Original subtitles

She turned around and she waved at me.

That's the last time I saw Barbara Nichols.

The authorities have no leads.

My dorm was the oldest dorm at that point on campus.

Strange events started to take place.

There was definitely that feeling of being watched,

that feeling of sort of pressure.

This case takes us deep into the self.

Somebody or something lured her to that pond.

What kind of creature can kill without a trace?

It just becomes this sort of overwhelming,

almost itchy sort of sensation where all I want to do is

turn around and see who is there.

A lot of the times, he would find the beagle dead

in Barbara Nichols' pond.

What's killing the dogs?

I don't believe in the supernatural too much,

but there's something about this seems to be supernatural.

The level of fear was 10.

She was no longer just a dream.

And I was terrified.

This case has all the markings of a paranormal revenge.

I ain't never lived anywhere else,

so Johnston County is home to me.

It used to be really rural.

Everybody was mostly a tobacco farmer

or some kind of farmer in some kind of way.

And I know that sounds

old-fashioned, but basically that's exactly what we did.

That's the way life was for us in Johnston County.

It's a place full of stories,

old as the land.

Story that lives in these deep woods

and in the stink of the swamps.

Dark things, witches.

Ghosts...

Things that put the fear of God in you.

I first met Barbara Nichols when she come

to our little grade school in Corinth Holders.

We rode to school back and forth together

on the same bus,

but I really didn't talk to her because I was

just infatuated with her.

Barbara Nichols walked off the bus,

and I was looking at her the whole time

with my little puppy love.

And she turned around, and she waved at me.

And I waved back at her.

And we just kept waving back and forth at each other.

And that's when I knew that she liked me

as much as I liked her.

I saw her turn around and start walking down

that long mile back at her house.

And that's the last time I saw Barbara Nichols.

It was a sad day.

Richard Estep, Todd Narron, take one.

This is an unusual and fascinating case.

It's got so many elements we don't usually see.

Erin Goodpipe, take one.

This case takes us deep into the South,

where there are swamps, a lot of histories,

a lot of legends and lore, and ultimately

the disappearance of a little girl

that takes us on a journey with a lot of unexpected outcomes.

This is the direction that our bus would come from

every day from school.

And this is the last time I saw Barbara Nichols

when she got off the bus that day.

Everyday she had to get off

and walk down this path about a mile to her house.

This is Barbara Nichols' house.

And you can see it's run-down, and it was run-down

way back then.

Nobody wouldn't rent to 'em.

And the reason being is 'cause the whole family

came from Ohio.

Even more than 100 years after the end of the Civil War,

resentments and hatred still run strong in the South

regarding the North and Northerners.

Barbara might be paying the price for something

that happened more than a century

before she was even born.

Then again, there are even darker, more grim possibilities

that we should consider.

Barbara's father drank a lot, and he would use up

a lot of the money. But her mama was real smart,

and she did all she could do to save her money.

And she would put in window panes.

They say she cut down all the brush, painted the house,

fixed everything up as far as she could.

She did everything she could,

and she got the house looking decent.

This is where Barbara Nichols come

when she got off the bus every day.

On this particular day, she just disappeared.

There was a farmer had a dog

and Bingo was his name, oh.

B-I-N-G-O,

B-I...

Her mother and father had missed her...

not getting home.

And they went down to the road, and they started stopping cars.

They would start saying, "Our daughter's missing,

"our daughter's missing.

Has anybody seen Barbara?"

The local police department is in a frenzy and they coordinate

a huge search, bringing in neighbors, the fire department,

any volunteer that will help, scour the thick woods

around the missing girl's home for any sign

of where she has gone.

At first glance, this case really appears

to be cut-and-dry.

Maybe there is a predator, a stalker, a pedophile,

that is preying on little Barbara Nichols.

At this point, the evidence takes

a really interesting turn.

One of the things Barbara Nichols had to do every day

after school was pass by this pond.

About 9 o'clock the next morning,

they found her...

floating in the little pond that was near her house.

We all went to school the next day,

and then our teachers announced it to us

that Barbara Nichols was gone.

And we were all shocked.

We knew old people died.

We didn't realize that young people died, too.

And it broke my heart.

