Original subtitles

Vivia.

Henry!

Henry.

Henry?

It's been so long.

So horrible.

Horrible?

It started three days after you left.

How long ago was that?

How many years?

Three small weeks.

It was the fastest most successful business trip that I

or anyone else ever accomplished for you.

What started?

I woke up in the middle of the night...

and I knew something was wrong.

And for the first time in my life, Vivia...

being blind terrified me.

Didn't you ring for the servants?

They were gone.

When did they return?

They didn't.

Well, I heard a door slam at the back of the house as I came up the stairs.

The new housekeeper.

She came the day after they left.

She said they told her that I'd be needing someone.

How do you do, Mrs. Mandour?

I've been looking forward to your return.

Mother?

Oh, Mother, oh.

What do you want?

Mother, why do you do this?

Mr. Orion.

Thank you for not dismissing my call as a prank.

You'd be amazed how few pranksters ask me to meet them in a cemetery.

At midnight.

I hope I didn't tear you away from anything really important.

- If you're being haunted, Mrs. Mandour... - Vivia, please.

My husband's name still slightly overwhelms me.

It's an impressive name.

Impressive and tragic.

Mostly to the Mandours...

themselves.

I've seen villages in Mexico.

Living people living in tin and mud.

And here...

dignity...

protection from the rain...

and even art.

And all wasted on the dead.

Yes, I suppose I am haunted, Mr. Orion...

by my memories of other people's anguish.

But not...

by a ghost.

How could I be? I don't believe in ghosts.

Someone must.

Unbelievers rarely are willing to pay my fee.

My husband asked me to write you a check.

In any amount.

Is your name spelled O apostrophe, Mr. Orion?

O-r-i-o-n.

As in the constellation.

Orion, the blind hunter.

My husband wants you to investigate a ghost...

that's haunting him by telephone.

He says it's a woman's voice, but it says nothing. It merely sobs and sobs.

His mother died almost a year ago.

He's convinced that it's her voice calling from in there.

The telephone is within arm's reach of her coffin.

You fill in the amount, Mr. Orion.

You look like a man who knows his own price.

If your husband isn't being genuinely haunted, I won't charge a penny.

Whenever I do uncover a prank or any other crime...

I turn it over to the police department.

A medium who charges only for the genuine thing.

Must be a very poor medium.

Officially I'm an architect.

And I make a sizable living at it.

And I am not a medium.

Forgive me. My husband did insist I refer to you as a psychic or consultant.

Which is a different breed of cat all together.

Would you rather not come with me, Mrs. Mandour?

It's natural to be disquieted.

Even for an unbeliever?

People that call themselves unbelievers always...

always remind me of Madam Pompadour's famous remark.

"I don't believe in ghosts...

but I'm afraid of them."

Why the telephone?

Within arms reach of her coffin.

Louise Mandour had a life long fear of being mistaken for dead and buried alive.

When she was a very little girl they brought her here

to attend a relative's funeral.

During the services she wandered off alone.

Somehow...

accidentally she locked herself in one of the burial chambers.

Poor Louise.

I don't believe she really thought anyone would bury her alive.

But her will made every possible provision for it.

Five doctors were to sign her death certificate.

Her body was not to be embalmed, her coffin was to be left open...

and there was to be a direct telephone line from her burial chamber...

to Henry's room at the house.

How long did she expect a grown, married man to stay withing reach of that phone?

For the rest of his life.

She had that kind of hold on him?

Oh, she simply knew Henry had no reason whatever to leave the house.

Why should he?

He's already traveled the whole world.

Several times.

I suppose he wanted the world to look at him.

And he could never look at the world.

Henry's been blind since birth.

How long has your husband been receiving these sobbing phone calls?

About two months ago I went to New York on business.

His mother had bequeathed large sums of money to certain charities

and appointed me administrator.

While I was gone...

These calls couldn't be made from anyplace

other than Louise Mandour's burial chamber.

No, it's a direct line.

Couldn't someone else have a key to this place?

It doesn't work like an ordinary intercom. It has to be dialed.

