Original subtitles

- You know, I've been around for a while.

Met some interesting people.

Done some crazy things.

So you just might think that there's not much

that can take me by surprise.

You'd be wrong.

The world is full of stories,

and science, and things that amaze and confound me

every single day.

Incredible mysteries keep me awake at night.

Some I can answer,

others just defy logic.

Do ghosts exist?

Should we fear the paranormal?

In California, a woman is terrorized

by an invisible attacker.

Is she the victim

of a genuine haunting?

- Forget these silly movies that are out there.

This is real.

- [Voiceover] In New England, a mother undergoes

a violent transformation.

(growling)

Has she been possessed by a demon?

- It'll make a cold chill go up your spine.

- [Voiceover] And a British teenager claims to see ghosts.

Does she have the gift?

- Like, the fear, it was uncontrollable.

- Yeah.

It's a weird world.

And I love it.

(intense music)

Have you ever seen a ghost?

Over 90 million North Americans claim to have done just that

and 40 million others say they have physically experienced

a paranormal event.

Many of these events are easily explained,

but some are not only weird and inexplicable,

most disturbing of all,

they seem to be evidence

of pure evil.

Do ghosts exist?

And what are they, anyway?

Is the paranormal something we should fear?

Or is is simply...

Hogwash.

August 8th, 1989.

Barry Taff, one of the world's leading

paranormal investigators,

responds to the call of a distressed woman

in San Pedro, California.

He brings along a colleague,

photographer Jeff Wheatcraft.

- After 5,000 cases,

you go out expecting nothing to happen.

And most of the time,

that's exactly what does occur.

Nothing.

- [Voiceover] The terrified woman

is Jackie Hernandez, a single mother

who claims that someone or something

has turned her home into a living hell.

- She reported apparitions of an old man.

Strange lights.

Somebody tried to smother her a couple times.

Things were flying at her.

It was extraordinary.

- [Voiceover] But perhaps most chilling,

on several occasions,

Jackie claims to have seen a corpse

in her son's bed.

Intrigued,

the ghost hunters decide to look around.

- I have this attitude where I'm very skeptical

because you know that a lot of people embellish

and exaggerate and misrepresent what's going on.

- [Voiceover] But in Jackie's house,

they find something unexpected.

And very weird.

- We were taking pictures all over the house,

and we saw this strange liquid, I don't know what,

viscous liquid dripping out of a wall.

- [Voiceover] Unable to explain the weird slime,

Taff is now convinced Jackie is not faking anything,

and real paranormal activity is occurring in her home.

They take samples

and promise to return.

But just three days later,

another call.

This time, it's an emergency.

Whatever is in Jackie's house

is on a rampage.

The physical attacks have become so violent,

and severe, she fears for her life.

- I was unavailable because my father had a heart attack.

So they were there without me.

- [Voiceover] Jackie reports the evil entity

is now in her attic.

It has been tormenting her with strange lights

and ear-shattering banging.

Jeff and Gary decide to investigate.

Nothing could prepare them

for what they find.

- They hear, oh!

Like a yell or a moan,

and Gary turned back to see what happened to Jeff,

and he couldn't see, it was too dark in the attic.

- [Voiceover] Despite his terror,

Gary snapped some photos in the darkness.

What they revealed

will haunt them forever.

- You can see that Jeff, a six foot two man,

about 215 pounds,

something has wrapped itself around his neck

and it's pulling him up against the rafter.

And yet, there was no one there.

It was Jeff and Gary.

And he cut him down.

He had a rope burn on his neck.

It would have killed him.

The question is, there was no one else there,

so what tried to kill him,

how and why?

- [Voiceover] Something had tried to murder Jeff Wheatcraft.

The investigators leave the house

only to make another chilling discovery.

The forensic lab report

on the ooze from Jackie's walls

is in.

- The conclusion was,

it was human blood plasma.

That's something you will lose sleep over, literally.

Forget these silly movies that are out there.

This is real.

- [Voiceover] Now certain they are dealing with an evil,

homicidal phenomenon,

they tell Jackie to get out

and never come back.

What was is Jackie Hernandez' house?

And was it out to kill?

Jackie's story became known as the San Pedro haunting,

one of the most mysterious paranormal events in history.

But what really happened?

Javier Ortega is a paranormal researcher.

He has no doubt.

- The Jackie Hernandez case is a very extreme case

of a haunting.

