Original subtitles

Two young brothers venture into the woods and encounter a demonic

entity.

I didn't know what it was. A monster, maybe.

No place is safe.

Not even their home.

I was terrified.

I knew there was something in our room.

It was looking at me.

As child's play turns into a real-life nightmare.

It's out there!

In America, there is real evil.

It lurks in the darkest shadows and in our most ordinary towns.

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

When they are opened, nightmares.

become reality.

Hi, superstar.

In the late 1960s, Sonny Yancey and his family live in Lake Worth in the largely

undeveloped southern Florida woods.

All right, on two.

Hut, hut. Where he plans for a quiet life with his wife Barbara and two sons,

12-year-old Tom and 7-year-old Tim.

Our house was pretty remote. It was at the end of this dirt road out in the

middle of nowhere.

Pretty isolated.

Barbara. is a stay-at-home mother my mother as a child i remember her as a

big silver shiny cherubic smile on her face all the time just great

energy sonny is a carpenter and works in construction he's also a korean

war vet who suffers from bouts of post-traumatic stress disorder go deep

gotta run faster than that son

My mom mentioned quite a few times how he was changed by Korea.

You gonna get it or what?

Yeah.

Part of him has never been able to shake the hold of the battlefield.

In Korea, he was a sergeant in charge of a mortar platoon.

He would tell stories every once in a while about how they would take

bulldozers and dig big holes and push the bodies in it and cover them up.

He never was like that the whole time. When I was really little, he was

bouncing me on his knee and, you know, being a typical dad.

All right, big third down play coming up. But that summer, Sonny's temper gets

inexplicably worse as he grows increasingly dark.

You know, I'm tired. I'm going into bed. I'm taking a nap.

Then all of a sudden, man, he just got wicked.

Hey, hon.

And whatever is affecting him now seems to be coming from the woods.

Lake Worth is a city in southern Florida settled in the late 1800s.

Before that, its lush forests and waterways were a refuge for escaped

slaves, as well as Native Americans fleeing the Seminole Wars.

The woods are rumored to still hold secrets from the past.

And an unexplained evil.

My brother and I spent a lot of time in the woods.

It was probably two, three square miles of woods.

We had paths that we would use to walk around through there. Spent a lot of

time playing together.

My dad built a fort out there. It was this amazing thing.

You got me.

I'm going down to the lake to look for frogs.

Want to come?

Nah, I'll hold the fort.

You're so funny, I forgot to laugh.

Squeak.

i got the feeling that i was being watched i knew it i mean everybody has

that inner feeling to where you know something's not right

My mind ran away with me.

I didn't know what it was.

A monster, maybe.

But I know it scared me to death.

Tom tells no one about his experience in the woods.

But seven-year-old Tim continues to explore alone.

unaware there was something in

the tree but I couldn't see it with my eyes I could just see the tree reacting

to it being there

This thing made its way down the tree to the bottom branch, and it landed in the

leaves.

Whatever it was, I didn't want to be near it.

I

talked

to my mom. I said that there was something out in the woods.

Just calm down.

Just tell me everything. Tell me what happened.

I told her that something was out there, and I could hear it behind me in the

grass. I could hear the twigs and branches breaking behind me. It's okay.

It's okay, sweetie. Calm down.

She summed it up as just an animal that I had perhaps startled or something like

that.

The boys ignore their experiences and try to enjoy the summer.

That's good.

Fearing any mention of the haunting could summon what they call

The Shadow Man.

Ladies and gentlemen, attention, if you will. Please note the wand I hold in my

hand is solid wood. When we would see these shadows moving outside the house,

they were very frightening. They were terrifying for me and Tom.

And we didn't talk about it.

One night Tim is suddenly jarred awake from his sleep when he feels a

presence I

looked over at our window. I saw a shadow go

past the window

I got up, looked out the window and there was nothing there.

In the late 60s, brothers Tom and Tim Yancey are haunted by an evil force they

call the Shadow Man in the Lake Worth, Florida woods where they live.

I knew things weren't right.

We knew that something was outside the house. We didn't know what it was.

Late one night.

seven-year-old Tim can feel it coming closer.

Tom! Tom!

I

looked

out through the window to see what it was and...