That was the end of Barbara Nichols.

And it was basically the end of the Barbara Nichols family

because they couldn't stand it

And they eventually moved.

The authorities have no leads.

We have to take in the fact that Barbara Nichols goes

down this path every single day.

It takes her about 15 to 20 minutes to get

from where the bus stops to her home.

So we need to consider, you know, who knows

this information?

Who or what did she encounter along the way?

We don't know what happened, but she ended up

inside the pond, and she drowned.

And that was the end of Barbara Nichols.

There was somebody that had bad intentions for Barbara.

Then maybe somebody knew Barbara's

uh, routine.

They could have knew that she went

down that path every day.

This is every parent's worst nightmare.

Seven-year-old Barbara Nichols has possibly been killed

by a child predator.

That's the conclusion that we would jump to at first,

but as the police investigate the case further,

it's not where the evidence points.

The autopsy shows that she died by drowning.

Why did she stray from this path

and end up in the pond?

Barbara Nichols' body doesn't have any trauma on it,

which suggests that somebody or something lured her

to that pond.

What I heard was death by drowning.

It didn't say anything about...

blunt-force trauma or anything like that.

It just said she drowned.

And what they had found

was tracks all around that pond.

Whoever made these tracks

was walking on four legs.

What was found at the pond were a number of different

animal tracks where Barbara Nichols died.

So, now this takes a turn.

Now the community is in this state of thinking

of superstitions.

People are talking and they wanna know

what kind of animal it is that can kill a little girl

without leaving a single mark on her body.

What kind of creature can kill without a trace?

Are we dealing with something that is not, in fact,

of this realm?

From then on, we figured that it had to be

something supernatural, but there's nothing

we can prove.

All of us little kids put the death of a child

as a ghost being there.

And our imaginations were wild.

That's when things started to look a little strange.

Hunters would go in there

to the woody part of the property

and let their dogs out,

and they would hunt rabbits

and the dogs would go and sniff out rabbits.

But a lot of times, one or two of the dogs wouldn't come back

at the end of the day, and the hunt was over.

And they would go back day after day,

calling for that dog.

Buddy!

Buddy!

And eventually, a lot of the times,

he would find the beagle dead in Barbara Nichols' pond,

and they would be drowned.

The hunters stopped hunting around that pond

because they didn't want to take the chance on losing a dog.

It really sent a chill through this community.

There's a local legend about a ferocious entity

known as the Beast of Bladenboro.

It terrorized everybody in Bladenboro, pretty much.

I mean, it scared people.

Well, I don't believe in the supernatural too much,

but there's something about this thing to be supernatural.

Bladenboro is a small town 85 miles south

of where Barbara Nichols' body was found.

According to witnesses, the creature looks similar

to a monstrous black panther, or great cat.

Over the years, multiple hunter parties were

arranged to try and hunt and kill this mystical beast,

but it was never found.

Is it possible that whatever took Barbara and killed

these hunting dogs was something paranormal?

A closer look at the tracks found in the scene

give us that answer.

These animal prints that they found around

Barbara's body, there wasn't just one.

There was at least half a dozen,

like a pack of animals.

What people did back then was, if you didn't want your dog

no more, what you did was took him to the woods.

And that was your way of giving the dog a chance

to live instead of just shooting the dog.

B-I-N-G-O,

B-I-N-G--

They were able to conclude that there was just,

that there was a whole pack of dogs.

We don't know what happened.

Maybe the dogs were just too fast for her,

or what happened, but she ended up inside the pond.

But it turns out that was only half the truth.

Now it becomes clear that it's more than likely

the wild dogs led to Barbara Nichols' death.

But the question is, what's killing the dogs?

Over the next week and months, the same thing kept happening.

Hunting dogs found missing and found dead by the pond.

It got to be so bad that people stopped fishing

in-- in-- Barbara Nichols' pond.

They were scared of it.

12 years had passed since Barbara Nichols' incident.

And my uncle from Wake County had called, and he was

a big hunter and fisherman.

And he asked me if I would like to go frog gigging.

I'll tell you a little bit about frog gigging.

First of all, you need a boat,

in this case a jon boat, and you need a trident.

