Original subtitles

A forsaken 19th century mansion harbors angry spirits from the past.

There was definitely something there, and it felt like it didn't want us

there. Get out.

Rumors of a deadly love triangle.

The banker was having an affair with her. One of the speculations was that

she was buried in the basement.

And a dark entity with the most evil of intentions.

Whatever it was wasn't human.

It frightened me so bad, I can't even describe the terror.

Some houses are better left undisturbed.

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.

In the heart of Decatur County lies the small town of Garden Grove, Iowa,

where the Rice family, Norman, Jennifer, and son Andrew, has just purchased a

19th century Victorian mansion.

It wasn't hard to fall in love with.

It was an amazing place, and I always said, you know, someday I'm going to own

you. Someday you're going to be my house.

I wanted to live there. It had everything that I ever wanted.

Better than the pictures?

It's incredible.

Just looking at the outside of the mansion, it's breathtaking.

It has a commanding presence.

Hey, what do you think, Andrew?

We're going to live here?

At that point, I would have been about eight, nine years old.

We were moving from a farm, and I was kind of excited. You know, new house.

It was really big compared to our old one.

It was really just a nice house.

I'd never seen anything quite like it before.

Built at the turn of the century, the mansion was commissioned by an affluent

businessman and his wife.

Garden Grove was in its prime, having served as a shipping point on the

Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad.

Garden Grove, Iowa, back in the 1800s was the place to be.

It was one of the major cities.

There were several thousand people that lived there because the railroad came

through. It had a nice, long downtown area with lots of shops and bakeries

and haberdasheries. And so that's why they chose that, is it just, it was a

beautiful place, still country-like, but city-fied.

And Jennifer feels an instant connection to the house.

The house just kind of felt like it belonged to me, like I'd known it at

some point in time.

It drew you in.

But the picturesque mansion hides secrets from the past.

Within these walls, it is rumored that an unspeakable horror took place.

Isn't it grand?

I mean, look at all the details.

Look at the staircase.

Very clearly, before we even moved in, we knew it was a money pit.

It's incredible, but... Don't get too crazy.

Norm, it's got to be done right.

For the company I worked at, I actually got a lot of stock options.

So we were kind of planning on using that money to put into the house. So we

were fully prepared to dump a whole bunch of money into it.

I feel like I'm the one who was meant to restore it to its former glory.

Now, honey, I trust you.

This is your passion.

Be reasonable.

I think Norman, more than anything, just knew that I love that house.

Are you sure you're okay with this?

Yeah, if you're happy, I'm happy.

In the months ahead, Norman spends most of his time working for a software

company in Arizona, nearly 1,300 miles away.

This leaves Jennifer alone.

to manage the big job of renovating the old house so that her family can move

in. With me being out of town, it kind of gave her something to do since we

were apart 90% of the time being in different states. Her being able to put

all of her energy into restoring this house really gave her a sense of

accomplishment.

Jennifer hires a main contractor named Claude and a few other workers to help

realize her vision of the old Victorian mansion.

It was a mission for me. I could just see what it should look like.

And that's what I loved about having that house. I could just create it from

basically the ground up into what it should be and what I love.

Clyde was putting in a chandelier, and the ladder was shaking so hard, he

wasn't sure if it was him shaking it or if there was some... thing shaking it

you could tell he was just freaked wait what happened i i don't know i

was pushed what do you mean who pushed you he

never really told me what it was that happened he just was very exaggerated in

his speech and his nervousness

I don't understand.

I have to go.

He actually told me. I don't want to be in this house anymore.

Jennifer is stunned.

It's as if Claude has just seen a ghost.

I told my wife I was gonna be working in this house. Uh-huh. You know what she

said? You know what?

Stay out of the basement.

What? Why? You know about the basement, right?

No.

That's where he buried her.

Who? The servant.

The woman he was having an affair with.

She was pregnant.

He didn't want nobody to know.

Then they had an argument.

Then she fell down the stairs.

He didn't want a scandal, so...

He buried her down there.

I think a lot of the creepiness and the fact that it sat abandoned for so long,

it did, it sparked a lot of rumors.

And the rumor was that the original owner buried her in the basement.

Eight-year-old Andrew's curiosity gets the better of him.

First he saw a man in the window, and now the scandalous rumor leads him

to the basement.

I couldn't even fathom everybody knowing so much about a house that I had just

moved into.

But it was kind of cool at the same time.

The feeling I got was immediately like someone had just dropped a bunch of

bricks on me.

It was just really heavy, dense air.

It was kind of hard to breathe a little bit.

I can remember it being damp.

It literally smelled like wet dirt.

In 2001, Jennifer and Norman Rice, along with their eight-year-old son, Andrew,

move to Garden Grove, Iowa, to restore their new home.

The historic mansion is haunted by rumors dating back to the early 1900s of

a suspicious death and a secret burial in the basement.