If somebody dared me to go in that house,

I wouldn't have set foot in there.

- [Voiceover] Haunting.

We've all heard of it.

But what does it really mean?

- In a haunting it's usually the sprit of a deceased person,

the homeowner that passed away in that house

and they were so attached to a physical object or location

that they come back.

- [Voiceover] Was Jackie's house haunted

by someone who had died there?

Incredibly, the investigation uncovered something bizarre.

- During the investigation of the Jack Hernandez case,

she reported that here and some friends

were playing with the Ouija board

and they were able to talk with the spirit in the house.

And the spirit had told them that

he was a Marine that was murdered.

So they went out and they did some research,

and they found out that there was a Marine

named Herman Hendrickson who was found dead in 1930.

- [Voiceover] Was the spirit of a murdered Marine

responsible for the attacks on Jackie and Wheatcraft?

Does a haunting explain the other things she experienced?

- A lot of the things that were reported were apparitions.

Whether it was a disembodied head floating in the attic

or a corpse-like old man sitting in her child's bed.

She also reported seeing strange lights.

They were described as globs of luminous light.

Free-floating globs of lights have been reported

in haunted places as well.

- [Voiceover] But for Ortega, the most compelling evidence

of a haunting is that mysterious goo Barry and Jeff

found oozing from Jackie's walls.

- I mean it just sounds so bizarre,

that you have human blood plasma oozing from the walls.

And when they checked, there wasn't any device

that was emitting this substance.

So that, to me, has to be one of the most compelling cases

in the paranormal.

- [Voiceover] Was the Marine so angry about being murdered

that he bled through Jackie's walls?

Incredibly, Ortega thinks Jackie wasn't the only victim.

- When Jackie Hernandez left the premise,

people who inhabited that home

have also reported strange activities.

They reported objects being moved around,

pots and pans being moved around,

and they reported being touched by unseen forces.

When you have a lot of physical activity

in a supposed haunted location,

it tends to speak volumes for the amount of energy

that resides in that home.

And we don't know, as paranormal researchers we don't know

if it's due to psychokinetic forces

or if it's due to location hauntings.

If we have the same reports happening year after year

at the same location when there's different tenants,

it usually tends to point towards

it being a location haunting.

- What an incredible story.

You know, I mean, strange things happen around my house too,

but once I say I'm sorry, everything's forgiven.

But human blood

dripping from walls

and a spirit that is so angry it tries to kill you?

I mean, who are they gonna call?

Ghostbusters?

(chuckles) I've always wanted to say that.

Was Jackie Hernandez the victim of a haunting

or was it something else?

- It does not appear that the house

would fit the classic haunting.

- [Voiceover] A terrified woman reports

extreme paranormal events in her home.

Weird light, strange noises,

even physical attacks.

Did Jackie Hernandez live in a haunted house?

- It does not appear that the house

would fit the classic haunting.

- [Voiceover] Loyd Auerbach is a paranormal investigator.

He believes the answer isn't ghosts at all.

- Knowing about the Jackie Hernandez case,

it seemed that she herself was a poltergeist agent.

- [Voiceover] Poltergeist?

Isn't that just a hyperactive ghost?

Or is there a difference?

- What we learned in the last hundred years

is that these things relate typically

not to ghost sightings,

not to hauntings per say,

not to a place being haunted,

but to a person, an individual in this situation,

who is typically stressed or otherwise put-upon.

Possibly epileptic, we're having epileptic type activity,

it's about a third, perhaps, of the cases.

And the expression, instead of by an entity,

it's by the entity in the body.

It's by a person's unconscious blowing off steam.

Or having a seizure, essentially,

it's kind of like a seizure in some of these people as well.

But it's not a ghost-related situation.

If you go on the web

and look at a lot of ghost-hunting sites,

you'll see poltergeist is a particular type of ghost,

mischievous spirit.

Most of the folks who are on the web

have no background in parapsychology,

they don't know the literature

for the last hundred or so years, they don't know

how we've actually come to these conclusions.

Or they don't know how the fact

that we can actually stop these cases.

Whereas it's a little bit harder

when you have a reported ghost instance or a haunting,

to deal with that.

- [Voiceover] Many now believe poltergeists are not ghosts,

but a manifestation of something called psychokinesis.

- We call it PK for short,

and it's the idea that the mind can directly interact

or affect matter and energy.

