Original subtitles

In this world, there is real evil.

In the darkest shadows and in the most ordinary places.

These are the true stories of the innocent and the unimaginable.

For Clara Dandy, life in the country promises peace and hope.

But in her new house, these things are hard to find.

Something sinister lurks in the woods and stalks her family.

Clara relies on her faith and on the sixth sense of a respected psychic to

fight a legion of lost souls.

Between the world we see and the things we fear, there are doors.

When they are opened, nightmares become reality.

For nearly 200 years the town of Hinsdale, New York has had a kind of

rural charm.

Far from the concrete and crime of the city, the mountains keep their secrets.

The house sits on eight acres of land. You're going to love it. For Clara

Dandy, western New York is a rural paradise.

Her family has vacationed here for years to escape the stress of their life in

Buffalo.

That's it, I told you, see?

We figured the country was our redemption.

We seemed to get along better there, and I thought, well, maybe we should move to

a country place.

In 1970, a real estate agent suggests they look at a house for sale in the

town of Hinsdale.

When we saw the house, I can't really describe the feeling we had

because it was so peaceful.

And the air, the air was like breathing in champagne. It was great.

Beautiful tree, beautiful mountains over there. The house

is over 100 years old.

Clara and her husband Phil are impressed with the house.

It was gorgeous.

It wasn't modern or anything, but it just glowed.

It was just perfect for us. It was just perfect.

Let's go.

I want to show you around.

We thought, okay, this is a good place for the family.

Look at the nice stairs over here.

The

children,

13-year-old Tina and 14-year-old Mike, are excited about the move.

Buffalo's a tough town.

And I'm not a tough guy.

I was very much into wildlife.

And so that was, like, just perfect for me. That's where I wanted to be.

It's a wonderful home.

Okay.

Beautiful house. I'm sold.

Thank you.

All right.

What's that door for?

Let me show you. That's across the base of the house.

I'll show you.

So what's in there?

It's like a storage. It don't be open for a while now.

We can do this all the time.

Don't have to worry about it now.

The crawl space was weird to me.

It gave me a funny feeling.

But I thought, okay, you know, it's just your city upbringing.

No. Clara thinks it is strange that there's a fireplace in the storage area.

Please, you can make a use for someone.

A few months later, the Dandy family moves to the country.

Phil plans to commute to his job in Buffalo 70 miles away.

On move-in day...

Clara's brother arrives at the house a few hours before the rest of the family.

What's going on?

I don't know, sis. Look, I came here. What is that?

There were bees.

They were all over the window in there. I mean, this place is flooded with them.

I mean, so I went ahead, I called the exterminator to come out here.

He said he'd never seen so many bees in one place, and it wasn't the time of

year for them to swarm.

So I thought, okay, this is one of my first lessons.

I'm going to have to learn to live with this because this is the way it is in

the country.

Life in the country is very different from Buffalo.

Clara is grateful for the change.

It was very calm, very peaceful, and it just seemed ideal for us.

I guess I should have known that things were too good.

A few weeks later, Mike explores the woods with his new neighbors.

You guess so?

So do you guys ever get lost around here?

No way.

We know these woods like the back of our hand.

Which way is my house?

Up there.

No, it's that way.

We could find it if we had to.

What was that?

Probably nothing.

We saw a tall teenage boy walk past us with a gun. Hey,

this is private property!

That's a ghost.

What?

We wanted to catch up with this kid and say, what are you doing on our property?

I could not explain how he could have just disappeared.

You won't believe what we just saw. Hold on just a second.

We saw a ghost, Mrs. D.

Just like Guy disappeared.

I was preoccupied with what I was doing.

I should have listened.

I couldn't be bothered with a ghost.

A few weeks later.

Clara has forgotten all about Mike's story.

You hear that?

Do you hear that, Madison?

I stopped and I listened and I hear this chanting.

I said, I know I hear it.

I felt surrounded by something.

What is that?

The reason I say that is because things are a little crazy around here without

you, you know?

Clara's husband calls from his workplace in Buffalo.