Rumors had spread around town like wildfire that a servant had broken her

neck. Some had even speculated that... the owner was having an affair with her.

Since he was prominent, he couldn't have that kind of thing on his record.

So one of the speculations was that she was buried in the basement.

I never, never went back down to the basement again.

I had thought maybe it was a skeleton grabbing me from underneath the ground.

Maybe because I had seen one too many horror movies as a kid.

By July 2001, the majority of the renovations on the house are complete.

despite the fact that all of the contractors have deserted the job.

With Andrew's father, Norman, frequently away on business, his mother has no

choice but to finish the house on her own.

I remember her having so many stressful nights because we would bring in

contractors to try to fix this place up, and they would just leave.

Jennifer suspects that it has something to do with the rumors surrounding the

house, but she doesn't believe.

the old wives tale it was somewhat unnerving but it was an amazing house

and it had amazing potential and that's all i could think about for a while it

didn't matter what people said there's always going to be rumors especially in

small towns but as time wore on and some of the things that

happened i began to wonder i started hearing noises i really couldn't explain

andrew

especially late, late, late at night. You don't really think things through.

Some of it could be written off to being tired late night.

It's the creepy factor.

It is now the late summer of 2001.

Norman is still working full-time 1,300 miles away in Arizona, while Jennifer

and Andrew adjust to the family-friendly Garden Grove, Iowa area.

One night, Andrew invites his friend Cody for a sleepover.

Why don't you push my truck down?

Sorry.

Andrew.

Cody? I remember Cody, when I looked up at him, he just points at the top of the

stairs.

Next thing we know, he just vanished.

Where is he?

In the beginning, everything was roses.

Home sweet home.

You know, we'd spent all the time fixing the house up.

But it didn't take too much longer after that to realize there was something off

about the house.

I chose to ignore a lot of things because I was elated and it was my

dream.

By the summer of 2001, Jennifer Rice has completed renovations on an abandoned

19th century Victorian mansion.

in Iowa.

And while the home's rumored history of a mysterious death merely lurks in the

back of her mind, her son, Andrew, comes face to face with evil.

After that had happened, Cody had never spent the night again.

And as a matter of fact, he really never even talked to me ever again.

Despite his terrifying encounter with the ghostly entity, Andrew decides not

to tell his mother what he saw.

I didn't want to worry her because I didn't know how she really would react

to it at the time. So I just avoided the subject altogether.

In September 2001, news that the once dilapidated mansion has been restored

begins to spread through the small town of Garden Grove, Iowa.

We had people that would knock on the door.

I'm sorry to bother you, but I just, I've always loved this house. Or I knew

so-and-so who lived here, and I always wanted to see this house. And we finally

decided we would do an open house.

I just want to thank you for opening your house to all of us. Oh, well, thank

you for coming.

As we're doing tours, this sweet little old lady started telling me that she was

so pleased to see somebody finally working on that house.

My great uncle is the banker who built this house.

And then she explained that she was the great niece.

I know he would be very pleased to see how you're caring for it.

She'd watched over the years how people came and went and left it, sit and rot.

You could tell it broke her heart.

And he and his wife would have been very happy to see a child growing up here.

Oh, that's my son, Andrew.

Please come in.

I have something for you.

The great-niece brought... a beautiful scrapbook full of pictures

and she showed us this picture lovely picture about yay big

of the original owners jennifer is struck

by the image of the husband it was just an old black and white yellowed photo

But you could tell he had the palest blue eyes you've ever seen because you

could barely see the pupils.

Then Jennifer suddenly recalls the rumors surrounding the man and the

Victorian mansion.

Did you ever hear any of the rumors about this house?

That's what they are.

Rumors.

Don't believe everything you hear.

Of course not.

What happened was they married later in life.

Did they have any children?

Oh, they wanted children so badly.

So they didn't have children.

And you can tell they planned on having children because there was a child's

room adjoined to the master bedroom.

That's my son Andrew's room.

Andrew, come here, sweetie.

This nice lady was just telling me that her great uncle is the one who built our

house.

Very pleased to meet you, Andrew.

You too.

Look at what she brought us.

As she's showing us all these pictures, I started realizing that I had seen the

banker somewhere before.

It's the man I saw the first time I went in the house.

And then again at the top of the stairs.

I need to go help Dad.

I'm sorry.

I don't even know what that was about.

Scared and confused, Andrew continues to keep his experiences to himself.

I was just in a kind of state of denial, really, because I just was thinking, oh,

well, now this is really happening.

I just remember pushing it out to the side, pushing it off to the side,

because I didn't want to even try to rationalize it.

This was not something that I could just tell somebody, because unless you're

there, you really can't fix it.

So, I mean I kept this to myself as best as I could.