And only Louise Mandour knew that code number.

I believe you're as certain as I am, Mr. Orion.

That this is not a genuine haunting?

That it is a prank.

Do you think it's a prank, Mrs. Mandour?

I don't know, but whatever it is is trying to bring Henry to the edge of madness.

It's warm.

Look at it, Mr. Orion, and then explain to me how that

cold, moldering hand could reach out and grasp a telephone.

And warm it.

A ghost doesn't need the physical properties of its former existence

in order to create tangible errant in its presence.

According to pre-scientific theory...

a ghost is of itself a physical entity.

It's only the wind.

No!

Mrs. Mandour?

Mrs. Mandour...

there's nothing to fear, it's quiet now.

It?

Don't you feel it?

Something is still present.

Something quiet, waiting.

No.

"Dial H-E-L-P."

The code number?

Mrs. Mandour.

I want to talk to your husband. Tonight.

Will you give me your address or shall I follow your car?

I came by taxi.

Then we'll go together in my car.

- I left my purse. - Let me go.

No.

I want to prove I'm not afraid.

To myself, that is.

Mrs. Mandour.

No!

I won't!

I-I can't!

Her face.

Blood-splashed.

Mr. Orion, would you please come in?

I'm Mr. Orion's housekeeper, Mary Finch.

Would you care for this?

We met last night, Mrs. Mandour, but being in shock you may not have noticed.

I helped Mr. Orion put you to bed.

Did he explain my...

shock?

He said something about you having seen a blood-splashed

apparition in a mausoleum.

Now what was a nice girl like you doing in a place like that?

Mrs. Finch, could that be our doorbell?

The young and wealthy make remarkable recoveries.

You better leave that tray in the kitchen, Mrs. Finch

and get down to that door before Mr. Sloan breaks it in.

Mary Finch.

Do you know why he didn't keep his 8:30 appointment with

the Los Angeles city council?

I'm afraid the world of art and architecture will have to be a bit patient, Mr. Sloan.

Your favorite employer is off at another of his morbid adventures.

Two coffees, Mrs. Finch, please.

Nelson, you don't seem to appreciate the fact that you live

in the age of the bulldozer.

Now, city council is perfectly willing to consider

saving one of our few historical buildings.

But, unless you meet with them across a friendly breakfast table and

show them how it can be saved without excessive expense...

Nelson...

The mortar used in brick buildings 90 years ago was different from that used today.

Now, moving that building to a city park will be a difficult and costly operation.

I assured the entire council.

I'll see the council tomorrow morning.

Unless there's more to this than prank phone calls.

You are almost a great architect, Nelson.

And you're unquestionably this nation's foremost restoration specialist.

Why do you squander your genius on...

the haunted?

Would you call a taxi for me, Mr. Orion?

He doesn't have a telephone.

Mr. Sloan, Mrs. Mandour.

I'll pick you up myself, right here.

At the dot of dawn.

Bye, Mrs. Mandour. Au revoir, Nelson.

Bye, Mary Finch.

Where did you get it?

It's the Mission of Sierra De Cobre.

According to legend the mission was haunted by a bleeding ghost.

The Sierra De Cobre officials allowed the legend to flourish until the bleeding ghost

murdered an American woman.

A school teacher.

Then they called me in.

I'll just be a minute, Mrs. Mandour.

Have you ever seen a genuine apparition?

I'm a realist, Mrs. Mandour.

That's the prime reason Mr. Orion employs me.

Like all promoters of the faith, he needs his devil's advocate.

If you saw one and the terror you felt left no room for doubt...

I'd make room.

Someone's got to not believe in ghosts.

I left it there last night. I had a faint

dizziness and lost control, so I called a taxi.

If you'll give me the key, I'll move it out of our way.

I must have lost them.

It's a long way off, but would you like to walk to the house?

It's over 100 acres.

One of the few estates in this country that hasn't been sold off and subdivided.

Seems sort of old world, doesn't it?

Having an entire family fortune tied up in real estate.

The Mandours aren't interested in selling any part of this?

My husband is the only Mandour left.