Oh, you can't. She tells him about the strange sounds she heard in the woods.

I don't know that he was disbelieving, but he didn't entirely believe either.

Okay, all right, I will. Okay, bye.

So I was losing his support right there.

Is everything okay?

Yeah. You all right?

I heard this, uh, this strange sound today. I went up to the woods, and there

was this strange sound, like a Gregorian chant.

Above our farm was a campground.

Yeah.

I just thought, well, it's the campers. You know, there's campers up above

there.

My mom said she heard the chanting over this way.

I decided to go up into the woods and find out what that was.

The older of the neighbor boys decided he'd had enough.

Matt and I were the skeptics, so we just kept going. It was slow going with the

denseness of the underbrush.

This is a weird area.

I really don't think anything's gonna happen.

Matt tries to meditate, thinking this may help him to contact the

supernatural.

Not getting anything met just concentrate

Did

you hear

that was that I don't know sound like an axe hitting water something

What's wrong with you guys?

Mike is scared.

He can't explain what he heard.

What the hell happened to you?

Come on, come on, come on. Sit over here. Sit down.

In that spot, you know, where you heard the chanting?

And while we were up there, we closed our eyes and we heard a sound like an

axe thudding against wood.

And then we heard a girl screaming.

You went up there?

Just said, well, you know, stay away from there. Whatever it is, we don't

want to know. Just stay away from it. That hurts. That hurts.

That hurts.

You know, that is what you get for going poking around when you're not supposed

to.

At that time, I'm getting a little prickle in the spine saying there's

something wrong.

Take this plate to the table. Yeah.

Clara and Mike try to dismiss the strange experiences they've had in the

woods.

Madison.

All right.

I'm so hungry.

We had a great life other than these weird things that happened, and it was

too easy to explain them away and say, okay, that's all right. You know, maybe

it's just something I don't understand.

Yeah, me too.

Can I get some of those?

Thank you. All right. Who wants to pass the burgers over this way? Yeah.

If you wanna go into town, you better get a move on.

Let's go.

Is there anything from town? No, I think I'm just gonna stay and read my book.

Okay. Bye guys, have fun. Bye.

We shouldn't be long.

I looked and the window was still open.

None of them had fallen.

A few nights later.

There is absolutely no way that I can come up with any physical explanation.

There's no gravitational shift or vortex that can cause something to come from

the bottom of the pile and leave the top on there.

Mom!

Mom, can you come in here?

What? Mike? Mama, Mama, I was sleeping and this chest and the checkers, they

fell on me from under that stack of magazines.

It fell from right under there.

Mike is very logical.

And this didn't make sense to him.

Clara fears that whatever has been lurking in the woods is starting

to invade her home.

At first, it was like, you know, all these strange things.

Clara turns to her faith for answers.

She contacts Father Al, a Catholic priest at a nearby university.

But Father, this thing with Mike, he's running around scared now.

I had to find out answers somehow so I could fight whatever this thing was.

And the only way to go was find a professional, somebody who would study

this. He really is.

For years, Father Al has counseled people about experiences with the

paranormal.

Something is trying to get into my house, and I sense that it's already in

there. It could be a poltergeist haunting.

That's where external forces exploit psychic energy created by the family.

Then they come out through one of the family members.

I thought there was more to it than that.

From anything I had read, Poltergeist had no motive and no mind behind it.

And this seemed to.

Would you like for me to come by your house tomorrow and say a mass?

Is there anything I can do for you, Father?

You get the family together in here.

I went to a Catholic school and I was quite confident my faith could take care

of it, whatever it was.

It really bonded us closer

in a way because we were together more for support.

We were all quite sure this was it, and we wouldn't have any more problem.

Let us pray.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

One night, while Clara's husband is away on business.

This figure passed by and I thought it was my daughter.

Tina?

What's wrong, honey? She's by the window.

What's by the window? A woman with straight hair.

She's gone, sweetie. Whatever it was, it's gone, okay?

Clara realizes that the priest's blessing was ineffective.