And you go along the shore,

as slow as you can, and you put a bright light on the bank

and you look for two shiny little eyes or a yellow throat,

then you know it's a bullfrog.

You see his size, he's big enough,

you know he's good to eat.

And when you see him, you stick him just like that.

Everywhere I took him, there was no frogs.

So I took one chance and I thought, well,

Barbara Nichols' pond hasn't been missed with in years,

and there's gotta be frogs there.

We get into the water,

and we start going around the pond,

and Immediately I started thinking about Barbara Nichols.

I just thought, "It's not the place to be."

Bingo was his name--

We hear a dog,

and he's far away.

And then the dog's getting closer and closer

and closer and barking.

We see him, and it's a hound.

And the dog jumps-- jumps completely into the water...

...and starts dog-paddling toward us as fast as he can go.

We're scared.

We don't know if he's got rabies.

We don't know what is up with this dog,

but we know he's coming straight for us.

Oh, hell!

All of a sudden, he's close.

And he just-- is sucked under.

And he is gone. There's no more noise.

There's no more nothing.

He's gone. Where'd he go?

We didn't have a reason for why the dog...

was just all of a sudden sucked down into the water.

There are no getters in North Carolina.

Go, go, go, go, go.

We don't worry about anything else.

All we worry about is getting back onto the truck,

and we get out of there.

Let's go.

Come on, come on, come on.

There was a farmer

had a dog...

And Bingo was his name, oh.

B-I-N-G-O,

B-I-N-G-O,

B-I-N-G-O...

My level of fear was-- was 10...

because...

I felt that I knew what it was

that had done it.

There's no doubt in my mind, it was Barbara Nichols

who took that dog.

This case has all the markings of a paranormal revenge.

You have little Barbara Nichols who has died at this pond

very tragically, and probably in a horrific manner,

considering all of the animal tracks

that were present during her death.

That's a motive for revenge on any other dog,

innocent or not, that strays into the vicinity of the pond.

It was a definitely act of revenge.

And it's sad so many good dogs had to die.

But see, it is even sadder that she had to die there, too.

This pond is still here

after all these years.

And it's been a lot of years.

And it's still called Barbara Nichols' pond.

I haven't been back in years.

It's kinda...

eerie to be back here.

It brings back a lot of memories.

She'd be-- have her own family now,

her own kids.

Just like the rest of us.

But that one day,

just one day and one moment in time

changed everything.

It shows the tragedy of when you have children's spirits

who are remaining in this realm,

either trapped or unable to find some sort of peace

to keep continuing on their journey.

And in this case, Barbara Nichols is,

for some reason, deciding to stay here.

♪ B-I-N-G-O... ♪

I do know that there's a paranormal world,

and revenge and other emotions keep going

long after... we're gone.

I grew up in a small city in western Kentucky

called Madisonville.

It is farm fields, it is forests,

it is very religious. There's not much going on.

That life very much did not appeal to me.

When I graduated from high school,

I went to a college in Eastern Kentucky,

and I was in the honors program there.

I was double majoring in History and Anthropology.

I loved my first couple of years at school...

until I moved into the honors dorm.

It was like something out of a horror movie.

My dorm was the oldest dorm at that point on campus.

It was an imposing old brick building

with this long sort of veranda front porch on it.

It looks like something out of a horror movie,

especially if you're there on the weekend

and you're the only person in the building.

It's just big and imposing.

Erin Goodpipe, Steph Bingham, take two-- five, six.

Stephanie Bingham's case is very fascinating

and quite original.

It begins with her moving into her dormitory

at the University of Kentucky.

Tawney Lewis, Stephanie Bingham, take one.

After moving in the dorm, strange events started

to take place, which makes me, as an investigator,

sit up and take notice.

This case has a really interesting motive.

It all starts when Stephanie moves in with her roommate.

In my dorm, I shared my room with another student.

I could tell there was something just a little

different about her.

She was very religious.

I knew that what she believed was very different

than the way I'd been raised.

Well, if you want, I have a prayer meeting on Saturday.

Oh, yeah, maybe.

The portico and not the building itself, or its store rooms,

its upper rooms and...

- I hope you have a good day. - Yeah, thanks.

