Original subtitles

An elaborate mansion built to ward off evil spirits.

A forbidden tomb guarded by a deadly curse.

And an amusement park that became a playground for the souls of the dead.

You know, from time to time it feels like there's an unseen evil energy

that shrouds the world we live in.

Ominous tombs, abandoned amusement parks, and cursed objects can all raise

hair on the back of our necks and make us wonder if something sinister is at

play.

But is that just a figment of our imagination?

Or is it possible that our fears are justified and that dark forces lurk

all around us?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

Near the center of this ancient city in Central Asia is a mausoleum known as Gur

-e -Amir.

It is also known as the Tomb of the King because inside its magnificent dome

lie the remains of one of the most feared rulers in history,

Tamerlane the Great.

Tamerlane was...

often credited as being the last of the great Asiatic conquerors in the mold of

Genghis Khan.

He started off basically as a minor tribal leader, and then he embarked upon

a 35 -year career of constant war and conquest,

during which he's often credited with exterminating 5 % of the world's

population.

Tamerlane was very adept at psychological warfare and putting his

the wrong foot.

His most chilling battlefield signature was the erection of large numbers of

towers around the city he'd just conquered.

And these towers were made up from the decapitated heads of the victims of the

latest conquest.

A really awful warning to anyone else who might think about rebelling.

This is the fate that awaits you if you even think about any opposition.

I will destroy you and destroy your city.

In 1405, Tamerlane died of a fever at the age of 69.

By that time, his empire stretched from Siberia to the Mediterranean Sea.

But some claim that even in death... Tamerlane wasn't finished exerting his

power on the world because his tomb is believed to be protected by a deadly

curse.

Certain people attain that level of, you know, absolutely terrifying, vicious

person.

Something is evil in them. So when they die, whatever it is that makes them

evil, a lot of people think they'll exist.

And where would it be? It would be wherever the body is. So in the tomb of

Tamerlane would be this evil presence that's now still terrifying in his

For centuries, Tamerlane's tomb was untouched by archaeologists for fear of

unleashing the dark forces inside.

But 80 years ago, his tomb was finally disturbed.

And there are those who believe that it set off a chain of events.

that changed the course of history.

June 20th, 1941.

Under the orders of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Russian archaeologists

Tamerlane's mausoleum and open his tomb.

Stalin was interested in the clues behind Tamerlane's greatness.

Tamerlane was such an incredibly powerful man whose career had been one

bloodshed and savagery.

And Stalin wanted to send a very strong message that he was a 20th century

equivalent.

When the expedition arrived on site, they were told, Tamerlane's tomb has

remained undisturbed for centuries.

And not to open the tomb, that if they did, something terrible would happen.

Of course, the expedition proceeded to open the tomb, and this very

powerful smell of frankincense, of rose oil and camphor suddenly burst

forth and enveloped the expedition.

Some of the members of the expedition believed that it was the smell of a

There are supposedly two inscriptions on the tomb of Tamlein.

The first inscription reads,

The body was

removed. And it was taken back to Leningrad, where the remains were being

studied at that point in time. One of the things that was in the paper was a

picture of a Soviet archaeologist holding the skull of Tamerlane.

And in the article accompanying this, there is a reference that there were

locals who were disturbed about this.

On June 22, 1941.

Two days after Tamerlane's tomb was opened, Russia was hit with a surprise

attack by Germany, its supposed ally.

Over three million Nazi troops marched into Russia in the most massive invasion

in history.

Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union without any warning.

Up until then, there had been a pact of non -aggression, so this came as quite a

surprise to the Soviet Union. The Nazis...

called the Surprise Attack Operation Barbarossa. And they were very swift and

overwhelming in their attack, and they managed to get very far into the Soviet

Union rather quickly, causing great devastation and loss of life to the

Hammer Lane's body is removed from its tomb on the 20th, and the Eastern Front

erupts in flames two days later.

Remember, there was a curse.

Whosoever will disturb my tomb will unleash an invader worse

than I.

So a lot of people would say the synchronicity between the removal of

Tamerlane's body from his tomb and the launching of Operation Barbarossa

isn't an accident.