We typically think of it in the paranormal world

as affecting things outside your body.

Whether it be moving objects,

what people often call telekinesis,

or bending metal,

or even healing.

- [Voiceover] Was Jackie Hernandez herself

causing the weird phenomenon in her own house?

If so, why?

And for that matter, how?

- Certain people, their unconscious minds,

let loose.

I mean, we see people who are stressed out,

who are put-upon in society,

really expressing that stress in different ways.

Some people get enraged and they break things.

Some people shoot people.

Some people keep it bottled up

and it can explode in kind of a different direction

for certain individuals,

which is a psychokinetic direction.

And we call those situations where there's stress,

think of it as an unconscious temper tantrum,

is happening outside themselves

and just throwing things around,

probably like they'd like to do

if they actually physically could do it.

But by having their unconscious throw things around,

who's gonna get blamed?

The invisible force, the invisible ghost?

Certainly not the person who's stressed out.

When we talk about the stress involved in these PK events,

which are often called poltergeist cases,

we're not talking about typical stress of, you know,

just day to day stress.

Sitting in traffic,

being frustrated because your computer couldn't work,

which may actually be related back to the PK.

Those kinds of stresses do show in small ways sometimes.

But they can, again, come out in a lot of different ways.

For example, road rage

or people just screaming at the driver across the way

without acting on it.

You release that stress.

People have other ways of doing it.

In poltergeist cases, the stresses

tend to be very psychologically oriented

in most of these cases.

So they can be related to deep-seeded issues

around the family,

or even around the working conditions.

They are typically not expressed in other ways,

so there's no outlet for most of these people.

In other conditions, these would be the kids or the adults

who are going to act out in a very bad way,

whether it be breaking things or doing something else,

typically.

So we have a different kind of stress level involved,

but it can be very much under that surface.

I had a case for example years ago,

where the woman was recovering memories

of her father abusing her as a child.

And that caused significant stress,

especially as she talked with therapists about it.

And that was extended out to a poltergeist incident.

By talking to her, you wouldn't know.

There's just no way you'd see that stress was there,

and it was a completely different kind of stress

than we think about of just being frustrated

by day to day activity.

- [Voiceover] Was Jackie's unconscious mind

throwing a temper tantrum?

And if so, why?

It could be due to the fact she was experiencing

emotional issues at the time following a difficult divorce.

- There was enough going on in her life,

and frankly enough psychological issues

that would indicate that she was responsible

for most of the phenomena that was happening.

In most poltergeist cases,

people rarely ever think of themselves as the agent.

- [Voiceover] According to Auerbach,

the most compelling argument

that Jackie was both the victim and the problem

is what happened when she moved 600 kilometers away.

Incredibly, the vicious paranormal attacks on her continued.

- In poltergeist cases, when people move,

the phenomena follows them.

Because it's coming from them.

And that also happened

in that particular case.

- [Voiceover] But if Jackie was her own poltergeist,

how is it that the new tenants

also reported paranormal attacks?

- We've had cases where people have heard about the case

and have gone home and because they're so freaked out

by the situation, they start witnessing things.

That has happened.

So you can think of it almost like a contagious idea.

It is possible that it was a haunted house.

It is possible there was an entity there.

We can't completely exclude that.

But it best fit the poltergeist model.

- [Voiceover] Could it be that Jackie herself

was responsible for the weird goings on?

Or were they the result

of an altogether different kind of bad vibe?

Professor John Huntington believes the Jackie Hernandez case

can be explained by undetectable audio waves

known as infrasound.

- Sound is just a vibration in air pressure.

That's how we perceive it,

that's how it gets into your ear.

Infrasound is below the range

that we can hear as an audible sound,

but we're still being affected by,

the sound wave is still impinging on our bodies.

In fact right now in the room,

we have a pretty loud 19 hertz,

19 cycle per second infrasound wave going,

but it's not really audible as a sound,

and it's quite a bit louder than the level of speech

I'm talking at right now.

But it's still there and it's still affecting us,

it's still pressurizing the air

that I'm breathing, that I'm speaking.

- [Voiceover] Human ears can't detect ultra-low frequencies.

If it's below 20 hertz, you can't hear it.

- Your body makes lots of sounds

down at very low frequencies,

such as your heartbeat,

the movement in you blood,

breath noise coming in and out of your body.

If we could hear all that, it would drive us crazy.

