Original subtitles

A million-dollar mansion on the coast of Florida is rumored to house a terrifying

ghost.

It felt like looking into the face of sheer evil.

Alive, he committed unspeakable atrocities.

Someone died from a hanging right there.

Dead, he continues his reign of terror.

You didn't want to turn your back. You didn't want to close your eyes for fear

of what might happen if you did.

I was terrified.

I was afraid for my children. I was afraid for myself.

Whatever was there was after me.

Will the family get out before it's too late?

In America, there is real evil.

It lurks in the darkest shadows and 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.

Among the waterways and marshes of the Escambia Bay in Pensacola, Florida,

stands a majestic million-dollar mansion.

In the summer of 2009, Jennifer Welburn and her two teenage daughters, Lauren

and Candace, bask in the beauty of their new home.

Before we moved to Florida, it was just the girls and I. I was a single mom

trying to raise them, put them both through school, take care of all of

their daily needs all by myself.

I was like, wow, this is really my house.

I was like, I'm dreaming. Somebody smack me and wake me up.

Hey, Jen.

You about ready to go?

I was until I came out here.

Pretty spectacular, doesn't it?

A few months earlier.

Jennifer and her high school sweetheart Jamie reconnected and got engaged.

Together, they moved into their dream house.

I found this beautiful home close to the water. It was the perfect family house

because there was plenty of room for the kids.

So, Lauren, how many times did that guy call you today?

When I first met Jamie, I absolutely loved him.

Twice. No, it was three times.

Like mother, like daughter.

Heartbreaker. He was really sweet, and you could tell he made Mom happy.

This is a guy that I can look up to as a dad.

I figured that we would live there happily ever after, but that's not how

it turned out.

It turns out the beauty of the house and the surrounding land mask a violent

history.

Pensacola, Florida is one of the oldest European settlements in North America.

By the mid-1800s, the native population had been completely overrun by new

landowners. Cotton plantations flourished, and slaves accounted for

nearly half of Florida's growing population.

You can imagine Escambia Bay being the waterway right on the property.

It was definitely used in slave trading.

Today... The horrors of the past are buried deep, but not dead.

Someone has never been able to let go of the land or the house.

Two weeks after moving into the house was when I actually noticed the first

signs of something strange going on.

I went upstairs and noticed that the pictures were hanging upside down on the

wall, as if that's the way we had placed them.

Initially,

I thought that the girls might be playing a prank on me.

Lauren?

So. I walked into my daughter's room.

Lauren!

And her windows were wide open.

Candace! The blinds were pulled up.

So, you know, the air condition is on.

Why are all the windows in Lauren's room open? She hasn't even been here all day.

I didn't open them.

Well, somebody opened them.

It wasn't me.

So I suppose you didn't flip the picture in the hallway either, huh?

Mom, what are you talking about?

Oh, forget it. Just please keep the windows closed, okay?

Okay.

I thought it was really weird, but I decided not to pay too much attention to

it, and I just put it to the side and tried not to think about it.

Over the following months...

Jennifer isn't the only one who senses something strange in the new house.

A few weeks after moving in, Lauren and Candace enjoy girl time at home while

their mom and Jamie are out.

The first time something happened, Candace and I were alone in the house.

What was that?

I don't know.

You stay here.

I'll go check it out.

And we kept hearing this noise upstairs, sounded like somebody was walking

around.

I went into my mom's room where the noise was coming from.

What was it?

I don't know.

There was nobody up there, so we just kind of swept it under the rug and just

assumed that it was the house.

Probably nothing.

Come on.

A few nights later, Jennifer is alone in the kitchen

when she senses a change in the air.

As if someone were watching her.

For the past month, Jennifer Wellborn and her daughters have had the distinct

feeling that they are not alone in their charming escambia bay florida mansion

i

would walk around the house i felt constantly like i was being watched

but i could never pinpoint what exactly it was it was just a really eerie

feeling my grandfather

from before I was even born, had shared ghost stories that just got passed down.

But I never really believed in any of it myself.

You have to see it to believe it.

But not too long after moving in, Jennifer has a terrifying encounter she

can't explain.

It felt like looking into the face of just sheer evil.

I heard a blood-curdling scream, so I immediately ran down thinking that

something very bad had happened.