Since his terrifying encounter in the basement, eight-year-old Anvil Rice has

felt an unsettling presence in his 19th century house in Garden Grove, Iowa.

At that point, it scared me so much. I would just go over to a friend's house,

or I'd go walk down the street and go play at the park.

You know, I'd just find any way to avoid the situation altogether.

But after seeing old photos of the original owner, a once prominent

businessman,

Andrew is now convinced that his ghost is haunting the home.

His father, Norman, who is often away on business, is completely in the dark.

My job's extremely stressful, trying to do software development and traveling,

too, and so they wanted me to be more concentrated on my work and not have to

really worry too much about the house itself.

They didn't really talk to me about it at all.

A lot of times my dad was out of town, so he had no idea what was going on.

One night, Andrew has a new visitor.

When I looked up, I saw this lady just sitting in my rocking chair.

At first, Andrew is stunned at the sight, but then he recognizes who she

is. I had seen the lady somewhere before.

It took me a minute, but then I realized it's the banker's wife.

Mom, I saw her.

The woman in the photo.

The banker's wife.

She was sitting in the rocking chair in my room.

He said, I saw a ghost.

He was very shaken up about it.

It's okay.

Maybe you're just dreaming.

You can really scare yourself when you're alone by overthinking things. We

were very used to being alone, and I think we tended to underthink things.

No, I'm serious.

She looked exactly like the photo. It was her.

And that's not all.

I've seen the banker, too.

Maybe they're friendly ghosts.

They always wanted to have children.

And your bedroom was supposed to be the nursery.

Maybe that's why they're drawn to you.

Or that's why they come to you.

Mom had told me... that she wasn't there to harm me, more so she was watching

over me. So she just said, oh, don't worry about it.

You want to sleep in here tonight?

Despite Andrew's compelling tale, Jennifer isn't entirely convinced that

the house is haunted.

I didn't want to believe that there was anything going on. I just didn't.

I'm stubborn. I'm very stubborn.

And if I don't see it, it didn't happen.

It is now January 2002.

Andrew and his mother have been living in the house for seven months while his

father is often away on business.

But that winter...

norman returns to garden grove and is told nothing about his son's encounters

with ghosts i'm so glad you're home it just wasn't something that came up

you know i didn't really feel like starting a gee i think our house is

haunted conversation but one night a dark force decides to make its

presence known norman something

picked us up, and we landed on the bed.

We were both awakened at the same time by some black entity, just some

ominous presence.

What was that?

You felt that too, right?

Yes. There was no way to rationalize it. There was just no way. It was

unexplainable. So that was the first time I hadn't been able to just explain

it away.

This isn't something that happened by yourself.

We're both sitting here talking about the same thing that just happened, so we

know this was real. This was no dream.

And now, Jennifer can no longer deny the truth.

Norman, I have something to tell you.

I think the house is haunted.

By what?

Ghosts? Yes.

A banker and his wife.

They lived here in the 19th century.

Andrew's been seeing them. Jennifer kind of starts hinting at things that had

been happening to Andrew that I wasn't aware of.

There's a rumor around town.

The banker had a servant girl who was pregnant.

I will have you thrown out. You'll starve in the street.

She died here.

And they buried her in our basement.

In our basement?

Why'd you wait so long to tell me?

I thought if we ignored it, it would just go away.

But now this?

We both felt it.

There's something here.

You just want to pack up and leave?

No.

There's nothing more to talk about, is there?

It made me feel like this is all my fault.

But we didn't talk about it.

It was frustrating, it was isolating. I felt alone because I didn't want to talk

about it and stir it up.

But now that the secret is out, Norman begins to dread spending time in his new

home, where he suddenly feels unwelcome.

You almost feel like you're going into a depression, thinking, okay, we've spent

a lot of money on this house, and now do you want to admit that somehow a house

can say, I don't want you here?

Although he doesn't believe in ghosts, Norman can't shake the unnerving feeling

that he is not alone.

and that something still lurks in the basement.

Walking in that basement for the first time, you know, basements can be scary,

and this one definitely was. It just kind of gives you the heebie-jeebies.

There was some ominous mass there keeping the light from shining into the

basement. It was like something just sucked the light out and it was pitch

black.

That had to be the most scared I ever was in that house.

For nearly a year and a half, the Rice family has been living in a haunted 19th

century Victorian mansion in Iowa, plagued by dark secrets from the past.

Their presence in the once abandoned house has stirred up angry ghosts still

roaming the property.

But that fall, a new evil spirit is unearthed from deep inside the house,

and Norman has a... terrifying encounter in the basement.

Instantly, something in him begins to change.

It's as if the evil force is taking over his body and his soul.

It felt like the longer I was in that house, just the more angry I could get

at nothing.

Anything at all could set me off.

I don't know if it was the house changing me or was it just me.

As Norman became more agitated, more angry, more sullen, reclusive...