But we're still being affected by,

the sound wave is still impinging on our body.

- [Voiceover] But other that our own bodies,

what might cause these low frequencies?

- Man made sources of infrasound could be anything

from a piece of air-handling equipment in a building,

anything like a train, a truck,

anything that's big stuff that's moving

could generate these very low frequency sounds.

- [Voiceover] Incredibly, Huntington believes

low-frequency sound waves

could've caused Jackie Hernandez' unpleasant experiences.

- So in addition to things like headaches and nausea

being caused by exposure to infrasound,

there have been some reports of feeling a presence

or some sort of hallucination

or feeling like strange things are going on in the room.

A lot of that was documented by two researchers

at Coventry University, Tandy and Lawrence in the late '90s.

They were working in a space,

sort of an underground space as I understand it,

and they had all kinds of strange experiences.

People would think that somebody was standing next to them,

and when there wasn't anybody in the room.

They'd be feeling alone,

and felt like there was a presence in the room

and there wasn't anybody else there.

All kinds of strange experiences

happening in this one space.

And this, of course, would build up anxiety,

having these sort of constant strange experiences.

And one of the researchers brought a fencing foil

into the room to work on it, clamped it into a vice

and it started moving on its own.

It was flopping up and down on both ends

where it wasn't secured in the vice.

That led Tandy and Lawrence to research this,

and they ended up doing some acoustical measurements

in the room and found that a piece of air-handling equipment

was causing a very loud,

19 cycle per second infrasound sound wave in the room.

And in addition, the physical geometry of the space

was causing that sound wave to build up

in certain locations in the lab.

As soon as they turned the HPAC equipment off,

or actually decoupled that piece of equipment

from the mounting equipment where is was transmitting,

all the strange experiences went away.

- [Voiceover] Can infrasound exposure mimic the experience

of a haunting?

- Infrasound could possibly cause something

like a hallucination or an apparition

or some other things like that

based on the vibration of the sound wave

actually affecting the eye.

The eye itself could resonate,

or get a very strong vibration,

and that could cause blurring of vision

or possible issues around the periphery of the vision.

Those things, coupled with already being

in a spooky location, being on edge by the infrasound,

can certainly cause some sort of ghostly experiences.

- [Voiceover] Could Huntington's theory be correct?

Does the paranormal activity witnessed in San Pedro

have a rational explanation?

And does it explain human plasma oozing from the wall?

Was Jackie's home haunted?

Or was she her own poltergeist?

Whatever the answer,

this story is certainly weird,

or what.

- [Voiceover] A Connecticut housewife is tortured

from within.

Has she been possessed by an evil spirit?

- Demons like to attack good people.

- Many of us have experienced events

that we would call paranormal.

But in fact, they're just things that are harmless

and easily explained.

But what is the paranormal?

And does it exist?

Even the name is a little, well,

weird and scary.

Here's the way it's described in the dictionary.

Paranormal: the claimed occurrence of an event

without scientific explanation.

(buzzing)

(sighs) As psychokinesis.

(sighs)

Extrasensory perception

of other purportedly supernatural phenomena.

Alright guys, come on, that's it, out.

You can fool some, oh boy, oh boy.

But some people experience paranormal events that are real.

So real, in fact, they're deadly.

Weird,

or what?

History professor John Koerner studies reports

of paranormal activity.

None have haunted him more

than the story of Patricia Reding.

- By all accounts, she was a good person.

I mean, there's nothing you can see in her past

that would indicate why this happens to her.

- [Voiceover] In 1992, Patricia's life

took a terrifying turn.

Doing chores around her home in Litchfield, Connecticut,

she suddenly hears a terrifying voice.

(low voices)

- Worship Satan!

- She felt what she thought was an evil presence

that was around her.

There was nothing that could explain this.

- [Voiceover] Patricia tries to brush it off.

But the eerie voice won't stop.

Ever.

(deep voice mumbles)

It's the beginning of a horrifying ordeal.

- Stop!

- A situation that's much worse.

Pat had a number of things that were happening to her

that were very unusual.

There were bite marks on the back of her neck,

bruises on the back of her body,

things she could not do by herself.

- [Voiceover] What could be inflicting

Patricia's vicious bruises

and other injuries?

It's a frightening and bizarre mystery.

Devastated and disturbed, she seeks help.