As German troops continued to overpower Russian forces, Stalin's advisors began

to question if the curse of Tamerlane's tomb had been unleashed.

They urged him to return Tamerlane's remains to Uzbekistan in the desperate

that it would turn the tide of battle.

And to their astonishment, it worked.

Tamerlane's remains are put back in in December 1942.

But the whole course of the war at the Eastern Front changes.

And from that point on, it's just one long nightmare retreat for the Germans

back to Berlin in April 1945.

Is it possible that returning Tamerlane's remains to his tomb broke

that triggered Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union?

For many, the evidence is hard to ignore.

I think for those who subscribe to what we call the curse of Tamerlane, there

are these two great coincidences.

Coincidence one, the tomb is opened against all the objections of the

Hitler invades the Soviet Union.

Coincidence number two, Tamerlane is reinterred with full burial rites.

Hitler is defeated.

It comes full circle.

Two coincidences or two proofs that the curse was absolutely for real. Take your

pick.

Mercer County, West Virginia.

Here on the bank of Lake Shawnee stands the abandoned remnants of what was once

a simple, wholesome family amusement park.

Opened in 1926, the park thrived for decades until it was abruptly closed in

1966.

According to local historians, the reason for the closure was that what

as a playground for children became the site of numerous tragic and disturbing

incidents.

In the 1940s, a little girl was riding a swing, and a soda delivery truck

delivered soda to the concession stand.

And whenever he did, he backed up into the path of the swing and it killed the

little girl.

They tried to play it down because it was the child getting killed.

She wasn't the only child killed here. There were several kids that drowned.

One was a really sad story, and I would hope it wouldn't happen nowadays.

A mother brought her 9 -year -old here and dropped him off to go swimming, and

she went on her merry way. She came back when the park was closing, and she

couldn't find her son.

And they looked for the son until 10 o 'clock at night when they found him.

His arm was stuck in the drain of the swimming pool, and it had sucked him in,

and he couldn't get out, and he had just drowned.

There was another incidence where there was a family out on an outing.

They was riding a canoe in the lake. The canoe overturned, and a little boy

drowned in the lake.

Before its doors were closed, six children had died in the park.

And that might have been reason enough for the park to remain closed.

But it didn't.

In 1985, local resident Gaylord White purchased the property with hopes of

reopening it.

In the 1950s, Gaylord, my husband, worked here when he was in high school.

He fell in love with it.

So that was his wish, that someday he would own the park.

And somebody had sent us word that the heirs had finally decided they were

to sell it.

That's how we bought it.

We wanted to have a children's ride park.

For years, locals believed that the park was haunted, maybe even cursed.

Then, in the late 1980s, the White family made some curious discoveries.

We started finding a lot of pottery and Native American tools and arrowheads,

stuff like that.

So we stopped doing the bulldozing. We called Marksville University.

They put together an archaeological team that would come down to the park.

They started uncovering bodies.

So that's when we knew we had a Native American burial ground on the property.

I know that one of the burial sites was a Native American 14 -year -old girl,

and the belief is that she died from giving childbirth because the child was

buried next to her.

A series of tragic deaths at an amusement park built on the site of a

American burial ground?

A coincidence?

As far as paranormal investigators are concerned,

Not a chance.

The first time I stepped foot on Lake Shawnee Amusement Park, I felt like I

being watched.

It was an ominous, just negative feeling.

I don't necessarily believe that places are born bad.

I believe that things have to occur for a place to become negative in nature.

People said whenever they come to the park that they see the swings move on

their own, or maybe they see an image of the little girl that's riding the

swings.

Seeing only one swing move, when I look at it, no one else sees it, or it stops

as soon as someone else is looking, that's pretty scary.

More than scary, it's unexplained.

We tend to be scientists now. All of us, we know everything that's going on. And

when you see something that you don't understand, it gets to be creepy.

Millions of people have had these experiences.

Not just hauntings, but all sorts of ESP experiences and related experiences.

These are questions that science should be looking at very carefully and

closely. And to say, oh, it's mass hallucination, or it's this kind of

explanation, without looking into the experience itself, either the singular

the general patterns.

It's not scientific. It's highly unscientific.

