36
  The doctors couldn't diagnose it, leaving the family only to
• 29:40
  continue to suffer with the symptoms alongside this, whether
• 29:45
  it was a result of the illness on an individual basis or the
• 29:49
  haunting itself, the whole family seemed to be thrown into
• 29:53
  a deep dark well of depression, submerged in its black waters,
• 29:59
  leaving them feeling hopeless. Things would begin to escalate
• 30:03
  further when, in January of 1977, Walker and his wife would
• 30:09
  witness one of their daughters be pushed down the stairs.
• 30:13
  But to their amazement, she didn't fall and crumple on the
• 30:16
  various steps. Instead, she floated almost in
• 30:21
  slow motion, until she landed on her.
• 30:24
  Feet. At the bottom of them, unharmed,
• 30:28
  not knowing what to make of this.
• 30:30
  The adults in the house weren't getting much sleep, and their
• 30:33
  condition continued to get worse.
• 30:36
  They would soon reach out to the church for help and guidance.
• 30:40
  Soon a Catholic priest would come out and bless the home,
• 30:44
  trying to quell whatever supernatural forces that were
• 30:47
  wreaking havoc upon the Bennetts.
• 30:50
  But these efforts were to no avail.
• 30:53
  If anything, after he left, the activity seemed to get worse.
• 30:59
  Ultimately, in March of 1978, the family who had been sound
• 31:04
  asleep in the night was woken up by the sound of Thunder
• 31:08
  crashing. Except there wasn't a storm
• 31:12
  outside. What followed this massive sound
• 31:16
  was a deluge of paranormal manifestations.
• 31:19
  Footsteps were pounding across the floor and in the attic above
• 31:24
  them. The attic door was being pounded
• 31:26
  on from the other side. Their dishes in their kitchen
• 31:30
  were being removed from their cabinets as they opened and
• 31:34
  slammed by themselves and thrown onto the floor, shattering them.
• 31:41
  Amongst the chaos was the scratching and banging on the
• 31:44
  front door, coupled with the sounds of a child weeping coming
• 31:50
  from inside of the walls, following them as they ran
• 31:54
  throughout the house. After enduring almost three
• 31:58
  years inside the home, the Bennetts finally fled this
• 32:02
  night, leaving with just the clothes on their backs.
• 32:06
  They left all of their belongings behind.
• 32:09
  After the family found temporary arrangements, they immediately
• 32:13
  tried to sell the home as it was, but had no luck finding a
• 32:17
  buyer. After several months, Walker
• 32:21
  Bennett reached out to a local newspaper in hopes of sharing
• 32:25
  the family's story anonymously to find help or a buyer to get
• 32:30
  them out of this haunted hell. In the interview, under the
• 32:33
  pseudonym of Bucky Johnson, he claimed that he was now $40,000
• 32:38
  in debt as a result of the family fleeing and being unable
• 32:42
  to live in the house and then being unable to sell the house,
• 32:47
  and that he had developed a drinking problem and now chain
• 32:51
  smoked as a result of the trauma and stress that he had endured.
• 32:56
  He also stated that he and the rest of the family were in
• 32:59
  therapy in hopes of eventually putting the past behind them.
• 33:03
  Several neighbors near the home were also interviewed, with some
• 33:07
  saying that they had never seen or heard anything and others
• 33:11
  saying that they always had an odd feeling whenever passing by
• 33:14
  the house. The article was then published
• 33:18
  on Halloween of 1979. Perfect timing for a local and
• 33:23
  terrifying story, no doubt. Following the initial publicity,
• 33:28
  word eventually made its way to Ed and Lorraine Warren, famed
• 33:31
  paranormal investigators and demonologists who had just
• 33:35
  covered another haunting known as The Amityville Horror just
• 33:39
  three years before. The couple made a visit to the
• 33:43
  Wells Street house in March of 1980, but by this time the bank
• 33:48
  had repossessed the home from the Bennetts due to their
• 33:51
  inability to make further mortgage payments on the home,
• 33:55
  so the Warrens were unable to enter the house due to it being
• 33:58
  entirely locked up for this reason.
• 34:01
  Lorraine, however, would say that she sensed a terrible
• 34:04
  despair emanating from the house and that the effect it must have
• 34:08
  had on those who lived there must have been very negative.
• 34:13
  Several years later, the house would be purchased by a woman
• 34:16
  named Katherine Watkins from the bank for $20,000 in August of
• 34:21
  1982. Her purchase subsequently
• 34:25
  prompted another newspaper article to be written.
• 34:28
  When asked, she told reporters that she was unafraid of the
• 34:32
  rumors surrounding the house and didn't fear any ghosts that
• 34:36
  could be there. She moved in with her two
• 34:39
  children shortly after her purchase.
• 34:42
  And whether it was sheer determination, stubborn nature
• 34:46
  or something. Else.
• 34:48
  She lived in the house for the next 30 years until her death on
• 34:52
  October 26th of 2012. Although shortly after moving in
• 34:58
  and over the decades to come, she and her family also
• 35:01
  experienced unexplained phenomena such as objects moving
• 35:06
  by themselves, their beds shaking, lights and appliances
• 35:10
  turning on and off by themselves, and seeing those
• 35:14
  ghosts that Catherine insisted she wasn't afraid of.
• 35:18
  Such as the. Woman and what looked like
• 35:20
  Victorian style clothing. Her daughter would inherit the
• 35:24
  home after Catherine's passing and would place the home up for
• 35:28
  sale where it was then purchased by a ghost hunter by the name of
• 35:32
  Tim Woods in December of 2013. Rather than repair, sell, or
• 35:38
  live in the property he had just purchased, Woods only wanted to
• 35:42
  investigate the paranormal activity that was taking place
• 35:45
  there. With his team of fellow
• 35:47
  investigators, they would record hours of content in the home and
• 35:52
  capture what they believed to be numerous supernatural
• 35:55
  manifestations. People who have joined him in
• 35:59
  the investigations have been known to have scratches manifest
• 36:03
  on their skin and have their clothing tugged on by unseen
• 36:07
  hands. Tim would later state that the
• 36:11
  Wells House is one of the scariest haunted locations that
• 36:14
  he had ever investigated. Due to the.
• 36:17
  Numerous ghost sightings that were caught on tape and demonic
• 36:21
  attacks that occurred while he was there, he said.
• 36:26
  It is our conclusion, based upon our documented research, that
• 36:30
  the house is haunted by a demonic presence that cannot be
• 36:34
  removed, nor is it safe for anyone to live in the
• 36:39
  strangeness of the house on Wells.
• 36:40
  Street doesn't end here. In the early hours of Wednesday,
• 36:45
  July 25th of 2018, police were called to the home to catch an
• 36:50
  intruder. Someone was outside of the house
• 36:54
  trying to get in. When authorities arrived, they
• 36:58
  apprehended a man in his 30s. He was caught in the act of
• 37:01
  prying the wooden boards off the back door of the property.
• 37:05
  He had a 24 inch sword tied to his back, had brass knuckles and
• 37:10
  a pocket knife in his pockets, and was carrying a Bible.
• 37:15
  The man seemed out of it to say the least, but claimed that he
• 37:19
  was trying to hunt for ghosts. Upon going through his Ruppsac,
• 37:24
  police also found a loaded shotgun with 10 shells alongside
• 37:28
  of it. He would be arrested and charged
• 37:31
  with numerous offenses as a result of the episode.
• 37:35
  Although we don't know who, it seems that the home was sold in
• 37:39
  2020 to new owners and at half the price that Woods had paid
• 37:43
  for it. There also doesn't appear to be
• 37:46
  any sort of a mention of it being haunted.
• 37:49
  It's listing reads like this, a home full of historical
• 37:53
  intrigue. With some TLC, you can bring new
• 37:57
  life to this four bedroom beauty.
• 37:59
  As soon as you step over the threshold, you'll realize there
• 38:03
  is truly something out of this world with this home and its
• 38:07
  craftsmanship. A very fitting spin if you ask
• 38:10
  me. I hope the new occupants are
• 38:13
  living peacefully, although given the home's infamous story
• 38:17
  and past seems highly unlikely. But the listing was right about
• 38:22
  one thing though. The home certainly has lots of
• 38:25
  historical intrigue and you can bring new life into this four
• 38:31
  bedroom beauty because as soon as you step over the threshold,
• 38:36
  you'll realize there's truly something out of this world with
• 38:39
  this home. Or should we say in this home
• 38:43
  that's been watching and waiting for some new life to engorge
• 38:49
  itself? On.
• 38:52
  Could an item, if given enough energy, devotion and focus,
• 38:57
  begin to take on a life of its own?
• 39:00
  Could it begin to exhibit human like characteristics as if it
• 39:04
  has been imbued with or contains some kind of soul or entity
• 39:09
  inside of it? This act of magic has been
• 39:11
  practiced by multiple religions and cults throughout the ages.
• 39:16
  This is just one very strange example that it could indeed be
• 39:20
  possible. After a gracious gift was placed
• 39:24
  into the arms of a little girl, tragedy would strike and what
• 39:28
  follows would continue to haunt the family, the citizens of the
• 39:32
  village, and would soon cross far beyond the barriers of land
• 39:37
  and sea. This is the untold story of
• 39:40
  Akiku, the haunted Japanese doll and the bizarre paranormal.
• 39:46
  Force that possessed it. Japan is a very mystical and
• 39:58
  spiritual place. A place where the souls of the
• 40:02
  past seem to interact with the living.
• 40:06
  Such places where the spiritual energy seems to be most visible
• 40:11
  is throughout many of Japan's spiritual temples.
• 40:15
  Home to many religions, the two main ones being Buddhism and
• 40:19
  Shintoism. Thousands of temples exist all
• 40:23
  over the country, but one in particular houses a spiritual
• 40:27
  artifact that has a tragic back story and an even more
• 40:31
  terrifying story that continues to be written to this day.
• 40:36
  Located in Hokkaido, Japan at the Menenji Buddhist Temple is a
• 40:41
  doll with a bizarre and tragic back story.
• 40:44
  Indeed. Although there are several
• 40:47
  origin stories of how the doll came to be and how the temple
• 40:51
  became its final living space, so to speak, all of them have
• 40:56
  most of the main details in common.
• 40:58
  Therefore, I'll be telling the most agreed upon origin story to
• 41:03
  try and be as true to the legend as I can.
• 41:06
  The years 1918 in Hokkaido, Japan and a 17 year old boy by
• 41:13
  the name of Ikiki Suzuki is in search of a gift for his little
• 41:18
  sister's birthday. As he pursues the different
• 41:21
  vendors and small shops, something soon catches his
• 41:25
  attention and one of the store windows.
• 41:28
  He spots a small childlike doll wearing a traditional Japanese
• 41:33
  kimono. Knowing that he had finally
• 41:36
  found something his sister will love, Akiki quickly purchases
• 41:40
  the doll and makes his way back home through the countryside.
• 41:45
  As the family celebrates their little girl's birthday, Akiku is
• 41:49
  presented with the doll and almost immediately, as soon as
• 41:53
  her eyes meet hers, she falls in love with it.
• 41:57
  The two from this point become inseparable.
• 42:01
  Wherever Okiku is, her doll is right by her side.
• 42:05
  She Combs her hair, bathes her, dresses her, and treats her as
• 42:11
  if she was her little sister. The two even share meals and
• 42:15
  sleep side by side. The joy that the doll brought
• 42:19
  Okiku must have filled Ekiki's heart with such happiness.
• 42:23
  But soon that happiness would change to tragedy. 1 hot day.
• 42:29
  As the little girl played outside with her doll, she was
• 42:32
  bitten by a mosquito. This benign insect by it would
• 42:36
  soon manifest itself into a horrible case of malaria.
• 42:41
  Although the family did everything they could possibly
• 42:44
  do, Okiku would pass away scared and gasping for air as she
• 42:50
  clutched her special doll all the way until the moment she
• 42:53
  took her last breath. Devastated the Suzuki.
• 42:58
  'S plan to have their little girl buried with the doll since
• 43:00
  she loved it so much, but unfortunately, due to either
• 43:05
  governmental or religious oversight at the time, this
• 43:08
  wasn't an option. Instead, after they had laid a
• 43:12
  kiku to rest, the doll would be placed on a small family shrine
• 43:16
  located within the living quarters of their home as a
• 43:20
  tribute of sorts. To their late daughter and their
• 43:23
  love for her. But shortly after the doll was
• 43:26
  placed on the shrine, very strange things began to happen.
• 43:31
  A Kiki, upon walking past the shrine one day, noticed that the
• 43:35
  doll's hair seemed significantly longer than what it had been
• 43:39
  when it was placed there. The hair, which was originally
• 43:42
  shoulders length on the doll itself and black, was now
• 43:46
  overgrown with differing shades of brown hair also coming
• 43:50
  through and splitting at the ends.
• 43:53
  Finding this bizarre to say the least, he brought the discovery
• 43:57
  to his parents attention and unsure of what else to do, they
• 44:01
  trimmed the doll's hair as the days came and when the family
• 44:06
  began to have distressing dreams at night of their departed
• 44:09
  Ukiku. Sometimes she would be scared
• 44:12
  and alone in the darkness, calling out to them, only being
• 44:16
  recognized by her voice. Other times she would blame them
• 44:21
  for what happened to her. Each member of the family at
• 44:24
  differing times had these dreams, and they would soon lead
• 44:28
  all of them to believe that Akiku's soul wasn't peacefully
• 44:32
  resting. These disturbing dreams soon
• 44:35
  became all the stranger when the doll, which they began to refer
• 44:39
  to as Akiku in their daughter's honor, would appear by their
• 44:44
  bedsides following these nightmares.
• 44:48
  One such incident involved the father of the family waking up
• 44:52
  in a cold sweat only to be met face to face with a blank and
• 44:58
  lifeless stare of the doll. Unsure of what was taking place,
• 45:03
  the Suzuki's turn to their faith.
• 45:06
  After contacting a local Buddhist priest and having a
• 45:09
  cleansing ritual be performed on their home and the doll, the
• 45:14
  activity seemed to grow and become stronger.
• 45:18
  Accompanying their ever frequent nightmares and random movements
• 45:22
  of the doll, the chilling events grew into full blown spiritual
• 45:26
  manifestations during their waking life.
• 45:30
  They soon began to hear banging noises all throughout the house
• 45:34
  and the whispers of a little girl.
• 45:37
  Strange disembodied voices varying from high pitched like
• 45:41
  those of a child to the low groans of something
• 45:45
  unexplainable began to be heard. Their lights began to flicker on
• 45:50
  and off, and the paranormal activity seemed to happen more
• 45:54
  frequently as the calendar ticked closer to the birth and
• 45:59
  death dates of Akiku. These strange and terrifying
• 46:04
  happenings would continue over the course of the next 20 years,
• 46:08
  with multiple religious, priests and shamans being contacted and
• 46:13
  all coming to the same conclusion that after the
• 46:16
  cleansings failed time and time again, that the restless spirit
• 46:19
  of Akiku now inhabited the doll she once loved so much.
• 46:25
  Finally needing a major change and unable to deal with the ever
• 46:29
  intensifying spiritual presence that seemed to haunt their home,
• 46:34
  the Suzuki's relocated to a different district.
• 46:38
  Believing the doll to be the source of their various ailments
• 46:41
  and emotional torture that they had endured over the last two
• 46:45
  decades, they had no desire to take it with them.
• 46:49
  The family had reached the conclusion that if their
• 46:51
  daughter's soul wasn't at peace, what could perhaps be helping to
• 46:55
  fuel Akiku's power or magic was the close proximity of her grave
• 47:01
  to their home where the doll resided.
• 47:03
  So in order to distance the doll from the grave, the family
• 47:07
  approached the Meninge Buddhist Temple in Hokkaido and over the
• 47:11
  years the dolls reputation for being haunted had spread
• 47:15
  throughout the community and indeed the majority of the
• 47:18
  country. This was more than likely due to
• 47:21
  the various interactions between the spiritual community and the
• 47:25
  Suzuki family, finding the doll to be mesmerizing and possibly a
• 47:29
  unique opportunity to commute and interact with the dead.
• 47:33
  If the. Stories were true.
• 47:36
  The leaders and priests of the Meninge temple agreed to home
• 47:40
  Okiku permanently. As with many legends, we find
• 47:44
  lots of details to be exaggerated over time and
• 47:47
  perhaps some of the details to not be true at all.
• 47:51
  And this is what the priests were originally thinking, that
• 47:54
  perhaps due to grief, the family was dealing with other spiritual
• 47:58
  ailments perhaps unrelated to the doll, or causing the doll to
• 48:02
  be a vessel of sorts for restless spirits.
• 48:06
  However, as the years came and when, as Akiku now called the
• 48:10
  temple her home, they began to slowly.
• 48:13
  But surely experience the same strangeness the Suzuki's had for
• 48:19
  all of those years. Akiku's hair continued to grow.
• 48:23
  And this. Baffled the priests.
• 48:25
  They would eventually have the hair trimmed and tested, and the
• 48:29
  hair was said to belong to a little girl.
• 48:33
  They found that the entity seemed to be appeased when her
• 48:35
  hair was trimmed and combed, and this led to less activity for a
• 48:40
  time. But the same activity?
• 48:43
  The knocking, banging, and disembodied voices which soon
• 48:48
  plagued the temple as well. No, Kiku's power only seemed to
• 48:53
  grow. Any priest who seemed skeptical
• 48:56
  of the doll or attempted to cleanse it themselves soon had
• 49:00
  their dreams haunted as well, turning their sleep into
• 49:03
  restless fits. Their homes and rooms soon also
• 49:08
  began to manifest the very same activity that the temple was now
• 49:12
  exhibiting. With no remedy seeming to work,
• 49:16
  the leaders turned to appeasement instead, hoping that
• 49:19
  gestures of goodwill would keep the entity at Bay.
• 49:23
  As years turn to decades, and as we've come into the 21st
• 49:27
  century, the priests of multiple generations now have overseen
• 49:32
  and cared for the Dahl known as Akiku.
• 49:35
  And though some of the more violent activity has faded, the
• 49:39
  general consensus is that she is now just as powerful as she was.
• 49:43
  Or is perhaps. More powerful as she's continued
• 49:46
  to age, it seems like as the more her fame and notoriety
• 49:51
  grows. The more visitors she has, the
• 49:54
  stronger she becomes. She continues to invade the
• 49:58
  dreams of those who come to visit her, and her hair is
• 50:02
  growing faster and more frayed. She's said to drive Taurus mad
• 50:07
  who doubt her, with many people even reporting that besides
• 50:11
  seeing her strange hair and feeling a malevolent presence
• 50:15
  when visiting her. They've also had her stalk.
• 50:18
  And appear in their dreams. Some more disturbing and recent
• 50:22
  reports have even suggested that her mouth is slowly opening and
• 50:27
  that if you dare to appear inside of it, you may just catch
• 50:30
  a glimpse of baby like teeth sprouting from her porcelain
• 50:34
  gums. As if whoever or whatever she is
• 50:39
  is slowly turning to flesh and bone.
• 50:44
  The paranormal displays of her power continue to occur as well.
• 50:48
  Her permanent home, located within the Menaging temple, is
• 50:51
  her own private shrine where she sits in a small wooden box on
• 50:55
  display. It is here that she watches and
• 50:59
  waits for anyone and everyone who dares to play with fire and
• 51:05
  invoke the power of the entity known as Okiku.
• 51:10
  But what are your? Thoughts was a.
• 51:12
  Kiku, the girl trapped inside of the doll.
• 51:15
  In my opinion, although her spirit would be much older now,
• 51:19
  at the time of her death she was either close to or was three
• 51:23
  years old, and no person at that age is capable of true malice to
• 51:28
  the point to where she would become aware enough to begin to
• 51:31
  blame her parents and then torment them for.
• 51:34
  Decades to come as children, our parents or our family or our
• 51:40
  entire world. So I find it incredibly
• 51:42
  difficult to think that these bizarre happenings were the
• 51:46
  result of her soul being restless and imbuing the doll.
