Original subtitles

In North Carolina, a local cemetery holds a deadly secret.

What if he really is seeing ghosts?

Bodies may lie in peace, but their spirits may be anything but restful.

And what if it doesn't stop?

What do we do then?

In America, there is real evil.

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

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

When they are opened, nightmares become reality.

Come on out!

Quit playing games!

Jamie Bruce and Aaron Pennington grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

A longtime couple, they decide to buy a house together in the historic

neighborhood of Jackson Acres.

It'll take some work to make it ours, but the foundation is solid, and the

neighborhood is great.

Yeah, this house was my first house. Nothing extravagant about it, but it was

a start, and it was near Jamie's family.

My vision for the house was...

being able to raise our children in the backyard and visualizing them being on

the swing set and playing and running around and laughing and riding their

bikes and calling it our home.

What do you think?

I think it's a home.

In the fall of 2008, the couple is settled in their new home with their two

children. One-year-old Lacey and three-year-old Mason.

And this one.

Baseball. Baseball.

What's that one? Aaron and Jamie enjoy their new neighborhood, but they have no

idea that mysterious neighbors will change their lives forever.

Almost every week, the family takes advantage of the local parks.

One in particular becomes a favorite.

Curiously, it's attached to a cemetery.

The cemetery is only a few houses over from my house and across the street, and

it's a very old cemetery, family-owned and kept up, and I believe it's as old

as Civil War time.

Go in. I'm going to check it out. Okay, we'll wait out here for you.

Jamie notices Mason seems preoccupied with something he sees and hears.

Mason, are you feeling okay?

I want to go home.

He wants to go home. Come on.

On weeknights, Aaron works the late shift as a manager

at a trucking company.

Sometimes he doesn't get home until dawn.

Good night, Dad.

I love you.

How do you want to talk to him?

Hey, any idea what time he'll be getting home?

I wish I knew.

Still waiting for two more trucks to come in. My work schedule is usually

kind of like a second and third shift combined.

You go in at 2, 3, but you don't really know when you're going to get home.

It puts a lot more responsibility on Jamie.

I miss him, and the kids miss him, and we just wished he could be home more.

Jamie settles in for another evening without Aaron.

But she and her children are not alone.

A few hours later, when Aaron comes home, he learns of his son's dream.

What was unusual about it was because this was totally out of the ordinary for

my son to make up something like this. What

are you doing awake? He wouldn't go back to bed until you got home.

The next morning, after Aaron and Mason leave the house, Jamie finds herself

experiencing the unexplained.

I went walking into the kitchen, and all the cabinet doors in the top

were opened.

My first instinct was, Maybe I had done this myself.

Don't really know why I would have left every single door standing wide open,

but that was my first instinct.

But still, in the back of my mind, it just didn't make sense.

Jamie tries to dismiss the experiences and goes about her routine.

Yeah, let me see those grubby hands of yours.

Oh, they're filthy.

Filthy, filthy. Other one.

All right, buddy.

I'm going to grab you a towel, okay?

But that soon proves to be impossible.

No, I don't want to go back there.

I had stepped out of the bathroom to grab a towel to get him out of the bath.

And as I stepped into the hall, he started having, like, a serious

conversation.

Mason, are you talking to someone?

And I kind of listened for a minute.

Couldn't really make out what my son was saying.

Mason, who are you talking to?

Gable.

Is Gable one of your toys?

Uh-uh. He's a man.

A man?

Uh-huh.

He was right here, but when he left... For the first time, Jamie begins to

worry.

Could Gable be more than a figment of her son's imagination?

Could her neighborhood or her house be haunted?

Mason, Mommy and I want to ask you something.

Where did you hear the name Gable?

Was it on TV or at school?

He told me.

Who told you?

Gable.

And I still kept thinking that maybe he was just imagining and he kept telling

me he was real. He promised he was real.

Honey, we know that Gable isn't a real person.

He's so real.

OK, well, if he's real, then where is he?

Gable's in the bedroom?

OK, well, why don't you go and get him? Tell him we want to talk to him.

My heart dropped a little bit at that moment when he said he's back there in

the bedroom.

And that's when I said, well, if he's back there, go get him.

Tell him I want to talk to Gable.

He really did walk back there.

and talked, said something.

Where's Gable?

Right here.

Gable's where?

Right here.

Well, if he's right there, then why can't I see him?

He's right where?

He continued to say over and over again, Mommy, he's real.

He's right here. He's standing right there. He sees you.

He's right here.

Can you ask Abel a question for me?

Ask him what five plus six is.

I knew that my son could not add.

He knew his ABCs and he knew his colors and he knew how to count, but he did not

know how to add.

Our mouths just dropped.

Oh, my gosh.

What do you think now? What are you supposed to believe in?

Do you believe your child now or not?

Jamie and Aaron are shocked that they may have a ghost lurking in the shadows

of their home and its target may be their son.