Beyond the yard, in the trees, you could see a dark figure.

It's human-shaped.

That was very frightening.

Tim, what's going on in here?

Tom, what'd you do to him?

Me? Nothing.

I don't see anyone.

For crying out loud.

Their father, Sonny, is a Korean war vet suffering from post-traumatic stress

disorder. Ever since the entity began tormenting the boys, he's grown

increasingly angry and volatile.

That's just great.

The Shadow Man disappears into the night.

For now.

But just two weeks later, 12-year-old Tom begins acting strangely.

One night I opened my eyes to see Tom standing in the middle of the room And

he walked out

the door

It was almost like there was something drawing him out there. Tom.

Tom, what are you doing?

Tom, wake up.

Wake up.

It was very frightening for me because I knew that something was out there. I

didn't understand what the interaction was, what was going on there.

For weeks, Tom continues to sleepwalk.

often finding himself by the lake.

It's a weird feeling to wake up and not know where you're at.

To keep Tom from sleepwalking, Sonny and Barbara resort to drastic measures.

Hey guys, don't stay up too late.

My parents were getting frustrated. They were having to get up out of bed every

night. Night after night.

So they made the decision to stack chairs in front of the door.

I'm not sure about this.

Look, if I can't sleep, I can't work.

I can't work, we don't eat. All right?

I know, and we can't have him fall in the lake in the middle of the night

either, but this is extreme.

Listen, let's just try and see if this works.

Maybe a sleepwalking will stop, okay?

What if I have to go to the bathroom?

Suck it up, soldier.

Hey, boys, knock it off in there.

Lights out.

That night, Tom sleepwalks once again.

Tom, be quiet.

You're going to wake up Dad.

No sign of frustration on his face, he would just stand there and work at that

door. For a long time.

I saw our closet door open up by itself.

Tom turned, he walked into the closet and the door shut behind him.

I could hear a conversation going on in there.

There were two voices in there.

The boys are not alone.

Mom! Mom!

Mom!

In the late 60s, an evil force they call the Shadow Man torments brothers Tim

and Tom Yancey in the woods and in their home in Lake Worth, Florida.

while they play, and while they sleep.

One night, it begins calling 12-year-old Tom outside.

His father barricades the door to keep him safe.

Tom wasn't able to get outside anymore. He wasn't able to go out into the woods

in the middle of the night.

Tom, you're gonna wake up Dad.

But the dark entity will stop at nothing.

I think that whatever there was that was there that he was interacting with

decided to come inside.

There were definitely two voices talking.

I could hear Tom and someone else inside that closet.

I was terrified.

I knew what was going on. I knew there was someone in our room.

Mom! Mom!

Mom!

where's tommy

what

are you doing there's a man in here

where in here with me i remember seeing

A black shadow figure in there with red eyes.

But his mother doesn't believe him.

Thomas Yancey, get out of the closet and back into bed.

I've had enough of your nonsense.

It's going to make real trouble around here.

She thought I was in there playing toys, messing around.

I was scared for him, but there was nothing that I could do.

they didn't believe us sweet dreams

while

their parents grow increasingly frustrated the dark shadow man shows no

signs of letting up then one night

It finds a new way to terrorize the boys.

I was laying in bed, and I felt something hit the mattress.

And I reached over. It was a pebble, a small rock.

Cut it out.

More of them started falling.

And it seemed like it was from a great height.

And then it started bringing things into the house, things from the woods.

I felt something land in my hair.

What is all this stuff in your bed?

It would drop insects in our bed. Big, creepy Florida cockroaches.

We didn't bring them in. There was no way for them to be inside with us. No

windows open, anything like that. And they would be there. And that really

confused my mother.

Timmy, what is all this?

That's when my mom started to notice that something was going on.

Desperate to help her children, Barbara gets angry and searches for answers

anywhere she can find them.

Who are you?

She bought a spirit board.

She brought it into the house, and she tried to communicate with it.

What do you want?

I think that she tried to do something to save her kids, to save herself, to

save her family. But I don't think that she knew what to do.

But little does the Yancey family know, Barbara has just unleashed the Shadow

Man's fury.

Good night, boys.

