Original subtitles

Would you believe a group of devout nuns

once found themselves in the crosshairs of something unholy?

Mother Superior tells a terrifying story

of being visited at night by demons.

They are coming to her in her sleep

and they're scratching at her skin,

whispering very obscene sexual commands.

Or that a fierce ancient weapon could possess a deadly will of its own.

Once a Muramasa sword is unsheathed,

it requires blood.

Some accounts put the death toll at a couple dozen.

Some claim a hundred people.

There's no real way to know for sure

because of the amount of pieces

that are just strewn all over the place.

How about a house that doesn't just haunt a family,

it wages a full-on war against them?

The children start describing these figures

that they're seeing in their room at night.

It seems like someone new is targeted every night,

and pretty soon, the entire family has finger marks,

bruises, scratches.

Invisible hands yank the young daughter out of her bed

by what they describe as some kind of unseen force.

These are the stories of evil encounters

so disturbing they are truly unbelievable.

Big guns and smart lawyers are powerful weapons

when you're facing off against a drug cartel.

But in this Mexican border town,

you might be better off packing a crucifix.

It's March 1989 down in Matamoros, Mexico.

Federal commander Juan Benitez Ayala

and his men have just wrapped up a raid at a compound.

At first, this looks like your pretty typical drug raid.

They obtain 75 pounds of illegal pot.

They grab a weapons cache. You've got cartel members in cuffs.

But then they start to smell something that isn't typical.

Ayala catches a weird stench.

He pinpoints it to a shack.

And when he and the officers burst inside,

they encounter a gruesome sight.

There are candles, animal skulls,

bloody chains, altars.

Right in the middle of the room is this honest-to-God witch's cauldron,

and when they look inside, it's filled with human body remains.

Even by cartel practices, this is something really dark and evil.

A quick search of the compound reveals

something even more disturbing:

shallow graves of more than a dozen victims.

All of these cartel members that are now in cuffs

are now facing murder raps.

But for some reason,

they don't seem all that bothered by it.

In fact, some of them are just laughing about the whole thing.

They say, "Go ahead and take us in,

"because we're protected by El Padrino,

the Godfather."

Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo.

His drug empire is legendary.

This guy is powerful, evil,

and somebody you do not want to mess with.

Before he was El Padrino,

Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo was born in Miami in 1962.

Adolfo Constanzo, he's baptized Catholic,

attended Mass, even served as an altar boy.

But neighbors report he becomes obsessed with charms,

dark spells, bad omens.

He starts sacrificing animals, chickens,

small birds and stray cats.

When he moves to Mexico City in 1983,

things get even darker.

At age 18, he is introduced to a priest

who practices his own version

of another Afro-Caribbean faith,

Palo Mayombe.

Palo Mayombe rituals include human remains,

so Constanzo begins raiding local cemeteries

to get the bones he needs to make these ritual vessels.

At first, Constanzo performs protection spells,

promising to keep people safe from harm,

whether that be from weapons or law enforcement.

This sounds like wild, wishful thinking, right?

But the thing is, it's kinda working because law enforcement has been unable

to arrest Constanzo.

For Constanzo, continued success demands a greater offering,

so in his quest for supernatural power,

he crosses a terrifying line:

human sacrifice.

Constanzo and his followers snatch a low-level drug dealer.

He's tortured, killed, and cut up,

and what's left of him goes into the cauldron.

Constanzo and his crew often seal their commitment

by marking their own flesh in sacrifice.

As his skin is sizzling,

he sees the Palo Mayombe god of chaos,

destruction and fire, Kadiempembe.

Now, for Constanzo,

Kadiempembe becomes his own twisted version of Satan.

He's convinced that this god is giving him real power

that makes him bulletproof,

invisible to police,

and gives him the ability

to put curses on his enemies.

At this point, his followers are all in.

They're convinced that Constanzo may be an actual god.

And this makes his followers double down

on their brazenness and on their violence.

After Commander Ayala's raid,

one of the bodies that's discovered on the compound

happens to be the body of an American college student.

So now, Constanzo has got the full attention

of the American government and American law enforcement.