The things in the house manifested more, more strongly.

It scared me. I was just getting numb to everything because it was just getting

worse and worse. And at this point, I just started not feeling anything.

But fortunately, Norman's job soon takes him out of state on business for several

weeks.

His absence comes as a welcome relief.

I just knew that there wasn't going to be another day of yelling and screaming

and wondering what was going to set him off.

I was happy when he left.

I mean, that's the very sad part.

But with or without Norman, little do his wife and son know, they are not

safe.

The evil spirit has been awakened.

We had just gotten home from Sunday church, and my friend from down the

street... He would always call and leave me a message after he got off church so

we could go hang out and play.

Honey, what are you doing? It's broken.

No, it's not.

It's not even plugged in.

The light was blinking, just like a normal, somebody left a message.

So, I don't know why I did it, but I pushed the play button.

Out of that came a noise.

Whatever it was, wasn't human. But as I turned it up, you could hear very

clearly... Get out.

Get out.

You could tell its intention was to make us leave.

I was scared.

At that point in time, I was scared.

Terrified, Jennifer reaches out to her last resort, the church.

Weeks later, a group of parishioners arrive to conduct a house blessing.

The evil immediately lures them to the basement.

In the name of Jesus Christ, we dedicate this home as a sacred

edifice. They were around the basement leaning inward with their Bibles.

while they were praying.

Lord, we ask that you protect this home so that Norman,

Jennifer, and Andrew Rice can worship and

grow spiritually in peace.

Amen. Amen.

Afterwards, the parishioners retreat.

They do not speak about their experience.

They were very visibly upset.

They did not want to talk about it.

The house blessing is now complete, and Jennifer has faith that it will make a

difference.

I honestly believe that it would be better.

I really did, because he picked the strongest people in our church, the most

steadfast people I knew.

It was very hopeful.

I had felt maybe it could get better, but at the same time, after going

through that for so many months, I had learned just not to get my hopes too far

up.

With her husband Norman out of town,

Jennifer tries to remain strong for Andrew.

Norman?

My mind is like, what?

I know he is not here.

Norman is that you?

Norman?

For well over two years, angry ghosts and an evil spirit have been haunting

the Rice family in their 19th century Victorian home in Garden Grove, Iowa.

In the fall of 2003, while her husband Norman is out of town, Jennifer wakes

to the sound of heavy footsteps in the hall.

Norman, is that you?

Norman?

I saw that thing. I didn't know what it was, and then it looked at me. I can't

move. It's gonna get me.

I'm feeling like I'm gonna die of a heart attack. I can't even describe the

terror.

I knew then that it could create...

whatever it wanted to, to scare us.

But this new entity is just starting its reign of terror, and soon

it targets the weakest member of the family.

When I looked up, the best way to describe it is I saw this bat head

almost. It was just this huge black form.

I feel this presence enclosed around me. It was just strong, and I knew that

if I had struggled, it would have just tightened his grip even more.

All I want to do is get to Andrew.

That's my first thought. I've got to get Andrew and run.

I'm just, I want to get out of here. I want out.

Come on, baby. Come on.

She didn't even grab her shoes. She just picked me up. We ran out the door.

Come on, Andrew.

It's okay, sweetie.

It's okay. I was too scared to look in the backseat, you know, in the rearview

mirror, because I was afraid that thing was in the car with us.

Sorry, sweetie.

That was it. I was done. I couldn't do it anymore.

We needed to sell it and move.

Finally, in November 2004, after three years of terror...

The Rice family sells the 19th century Victorian mansion.

I was heartbroken, naturally. It was my dream.

But I knew my family just had been through enough.

So I had to say, sorry and start all over again.

We admitted defeat.

We were cutting our losses. But then after we sold the house, and even now

today, I'm glad that we did.

It seems like getting out of that house played a big role in...

Getting our family back on the right track.

Family is definitely more important than any house.

After we sold the house, everything seemed to return to normal. Where we

lived was just a nice, calm little house that didn't have any worries. And my dad

just started feeling my dad again.

Still, even years later, Jennifer is unable to let go.

wanting answers about her family's terrifying ordeal.

It had been probably five years.

I just guess I wanted to find out whether or not this really was just

about my family or was it related to the house.

So I knocked on the door. Nobody was there.

And to this day, Jennifer has not been able to determine if the new family has

experienced anything paranormal.

What happened to the Rice family in Garden Grove?

And what, if anything, lies buried in the basement remains a

mystery. I think that thing saw a source of power that it could draw from.

I was feeling fear. My mom was feeling stressed. My dad was feeling anger. All

those are negative, and it gave it something to feed off of.

I think that the worst of it came from the turmoil in the family.

This thing, whatever it was in the house, had to break us up. It had to get

between us.

I just hope that no one else ever has to go through the same thing that we did.