He wouldn't sell it if his life depended on it.

He's very loyal to the wishes of his ancestors.

Why? Are you interested in buying?

Is there a reason why your husband uses his mother's maiden name?

Yes.

The most recent offer was seven and a quarter million dollars.

Could Benedict's loan associate bat an eye?

It would be almost immoral to let the bulldozers get at all this.

Perfect nature.

Could you picture it, Mrs. Mandour? Every hundred feet, a motor driven barbecue

with a high middle income housing package.

Why do you...

traffic in the supernatural?

It's one thing to rebel against urban development, but to believe in things that

science has disproven.

Disproven?

No, no. Merely not been able to prove.

Distinction is slight.

Nevertheless it's there.

And I've always been against any dogma or philosophy that says we must

discard or disbelieve in that which science cannot prove, computerize or tame.

Mrs. Mandour.

Supernaturally or otherwise we are all haunted.

Anyone who's lived in this past century...

this last week...

cannot escape being haunted.

For some of us, it's a mass haunting.

An all pervading spector of guilt.

Or futility, or alienation that we suffer collectively.

For others the haunting is more private and more terrible

because the ghosts are ours alone and we recognize them.

Sometimes it takes so little to free ourselves of our ghosts.

And if my believing in another man's haunting helps to free him...

does it matter whether science calls his agony hallucinatory or real?

Grim, isn't it?

- Effective? - Shhh.

Mrs. Mandour.

What did you see in that chamber last night?

What did I imagine I saw?

- Blood-splashed apparition.. - Did you see her, Mr. Orion?

Her?

No, but I saw the effect she had on you.

What did she want you to do?

Lend her a quarter for the powder room.

- Mr. Orion. - Mr. Mandour.

Our housekeeper, Paulina.

Do you mind if she remains during our consultation?

She's only been with us two months, but her concern for me is very real.

And I'd like her to see for herself that you're not a charlatan.

Is this the first time we've met?

Perhaps I was among those who tried to touch your sleeve.

The day you rode into my village.

Sierra De Cobre.

Charlatan?

You could not exorcize the bleeding ghost.

There was no ghost at the mission of Sierra De Cobre.

My own child once was splashed by the black blood of it.

Water.

Thickened with sugar, colored with soot. A sot for the tourists.

The people of Sierra De Cobre had faith in you.

We expected you to rid our mission of its horror.

If you'd merely failed in that, we would have forgiven you.

But to cast suspicion on us...

To say that one of us would murder an American...

Some of us would rather believe in the supernatural, Mr. Orion.

Ghosts can be less frightening than crime.

Or madness.

Mr. Mandour, do you want to believe that these

calls come from the realm of the supernatural?

Vivia's afraid that they're the hallucinations...

of a blind mad man.

No.

She hides her fear under that...

incredible tranquility of hers.

But at odd times, she weeps.

As only someone...

who loves someone can.

I hear...

Paulina going to her...

and calming her.

Somehow.

Her fear is not entirely groundless, Mr. Orion.

My father went mad the night I was born.

And some strains of madness are inherited.

Then, of course...

she's never heard this phone ring.

Nor has Paulina.

Mr. Mandour, I don't feel there's anything supernatural about these calls.

Again?

He will try to persuade you that someone is trying to break your mind.

And your heart.

To save his face...

and his lucrative reputation.

He will cry trickery here.

As he cried murder...

at Sierra De Cobre.

I could have saved you a great deal of expense and hope...

if I'd had known that you were going to ask Mrs. Mandour to call on him for help.

Your medium has no psychical powers.

He cannot help you.

No one can.

The haunted must deal with their ghosts...

alone.

Will your guest be staying for lunch, Mr. Mandour?

I do not claim psychical powers, Mr. Mandour.

As an architect I've always specialized in the restoration of old...

forsaken houses.

And in some of these houses I've seen and heard things no one has ever proven...

or disproven.

The mission at Sierra De Cobre might have been haunted...

but I saw and felt nothing that could convince me of it.

So, I suggest that an autopsy be performed on the so-called victim.

