Original subtitles

What does it take to turn a skeptic into a believer?

I couldn't control my own body Mark and Rebecca Spencer are about to learn the

hard way It was about five or six seconds of sheer terror their dream

house turns into a nightmare

When they discover its horrific past hearing all those voices just really

changed my life 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

What's wrong?

I saw something.

A ghost.

Monticello, Arkansas 2005 For the past 18 years,

mark spencer has been a department chairman at a university in oklahoma but

he's interviewing for a new position at the university of arkansas i ended up

coming out here for the interview rebecca and the boys came with me and we

found the town charming and i was really drawn to the sense of history here look

at that one while out walking one afternoon a large mansion catches

rebecca's attention we just looked at it in almost disbelief that a house like

that existed because it was so unique.

If we're going to move here, I want that house.

I was rather drawn to Monticello in a somewhat mysterious way, I suppose.

I could have stayed where I was, which would have been safe. I would have made

more money.

But I just really felt drawn to the town.

The following day, Mark accepts the job.

Rebecca is thrilled. She can now pursue her dream house.

That afternoon, they pay a visit to the owner.

I wanted that house. Short of the devil walking out the front door, I was gonna

buy it.

It was all kind of...

gloomy and eerie.

After getting a close look at the house, I was having some serious

second thoughts about trying to buy it because it seemed to be in such a

dilapidated state.

But what Mark doesn't realize is that this house is not dead.

It's very much alive.

The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out

without mixture into the cup of his indignation. And he shall be tormented

with fire and brimstone.

I think the idea that frightened me was that whoever owned this house would be

listening to such a radio program in the middle of the afternoon.

I was a little bit afraid of what the owner was going to be like.

I was glad that nobody answered the door.

This place looks like a money pit to me.

Although the house is in disrepair, there's something about it that still

fascinates Rebecca.

I think he was trying to discourage me, but it didn't work.

I still wanted the house. It didn't matter.

It didn't really matter what he said.

The Spencers ask everyone they know about the house on North Main Street,

hoping someone can lead them to the owner.

We thought maybe we could go to a real estate agent, and the real estate agent

could approach the owner and see whether the owner might be interested in an

offer. We are interested in a particular house. Great.

It's the one on the corner of North Main and Oakland.

You mean the Allen house?

Hasn't anyone told you? It's haunted.

I just figured, you know, it's a small town.

Every small town has a haunted house.

And she just said, well, you know, that's not the kind of house you want to

talk about.

It's not for sale or anything, and the woman that owns it would never sell it

anyways.

I'm sorry, but I can't help you with that house.

I didn't immediately assume that there was something weird about the house. No,

I was more inclined to think there was something weird about the real estate

agent.

In the meantime, Mark investigates the haunted history of the Allen House.

He wonders if the rumors are true.

I did an internet search one day, just, you know, typed in Allen House,

Monticello, Arkansas, and a whole bunch of websites came up, and they were all

about... paranormal activity associated with the house. And apparently the house

had a reputation for paranormal activity for over half a century.

The house was built in 1906 for Joe Lee Allen, one of the wealthiest businessmen

in Arkansas.

Allen had three daughters.

Liddell, the middle child, was apparently his favorite.

Liddell Allen got married when she was 19.

The marriage didn't last.

Liddell moved back to her childhood home where she lived with her mother.

It was there that she committed suicide on Christmas night, 1948.

No one knew why.

Hello?

I got a call from the owner of the house.

And she said that she understood that I wanted to buy her house.

She said that she would have to meet us.

And after she met us, she would decide whether she would consider talking about

selling the house.

Mark and Rebecca will need to wait several weeks until the owner returns

from an out-of-town trip.

But in the meantime, they often visit the Allen house, anticipating the day

they can finally go inside.

Are we really?

Maybe. Definitely.

Oh, that must be Miss Marilyn.

I saw a woman sitting in the window, and she looked like she was sitting at a

desk maybe, reading or writing a letter.

Come on, guys, let's go. We don't want to activate the neighborhood. Watch.

I didn't want her to look and see us and then recognize us later and think, oh,

well, they were stalking the house.

But finally, the day comes.

Mark and Rebecca will step into the Allen house for the first time.

Welcome to Allen house.

I'm Mark. We spoke on the phone.