They kind of send some chills, chills up my back.

What if there is a ghost in here by the name of Gabriel and my son's telling

them the truth?

Their friend Pam Marsh is starting to believe it as well.

Stop, it's my turn.

I said stop it.

Mason, is Gable going to be joining us for dinner?

Her son's demeanor let us know that this was something very serious by the look

on his face.

Uh-uh, he has to work.

We questioned him, and the answers he gave us let us know that he really

believed this.

Mason, quit being silly and go get ready for dinner.

Come on, we can't play in here.

It was really odd that he believed so intensely.

I'm beginning to believe him.

Me too.

It was pretty weird.

And he was dead serious.

Miss Hamilton?

Yes. I'm Jamie, Mason's mother.

Of course. Good to see you again.

Seeking a rational explanation, Jamie consults Mason's preschool teacher.

Wow, he did very well. Listen, I know this may sound like an odd question, but

does the name Gable mean anything to you?

Gable?

No.

I don't think so.

Mason's been talking about someone named Gable, and I thought maybe it was

someone in your class or a character from a book you read to the children.

I've never heard the name Gable before.

It's an unusual name.

Maybe you heard it on TV.

He couldn't have gotten it from anywhere else, not even off of television.

He watched Elmo.

I mean, I don't know of anywhere else he could have come up with such a name.

I had to finally trust in my child and believe that he was definitely seeing

someone or something.

In the following days, Jamie is on high alert, watching for any signs that Gable

is real.

At times, I have felt like something was standing behind me and watching me.

I was a little unsure if my mom was overreacting or if something really was

watching me.

You had it in the back of your mind like something wasn't right.

Something felt out of place.

Seeking comfort from her friend Pam, Jamie is interrupted, this time, by

mysterious sounds.

I just don't know what to say to him anymore. I mean, he talks to Gable more

than he talks to me.

Please, you know Aaron.

He has an explanation for everything.

But he doesn't have to spend half the night here alone.

I think someone's in the house.

Shh, shh, shh.

Just hang on a second.

There was nothing there.

The kids were fast asleep.

There is something going on in this house, Aaron. I'm hearing noises.

There's loud noises. All right, just slow down.

It sounded like bike chains, like bike chains hitting the floor, and it was

loud, and I have no idea how the kids didn't wake up. Did you check the rest

of the house? Yeah, I did. I checked the rest of the house. Everything's fine. I

know I heard something coming out of that room.

I believe you did hear something, but it couldn't have been a chain falling. It

was probably just something in the heating system.

I myself always look for answers. If something's broken, I want to fix it. If

it's unexplained, I want to explain it. That's my, I guess, my thought process

is there's an explanation for everything.

Aaron never seemed overwhelmed.

He was just wanting me to understand that he's listening.

Jamie tries to convince herself there is nothing to fear.

That her home is a safe haven where she can be protected from the outside world.

But something wants her to feel otherwise.

I looked up at the monitor to check on the children and I saw smoke, real

thick smoke going from one side of the TV to the next.

I got up there and there was nothing there.

There was no smell, there was no smoke, nothing.

I called Aaron, and he said that if you saw smoke, then there

has to be an explanation as to why there was smoke.

Everything looks fine.

Maybe what you saw was static.

The camera could have picked up some kind of interference.

No, no. I know what I saw. It was smoke.

Maybe this was Gable. I thought in the back of my mind that it was possible

that there was something that was trying to communicate with me to let me know

that it is there and is present.

Oh, whatever it was.

It's over now. Nobody got hurt.

Let's let it go.

Call it a night.

Fine.

The children are staying in our room tonight.

Jamie, Aaron, and Mason are finally able to rest.

But their daughter, Lacey, is not.

And Jamie is terrified because she knows why.

What are we supposed to do?

My children are my world, and to have something that's scaring them or

bothering them is just devastating.

I'll stay out with her tonight.

And what if it doesn't stop?

What do we do then?

Jamie is now convinced that the entities seen by her children may not be

imaginary Never

heard my daughter scream like that.

She just kept looking like Like something was in there,

I mean she probably just had a bad dream

Of course, when Jamie told me what had happened, I said, did she have a

nightmare? And Jamie's like, no, this is different. She said, Pam, there was

actually fear in my little girl's eyes.

I don't believe in ghosts, but I don't know how else to explain it.

Stuff like this has been happening ever since Mason started talking to Gable.

What if he really is seeing ghosts?

Well, Aaron again works late.

Jamie tries to sleep unaware that Gable may not be the only entity haunting her

house

I

finally

braved up enough to pull the covers down, and there was nothing there.

When I heard the laugh, it was as loud as I'm talking right now and

only about two or three feet away from me.

And it was just

so real.

That's when I realized that this was real, that there was definitely

something in my house.

And at that point, I was terrified.