It's going to be okay, my love.

I thought, wait a minute.

I've been taught that this works. I've been taught that a priest can come in

and say a prayer and...

You know, everything's okay.

It did not work.

He's running around scared now.

This is Father Al. May I help you?

Father Al, it's still happening.

No, Tina. Tina just saw something in her room.

Everything I had ever believed in suddenly was crashing around my feet.

Perhaps I could ask him to... Father Al promises that he will bring a paranormal

expert to the house as soon as possible.

I'm writing down everything that's happening because it's not stopped.

In the meantime, Clara knows she must keep her family calm. Thank you, Father.

All right.

Bye. I'm going to stay in control of myself, and if I can do that, then

they'll be able to stay in control, too.

That weekend, Mike is out with friends.

Tina is asleep.

I found a dirty condenser back here, Mrs. Hague.

I cleaned it up for you, no charge.

What? I heard something.

What the hell was that?

Phil and Clara hear something outside.

Raccoons.

Tina?

Did you see that?

Go! Just go, go, go, go, go!

Tina?

Tina!

Tina!

Tina, she's not responding. Phil!

Oh, my God, Phil, look at her eyes.

Tina, are you okay?

Tina?

Tina?

Tina?

Tina, let me talk to me, please.

Am I going crazy? No, you're not going crazy.

I'm in defense mode. I'm in mama bear mode.

Don't mess with my kids. You know, I was starting to get mad.

I'm going to check. Don't leave this room.

Mike calls home to ask if he can spend the night at a friend's house. When his

mother tells him what's been happening, he rushes home and brings his friend

Randy with him.

He's shaken.

He's pale.

Almost like he can hardly keep his hand on the steering wheel. I said, what's

wrong, Mike? And he just said, things...

Things are going on at the house that I can't understand.

My father's running like a chicken with his head cut off because he's going to

do battle with whatever's happening.

Are we reaching some kind of communal psychosis or something? What's

happening?

Quiet, quiet, quiet.

The overhead lights go out.

Even though the power is still on in other parts of the house.

It's kind of... Have you been working

on the... Bricks from the fireplace have been stacked in the middle of the floor.

No, nobody's been in this room.

Oh, my God.

It took some doing to cart all those bricks all

the way across this crawl space.

Oh, my God.

I thought, oh, no, this... I thought, I can't fight this thing. Whatever it is,

it's too strong.

Father Al returns to the house, accompanied by Alex Tanis.

A respected psychic whose abilities were studied at the American Society for

Psychical Research.

Alex Sanis was a real presence.

When he looked at you, there was an intensity. It was like he was looking

into your soul.

The family leads him to the crawlspace.

This is where the noise came from. Please, please, don't tell me anything.

What

do

you

see?

I see...

Bodies.

Tina?

strong feeling that many people died in this house.

Some died of natural causes.

Some were murdered.

This property used to be a stopping point for stagecoach passengers.

What I'm getting is that someone nearby

robbed and killed the travelers.

God.

Their bodies were placed in the crawl space until they could be buried.

I sensed the presence of seven different spirits.

It was freaky. It was really scary.

And I thought, man, we got the guy. This is the guy. He knows what we're doing.

What we're talking about. Let us pray that these souls might find release.

I think things should calm

down. Clara has renewed hope.

The house feels more peaceful.

Whatever his presence did, it calmed the place down.

Mike and Randy are skeptical of the psychic story about the murdered

travelers. They search for proof of an old stagecoach route near the house.

Okay, so according to the map, the stagecoach went through here.

Yeah, see? The track goes all the way down that way.

They see a strange light in the trees.

This has got to stop.

I couldn't breathe.

Something was pushing against me.

almost like somebody's having you in a bear hug, squeezing you.

Mike, what's going on? Where have you been? Brandy and I, we went into the

woods and... Mike was... Oh, Lord, you know, something's going on. And while we

were out there, we saw these, like, these orbs of light in the trees. We got

to do something. We got to do something. I said, what?

What on earth can we do?