The FBI and DEA join Mexican authorities,

and within days, Constanzo is cornered in a dingy Mexico City apartment.

Faced with capture, Constanzo sees only one way out.

One of Constanzo's disciples says

that the godfather orders one of his followers to shoot him.

Constanzo is found dead,

but this doesn't deter his followers,

who say that the bullets merely helped him escape

in another form.

They're adamant that the godfather will return one day,

along with the dark god, Kadiempembe,

and they will be more powerful than ever.

We're still waiting to see if they're right.

It's hard to top drugs, murder, and black magic,

but this next house of horrors gives the Godfather

a run for his money.

It's 1632 in the small French town of Loudun.

This is a horrific moment in French history.

The Black Plague is ravaging all of Europe.

The town has lost as much as a third of its population.

And the cobblestone streets reek of death.

People are hiding indoors

because there are dead bodies being carted around in wheelbarrows.

And then the local convents are on lockdown

because even the nuns are afraid of getting sick.

As hellish as things are outside the convent,

inside they're about to get even worse.

One day, from inside the walls of this closed convent

come these terrifying screams, roars,

beastly howls, blasphemes.

The thing is, these don't sound like screams of pain.

They kind of sound like cries of pleasure.

Clergy and locals begin entering the convent

to see what's going on,

and their accounts are alarming.

They describe these nuns as writhing,

twisting their bodies in ways that don't seem possible.

They're bending over backwards so far that they're grasping their heels.

They have wild, supernatural strength.

It takes four or five men to try to hold them

when they're in the midst of one of those flailing fits.

Whatever is happening inside this convent

seems to be spreading.

And at the center of it all is the Mother Superior herself.

Jeanne des Anges is the 30-year-old

Mother Superior of the convent,

and she tells a terrifying story

of being visited at night by demons.

They are coming to her in her sleep,

and they're scratching at her skin,

whispering very obscene sexual commands.

Today, claims like this might lead to therapy.

But in 17th century France,

they trigger a full-blown public exorcism.

Jeanne des Anges is brought out, and she is trembling,

her rosary in hand,

and she begins to describe what this demon says to her,

what he does to her.

Scandalous stuff.

And then the priests conducting the exorcism

lean in and they ask,

"Do you know who has sent these demons?"

Mother Jeanne des Anges eventually growls a name,

one everyone knows.

Father Urbain Grandier.

And the crowd goes wild

because he is sort of a religious rock star

in the city of Loudun.

He's very good-looking.

There are even some rumors

that he is doing more than flirting

with the ladies around town.

All of the nuns are brought out from the convent

to the public square,

and in the midst of all their contortions and their thrashing and things,

they're all telling the same story.

This has been caused by Father Grandier

because the Mother Superior had rejected

his sexual advances.

Word of this gets back to the court of King Louis XIII,

and Cardinal Richelieu,

who is not a fan of Grandier.

So Richelieu orders Grandier to stand trial.

And, if you believe the rumors,

the prosecutors produce their most damning piece of evidence,

a literal pact with the devil signed by Grandier

and all of the demons who have assisted him.

To get a confession

and encourage Grandier to name any accomplices,

the church authorities strap him into a torture device

known as the Spanish boot.

This is a device that uses metal or wood.

It goes around your leg with a vise.

They will slowly tighten that vise down,

crushing the bones and the flesh.

Despite all of that, Grandier never confesses,

and he's burned at the stake anyway.

But the strange thing is this scandal

makes Mother Superior into an actual celebrity

who travels all over France.

She even writes it down in what becomes a very provocative memoir

about her time as a woman being seduced by Satan.

If evil can take hold of a holy convent,

are any of us safe?

Coming up, a sinister blade with an insatiable appetite.

Every Muramasa sword contains within its metal

an inherent bloodlust so strong

it can overpower any samurai who wields it.

They say good things come in small packages,

but for one mild-mannered postal carrier in the 1950s,

a tiny box in his mailbag is less like a precious delivery

and more like a ticking time bomb.