- The family took Patricia Reding to the hospital,

to local doctors.

They ruled out all the conditions

that could possibly be affecting her.

- [Voiceover] With no medical explanation,

Patricia resorts to hoping her problems will simply go away.

- But then things started getting much worse after that.

(evil laughing)

She was knocked over.

Horribly, she did not know what was happening.

- [Voiceover] Again and again.

The seemingly evil presence

hurls her into the wall.

- These are things that never could happen

to Pat Reding in a normal situation.

She is not herself.

(moans)

She's becoming someone else.

- [Voiceover] Fearing for her safety,

Patricia has only one place to turn.

- At that point, the Catholic church got involved.

- [Voiceover] Patricia's bishop takes her claims seriously.

After an examination,

he reaches an incredible conclusion.

- They make the diagnosis,

yes, she is possessed.

Demons like to attack good people.

- [Voiceover] There's only one solution.

An ancient ritual

as old as the church itself.

The bishop decides he will perform an exorcism.

- He called upon the demon to reveal himself

and say who you are, reveal yourself,

in the name of Jesus Christ.

Almost every religion believes in evil,

in some form or another.

But the difference with the Catholic church

is that the Catholic church believes evil

is actually a physical manifestation in this world.

It's not just a concept.

- [Voiceover] At first, the demon stays hidden.

But not for long.

(talking in foreign language)

- She was speaking in a language

that she could not speak in normally.

Trying to insult the priest, insult his family,

things that she never would have done on her own.

(moaning)

These are pretty clear signs you're dealing

with an evil entity inside the person's body.

- [Voiceover] Having forced the demon into the open,

the real battle begins.

- Things like holy objects.

This often can anger the demon.

These are tools in a war

that can cause them to be so upset,

the words of Christ makes them so angry,

so it has to be said over and over again.

It's a war of attrition.

- [Voiceover] The battle rages for hours.

At long last, something breaks.

- The demons, they get so upset,

they just can't take this any longer,

and they'll go somewhere else.

They'll go bother somebody else.

- [Voiceover] The exhausting battle ends

with the demons on the run.

But before long, they're back.

- Evil is real.

It can affect someone in some horrible ways.

- [Voiceover] Sadly, Patricia runs out of time.

After 16 exorcisms,

in 2005 she dies of cancer,

believed to be caused by her demons.

Incredibly, Patricia's story is far from the only one.

An estimated 15,000 exorcisms are performed each year.

Can evil really live inside us?

Or is there some other way

to explain demonic possession?

Christopher Rosik is a psychologist.

He says he knows exactly what happened

to Patricia Reding.

- Coming from a religious perspective, you might assume that

this must be a demonic presence.

But as a psychologist, my diagnosis would be

dissociative identity disorder.

- [Voiceover] Better known as a split personality,

dissociative identity disorder

is when two or more personalities

inhabit one mind.

An abusive childhood can sometimes cause

such a psychological break.

One personality becomes the happy face,

the person the world sees.

The other deals with all the hidden pain,

shame and suffering.

- The primary personality is unaware

of the other personality.

They may hear voices

and have these sort of signs,

but they don't know what it's about.

- [Voiceover] Were the demonic voices Patricia heard

really the screams of a tortured second personality?

- Stop!

- [Voiceover] Could it have even tried to hurt her?

- I had a patient who would end up in a graveyard

with a blade in her hand

and having cut her arm.

- [Voiceover] Is a self-destructive alter ego

responsible for Patricia's injuries?

Can psychology explain the power of an exorcism?

- After the exorcism, the individual experiences complete

and sudden remission of their symptoms.

And of course that's considered proof positive

that the demon has been removed.

An alternative way of looking at that, however,

is that the prayer, the ritual has in fact

just served to rearrange these separate identities

such that they have receded

from the host's awareness.

They don't hear the voice any more.

Then, what I experience happen with some patients is that

maybe weeks or months later,

the voices come back.

And then they think, well, I must have invited it back,

or something's wrong with me, I'm really evil.

And so, that's just to say that, that experience

of the sudden symptom relief after an exorcism

is not a clear indicator that there was a demonic presence

that was expelled at that point.

Everything I'm saying here is in no way meant

to malign the value of religious, spiritual care.

But there are some psychological ways

of understanding these experiences

that really should be taken into account.

- Demonic possession.

Ordinary people suddenly possessed by nasty entities.