Is Lake Shawnee Amusement Park home to deadly powers that are simply beyond our

understanding? Or is it possible that just the thought of dark forces is all

that's needed to give us a fright?

Perhaps clues can be found by investigating a vast mansion that many

haunted by the souls of restless gunslingers.

Strange.

Macabre.

Disturbing.

In San Jose, California, stands one of the largest and most bizarre private

residences in the United States.

Known as the Winchester Mystery House, this 24 ,000 square foot Victorian

mansion contains an astonishing

160 rooms, 17 chimneys, 47 fireplaces,

two basements, three elevators, and more than 10 ,000

panes of glass.

And those are just the ones we know about.

But why?

Well, the Winchester Mystery House is a very special place.

It was built with no master plan.

but there are a lot of architectural oddities that remain a mystery as to why

they're here.

Most buildings start with some drawings, some blueprints, some documents that

say, this is what it's going to look like when it was finished.

That building looks like they made it up as they went.

There are doors that open to 12 -foot drops outside.

There's doors that if you step through them, you'll land in a kitchen sink on

the first floor.

It's almost like an Escher picture in some ways.

The mastermind behind this architectural jigsaw puzzle was Sarah Winchester, the

widow of a man who manufactured the Winchester repeating rifle.

It was famously known as the gun that won the West because it could kill more

people faster than any gun previously invented.

The Winchester rifle was special because it could fire up to 15 rounds without

being reloaded, which was very different from most of the smoothbores used in

the Civil War, which were, you loaded it, you fired one shot, and that was it.

So you could imagine the advantage that you would have being able to shoot round

after round after round without reloading.

When Sarah's husband died in 1881, she became the heir to his massive fortune.

Three years later...

She began construction on a mansion that would take 38 years to complete.

She just added things on as she had a great idea. So everybody had to listen

say, oh, okay, you want a large ballroom up there? And then they'd figure it out

as they went.

Even to this day, they're still finding new rooms and new features to this

house. Was Sarah just working off of her whims? Was she just an eccentric, crazy

lady?

Or is there some other unknown explanation that we have yet to

It is suspected that one reason Sarah kept building and building around the

clock for 38 years is that she was trying to protect herself from all the

souls the Winchester rifles had killed.

Perhaps, it was thought, if the house was built as a giant maze, the ghosts

would never be able to find her.

The story is that Sarah Winchester went through a long period of grief. She

unfortunately lost a child only weeks old, and she lost her husband to

tuberculosis. And she started wondering, why are all these terrible things

happening to me? And what was common at the time was to seek out a medium or a

spiritualist for guidance.

And that person said that The karma of the gun that won the West and all these

terrible things associated with this firearm is kind of haunting you.

The spiritualist medium told her that in order to pacify these spirits who were

very offended at having been killed by Winchester rifles, she needed to build a

house. And she should never stop building.

And the idea also was that the constant sound of the saws and hammers would

drive the bad spirits away.

Some of the design features were specifically built to confuse evil or

spirits. So if stairs led to the ceiling or if a door led to the outside,

possibly they would be confused and leave the property.

Did Sarah Winchester spend nearly 40 years and the equivalent of more than

million constructing a bizarre labyrinth of stairs?

halls and doors, in order to keep the vengeful dead at bay.

Perhaps.

And for further evidence, some point to the fact that the house is filled with

strange symbolism.

An interesting symbol that you see all throughout the house is the symbol of

sun.

In astrology and astral theology, you have the idea of the zodiac, which is

have the 12 houses of the zodiac, and the number 13 is the sun at the front

gates of the house. And on each gate, you have a symbol of the sun.

And the rays of the sun add up to 16 on each sun.

So when you put the 16 and the 16 together, you have the date that William

Shakespeare died.

The two most cryptic windows, stained glass windows in the house are Sarah's

ballroom windows.

They're the only ones that have any text in them. And they're two quotes from

different Shakespearean plays.

And they read, wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts.

And then the other one says, these same thoughts people this little world.

We don't know exactly what that meant to Sarah. She took that secret with her to

her grave.

Sarah Winchester passed away September 1922.

As you can imagine, there was great excitement to see this incredible home

everyone in the town had seen being built up over so many years.