I definitely anticipated some sort of magic when I walked in the front door,

and it felt that way. It felt like I was walking into something that was even

better than I had imagined.

The lady who owned the house, had a lot of nice things.

So it looked good, but it also felt good.

I had a good feeling about the house. It felt warm.

The second floor isn't in such good shape.

This is the master bedroom.

Is this the room that overlooks the street?

Yes.

I immediately could see that this was the second story room in which we had

seen the woman in the window.

And what was surprising was that we couldn't get into the room because the

room was packed full of furniture and boxes.

You must have done a lot of heavy lifting to get these boxes in here.

We saw you sitting at the front window just a few days ago.

I haven't been in this room for months.

I figured that my wife and the kids and I had all experienced some sort of

common optical illusion.

Maybe it was a ghost.

I'm sure you've heard by now that this house is haunted.

We don't believe in that sort of thing.

Oh, but it's true.

This house is haunted.

She told Mark that he would hear lots of stories about it, but not to worry,

because she had had the house exercised.

When I first moved in here, I could hear the ghost talking constantly.

They don't talk as much now.

My response to that was that, well, she was just probably a little crazy. And I

wanted to be polite, and after all, I was trying to buy her house. So I just

kind of went along and said, oh, that's really interesting.

Well, we've got to be going.

We've got to pick our son up from school. But thank you so much for

showing us your beautiful home.

Glad you like it. I think the house likes you, too.

That's when she first came out and said that she was thinking of selling her

palace and that God must have brought us to her because we were the types of

people that she would want to sell her palace to.

But yes, I think I'm supposed to do this.

She said that she was surprised to find herself saying that because she never

thought she would sell the house.

But she had a feeling about me and Rebecca.

She said that...

For some reason, she felt that we were meant to own it. Done.

Oh, my goodness. I have to hug you.

But little do they know, they're moving into a house with a very dark past.

We felt that the house needed to be saved and that we were the ones to save

it.

Perhaps Mark and Rebecca were chosen to own the house.

But just what were they chosen for?

Soon

after

the Spencer family moves in, Monticello residents start showing up, hoping to

get a first-hand look at the infamous haunted house.

We heard that you were letting people come in to see the haunted house.

They would show up at the door, and they would say, hey, we want to come and see

inside.

And I'm like, well, I don't know who told you you could come inside my house,

but you can't. What, do you have a stranger come into your house and look

around? No.

Sorry. I just knew right from the start, when the kids started showing up at the

door and then later adults showing up at the door, that the house was of interest

to everybody, and there was no way I was going to be able to just

Say go away and don't come back.

In the following months, the Spencers concentrate on renovating the historic

house. Have you been at this long?

I just started, actually. I convinced Lauren to take the kids.

We did most of the work ourselves because we enjoy hands-on projects, but

also for the financial reasons.

Taking on the project and hiring someone to do every little part of it would have

just been too costly.

Can you run up to the attic real quick and grab your screwdriver?

No problem.

I was working 50 to 60 hours a week at the university, and then every spare

moment I had, I was at home working on the house.

I don't think that I could have worked as hard as I did on the house if I

wasn't so much in love with the house.

While Mark loves the house, he's also mystified by it.

The attic, in particular, holds great mystery.

I was fascinated with the attic. In a way, I loved the attic, but I also was

afraid of it. And I can't give you a rational explanation as to why I was

afraid of it, but right from the start, right after we moved into the house, I

was somewhat afraid of it.

Mark's uneasiness grows.

Someone or something is watching him.

One of the little things that I found in the attic was half of a photograph of an

infant, and on the back of it was enough of an inscription to determine that it

said Miss Liddell. And I wondered, why would anybody tear a photograph of a

baby in half?

But then, something unusual catches his eye.

I stood there kind of mesmerized because it was such an interesting play of light

and shadow, I thought.

I was trying to figure out where the light was coming from and how my shadow

was getting cast all the way around the other side of the attic.

And then what was really strange was that when I moved, my shadow didn't

move.

And I thought, oh, OK, well, I've been working too much.

At the time, I was just determined really not to think much about it.

I figured, well, there must be some explanation. I just don't have it at the

moment.

But who was this mysterious Liddell?

The next day, Rebecca follows up and discovers that this woman grew up in the

house and later died of an overdose at the age of 54.