Because she was an American...

and a school teacher...

the authorities acted.

She'd been poisoned.

By sugar water colored with soot.

By an overdose of a hallucinogenic drug called lawaska or yage.

Did they find the murderer?

No.

Mr. Mandour.

I've told you this because I need your trust...

and your rationality and your cooperation not your...

Not my blind faith.

Then I'm not being haunted.

I am going mad.

Take her out of the house. Walk with her.

She'll be alright now, Mr. Mandour.

Sounded like someone locked inside a coffin.

Someone not dead.

Like the nightmares my mother used to have.

Could this be a trick, too?

Or is my mother trying to drive me mad?

Drink this.

It will help.

This lid hasn't been opened for years and years.

The nails are buried in the paint. I can feel it.

Could someone manufacture this, Mr. Orion?

No.

Or could someone enter my mother's burial chamber?

And dial the code number that only my mother knew.

The code is recorded on the cross hanging in the chamber.

Anyone looking for it could find it.

Then if not my mother, who?

Who would want me mad?

I understand the current market value of the Mandour

estate is seven and a quarter million dollars.

- If you were declared insane... - I have no heirs.

Other than my wife, Mr. Orion.

You haven't answered my question.

Was that pounding a trick, too?

No.

That pounding was a genuine psychical disturbance.

Then my mother is trying to drive me mad.

- Mr. Mandour... - Would you tell my wife...

I'd like to speak to her.

Alone.

I heard her pounding the way she did when we...

locked her down there.

You see why I grew so angry when I found that you'd called in Mr. Orion.

I was afraid he'd distress you.

And he has.

He's stirred up that childish nightmare.

It wasn't. It was real. I saw her last night.

She wasn't whole.

She was half born.

Half dead.

She told me I had to...

Tell me...

Why did she come now?

So suddenly after so much time.

What do you suppose she was waiting for?

She said...

sometimes they need help.

They need the strength of someone living.

Who sang you the medieval tune?

Mr. Orion?

Only romantics...

and old children...

believe in ghosts.

And murderers.

Only those that get caught.

Well...

Well if it's Mr. Orion's strength that she needs,

we'll have to find a way to deprive her of it.

Do you live in that?

Yes.

I've been staring at it.

- It's a house. - I know.

That lady lying there told me it was haunted.

She hoped to scare me away.

Is it haunted?

Not on a regular basis.

I like haunted houses.

Have you ever wandered through one?

Yes.

Did you break in through the cellar window?

I didn't have to.

The doors were hanging open like...

like eyelids that no one had bothered to put a penny on.

Would you like to spend an evening in a haunted house?

Yes.

Um, if your husband wouldn't mind.

I'm not married.

Well, I've been invited to a party at one Friday night.

I'll pick you up at 8 o'clock.

Right here.

Right here?

Mr. Orion!

Is that you?

Is it?

Nelson Orion.

Right here.

You look too complacent this afternoon.

Someone may have to kill me.

Or at least try.

You're referring to one of them, I trust?

Them?

Your fettered friends. The psychical phenomenon set.

You know I find it suspect when a lady feels compelled

to disparage a thing she doesn't believe in.

No, I was...

deferring to Paulina.

The Mandour's housekeeper.

Why should she have to kill you?

To keep me from giving strength to something...

half born, half dead.

Sometimes the sun sets so suddenly.

Mr. Orion.

Is there something I can do to help?

Do you think you could suspend your disbelief in the supernatural?

Just for the sake of argument.

Let's start with the sobbing telephone.

The sobbing telephone?

- Was a trick? - Mmhmm.

I knew it had to be.

No self-respecting ghost would be caught dead using one of the devil's own inventions.

Mrs. Mandour was making the calls.

The housekeeper.

The private line had a third extension hidden in the library.

Well, it was Vivia Mandour who ordered the installation.

I checked with the telephone company.

Did you have her little vile of black magic analyzed?

I've seen it work.

Instant serenity.

Probably the raw essence of some tranquilizing root juice.

Well, I'm disappointed.

I'd hoped it was one of those hallucinogenic mind-expanding drugs.