All the furnishings were sold anonymously at auction, but what was

large safe in the grand ballroom.

Sarah put a safe in the grand ballroom, which is an odd place to put a safe, and

the safe itself is very odd.

It's basically you open up the safe, and then...

You find another safe, and you have to open up another safe, and it's a safe

within a safe within a safe.

People were kind of mystified, like, what's in the safe? And they were hoping

for maybe treasure, gold bars, or jewelry.

After they finally got inside, they found just two things. No gold, no

no diamonds.

A lock of hair from her baby Annie, who passed away just a few weeks old, and

the obituary of her husband, who passed away to tuberculosis very young.

A lock of hair?

And an obituary?

It seems Sarah Winchester's motives for building such a strange and unsettling

structure remain safely hidden somewhere in the never -ending house.

Ultimately, it's hard to say what secrets the Winchester Mystery House

But one thing is certain. It was built to confuse unwelcome guests, whether

they're alive or dead.

But there's another residence located in the state of Indiana that may

be imbued with even darker forces. It's a home that many believe is the most

evil place in North America.

Cayuga, Indiana.

February 16th, 2019.

paranormal investigator Dave Spinks and his associate Haley Sharp have traveled

here to this small town to investigate a house that many consider to be the most

evil place in North America.

Referred to as Willow's Weep, it has been the site of a series of gruesome

deaths since it was built in the 19th century.

Brenda Johnson owns Willow's Weave. Hi, Brenda. Dave.

She dismissed the rumors about it being an evil place and purchased it only a

few years ago with plans to renovate it. This is my assistant, Haley. It's nice

to meet you.

But recent events have convinced her that she may have made a terrible

To this end, she's invited Dave and Haley to come and investigate the house

see if her strange experiences can be verified.

So, how are you doing?

I couldn't stand in here.

Last night I was sick thinking about coming over here around this house.

So tell us a little bit about the house, some of your experiences here.

Well, when I bought the house, we started working on it, and then my son

working on the ceiling. The boards come flying off at him and hurt him, and I've

been scratched in there, six claw marks down my back, doors slamming on you,

banging underneath the floors.

I understand there's been deaths in this house. Can you kind of go through those

a little bit?

Yeah.

The man that built the house, he died in the bathtub.

There was two suicides and then another hanging.

And I heard that three men had been poisoned.

About six months prior, before I bought it, there was a man that he committed

suicide in there.

He fell into the chair.

And that's where they found him? They found him a couple days later, right? A

week. A week? A week later, okay.

Do you think what's in that house is evil? Yes, I do.

Without a doubt? Yes, I do, without a doubt.

If it wasn't evil, it wouldn't be hurting people. I don't think there's

good in there.

The house was built in the late 1800s, correct? 1890, yes.

So, regarding the shape of the house, It's in the shape of a cross.

Upside -down cross.

Strange. Yes, very strange.

Do you think the guy was into some weird stuff, like occult stuff, that built

it? Why would you build a house like that if you wasn't into something?

Absolutely.

So we're getting ready to go into this house and investigate it.

Would you like to join us? No, no way.

Never go back in there again, ever.

All right, we're going to get in there and investigate.

All right.

Here we go. All right.

Pretty heavy in here.

Definitely.

Well, where do you want to get set up?

Right here.

Okay.

To see if the house might contain strange anomalies, Dave and Haley will

temperature sensor, which can detect fluctuations in both temperature and

electromagnetic fields.

All right, 41, 40 degrees, and it's going down.

It really likes this area.

Yeah.

It's going nuts.

The temperature sensor has been dropping steadily by as much as 9 degrees.

But why?

So this room is appearing to be pretty active so far. I mean, the whole house

really is.

But we've got a lot of hits right here on this device.

This is the chair that Brenda was talking about.

Yeah, look at the blood on it. It's a really sad, heavy feeling right here,

I was pitting my stomach.

Almost immediately, the device started going off in the chair where the man who

killed himself in the house several years ago was found in.

Something there.

Could the strange changes in the temperature of the house be caused by

explainable force?

A sudden drop in barometric pressure caused by the presence of a deep

underground well, perhaps.

Or could it be caused by something else?

Something that can't yet be explained.