It's November of 1958,

and United States postal carrier James Todd

is delivering a small package

to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.

He's a little nervous

because the small, brown paper-wrapped package

contains the 45-karat Hope Diamond.

Imagine a diamond that is about the size of a walnut,

which today is worth about $350 million.

This diamond is being donated to the Smithsonian

by the famed jeweler Harry Winston,

who has placed great faith in the U.S. Postal Service

and paid a tidy sum of $2.44

to see it delivered to Washington.

But while Todd may be done with the diamond,

it seems the diamond may not be done with him.

Shortly after Todd delivers the diamond to the Smithsonian,

he has an accident.

His mail truck gets totaled, but he walks away unharmed.

But then it gets worse

because then a few days later,

he falls, sustains a serious head injury.

Then his wife dies of a heart attack,

his dog strangles himself on a leash,

and then part of his house burns down.

Many insist that Todd's remarkable run of bad luck

is not just a coincidence,

but an awful curse that goes back centuries.

The legend of the curse of the Hope Diamond

begins in the 1600s, with a French merchant

and adventurer named Jean-Baptiste Tavernier,

who acquires this massive blue diamond in India.

According to legend,

the diamond comes from the infamous Kollur Mine,

which is known for its brutal working conditions.

Others say that Tavernier stole the diamond

from a statue of a venerated Hindu idol,

thus beginning the curse which continues to this day.

Tavernier takes the diamond to Europe

and sells it to Louis XIV in 1668.

The diamond becomes part of the French crown jewels,

but it doesn't stay there for long.

During the French Revolution,

around the time that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette

are taken away to the guillotine,

the diamond disappears.

The next chapter takes us to the 1790s,

where a jeweler named Wilhelm Fals gets ahold of the diamond

and decides he's going to recut it.

Not long after,

the jeweler is murdered by his own son, Hendrik,

who covets the rare gem.

Not long after that, Hendrik takes his own life.

And then it's purchased by a banker

named Henry Philip Hope in the 1830s,

and that's when the diamond finally gets its name,

the Hope Diamond.

In the early 1900s,

the Hope Diamond's sinister reputation becomes part of its mystique.

And one jeweler sees that as the perfect sales pitch.

Famous jeweler Pierre Cartier really leans into the curse,

and he ends up selling it to this mining heiress

named Evalyn Walsh McLean.

In the years that follow, her son is killed by a car,

her daughter dies,

and her husband ends up in an institution.

And at long last,

it comes into the ownership of America's king of diamonds,

Harry Winston, who decides, perhaps wisely,

that this stone belongs in a museum.

Today, the Hope Diamond still resides at the Smithsonian

behind three inches of bulletproof glass.

Supposedly that is to protect the diamond from people,

but maybe it's the other way around

and it's actually protecting the people from the diamond.

This next cursed object doesn't wait around for misfortune to strike.

It cuts straight to the point.

It's the very end of the 17th century in feudal Japan

and customers are partying in the Yoshiwara district in Edo,

which is Tokyo today.

This is the sort of officially sanctioned red-light district.

It's where wealthy men go to be entertained by ladies.

One night, according to legend,

Sano Jirōzaemon has confessed

to his favorite courtesan his love for her.

Sano has been rejected,

which sends him into a violent, bloody rage.

Some accounts put the death toll at a couple dozen.

Some say around 40.

Some claim 100 people.

There's no real way to know for sure

because of the amount of pieces

that are just strewn all over the place.

But then a strange thing happens.

As soon as he is disarmed,

he goes from this furious man

to being entirely calm.

Sano becomes known as the Hundred Person Slayer of Yoshiwara,

and according to some, the world's first recorded spree killer.

Like any spree killing, people hunt for a motive.

There's a bit of a creepy twist on this.

Instead of blaming Sano...

...they blame the sword.

The man said to have forged the deadly blade,

Sengo Muramasa, is remembered as one of the most feared

sword makers in Japanese history.

Muramasa has a totally different temperament

than any of the other master swordsmen.

Angry, jealous, filled with rage.

And according to legend,

Muramasa imbues that into the swords that he crafts.