In the summer of 1968, an evil entity is awakened in the woods outside

Tim and Tom Yancey's home in southern Florida.

For months, it torments the brothers day and night.

Their mother, Barbara, suspects there is paranormal activity in their home, but

has no idea how to help her seven and 12-year-old sons.

One night the shadow man is too close for comfort

It

was on the wall

across the room I was terrified

I remember the feeling of being there at the doorway to their room and knowing

that I had to wake mom and dad up.

Just the fear of how they were going to react, what they were going to say.

Timmy? Is that you?

The man.

He's on our wall.

Like a fly.

His father reacts with fury.

Now you listen here, son.

I'm going to tell you exactly what the problem is here.

You ever heard of the boogeyman?

Boogeyman? The boogeyman. The boogeyman does bad things to bad kids.

If you're good, the boogeyman will go away.

So you have to be good.

Now get back to bed!

That notion that I was a bad kid and that I was doing bad things and that

something had come to punish me, had affected me for the rest of my life. I

didn't know what I had done to deserve this.

I felt that I was a bad kid and that I was being punished for something.

From that point on, the boys keep silent about their frightening experiences.

It was easier not to talk about this stuff and kind of deal with it

ourselves. You tough up.

There were so many nights that you would lay there still.

covers-over-the-head kind of mentality and hope that whatever it was, that it

wasn't coming after you that night.

As the Shadow Man grows stronger, their father, Sonny, a Korean War veteran who

suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, grows angrier.

He would be so frustrated because he didn't understand what was going on in

our house. A lot of family dysfunction.

a lot of chaotic environment, that those things seem to attract this negative

energy into the home. And it's like a coupling, that it attaches to a family

or to a location, and it thrives off of the negative energy that's there.

The brothers vow to stick together no matter what and have a new name for

their tormentor, the Boogeyman.

On Christmas Eve, the boys sneaked downstairs to look at presents under the

tree.

We had gotten up and we had dared to venture into the living room.

The banging started.

It was back in my room.

We're trapped.

Dad's awake now.

And we're outside in the living room. And we know he's going to blame that

sound on us.

And we don't know what to do.

Boys, I warned you. You little... Come on.

Tell me this was an accident.

We didn't do it. Tell me this was an accident. I didn't do it. Honest. I

started shaking.

So, your friend from the closet comes down here on Christmas Eve and starts

throwing things around.

Where is he?

Huh? Is he in the tree?

Is he in the kitchen? Leave him alone.

You want to stay up?

You can stay up outside.

Follow me.

Whatever this was had the ability of conscious choice. It was intelligent.

It could get us in trouble, and it took great delight in doing that.

You guys like to stay up all night?

You can stay up all night.

I'm going to get a good night's sleep.

Their father employs a scare tactic he learned while in the military.

Stay out here with your ghost.

Stand here all night.

Without realizing it, Sonny Yancey delivers his children.

directly into the arms of the dark entity that haunts them.

We stood there, and we stayed there.

My brother worked very hard to talk to me, to tell me stories, to keep us

calm. But being outside of the house, knowing that there's something in those

woods, and I was terrified.

You'll be all right.

You'll be all right.

Mom!

For

the past few

months, an evil spirit they call the Shadow Man has been

haunting 7-year-old Tim and 12-year-old Tom.

in and around their home in Lake Worth, Florida.

That winter, it finds a new way to torment the Yancey brothers.

Provoking the wrath of their father, who suffers from post-traumatic stress

disorder.

So, you want to stay up?

You can stay up.

Outside! Follow me!

The punishment, stay outside all night in the woods.

The woods where the brothers first encountered the Shadow Man.

Stay out here with your ghost.

You can hear it walking around. You can see a shadow moving through the trees.

And we're out there, and we're with it. And it's me and my brother, two kids, in

the middle of the night, standing out in the middle of the woods. It was very

frightening.

Mom finally got dad to come out and let us back in.

All right, you guys can go back in now.

My father grew more and more frustrated.

The phenomenon that was going on was increasing, and he would blame the

noises that were happening on us. His punishments were very severe.

The goal of this monster...

I think was to create more negative energy, more chaos, more depression in

us as kids, and a more chaotic environment in our house.

The haunting of the Yancey home grows more dangerous.

You know there's something there.