What's wrong?

We went outside, and there was nothing there.

No one, no sign of anyone.

I just didn't see nothing.

Well, whoever it was, they're gone now.

Did you get a good look at him?

No, but there was someone there.

It was a man. He was looking right at me.

But Jamie doesn't believe her.

It was probably just kids.

You probably scared them just as much as they scared you.

Somebody was there.

Somebody was there.

I think maybe the house is haunted or something.

Haunted house?

You've been watching way too much television.

You know that stuff doesn't even exist.

Finally, I told her, let's just, you know, let it go and keep an eye on

things, make sure everything's going to be fine, no problem.

He didn't feel the house was haunted.

He thought that I was crazy.

There's no way to explain what's happening, so he just didn't want to

hear any of it.

Come on, let's just go on back in the house, okay?

Come on back in.

I was really at battle with myself because on one hand, I knew what I had

seen. I knew what I had experienced.

Come on.

And on the other hand, I really didn't believe it.

Everything's all right.

I just could not believe that I had a ghost in my house that was haunting it.

At first, Jennifer keeps the unexpected intruder a secret from her

daughters i was worried because i had physically

experienced something and seen something that no one else had but

she finally decides to bring it out in the open i've sat down with

the two girls and explained to them a little bit about what i thought and what

i felt and Sure enough, they were experiencing the same types of events

and emotions that I was.

I finally felt like, okay, I'm not going crazy.

Finally, someone else can see this too.

Knowing that mom was going through the same thing definitely made me scared.

When you're the only one feeling it, you're kind of like, well, maybe it's

nothing, just kind of brushing under the rug. But to know that somebody else is

experiencing the same things.

makes it more real and definitely a whole lot more scary.

For the next few weeks, talking about the haunting only heightens the fear in

the house.

As a parent, it was terrifying that my girls were having to witness a lot of

the same things that I had. It was a difficult situation because I didn't

know what to do. I didn't know how I could help them. I couldn't even answer

all of these questions for myself.

Within a few months of moving in tension is at an all-time high

Lauren

finds herself walking around on eggshells in constant fear of the

unknown and the unseen

I was in my room and I turned around and it was just a really eerie feeling.

Something was in my closet.

For the last few months, Lauren and Candace Welburn have been experiencing

paranormal activity in their million-dollar Pensacola, Florida home.

Everywhere they go, the teenagers sense evil.

While their mother, Jennifer, is convinced she's seen a ghost.

I was terrified.

I was afraid for my children.

I was afraid for myself.

Jennifer's fiancé, Jamie, doesn't believe her.

Strange things were happening in the house, but I didn't believe in the

paranormal.

It was such a big house, I just thought that maybe she wasn't used to it because

it has its own little creaks and sounds.

Then one night...

Lauren's instincts go on high alert when she feels a presence in her

bedroom.

I was in my room and I turned around and something was in my closet.

I was petrified.

It had this hold on me. It wouldn't let me call for help. I tried to scream out

for my mom, but I couldn't get anything out. I felt absolutely helpless.

I don't know how long it was.

Seconds, maybe minutes before I was finally able to scream.

I heard Lauren scream.

Lauren, what happened?

And could tell by the way she yelled for me that something had hurt her.

Honey, what's wrong? What's the matter?

She picked her arm up to hang on to me, to cling on to me.

She had two, it looked like, claw marks.

They looked fresh.

It was pretty new, whatever had happened.

Lauren remembers the man lunging at her.

but not being scratched.

What did you do to your arm?

I don't remember ever being scratched or feeling pain.

Seeing that there was completely horrifying for me.

It really scared me.

Jennifer fears that the ghost she saw in the window has now attacked her

daughter.

What happened?

There was a... a man.

She was scratched. Look.

Jamie has no idea what to think.

Now both his fiancée and her daughter are convinced the house is haunted.

By what?

The first thing that went through my mind is, how did it happen?

Has she decided to hurt herself for attention?

Hurt herself and not want to tell us? I mean, I'm really concerned of what the

surrounding circumstances are of how it actually happened.

She doesn't know.

There was a man.

It attacked me.

I'm not going back in there.

I can't go back in there. You don't have to, honey. You don't have to.

She was shaking, trembling.