When I was in the building, there was definitely

that feeling of being watched, that feeling of

sort of pressure.

Stephanie is starting to feel that something is off here,

something in the room, something about her roommate.

There's just an odd feeling.

But things don't start to take a paranormal turn

until three nights later, after she moves into her dorm,

which make me, as an investigator,

begin to question what's going on here.

I was laying in my bed, and I saw movement

inside my closet.

I talked to some of the other girls on the floor,

and they would talk about seeing movement in their closet

when there was no one in there.

A lot of the girls would call it Peeping Tom.

So Stephanie and a few other students in the dorms,

they seem to have issues with ruffling clothes,

and they all assume it's a peeping Tom.

But there's no actual evidence that there's a real person

doing this.

But that's where I get involved.

I'm wondering, OK, is this paranormal?

What could this be?

If you're a spirit who is trying to elicit a sense

of fear, what better place to do this than to do it

from the closet or under the bed?

Ow! In our dorm, we had this wall where we'd hang up cards

from our family.

One day I came home, and they were opening and closing.

Nothing was causing air movement

in that direction at all.

I'm starting to notice a pattern when it comes

to Stephanie and the activity around her.

The cards, that's really personal.

You know, moving back and forth, her clothes.

There's so many things pointing to something being

around her that's always around her in particular.

And I'm trying to figure out who this is and why.

I oftentimes clue into an equation

that often happens when people are experiencing interactions

with the Spirit realm.

You have spirits that begin by making sounds,

so the rustling of things in someone's closet

and then moving around personal items.

And from there, it really shows me that this is

just the beginning.

I was on my way back to the dorm one afternoon

when one of my friends from school stopped me

to tell me a story.

Hey, are you OK?

She was sort of flustered, just not right,

and you could tell it in her eyes, she was upset.

I just had this...

She started telling me about this dream

that she was having.

She was absolutely terrified.

At the foot of this bed was this little girl,

and she was smiling at her.

That innate panic just ripped through her.

I don't know what to do.

I was very much of the opinion, you know,

it's a bad dream, just chill out, it'll be fine.

]

A couple of days later, I actually had another friend

come up to me.

So, where'd you go? Are you OK?

And she started telling me about this really strange dream

that she had had. - And she was there again.

Her face was there. She started to smile.

She had woken up inside a bathtub.

And standing on the end of this bathtub

was this little girl.

And that she was terrified.

I don't even know if it was real.

These girls were in entirely different programs.

They were in entirely different dorms.

They were in entirely different years at college.

There was no crossover.

This was no longer just a weird dream.

I didn't know what it was, and I didn't know why it was

freaking them out, but I knew that it was something.

When it comes to, like, that many people having

the same dreams, I wouldn't say it's necessarily paranormal,

but it could be.

I feel like everyone's naturally just feeling her,

because wherever she came from,

pretty strong, pretty powerful.

My belief supports the fact that when we go to sleep,

we are in different states of consciousness,

and therefore we are in a state where we might be more

susceptible to the spirit realm that is around us already.

We have to ask questions here around what is the intent

of this so-called child spirit.

I was trained to think like an anthropologist,

which means that if you don't understand something,

you do research.

I thought something was trying to show itself with the dreams

and what happened with the cards.

When I started trying to dig around and find things

about this particular story and those particular dreams,

I couldn't find anything that truly matched.

And then I started thinking about paranormal things

that were known to smile.

I found out there was something kind of similar out there,

a story that has been circulating for years

about a smiling man.

So, the smiling man is--

another term for it is "Creepypasta,"

an online ghost story.

When it comes to the smile, it's not just a regular smile.

It actually has a threat behind it,

almost like "I'm out to get you."

We need to pay attention to what it feels like when you see

this little girl or this child and the smile.

What does the smile mean?

And I think oftentimes our internal

compass feels what that is.

I lived on a suitcase campus.

Pretty much everyone went home for the weekends,

and I very much did not.

I liked being on campus when it was quiet.

I got a lot of work done then, but it is a very lonely place.

I hated doing laundry because the laundry room was

in the basement in the oldest, creepiest part of the building.

I can feel eyes boring into the backs of my shoulders.