Honey, it's dangerous.

We've got to do something, Mom.

Go. Go inside, guys. Just go.

Mothers deal with, you know, cuts and bruises and falls and...

Homework and stuff like that. They don't deal with things that can't happen and

that couldn't have happened

Clara

fears that there is nothing left to do but move out of the house

But this seems like an unrealistic solution.

There was really no place to go.

We had sunk all our money into that house, and I didn't want to be beaten,

neither did the kids.

A few days later.

Yes, are you Mrs. Dandy?

Yes. Do you have a son, Mike?

Yes, I do.

There's been an accident.

We just took Michael to the... It was bad. He has a serious head injury and a

ruptured spleen.

We're taking him to surgery now.

He was bleeding so bad, they said they'd have to remove his spleen.

Excuse me.

I'm sorry, folks. I know it's a tough time for you.

Yes.

In the ambulance.

The state troopers who had gotten him out of the car said that Mike had said

someone was in the car with him.

We searched for a passenger, but were unable to find anybody else at the

scene.

He was by himself.

Dr. Wilson, you need an ICU.

Weeks later, Mike wakes up from a coma.

Mike? Can you hear me?

Mom, I can't see. Mike, just don't move, honey.

You've been in a bad accident.

Maybe I was clutching at straws. Maybe I wanted somebody to blame.

But my gut reaction was that whatever was in the house had done something.

Father Al and psychic Alex Tannis return to the house to make one final attempt

to end the haunting.

Confession is good for the soul, even after death.

Obviously, there's some spirits here that feel they have a story to tell.

Okay.

God bless you, Father.

It'll be fine.

It'll be fine.

There is someone here with us

The

psychic

has a vision of a young girl

He senses that she is in pain.

He also senses the presence of other spirits.

At some point there was a boy of 18 or 19

who entered this house.

He is deceased now, but his energy is here.

There are others here, too.

I am deep dead cold now.

And the chill grows stronger.

The psychic has a vision of one particularly angry spirit in the room.

The energy.

A young woman is telling me she does not want to leave.

The woman used to lock herself in this room and not come out.

She does not want the other energies to leave.

No.

No, you must leave.

You must leave.

No, the answer is no, you must leave. You cannot stay in this house. You

cannot stay.

Let go.

Let go.

The psychic and the priest has tried to release the negative energies in the

house.

We'll start by holding hands.

The priest prepares for a common exorcism, the most extreme action that

he can take on his own authority.

And release the energy that is evil.

He said there were multitudes of entities there.

Whether these were people who were murdered there, I don't know. He didn't

say that, but that was the implication, that they must have been the people who

had been murdered there.

Let us pray.

I think Father Al considered this his last chance to get rid of whatever was

there.

And I think he pulled out the big guns.

Defend us in the conflict which we have to sustain against Prince.

This was the culmination.

This was going to do it. Against the spirits of wickedness and high places.

It had to work this time.

Come to the rescue of men whom God has created to his image and likeness and

who he has redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.

Cease by your audacity, cunning serpent, to delude the human race, to persecute

the church, to torment God's elect.

and to sift them as wheat.

This is the command made to you by the Most High God.

Let God arise, and let his enemies be scared, and let them that hate him flee

from before his face.

As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish away as wax melted before the fire, so

that the wicked perish at the presence of God.

God the Father, come in!

God the Son, come in!

God the Holy Spirit, come in!

Come in.

What I remember was the feeling of, wow, they've got to go. I mean, this is

strong. This is powerful.

Amen.

Yeah,

after the ceremony was over and the dust had settled, the place was blissful. It

was the way it was when we moved in.

For several months, the Dandy family lives in peace.

But within the year, the haunting begins again.

The family is forced to move.

Unable to find a buyer for the house, they declare bankruptcy.

Clara has come away from her experience, conflicted about her own religious

beliefs.

I have trouble believing in anything anymore. I really do, because I think

formal religions, maybe each one of them has a little bit of the truth, but none

of them have it all.

And not enough of them admit that this type of thing happens.