Why, Ms. Finch, what an unholy little hope.

Well, it would have explained the hallucination she suffered in the burial chamber.

That wasn't a hallucination.

Only Vivia Mandour saw it.

And the pounding in the window seat?

All of us heard that. Not only Vivia Mandour.

Well, it could have been a mechanical device hidden that

someone could've operated from another part of the house.

Only Vivia Mandour.

She's the one person who's always been present.

The one recipient of every psychical disturbance

that's occurred since the genuine haunting began.

The wind.

The apparition. The...

pounding.

Henry Mandour isn't being haunted.

I never did believe any red-blooded American mother ghost would haunt her own son.

I'm convinced that Louise Mandour isn't haunting anyone.

She died a natural death. Five doctors certify to that fact.

She died smiling.

Louise Mandour has no reason to be haunting Vivia.

She'd have to have a desperate reason.

Ghosts don't haunt out of whimsy, Mrs. Finch.

They're either to noble or to evil to indulge in...

mere mischief.

I say there's no ghost at all except in that girl's very guilty conscience.

There is a ghost.

But whose?

If the Mandour's housekeeper feels she has to kill

you, it's because she's afraid of you, Mr. Orion.

Not something half born, half dead.

Human being don't murder out of whimsy.

I think you'd better find out what it is she doesn't want you to find out.

Mr. Orion, I know how you feel about helping people who are haunted.

And I admire you for that.

If you were just looking for more of an adventure

I'd say go ahead and get yourself hurt.

But you aren't.

And there aren't too many of us in this world

that care about the suffering of strangers.

Still...

Still I can't help feeling that there are some things that...

no one should...

I'll be careful, Mrs. Finch.

Mr. Mandour asks if you will see him at this hour?

Simply to say goodbye.

Mrs. Mandour will bring him.

Mr. Orion?

I'll be alright, Mrs. Finch.

Well, I'll just leave my door a little bit open.

Mr. Mandour.

Mr. Orion.

I regret this intrusion in the dead of night.

It's quite alright.

Sit, Vivia.

I couldn't leave without saying goodbye.

And thanking you.

You don't owe me anything, Mr. Mandour.

You're wrong, Mr. Orion.

I owe you a great deal.

I needed a justifiable reason to rid myself of that estate.

You gave me that reason.

When you proved my mother...

is haunting me.

Now, Mrs. Mandour. Tell him now, or you'll never tell him.

And you'll be haunted for the rest of your life.

Tell me what?

The ghost hasn't been haunting you, Henry.

You?

Yes.

Why should my mother haunt you?

It isn't your mother.

It's the woman who was murdered.

In the mission of Sierra De Cobre.

The American school teacher.

I was born in Sierra De Cobre.

My father was an American dreamer who came there to...

dream.

So, it was up to my mother to earn money for bread.

Or beg for it.

We earned it by guiding tours to the mission to see the bleeding ghost.

I would lead the tours down into the catacombs

and my mother would be hiding there.

She'd moan and splash some...

sugared water colored with soot.

And then...

my mother discovered...

an hallucinogenic drug called lawaska or...

[Wage].

A few drops of it and the tourists saw...

all the horror or beauty they wanted to see.

But, for some reason...

it didn't have enough effect on the school teacher...

and she refused to pay us.

So, my mother gave her more and more and...

An overdose makes you go mad...

before it kills you.

When she went mad...

we became frightened.

So, my mother locked her in one of the little tombs...

and we ran away.

You were a child, Vivia.

Why should she want to haunt you?

Mr. Orion?

Would you help my wife?

Mrs. Mandour, last night in the burial chamber...

the school teacher told you to expose your mother to the Sierra De Cobre authorities.

But, I can't.

Help!

Help!

Help!

Help!

Help!

Help!

Help!

Help!

Mr. Orion?

Mama.

Do you recognize that sobbing, Mr. Mandour?

I was the one who told...

Paulina about the telephone.

Vivia.

You didn't know that...

she was going down there and making those calls.

I knew.

And you let her?

That day when I got back from that business trip and found her...

in the house.