• 51:50
  What I find more likely, and all the more interesting really, is
• 51:54
  the thought of invocation or the imbuing of the doll, like a
• 51:58
  conduit or a vessel of sorts. Akiku, the girl was, as they
• 52:04
  said, inseparable from this doll.
• 52:06
  She fed it, bathed it, took naps with it, and everything else a
• 52:11
  small child would do with that wonderful imagination that they
• 52:14
  have. But could all of this dedication
• 52:17
  and focus accompanied with the tragedy that took place allow
• 52:22
  for a portal to open for an entity, whether non human or a
• 52:26
  restless human spirit to inhabit the doll?
• 52:30
  And by non human I mean a demon. This would make sense to me.
• 52:35
  Something that enjoys and grows more powerful off of pain and
• 52:39
  misfortune or the emotional torment of others.
• 52:42
  As it causes the pain, it feeds off of it and grows ever
• 52:46
  stronger. This would not only explain the
• 52:49
  malevolent manifestations of whatever entity is present, but
• 52:53
  would also explain the still present force and the alleged
• 52:57
  ever growing. Power of it.
• 52:59
  And depending on the entity's strength, it could also explain
• 53:03
  why the cleansings thus far have failed.
• 53:06
  However, if you find yourself taking a trip to Japan anytime
• 53:10
  soon, or you happen to call Japan home if you find yourself
• 53:15
  in Hokkaido, you may want to steer clear of the Menajin
• 53:18
  Temple. Because if you don't, the entity
• 53:21
  that inhabits the doll known as a Kiku may just use you as its
• 53:26
  next feeding source, where it'll begin to plague your dreams,
• 53:31
  making you twist and turn, sweat and fear as it grows ever
• 53:38
  stronger and attempts to cross from its world into ours, making
• 53:44
  our plane of existence its permanent residence.
• 53:49
  After a flood destroys their home, a family is forced to
• 53:53
  relocate to a new home, which they believe is going to be a
• 53:57
  fresh start for them. However, it turns out to be a
• 54:01
  fresh new hell instead. From demonic attacks,
• 54:06
  nightmares, visuals, and terrifying manifestations, this
• 54:11
  is 1 haunting story you won't want to miss.
• 54:14
  This is the untold story of the Smurl Haunting in Pennsylvania
• 54:20
  and the monstrous creature that stalked its walls.
• 54:29
  The timeline of events is rough at best, but I've done my best
• 54:33
  to make the most coherent retelling of the story, so
• 54:36
  please keep that in mind. Raging floods as a result of
• 54:42
  Hurricane Agnes have destroyed the homes of many families, and
• 54:47
  one such family was the Smurls. The Smurl family consisted of
• 54:52
  Janet and Jack Smurl and their four young children, Heather,
• 54:57
  Shannon, Karen, and Dawn. With their home destroyed in the
• 55:02
  Wilkes Barre, PA area, feeling as if they had been uprooted and
• 55:07
  tossed about like the rushing waters that took their house,
• 55:12
  the Smurls decide to temporarily relocate to West Pitzen, where
• 55:17
  Jack's parents currently lived. After explaining the situation
• 55:22
  and staying with the couple for a short time, they were
• 55:25
  surprised and ultimately blessed when Jack's parents proposed an
• 55:29
  idea to them. They had found an old duplex, a
• 55:33
  bit of a fixer upper, also in West Pitzen.
• 55:37
  The two of them could live on one side and Jack, Janet and the
• 55:41
  kids on the other. That way they could look out for
• 55:44
  one another and of course, spend more time together.
• 55:48
  Not in a position to or wanting to say no, Jack and Janet humbly
• 55:53
  accepted their offer. But all too soon they would be
• 55:57
  confronted with the question. Was this blessing truly a curse?
• 56:02
  With Jack's parents paying for them all to move into the new
• 56:06
  house, they soon find themselves rehomed and living in the newly
• 56:10
  purchased duplex located on Chase St. there in West Pitzen.
• 56:16
  Although the home would need some work, the neighborhood
• 56:19
  seemed friendly and inviting, a good place to raise a family.
• 56:24
  The family collectively puts their efforts into repainting,
• 56:28
  retooling, and other repairs, but in no time, the slightly
• 56:32
  rundown home was feeling fresh, vibrant and modern, making the
• 56:38
  Smurls feel evermore at home and hopeful for the future.
• 56:43
  However, this would not last forever, for it seemed that each
• 56:47
  time they banged a hammer, each time they drove a nail into a
• 56:51
  wall, and with every drop of paint they woke something up
• 56:56
  within the house itself, something that perhaps had been
• 57:00
  slumbering there for quite some time.
• 57:03
  During this time, small episodes of strangeness began to
• 57:07
  manifest, seeming rather benign at first.
• 57:12
  Tools began to disappear, only to reappear hours later in
• 57:17
  different spots. Old stains that covered the
• 57:21
  walls began to seep through the fresh coats of pain, and several
• 57:25
  appliances in their kitchen had mysteriously caught fire even
• 57:30
  though they were unplugged. Along with these oddities, the
• 57:34
  family would also begin to smell awful odors that overwhelmed the
• 57:38
  entire house, like an omnipresent floating cloud of
• 57:43
  rotting meat that hungover them only to disperse mere moments
• 57:47
  later after being detected. But despite these weird events,
• 57:53
  the family didn't really think much of it.
• 57:55
  They were just thankful to have a roof over their heads.
• 57:58
  Jack and Janet continued to rebuild their lives.
• 58:02
  Jack fortunately had since gotten a better job than the 1
• 58:06
  he had had previously and was promoted.
• 58:09
  During this time he was also able to coach his daughter's
• 58:12
  softball team. The children had re acclimated
• 58:15
  to a new school and were getting good grades and Jana had become
• 58:20
  pregnant with baby #5 and also helped organize an anti drunk
• 58:24
  driving group at the local high school.
• 58:27
  And Jack's parents were doing great as well.
• 58:31
  That all of this positivity, unfortunately, would not last.
• 58:36
  By 1974, things began to change for the Smurls.
• 58:41
  It began when Mary Smurl, Jack's mother, suffered a heart attack.
• 58:46
  This led to the entire family struggling to make ends meet.
• 58:50
  And whether it was a result of the renovations or something
• 58:54
  else, something paranormal had began to manifest and make
• 58:59
  itself known. It began when Janet began to
• 59:02
  hear the voice of her mother-in-law, who shortly after
• 59:06
  her heart attack was now at home and recovering, doing what she
• 59:10
  could to help her. She would hear her name being
• 59:13
  called out from Mary and would rush to her aid to help her with
• 59:17
  anything and everything that she could possibly need.
• 59:20
  But the strange thing was, Mary at times would either be
• 59:24
  unconscious, sleeping, or wouldn't have had called for her
• 59:28
  at all. Attributing this bizarre
• 59:30
  phenomena to stress at first, she writes it off.
• 59:34
  However, Mary soon starts experiencing her own
• 59:38
  strangeness. She too, as if the words had
• 59:42
  come from Janet's mouth herself, would hear her name being called
• 59:46
  only when confronted. Janet would have no idea what
• 59:49
  she was talking about. But that wasn't all, of course.
• 59:54
  The stains that had previously been painted over and were
• 59:58
  thought to be covered began to seep through yet again, and new
• 1:00:02
  stains began to appear as well, with several appearing on the
• 1:00:06
  hardwood floors of the home. As the days progressed, the
• 1:00:11
  oldest small child soon began to experience the presence as well.
• 1:00:16
  She would often be woken up in the dead of night, frozen with
• 1:00:19
  fear and unable to move. She would see translucent
• 1:00:24
  figures standing above. Her, or at the edge of her bed,
• 1:00:28
  staring. And watching her.
• 1:00:31
  And although it wasn't exclusive to the midnight hour, the
• 1:00:35
  activity seemed to pick up at night.
• 1:00:38
  Often when Jack was at work or gone.
• 1:00:41
  Janet began to have violent and sickening encounters with the
• 1:00:45
  being that she couldn't see. She began to be molested by an
• 1:00:49
  unseen force. These interactions left her
• 1:00:53
  hysterical, feeling violated and unclean, trying to come to terms
• 1:01:00
  with what was happening to them. The family's luck continued to
• 1:01:04
  worsen. Additional appliances, including
• 1:01:08
  ATV set, went up in flames, causing smoke and fire damage to
• 1:01:13
  the home on several occasions. And then, like the TV, the other
• 1:01:18
  appliances were not plugged in in order for the family to save
• 1:01:22
  money, which makes it all the more mysterious.
• 1:01:27
  On top of this, several water pipes, which are fairly new
• 1:01:30
  after the family had initially renovated the home, began to
• 1:01:34
  leak, not only causing water damage to the house, but adding
• 1:01:39
  to their financial. Woes as well.
• 1:01:42
  The string of bad luck would continue for the Smurls, and by
• 1:01:45
  1977, the activity in the home became much more aggressive.
• 1:01:52
  The family's radio began to turn itself.
• 1:01:54
  On and off. Typically a strange hours and
• 1:01:58
  almost always when the family was trying to sleep, the sinks
• 1:02:03
  in their bathrooms began to turn themselves on, pouring what
• 1:02:07
  little money they had left literally down the drain, and
• 1:02:11
  their toilets began to flush by themselves.
• 1:02:14
  Along with this activity, the sounds of footsteps began to be
• 1:02:18
  heard all throughout the house and even on the insides of the
• 1:02:22
  walls. Drawers began to open and close
• 1:02:26
  by themselves and coupled with these happenings was again the
• 1:02:31
  stench of rotting mean but the family would begin to describe
• 1:02:36
  as the dead smell. Except instead of dissipating
• 1:02:39
  almost as soon as it was detected before or in one
• 1:02:43
  particular area of the house, the smell would permeate all
• 1:02:48
  throughout the house and would linger for minutes or sometimes
• 1:02:52
  even hours. Up until this point, besides
• 1:02:56
  seeing things being moved, dealing with the stains, pipes
• 1:03:00
  and appliances, Jack hadn't been targeted, so to speak, by
• 1:03:05
  whatever paranormal force that was now fully awake within the
• 1:03:09
  Smirrel residence. But one night when he was trying
• 1:03:13
  to get some sleep after a long day's work, his side of the
• 1:03:17
  sheets were pulled from his body and the sensation of dozens of
• 1:03:22
  hands touching and grabbing him ensured that not only was he not
• 1:03:28
  going to get the rest that night due to sheer terror, but that
• 1:03:32
  perhaps his wife had been telling the truth.
• 1:03:35
  Janet, shortly after moving into the house, had become pregnant
• 1:03:40
  and this time had given birth to two baby girls, expanding the
• 1:03:44
  Smurrill family to six children. Shortly after the twins were
• 1:03:49
  brought home. It seemed like whatever presence
• 1:03:51
  that had been woken up was making itself known.
• 1:03:55
  It became more aggressive, more vindictive, as if it was jealous
• 1:04:00
  or hated the living. One morning, while the majority
• 1:04:04
  of the children were at school and napping and the rest of the
• 1:04:08
  adults were out, Janet was headed to the kitchen to pour
• 1:04:12
  herself a freshly brewed cup of coffee.
• 1:04:15
  As she turned around the corner, her blood ran cold.
• 1:04:20
  Standing in the middle of the kitchen with a stain seeming to
• 1:04:24
  materialize directly underneath it.
• 1:04:27
  It was a translucent figure with hollow eyes frozen in place upon
• 1:04:33
  seeing it was if she blinked. Whatever this creature was, was
• 1:04:38
  gone. Was this what was responsible
• 1:04:41
  for the multitude of paranormal happenings within their house?
• 1:04:46
  As time progressed, Janet again would continue to hear her name
• 1:04:50
  being called out when no one else was there, over and over
• 1:04:56
  and over again. Strangely, as it was before, in
• 1:05:00
  the beginning, the voices would often sound like her
• 1:05:03
  mother-in-law, Mary, and even after double or triple checking
• 1:05:08
  sometimes to make sure she wasn't losing her mind, Mary
• 1:05:12
  would be nowhere to be found. Janet truly was alone.
• 1:05:17
  Other strange things that were heard during this time would be
• 1:05:20
  heard from the other side of the duplex.
• 1:05:24
  Couples do argue and some fight that just tends to happen to
• 1:05:28
  most unfortunately, but these fights were something else.
• 1:05:34
  Jack's parents began to hear yelling and screaming, sometimes
• 1:05:38
  even items breaking coming from the other side of the duplex
• 1:05:43
  where Jack and Janet lived. These fights became so violent
• 1:05:47
  that not only did they think their marriage was collapsing,
• 1:05:51
  but they began to become concerned for Janet and the
• 1:05:53
  children's safety. One night, Jack's father
• 1:05:57
  couldn't take it anymore. He walked from their front door
• 1:06:01
  to the other side, and with the fight still raging, he threw the
• 1:06:05
  door open, only to be greeted with silence.
• 1:06:11
  The entire family was asleep. Not knowing what to make of this
• 1:06:17
  discovery, he simply left bewildered.
• 1:06:22
  But the supposed audio of the fights would continue.
• 1:06:27
  Shortly after the bizarre discovery, Mary would experience
• 1:06:31
  something that almost gave her another heart attack.
• 1:06:35
  One evening, while her husband was still at work and she was
• 1:06:38
  alone on their side of the duplex, she began to hear her
• 1:06:42
  name being whispered and it sounded like Janet, but it was
• 1:06:46
  right within earshot or several feet of where she had been.
• 1:06:51
  Weirded out as most of us would be, she began to make her way
• 1:06:55
  towards the voice that was calling out to her, and that's
• 1:06:59
  when she saw it. Standing in her living room with
• 1:07:03
  a stain seeping underneath its feet was the same translucent
• 1:07:08
  being that Janet had claimed she had seen just a short while ago.
• 1:07:13
  And terrifyingly, its mouth was mimicking Janet's voice and
• 1:07:19
  calling out her name, frozen in terror at first.
• 1:07:24
  With her heart. Racing Mary ran to the door,
• 1:07:28
  exited, and immediately went into Jack and Janet's door,
• 1:07:32
  absolutely petrified with fear. The talks that.
• 1:07:35
  Followed this event in particular is what led to most
• 1:07:39
  of the individual experiences being laid out in the open for
• 1:07:43
  everyone to know. They would all come to the
• 1:07:45
  realization that whatever force that was in their house was not
• 1:07:50
  friendly. Shannon Smerl, who was only 7
• 1:07:54
  years old during this time, would be the next target.
• 1:07:58
  One day as she casually walked through the kitchen and into the
• 1:08:02
  dining room, a large glass light fixture fell and crashed into
• 1:08:07
  her, cutting her and raising the alarm bells for the entire
• 1:08:11
  house. Again, it seemed like the
• 1:08:14
  paranormal being or force hated life and now was possibly trying
• 1:08:20
  to end it if the opportunity presented itself.
• 1:08:25
  Scared but strapped for cash, they were all seemingly stuck in
• 1:08:29
  what was supposed to be their fresh start, but instead at this
• 1:08:33
  point was becoming their fresh hell.
• 1:08:36
  Shannon would continue to experience strangeness of her
• 1:08:39
  own as well and her diary, and later she would recount that
• 1:08:44
  oftentimes she would wake up and find herself floating above her
• 1:08:48
  bed, literally levitating several feet above her bed.
• 1:08:53
  Some nights while floating, she would suddenly be thrown across
• 1:08:58
  the room and into a wall with so much force as she thought she
• 1:09:03
  would be crushed. The climax of these attacks on
• 1:09:07
  Shannon happened one night when she woke up to find herself
• 1:09:11
  floating once again, but instead of being let back down or
• 1:09:16
  smacked into a nearby wall, her door was flung open and she was
• 1:09:21
  thrown out of her room and down the stairs.
• 1:09:25
  Her parents heard this happen and rushed towards the screams
• 1:09:29
  of their little girl to find her absolutely hysterical and in
• 1:09:34
  pain. Fortunately, however, she would
• 1:09:37
  be OK physically after this event in particular.
• 1:09:41
  Another unfortunate sold out be targeted in the Smirrel duplex
• 1:09:45
  was the family's German Shepherd, Simon.
• 1:09:48
  Simon would be found floating in the air, confused and concerned.
• 1:09:54
  And this new development and activity was not just exclusive
• 1:09:58
  to Shannon or their beloved dog. Alongside the intensified
• 1:10:03
  attacks on Janet, she too would begin finding herself woken up
• 1:10:07
  in the middle of the night, floating in the air and
• 1:10:11
  sometimes horrifically without control of her body.
• 1:10:16
  She would then also be assaulted.
• 1:10:19
  However, Jack wasn't always gone at this time.
• 1:10:22
  Frequently at this point he would be home and sleeping
• 1:10:25
  beside her but could never seem to wake up, as if he was being
• 1:10:29
  kept asleep or in a state of paralysis.
• 1:10:33
  Why the events took place. Coupled along these intense and
• 1:10:37
  abhorrent manifestations came activity that was plain creepy.
• 1:10:43
  Not a day would go by without the family hearing scratching
• 1:10:46
  noises coming from within the. Walls or deep?
• 1:10:51
  Drawn out breaths coming from behind them, feeling the exhale
• 1:10:55
  upon their necks, making the hairs on their entire body stand
• 1:11:00
  on end. Jack, at times, after a hard
• 1:11:03
  day's work, would like to unwind and decompress by watching some
• 1:11:07
  TV in the living room. On occasion he would fall asleep
• 1:11:12
  to whatever was on before eventually waking back up and
• 1:11:16
  making his way to bed. However, this night he found
• 1:11:20
  himself awake and coherent, but unable to move.
• 1:11:26
  As if he was paralyzed. Or stuck in some kind of a glue
• 1:11:30
  trap like an insect, unable to break free.
• 1:11:34
  He glanced around the room, trying to discover the source of
• 1:11:37
  his distress. It was here that he was met face
• 1:11:42
  to face with this being, this demon that seemed to be plaguing
• 1:11:47
  their lives. The creature grabbed him from
• 1:11:50
  the back and slammed him onto the floor, began repeatedly
• 1:11:55
  bashing his head into the hardwood below before
• 1:11:59
  disappearing. After this, Jack didn't watch TV
• 1:12:04
  to unwind anymore. As a matter of fact, no one
• 1:12:08
  could unwind. They were petrified at whatever
• 1:12:11
  was taking place in the house, unable to afford to move between
• 1:12:16
  all the adults and seemingly stuck between a rock and a hard
• 1:12:20
  place. Scared and unable to figure out
• 1:12:23
  what to do, they began to seek help wherever they thought they
• 1:12:27
  could find it. It was now winter and the
• 1:12:30
  family, besides their daily duties, spent most of their time
• 1:12:34
  indoors. While watching TV one afternoon,
• 1:12:39
  they saw an interview with Ed and Lorraine Warren, world
• 1:12:42
  renowned paranormal experts and demonologists, not being
• 1:12:47
  particularly religious and unsure of where to turn.
• 1:12:51
  They decided to reach out to the couple and were surprised.
• 1:12:54
  When they made contact, after speaking with them for some
• 1:12:58
  time, the Warrens agreed to come to their house to meet in person
• 1:13:02
  with the Smurls and to investigate.
• 1:13:05
  And within a week, that's exactly what they did.