Ring a bell?

Well, you know, I've seen all the movies.

Omen one, two, three.

The Exorcist, the lot.

And guess what?

Not only do they not scare me,

but I don't believe in them.

(lightning crackles)

I mean, just because it gets a little stormy

doesn't mean the devil is on his way

to take over your soul, does it?

And as for all that other ridiculous stuff

like twisting heads,

speaking in strange tongues.

Is demonic possession all in our heads?

Or is there a more frightening answer?

- What Satan can do, is invade human bodies.

- [Voiceover] A Connecticut woman appears

to have been possessed by an evil demon.

Could she be suffering from a split personality?

Or is the explanation far more terrifying?

Reverend Bob Larson

is not your average man of God.

- I am, among other things,

an exorcist.

- [Voiceover] Larson has studied

Patricia Reding's possession

and is convinced it was real.

- There are those who would like to have the public believe

that demonic possession is rare.

I can tell you, it's not rare.

It'll make a cold chill go up your spine.

- [Voiceover] Are demons really all around us?

Are they trying to take over the bodies of innocent humans?

- The Bible teaches that when Satan was cast out of Heaven,

a third of the angles involved in that insurrection

were cast out with him.

- [Voiceover] According to the Book of Revelation,

when Satan lost his war with God, he and his followers

were banished to the spirit realm on Earth.

- Satan is now then, invisible spirit being.

Satan can't pull the trigger of a gun.

But what Satan can do, is invade human bodies.

And those people then become

the instruments of evil.

- [Voiceover] Larson believes demonic possession

has a firm basis in scripture.

He's also certain that Patricia's condition

wasn't a case of split personality.

- I deal a lot with multiple personality disorder.

I know the difference.

When you see the demon have such utter hatred for God

and religious objects such as the cross,

that aversion means it's something more than psychosis.

That's when you know they are possessed.

- [Voiceover] But there's one thing Larson believes

is the ultimate proof of demonic presence.

- In the Pat Reding case,

she apparently spoke in another language.

I've seen this happen thousands and thousands of times.

I had a woman speak Chinese one time.

I had a fascinating case where a strange language

was being spoken and a college professor

with a PhD in ancient Semitic languages,

he said, I can come up and tell you

exactly what the voice was saying.

And he did!

And the voice was speaking

about his possession of the person

and how he was determined to destroy them.

Now this was a PhD college professor

who was giving testimony to it.

- [Voiceover] Could these foreign, even forgotten languages

prove that Satan is carrying on an age-old war

by invading the bodies of humans?

- To the skeptics, who may not believe

in demonic possession, I say, travel with me

and meet the thousands of people who have had exorcisms.

When you see the smile and the glow

on the person's face as they say to you,

wow.

I didn't know I could feel like this.

Something is gone.

That's why I do exorcisms.

- [Voiceover] Are exorcisms ultimate proof

that devilish spirits still roam the Earth?

Could reports of demonic possession be explained

by a misunderstood mental illness,

or is everyone simply making it up?

Whatever the truth, this mystery is most definitely

weird, or what.

- I don't know about you,

but stories of ghosts and the paranormal

send shivers up my spine.

But that's kind of fun, right?

But do spirits or ghosts or whatever they are

always have to be evil?

Aren't there any friendly dead people out there?

I hope so.

But there's some people

who not only enjoy having ghosts around,

they can talk to them whenever they like.

How?

They'v got the gift.

In just about every way,

Fae Jackson is an average teenage girl.

- I like to shop

and just hang out with my friends.

- [Voiceover] While Fae's life appears to be ordinary,

in truth she and her family are dealing

with something so sensitive,

they've chosen to conceal their appearance.

- Well although is has become part of everyday life for us,

it is still at times frightening.

- [Voiceover] Fae's story began three years ago

when she was 10.

- I was sitting in my bedroom on my own.

I could feel a man sitting next to me.

- She could feel, like an energy, like a presence

next to her.

- And I could just feel his breath in my ear

and it was all warm.

- And then she heard him whispering in her ear.

- Can you hear me?

- Can you hear me?

- [Voiceover] Fae races to her mom.

- Like, the fear, it was uncontrollable.

It just was unexplainable.

- The child was absolutely terrified.

And I was scared for her, to be honest.

- [Voiceover] When Lynn takes her daughter back to the room,

the man is gone.

But Fae is in no doubt

as to what she's experienced.