Part of the Muramasa legend

is that he would go to battlefields where people had fought

and died in gory battles,

and he would collect up broken weapons.

And he was able to forge these broken blades

into beautiful new weapons.

But they would be imbued with the hate and violence

of those fallen samurai.

Every Muramasa sword contains within its metal

an inherent bloodlust so strong

it can overpower any samurai who wields it.

As the legend goes,

once a Muramasa sword is unsheathed,

it requires blood

before it can be returned to its case.

This could be the blood of an opposing warrior,

an innocent person, or even the sword-bearer himself.

Tales spread across Japan like wildfire.

A samurai that takes the life of his wife while in a trance.

He awakens to find his hands covered in blood,

terrified and mortified at what he'd just done.

Eventually, fear of the Muramasa curse

becomes so intense that the swords are banned by the 1630s

during the Tokugawa shogunate.

But some, like the one used by Sano,

are hidden and kept in secret.

In modern Japan, the ban has been lifted.

But there are still plenty of people who fear the curse.

And so, some brave, or some would say foolish,

collectors want to profit off of the bloody reputation

of these swords, which have now become that much more valuable.

If you want to lay eyes on an evil Muramasa masterpiece,

you can spot one in the Kawana City Museum,

hopefully behind curse-proof safety glass.

Coming up, a disturbing revelation

that definitely didn't show up in the home inspection.

The children start describing these figures

that they're seeing in their room at night.

Then things start to get physical.

Moving into a new house is always a hassle.

The boxes, the unpacking, figuring out where everything goes.

But for one family in upstate New York,

the real problem isn't settling in,

it's realizing something else already lives there,

and it's not looking for roommates.

It's 1970 in Hinsdale, New York.

Clara and Phil Dandy and their four children

are looking for a new house to make a fresh start.

Lucky for them, they found the perfect spot,

a 19th century farmhouse in a quiet area near the Allegheny Mountains.

Soon, according to Phil and Clara,

really random stuff starts disappearing.

A hairbrush, a trinket from a living room shelf.

Strange, but not alarming.

But as the days pass,

the house doesn't feel quite as empty as it should.

According to the Dandys,

that's when the voices start.

These murmurings coming from inside the walls.

And outside, they hear what they report as chanting.

Like this foreign language,

or words they can't understand.

The family tries to convince themselves that they're just imagining things,

but that becomes nearly impossible.

Clara said there are times she could look back at the house

and see a pale woman standing in the window

looking back at her

from a room she knows is empty.

By now, Phil and Clara are justifiably freaked out,

but they still hope there's a rational explanation for all this.

So they call the cops.

They expect to uncover something

like local teenagers pulling pranks.

But the police simply laugh it off,

telling her it's probably just animals.

With no explanation, and no clear culprits,

the family tries to move on.

Then the interactions start to escalate.

The children start describing these figures

that they're seeing in their room at night.

Tall, dark silhouettes, almost shadows,

that are lurking along the walls of the room.

Then things start to get physical.

Invisible hands yank the Dandys' young daughter, Beth,

out of her bed and onto the floor.

It seems like someone new is targeted every night,

and pretty soon the entire family has finger marks,

bruises, scratches.

Nobody's safe.

One morning, Beth wakes up with a burn on her leg,

and she shows her family at breakfast.

Her brother, Mike, goes white,

and he has the same exact identical wound on his leg.

Then the mysterious force seems to send

a more direct message.

One night, the family is watching TV together.

And on the wall of the living room is a collection of family portraits.

The kids' first communion, school photos, that sort of thing.

There is a photo of Mary in the center of the room.

And somehow, someone or something

has taken a letter opener, which is still there,

and rammed it through the picture...

as if Mary herself has been stabbed.

Clara is convinced this malevolent force

will only turn more violent.

So she seeks help from a higher power.

They contact Father Alphonsus Trabold,

a local Franciscan priest.

He listens to their story intently and agrees to help.

But Father Trabold knows this case is beyond anything he's dealt with before,

so he brings in renowned psychic Alex Tanous.