• 1:13:09
  After an initial meeting with the family, hearing their
• 1:13:12
  testimonies in person and after exploring the home, the Warrens
• 1:13:16
  decided seems genuine and it's worth investigating, and they
• 1:13:21
  begin their usual process of bringing in their team for an
• 1:13:25
  extended period of time to document and Mull over potential
• 1:13:30
  solutions for the family. After several months of the
• 1:13:33
  documenting team living with the family and experiencing strange
• 1:13:38
  activity themselves such as furniture stacking on top of
• 1:13:42
  itself, along with several other previously mentioned happenings
• 1:13:47
  such as the stains and attacks on individual members of the
• 1:13:50
  home. Lorraine finally comes to the
• 1:13:53
  conclusion after having a vision within the house that they were
• 1:13:57
  dealing with a total of 4 entities. 1 was that of an old
• 1:14:02
  woman who she believed was not a threat to the family but was
• 1:14:06
  simply being held against her will within the home. 1 was a
• 1:14:09
  younger woman who was angry and resentful and could be violent,
• 1:14:15
  and the other was a man who took the life of his wife and his
• 1:14:19
  lover and had been hanged in the same spot 100 years earlier by a
• 1:14:24
  vengeful crowd. The final entity was that of a
• 1:14:28
  demon, and this demon not only was strong in keeping the other
• 1:14:33
  three spirits under its heel of control, but would use them to
• 1:14:37
  strengthen itself and wreak havoc upon the family, to sow
• 1:14:42
  discord, anxiety, and fear, all things to which it could feed on
• 1:14:48
  and continue to grow stronger. After reaching this conclusion
• 1:14:53
  and having gathered sufficient information, the warrant spoke
• 1:14:57
  to Father McKenna. Who was a?
• 1:14:59
  Vatican sanctioned exorcist and had worked with them over 50
• 1:15:04
  times on separate cases in the past, so he was no stranger to
• 1:15:10
  the demonic. But after his arrival and
• 1:15:13
  attempted exorcism, the activity only increased in aggression and
• 1:15:18
  hostility, and for whatever reason, it was not tied to the
• 1:15:22
  home anymore, but rather the family members themselves.
• 1:15:27
  Jack began to experience horrific visions of the creature
• 1:15:31
  at work, as did his father, and alongside the continued
• 1:15:36
  paranormal activity taking place at their home, their daughter
• 1:15:40
  Karen fell seriously ill with a fever that the doctors couldn't
• 1:15:44
  diagnose at the time and almost died.
• 1:15:48
  Several of the other girls were also visited by the sickening
• 1:15:52
  presence at night, as Janet also was and continued to be.
• 1:15:58
  The demon also began to physically attack the family
• 1:16:01
  more often, causing stinging, scratches and cuts on their
• 1:16:05
  bodies at random times. As well as deep.
• 1:16:09
  And bruising bite marks. Still trying to help the family
• 1:16:13
  rid themselves of this creature and fearing for the family's
• 1:16:17
  continued torment, the Warrens convinced the Smurls to allow a
• 1:16:21
  second exorcism to take place, and McKenna again would visit
• 1:16:25
  and conduct a second exorcism months later in the early
• 1:16:29
  spring. During this exorcism ritual,
• 1:16:33
  Evps were recorded which, when played back after the fact,
• 1:16:38
  would reveal multiple entities laughing at and berating them
• 1:16:42
  for their efforts. Ed Warren would also be choked
• 1:16:46
  during this visit and would be incapacitated for multiple days
• 1:16:51
  after. Unfortunately, the second
• 1:16:53
  exorcism also failed, leading to even more violent manifestations
• 1:16:59
  of evil. Trying to get away from it all
• 1:17:02
  for even just a few days, the family went on a camping trip to
• 1:17:06
  the Pocono Mountains, but the demon would follow them there as
• 1:17:10
  well, tormenting them wherever they went, allowing for no rest,
• 1:17:16
  no decompression, and no peace. Upon returning to their home
• 1:17:21
  following this trip and getting even more desperate, they
• 1:17:25
  decided to reach out to a local TV show called People Are
• 1:17:29
  Talking to see if anyone could possibly help them.
• 1:17:33
  They did, however, remain anonymous during their interview
• 1:17:36
  and this call for help, however, went unanswered.
• 1:17:40
  But the demons seemed to retaliate against them for it.
• 1:17:44
  Janet would once again be hurled against a wall, and Jack would
• 1:17:48
  experience something truly terrifying and new as he woke up
• 1:17:53
  in the early morning to get ready for work.
• 1:17:55
  Before the sun had come up, a light rain tapped the glass of
• 1:18:00
  the windows outside. As he dressed himself and began
• 1:18:04
  to gather his things for his work day departure, he came down
• 1:18:07
  the stairs and was greeted by a disgusting and horrid creature.
• 1:18:13
  Standing in front of the door was a monstrous being whose head
• 1:18:17
  almost touched the ceiling. It resembled a horrible
• 1:18:21
  amalgamation of a man and a pig standing upright on 2 legs.
• 1:18:28
  It screeched and rushed towards him, but as he fell backwards
• 1:18:33
  onto the stairs, hurting his back, the creature stood over
• 1:18:37
  him face to face, snarling before it disappeared.
• 1:18:42
  This manifestation disturbed and rattled Jack to his core.
• 1:18:47
  The same morning, shortly after Jack had left for work because
• 1:18:51
  although terrified, he still had to provide for his family if
• 1:18:55
  they ever wanted to have a chance of escaping this
• 1:18:58
  hellscape of a home, Janet was woken up a short while later by
• 1:19:02
  a hand reaching up through her mattress and grabbing the back
• 1:19:06
  of her neck and pulling her towards it and choking.
• 1:19:10
  Her. After these events, horrific
• 1:19:13
  snarling noises like that of a pig could be heard coming from
• 1:19:18
  inside the walls. The time was now August of 1986,
• 1:19:24
  and the Smurls felt that the risk of ridicule did not
• 1:19:27
  outweigh the need for their story to reach a wider audience
• 1:19:31
  so that somehow, somewhere, someone could possibly help them
• 1:19:36
  be freed from this torment. It would soon be granted an
• 1:19:39
  interview with the Wilkes Barre Sunday newspaper, but instead of
• 1:19:43
  someone reading and immediately coming to their aid, their home
• 1:19:48
  quickly became a tourist attraction instead.
• 1:19:51
  The press, skeptics and curious onlookers alike began to visit
• 1:19:56
  the house and camp outside of it at all hours of the day and
• 1:20:01
  night, with some particularly weird people even coming up and
• 1:20:05
  staring into the home's windows themselves.
• 1:20:08
  Some of their neighbors who had seen and heard strange things
• 1:20:12
  coming from the small residence began to turn on them.
• 1:20:16
  They believed that the family was concocting some kind of a
• 1:20:19
  story to try and make money. Eventually however, despite the
• 1:20:24
  torment inside and outside of the home now that they were
• 1:20:27
  experiencing, the Smurls would be contacted by a medium by the
• 1:20:31
  name of Mary Alice Rinkman, who offered to meet with them.
• 1:20:35
  Upon meeting the family and walking through the home, it was
• 1:20:39
  also Mary's conviction that there were 4 entities within the
• 1:20:43
  house, 3 human spirits and one who had never been human, thus
• 1:20:48
  corroborating the Warrens beliefs about the situation as
• 1:20:52
  well. She would however take things a
• 1:20:54
  bit further. She identified the old woman by
• 1:20:57
  the name of Abigail, the murderous man as Patrick, and
• 1:21:02
  the violent and I'll tempered spirit as Patrick's wife.
• 1:21:06
  And the 4th entity, of course, could not be identified by name,
• 1:21:11
  but was indeed a very powerful demon.
• 1:21:14
  The press coverage, despite the ridicule and the positive
• 1:21:17
  acquaintance of Mary, also had pushed the Scranton Catholic
• 1:21:20
  Diocese into action as well. They offered to take over the
• 1:21:24
  investigation and the meantime the Warrens had not given up on
• 1:21:29
  the family, but rather had reached out to several more
• 1:21:32
  priests and had arranged for a mass exorcism to be conducted
• 1:21:37
  with four priests taking part as well as multiple prayer groups
• 1:21:42
  alongside this. Now Bishop McKenna came in for a
• 1:21:45
  third and final time and conducted an exorcism on the
• 1:21:49
  House for the family and fortunately the ritual, at least
• 1:21:54
  for a time, seemed to work because following it there were
• 1:21:59
  no disturbances for about 3 months.
• 1:22:02
  But as winter set in that year, just before Christmas of 1986,
• 1:22:08
  Jack would again see the creature that had tormented him
• 1:22:12
  for all of those years. This time, however, it beckoned
• 1:22:16
  him to allow it to take over. But clutching a rosary in his
• 1:22:21
  pocket that had been gifted to him by the church, he prayed as
• 1:22:24
  hard as he could. And thankfully, this time the
• 1:22:28
  demon vanished, never to be seen again.
• 1:22:33
  However, the putrid smells and violent manifestations would
• 1:22:36
  return and continue day in and day out, frustrated, hopeless,
• 1:22:44
  and exhausted. The smirrels by this point had
• 1:22:48
  finally saved enough to be able to leave this dreaded duplex on
• 1:22:52
  Chase Street and decided they needed the closest thing to a
• 1:22:56
  fresh start as they could get. So when they finally did move,
• 1:23:00
  they moved to a completely new town, one where the ridicule
• 1:23:04
  would not find them. But like the terrible patterns
• 1:23:08
  shown before, the demon did not seem to be tied to the property,
• 1:23:13
  but rather the family. The activity started back up
• 1:23:17
  almost as soon as they had moved in and laid their heads to rest
• 1:23:21
  in their new home. It would take some time, but in
• 1:23:25
  1988 the church finally sanctioned 1/4 exorcism, but
• 1:23:29
  this time at their new residence.
• 1:23:32
  And this finally seems to have given the family peace.
• 1:23:37
  A few things I would like to mention, however, are these.
• 1:23:41
  From my own personal experience and many other stories I've
• 1:23:44
  researched, it seems like renovations, particularly on
• 1:23:48
  older homes, can wake up dormant spirits or hauntings.
• 1:23:53
  Perhaps this is what happened to the Smurls?
• 1:23:55
  It's hard to tell if the assaults were one or multiple
• 1:23:58
  demonic entities, but if they did truly exist, how did they
• 1:24:02
  get in the home to begin with? And my guess is that the
• 1:24:06
  collection of negative energy attracts them like moths to a
• 1:24:10
  flame. Perhaps they enjoy.
• 1:24:12
  Or. Feed off of human suffering.
• 1:24:15
  This would only make sense to me, considering that they hate
• 1:24:17
  humans, refuse to bow to them in the beginning.
• 1:24:21
  Perhaps once they're embedded in one's life they continue to so
• 1:24:24
  said, suffering to exploit and grow stronger, ultimately trying
• 1:24:29
  to take the human's life and their soul back with them to
• 1:24:33
  hell. I would also like to mention
• 1:24:36
  that scratching on a person and inside the walls as well as
• 1:24:40
  disembodied breathing are all signs of demonic infestation and
• 1:24:45
  for one reason or another having actually experienced this,
• 1:24:49
  personally seeing the manifestation of a pig like
• 1:24:52
  demon. Or a creature.
• 1:24:54
  As well as hearing pigs snarling coming from within the walls is
• 1:24:58
  considered to be a serious or incredibly strong sign of a very
• 1:25:03
  strong demonic infestation. As far as the.
• 1:25:06
  Initial activity, the seeping through of the stains, the sinks
• 1:25:11
  turning on, toilets flushing on their own, and leaky pipes.
• 1:25:15
  Those initially could be written off as poor skill when the work
• 1:25:18
  was initially done. But it seemed like with this
• 1:25:21
  story all of these things were working perfectly fine for
• 1:25:25
  months before they all of a sudden almost at the same time
• 1:25:29
  began to go wrong while costing the family money that they
• 1:25:32
  didn't have. And money at the time seemed to
• 1:25:35
  be their main issue as well as the paranormal.
• 1:25:38
  So perhaps the demon knew and exploited this to add to the
• 1:25:42
  misery it was feeding on. But truly at the end of the day
• 1:25:46
  the conclusion is yours to make. Was this Merle haunting
• 1:25:50
  legitimate, or just another tale concocted for money or inside
• 1:25:54
  the broken minds of individuals who claimed to have experienced
• 1:25:59
  it? Let me know down in the comments
• 1:26:01
  below. They would eventually release a
• 1:26:03
  book about all they had experienced called The Haunted
• 1:26:07
  in 1988. But financials or how successful
• 1:26:10
  it was was never released, at least not from what I could
• 1:26:13
  find. But what I do know is this.
• 1:26:16
  It's extremely important to examine a situation from all
• 1:26:20
  angles just before diving into it.
• 1:26:23
  Although a place might seem like a fresh new start, it could
• 1:26:26
  indeed be your fresh new hell, and those renovations that you
• 1:26:31
  think are going to improve your quality of life could awaken
• 1:26:34
  something that has been watching and waiting for a new host to
• 1:26:39
  attach itself to and feed upon until it can wear it down, rot,
• 1:26:45
  and eventually drag it back to the depths.
• 1:26:48
  From where it came from when you think of the paranormal realm.
• 1:26:54
  What is the first thing that comes to your mind?
• 1:26:57
  Is it a haunted place? A person who's being tormented
• 1:27:01
  by unseen forces, or an object like a doll that has seemingly
• 1:27:06
  taken on a life of its own? Or perhaps a little of all three
• 1:27:11
  and more? But have you considered that a
• 1:27:14
  vehicle could be haunted? Considering if objects could be
• 1:27:18
  haunted, it seems possible to me that this story may just
• 1:27:21
  convince you that something inhabits this vehicle, in
• 1:27:25
  particular. Something.
• 1:27:27
  Malevolent. This strange tale over the
• 1:27:30
  decades has seemed to take on a life of its own, and not only
• 1:27:34
  has it been requested but deserves its very own rendition
• 1:27:37
  here on Mystery Archives. This is the haunting story of
• 1:27:41
  James Dean's cursed car and whether or not it continues to
• 1:27:45
  plague the lives of those who possess its parts.
• 1:27:51
  James Dean, both in the 50s at the height of his fame and even
• 1:27:55
  today, is widely considered a Hollywood icon.
• 1:27:59
  Born James Byron Dean in 1931, he was born into a humble
• 1:28:03
  background in Marion, IN, the only child of Mildred Wilson and
• 1:28:09
  Wynton Dean growing up. He excelled in school both
• 1:28:13
  academically and athletically. Playing varsity baseball and
• 1:28:17
  basketball as well as becoming an avid student of drama, his
• 1:28:22
  efforts would eventually land him at UCLA in 1949 after his
• 1:28:27
  high school graduation, where he began to truly pursue his
• 1:28:31
  passion for acting. He had first started out as a
• 1:28:35
  pre law major but would soon switch his major to drama.
• 1:28:40
  His first role in college that truly made him consider becoming
• 1:28:43
  an actor was when he was selected out of a group of 350
• 1:28:48
  other actors to portray Malcolm in the play Macbeth.
• 1:28:52
  Shortly after this he also began acting in James Whitmore's
• 1:28:56
  workshop. Although he loved acting, his
• 1:29:00
  father didn't and his choice of major would soon alienate the
• 1:29:04
  two from each other. But refusing to give up on his
• 1:29:07
  dreams, James would drop out of UCLA in January of 1951 to
• 1:29:13
  pursue a full time career as an actor.
• 1:29:16
  It was during this time that he began to pay his dues so to
• 1:29:20
  speak, first starring in a Pepsi commercial, then landing a
• 1:29:24
  series of walk on roles in various movies such as Fixed
• 1:29:28
  Bayonets, Sailor Beware and Has Anybody Seen My Gal While
• 1:29:33
  struggling to pay the bills. Whilst chasing his dreams, James
• 1:29:37
  also worked as a parking lot attendant at CBS Studios where
• 1:29:41
  he would eventually meet Rogers Brackett, a radio director and
• 1:29:46
  agent who offered him professional advice and guidance
• 1:29:49
  to assist him in furthering his career.
• 1:29:52
  Brackett would open a major door for James, a starring role in
• 1:29:56
  the Broadway play See The Jaguar, which would indeed
• 1:30:00
  continue to open many other opportunities for the aspiring
• 1:30:03
  actor. Moving from walk on roles and
• 1:30:06
  movies to several television appearances and soon a major
• 1:30:10
  role in a major film. He would finally receive his big
• 1:30:14
  break in 1953 where he starred in the movie East of Eden.
• 1:30:19
  It was here that his complexity as an actor and improv skills
• 1:30:23
  were finally able to shine. Almost immediately after East of
• 1:30:27
  Eden premiered, Dean would quickly pick up another and an
• 1:30:31
  even. Bigger role in Rebel Without a
• 1:30:33
  Cause? As well as another film called
• 1:30:36
  Giant following soon after. Rebel Without a Cause is what
• 1:30:40
  seems to make Dean a cultural icon, becoming not only an
• 1:30:44
  admired actor to many, but a heartthrob as well to thousands.
• 1:30:49
  In 1954, shortly after East of Eden had concluded being filmed,
• 1:30:54
  James began to take an interest in auto racing.
• 1:30:58
  He purchased several vehicles for the hobby.
• 1:31:01
  Including a Triumph Tiger T110. In a Porsche 356, James competed
• 1:31:07
  in his first professional event at Palm Springs Rd.
• 1:31:10
  Races held in Palm Springs, CA where he achieved first place in
• 1:31:15
  the Novice class and 2nd place for the main event.
• 1:31:19
  He continued to race and would race at Bakersfield a month
• 1:31:23
  later where he would take first in his class and 3rd overall.
• 1:31:28
  Really taking to the motorsport, he hoped to compete in the
• 1:31:31
  Indianapolis 500, but his busy filming schedule unfortunately
• 1:31:36
  made this impossible. His final race would occur in
• 1:31:40
  Santa Barbara on May 30th, 1955. During this race he was
• 1:31:46
  unfortunately unable to finish due to a blown piston.
• 1:31:50
  His racing career was then placed on hold by Warner
• 1:31:53
  Brothers, the studio in charge of the film Giant, until filming
• 1:31:57
  was finished. Dean would finish his scenes and
• 1:32:01
  while Giant was in post production.
• 1:32:03
  With the ban lifted, he decided that he would race again.
• 1:32:07
  However, this time he wanted something stronger and faster.
• 1:32:12
  On September 23rd of 1955, James purchased a new 1955 Porsche 550
• 1:32:20
  Spyder and brought it to the legendary Flim Flammer George
• 1:32:24
  Barris to have it personalized before his next race.
• 1:32:29
  During the customization process, he chose Tardon seats,
• 1:32:33
  the number 130 emblazoned upon the hood, and the name Little
• 1:32:38
  Bastard painted on the back just underneath the Porsche emblem on
• 1:32:42
  the engine cover. Almost as soon as his car was
• 1:32:45
  done being customized and James began to drive it around, there
• 1:32:50
  was a series of omens that should have alerted him that
• 1:32:53
  something wasn't quite normal with Little Bastard.
• 1:32:57
  Later that day, on September 23rd, James was driving his new
• 1:33:02
  car around Los Angeles where he met up with British actor Alec
• 1:33:06
  Guinness to show him his new toy.
• 1:33:09
  Almost immediately, Alec became very wary of the car.
• 1:33:13
  In his personal diary he said this in regards to seeing it for
• 1:33:17
  the first time, and this is also a summary.
• 1:33:20
  Of what he. Told James himself in person
• 1:33:22
  that day. The sports car looked sinister
• 1:33:25
  to me. Exhausted, hungry, feeling a
• 1:33:29
  little ill tempered in spite of Dean's kindness, I heard myself
• 1:33:33
  saying in a voice that I could hardly recognize as my own.
• 1:33:37
  Please never get in it. If you get in that car, you'll
• 1:33:41
  be found dead in it by this time next week.
• 1:33:45
  After being told that his car seems sinister and that he would
• 1:33:48
  be found dead in it by this time next week, all James did.
• 1:33:53
  Was laugh. Exactly one week later, on
• 1:33:56
  September the 30th, James Dean and Rolf Vuterach, a former
• 1:34:01
  Luftwaffe pilot and factory trained Porsche mechanic, were
• 1:34:05
  at Competition Motors in Hollywood preparing Little
• 1:34:09
  Bastard for racing that week at the Salinas Rd. races in
• 1:34:14
  Salinas, CA. The intent was for Dean to
• 1:34:17
  transport the car via trailer to Salinas behind his 1955 Ford
• 1:34:23
  Country Squire with his photographer Bill Hickman.
• 1:34:27
  But before it could be raced, the car needed some break in
• 1:34:30
  miles on it to make sure everything was in working order.