When Aaron returns home, he knows his family's life has dramatically changed.

We're all now in the living room, all together,

one big bedroom.

It's Aaron's turn to listen.

I start hearing this like three notes, same notes, same rhythm, over and over.

And I'm sitting there listening to it, and it don't stop.

It just don't stop. It goes on for like five minutes.

I'm thinking,

Maybe it's a little kid's little toy piano that was in the basement, or maybe

it's something in my closet. I don't know. I didn't know what it was. I'm

just trying to figure it out. What is this noise?

Arryn is determined to find an explanation.

But now he himself begins to wonder.

What if there isn't one?

And I'll listen, and sure enough, it was a piano playing, just plain as day,

and it sounded like it was in the next room.

What is it?

I searched the entire house.

I can't figure out where it's coming from.

It sounds like our old piano.

We used to have a piano in our home when we first moved there.

any sense first gable then a child's laughter now terrifying sounds

what could be next

i woke up to a

real muffled sound

It's like they heard us. We interrupted them.

What I had heard, 100%, I knew that there was no denying that.

Jamie and Aaron both realized they need help, and they need it fast.

Jamie and Aaron are horrified and confused by events occurring in their

North Carolina home.

Jamie has decided it's time to figure out what could be causing the bizarre

behavior.

I finally had to do some research and figure out how bad these things can

actually get.

I was bound and determined that I was not going to.

would get to that point but helpful information comes in a most unexpected

way we're back with best-selling author philip james mr james is a paranormal

researcher and investigator and he's written a new book called earthbound

spirits a lot of times from an unlikely source aaron learns for the first time

how they might deal with paranormal activity the expert had said that if

It knows that you're aggravated. It feeds off of that.

It's going to continue.

It's not going to stop.

Jamie learns that the most important thing she can do to rid her house of the

entity is to face her fear.

Mommy?

I'm sorry, sweetie. Did I wake you?

No. It was Gable.

He wants to play.

Is Gable here right now?

I decided to be strong. I was going to stand up for myself,

for my children, and for my home.

Gable, I need you to leave our house now.

It's time for Mason to go to bed, and you're keeping him awake.

I looked over that direction, and I told Gable that he needed to leave, that it

was time for our son to go to bed.

Going good In the following weeks the house remains quiet

and peaceful Jamie ignores her fears and reclaims her life

She has no idea that the entities in her home are changing their focus

from her children

Something had stepped on the back of my pants legs.

It startled me, but I ignored it.

As I go to get up the steps, I realized I forgot to cut the dryer on.

Something. grabbed the back of my calf i felt like it just wanted me to know that

it was still there at that point i lost it i knew then that it can get physical

what happens if it touched my children she called me hysterical she said

something you need to get home are you okay it bothered me to think that it's

okay if something can touch you that's that's a whole different ball game

Because if they could do that, what else can they do?

Stay out of the basement.

I'm on my way.

If

you're

here, I want to see you. I wanted to let it know, hey, this is my way of inviting

you.

Got the lights off, just me and you.

If you really want me to believe in you, come on out!

Quit playing games! I was so angry at it, I wanted to see it.

But the entity remains hidden.

Gable!

If you're in here, show yourself!

When Jamie's friend Pam Marsh learns of the heightened paranormal activity...

She enlists the aid of investigators Pam Nance and Ashley Field.

After reviewing the past events, they are puzzled until they suddenly make a

connection to the graveyard near the home.

The family had visited this cemetery on their property.

When they came back from the cemetery, shortly thereafter, the activity

started, which...

leads me to believe that they brought something back with them.

When the investigators arrive at the house, they find unusually high levels

of electromagnetic energy, signs that supernatural entities are indeed

present.

They decide to try to communicate with whomever or whatever is occupying the

house by videotaping an EVP session and record electronic voice phenomena.

Gable, are you here?

Once the EVP session started, you could feel an energy build in the room.

Are you here because of Mason?

Do you want to play with Mason?

I know there are others.

Who is here with you?

I very rarely hear voices with my naked ear on an investigation, but this

investigation was different.

The feeling in the room became just one of

complete uneasiness.

It was not going to get better. It was going to get worse.

Jamie, would you turn on the light?

It felt like a bubble was forming on the front of that mirror and pushing out a

very negative energy, and it was about to explode.

Paranormal investigators Pam Nance and Ashley Field cannot believe their eyes.

As they watch something try to emerge through a mirror in Jamie and Aaron's

home, an entity, they immediately decide they need to stop.

Many people believe that mirrors can actually act as a portal between our

world and the spirit world.

There have actually been reports of entities coming through mirrors.

I think there's something trying to get through.

At that moment in time,

Had I not stopped, I think the activity would have escalated on a level no one

had seen yet by what would have been brought in.

I knew immediately that I needed to do something before this bubble of

negativity exploded outwards into the room.