The only thing I really understood about Liddell from the newspaper was her

obituary. That said the most about her. It really said that she was a very well

-loved woman who cared for everyone but herself.

I heard four very heavy footsteps above me in the attic.

I was absolutely certain that someone had snuck in the house and was hiding

out up there.

After hearing footsteps in the attic, Rebecca believes an intruder has broken

in.

But shortly after the sounds of footsteps disappear.

It made me pause. It made me go back and think about some of the stories people

had said about the house. Things I had disregarded, things I thought were

silly, now became a reality to me. Those became real stories because now they

were my stories.

In the following days, the Spencers discuss a more concrete problem with

their new house.

We have got to hire someone to come in and insulate the walls.

The electric bill is getting higher and higher every month.

We were quickly going broke doing these renovations.

Paint and wallpaper and lumber, all of these things are pretty expensive.

Oh, we got a letter from those ghost hunter people.

I'll take a letter any day over people just showing up on the front porch.

I had to turn another one away today.

She must have been 90, and she was pushier than the kids, as if she expects

us to give guided tours.

Well... Why don't we?

I mean, Halloween is coming up. We could charge five bucks a head. It would help

pay for the renovations.

When Rebecca came up with the idea of giving some tours at Halloween, I

thought, well, it can't hurt.

On Halloween night, the Allen House opens its doors to the public for the

first time.

You're not going to believe this.

The line stretches all the way around the block.

I thought it would be great if 50 people showed up and paid to tour the house.

And we had 600.

Welcome to Allen House.

Some of the people, when they came up on the porch to wait for their turn to go

in the house, were so scared that they were shaking.

They thought something was going to just jump out and get them, and they were

going to have a real, true haunted experience.

The Spencers have hired a group of local students to lead the tours.

All right, first group, follow me, please.

One of those students is Shane Curry.

That first group was really more interested in, like, the ghost stories.

That's what they really came for.

You've all heard about Liddell Allen, who supposedly haunts this house.

This is the room where she killed herself.

Right over there.

It was Christmas Eve, 1948.

Caddy Allen, Liddell's mother, was hosting her annual Christmas party.

Liddell was, of course, in attendance.

Good to see you.

We'd heard some accounts of the Christmas party of Liddell seeming a lot

more somber than she usually was.

By the end of the party, Liddell appeared disheartened, but no one could

understand why an otherwise cheerful woman seemed so depressed.

At one point late in the evening she prepared herself a plate of hors d

'oeuvres and a glass of punch and she went upstairs

Late

that very same night Liddell decided to end her own life

She suffered for about a week before she finally passed away her mother came home

and sealed up this room No one came in here for the next 37 years until the

Allen family sold the house That's when the ghost stories began You

don't actually believe those stories do you

In the middle of the story, the lights flickered and a shirt flew out of the

closet.

Nice trick.

Did you break that up with some wires or something? I didn't do that.

Everyone looked at me like, you know, how did you do that? That was cool.

I'm like, I don't know how that just happened.

Yeah, right.

See for yourself.

And I'm freaking out because I don't know why that just happened. He goes and

he looks and there's nothing in there but a pile of clothes.

People were definitely freaked out once they realized that that was not, you

know, a gimmick, that we hadn't planned for a shirt to fly out the closet.

Some of them wanted to go ahead and leave. Some of them wanted to hurry up

and finish the tour.

It is obvious that Liddell does not care for the idea of strangers touring her

home.

And she'll make sure they'll never come back.

a simple tour of the haunted allen house has turned into much more than anyone

planned thank you for

coming thank you thank you for coming i saw her she's still here who liddell

we had an older lady on the tour who came up to me as she was leaving the

house and and told me that when she was on the second floor she saw a lady in a

Victorian dress.

She was saying she thought she had seen Liddell.

Why is she so sad?

I don't know.

People who came on the tour, they all wanted to know what our ideas were or

what we knew about Liddell's suicide.

And the fact is, nobody knew why she had committed suicide.

Thank you so much for opening your house to us. I'll never forget this.

I saw her, I saw her.

After the excitement of Halloween, the Spencers returned to their routines,

still working hard to make the house their own.

But someone...

is intent on distracting them.

I put the needle down, it stopped instantly.

And what's odd about that is that it's wound up with a spring.