• 1:34:34
  Rolf suggested driving the car to Salinas to break in the
• 1:34:38
  engine and familiarize himself with his new vehicle.
• 1:34:42
  He would also ride with him. After having a cup of coffee
• 1:34:46
  across the street from Competition Motors at 1:15 PM,
• 1:34:50
  the group departed for Salinas at 3:30 PM.
• 1:34:54
  Patrolman OV Hunter said he stopped and wrote Dean a ticket
• 1:34:59
  just South of Bakersfield, CA for driving 65 mph and a 55.
• 1:35:06
  Hickman, who was towing the trailer, would receive a ticket
• 1:35:09
  for 20 miles over the speed limit because he was towing a
• 1:35:12
  trailer in which the maximum speed allowed would have only
• 1:35:15
  been 45 mph. The crew would then stop at
• 1:35:19
  Blackwell's Corner on Route 466 for drinks.
• 1:35:23
  Here they also met up with Lance Ravendlow and Bruce Kessler, two
• 1:35:28
  other racers who would also be competing in the Salinas Rd.
• 1:35:31
  races. Once they had departed at about
• 1:35:34
  5:15 PM, Dean and Hickman drove W towards Paso Robles 1/2.
• 1:35:40
  An hour later, a black and white 1950 Ford Tudor coupe was headed
• 1:35:45
  E on 466. The vehicle was being driven by
• 1:35:49
  a 23 year old California polytechnical student, a man
• 1:35:53
  with a strange name of Donald Turnip Seed.
• 1:35:57
  Donald made a left on Route 41 and as he crossed the center
• 1:36:01
  line, Dean, who was traveling around 85 mph, tried to avoid.
• 1:36:07
  Him. However, despite his best
• 1:36:09
  efforts, the two vehicles collided.
• 1:36:12
  Head on. The Ford coupe upon the
• 1:36:15
  collision slid 39 feet down Route 466 and the westbound
• 1:36:20
  lane. Dean bore the brunt of the
• 1:36:22
  collision but stayed within the car.
• 1:36:25
  Voutirage, however, was thrown from the Spider and was laying
• 1:36:29
  on the shoulder multiple feet away from the scene.
• 1:36:32
  Upon the arrival of emergency personnel.
• 1:36:35
  With Little Bastard completely totaled, they would have to pry
• 1:36:39
  James from the mangled vehicle using the crowbar.
• 1:36:43
  An unconscious and dying James Dean was then placed into the
• 1:36:46
  ambulance along with a heavily injured Rolf.
• 1:36:50
  The closest hospital was 30 miles away, and as the ambulance
• 1:36:55
  rushed towards Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, they too, as
• 1:37:00
  if they had been stricken with the worst luck imaginable, would
• 1:37:03
  also be involved in a car accident.
• 1:37:06
  Despite the horrible circumstances surrounding the
• 1:37:09
  initial accident, the ambulance did eventually make its way to
• 1:37:12
  the hospital roughly 45 minutes later, and although it would
• 1:37:17
  take months of recovery, Rolf would live.
• 1:37:20
  But despite the emergency crew's best efforts, Dean, however,
• 1:37:25
  would be pronounced dead on arrival at 6:20 PM.
• 1:37:29
  His final cause of death upon autopsy would be determined to
• 1:37:33
  be a broken neck and internal hemorrhaging as a result of the
• 1:37:36
  crash. He also had sustained multiple
• 1:37:40
  broken bones, including his legs, arms, and jaw, as well as
• 1:37:46
  multiple severe external lacerations.
• 1:37:49
  Donald Turnip's seat, however, despite his vehicle also being
• 1:37:53
  totaled, walked away with barely a scratch after his death.
• 1:37:58
  James Dean would be nominated for two Academy Awards in 1956
• 1:38:03
  and 1957 for his roles in East of Eden and Giant.
• 1:38:09
  He would also become the first actor to posthumanously win an
• 1:38:13
  Academy Award for one in 1956, seemingly being cut down in his
• 1:38:18
  prime at the young age of 24. Dean's death was an
• 1:38:22
  unprecedented tragedy, but the story of Little Bastard, despite
• 1:38:27
  being crumpled in the crash, would be far from over.
• 1:38:31
  A man by the name of George Barris purchased the wrecked
• 1:38:34
  Porsche remnants for $2500 later that year, likely with the
• 1:38:39
  intent to host some sort of an exhibit with it and to sell
• 1:38:43
  tickets. But after he purchased it, while
• 1:38:46
  transporting the remains, upon arriving at his shop, the car
• 1:38:51
  slipped off the trailer and broke the leg of his mechanic
• 1:38:55
  once it was secured in one of the shops garages.
• 1:38:58
  In approximately 1 month's time, while Barris was arranging for
• 1:39:02
  the first exhibit to open, the garage housing the car
• 1:39:06
  mysteriously caught fire and burned to the ground.
• 1:39:11
  Even more mysterious, upon surveying the damage, the
• 1:39:15
  Porsche had sustained no damage from the fire itself.
• 1:39:20
  Barris would eventually. Arrange for a second exhibit
• 1:39:23
  which was held at a local high school.
• 1:39:25
  In conjunction with the California Highway Patrol.
• 1:39:29
  But this showing too was unexpectedly cut short.
• 1:39:33
  When the car was surrounded by onlookers and students, it
• 1:39:37
  suddenly fell off of its display and broke a young student's hip.
• 1:39:42
  Getting an eerie sense that something was off with this car,
• 1:39:46
  Bears then began to sell its parts.
• 1:39:49
  He would sell the engine to a man named Troy McHenry and the
• 1:39:53
  drivetrain to William Eskrid. The two used parts to build cars
• 1:39:58
  of their own and had even once raced one another, and both
• 1:40:02
  would experience horrendous accidents during a street race.
• 1:40:07
  Troy would lose control of his vehicle, veer off the street and
• 1:40:12
  slam directly into a tree. The impact would kill him
• 1:40:16
  instantly and shortly after Troy's tragedy.
• 1:40:24
  William, who was casually driving his vehicle containing
• 1:40:27
  the drivetrain of Little Bastard, suddenly had his wheels
• 1:40:31
  lock up for no reason, and upon turning while experiencing this,
• 1:40:37
  the car began to roll, leaving him critically injured in the
• 1:40:41
  crash. He, however, despite his
• 1:40:44
  injuries, would live while parting out what was left of the
• 1:40:49
  car. Barris would also sell two of
• 1:40:51
  the Porsche's tires, which have been untouched since the
• 1:40:54
  accident that claimed Dean's life.
• 1:40:57
  After selling the tires, he also installed them on the customer's
• 1:41:01
  vehicle. At his shop.
• 1:41:03
  However, upon driving home both of them, not one or the other,
• 1:41:09
  but both simultaneously exploded, causing the driver to
• 1:41:14
  lose control and drive off the road.
• 1:41:17
  They would fortunately regain control of their vehicle and
• 1:41:21
  despite being shaken up, were unharmed.
• 1:41:25
  George Barris, after selling what parts he could, will
• 1:41:28
  continue trying to arrange exhibits for the remnants of the
• 1:41:32
  car to be shown. The 3rd and final exhibit that
• 1:41:36
  was set to happen was going to be held by the Los Angeles
• 1:41:39
  Chapter of the National Safety Council as a traveling display.
• 1:41:44
  However, the truck driver who was hired to transport Little
• 1:41:48
  Bastard to the exhibit on a flatbed truck.
• 1:41:51
  A man named George Barkas would be involved in an accident while
• 1:41:55
  heading there. He would be ejected from his
• 1:41:58
  vehicle and would land to the side of the flatbed and whether.
• 1:42:03
  It was a failure of securing the remnants or something more
• 1:42:06
  sinister. He would be crushed and killed
• 1:42:10
  when the Porsche rolled off the flatbed and on to him.
• 1:42:14
  There would be other mishaps as the twisted Porsche would be
• 1:42:17
  loaned out to various exhibits across the country in the years
• 1:42:21
  to come. But when it was on loan to a
• 1:42:23
  safety exhibit in Miami, FL in 1960, following the conclusion
• 1:42:28
  of the exhibit, as it was being hauled back to Los Angeles, the
• 1:42:33
  truck that was carrying what was left of the vehicle would once
• 1:42:36
  again be involved in a fatal crash, killing the driver.
• 1:42:40
  What remained of the Porsche, known as Little Bastard vanished
• 1:42:43
  from the scene that day. And to this day, all these years
• 1:42:47
  later, it has never been seen again, nor has any of its parts,
• 1:42:52
  despite collectors and enthusiasts alike willing to put
• 1:42:56
  up big money for even a genuine scrap of its remains.
• 1:43:00
  But before we speculate on what could have happened to it, I
• 1:43:03
  would first like to give my take on the bizarre activity that
• 1:43:07
  surrounds this now infamous legend.
• 1:43:09
  To me, if there was ever something that could be
• 1:43:12
  considered cursed, this once prized Porsche of James Dean
• 1:43:16
  very much fits the bill given all that we've learned.
• 1:43:20
  But just why would it have been cursed and how?
• 1:43:24
  These are questions that I've pondered while researching this
• 1:43:26
  topic. There of course doesn't seem to
• 1:43:29
  be a proper answer or even a real speculated one that would
• 1:43:33
  genuinely make sense that I could find.
• 1:43:36
  There doesn't seem to be any crazy occult ties to anyone he
• 1:43:39
  was involved with, but one theory that I did come across
• 1:43:42
  could possibly explain why. But of course this is just a
• 1:43:46
  theory, I don't want people getting mad at me.
• 1:43:49
  James Dean, besides being an acclaimed actor by the young age
• 1:43:53
  of 24, was most definitely a heartthrob with the ladies.
• 1:43:57
  It's been rumored that among his various affairs with rich and
• 1:44:00
  powerful women, he also had multiple escapades per week.
• 1:44:04
  The theory I came across was this.
• 1:44:07
  Could it have been possible that some star crossed lover or fling
• 1:44:12
  of Deans could have placed a curse on him?
• 1:44:15
  Curses, of course, like anything paranormal in nature, are
• 1:44:18
  subject to a sense of belief in these kinds of things, or so
• 1:44:22
  most think. Perhaps Dean broke the heart of
• 1:44:25
  the wrong person, with Dean hitting the big time and also
• 1:44:29
  taking up car racing in between films or the filming of those
• 1:44:32
  films. Perhaps one of his girlfriends,
• 1:44:36
  rather jealous or heartbroken or both, placed a curse of sorts on
• 1:44:41
  him, either on him or something to do with his new found love
• 1:44:45
  for Motorsports. How this would have exactly
• 1:44:48
  imprinted specifically upon the newly purchased Porsche of 1955
• 1:44:54
  goes far beyond my expertise, but it is the only explanation I
• 1:44:58
  could find that would remotely make sense, aside from a
• 1:45:02
  horrible string of unfortunate coincidences.
• 1:45:05
  And strangely enough, the man who hit Dean having the name of
• 1:45:09
  Donald Turnip Seed. Turnip seed, in my opinion, is
• 1:45:13
  all too close to turnip speed. It's kind of weird, don't you
• 1:45:17
  think? With all of the darkness
• 1:45:19
  surrounding this car, Rolf. Had a very.
• 1:45:22
  Tragic ending as well. Upon his post rec recovery, he
• 1:45:27
  began to receive horrible letters from James Dean's fans
• 1:45:31
  blaming him for the actor's death.
• 1:45:34
  This eventually led to a terrible drinking problem as he
• 1:45:37
  felt responsible for what had happened.
• 1:45:39
  He would eventually move back to Germany where he experienced
• 1:45:43
  many lows including multiple divorces and his final marriage,
• 1:45:48
  however, seemed to be at the lowest point in his life, having
• 1:45:52
  been depressed for years coupled with other psychological
• 1:45:56
  problems stemming from the guilt of the accident with too much
• 1:45:59
  alcohol in his system. In 1969, Rolf attempted to end
• 1:46:04
  his fourth wife. He stabbed her 14 times with a
• 1:46:08
  kitchen knife while she slept. Afterwards, he attempted to take
• 1:46:13
  his own but failed. He was however arrested and
• 1:46:18
  would spend a lengthy term in a mental institution instead of
• 1:46:22
  prison. This would also be his last and
• 1:46:25
  final. Divorce.
• 1:46:27
  He would. For a short.
• 1:46:28
  Time bounce back as both a Porsche mechanic and would also
• 1:46:32
  be a racer himself once again, but again as well he succumbed
• 1:46:37
  to psychological issues, falling back on hard times.
• 1:46:41
  In July of 1981, he signed a contract for 20,000 Deutsche
• 1:46:46
  Marks for a feature in ATV show discussing the accident and the
• 1:46:51
  death of James Dean. As he contemplated what he was
• 1:46:54
  going to discuss, he would become heavily intoxicated and
• 1:46:58
  later that night he would crash his Honda Civic into the wall of
• 1:47:03
  a residence in Kufrzel. Ironically, like James, he too
• 1:47:08
  had to be cut from the wreck. It would be pronounced dead on
• 1:47:12
  arrival at the hospital. Now, where exactly could the
• 1:47:16
  remains of the Porsche have gone?
• 1:47:19
  The most likely explanation, in my opinion, had to have been
• 1:47:22
  bystanders who witnessed the crash, and my guess is that
• 1:47:27
  perhaps they didn't know exactly what they had, but rather saw
• 1:47:30
  dollar signs. This could perhaps explain why
• 1:47:33
  it didn't show back up. Perhaps people who owned the
• 1:47:36
  parts and or the vehicles with the parts didn't know what they
• 1:47:40
  indeed possessed. But what also makes this strange
• 1:47:44
  is that they've never shown back up.
• 1:47:47
  At all. There is one transaxle that was
• 1:47:50
  rumored to be from James Dean's car that was found in a wooden
• 1:47:54
  box in rural Massachusetts, but from what I could find it has
• 1:47:59
  yet to be confirmed as genuine. It was either that people didn't
• 1:48:03
  know what they had or something terrible happened to them as
• 1:48:06
  well and what remains they did possess or parts that they had
• 1:48:10
  put in their cars could have ended up scrapped somewhere,
• 1:48:14
  never to be seen again. Although I don't want to
• 1:48:17
  persuade you one way or another. With all the strange, dark and
• 1:48:21
  terrible events that surround the Porsche 550 Spider known as
• 1:48:26
  James Dean's little bastard, one certainly has to consider that
• 1:48:30
  there is something otherworldly or cursed surrounding this case.
• 1:48:35
  But is it a curse, Is it something evil?
• 1:48:38
  Or is it just a horrible? String of coincidences.
• 1:48:41
  Let me know down in the comments below.
• 1:48:44
  Either way, this is 1 car I have.
• 1:48:46
  Absolutely no desire to see, let alone ride in one that contains
• 1:48:50
  any piece of it. When a family moves into a new
• 1:48:54
  house, they discover its gruesome past and are met face
• 1:48:59
  to face with a grotesque horror. They must choose to fight or let
• 1:49:04
  their ever growing fear consume them.
• 1:49:07
  Will they make it out alive, or will evil triumph?
• 1:49:11
  This is the untold story of the terrifying Snideker family
• 1:49:15
  Haunting, better known as a haunting in Connecticut Evil.
• 1:49:22
  Entities, specters of another world that create misery and sow
• 1:49:28
  discord to engorge and strengthen themselves.
• 1:49:32
  Are they simply figments of the human imagination?
• 1:49:35
  A byproduct of the human condition, if you will.
• 1:49:38
  This story, as well as many others that have been covered
• 1:49:40
  here on this channel, begged the question, do evil beings from
• 1:49:44
  another world truly exist? I'm not here to convince you
• 1:49:47
  either way. All that I ask is that you draw
• 1:49:50
  your own conclusions because this story, like others, will
• 1:49:55
  make you truly wonder just what could be lurking in the shadows.
• 1:50:01
  The day is a cold one. Snow drifts down from the sky
• 1:50:05
  and covers everything in a layer of frozen powder.
• 1:50:10
  But colder still is the life altering news the Schneidecker
• 1:50:14
  family has just received. Their son Philip has been
• 1:50:18
  diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at the age of 14 and
• 1:50:22
  unless something short of a miracle takes place to put the
• 1:50:25
  disease into remission, he will die in less than six months.
• 1:50:30
  He is already deteriorated from a strong and healthy boy to a
• 1:50:35
  ghost of his former self. For Phillip to undergo
• 1:50:39
  experimental treatments, he has to see a specialist located over
• 1:50:43
  300 miles away from the family home and a hospital located in
• 1:50:48
  Connecticut. As his treatments begin, the
• 1:50:51
  family soon realizes that the 8 hour daily round trips are
• 1:50:55
  unsustainable not just for the family members taking Phillip,
• 1:51:00
  but more importantly to Philip himself who is becoming weaker
• 1:51:04
  as a result of the cancer and the radiation.
• 1:51:08
  Wanting to do anything they can to lessen the burden and get
• 1:51:11
  their son closer to his doctors to give him a fighting chance,
• 1:51:16
  Alan and Carmen liquidate what is left of their assets as Alan
• 1:51:20
  puts in a transfer to move to another site with his company
• 1:51:25
  and into the state of Connecticut.
• 1:51:27
  As Alan handles the children at home, Carmen heads to
• 1:51:30
  Connecticut to attempt to find a suitable place to live for her
• 1:51:33
  family. But with two adults and four
• 1:51:36
  children all together, this isn't the easiest of tasks to
• 1:51:39
  accomplish given their budget. After dozens of appointments and
• 1:51:44
  dozens of refusals, the situation was becoming bleak.
• 1:51:49
  That wasn't until she happened to drive by another house.
• 1:51:53
  As she contemplated what the future held, Carmen happened to
• 1:51:56
  drive by a large house with a four rent sign hanging in the
• 1:52:00
  front yard. Upon inquiring, she made her way
• 1:52:03
  inside to speak with the owner of the property and although
• 1:52:06
  renovations were still taking place and it would be a short
• 1:52:10
  while before the home was ready to live in, she was allowed to
• 1:52:14
  take a tour. Almost immediately, she fell in
• 1:52:17
  love with the home. It's freshly laid hardwood
• 1:52:20
  flooring and inviting interior seemed to call out to her, and
• 1:52:24
  with four bedrooms, 2 upstairs and two downstairs, and plenty
• 1:52:30
  of room for everyone, it seemed like the perfect fit.
• 1:52:34
  And more importantly, it was just minutes away from the
• 1:52:37
  hospital, which was the primary factor.
• 1:52:40
  Of course. Fearing that the large size of
• 1:52:43
  the house would be far outside of their budget, Carmen decided
• 1:52:47
  to cut to the chase and ask the property owner just how much the
• 1:52:51
  rent would be. And as if a gift from the
• 1:52:53
  universe itself, it just happened to fit their budget
• 1:52:57
  perfectly. After a handshake the first day,
• 1:53:01
  before too long, the terms are inked and the family begins to
• 1:53:05
  move in. Finally, after all of these
• 1:53:09
  months of struggle and worry, they have now secured a fighting
• 1:53:12
  chance for some kind of normalcy for the entire family and an
• 1:53:17
  even better chance for their son Philip to beat his cancer.
• 1:53:21
  Several weeks later, as the children are staying with
• 1:53:24
  relatives, Carmen and Allen begin to move things into the
• 1:53:28
  house. Just seeing the home for the
• 1:53:30
  first time, Allen agrees that his wife did a great job given
• 1:53:34
  the situation and that the house would be a good fit for the
• 1:53:37
  family. That wasn't until the couple
• 1:53:40
  looked into the basement. A small room was now present
• 1:53:44
  that Carmen hadn't seen on her initial walkthrough, perhaps one
• 1:53:48
  that was being renovated at the time.
• 1:53:51
  As her and Alan opened the door and walked into it, they began
• 1:53:54
  to notice strange tools that they had never seen before laid
• 1:53:58
  out on several tables as well as a sink located in the back of
• 1:54:03
  the room. As the snow falls outside and
• 1:54:06
  the whispers of the winter wind make themselves heard, the
• 1:54:10
  Snydeckers unveil a hideous revelation tucked in the
• 1:54:14
  basement of their new rental home.