Alex walks the home and the property,

and then he pulls Clara and Phil aside

and gives them this kind of ominous warning.

According to Phil and Clara, Alex says there were seven people killed.

Some of them he can see very clearly.

One man was stabbed.

A woman was hanged.

Another woman was drowned.

The thing about this that really grabs Clara

is that from what he described,

everything kind of fits in with these spirits

that are in the house.

The stabbing victim, that reminds her of the letter opener

through the picture of Mary.

And the drowning victim reminds her of this figure

that they sometimes would see in the window.

This just makes it all seem much more real to Clara

and much more frightening.

Determined to rid the Dandy house of these sinister entities,

Father Trabold decides to perform what's known as a structural exorcism.

This job is far too big for just one person,

so Father Trabold returns with the medium and the entire Dandy family.

And once Father Trabol begins this ritual,

things get wild.

According to those who were there,

the entire house starts to shake.

As if they're in the middle of an earthquake.

There are bloodcurdling screams

that seem like they're coming from inside the walls.

The presence returns,

bigger and angrier than ever.

It's like all they did was make this house mad.

At this point, Father Trabol has realized

that this evil is just too big.

They're left with no options but to leave.

They leave so fast

that they don't even take everything they own.

As for the Hinsdale house itself,

it's now open to tourists.

You can visit by day

or even stay the night,

if you dare.

Coming up, an infamous gangster goes to prison

and gets a cellmate that rattles more than just the bars.

And in his cell, reaching for his head,

rocking back and forth and just mumbling to himself

saying, "Jimmy, leave me alone, man. Jimmy, leave me alone."

When you build a life on bloodshed and betrayal,

the past has a way of catching up with you.

Just ask Al Capone.

It's August of 1929,

and Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia

is a horrible place

infested with bugs and rats.

It's a hellhole.

The prison's newest guest is America's most notorious gangster,

Public Enemy No. 1,

aka Scarface.

Al Capone.

He runs Prohibition-era Chicago.

He is willing to use violence, explosives, guns,

whatever, in order to keep his control over the city.

But Chicago's most feared mobster

isn't doing hard time on a murder rap.

Instead, he was pinched in Philly

on a simple concealed weapons charge.

Capone is sentenced to a year in prison, but the prison sentence is kind of a joke

because while all the other prisoners are living in squalor,

Capone is living like he's in a posh hotel.

He's got his cell decorated with lavish furniture

and all the creature comforts that one could want.

He thinks that business will go on as usual

while he's in prison.

But soon, the kingpin appears to be tormented

by something far more frightening than a jail sentence.

Guards spot Capone, and he's agitated.

He's walking in these tight circles,

talking to someone who's not there.

Over the next few nights, they start hearing him arguing.

He's shouting and he says he didn't mean to do it.

They see Capone in his cell, reaching for his head,

rocking back and forth and just mumbling to himself,

saying, "Jimmy, leave me alone, man. Jimmy, leave me alone."

Now everybody's starting to wonder, who's Jimmy?

To answer that question,

we have to go back to Prohibition-era Chicago.

Jimmy Clark is a pretty important character in the Chicago underworld.

He's a mob enforcer,

and he's also the brother-in-law of Capone's biggest rival,

George "Bugs" Moran.

Capone and Moran are at war

over controlling the bootlegging industry in Chicago.

It is one of the bloodiest mob wars of the time.

There are car bombs and assassinations.

The streets are literally running with blood.

On the morning of February 14, 1929,

that war culminates in one of the most notorious incidents

in Chicago history.

Capone's men, disguised as police officers,

walk into a garage in Chicago

where seven members of Moran's gang are waiting

for a hijacked load of illegal whiskey.

They're expecting that this is just a typical shakedown

that they're gonna get from the police.

They'll be home for dinner.

But that's not what happens.

Instead, tommy guns and shotguns ring out,

and more than 70 rounds are punched into these guys

in front of a brick wall at the back of this garage.

Newspapers at the time describe it as being a sea of blood.

So it really becomes known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Capone expects the massacre to be the end of the trouble

with George Moran.