I'm getting the sickness, the headache.

Definitely something negative in here, in my opinion.

I agree. All right, so let's get out of here. Let's go. All right.

Dave and Haley are beginning to suspect that the stories of Willow's Wheat being

an evil place might be based on more than fear and superstition.

The house is scary.

I wouldn't want to be in this house alone.

I'd say this house does have some evil in it. It does not give you a good

feeling. It wants to suck the life out of you.

I've been to many locations, and this one stands out above all of them so far.

In my personal opinion, there are many spirits and entities in this house.

are human spirits and possibly demonic spirits that influence the humans that

have lived in this house and quite possibly have caused them to harm

Once outside, Dave and Haley give owner Brenda Johnson a report on their

findings. But not before Dave makes Brenda a rather surprising offer.

I know you really don't like this place.

No. And I know that you want to get rid of it. Yeah. Because I'd like to

purchase the house from you.

Okay.

Yes. Dave is willing to be the next owner of Willow's Weep. All right. Thank

you. Thank you.

I told Brenda if I owned this house, I could investigate it much further.

and much more in -depth and possibly come to a conclusion as to what's

the evil that lurks within its walls.

That is, if something doesn't happen to me first.

You too.

Luckily for me, she agreed.

She really couldn't wait to sell the place.

Is it a good idea to investigate places like Willow's Weep in order to find out

whether dark forces really exist?

Perhaps.

But some people believe that it's better to simply avoid these locations at all

costs. Like in the case of an abandoned island in Mexico, whose only inhabitants

are thousands of eerie dogs.

Xochimilco, Mexico.

Just south of Mexico City.

Dotted amongst the numerous tree -filled canals that run through this ancient

city are dozens of artificial floating islands known as Chiñapas.

But one Chiñapa stands out because the branches of its willow and cypress trees

appear to be growing something rather unusual.

The place is called Isla de las Muñecas, otherwise known.

as the Island of the Dolls.

The island is a forest -like enclave draped with thousands and thousands

of ordinary dolls.

Childhood playthings hanging from trees, vines, and branches.

It's very eerie.

These look like suspended living presences that are believed to ward off

It's a spooky living sculpture that some people say is cursed.

And according to folklore, you can hear whispering and you

can hear little girls' voices.

You can see the dolls' eyes blinking on their own, which is just terrifying.

The only permanent residents of the island are the strange dolls.

that have given the place a ghoulish reputation.

But who created this macabre spectacle?

And why?

Well, according to local lore, the story began in the 1950s when the island was

owned by a man named Julian Santana Barrera.

Julian Santana Barrera came to live on the Chinampa.

And according to the stories, he came across a little girl.

floating in one of the canals.

Barrera is devastated that he can't save the little girl and pulls her out of

the water and buries her on the island.

Barrera felt eventually that he was seeing the ghost of this girl walking

his little Chinampa island.

To try to make her happy, he hung some dolls in the trees.

And he hung more and more dolls up to appease the spirit of this little girl

died tragically.

We can think about what Barrera did as a talisman or a symbol

that is used to protect.

All across the globe, you see these totems being used in this particular

There are stones and there are ornaments.

that people hang in their houses, in their cars.

Sometimes people carry them on their physical person, and the act is done as

kind of protective gesture.

Ultimately, Barrera hung thousands of dolls all over the island, not only to

honor the memory of the young girl, but also to guard against a dark entity that

he believed had caused her death.

An entity known as La Llorona.

La Llorona is a tragic character.

She is the first native mother who gave birth to children from

a conquistador, a Spaniard.

The story says that her community rejected her because her children were

Spaniard, and so she was shamed. She was so ashamed of this, in fact, that she

went down to the river and she drowned her children.

She immediately regretted this.

Now she's the spirit that haunts lakes and rivers.

La Llorona is a well -known myth all around Mexico. And so a man like

who sees a child floating in the water, he almost certainly, at least for a

moment, thought of La Llorona and that this is her children floating.

Since Barrera's death in 2001, the island of the dolls has remained

But locals continue to tell the story of the drowned girl.

Many are convinced that there's an evil presence on this island.

And as evidence, they point to the chilling circumstances of Julian

death.