She didn't understand what had just happened to her. She didn't even really

understand what she had just seen. As a parent, you protect your child, and I

was not able to do that. I was terrified.

Whatever it was definitely meant us harm.

Jennifer decides to take no chances with her daughters.

Lauren and Candace, and we all slept in the same room.

I didn't want my girls alone.

I didn't want to be alone.

We needed to be together where we could look out and protect one another.

No longer able to hold back her anger, Jennifer confronts Jamie about the

haunting.

What are we going to do?

About what?

About the house.

Lauren was attacked. I'm really worried.

I don't know, Jen.

I just can't believe this stuff is happening to us.

In the world I live in, if someone's a threat, you can face it. And there, I

felt like there's just nothing I could do. I couldn't really give them any

peace of mind. I mean, what could I really say?

It was really frustrating that Jamie did not believe.

Well, I'm going to find someone, someone who can help us.

OK.

I knew that my house was haunted.

I had to get help. I had to do something because I did not know what was going to

happen next.

With the help of friends, Jennifer finds Tony Talley, a paranormal expert, and

invites her to investigate the house.

My name is Tony.

I'm an empath, and that means that I feel things very deeply about

environments and people.

Right away, Tony feels that the energy surrounding the house is off.

When I arrived on the property, something just didn't ring right.

I felt very uncomfortable.

The level of negativity made you feel like you had to look over your shoulder.

You definitely knew something just wasn't right.

Hi, I'm Tony.

Jennifer reached out to me.

My biggest hope with Miss Tony coming to the house was just to tell Jennifer that

it's all in her head and go back to being life as normal and just forget

about the whole thing.

I thank you so much for coming.

How is Lauren?

She is still really upset.

You could just really see that Jen was wearing this dress.

You could see tightness in her jaws.

Her whole body language just really showed that she'd been under stress for

a while.

She was refusing to sleep in her room?

Well, that's where I'd like to begin, in Lauren's room. Is it upstairs?

Yes. It's the first door on your right.

Tony can immediately sense an evil force at work when suddenly...

That dark energy, he had written his name in the mirror.

H.A.L. Howe.

I was awestruck. I wanted to run.

For the past few months, Jennifer and her two teenage daughters have been

spooked by what they believe is a ghost in their Pensacola, Florida home.

Then, Jennifer's oldest daughter, Lauren, is attacked.

Lauren! Honey, what's wrong?

As I saw the marks on her arm, I was terrified.

I knew that if it had attacked her, On this level, I was afraid what was going

to be next.

A skeptic of the paranormal, Jennifer's fiancé, Jamie, has been no source of

comfort. I just thought people were just a little overdramatic. If the wind blew,

they'd blame it on a ghost.

I quite frankly didn't believe in it.

Feeling desperate and alone in her fight, Jennifer calls upon Tony Talley.

An empath with the ability to feel the presence of entities from other worlds.

My biggest hope was that Miss Toni would be able to come in and give us our house

and our lives back again.

It doesn't take long for the ghost to introduce himself.

There was a large mirror that had partially fogged, and that dark energy,

he had written his name in the mirror, H-A-L Howe.

I was up close and personal and in a one-sided fistfight with dark, evil

energy.

You are not welcome here.

You must leave this house.

You hear about things like this, but until you see it with your own eyes, you

just always kind of have a little bit of doubt when you hear other people talk

about it.

Well, now here I am in a situation that I can't doubt the people that have

invited me.

On the inside, it made me feel nervous.

Even though I was very afraid, the family needed me to be stable and

confident.

to get this energy out of their home. The only spirit welcome in this house is

the spirit of God.

The ghost of Hal eventually draws Tony to the backyard, where a feeling of

dread immediately washes over her.

As I made my way around the outside of the home, it became very clear that a

lot of lives were lost on that property.

As an empath, coming in contact with that kind of feeling is extreme sadness.

And then she sees them.

I had a flash vision of multiple.

People hanging from the trees.

The men appear to be slaves.

The house sits near Escambia Bay, believed to have been the site of a

slave plantation in the 19th century.

According to Tony's vision, Hal was the plantation's slave master.

I came to the conclusion that this entity, Hal, was over the slaves.

Somebody who mistreated the slaves.

These are people that died without their last rites.

They died under the most cruel circumstances.

I knew this house had a very dark presence.