So if someone had actually wound it up and you were to put the needle down, it

would either play or it would just slowly wind itself out. But it stopped

instantly, so it wasn't wound at all.

Rebecca goes upstairs to tell her husband what she saw.

But something stops her dead in her tracks.

It was controlling me. I had to feel what it wanted me to feel.

Rebecca!

It was about five or six seconds of almost sheer terror.

What's wrong?

I saw something.

A ghost.

It's as if Liddell is trying to tell her something.

But what?

I still wasn't really convinced, I guess, for myself.

It wasn't that I thought that she was crazy, but I suppose I just wanted to

see it for myself.

Come on, honey.

I think maybe it's time we let one of those paranormal groups come and

investigate.

I wanted concrete evidence of paranormal activity before I was going to be able

to say, yeah, this house is haunted.

The Spencers invite a team of paranormal experts from Louisiana Spirits to

conduct an investigation of the Allen house.

Among the investigators is Bess Maxwell.

You could feel the history of that house, and you could feel...

You could feel the house. I don't know that I've ever been any other place that

you could just feel the spirit of the house like the Allen house.

We really didn't understand what the protocol was for having paranormal

investigators in one's home.

So we sent the kids off to friends' houses for the night. And Rebecca and I

decided that we would go out.

and leave the house to the investigators.

We've never left anyone alone in the house before.

Don't worry.

We do this kind of thing all the time. We'll be fine.

Rebecca Spencer's concerns were she always felt that the Allen house had its

own distinct personality.

She elected the house as being almost a person in and of itself.

And she was just kind of worried that, as strange as it sounds, the house would

not like us being there.

You ready?

I guess so.

That night, I felt that something was a little off.

Mark felt something was a little off.

We just weren't sure what to do, so we chose to leave. But I think we both knew

right from the start that we shouldn't do that.

Are you all right?

I felt a little dizzy coming down the stairs. I didn't think too much of it at

the time. I thought, well, maybe I need to eat or something.

But I did, I felt like the air was suddenly charged in some way.

I'm okay, come on.

But Mark is far from okay.

Perhaps it's a warning of events yet to come.

After Mark and Rebecca leave for the evening, the investigators continue

their attempt to solve the Allen house mystery.

The attic has always been the focal point of a lot of the activity in the

house.

Bess uses an EMF meter to pick up on electronic frequencies.

When it lights up, it suggests the presence of spiritual activity.

I thought that one of the other investigators was coming up behind me

and had just said her name.

She had not been behind me.

So where the voice came from, I don't know.

Meanwhile, Rachel Ellis sets up a camera in the master bedroom.

I could hear a lady singing really softly, but there was nobody in there

with me.

Maybe nobody inside.

It was like lightning all around the house.

Everything is dead except the audio recorders. All electricity went out.

There was no electricity whatsoever, but our recorders were still on.

I saw sparks outside just before the lights went out. Must have been a

transformer.

The neighbors still have power.

Then we realized that, well, it could have been the transformer because we

were the only house with no electricity.

The houses next door on either side, the house across the street, their lights

were on.

So it was just us.

I better call Rebecca.

We were just a few blocks from the house when my phone rang. It was one of the

investigators. My immediate feeling was I knew it.

I knew we shouldn't have left the house.

What happened? Come on, follow me. I want to show you something.

Here, be careful.

Watch the wire.

Without any probable explanation, a branch has fallen on the power lines.

I'm not a big believer in coincidences, so it just seemed too odd to just say,

well, a limb just happened to fall off the tree just as we were about to begin

our investigation.

It was just too strange.

It's perfectly still. There's no breeze. It's not raining.

The tree limb is a big, leafy limb, or what appears to be a perfectly healthy

tree. Since most of the equipment that the investigators use is electrical, the

blackout effectively ends the investigation.

A few days later,

Bess Maxwell returns with surprising news.

We taped this a few seconds after the power went out.

During their investigation, they record several disembodied voices known as

electronic voice phenomena.

What happened? I don't know.

Everything is dead except the audio recorders. I saw sparks outside just

before the lights went out. Must have been a transformer.

Not a transformer.

Not a transformer.

Not a transformer.

Hearing all those voices just really freaked me out.

I've never heard anything like this.

And there are more.

Hearing all the EVPs that LA Spirits had recorded during the investigation really

changed my life, I think.