Investigator Ashley Field has come prepared for a purifying ritual.

The cleansing of the mirrors with this lemon-based water is a low country.

recipe to seal a portal.

The investigator knows that the power is not only in the recipe.

Cleansing is all about intent.

It's not a power that anybody gives you. It's all about your intentions, what

you're putting out there. If you're putting out good and you're wishing for

good and you want the bad gone and you're pushing away negative energy,

it's like getting away from bad people.

Now we just have to get rid of what's already here.

The sage will free the room of the spirits.

The investigator uses a Native American tradition known as smudging to purify

the air.

You start from the center of the room and you move outward, pushing all the

negativity out of the room.

You start in one room and you keep moving through each room.

You have to have a door or a window cracked prior to starting this process

so whatever's in there can leave.

Otherwise, you're just chasing it from room to room.

Next, she salts the property, a Christian tradition in the South.

Salt's used for its protective qualities.

It's a pure substance.

It also repels evil.

You start from the center of the room and you flick the salt forward.

The salt water I used was from an outgoing tide.

It's based on the same principle of baptism in the ocean.

You always baptize on an outgoing tide to pull away your sins and the negative.

With the cleansing complete, the investigators hope to be able to confirm

that the entities are gone.

They are not.

I typically take three photographs at a time. The first photograph was normal.

Second photograph, there was a very dark shadow coming down across the camera's

field of vision. The third photograph... clear again.

And at that exact same moment, we did get a spike on our EMF meter.

The investigators conclude there is only one other way to complete the cleansing

of the home.

They need to return to the place where the bizarre occurrences began.

Pam, come look at this.

When we went back to the cemetery, we were reading the grave markers, and

there was a grave for Gabriel.

Gabriel Jackson, 1838-1864.

He was the son of the original plantation owner.

He had been in the Civil War and had been killed in the Civil War.

The trauma of that sudden death is the perfect storm for a restless spirit.

We associated that Gabriel with the gable that the little boy was

experiencing. The investigators also learned that the spirit of the laughing

young girl taunting Jamie might also have a physical connection to the area.

In our research, we did find that there was a group of pawns behind the original

home place.

And the story goes that a young girl drowned there.

We suspect that the little girl may have been a slave on the original plantation.

She died a traumatic death, a sudden death.

As we've seen through other investigations, she may not realize that

she is deceased.

She may still think she's living.

She's still acting out the same lifestyle she was living before her

death. I feel like that this is still their land in their eyes, and

that's why they're still roaming around.

With the investigators now understanding the entities at hand, can they finally

free Jamie and her family from their paranormal nightmare?

For Jamie and Aaron, what began as a visit from their son Mason's imaginary

friend Gable has evolved into a paranormal experience for the entire

family.

Investigators have determined that more than one entity haunts the home.

While they now have an idea who these lost souls might be,

they know there is only one way to put them to rest.

Through the power of prayer.

Now I need you to do something.

I need you to say a blessing.

to complete the cleansing and to reclaim your house.

The homeowner should always be present when you do a cleansing.

It's their home. They have to take back ownership.

They need to be there with you. They need to reiterate and reinforce what

you're doing.

Because when you leave, it's just them again.

Kind of blessing.

Any kind.

As long as it's something you truly believe in. To effectively do a cleanse,

it has to be based on what the homeowner believes in.

our father who art in heaven

hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come

thy will be done on

earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily

bread

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom.

In the glory.

Forever.

Devil!

If you're in here, show yourself!

Amen.

They're gone.

Aren't they?

Nothing here can hurt you now.

It was a long night, but I really appreciate you all coming.

Hey.

Did you get any sleep? No, no sleep.

Thank you.

You have given me my home back.

We didn't do that. You did that. The power and the rituals came from you. And

if anything like this starts up again, just remember, you're strong enough to

stop it yourself.

Thank you. I was very thankful for having them come and to give me that

strength and to know that no matter what, I own that home. I knew.

By them telling me that I could do this, and that I was strong enough to do this,

that I could do it. And I was determined I was going to do exactly what they

said.

For Jamie, Aaron, Mason, and Lacey, their paranormal nightmare

is over.

Hey!

Oh, I missed you!

After the cleanse, it was like a huge burden lifted. Jamie was smiling more.

She felt validated.

It's kind of like, maybe we can pick up where we're left off.

You know, it's time to focus on other stuff.

It's OK.

Hey, hey, it's OK.

You ready?

Talking with the neighbors made me realize that we were not the only ones

experiencing this, and that it was the land, I believe, is where

it's all coming from.

Before I listened to the stories I've seen on TV, I've always just

automatically thought there's always an explanation.

Now that I've seen it and heard things, there has to be more. If you're closed

-minded to any idea, then the less you're ever going to learn.

I would tell any skeptic to be more open-minded.

You just need to listen.

Just listen.