Something's doing it. It's in the room. It's with you.

And you've got to reach down there and pull those sheets up.

It felt like somebody's fingernails raking across your rib cage.

I broke both of my collarbones. That's

when things started getting physical.

Tim.

Tim.

Pick on somebody your own size, huh?

He's your brother. I didn't do it. Just ran straight into the wall.

I swear.

He just got up and ran straight into the wall.

We have to get him to a hospital.

Months of terror have led up to this moment.

But it would take another 30 years before the brothers would rid their

house of... The Shadow Man.

From the time they were young boys, Tim and Tom Yancey were tormented by an evil

entity that came out of the woods and into their home.

They called the Dark Figure.

the shadow man i'm gonna tell you exactly what the problem is here

boogeyman does bad things to bad kids

and

when tim was just a boy it attacked him

something it felt like

somebody's fingernails very frightening

I panicked. I jumped up out of bed screaming, just blindly trying to get

away from whatever it was that was attacking me.

Tim.

Tim. I had no ideas that ghosts could actually harm you.

Things never got any better for us.

As soon as my brother was old enough, he left the house.

He'd had enough, and I didn't see him again for years.

He was gone.

It is now 2009.

It's been nearly 30 years since Tim and Tom lived in the house.

Their parents, Sonny and Barbara, have since passed away.

Tom went on to play football for Florida State University and later became a

firefighter and assistant fire chief.

Tim and I just kind of grew apart.

And it killed me. I mean, all I wanted was my brother back, you know.

Tim eventually became a paranormal investigator.

If there's... Any way to take something bad that happened in your life and to

turn it into something positive is by taking the information that you've

learned and using it to help others.

But the brothers still have unfinished business.

My brother and I reconnected again to figure out what we're going to do with

this house.

It was quite a while since I'd been to that home.

It had a sickening feel to it. It was pretty sickening. It was just evil.

It was just an evil feeling.

So, what are we going to do with this place?

Tim tells Tom he and his wife Trish want to reclaim the house.

What are you, nuts?

I was very surprised that Tim wanted to move into the house.

simply because of the things that happened.

I felt like he wanted to stop the paranormal activity completely.

And I think that's why he bought the house, to put a stop to it, to end it.

We made a decision that we weren't going to be afraid anymore.

We were going to take back that house.

Tim reaches out to his friend Roy Hall, a violent haunting expert, to help him

perform a cleansing ritual in the home.

Roy believes the demonic entity from the woods haunted the Yancey family because

Tim's father was abusive.

Boys, I warned you!

Tell me this was an accident!

Where is he? Is he in the tree?

Is he in the kitchen?

Tim's house had a lot of dysfunction in it, and that's the thing that something

like that feeds upon.

Tim Yancey and Tom's father, having served over in the Korean War, I'm sure

he's seen a lot of bad things.

Feel that?

I've never stopped feeling that.

This thing that entered the home could have definitely magnified that and keyed

on that.

to try and make him worse than what he really was.

Where's the room?

Upstairs.

The negative energy is

strongest in Tim and Tom's old bedroom.

Lord, please help cleanse this house.

of evil and negativity.

Help us make it a place of light and love.

A home fit for a family.

St. Michael the Archangel.

Defend us in battle against a world of darkness, against evil spirits.

When we were done, you could feel that the energy was different in the home.

There was a change in the air. We had displaced the negativity in the home.

Is dinner almost ready?

Almost. In August of 2009, Tim, Trish, and her

son Gabriel move into the Lake Worth, Florida house.

I don't think there is a day where we're going to be able to turn a page and say,

oh, whew, that's done.

Tom often drops by for a visit.

It's not easy sometimes because you can feel an energy that

underlies.

The house that underlies my husband.

Oops, got a lineman in the family.

Lunch is ready.

All right, I'm starving. That was awesome.

After I left home, I had no interest in paranormal or ghosts.

But now that I'm becoming closer with my brother, I'm starting to understand.

what happened to me in my childhood.

I live in a house today that is full of family, full of laughter,

full of humor.

It's a joyous place.

So many times when Trisha and I work with families who are going through a

violent haunting, the key is mindset.

If you heal the dysfunction in the family, you can heal the haunting.