• 1:54:16
  A home that they've moved in in order to give their son a
• 1:54:19
  fighting chance against cancer, appears to have previously been
• 1:54:23
  a Funeral Home 1 where the dead have been prepared for burial
• 1:54:27
  in. And unbeknownst to anyone, some
• 1:54:30
  of the old tools and saws were still present now in the room as
• 1:54:35
  they come to this realization. Shocked and angry with herself,
• 1:54:40
  Carmen initially refuses to bring the children there,
• 1:54:44
  especially Phillip. But after being talked down by
• 1:54:47
  Allen, who told her to consider their situation, the fact that
• 1:54:51
  they had already signed an agreement, that they had spent
• 1:54:54
  every last penny on Phillips treatments, the move and the
• 1:54:58
  rent, that even if it was a Funeral Home, no one likely died
• 1:55:03
  there. And Carmen finally relents and
• 1:55:06
  agrees to continue with the move.
• 1:55:08
  In process, the two vow to hide the morbid past of the home and
• 1:55:13
  its contents from their children.
• 1:55:16
  They contact the landlord, who removes the embalming and
• 1:55:19
  preparation equipment but leaves several tables and a deep freeze
• 1:55:23
  that might be useful to the family.
• 1:55:26
  And several weeks later, the rest of the family moves in as
• 1:55:30
  Philip and the other children wander from room to room
• 1:55:34
  examining their new house. Carmen begins to mop the floors
• 1:55:38
  to prepare to bring in the furniture to complete their
• 1:55:41
  move. But as she fills the bucket with
• 1:55:44
  soap and hot water and begins to mop where the items will go, she
• 1:55:49
  experiences an omen of sorts. As she mops from side to side,
• 1:55:54
  the steamy and soapy water began to congeal and turn into a thick
• 1:55:59
  and dark red substance, like that of dead blood as the liquid
• 1:56:04
  smears all over the hardwood floor.
• 1:56:06
  Within an instant. As she blinks, things seem to be
• 1:56:10
  back to normal. Attributing the bizarre vision
• 1:56:13
  to intense stress and exhaustion, she tries to write
• 1:56:17
  the experience off and continues mopping.
• 1:56:20
  Meanwhile, Philip has wandered into the basement stairwell and
• 1:56:24
  begins to descend the stairs, feeling an icy and cold presence
• 1:56:29
  overtake him the lower he gets into the basement.
• 1:56:33
  As his eyes scan the room, he feels an ominous presence
• 1:56:37
  staring at him when suddenly he hears a voice call out to him
• 1:56:43
  from a specific room, and this voice knew his name.
• 1:56:48
  Scared and unnerved, he makes his way back upstairs and greets
• 1:56:52
  his mother in the kitchen. He tells her that they need to
• 1:56:56
  leave immediately because he doesn't feel like any of them
• 1:56:59
  are safe. Carmen initially wrote off the
• 1:57:02
  feelings of her son due to him having his illness, adjusting to
• 1:57:07
  a new environment, and believing that it was an inner voice, not
• 1:57:11
  a physical one that he was hearing.
• 1:57:13
  But she would realize that she indeed was very, very wrong.
• 1:57:19
  As the days grow more difficult and long, the family began to
• 1:57:23
  turn to their faith for guidance.
• 1:57:25
  Reaching out to the priest who had married the couple.
• 1:57:28
  Alan and Carmen have him pray a prayer of healing over Philip,
• 1:57:32
  hoping to assist in his treatment, but despite their
• 1:57:35
  best efforts, he is only continuing to get worse.
• 1:57:39
  By this time, the entire family has moved into the former
• 1:57:43
  Funeral Home, including the other children, but no one has
• 1:57:47
  told the children that it was indeed a Funeral Home.
• 1:57:50
  Philip, unbeknownst to the rest of the family, had figured this
• 1:57:54
  out on his own. Carmen would eventually
• 1:57:57
  attribute his discovery to him being so close to death.
• 1:58:01
  At the time, she believed that the veil between life and death
• 1:58:05
  had become so thin for her boy that he could see what no one
• 1:58:09
  else could and know perhaps what others didn't.
• 1:58:13
  Working to provide as best as he could, Alan had long since gone
• 1:58:17
  back to work, leaving Carmen to run the strange and new house
• 1:58:22
  with their family and sick son on her own.
• 1:58:24
  He would be home on the weekends until his transfer was finalized
• 1:58:28
  because despite the horrors of having a cancer ridden child,
• 1:58:32
  the bills unfortunately never stop.
• 1:58:35
  As the day's progress, the strangeness within the home
• 1:58:39
  begins to reveal itself from the shadows.
• 1:58:43
  The youngest daughter of the Schneideckers is playing with
• 1:58:46
  her toys in her room as the wind whistles outside.
• 1:58:50
  As she talks with the dolls and places them within their
• 1:58:53
  dollhouse, a figure grazes the background.
• 1:58:57
  Of her room. When the little girl looks up
• 1:58:59
  above her dollhouse. She sees the.
• 1:59:02
  Figure of a woman with pale skin and sunk in eyes.
• 1:59:08
  Screaming, she races to her mother as fast as possible.
• 1:59:12
  Carmen comforts the poor girl, who is shaking as she grips her
• 1:59:16
  mother. Wanting to comfort her, Carmen
• 1:59:19
  goes upstairs to try and dismiss her daughter's fears, and
• 1:59:22
  despite her searching, nothing seems out of the ordinary.
• 1:59:27
  Believing that Philip and his brother were playing tricks on
• 1:59:29
  the poor child, Carmen angrily rushes to find and confront
• 1:59:34
  them. But despite her rage, the boys
• 1:59:37
  swear that they never told her the secret that Philip had
• 1:59:40
  discovered and that neither of them had played any tricks on
• 1:59:44
  her whatsoever. Bewildered, Carmen sets them
• 1:59:47
  straight and heads back to the kitchen to cook the family
• 1:59:51
  dinner. The only piece for her seems to
• 1:59:54
  come at night when the children are fast asleep in their beds
• 1:59:58
  with the crisp air holding an ever present moon above their
• 2:00:01
  home. Despite believing that all of
• 2:00:03
  her children were fast asleep, and with the house being so
• 2:00:07
  calm, her boys in the basement room were not getting much sleep
• 2:00:11
  at all. The boys are often woken up by
• 2:00:14
  the sounds and then visuals of someone or something moving
• 2:00:20
  behind the closed door. At first they thought it was
• 2:00:23
  simply shadows or their minds playing tricks on them when one
• 2:00:27
  or the other would be the only ones awake, but now that it was
• 2:00:31
  both of them, they were seeing the exact same thing and
• 2:00:35
  experiencing the same exact chill creeping up their spines.
• 2:00:41
  The two would then continue to confide in one another, as
• 2:00:44
  brothers often do, about all the things they had experienced
• 2:00:48
  individually. Once the bizarre specter had
• 2:00:51
  dematerialized, the days grew longer and more stressful as
• 2:00:56
  time wore on. Philip was knocking on Death's
• 2:00:59
  door and his lack of sleep was not helping His treatment for
• 2:01:04
  the frigid nights brought the icy touch of death and the
• 2:01:07
  wandering apparitions of another world into theirs.
• 2:01:12
  Soon the boys can no longer take it.
• 2:01:15
  They approach Carmen to explain what they've been seeing and
• 2:01:19
  that there's been a man in what they now call the lab room and
• 2:01:22
  their room in the basement. Carmen, as per usual, whether it
• 2:01:27
  was to cope with the mounting pressures and responsibilities
• 2:01:30
  of their daily lives or to try and convince them to negate
• 2:01:34
  their fear or both, wrote off the boys as having nothing more
• 2:01:39
  than overactive imaginations, reminding Philip that he was
• 2:01:43
  very sick and this could play a role in him seeing something
• 2:01:46
  that perhaps wasn't. There.
• 2:01:48
  However, that would still not explain his brother experiencing
• 2:01:52
  the exact same thing at the exact same time.
• 2:01:57
  Another typical day in their new lives.
• 2:01:59
  Carmen begins cooking dinner for the family, and up until this
• 2:02:03
  point she hasn't had an experience that she's recognized
• 2:02:07
  as anything truly paranormal that wasn't stress related or
• 2:02:11
  something else that she could write off entirely.
• 2:02:14
  She had just set all the dishes out on the table for her family,
• 2:02:17
  and as she starts to make her way to the deep freeze to grab
• 2:02:20
  the protein she'd be cooking for the family's meal, she hears
• 2:02:24
  slight movement coming from the dining room.
• 2:02:26
  As she grabs and then sets the meat down in the kitchen, she
• 2:02:30
  goes to examine what the sound was.
• 2:02:32
  All of the dishes are gone without a trace, as if she never
• 2:02:37
  placed them down at all, feeling as if she was losing her mind.
• 2:02:42
  Carmen can't so easily dismiss this experience because she
• 2:02:46
  knows she set that table. Meanwhile, Phillip's younger
• 2:02:50
  brother Bobby was down in their room.
• 2:02:53
  He knows something strange is happening in the house that they
• 2:02:56
  can't explain, given the apparitions and the noises the
• 2:03:00
  two of them have heard and experienced together, along with
• 2:03:04
  whatever their younger sister had seen.
• 2:03:06
  But this experience seems more personal.
• 2:03:09
  He begins to hear what first. Sounds like whispers coming from
• 2:03:12
  the lab room and sees the apparition of a man behind the
• 2:03:16
  closed window door. He can't make out any.
• 2:03:20
  Features other than a general outline and his size, but the
• 2:03:24
  closer he gets the more audible the whispering becomes.
• 2:03:29
  And this man, this thing is slowly muttering the name
• 2:03:34
  Philip. Feeling that sense of terror
• 2:03:37
  overtake him, fight or flight takes over the boy and he
• 2:03:41
  quickly runs upstairs where he bumps into his mother.
• 2:03:44
  Having just had her own experience, she's not sure what
• 2:03:48
  to say to him, so taking his hand, the two make their way to
• 2:03:52
  the basement and towards the lab room where the whispers had been
• 2:03:56
  coming from. After a tense couple seconds,
• 2:04:00
  Carmen opens the door only to be met with silence.
• 2:04:05
  Although she believed in the spirit world, she up until this
• 2:04:09
  point did not believe that it could interact with the world of
• 2:04:12
  the living. But given what her kids have
• 2:04:15
  been telling her and what she's just experienced that very
• 2:04:18
  night, she wasn't so sure anymore.
• 2:04:22
  She had to consider the prospect that her house may just be
• 2:04:26
  haunted. Alan would arrive the following
• 2:04:29
  morning to spend the weekend with his family.
• 2:04:32
  At the same time a winter storm began to set in as he arrived.
• 2:04:37
  After speaking with his wife and knowing that Philip has made the
• 2:04:41
  other children aware of the macabre past of the home, he
• 2:04:45
  finds it important to address the issue as a family, believing
• 2:04:49
  that the information could perhaps just be adding fuel to
• 2:04:52
  overactive imaginations. At the breakfast table, he does
• 2:04:56
  just that, finally addressing the family that they indeed were
• 2:05:00
  living in an old Funeral Home, but that there was no reason for
• 2:05:04
  the children to be scared, that there were no monsters lurking
• 2:05:08
  in the shadows and no specters of otherworldly beings watching
• 2:05:12
  them. Although Philip and his brother
• 2:05:15
  argue that they've seen and experienced the same things and
• 2:05:19
  they have indeed been very real, they are once again dismissed.
• 2:05:24
  Allen would then pull Philip aside to ask him that despite
• 2:05:28
  the entire situation with him being the oldest, if he could
• 2:05:32
  please set an example for the rest of the children and not
• 2:05:35
  scare them with ghost stories. Philip's cancer treatments
• 2:05:40
  continue day after day, slowly draining the remaining funds the
• 2:05:45
  family has left. Meanwhile, he continues to see
• 2:05:49
  and experience even more paranormal happenings within the
• 2:05:52
  home. His mother attributes this to
• 2:05:55
  his illness and the interactions between his body and medications
• 2:05:59
  he's been placed on, despite knowing that her other children
• 2:06:03
  and even herself have had their own experiences.
• 2:06:07
  Another bizarre development recently has been that most, if
• 2:06:11
  not all of the family's crucifixes that have been placed
• 2:06:15
  all throughout their home have started to go missing, with no
• 2:06:19
  indication as to where they could have gone.
• 2:06:22
  The nightly disturbances have also become regular by this
• 2:06:26
  point, with Philip and his brother seeing the man in the
• 2:06:29
  lab room ever more frequently, as well as hearing and seeing
• 2:06:34
  other apparitions circling them as they lay in their beds.
• 2:06:39
  This night is no different. The boys wake up their parents
• 2:06:43
  screaming in terror that the man is back after sweeping the house
• 2:06:48
  and ensuring that everything is locked, that there was no way
• 2:06:51
  anyone could have possibly gotten in.
• 2:06:54
  Alan, being very wary of being woken up almost every night,
• 2:06:58
  forces the boys to go back to bed again, dismissing their
• 2:07:02
  experiences. Tired of not being believed, the
• 2:07:07
  boys began to leave the lights on in their room and talk
• 2:07:10
  amongst themselves to comfort one another as they would slowly
• 2:07:14
  but surely begin to fall asleep. Convinced that Philip was seeing
• 2:07:18
  things due to his medication and then influencing the younger
• 2:07:22
  children, his parents requested that he be examined for any
• 2:07:25
  possible interactions by his doctor and after a series of
• 2:07:29
  tests, the doctor would conclude that nothing Philip was on could
• 2:07:34
  be causing such things. The only other possible answer
• 2:07:38
  was a psychological problem. Alongside his cancer, Allen was
• 2:07:43
  now picking up every hour he possibly could, as well as any
• 2:07:47
  side work that presented itself to try and keep up with the
• 2:07:50
  mounting debt the family was being buried in.
• 2:07:53
  On any given day, A2 inch stack of bills, either late or
• 2:07:58
  termination notices could be found on the kitchen counter.
• 2:08:02
  While sorting through them, he was shocked to find an electric
• 2:08:05
  bill almost twice its average. To him, the children sleeping
• 2:08:09
  with the lights on because of ghost stories was not only
• 2:08:13
  causing them to lose sleep, but now is costing the family money
• 2:08:17
  they simply didn't have. So to counteract this, and of
• 2:08:21
  course feeling as if he was justified in doing so, he goes
• 2:08:25
  to each one of their rooms and removes all of their light bulbs
• 2:08:29
  except for one at night. However, the lights that used to
• 2:08:33
  make them feel protected and bring them relief would soon
• 2:08:38
  contribute to a new supernatural horror.
• 2:08:42
  Sleeping in their room in the basement, the Schneidecker boys
• 2:08:45
  are suddenly woken up by the flashing of their overhead
• 2:08:49
  lights. Glancing to find the source,
• 2:08:52
  they see their little sister flicking the lights on and off,
• 2:08:56
  and despite there being no light bulbs in their sockets, they are
• 2:09:00
  still flashing on and off. Running towards her, the
• 2:09:04
  youngest brother chases her up the stairs, but she's just too
• 2:09:08
  quick for him to catch her. Instead, he runs into his
• 2:09:12
  parents when he exits the basement door, but strangely,
• 2:09:16
  his mother explains to him that she's been asleep in her room
• 2:09:19
  for hours now and she would know because she had tucked her in
• 2:09:24
  and had been near the basement ever since.
• 2:09:27
  Not believing her at first, he rushes upstairs to soon find her
• 2:09:32
  fast asleep in her bed. He is now even more freaked out
• 2:09:36
  because whatever this thing was, it could take the form of a
• 2:09:39
  family member. Meanwhile, as his brother comes
• 2:09:43
  to terms with this hideous revelation, a voice begins to
• 2:09:47
  call to Philip once again from the lab room, waking him up.
• 2:09:53
  Getting sick of living in fear, Philip finally decides to
• 2:09:57
  confront whoever or whatever has been calling out to him and
• 2:10:02
  approaches the room. Upon opening the door and
• 2:10:05
  stepping inside, he is met face to face with the entity that has
• 2:10:10
  been calling his name. The apparition appeared to him
• 2:10:14
  as a man with dark red, almost blood filled eyes began to
• 2:10:20
  whisper to him things about the home's past.
• 2:10:24
  After this freezing winter's night, Philip began to undergo a
• 2:10:28
  radical change in personality. He began to pull away and
• 2:10:32
  isolate himself from the rest of the family, insisting that he be
• 2:10:37
  left alone in the basement and that his brother Bobby move
• 2:10:40
  upstairs, making Bobby feel alienated from their once close
• 2:10:46
  and confiding relationship. Despite these personality
• 2:10:49
  changes, a miracle seemed to take place, one that the family
• 2:10:54
  had been praying for since the very beginning of their
• 2:10:57
  struggle. After months of daily
• 2:11:00
  treatments, Philip's blood labs finally came back normal.
• 2:11:04
  His cancer was in remission, but surprisingly, he almost doesn't
• 2:11:10
  seem to. Care at all?
• 2:11:12
  Later that evening, as the family prepares to celebrate the
• 2:11:15
  good news, they also welcome a guest for the first time since
• 2:11:19
  they had moved. Their niece Teresa, would be
• 2:11:22
  temporarily living with them and had just arrived from New York.
• 2:11:26
  Her parents had been separated and undergoing a messy divorce,
• 2:11:30
  so to help her make the best of the situation they've allowed
• 2:11:34
  her to stay with them. Not having seen the family in
• 2:11:37
  quite some time, Teresa begins to get re acclimated with them,
• 2:11:42
  but soon notices that Philip, who she had previously been very
• 2:11:45
  close to, was missing from the party.
• 2:11:49
  She would eventually find him in the basement and also notice
• 2:11:52
  that something was very different about him.
• 2:11:55
  He seemed darker, more angry, and not at all like the boy that
• 2:12:00
  she used to know. He would eventually confide in
• 2:12:03
  her all the paranormal activity he and the others had
• 2:12:06
  experienced in the house it's past and that his parents did
• 2:12:11
  not believe them. This made him feel extremely
• 2:12:14
  isolated and alone, and that the activity had not simply gone
• 2:12:18
  away, but had continued to get worse each and every night.
• 2:12:24
  His experiences as he explained them to Teresa ranged from
• 2:12:28
  scratching on his door and inside his walls, to his name
• 2:12:32
  being called, to seeing the apparitions of figures
• 2:12:36
  surrounding him, hearing, whispering, and also seeing and
• 2:12:41
  hearing a man in a suit with blood red eyes call out to him.
• 2:12:45
  And that this man would also visit his bedside every single
• 2:12:50
  night and tell him things that his parents had said about him,
• 2:12:54
  negative and terrible things. He would then encourage Philip
• 2:12:58
  to take action and to hurt his own family.
• 2:13:02
  Shortly into her stay, Teresa began to observe that the hatred
• 2:13:06
  and malice that was dwelling within Philip that seemed to
• 2:13:09
  make itself a part of the family's daily routine.
• 2:13:13
  Fights and screaming matches soon became a daily occurrence,
• 2:13:18
  especially between Philip and Allen, with Allen seeming to
• 2:13:21
  resent Philip for the family's financial situation and for
• 2:13:26
  Philip feeling isolated and not being believed about what he was
• 2:13:30
  experiencing. According to Philip's diary,
• 2:13:33
  every night when he was trying to sleep, this creature, this
• 2:13:38
  demon, would visit him and push him harder and harder to commit
• 2:13:44
  unspeakable things. He got to the point to where
• 2:13:47
  Philip wouldn't even leave his room.
• 2:13:49
  He wouldn't argue back against this entity.
• 2:13:52
  And day after day, night after night, it pushed for him to hurt
• 2:13:57
  his family. Philip will continue to confide
• 2:14:00
  in Teresa that alongside this, he began to see other people
• 2:14:04
  within the basement who were dead and buried as if they were
• 2:14:08
  trapped there by the man in the suit with the blood red eyes.