I knew the family was in danger.

Tony gathers the family together and confirms their worst nightmare.

Their house is haunted by an evil ghost.

I know who attacked Lauren.

His name is Hal.

And he used to live on this land.

Hal was a plantation master.

It was ingrained in his personality to be cruel and inhumane.

And he brought that with him into his afterlife.

I could see Hal to be...

In excess of 6'2", very large build, very balded looking, a scour

across his face all the time. You could see the meanness on this person from the

top of his head to the soles of his feet.

If he were to laugh or smile, it would be at somebody else's weakness or pain.

I had not told her anything about what he looked like or what we had actually

seen. She came in and described it to a T.

I wanted to feel relieved, but I didn't.

I felt more terrified knowing that someone who was an expert in this sort

of thing had seen the exact same figure that I had seen. It actually made me

more scared to be at the house.

So how do we get rid of him?

I believe we need to do a house cleansing.

And I'm going to start in Lauren's room.

At this point in time, I was willing to try anything to reclaim my house.

It was surreal that Ms. Tony was able to validate some of the things that were

going on there.

One half of me, I wanted to believe her, and the other half of me still didn't.

I hereby banish all negative energy from this house.

I knew that at that point...

The mission was to rid the house of all that darkness and all that evilness.

Through the power of light and love.

For the next few days, the family senses a levity in the house, as if Hal has

disappeared.

After the cleansing on the house, it just felt completely different. It felt

like it had felt when we first moved in.

We had this little glimmer of hope that...

The cleansing had worked.

Everybody in the house just had an initial sigh of relief.

This is done.

It's finished.

I was incredibly hopeful that we were going to get our life back, that the

house was going to once again be my dream home.

But the peaceful state of the house is about to come to an abrupt end.

Hal is back

Ever

since they moved into their million-dollar mansion in

Pensacola, Florida

Jennifer and her teenage daughters have been tormented by the ghost of a former

slave plantation master named Hal.

All of us were scared. There was a lot of tension in the house because we

didn't know what to expect anymore.

In the fall of 2009, despite her fiancé Jamie's disbelief in ghosts,

Jennifer brings in an expert to cleanse the house of the evil spirit.

But she soon finds out.

It didn't work.

He was back, and he was back with a vengeance.

I felt just a kind of a grip on my ankle.

I have this...

just gripping fear go through my body like this is someone trying to hurt me i

knew that someone was under my bed being a good southern christian boy i keep a

black bible right by my bed with a 45 loaded and cocked right on top of it

what is it there's someone under the bed i was terrified i didn't realize what

was going on and what was happening you got three seconds to come out i'm gonna

open fire

I just wanted to get at it, and I wanted to inflict pain on it.

There

was nothing

there.

Nothing. That was impossible, and it freaked me out.

Jamie realizes he's up against the same evil force that's been after his family,

and now it's after him. This is mine!

I just lost it. This is my house!

I went on a tirade. This is my house!

A normal person would probably think I was insane.

You want to bully somebody, bully me!

I felt so helpless. This is my house!

I have a loaded .45, and I can't defend myself.

I knew that this was how he wanted to ruin my life and my family, and he was

not going to stop until he did.

It was completely terrifying to know that whatever this was could pull a man

out of bed like it did.

It terrified all of us.

For Jamie, this was the first time that he knew in his heart of hearts that the

house really was haunted.

It caused him to feel like he wasn't in charge of his household anymore.

There was something there that was bigger, something there that had more

control.

That scared Jamie.

With nowhere else to turn, Jennifer pleads with empath Tony Talley to come

to their aid once again.

I was hopeful that she might still be able to help us.

Maybe something was just inadvertently left out the first time that would

completely cleanse the house and give us back our home and our family.

That night, Tony returns to do a second cleansing.

18-year-old Lauren and 17-year-old Candace are not present.

I need you to remain in prayer with me and focus your energy.

I hereby banish all negative energy from this home.

When I was invited to come back to the home the second time, The Lord is my

shepherd. After walking through and blessing and praying again, I knew it

would take divine intervention to be able to get that dark energy out of

there. He leads me in the path of righteousness for his name's sake.

It made me very afraid for the family, afraid for the teenage daughters, afraid

for anybody else, really, that would come into that home.