But as it turns out,

Moran was running a little bit late that morning,

so he survived.

Jimmy Clark, however, did not.

Now it appears Jimmy is seeking justice

from the afterlife,

and getting some.

This guy, who's not afraid of anything,

one of the biggest names in crime,

is begging for mercy.

He's terrified and being haunted by a ghost.

Stories of haunted prisons are not all that uncommon,

because people die and suffer in prisons.

This is kind of unique because the story that the guards are telling about Capone

suggests that he brought his ghost with him.

After eight months, Capone does get released on good behavior.

But for him, this was hard time.

Guards at the prison who see Capone on the day he's released

report that he says something like,

"Well, now that I'm out of here, at least I'll get a decent night's sleep."

Whatever the truth, Capone's encounter in Eastern State Penitentiary

doesn't seem to scare him straight.

Once released, he goes right back to business as usual

until 1931,

when he's haunted by an even more terrifying entity,

the IRS.

Coming up, everybody goes through changes as a teenager,

but these are no ordinary growing pains.

He seems to go into these weird trances.

He speaks in voices that are not his own.

Scratches start to appear on Ronald,

and they begin forming a word: "Louis."

When teenagers get moody, rebellious, or secretive,

most parents tell themselves it's just a phase.

But when one family's problems escalate from slammed doors

to something more extreme,

a simple time-out just isn't going to cut it.

January 1949, in a suburb outside of Washington, DC,

a 13-year-old boy named Ronald Hunkeler is upstairs

in his family home in his room

when he begins to hear scratching noises...

...coming from within inside the walls.

Faint at first, but then more pronounced.

Almost as if something was trying to claw its way

into his room.

The noises start happening on a regular basis,

and Ronald's behavior becomes increasingly strange.

He seems to go into these weird trances.

He speaks in voices that are not his own.

He's even awakening the entire family with these terrifying screams at night.

The nighttime incidents get worse.

One night, they hear a commotion coming from his room.

They run in, and they see him shaking on the bed.

It looks to them like the mattress itself is shaking,

and it shakes so violently

that it shakes its way off of the bed frame

and onto the floor.

His parents want answers,

and Ronald is examined by medical doctors and by psychiatrists,

but no one can find anything physically or mentally wrong with him.

With no scientific or medical explanation,

his religious mother looks for a spiritual one

and calls Pastor Luther Miles Schulze.

The reverend says, "What if we take him out of his house,

"place him in a neutral environment

to see whether or not these things can continue to happen?"

On the night of February 17th,

he invites Ronald's mother and Ronald

to spend the night at the church parsonage.

He won't put Ronald in a bed with springs,

something that could be easily moved.

He makes a pallet on the hardwood floor.

And it's blankets and pillows.

Ronald lays down to go back to sleep,

but then the pallet starts moving on its own.

It slides across the floor,

and he notes in his record

it seems to be floating.

Reverend Schulze comes away with this experiment at his home

believing there is something paranormal happening here.

Before long, whatever has taken over Ronald's bedroom

invades the rest of the house.

One day, Ronald is standing next to the kitchen table,

when all of the sudden it flips up into the air

and lands on the floor upside down.

It's a tiny teenager and a very large table,

and neither Ronald nor his mom were anywhere near it.

As the incidents escalate,

Ronald's mother prays for a sign, and gets one.

Ronald starts to wake up with these strange welts

and marks and scratches all over his body.

Some of those scratches and things look like words.

They clearly spell out "Louis."

Ronald's mother thinks this is a supernatural clue.

She decides that she needs to return to St. Louis,

where she's originally from,

in order to get help.

In 1949, St. Louis has this very large Jesuit community.

The Jesuits have a lot of experience in handling possession cases.

The church assigns Fathers Raymond Bishop,

William Bowdern, and Walter Halloran to the case.

Together, they begin an exhausting spiritual battle

against the entity believed to possess Ronald.

Ronald reacts violently to every one of the exorcism rituals.

He writhes and thrashes about, he screams, he howls,

he urinates copious amounts.

There's a horrible stench.

And he's fighting in a way that he never has before.