It just becomes this sort of overwhelming, almost itchy

sort of situation where all I want to do is

turn around and see who is there.

And I heard something growl right behind me.

My stomach dropped.

I was done.

There are spirits that will masquerade themselves

as children to lure people in because of the fact

that I think, as human beings, our hearts

always go out to them.

So spirits know this and they'll attack that desire.

My roommate was in the room at the time and I told her

what had just happened.

She actually told me that I was going to hell,

but then something else happened.

Stephanie avoids the basement for as long as she can,

but eventually she has to go down there.

I ended up falling about a third of the way down the stairs

before I actually caught myself on the banister.

And standing right there was a little child

staring at me, these glittering eyes and this big, big smile.

I knew in my heart that that was the same entity

that my friends had been seeing in their dreams.

I ran back to the top of that staircase,

planning on grabbing her.

Like, that is what I wanted to do in that moment.

By the time I got to the top of those stairs,

she was gone.

When you have certain elements that are presenting themselves,

such as the fact that there is a child here, you wanna look

around and do some research and figure out, you know,

are there deaths of children in the area?

Just a few miles up the road is Irvington House,

where Elizabeth Irvine, who married her cousin

William Irvine, they had five children.

They all died in infancy.

I believe one died of typhoid fever.

I wonder if the spirit of one of her children could be

haunting Stephanie.

And if that's the case, what would they want

with Stephanie?

She had...

...pushed me.

She was excited by what she had done.

She was excited by what had happened.

She was happy about it. She was no longer just a dream.

And I was terrified.

What are you doing?

Nothing.

When I went back to the dorm room to tell my roommate

about what had happened,

I've seen her...

in the laundry room, and she...

she grabbed my leg and she pulled me down the stairs.

I did not expect what happened.

I don't know.

My roommate told me about a trip that her family

had been on recently to the Caribbean.

Her family was religious, and they wanted to spread

their religion with anyone they could.

And so they were just trying to talk to and touch

as many people as they could,

and it rubbed someone the wrong way.

Before they left, her parents were given a gift.

And that gift was a string of beads,

and they brought it back to their family home,

and suddenly they started having issues.

We oftentimes hear of people doing these mission trips

without really realizing the atmosphere,

the culture, the history of the people there,

and so you just have to be really careful if you're going

and doing that kind of work.

There are many cultures that will fuse energy

into certain objects or items, and you just have to be

really careful about what kind of energy could be in there.

Stand up.

Just stand up. I've got to show you something.

So I know what you're talking about.

So to protect her parents, my roommate took away the beads

and brought them to her college campus.

And she put them under my bed.

As Soon as they brought the beads into their home,

activity started.

And as soon as the beads left their home,

the activity stopped.

And as soon as the beads got to campus,

activity started there.

It was a eureka moment.

I knew that that's what had to be happening.

After she told me what had happened at her parents' house

and looking at when she brought the beads to campus

versus when the dreams of my friends started happening,

it all made sense.

So the revenge in this case is pretty much twofold.

You have the roommate, who knew what would happen

if she had the beads, placed it under Stephanie's bed,

possibly because they just did not get along

or Stephanie did not have the same beliefs

as the roommate.

Then you also have the spirit, who is vengeful.

You know, the parents were given the beads

because they were trying to shove their religion down

someone's throat.

I had very few options on what to do with the beads

to get the entity off campus.

I took them into the woods.

I wrapped them around a rock.

And I threw them in the bottom of a river.

That way, this little girl, this entity, when she came

loose off of the beads, she could return to where

she is from, and she could not hurt anyone down there.

Water has a very powerful spirit attached to it.

It has qualities of rejuvenation, of cleansing.

So Stephanie going and putting those beads there is just

really great intuitively.

This is a really fascinating case around revenge.

And hopefully, by Stephanie's actions, she sees a resolve

and that this spirit that was attached to these beads has

moved on or potentially is on their spirit journey.

After I threw the beads and the river,

we never saw her again.

And nobody reported any other dreams on campus.

So I do believe it worked.

I have no resentment to the people that attached

her to the beads.

They were trying to protect their culture,

their beliefs, their home. I was not the intended target.

I was not the object of their revenge.

I was simply collateral damage in the situation.