- I saw my first ghost.

- [Voiceover] Terrifyingly, Fae's encounter

was just the beginning.

- The spirit started regularly visiting me.

They'd only come when I was on my own.

Then when they did,

just random spirits would walk into my bedroom.

- [Voiceover] Fae is haunted by hundreds of ghosts.

Sometimes she sees as many as five a night.

- Sometimes they just want to show her how they died,

which is a little bit grim at times,

and she's only 13.

- [Voiceover] The ghosts begin getting bolder.

- There was an instant when her bed was shook,

which completely terrified me.

- I just felt like I was being attacked.

It was horrible.

It felt really dangerous

and I felt like I was on my own.

- That was when I knew we had to do something about it.

- [Voiceover] At her wit's end,

Lynn seeks professional advice.

- We got lots of help from local mediums

who understood what was happening.

- [Voiceover] Far from seeing it as something frightening,

the mediums tell them Fae's ability to see

and connect with the dead is a gift,

and a very rare one at that.

- They taught Fae techniques that she could use

to take more control over her gift,

and see it as a gift really.

- [Voiceover] With the help of psychic mediums,

the support of her mother

and lots of hard work,

Fae finally mastered her gift.

- It's like I have two lives.

Like, I live one life where I'm just a normal girl.

And then, other times I can talk to spirits.

So it's really quite exciting.

- I see dead people.

That's something else I've always wanted to say,

but I can't, 'cause I don't.

Well, not when I'm sober anyway.

But incredibly, it may be

because I'm an adult.

You see, Fae isn't alone.

Millions of other children see dead people too.

How?

Do they possess a special power?

A sixth sense?

And is it a gift?

Or a curse?

Weird,

or what?

- [Voiceover] 13 year old Fae Jackson

claims she can see ghosts.

Do children possess the gift?

Who better to ask about children who see ghosts

than Caren Goode, author of Children Who See Ghosts.

- To discover that children see ghosts, talk with ghosts,

to me it was exciting.

- [Voiceover] After more than 25 years

researching the special abilities of young minds,

Goode has reached an incredible conclusion.

- Children are more predisposed to see ghosts

than adults are,

primarily because of their brain power.

The sixth sense begins to develop in children

between the ages of 18 months

all the way up through

five to six years.

And the reason is because their brain is going

through a tremendous growth spurt.

- [Voiceover] We've all heard of the sixth sense,

but what is it?

What does it do that your other five can't?

- When I discuss with a parent, for example,

what is the sixth sense.

I explain it to the parent as being intuitive intelligence.

Some people have a heightened intuition.

Particularly sensitive children,

we call them sensitive because

they may be sensitive to the feelings

of someone who might be ill.

Or, one child that I'm aware of used to tell me about,

he would know a car accident when his mom was driving.

He would get nauseated.

And it always correlated, for him,

with a nearby car accident.

So I think that a sixth sense

involves feeling and intuition,

and it could involve heightened sensitivities.

- [Voiceover] But where does this sixth sense come from?

Is it a gift only bestowed on some?

Remarkably, Goode believes it's an ability

that's within us all.

- The pineal gland is located within the brain,

which actually regulates light within our body.

I believe he pineal gland can be a doorway

to the sixth sense.

- [Voiceover] But if we all have the ability

to access our sixth sense,

why do so few children maintain this power into adulthood?

- As the hormones change,

children go through brain wave shifts, mood shifts,

and that's the time logic develops.

And children may turn away from their intuition,

their feelings.

If children have not been encouraged in their imagination,

in their conversations and sixth sense development,

it can shut down when cognition sets in.

- [Voiceover] Do children's growing brains

give them a sixth sense?

Should a child's ghost sightings be encouraged?

Do kids like Fae really have the gift?

- My initial reaction to reading the article about Fae,

was quite honestly, I wasn't impressed.

- [Voiceover] Psychic Jack Rourke

is an expert in parapsychology.

Experience has taught him

that a far more mundane explanation may be at work,

or rather, at home.

- There is a phenomena called parentizing.

Where, in essence, there's a bit of a role reversal.

Where a child can sometimes become the caretaker

of the parent, or become the mirror to the parent.

- [Voiceover] Rourke believed that through parentizing,

children can be actively encouraged

to say they see ghosts.