• 2:14:13
  And this entity would continue to threaten to do things to
• 2:14:16
  Philip if he did not listen and do as he was told.
• 2:14:21
  While explaining these newer developments to her, without
• 2:14:24
  warning, he suddenly attacked. Her grabbing her arm, trying to
• 2:14:29
  harm her. Breaking free and rushing up the
• 2:14:33
  stairs and into the arms of her Uncle Alan, she watched Phillip
• 2:14:37
  essentially be exiled back into the basement.
• 2:14:40
  And with that, their relationship began to
• 2:14:42
  disintegrate. Upset at not only what had
• 2:14:45
  happened between her and Phillip, but the strange
• 2:14:48
  behavior and dysfunction that was taking place within the
• 2:14:51
  house, Teresa wept in her bed. She would eventually be gifted A
• 2:14:56
  rosary by Carmen, who believed that it would help comfort her,
• 2:15:00
  and she wore this to bed that night as a necklace of sorts.
• 2:15:04
  However, she would quickly discover that instead of
• 2:15:07
  comfort, this holy object made her a target instead.
• 2:15:12
  Fast asleep, Teresa was suddenly woken up by the sensation of her
• 2:15:17
  blankets being pulled from her body.
• 2:15:20
  She opened her eyes to find Phillip staring at her with a
• 2:15:24
  crooked smile just before he attacked her, striking her
• 2:15:28
  several times in the face. Her screams thankfully quickly
• 2:15:32
  warrant to Carmen and Allen, who subdued Phillip immediately.
• 2:15:37
  Phillip, after this unpredictable series of
• 2:15:39
  incidents, was then removed from the house due to his violence
• 2:15:44
  upon the arrival of law enforcement and medical
• 2:15:46
  personnel. He seemed to have no
• 2:15:48
  recollection of what had taken place and was screaming and
• 2:15:52
  crying as he was being forcibly removed from the home and sent
• 2:15:56
  away for a mental evaluation. Alan and Carmen, after securing
• 2:16:01
  the rest of the children in the house, followed the ambulance to
• 2:16:04
  the hospital to sign the necessary paperwork to have
• 2:16:08
  Philip committed for the evaluation.
• 2:16:11
  But just before he was led into the hospital, he issued an
• 2:16:15
  ominous warning to the both of them.
• 2:16:17
  He said. Mark my words, now that I'm out
• 2:16:21
  of the house, it'll be after you and it will get worse.
• 2:16:26
  Shattered by what had taken place, the snydecker's somber
• 2:16:29
  drive home turned into a long one given the distance and the
• 2:16:34
  weather that they were braving. By the time they arrive back
• 2:16:37
  home, it's time for Alan to head to work after dropping off
• 2:16:41
  Carmen. He departs for the day, wanting
• 2:16:44
  to sleep but too stressed to. Carmen sits on the edge of her
• 2:16:48
  bed, crying and contemplating what her son had said.
• 2:16:53
  What if this all truly was real? What would they even do?
• 2:16:57
  Where does one begin to fight something they can't see?
• 2:17:01
  She decides to head down into the basement to Phillip's room
• 2:17:05
  to see if she can experience anything whatsoever.
• 2:17:09
  After several minutes, despite not seeing anything, she does
• 2:17:13
  begin to feel a massive drop in temperature, so low to the point
• 2:17:18
  to where she can see her breath. She also soon begins to shake
• 2:17:21
  with fear she can't describe. Fighting these feelings, she
• 2:17:26
  issues a challenge to whatever could be lurking there to show
• 2:17:30
  itself, to prove that it was indeed real, that it truly did
• 2:17:35
  exist. But despite her challenge and
• 2:17:38
  waiting half an hour, she sees nothing.
• 2:17:42
  So she heads back upstairs to her room to take a shower, to
• 2:17:46
  try and relax herself enough to sleep.
• 2:17:49
  Meanwhile, Alan had been driving in the dark, heading to work for
• 2:17:53
  the day. During his drive, he was worried
• 2:17:55
  about his son, his family, and leaving them behind for the day
• 2:18:00
  in such a raw and emotional state, but he would have no way
• 2:18:04
  of knowing that these weren't the only problems he had to
• 2:18:07
  worry about. After his long drive, he finally
• 2:18:11
  arrives at work for the day and begins.
• 2:18:14
  He hopes to be distracted from his lack of sleep and family
• 2:18:18
  problems. As Carmen runs her shower and
• 2:18:22
  the rest of the children's sleep, a horrific presence
• 2:18:26
  begins to manifest within the house.
• 2:18:29
  As she's washing herself, the shower curtain suddenly covers
• 2:18:33
  Carmen's face, catching her off guard, out of breath, and begins
• 2:18:39
  to smother her. At the same time, Teresa's
• 2:18:43
  startled awake. She's being strangled by the
• 2:18:46
  rosary she's wearing. She screams, pulling out her
• 2:18:49
  neck and eventually frees herself from its stranglehold.
• 2:18:54
  She then runs towards the muffled screams of her aunt
• 2:18:57
  coming from her bedroom, seemingly having no other choice
• 2:19:01
  after seeing her being strangled by the shower curtain, she pulls
• 2:19:04
  it off of her as fast and as hard as she possibly can.
• 2:19:08
  The two then share a moment of sheer terror and trauma, both
• 2:19:12
  having experienced things that they can't explain.
• 2:19:16
  However, unbeknownst to the two of them at home, Alan is about
• 2:19:20
  to experience an attack of his own.
• 2:19:23
  While working at his job site he begins to hear his truck turn
• 2:19:26
  over despite his keys being in his pocket.
• 2:19:30
  Glancing out to figure out just what this could be, he watches
• 2:19:34
  his truck begin to move towards his small work building and then
• 2:19:38
  as if someone had their foot on the gas, it began to accelerate
• 2:19:42
  to a high rate of speed and before he could run out of the
• 2:19:46
  way, the truck smashes directly into the building and straight
• 2:19:50
  towards where he was standing. Back at the house.
• 2:19:54
  Carmen and Teresa are still in shock when suddenly the phone
• 2:19:57
  rings. However, there is nothing but a
• 2:20:01
  muffled laugh coming through from the other side.
• 2:20:05
  Feeling a burning sensation on her ear, Carmen immediately
• 2:20:09
  drops the phone to find that it's partially melted.
• 2:20:13
  Starting to scream, she finds herself frozen as she glances
• 2:20:17
  towards the ceiling after she sees something.
• 2:20:20
  Out of the corner. Of her eye.
• 2:20:22
  Teresa then sees it as well and begins to scream.
• 2:20:27
  A black cloud of some kind now floated above them.
• 2:20:30
  The two are absolutely mortified by these sudden and horrendous
• 2:20:34
  manifestations of supernatural evil that are taking place, and
• 2:20:39
  realize that Philip was right. This force, this demon, has
• 2:20:44
  taken over the entire house. Running out of the room and
• 2:20:48
  frantically into another. They rush to gather the rest of
• 2:20:52
  the children, but with a snowstorm raging outside and a
• 2:20:56
  demonic storm raging inside, they seemingly have no escape.
• 2:21:01
  Carmen is unsure of what to do. She then receives another phone
• 2:21:05
  call, this time picking up another landline in the home.
• 2:21:09
  It's Alan on the other end. He explains just what had taken
• 2:21:12
  place and that he was waiting for the authorities to arrive,
• 2:21:17
  even more shocked and scared now that this entity has now
• 2:21:20
  attacked all members of the family and has left the home and
• 2:21:24
  attacked Alan as well. Since all the events seem to
• 2:21:27
  take place roughly during the same time frame, she's convinced
• 2:21:31
  that the demon will follow them wherever they go to try and
• 2:21:34
  escape it. So, although it is the middle of
• 2:21:37
  the morning during a winter storm, she makes a phone call to
• 2:21:40
  the only person who she thinks can help her in this desperate
• 2:21:44
  situation. She calls the priest who had
• 2:21:47
  married her and Allen and had blessed Philip before his cancer
• 2:21:50
  was in remission. Thankfully, for their sake, the
• 2:21:54
  Father picked up on the other end and promised to head to the
• 2:21:58
  home as soon as possible. Given the road conditions, it
• 2:22:02
  takes him several hours to arrive, but thankfully he does.
• 2:22:08
  First things first, the Father wanted to speak with Carmen and
• 2:22:11
  figure out just what exactly was taking place, and after
• 2:22:15
  discussing anything and everything, they can think with
• 2:22:18
  him, hoping for an answer to fix their situation, albeit it's
• 2:22:23
  never that easy. The Father's response leaves
• 2:22:26
  them stunned. He tells them that he does
• 2:22:29
  believe them, but if that they simply ignore the presence, what
• 2:22:34
  it's been doing, it'll go away. This is the first time her faith
• 2:22:39
  has failed Carmen. She's bewildered by his answer.
• 2:22:43
  How can you just ignore something that's tried to take
• 2:22:46
  your life, your family members lives this very day alongside
• 2:22:51
  everything else that has been building up to this point.
• 2:22:55
  In her opinion, she couldn't. So once he left, she rushed to
• 2:23:01
  seek other, less conventional options to find the answers that
• 2:23:05
  she desperately needed. While digging through a phone
• 2:23:09
  book and multiple newspapers to try and find anything she could,
• 2:23:13
  she stumbled across an article about a husband and wife team of
• 2:23:17
  so-called demonologists and we're set to give a lecture at a
• 2:23:20
  nearby university. After several additional phone
• 2:23:23
  calls, she makes contact with Lorraine Warren, which after
• 2:23:28
  discussing the prospect of the visit with her husband, Ed,
• 2:23:31
  agreed to come and visit Carmen that day to evaluate her
• 2:23:35
  situation. After their arrival in a brief
• 2:23:38
  interview, Lorraine starts to survey the house using her gift
• 2:23:42
  of discernment, the supposed extra sense that allows a person
• 2:23:46
  to discover the true nature of a situation, a person's character,
• 2:23:51
  or in this case, a spirit or haunting.
• 2:23:54
  Whether it was something good and godly or something grotesque
• 2:23:59
  and not of God. She's almost immediately drawn
• 2:24:02
  to the basement. With no knowledge of the home
• 2:24:05
  prior, she makes her way towards the notorious lab room and soon
• 2:24:10
  begins to sense a plethora of beings.
• 2:24:13
  A sense of horrible depression and doom began to fill her
• 2:24:17
  entire soul. Among the many.
• 2:24:19
  Human spirits, she felt. She felt something else,
• 2:24:24
  something sinister and sickening.
• 2:24:27
  There was a demonic force dwelling within the basement.
• 2:24:32
  She would later describe the feeling as if there was a
• 2:24:34
  doorway to hell itself located in that room.
• 2:24:38
  To remove any such spirits within the house, the Warrens
• 2:24:42
  informed Carmen that the Catholic Church would have to
• 2:24:45
  authorize an exorcism and send the appropriate personnel to
• 2:24:48
  make this happen, a process that could take weeks or even months.
• 2:24:53
  To try and expedite the process, the Warrens contact their lead
• 2:24:57
  researcher, a man named John Zappos, to come in and document
• 2:25:02
  anything and everything that could be found so that a proper
• 2:25:06
  report could be submitted to the church.
• 2:25:08
  John, along with his crew, temporarily move into the home
• 2:25:12
  to try and document anything that they can find that will
• 2:25:15
  help prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an exorcism is indeed
• 2:25:19
  needed to be performed to help this family.
• 2:25:22
  During their time there, they relied on video, audio, and
• 2:25:27
  photographic evidence to document their findings that the
• 2:25:31
  Warren's advice so that the demon could not isolate any one
• 2:25:34
  person in the family. The entire family moves their
• 2:25:37
  beds into the living room to sleep together at night and
• 2:25:41
  protect one another. Thankfully, with the researchers
• 2:25:45
  also temporarily living there, at any one given point in time,
• 2:25:49
  there was always an additional person with a member of the
• 2:25:51
  family. However, with Philip gone, the
• 2:25:55
  entity begins to pursue the next most vulnerable person, having
• 2:26:00
  suffered intense stress from the entire situation.
• 2:26:03
  Given that her son was in the psych.
• 2:26:05
  Ward. Her family dynamic was in
• 2:26:07
  tatters and the bills were forever continuing to pile up.
• 2:26:12
  That person was Carmen. Carmen was also stricken with an
• 2:26:16
  overwhelming sense of guilt for not believing any of her
• 2:26:20
  children, especially Philip, about what they had experienced
• 2:26:24
  during the entire ordeal, and it seems like perhaps the entity
• 2:26:28
  exploited this within her for all that it was worth.
• 2:26:31
  As the family discussed potential findings with the
• 2:26:34
  Warrens as well as their researchers around their
• 2:26:37
  fireplace in the living room, Carmen was suddenly flung
• 2:26:41
  backwards as everyone gathered around her.
• 2:26:44
  Their faces switched from those of concern to horror as her
• 2:26:49
  throat began to bulge and swell and her face began to contort
• 2:26:55
  and twist. She would later describe what
• 2:26:58
  she felt while experiencing this, She said I felt as if I
• 2:27:03
  was in a dark hole, like a well, surrounded by black figures who
• 2:27:07
  I couldn't make out their features.
• 2:27:10
  I felt pure despair and hopelessness to the point where
• 2:27:14
  if I stopped breathing, I knew I deserved to.
• 2:27:17
  Rushing to her. Aid, but not being qualified to
• 2:27:20
  perform an exorcism themselves, the demonologists and their crew
• 2:27:24
  asked for the rest of the family to bring anything sacred to her
• 2:27:28
  to be placed upon her. Teresa rushes to find the rosary
• 2:27:32
  that she was gifted by her in the same 1 Carmen believed would
• 2:27:35
  protect her. This was placed upon her in an
• 2:27:38
  effort to combat whatever was attacking her.
• 2:27:41
  After hours of praying and pleading, the group's prayers
• 2:27:45
  along with the rosary placement seemed to work, at least
• 2:27:48
  temporarily, breaking whatever spell Carmen was under as she
• 2:27:52
  came back to waking life. She had no idea how long she'd
• 2:27:56
  been out of it. And the rain.
• 2:27:58
  Warren told her that she had been under attack for the last 8
• 2:28:01
  hours as they had. Prayed over her.
• 2:28:04
  The experience seemed to last mere minutes to Carmen, yet they
• 2:28:08
  were the longest minutes she had ever experienced.
• 2:28:12
  It took several more weeks, but eventually the researchers
• 2:28:16
  alongside the Warrens were able to attain enough evidence and
• 2:28:19
  their view to provide the church.
• 2:28:22
  But they too, just as the family by this point, were beyond worn
• 2:28:26
  down. At night they slept on
• 2:28:29
  mattresses alongside the family, all together in the living room
• 2:28:33
  around the fireplace. Their mattresses would breathe
• 2:28:37
  an alternating breath to their own, not only waking and scaring
• 2:28:42
  them, but behaving as if they themselves were living,
• 2:28:46
  breathing creatures being laid on.
• 2:28:49
  Although they had researched and dealt with dozens, if not
• 2:28:52
  hundreds of paranormal cases, they believed what they
• 2:28:55
  experienced in the Snydecker home in Connecticut was by far
• 2:28:59
  the strongest demonic presence they had ever come into contact
• 2:29:03
  with. Close to what was supposed to be
• 2:29:06
  the final night, head researcher John Zaffis made the mistake of
• 2:29:11
  leaving the safety of the living room when he was suddenly woke
• 2:29:14
  up out of a sound sleep. He went and sat in the kitchen,
• 2:29:18
  unable to go back to sleep. Within minutes he felt as if he
• 2:29:22
  had been placed in a freezer. All the warmth quickly left his
• 2:29:26
  body and he began to see his own breath hang in the air.
• 2:29:30
  Having experienced this before, he knew he was being targeted.
• 2:29:35
  As fear began to overtake him, he began to call out to anyone
• 2:29:39
  and everyone that was sleeping just feet away in the living
• 2:29:42
  room but was met with no response.
• 2:29:45
  He rushed to the living room where he began to see the
• 2:29:47
  mattresses breathing, but everyone who laid upon them was
• 2:29:51
  completely unresponsive. He then hears the basement door
• 2:29:55
  creak open. As he slowly walks to where he
• 2:29:59
  can see the entrance to the basement, he sees a man wearing
• 2:30:04
  a suit with a contorted face and blood red eyes.
• 2:30:09
  The experience terrifies John so much to the point where he runs
• 2:30:14
  into the living room shaking his crew awake and telling them that
• 2:30:18
  he has to get out. Having only spoken about the
• 2:30:21
  situation a handful of times since then.
• 2:30:24
  He would go on to say I have never, in the decades upon
• 2:30:28
  decades of investigating the paranormal, experienced
• 2:30:32
  something to that degree of evil since that night, and I pray I
• 2:30:36
  never do again. Days after John vacates the
• 2:30:40
  home, the Warrens finally managed to convince the
• 2:30:43
  Connecticut diocese to grant the family a priest to determine if
• 2:30:48
  an exorcism would be granted. Exorcism in the Catholic faith,
• 2:30:52
  especially these days and Even so in the 20th century, are only
• 2:30:57
  conducted an absolute secrecy and are extremely.
• 2:31:00
  Rare to be. Granted, evil must be proven to
• 2:31:03
  be present beyond a reasonable doubt through a variety of
• 2:31:07
  methods, and rarer still is performing an exorcism on a
• 2:31:12
  building or place rather than a person.
• 2:31:16
  A priest by the name of Father Frank soon arrives to execute
• 2:31:19
  the Church's orders and conduct an investigation on their
• 2:31:23
  behalf. Having viewed the evidence given
• 2:31:26
  to the Church by the Warrens, he also listens to the Snydeckers
• 2:31:29
  about their experiences and tours the home.
• 2:31:33
  By the end of the interview, the family cannot tell if the father
• 2:31:36
  will be for or against advising the church to grant them what
• 2:31:40
  they so desperately believed they needed.
• 2:31:43
  Several agonizing weeks would go by until word was received.
• 2:31:47
  From the church. And to the family's relief, they
• 2:31:51
  decided to grant them an exorcism.
• 2:31:53
  Another priest by the name of Father Richard was sent to
• 2:31:57
  conduct the ritual. Upon arriving during an
• 2:32:00
  exceptionally bad snowstorm, Father Richard is almost
• 2:32:04
  immediately drawn to the basement.
• 2:32:06
  As he descends the steps with Carmen behind him, he turns to
• 2:32:10
  her. His stone face, which has been
• 2:32:12
  relatively void of emotion, turns into a grimace, almost as
• 2:32:17
  if he sensed that there was something truly evil lurking
• 2:32:21
  within the shadows. Within seconds, he asked to step
• 2:32:25
  into the lab room and to close the doors behind him so that he
• 2:32:30
  may begin. As he starts to flick droplets
• 2:32:33
  of holy water into the space, the energy in the house seems to
• 2:32:38
  become darker and the air heavier.
• 2:32:42
  Despite feeling a malevolent presence surrounding him, Father
• 2:32:46
  Richard continued with the ritual.
• 2:32:48
  He went from room to room conducting the exorcism and
• 2:32:52
  exalting God's blessings until finally he was in the living
• 2:32:57
  room in the presence of the Schneidecker family as well as
• 2:33:01
  Ed and Lorraine Warren. Now, several hours in, as he was
• 2:33:05
  making his way towards the ritual's conclusion, the demonic
• 2:33:09
  presence that had plagued the family all of these days since
• 2:33:12
  they had first arrived at the beginning of this harsh winter
• 2:33:16
  in Connecticut refused to be ignored and was ready for a
• 2:33:20
  fight. Seen by everyone present, all
• 2:33:24
  objects in the room that weren't nailed down were being sat in
• 2:33:28
  began to shake and be thrown. Books, knickknacks, statues, and
• 2:33:35
  ornaments shattered as the snow and ice slapped the windows
• 2:33:39
  outside of the house. The more they prayed, the more
• 2:33:43
  they seemed to provoke the entity and the more intense the
• 2:33:47
  activity became. Amidst the turmoil and again
• 2:33:51
  witnessed by everyone, Teresa's lifted into the air by what she
• 2:33:56
  would later describe as massive unseen hands and is choked.