After suffering from a fatal heart attack, his body was found in an

location.

Barrera dies.

And not only does he die on the island, but his body is found in the exact canal

where he found the little girl.

Is there correlation?

We don't know.

But many people believe that if you are out at night by yourself, playing

down by the river, that La Llorona will, quote -unquote, get you.

about the aftermath of a local house fire.

But, according to John Murphy, this is not your typical human interest story.

Because, although the blaze burned the home and nearly everything in it to the

ground, one object did manage to survive.

A copy of a painting depicting the crying boy.

I was told to go out and have a look at the fire, speak to the homeowners and

see what has happened. I got there and it was a conventional chip pan fire.

No one, fortunately, was hurt, but the house had been completely gutted. But

extraordinary thing was that the print had actually survived the blaze.

Initially, John thought that the painting's revival was a mildly

tidbit, but not especially newsworthy on its own.

That is, until a firefighter on the scene informed him that this wasn't the

time that a copy of a similar painting had survived such a massive fire.

When I was speaking to the fire officer outside the home on that Monday morning,

he told me about his brother -in -law, whose house had also been destroyed by

fire, and who also had a print of the crying boy in the house which survived.

We had an interesting conversation.

And he said, this is really, really strange. I have been on so many house

recently where there has been this print in the house.

The houses where there'd been these fires, completely gutted, so hot, in

that on the ground floor of one particular house, the plaster was

the wall.

And yet this particular print was hanging on the wall, absolutely

I contacted my news desk, phoned through the story, so hence the story of the

Curse of the Crying Boy print was born.

Dozens of homes ravaged by fire, and in every single case, a

Crying Boy print had survived unscathed.

But how could such a thing be possible?

The story went viral after the son got hold of the story, and next thing...

They ran telephone campaigns asking if their readers had got a print of the

crying boy, and if so, had they experienced any disasters like house

So that's where the rumour became alleged.

But at that stage, there was no story to explain who the child was and why was

he crying.

The crying boy portraits are among a series of mass -produced artworks.

that belonged to a genre known as big -eyed art, sold in British department

stores in the 1960s and 70s. But in this case, who was the artist?

And why was he or she so obsessed with painting the crying boy?

In the 1950s, there was a Californian artist, Margaret Keane, who painted a

whole range of children, and this became...

big -eyed art, and it was something that was very popular in the 50s and 60s.

Lots of European painters copied Margaret Keane's art style.

Probably the best known was a series of 27 paintings by an Italian artist

called Bruno Amadio, who was born in 1911, died in the early 1980s. And he

classically trained, but he didn't make...

much in the way of money. So in order to make money, he painted, in the style of

Margaret Keane, lots of pictures of small children, sort of street urchins,

crying girls, crying boys, and these sold to tourists in post -war Italy.

He didn't want to be associated with these paintings because he just didn't

think they were very good quality paintings. So he came up with a name,

de guerre, Giovanni Bragolin.

which was actually apparently his uncle's name.

No one knew who this Bragolin was.

It didn't have a biography in the way that many other well -known artists did.

So there's that element of mystery.

And one of the stories about the Crying Boy Curse is that the child in the

painting is trapped inside the painting, and that the only way that the child or

the spirit of that child can free itself is by setting fire.

to its surroundings, and that's the way it escapes from the painting.

Recently, forensic investigators studying the so -called Curse of the

have raised a new possibility as to how the painting has come to survive so many

house fires, and it has nothing to do with the supposed curse.

There was some investigation done on these paintings and they were actually

coated with fire retardant material.

And that could just be the reason that they didn't burn and the other aspects

the locations did burn.

You plant an idea, whether it's in a newspaper, in a book, or via Twitter or

Facebook, suggesting that there's something eerie or there's bad luck

circulating around a particular object or painting.

And you're almost guaranteed to get people saying, yes, I've had bad luck.

that's exactly what happened in the 1980s with The Curse of the Crying Boy.

So, what do you think?

Are dark forces just a manifestation of human fears and nothing more?

Or are we surrounded by invisible and malevolent energy that we don't fully

understand? Well, until we know for sure.

Perhaps it's best to listen closely when our instincts warn us about deadly

powers that remain unexplained.