- The more positive reinforcement a child gets

from their parent that they are special,

that they are extra sensitive,

that they have special empathic or intuitive abilities,

the more the child then believes they're psychic.

And I'll give you an example of how this is done.

The child wakes up in the middle of the night

from a horrible dream

and is talking about ghosts chasing them, things like this.

You come in as the parent and say,

no, you're wrong, that didn't happen,

you lose the ability to comfort the child

because they've been made wrong.

Now, I go into the room, same scenario, and I say,

oh you saw a ghost, didn't you?

(sniffles) Yes.

This is how it's done.

- [Voiceover] But why would a child like Fae

go along with the idea of seeing ghosts?

What's in it for her?

- The specialness of the child in these circumstances

gives the child permission to commiserate

with the parent, they become their emotional partner.

They go to activities together,

they may go to certain psychic functions,

and this unique relationship becomes a reward to the child.

And in order to maintain that closeness with their parent,

they have to maintain the psychic identity.

For the parents, this also gives them the passive means

to control the child.

And also, what I've witnessed is a way

to slow down their development

and prolong their childhood.

So this is an interesting thing,

one of the things that we look at.

Now why, per say, a child might have a specific experience?

Could be biological.

It could be an environmental reason.

It could just be an ordinary bad dream.

- Can you hear me?

- [Voiceover] Are children who see ghosts

merely playing out a fantasy

with the encouragement of their parents?

Is there nothing special about them at all?

Does the gift exist in children at all?

- A person like Fae may be capable of seeing ghosts

because she has some physiological advantage.

- [Voiceover] Thousands of children across the globe

claim they can see dead people.

Do they have an extra special sense

known as the gift?

Paranormal investigator Joshua P. Warren

believes there could be a medical explanation

for this phenomena.

- A person like Fae may be capable of seeing ghosts

because she has some physiological advantage

in her eyeballs themselves.

- [Voiceover] Could Fae's eye

have powers the rest of ours don't?

Warren believes her secret may be

that she sees light differently.

- Right now, all the data that we have

indicates ghosts are more visible in the infrared realm.

Some of the best ghost images I've seen

have been captured using infrared technology.

- [Voiceover] Could Fae be seeing ghosts

that are all around us?

Ghosts that most of us miss

because we can't see infrared?

- The average person can only see

a relatively narrow band of light

from usually around green to red.

Fae might be able to see a little bit more

than the rest of us.

- [Voiceover] Scientists call the range of light

the visible spectrum.

Although most of us know it

as the colors of the rainbow.

But what if Fae was somehow able to literally see

what the rest of us can't?

- In the human eye, there are two primary types of cells.

You've got the rod cells and the cone cells.

Rod cells are used for night time vision,

but they can't see color.

Then you have the cone cells,

which respond very quickly

and they see color.

If Fae has more of those rod or cone cells,

especially the cones,

that alone might allow her to see a broader range

of colors and frequencies than the average person.

Her eyes physiologically allow her to peer deeper

into the infrared or ultraviolet realms.

- [Voiceover] Incredibly, Warren also believes the eye

might not just explain Fae's story,

but also why children on average

report seeing more ghosts than adults.

- As a person ages,

the components of the eye become more and more dense.

In extreme cases, they can become very cloudy

and form a cataract.

So the older you get, the less you're able to see

when it comes to this band of frequencies.

Children are not only

able to see a wider range of frequencies,

but they also should have an open mind and open awareness.

They have not been structured so much yet

into a belief system

and into a task-driven, day to day routine

that gives us tunnel vision as adults.

As children, they still have a wider awareness

and perception of what's around them,

and a willingness to acknowledge honestly what they see.

- [Voiceover] Could Fae and other children like her

really be able to see into the infrared world of ghosts?

Does she have a sixth sense?

Or is Fae just a needy kid?

Who wanted her mother's attention and approval.

We may never know.

Weird, or what?

- [Voiceover] So there we have it.

Ghost stories from around the world.

A Californian woman's home plays host

to one of the most terrifying paranormal events on record.

(evil laughing)

In New England, a woman is possessed

by an evil spirit so strong,

even the Catholic church fails to defeat it.

And a British teenager can see and talk to ghosts.

Is she proof that some children have the gift?

Are these bizarre stories evidence

that ghosts exist?

Can we seek comfort in rational explanations

or do we ignore them

at our peril?

You decide.

Join me again next time for more stories

that will undoubtably be weird, or what.