• 2:34:02
  It seems as if the entity is attempting to shock and break
• 2:34:06
  the prayers of those present, but Father Richard refuses to
• 2:34:10
  give in. Then within the blink of an eye,
• 2:34:13
  it was if whatever had been stalking the walls inside of the
• 2:34:17
  Schneidecker home and was gone. And despite the mess that now
• 2:34:22
  surrounded them, they could not be more relieved or thankful for
• 2:34:26
  their new found freedom. Several days after the exorcism,
• 2:34:31
  they started the process of selling the house, not only to
• 2:34:34
  try and put their past experiences behind them to move
• 2:34:38
  forward, but to also not take a chance of the door that they
• 2:34:42
  believed they closed. With the help of their faith
• 2:34:45
  being reopened and reigniting their own personal paranormal
• 2:34:50
  hell, Philip would be released from the mental hospital about a
• 2:34:54
  month later after the exorcism had transpired.
• 2:34:58
  He not only seemed to be in stable condition, but appeared
• 2:35:01
  much healthier and was truly happy to see his family again.
• 2:35:05
  His cancer, thankfully, would never return.
• 2:35:09
  What happened in the Sneidecker home is open to interpretation.
• 2:35:13
  Those who believe them believe the exorcism to be a resounding
• 2:35:17
  success, while those who don't believe see it as some kind of
• 2:35:21
  attention grabbing hoax. The warns themselves back then
• 2:35:25
  and even now, long after their own deaths, continue to be
• 2:35:29
  polarizing figures, with some believing them to be legitimate
• 2:35:32
  demonologists and paranormal experts, with others believing
• 2:35:37
  that they were charlatans, nothing more than profiteers of
• 2:35:41
  people's fears. As stated in the beginning, I'm
• 2:35:45
  not here to convince you one way or the other.
• 2:35:47
  My job is to provide as many details as I can of what
• 2:35:51
  happened with the particular case and the rest is up for you
• 2:35:54
  to decide. Some additional details I would
• 2:35:57
  like to add, however, are these. After investigating the home,
• 2:36:02
  the Warrens did launch a large media campaign promoting the
• 2:36:05
  homes majorly possessed. Whether this was for good or bad
• 2:36:09
  intentions, I can't say because I simply don't know.
• 2:36:14
  Philip, unfortunately, would later develop a drug habit and
• 2:36:18
  would also later be diagnosed with schizophrenia.
• 2:36:21
  Whether this was a result of drug use or something that was
• 2:36:24
  there all along, we'll never know, but it did not appear to
• 2:36:28
  be his condition prior or even after his stint in the mental
• 2:36:32
  hospital. The story would go on to inspire
• 2:36:35
  a dramatized documentary with altered names of the family and
• 2:36:39
  with hidden interviews of the family in 2002 known as A
• 2:36:43
  Haunting in Connecticut. It would then again be
• 2:36:45
  popularized in 2009 when the horror film The Haunting in
• 2:36:50
  Connecticut was released. Upon moving out in 1987, the
• 2:36:54
  Schneideckers did not experience any other paranormal activity in
• 2:36:58
  their lives, and subsequent owners of the home say they
• 2:37:01
  haven't experienced any activity either.
• 2:37:04
  This is perhaps due to the successful exorcism of the home,
• 2:37:08
  or the demons simply existing within the minds of those
• 2:37:12
  involved. Again, the interpretation is up
• 2:37:16
  to you, but part of me still wonders.
• 2:37:19
  Could hell still be locked away within the basement of that
• 2:37:22
  house, watching, lurking, and waiting for the right person to
• 2:37:27
  stumble upon its locked door and to pry it open again?
• 2:37:31
  Could the blood red eyes of the demonic man in the suit still be
• 2:37:35
  lusting for more souls? If so, this is 1.
• 2:37:39
  Door, I pray, stays locked for good.
• 2:37:45
  If the walls of certain homes could speak, some of the stories
• 2:37:50
  they would tell would more than likely shock and amaze us, or
• 2:37:55
  perhaps repulse and terrify us instead.
• 2:37:59
  This is one such story that if a house could tell its own tale,
• 2:38:04
  it would certainly be one we would never forget.
• 2:38:07
  A family moves to the country in search of peace, but those
• 2:38:11
  dreams are soon shattered by supernatural terror.
• 2:38:15
  Something evil lurks within the woods outside of their home, and
• 2:38:20
  this evil begins to stalk and wreak havoc upon everyone that
• 2:38:24
  dwells within the home. Can they save themselves before
• 2:38:29
  it's too late? This is the untold story of the
• 2:38:32
  haunted Hinsdale House, also known as the Dandy House, and
• 2:38:37
  the entities that infested it. Hinsdale, NY, A small town with
• 2:38:49
  a rustic and rural charm, tucked deep into the countryside and
• 2:38:54
  far away from the crime, concrete and smog of New York
• 2:38:59
  City. Instead of gazing at
• 2:39:01
  skyscrapers, they would rather gaze at the surrounding
• 2:39:04
  mountains covered in dense foliage.
• 2:39:08
  But these mountains and their surrounding woods harbor many
• 2:39:11
  secrets and have many stories to tell.
• 2:39:16
  This is just one of them. The years 1970 and the Dandy
• 2:39:22
  family is in pursuit of their American dream.
• 2:39:26
  After years of vacationing to Hinsdale and the surrounding
• 2:39:29
  areas to catch a break from their fast-paced life in
• 2:39:33
  Buffalo, they finally reached a point where they can turn their
• 2:39:37
  vacation into their daily life. Seeking their own rural
• 2:39:41
  paradise, they come across a listing for a home that seems
• 2:39:46
  idyllic for their family and its needs.
• 2:39:49
  Clara Dandy, the mother of the family, believed that they all
• 2:39:53
  got along so much better in the country, like it had some form
• 2:39:57
  of redemption qualities about it that seemed to rejuvenate their
• 2:40:01
  spirits and their relationships. As they wind their way through
• 2:40:06
  the countryside, they lay eyes on the home for the first time.
• 2:40:11
  They are not only taken aback by the beauty and the sheer size of
• 2:40:15
  the house, but that it sat upon 8 acres of land surrounded by
• 2:40:19
  dense and breathtaking woods. Clara would describe her
• 2:40:24
  feelings about first seeing the house as being overcome with a
• 2:40:27
  deep sense of peace. It was like I'd finally come
• 2:40:31
  home after years of being elsewhere.
• 2:40:34
  And the air, the air was like breathing champagne.
• 2:40:38
  It was wonderful. The home is over 100 years old
• 2:40:42
  and still had most of the original and ornate woodwork
• 2:40:45
  intact. It just seemed to emanate charm
• 2:40:49
  and elegance. As the children explored the
• 2:40:52
  nearby woods, Mr. and Missus Dandy continued their tour, but
• 2:40:58
  when they were being shown the storage space underneath the
• 2:41:00
  stairs, the door was initially stuck, but after some elbow
• 2:41:05
  grease from Mr. Dandy, they were finally able to get it open.
• 2:41:10
  It revealed A dusty space of sorts with a fireplace, the one
• 2:41:15
  that didn't seem to fit the feeling of the house at all.
• 2:41:18
  Clara would describe her feelings towards the space like
• 2:41:21
  this. I wasn't sure why, but I felt
• 2:41:25
  very uneasy when we opened up the storage space.
• 2:41:29
  I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was dark and desolate,
• 2:41:34
  not at all like the rest of the house.
• 2:41:37
  But she quickly would dismiss these feelings, attributing the
• 2:41:40
  creepy factor to her city upbringing and the fact that
• 2:41:44
  they didn't have storage rooms like that where she was from.
• 2:41:48
  After closing the space and continuing to evaluate their
• 2:41:51
  opportunity, the feelings of peace would return and the
• 2:41:55
  dandies decide that they can't resist the charm of this rustic
• 2:42:00
  100 year old home, so they decide to purchase it once
• 2:42:04
  things are squared away. Several months later they move
• 2:42:08
  in to start their new rural existence.
• 2:42:11
  On move in day, Claire's brother decided to lend a helping hand
• 2:42:16
  and had begun to move things in hours before the family was able
• 2:42:19
  to arrive. When loading in a box of
• 2:42:22
  belongings, as he opened the door he was greeted by a flurry
• 2:42:27
  of insects. Both bees and flies pelted him
• 2:42:31
  in his face, rushing past them and then unloading the box onto
• 2:42:35
  the floor in the main room. He was startled to see hundreds
• 2:42:39
  of dead bees scattered all over the floor, and even more
• 2:42:43
  startled to see hundreds still alive encoding the windows.
• 2:42:49
  It was still cold during this time of year and although he too
• 2:42:53
  wasn't from the country, he found it rather odd that there
• 2:42:57
  would be any kind of infestation at this time.
• 2:43:00
  When his sister and her family finally arrive, he greets her
• 2:43:04
  with the news and in order to continue with the move in, they
• 2:43:08
  have to call an exterminator. Upon his arrival, he too
• 2:43:12
  confirms the oddity of the situation.
• 2:43:16
  He said that he had never seen so many bees and flies in one
• 2:43:19
  spot in a home, and given this time of year, it was not normal
• 2:43:24
  for them to swarm or infest anything during this time.
• 2:43:28
  It takes some time, but after he finishes clearing them out, the
• 2:43:32
  family is finally able to get moved in.
• 2:43:35
  As time progresses, things seem to fit the dreams they had for
• 2:43:40
  moving there in the 1st place. The family finally seems at
• 2:43:44
  peace. They were getting along better
• 2:43:47
  and enjoying each other's company, a far departure from
• 2:43:50
  their city life in Buffalo. But as the old adage goes, if it
• 2:43:55
  seems too good to be true, it is.
• 2:43:59
  A few weeks into living in what they believed was going to be
• 2:44:02
  their rural paradise, their son Mike has met and made friends
• 2:44:07
  with a nearby neighbor. Together, they begin to explore
• 2:44:11
  the woods surrounding the Dandy property.
• 2:44:14
  As the two navigate the forest, they're startled when they hear
• 2:44:17
  the crunching of leaves directly in front of them.
• 2:44:21
  Stopping frozen in their tracks and fearing that it could be a
• 2:44:25
  bear, they take refuge behind a large tree and sneak glimpses
• 2:44:30
  for rounded sides to figure out just what it could be.
• 2:44:35
  To their shock, they spot a boy not much older than them
• 2:44:39
  carrying a rifle and walking in the path ahead.
• 2:44:43
  Yelling at the boy that this is private property and wanting to
• 2:44:47
  know what he was doing there, they run towards him and try to.
• 2:44:51
  Catch up to him. They again freeze in their
• 2:44:54
  tracks when they notice that not only is the boy transparent the
• 2:44:58
  closer they get, but half of his head is missing.
• 2:45:03
  As the figure continues to walk and taking deep breaths, they
• 2:45:08
  slowly continue to follow him. The three approach a small lake.
• 2:45:13
  Within the blink of an eye, the boy vanishes.
• 2:45:18
  Mike and his friend are at a loss for words and have no
• 2:45:21
  explanation for what they saw. They quickly rush back to the
• 2:45:25
  Dandy house as fast as they can to tell anyone who will listen
• 2:45:30
  to them. They soon make contact with
• 2:45:32
  Clara and explain to her what took place, but she's quick to
• 2:45:36
  dismiss their experience as nothing more than overactive
• 2:45:40
  imaginations. Another several weeks pass by
• 2:45:45
  and Clara has all but forgotten about what her son had told her.
• 2:45:49
  She's now walking the family dog, Madison, in the woods for
• 2:45:53
  some fresh air and exercise. As they get deeper into the
• 2:45:58
  forest, Clara starts to hear what can only be described as
• 2:46:02
  chanting. As she stops to listen, it
• 2:46:06
  sounds eerie and disembodied, as if the sound is all around her
• 2:46:12
  but has no true origin. It's at this time that Madison
• 2:46:17
  begins growling and barking. The longer she seems to focus on
• 2:46:23
  the chanting, the louder it seems to become.
• 2:46:27
  Madison by this point is losing her mind and breaks free from a
• 2:46:31
  distracted Clara and bolts in the direction of their home.
• 2:46:35
  Clara chases her down and she finally stops running when she
• 2:46:39
  makes it to the front door of their estate.
• 2:46:42
  After taking a moment to collect herself, Clara then calls her
• 2:46:46
  husband, who, like she was to her son, was quick to dismiss
• 2:46:51
  her feelings, thinking that she just had to adjust to rural life
• 2:46:55
  and wasn't used to it being so different from their life in the
• 2:46:58
  city. Frustrated and worried now about
• 2:47:02
  what the chanting could have been, Clara talks with her son
• 2:47:05
  about her experience while she prepares dinner for the family.
• 2:47:10
  Mike thinks that it could have been some campers at a nearby
• 2:47:13
  campground not too far from where their property line ends
• 2:47:17
  that could have been the cause of the strange sounds.
• 2:47:19
  To try and put his mother at ease, he and his friend Matt
• 2:47:23
  once again take to the woods to explore this possibility.
• 2:47:27
  As they venture further into the woods to a lookout point towards
• 2:47:30
  the campsite, they see nothing. There are no signs of any
• 2:47:35
  campers that could be nearby enough to have caused such a
• 2:47:38
  noise. Even more perplexed now that
• 2:47:42
  there was no explanation, the boys start to make their way
• 2:47:46
  back to the house when suddenly they hear what sounds like an
• 2:47:51
  axe studying into a tree right next to them, unsure of what
• 2:47:55
  that noise could have been before they could even begin to
• 2:47:59
  ponder or investigate. They.
• 2:48:01
  Hear a woman screaming to their left.
• 2:48:04
  This frightens them so bad, but the two young men run as fast as
• 2:48:08
  they can all the way back to the Dandy's home.
• 2:48:12
  When they arrive, Mike is truly scared this time.
• 2:48:16
  He has no way of explaining his mother's experience or any of
• 2:48:21
  his own either. Upon relaying this information
• 2:48:24
  to Clara, both of them are left beside themselves now with a
• 2:48:29
  chill up both of their spines. But these weird events thus far
• 2:48:34
  would only intensify as the sands of time continue to
• 2:48:38
  trickle into the hourglass. It has now been months since the
• 2:48:44
  initial experiences, and besides the oddities they were, the
• 2:48:49
  family's life continues to be great.
• 2:48:52
  This distance from the experiences only makes them ever
• 2:48:55
  easier to dismiss in the minds of Clara and Mike.
• 2:49:00
  One day, Phil or Mr. Dandy decides to take the children,
• 2:49:05
  Mike and Tina, into Buffalo for the day to get some errands
• 2:49:09
  done. Mostly being a homebody, Clara
• 2:49:12
  decides to forgo the trip with her family and relax at home
• 2:49:16
  reading her latest book instead. When her family departs, Clara
• 2:49:21
  finds herself curled up on the couch and immersed in her latest
• 2:49:25
  story as a warm breeze drifts through the open windows of the
• 2:49:29
  house. As she reads page to page, she
• 2:49:33
  is suddenly startled when the window closest to her slam shut.
• 2:49:39
  Upon investigating, it makes no sense to her because the breeze
• 2:49:44
  was light, not forceful at all, and their windows were fairly
• 2:49:48
  new, which made it all the stranger.
• 2:49:52
  But as she always does, she dismisses the happening as
• 2:49:56
  nothing more than a weird coincidence and heads back to
• 2:50:00
  her book. Several nights later, as Mike
• 2:50:04
  lay asleep in his bed, he's suddenly woken up when a nearby
• 2:50:08
  box of a chess game drops onto his chest.
• 2:50:12
  The storage. Shelf is directly above.
• 2:50:14
  His head so opening his eyes, he glances up to see if perhaps it
• 2:50:20
  could have been hanging. Too far off the edge.
• 2:50:23
  Causing it to fall and to his shock, he begins to see several
• 2:50:28
  more boxes slowly shifting towards the edge by themselves.
• 2:50:34
  The lowest one then suddenly flies out from the rest and
• 2:50:38
  smacks him in the chest. Terrified, he sits up, trying to
• 2:50:43
  catch his breath. He has no way of explaining how
• 2:50:47
  the lowest box could be pulled and thrown with such force
• 2:50:52
  without bringing the rest of the boxes with him, as if someone or
• 2:50:56
  something had grabbed and thrown it by a will of its own.
• 2:51:02
  Calling out to his mom in the darkness, she soon arrives in
• 2:51:05
  the doorway of his room. Being a very science and logic
• 2:51:09
  minded person, Mike has no way to explain what has happened.
• 2:51:15
  Examining the pile, Clara too is perplexed and becomes just as
• 2:51:19
  scared when another box from a different pile flies across the
• 2:51:24
  room, causing both of them to scream in terror and run out as
• 2:51:29
  fast as possible. Trying to make sense of what was
• 2:51:33
  taking place, Clara fears that whatever could be lurking in the
• 2:51:37
  woods has been stalking her family and has slowly but
• 2:51:42
  surely, like a malignant stain, invaded her home.
• 2:51:48
  As her fears turned into a revelation, Claire decides to
• 2:51:52
  reach out to a local priest for help, hoping her faith will help
• 2:51:56
  her come up with some answers and better yet, some solutions.
• 2:52:02
  She speaks with a priest named Father Alphonsus at the
• 2:52:05
  University of Saint Bonaventure. He believes that the activity
• 2:52:10
  could be a poltergeist, but given the intelligent nature of
• 2:52:14
  how it seems to be behaving, Clara has her doubts but
• 2:52:18
  nonetheless wants an expert's opinion and assistance.
• 2:52:23
  So arrangements are made for the Father to come out and bless the
• 2:52:27
  home, and after several days he arrives.
• 2:52:32
  On April 13th, 1975, the cleansing begins as the family
• 2:52:39
  and the priests were all gathered together and as he
• 2:52:43
  began to speak, a series of. Horrible wailing.
• 2:52:47
  And moaning noises began to fill the home, as if the house itself
• 2:52:53
  was crying. The scent of burning matter also
• 2:52:57
  quickly enveloped the house. The activity reached a fever
• 2:53:02
  pitch when the priest opened and began to.
• 2:53:05
  Pray over the crawl space that was underneath the stairs.
• 2:53:09
  But after this, a blissful silence overtook them all.
• 2:53:14
  It was if whatever entities that dwelled within the walls of the
• 2:53:18
  dandies home had finally been evicted.
• 2:53:22
  Within time, the father gathered his things, exchanged
• 2:53:26
  pleasantries and departed for the evening.
• 2:53:30
  The family now believed that their darkest days were behind
• 2:53:33
  them, and for all intents and purposes, that seemed to be the
• 2:53:38
  case. But as if to mock the Holy
• 2:53:41
  Trinity itself, three months later to the day, all hell would
• 2:53:46
  break loose once again. That night, while her husband is
• 2:53:51
  away on a business trip, Clara finds herself woken up out of a
• 2:53:56
  dead sleep by a series of knocks coming from inside the walls.
• 2:54:02
  The knocks themselves are soon accompanied with whispers from
• 2:54:06
  someone that she can't see. As she apprehensively makes her
• 2:54:10
  way from her room and slowly down the stairs headed towards
• 2:54:15
  the main level, the apparition of a young girl begins to walk
• 2:54:19
  by the stairs. She slowly makes her way to the
• 2:54:23
  crawl space, opens the door and closes it behind her.
• 2:54:30
  Clara's baffled at the sight. After gathering up her courage
• 2:54:35
  she too makes her way fully down the stairs into the crawl space
• 2:54:40
  and after a moment of bracing herself she opens the door only
• 2:54:45
  to be met with nothing. Claire then makes her way to her
• 2:54:50
  daughter Tina's room to make sure it somehow wasn't her and
• 2:54:54
  perhaps her nerves were just on edge.
• 2:54:57
  But after opening her door, she finds her fast asleep in her
• 2:55:01
  bed, with no signs that she had been awake for some time.