All at once, there was a very large thud on the wall directly behind me.

Tony has made someone angry.

I just kind of, like, lost the feeling of direction.

She just does an immediate stop.

And gets thrown back against the wall.

Tony!

It... I felt like somebody had punched me.

My arm. What?

As she takes her hand away, it's pretty obvious that something... Oh, my God!

What is that? The only way to describe it looked like something bitter. It was

gruesome. I mean, it was bad.

It made me feel like I was up against the most evil thing I've ever faced in

my life.

Tony reluctantly claims defeat.

It appears Hal has won.

I can't help you anymore.

Everything until now has just been a warning.

Ms. Tony said that she didn't feel that she alone would be enough to rid the

house and the land from Hal.

I knew Hal was not going to leave.

This energy that Hal is, this is beyond where my expertise lies.

Hal's energy was just not going to go easily.

It really required divine intervention.

I'll find someone to help you.

But I can't tell you what to do.

Only your hearts can do that.

She said that there was not going to be a happy ending.

That this is only going to get worse.

She really felt that we were in danger.

It was devastating because you spend most of your life thinking and dreaming

about an opportunity to live in a house like that, 5,000 square foot, and it

turns out to be a living nightmare.

For now, Jamie and Jennifer decide to keep Hal's attack on Tony a secret from

the girls.

But they do tell them they are thinking about moving.

I was ready to be out of that house and try to get the normalcy back in our

lives. But after everything that had happened, I was ready to go.

But it won't be soon enough.

I went into my mom's closet.

For the past seven months, Jennifer and her family have been living in a haunted

million-dollar mansion near Escambia Bay, Florida, while an angry ghost

targets family members one by one.

An empath has had visions of a ghost named Hal, who she believes used to be a

slave plantation master.

He's angry.

I was scared to death.

He was a bully.

He liked being in control.

He liked people to be afraid of him.

And has warned them they are in great danger.

The family makes plans to move out of what was once their dream house as soon

as possible.

When Miss Tony shared with us that we were in danger, Jamie and I decided to

have a serious talk about the house.

We didn't know where we would go, but we didn't know what else to do.

We had to think about the girls.

I saw this shadow figure, and I knew that it was Hal.

I... I felt this burning feeling on the back of my neck. I just remember it

hurting so bad.

What?

My God.

She had a scratch going from the base of her hairline halfway down her back.

For Jennifer, this is the last straw.

We're leaving right now.

It was at this point that I said, I don't care. My kids, this is not worth

this. I don't care about the house.

I want out, and I want out now.

As much as I had loved the house, I didn't want it.

I didn't care about having my own room anymore. I didn't care about how big the

house was. I was done. I couldn't handle that house anymore.

Come on, Candace. Come on. It doesn't matter what it costs. It doesn't matter

what the devastation is financially.

It's time to say goodbye, cut our losses, and get my family to safety.

As crazy as it sounds, I felt like I was in a fight with what was in that house.

Girls, come on, get in the car. Let's go. Get in, please.

And I've never walked away from a fight.

That's the moment I had to concede that it won.

That I would have to take my hit.

and move on.

I focused straight.

I put that car in drive.

I never looked back.

After this happened, we were struggling financially for a little while because

all of our money was tied up in the house.

We sold the house back to the bank.

And the house that we paid a million dollars for was sold for $119,000.

I'm very blessed that we were able to get out unhurt and relocate and have our

family together and safe.

It was a very, very difficult time.

Before I moved into the house, I did not believe in ghosts at all.

I don't know that it's something that I'll ever fully put behind me. I think

that it's something that I'll always deal with.

I completely believe in the paranormal now, whereas before, I would laugh at

anybody that said it.

Until you live it, don't judge it, because it is real.

I was very sick for the next few years after coming in contact with the house.

I had to have an emergency surgery. They removed a mystery four-pound tumor.

that had doubled my intestine in half. It was life-threatening.

I stopped doing house blessings altogether.

I believe that opens a gateway that invites dark, evil energy.

I don't think I'll ever be the same again. I don't really think there's any

way you could. You can't experience things happening like this to your

family, things happening like this in your own home.

and forget about it. It changes who you are.

I don't know if whatever this was has manifested itself at all to the people

that are living there now, but I have no doubt it's still there.