Then, according to some of the Jesuits who were there,

a very clear voice comes out of Ronald...

identifying itself as St. Michael the Archangel,

the chief warrior against Satan.

It orders the demon to leave Ronnie's body,

to get out now, now, now.

Suddenly, Ronald's body finally goes completely limp,

and everything in the room just goes quiet.

Ronald stops,

and in his own voice says,

"It's over."

The fog lifts, the wounds heal, and Ronald resumes a quiet, ordinary life.

But his frightening encounter makes national news.

Those newspaper articles are read by a seminary student

at Georgetown University named William Peter Blatty.

He hangs onto the clippings,

and years later,

he is inspired to write something based on that story.

The Exorcist.

Whatever happened to Ronald as a boy,

it didn't stop him from building a remarkable life,

including a career as a respected NASA engineer.

Like all of us,

he just needed a little help dealing with his demons.

Coming up, nothing gets a small town's blood pressure up

like the "V" word.

Elizabeth has repeat visions

of some sort of a threatening creature

with an animal-like face.

The nightmares not only continue, she gets thin, weak, anemic.

Her boyfriend and family start to freak out.

Across Europe, fear of vampires has sparked panic,

exhumations, and even government investigations.

And while most of these scares belong to the distant past,

every so often terror resurfaces.

And in 1970,

it finds a new home in London's Highgate Cemetery.

It is the late 1960s in North London,

and Highgate Cemetery,

at one time a splendid place of burial,

has fallen into ruin.

But in 1969, Highgate gains a reputation

for something far more disturbing than neglect.

One night, two young girls, Elizabeth Wojdyla and Barbara Moriarty,

are walking past the cemetery.

And as they look out amongst the tombstones

and the overgrown grass,

they see something that startles them.

The girls are, like, completely frozen

because this isn't some kind of vagrant or vandal.

This is just like a spectral figure

that looks like it's coming out of the graves.

And this was two of them seeing the same thing,

so you can't, like, blame it on your imagination.

So, they just immediately book it out of there.

Elizabeth says the sinister sight

continues to haunt her long after she gets home.

She starts complaining about these strange nightmares.

These gaunt, corpse-like figures

coming to her bedroom window at night,

attempting to get in.

It's a dream that feels almost real.

Elizabeth has repeat visions

of some sort of a threatening creature

with an animal-like face.

But it's not an animal.

It is a man.

The nightmares not only continue,

she gets thin, weak, anemic.

Her boyfriend and family start to freak out.

Not only does she find bite marks in her neck,

but she says she sees blood on her pillow,

and that's not the kind of thing you get from a bad dream.

Desperate for help, she gets in touch

with an occult researcher named Sean Manchester.

Manchester calls the local paper, the Hampstead & Highgate Express,

and tells them in no uncertain terms

that he is convinced Highgate has a vampire problem.

Manchester announces plans to hunt down the Highgate Vampire.

But the problem is this cemetery is huge.

It's 40 acres, 50,000 graves.

So he can't do it alone. He's gonna need help.

Manchester puts the word out, expecting a few people to show up.

What he gets instead is a panicked mob.

On Friday, March 13, 1970,

just two weeks after the story hits the paper...

hundreds storm Highgate Cemetery

on the hunt for the alleged vampire hiding inside.

You know what's actually more dangerous than an alleged vampire?

A real-life human mob that's cracking tombstones

and busting open crypts.

That actually happened.

Not only do vandals bust into graves,

but one corpse is exhumed and beheaded.

And this once illustrious burial ground

is left in even worse condition than it was before.

No actual physical vampire is ever found,

and eventually the vampire panic fades.

Elizabeth recovers from her wounds.

Many North Londoners regard the Highgate sightings

as mass hysteria.

But one man still says, "Not so fast."

Sean Manchester is, however, quite cagey

about what may or may not have been discovered that night.

He simply says Highgate is now safe for the living.

From cursed jewels to bloodthirsty vampires,

demonic possessions to ghosts that refuse to stay buried,

evil encounters take many forms.

And every one of them is unbelievable.