• 2:55:07
  The following morning, while the rest of her family is still
• 2:55:09
  asleep, Tina wakes up to begin her day.
• 2:55:14
  As she feeds her pet bird in its cage and begins to brush her
• 2:55:18
  hair in her Oval mirror, she notices that her bird isn't
• 2:55:22
  doing its usual whistles. As she glances over at them, she
• 2:55:27
  finds it staring into the corner of the room.
• 2:55:30
  As Tina glances back up at the mirror, she's met with the
• 2:55:34
  apparition of a young girl. Her face sunk in and her eyes
• 2:55:41
  were gone. She.
• 2:55:43
  Screams in terror and just as quickly as it appeared, the
• 2:55:47
  apparition disappears. The screams of her daughter
• 2:55:51
  startles and quickly summons Clara to her daughter's room.
• 2:55:55
  As she consoles Tina, she realizes that the priest's
• 2:55:59
  blessings were ineffective. She quickly calls Father Al back
• 2:56:05
  and explains what had taken place the previous night and
• 2:56:08
  that morning, and although he is busy, he promises to come back
• 2:56:13
  as soon as possible and this time to bring a paranormal
• 2:56:17
  expert with him as well to help him determine the cause and
• 2:56:21
  hopefully find a working solution.
• 2:56:24
  He's able to come back the following week.
• 2:56:27
  In the meantime, Clara's determined to keep her family
• 2:56:31
  calm. If she can control her own
• 2:56:33
  emotions, she knows that everything else will be OK.
• 2:56:38
  As they wait for the priest to return, Claire tries her best to
• 2:56:41
  keep her family calm and live some sort of a normal existence.
• 2:56:47
  That weekend, her and Phil are watching a movie while Mike and
• 2:56:51
  Tina are out with friends. As they enjoy their time
• 2:56:55
  together, their happiness is quickly shattered by a huge
• 2:56:59
  crashing noise coming from outside of their house.
• 2:57:04
  Quickly grabbing a flashlight and running outside to
• 2:57:07
  investigate together, they quietly stepped towards where
• 2:57:10
  they believed the noise to be originating from.
• 2:57:14
  And suddenly they hear it again. But this time, thankfully for
• 2:57:19
  them, the origin is not paranormal.
• 2:57:24
  This time, there's several raccoons who happened to be
• 2:57:27
  forging through their metal trash cans for something to eat.
• 2:57:32
  Relieved for that moment, they start to make their way back to
• 2:57:35
  the house when they suddenly see the figure of a young girl in
• 2:57:40
  their living room window, staring at them as they rush
• 2:57:45
  inside. They run up into Tina's room,
• 2:57:48
  where they find her incoherent and staring into her Oval
• 2:57:53
  mirror. They try to get her attention,
• 2:57:56
  but she's entirely unresponsive. Her pale blue eyes or black.
• 2:58:03
  Panicking, they shake her and yell her name, not knowing what
• 2:58:07
  else to do when she eventually comes back.
• 2:58:12
  In that moment and later, Tina will not recall how she got home
• 2:58:17
  or what exactly happened. As the family tries to gather
• 2:58:21
  themselves from the shock of what had just taken place, they
• 2:58:26
  hear movement coming from Mike's room.
• 2:58:29
  Phil tells his family not to leave Tina's room.
• 2:58:32
  As he rushes to investigate, however, the home phone begins
• 2:58:38
  to ring. It's Mike.
• 2:58:41
  He's asking if he can stay the night at his friend Randy's
• 2:58:44
  house. However, when told what was
• 2:58:47
  going on, he quickly tells her that he's coming home to help in
• 2:58:51
  any way that he can. Rushing to his car, Randy offers
• 2:58:55
  to come with him, to which Mike agrees.
• 2:58:59
  Randy would later recount that Mike's hands were sweating and
• 2:59:03
  he was shaking, gripping the steering wheel.
• 2:59:06
  He was pale. I asked him what was wrong, and
• 2:59:09
  he said that things were happening at the house that he
• 2:59:12
  couldn't explain. The boys quickly arrived to find
• 2:59:16
  the family in chaos. Phil is prepared to do battle
• 2:59:20
  with whatever forces within the house, and the girls are staying
• 2:59:24
  close to one another, attempting to comfort each other.
• 2:59:28
  As they try to determine a course of action, all the lights
• 2:59:31
  in the house go out. They then begin to hear banging
• 2:59:37
  and scratching coming from the crawl space.
• 2:59:41
  Flashlight's still in hand, fill with the backup of his family,
• 2:59:45
  shines the light towards it and begins to make his way towards
• 2:59:50
  whatever this thing is. It seems like with each step he
• 2:59:54
  takes, the sounds become louder, and after a tense several
• 2:59:58
  seconds, he opens the door to the crawl space.
• 3:00:03
  Inside, they find that the fireplace that was once there
• 3:00:06
  has been completely disassembled.
• 3:00:09
  Its bricks have now been stacked in an elaborate pile directly in
• 3:00:14
  the middle of the small room. The amount of effort and
• 3:00:17
  strength required to perform such a task convinces all of
• 3:00:22
  them that whatever they're dealing with is strong,
• 3:00:25
  persistent. And perhaps uncleansable.
• 3:00:30
  Nonetheless, with their spirits waning, Claire makes a desperate
• 3:00:34
  call to Father Al, who agrees to come earlier than originally
• 3:00:38
  planned and makes emergency arrangements for himself and his
• 3:00:42
  paranormal expert of a friend to come out that night.
• 3:00:47
  They arrive as soon as possible. The paranormal expert is a man
• 3:00:51
  by the name of Alex Tennis, a well respected paranormal
• 3:00:55
  researcher and psychic whose abilities were studied at the
• 3:01:00
  American Society of Psychic Research.
• 3:01:04
  Together they make their way to the door of the Dandy House,
• 3:01:08
  hoping to help rid this family of whatever seems to be stalking
• 3:01:11
  them. After being let in, the family
• 3:01:14
  quickly leads the pair to the crawl space to show them just
• 3:01:18
  what they were talking about. Although he was aware that some
• 3:01:22
  sort of activity was taking place, Alex had not been given
• 3:01:25
  any additional details or information in regards to the
• 3:01:29
  home, its history, or happenings.
• 3:01:33
  As he steps into the crawlspace room, he begins to have a
• 3:01:37
  vision. In his vision, he sees multiple
• 3:01:40
  dead bodies stacked within the crawlspace itself.
• 3:01:45
  After the vision subsides, Alex begins to explain to the family
• 3:01:49
  what he saw. He believed that many had passed
• 3:01:52
  away within the home itself, some of natural causes and some
• 3:01:57
  of murder. It was his conviction that based
• 3:02:00
  on what he saw, that the house used to be a stopping point for
• 3:02:04
  a Stagecoach or perhaps some kind of inn where people would
• 3:02:08
  stay the night before departing the following morning.
• 3:02:12
  It was also his belief that there was a nearby criminal or
• 3:02:15
  gang of criminals that would often rob and kill nearby
• 3:02:19
  travellers, and that perhaps these souls somehow became
• 3:02:23
  trapped here when someone passed or was found dead nearby.
• 3:02:28
  Being the only stopping point in the area, their bodies would be
• 3:02:32
  placed in the crawl space until they could receive a proper
• 3:02:35
  burial. It was also his belief that
• 3:02:38
  there were seven different spirits that were trapped within
• 3:02:41
  the home all together. With this revelation, the
• 3:02:45
  family. Alex and the Father pray that
• 3:02:48
  the trapped spirits within the home find peace and be released
• 3:02:53
  so that they may go on to their final destination.
• 3:02:56
  Upon the pair's departure, Clara once again has renewed hope.
• 3:03:01
  The home, as it did the first time around, seemed to be
• 3:03:04
  cleansed and to be more peaceful.
• 3:03:07
  Meanwhile, Mike and his friend Randy were skeptical of Alex's
• 3:03:11
  conclusions. After he left, they used an old
• 3:03:15
  map of the area to trace where he had said the old Stagecoach
• 3:03:19
  route was. They did indeed find what they
• 3:03:22
  believed to be an old trail that could have been used for such a
• 3:03:25
  thing, and the trail passed right by the Dandy home.
• 3:03:30
  But during their search, as they were following the trail out and
• 3:03:33
  headed back to the house, they experienced strangeness of their
• 3:03:37
  own. As they began to trace the
• 3:03:39
  trail, they began to see what they described as orbs of light
• 3:03:43
  in the nearby trees, and these orbs began to come at them.
• 3:03:48
  Randy, having never seen or experienced anything
• 3:03:52
  supernatural before, began to have a panic attack upon
• 3:03:56
  arriving at the house. They were fortunately able to
• 3:03:59
  get him calmed down. By this point it was late in the
• 3:04:03
  night and the entire family needed to try and get some form
• 3:04:07
  of sleep in order to function the following day.
• 3:04:11
  Randy ended up staying the night since he had rode with Mike.
• 3:04:15
  Once everyone else was settled down for the night and fast
• 3:04:18
  asleep, Clara sat by herself weeping.
• 3:04:23
  She felt that her and her family were helpless in the situation
• 3:04:27
  and that all efforts have been exhausted and that they needed
• 3:04:30
  to move. The only problem was that all
• 3:04:33
  their money, every last dime, had been sunk into the house,
• 3:04:38
  leaving them stranded. She would continue to
• 3:04:41
  contemplate the future and would cry herself to sleep that night.
• 3:04:46
  The following morning, as the family began to wake up and
• 3:04:50
  start to try and resume some form of normalcy, Mike went
• 3:04:54
  ahead and departed with Randy to take him home.
• 3:04:57
  Several hours would go by and Mike hadn't returned.
• 3:05:01
  Finally, there was a knock on the door.
• 3:05:04
  It was a police officer. He informed the family that
• 3:05:08
  there had been an accident, that they needed to head to the
• 3:05:11
  hospital as soon as possible. Rushing into the car into the
• 3:05:15
  hospital, the Dandy family wondered just what had happened.
• 3:05:20
  There had been no mention of Randy by the officer at the
• 3:05:22
  time. Upon arriving, they were briefed
• 3:05:26
  that Mike had lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a
• 3:05:30
  nearby ditch. He was now undergoing emergency
• 3:05:33
  surgery, he had extensive head injuries, A ruptured spleen that
• 3:05:38
  may have to be removed and that he had lost a very significant
• 3:05:42
  amount of blood. As they waited for the outcome
• 3:05:45
  of their son's surgery, the dandies were once again greeted
• 3:05:49
  by the officer who had knocked on their door.
• 3:05:52
  He explained to them that Randy had indeed been dropped off and
• 3:05:56
  that Mike had wrecked on his way back to the Dandy residence, but
• 3:06:00
  as he was being loaded into the ambulance, he kept saying that
• 3:06:04
  there was another person in the car with him.
• 3:06:06
  Although they believed him to be confused on account of his
• 3:06:09
  injuries, they went ahead and searched the area nonetheless,
• 3:06:13
  but another person was never found.
• 3:06:17
  After two weeks of being in a coma, Mike finally wakes up, but
• 3:06:22
  unfortunately has no recollection as to what exactly
• 3:06:25
  happened to him. To cause the accident, Clara,
• 3:06:29
  however. Believes that whatever presence
• 3:06:32
  that's been plugging their lives had to have been responsible for
• 3:06:35
  what happened to her son. After months of recovery for
• 3:06:39
  Mike and continued paranormal activity within the home, Father
• 3:06:44
  Alphonsus would return with Alex one last and final time at
• 3:06:49
  Claire's request to try and rid the home of the evil and
• 3:06:53
  persistent force that had drained the life out of all of
• 3:06:56
  them for years now. However, this time just the
• 3:07:01
  Father and Alex would perform the cleansing inside the home
• 3:07:05
  themselves. As they moved from room to room,
• 3:07:09
  Alex would once again experience multiple visions of the past.
• 3:07:14
  His visions would tell him that of the seven spirits who he
• 3:07:17
  believed to be within the house, 1 was that of a young man who
• 3:07:22
  had been in some kind of a war or battle near where the
• 3:07:25
  property sits now. Another was that of a young girl
• 3:07:29
  who had passed from some sort of very painful illness in what was
• 3:07:33
  now Tina's room. And there was another spirit
• 3:07:37
  that seemed to be keeping herself and others trapped
• 3:07:41
  within the house. It was the spirit of a woman who
• 3:07:44
  was incredibly angry and resentful.
• 3:07:48
  She continued to be possessive, depressive, and just as angry
• 3:07:52
  and death as she was in. Life.
• 3:07:55
  Refusing to pass on believing what they had identified to be
• 3:08:00
  the source of the paranormal activity, Father Al decided to
• 3:08:03
  take a different approach to the cleansing itself.
• 3:08:07
  Although an exorcism cannot be performed on a place, but rather
• 3:08:11
  has to be performed on an individual, the rights
• 3:08:14
  themselves could in theory be performed or added to a series
• 3:08:18
  of prayers to try and use their strong cleansing powers to clear
• 3:08:23
  out a home such as this one. So that's exactly what the
• 3:08:27
  Father did. He began to perform the rites of
• 3:08:30
  exorcism within the house itself.
• 3:08:33
  As the prayers began to exit his lips, varying with intensity as
• 3:08:38
  the rights often do, the home began to literally shake, and
• 3:08:43
  the horrific moaning and wailing that had made itself present in
• 3:08:47
  the very first cleansing seemed to return with a vengeance.
• 3:08:52
  Every horrible feeling. Banging, knocking and scratching
• 3:08:57
  noise that the family had experienced thus far was present
• 3:09:01
  and seemed to be magnified. It takes hours, but eventually
• 3:09:06
  the rides are finished as the dust settles, so to speak.
• 3:09:11
  The home seems peaceful and blissful, like it did when the
• 3:09:15
  family had first visited and decided.
• 3:09:18
  To buy the. Home, and again for three more
• 3:09:20
  months, the family. Lives in peace.
• 3:09:24
  But like the persistent force that has manifested itself to
• 3:09:27
  be, the haunting begins again. The Dandy family, despite their
• 3:09:33
  best efforts, simply cannot take it anymore, decide to cut their
• 3:09:38
  losses and move. Unable to find a buyer for their
• 3:09:42
  house, they eventually declare bankruptcy.
• 3:09:46
  Shortly after this, Phil and Clara would also divorce,
• 3:09:51
  bringing a sad and bitter end to what was supposed to be a rural
• 3:09:55
  redemption for the Dandy family. However, this wouldn't be the
• 3:10:01
  end of the story of the Hensdale house.
• 3:10:05
  Eventually, the home would come into the possession of Daniel
• 3:10:09
  Klaus, who currently owns it. Daniel's a renowned paranormal
• 3:10:13
  investigator and has been involved with the likes of Nick
• 3:10:17
  Roth and has made appearances on tons of national TV programs
• 3:10:22
  centered around the paranormal over the years.
• 3:10:25
  Having been raised in a haunted house, this led to a lifelong
• 3:10:29
  fascination with the Paranormal Forum.
• 3:10:32
  After years of restoration, it is now available for both
• 3:10:36
  investigations and tours and is still considered a very active
• 3:10:41
  paranormal portal and is kept open as a paranormal research
• 3:10:45
  location. It's even staged in the 1970s
• 3:10:49
  period to maintain the integrity of when the hauntings were
• 3:10:53
  initially known to have began. But now that we know the back
• 3:10:57
  story of the 20th and into the 21st century of the Hensdale
• 3:11:01
  house, just who owned it, what happened to them and who owns it
• 3:11:05
  now, I would like to shift your attention to some of the
• 3:11:09
  plausible theories as to what could have caused the haunting.
• 3:11:13
  Many theories of what could have caused the haunting have been
• 3:11:16
  formed over the years by the many people who have researched
• 3:11:20
  and have been interested in the case.
• 3:11:22
  One theory is that the home was built on top of an Indian burial
• 3:11:26
  mound. This of course could have
• 3:11:28
  disturbed the spirits of the natives that rested within the
• 3:11:31
  land, and although tribes who used this method of burial were
• 3:11:35
  present in the area back in history, there's little to no
• 3:11:39
  evidence to support this claim. But perhaps any evidence by this
• 3:11:43
  point could have long since been lost to the sands of time or
• 3:11:47
  could have been removed when the home was initially built.
• 3:11:51
  Another theory is that the home was at one point used as a
• 3:11:55
  Stagecoach in and passer bys were murdered either near or
• 3:11:59
  within the home itself, leading to their spirits being trapped
• 3:12:03
  within the home or on its land. Although there is evidence that
• 3:12:07
  a Stagecoach route did run very close to the home, there isn't
• 3:12:11
  direct evidence that the house itself was used as an inn, but
• 3:12:15
  it is possible murders also did take place in or around the area
• 3:12:20
  in which the home is now located, which could lend
• 3:12:23
  credence to the theories of criminals robbing and murdering
• 3:12:27
  people along the Stagecoach route.
• 3:12:30
  An old family from the area that used to own the home with the
• 3:12:33
  last name of McMahon also lends credence to the home being used
• 3:12:38
  as an inn. At some point.
• 3:12:40
  The now past grandfather of the family used to tell stories of a
• 3:12:44
  road that passed by the house or stagecoaches traveled.
• 3:12:49
  Another theory is that one or several of the spirits were
• 3:12:53
  trapped as a result of hangings that took place.
• 3:12:56
  There. The now famous hanging tree that
• 3:12:59
  sits near the residence was indeed used for executions for a
• 3:13:03
  time. Most famously, it seems, was the
• 3:13:06
  execution of a woman named Elizabeth.
• 3:13:10
  Elizabeth was pregnant. Could this perhaps be the spirit
• 3:13:14
  of the woman who was angry and refusing to leave?
• 3:13:19
  Other events, such as a homicide that took place in the year 2000
• 3:13:23
  near the house, as well as a buzz saw incident that led to a
• 3:13:27
  boy's death, have led many to believe that whatever haunts the
• 3:13:31
  area could indeed still be there and influencing our world.
• 3:13:37
  It's important in my opinion to try and get the story and the
• 3:13:41
  facts as straight as possible, not only for the current owners
• 3:13:45
  benefit, but for the dandies who have suffered greatly as a
• 3:13:48
  result of their story becoming public, especially towards the
• 3:13:52
  end of their time at the property.
• 3:13:54
  As word got out that something strange was taking place at the
• 3:13:57
  house, a local paper ended up reaching out to the dandies for
• 3:14:02
  a statement. Thinking that they were
• 3:14:03
  accepting an opportunity for additional outside help, they
• 3:14:07
  gave their story only to be met with ridicule from the paper,
• 3:14:12
  which in turn led to ridicule from the public and nearby
• 3:14:15
  residents. Which this combined with the
• 3:14:18
  paranormal torment they were experiencing along with then
• 3:14:21
  having to file bankruptcy and then later divorce.
• 3:14:26
  In my opinion, they suffered greatly and did not benefit from
• 3:14:30
  the story especially during that time.
• 3:14:33
  The only benefit I've seen could be from Clara Miller, formerly
• 3:14:37
  Clara Dandy, who would eventually write a book known as
• 3:14:41
  Echoes of a Haunting. But to be fair, if I experienced
• 3:14:45
  even a portion of what she did, I would eventually write a book
• 3:14:48
  to catalog what happened as well.
• 3:14:51
  Not only for some monetary benefit, of course, but for my
• 3:14:55
  own sanity really. So as I've began to mention and
• 3:14:59
  will continue to mention again in the future, if you ever
• 3:15:03
  encounter anyone mentioned in this video or any of my other
• 3:15:06
  videos, whether it be in person or online, please be respectful
• 3:15:11
  of them and their experiences and do not ever harass anyone.
• 3:15:16
  And if you find yourself seemingly handed an opportunity
• 3:15:20
  that seems too good to be true the answer to your prayers, it's
• 3:15:25
  more than likely not the case. It could be a nightmare waiting
• 3:15:29
  to happen. It could be a haunted home
• 3:15:32
  infested with entities sitting and waiting for the perfect
• 3:15:37
  victim. Don't let it be you.