For me, the truly amazing thing about this is that the voice seems to be

responding to us in the moment as if it hears what we're saying and it's trying

to talk to us.

A lot of the things that we do deal with residual hauntings.

which are not intelligent hauntings. It's just like something playing over

and over and over on a tape recorder.

You can get EVPs from that too, but this was not that.

This was an intelligent haunting.

This was a spirit in the house that had an agenda.

This spirit wants something from us.

What does it want?

Well, that's what we have to find out.

We thought if maybe if we could reveal why Liddell killed herself and what was

going on with her, maybe then she would be done with her earthly business.

The Spencers continue to be haunted by unanswered questions about the suicide

of Liddell Allen Bonner.

It's a mystery they cannot ignore.

Marcus tried to understand things rationally.

But now, his instincts take over.

One Saturday morning, I woke up and I immediately felt the compulsion to go to

the attic.

I was arguing with myself that there wasn't any reason to go to the attic

because I had scoured the attic many times and I was convinced that I had

found everything that there was to be found.

But this voice in my head just was nagging me, you've got to go to the

attic.

I looked down at that opening, and at first I didn't see anything.

Still there's, you know, like this voice in my head telling me, look closer.

It was almost like a hand was on my shoulder pushing me down.

I opened up their large brown envelope, and it was full of smaller white

envelopes, and these were all letters.

They were all postmarked in 1948, and they were all addressed to Liddell Allen

Bonner. They were all written to her, obviously, in the last year of her life.

I thought that I was dreaming. I really was waiting to wake up.

Mark is one step closer to solving the mystery, as he's about to discover...

The shocking truth of Miss Liddell Allen.

After

trying

to decipher the paranormal disturbances in the house, Mark is led to the attic.

and discovers a stash of hidden letters.

The truth behind Liddell's suicide is finally before him.

Mark?

Mark?

blinked fast several times, and it was Rebecca coming toward me.

What's wrong?

I think that the transition between seeing Liddell and then seeing Rebecca,

I think that it was meant that way. I think that Liddell was probably using

Rebecca's energy to show herself to me.

I know why Liddell killed herself.

Later that afternoon, Mark and Rebecca read through all 82 letters, hoping to

unveil the mystery behind Liddell's secret past.

Obviously, these were letters from a man who was madly in love with Liddell.

You certainly are as near Liddell I knew years ago as you could possibly be.

Liddell's admirer was a gentleman named Prentiss Hemingway Savage.

Prentice was vice president of Texaco Oil in 1948.

He lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

But he had grown up here in Monticello.

Liddell and Prentice dated as teenagers.

Years later, as adults, they rekindled their love.

Hello, Liddell.

But this time, something was different.

Prentice was married.

In July 1948,

Liddell arranged to meet Prentiss in Milwaukee.

It ended on a promise to spend the rest of their lives together.

Liddell returned home, and they began making plans through a series of

letters.

But then, Prentiss stopped writing.

Reality just got in the way, and this man couldn't leave his wife because he

couldn't accept the scandal that his wife would.

stir up in the newspapers because he was vice president of Texaco Oil.

And on Christmas night, 1948,

Liddell finally sealed her fate.

I think that she hoped that Prentiss would arrive, would show up, would

surprise her.

Michael, come on in.

The man she loved never arrived.

Her dreams were broken, and she gave up hope of ever being happy again.

I'm reading these letters full of these wild promises and declarations of love,

but I know how it ends.

She knew he wasn't coming back.

I felt sad for her, and at the same time, I felt a sort of happiness

that now we knew, and obviously she wanted us to know. We would not have

discovered those letters any other way. She had to have wanted us to know the

story.

She had nothing left, and she couldn't pretend anymore.

We'll make sure everybody knows that.

From the first moment we saw the house till now, all of it has felt like it was

destiny or some sort of fate that brought us to this town.

I really feel like we are where we're supposed to be.

What? I think I've experienced following my discovery of the letters is a greater

awareness of Liddell's presence.

I think that connection she made with me the day that I discovered the letters

has, you know, opened the sort of door, and there is a connection

between me and her.

Mark has no doubt that Liddell has chosen him to tell her story.

He decides to write a book about his experiences, the house, and the truth

behind the untimely death of Liddell Allen Bonner.