She told me she paid the servants five thousand dollars to disappear.

That it was worth it to be alone with me...

and you.

That's why she...

pretended to be a housekeeper.

She didn't want anyone in the house...

but the three of us.

She'd been a long time in searching for me.

She wanted to enjoy my...

good fortune...

in marrying so well.

She'd read all about it in the newspapers.

Why didn't you tell me at once?

She said if I did...

she'd kill you.

You shouldn't have believed her.

- You should have... - Mr. Mandour.

Haven't you ever been afraid of somebody?

She started giving me the drug.

The sweet medicine she used to give me when I was a little girl.

I stood by while she made all of those telephone calls.

They were supposed to frighten you into selling the Mandour estate.

I thought...

fear was better than death.

It isn't.

It's only slower.

Go back to your home, Henry.

No.

Mr. Orion can turn us over to the police.

No.

Please.

There's nothing you can do at the moment.

Please.

Is there someone here who can take me there?

I will.

The car keys, Mr. Orion.

Do you know who tried to kill you?

I tried to tell her the school teacher had come for us, but she...

only took me into the library and gave me drugs to calm me.

I suppose American school teachers have better things to do than light the stars.

Will you let me help you?

You'll tell the police it was an accident?

She begged to be taken to the mission.

She would pay anything, she said, to see the bleeding ghost.

School teacher.

Parched in the heart.

Was it wrong...

to put a few drops of cooked illusion on her tongue?

We didn't want to kill her.

Tell her that.

She will believe you.

Ask her to show a little mercy.

Just a little.

Just for my daughter.

The golden one.

Then I'll ask.

I'll beg them.

Have you ever witnessed anything so excessive?

She's never begged for anything. When I was I child she'd

grab me by the throat and scream, lie, deceive, beguile but never beg.

When my father finally took me out of that black boil called Sierra De Cobre...

I was asleep...

on his lap when we crossed the border.

And I woke up in his country.

But you went back to her when you grew up.

No.

She wanted me, so she came and took me.

Whenever she wanted anything, she simply took it.

Well, you've uncovered worse than a prank, Mr. Orion.

Turn us over to the police and let justice collect whatever payments are due.

What are you going to do with me?

Will you let me help you?

To escape?

To escape what?

- The police? - The police.

It isn't the police I'm worried about.

No. You do not come from Sierra De Cobre.

You do not know what they do to you for stealing

a cup of milk to feed a starving child.

They'll show you more mercy than she will.

She?

- The ghost of the woman you murdered. - Ghost?

I've never seen a ghost.

I have seen the police.

What do you think happened outside in the car?

The break slipped.

And the locked doors?

Let me go.

That school teacher wants her murder avenged.

And she won't stop haunting you until you've confessed to it and paid for it.

- Let me take you to the police. - No.

Find some other way.

There is no other way.

Alright.

I can't do anything more than...

beg.

And I can't do anything worse.

I'll bring your car to the door.

A wounded deer leaps highest.

Mama!

You can take me to the police now, Mr. Orion.

Would you please carry my mother's body to the car, Mr. Orion.

Mr. Orion.

Mr. Mandour asked me to go up to the sitting room with him

and the moment we got there, he ripped the telephone out.

He asked me to tell you I saw him do that.

Was there a mechanical device in the window seat?

Did she...

Did she deliberately drive off?

No.

I think for a moment she...

contemplated trying to escape, but...

only out of habit.

I think she was ready to face at least a little reality.

How?

It must have been an accident.

I refuse to believe in all ghosts, especially those of American school teachers.

No, no the school teacher this time.

Her mother was in the car with her.

Paana.

Even more possessive in death than she was in life.

Whenever she wanted something, she simply took it.

It's the dot of dawn.

The city council expects you at 8:30 and don't tell

me you're still too busy with prank phone calls.

No, Ben.

The prank is over.

That's all it was, huh?

Just a prank.

Well, apparently there was a wee bit more to it than that, Mr. Sloan.

But it needn't worry people who don't believe in such things.

Come into the house. I'll buy you breakfast.