Original subtitles

[Haunting music]

- Children are something that I've always longed for.

- How is this little boy

communicating with something that's in the house?

- [Gasps]

- It was like a little child just running around.

- [Screams]

- I feel like he wants to interact with me

like a child would interact with their mom.

- This is where the little boy wants to play.

- I didn't know what was going on.

Is it a possession?

- [Screaming]

- I'm like, "I can't move."

I can't move my arms. I can't move my legs.

- Where is he?

- When I was a kid, on my way to school,

there was this huge victorian, and I would always...

Every day, I would stop to just admire this house.

And I always thought to myself,

"one day, I will own a victorian like that."

- You want to check it out?

- Visually, it was stunning.

The windows were huge.

The doors were massive.

It was something out of a storybook.

- It's big.

- This place was built in 1875 by s.K. Pierce.

It has a lot of history.

There are 26 rooms in total.

They called this the ladies' parlor.

- Everything about the house was just so intriguing.

- Let me take you up to the second floor.

There's a lot of choice for bedrooms.

There's ten of them.

- I couldn't quite pinpoint how something this big,

26 rooms, could be this affordable.

- Why is the price so low?

- Well, it needs a lot of work, a lot of investment.

- I started thinking,

"I wonder if there's something structurally wrong with it."

- Listen, um, you're nice people.

I'm gonna be straight with you.

There's a lot of history to this place,

a lot of rumors going around about it,

rumors about ghosts and crazy things like that.

- Really? - Yeah, they're just stories.

- I was very, very skeptical.

I've always been very skeptical.

- Both Lillian and I do not believe in ghosts.

- Uh, do you mind if we look around a little bit more?

- Oh, yeah, sure.

Take as long as you like.

- Okay.

- Perhaps the rumors of it being haunted

might have brought the price down.

But for both Lily and I, it was just something that...

We thought it was silly, and it was great for us.

- The nursery. - Hmm.

- Edwin and I have been together for about 17 years.

We were born in Puerto Rico, same town, same hospital.

Children are something that I've always longed for.

- We have a lot of nieces and nephews,

so it always felt...

A strong connection with children.

- I have five siblings.

And I've always been the motherly type.

I've mothered them.

I even mother my own mother.

- What do you think?

- I love it, ed.

- I wanted it so bad.

I didn't give it a second thought

about, you know, the repairs and the heating and, you know,

how it would be like, the... Financially.

I just... I really wanted this house.

We were thrilled to move in.

I was just thinking of the stuff that I could do and accomplish.

And I'd just take my time and fix her up

and get her back to how she used to look.

[Loud crash]

- Ed?

Ed, you okay?

- It was as though something had fallen...

I mean, something huge had fallen.

- Ed, you okay?

- Lillian?

- What the hell was that?

- It sounded as though it was bricks.

It almost sounded like a chimney had collapsed.

- We both start asking each other,

"what was that noise?"

We thought it was down here.

And, no, I thought it was up there.

I heard it clearly. It was upstairs.

[Loud crashing]

- The shelf did not collapse.

It was almost, though, as something

physically had stood there

and basically knocked everything down from end to end.

I thought, "someone is in the basement.

Someone's hiding out."

It was very dark.

It was kind of gloomy.

All of a sudden, I could see something.

I didn't know what it was.

Immediately, I started thinking, what was in there?

- Come look at this.

- It's like a huge water tank.

My first impression when I saw this was like,

"wow, any little kid playing down here

can actually fall in there and drown."

- When I first moved in across the street,

Edwin and Lillian had been living in the house

for maybe a half a year.

It was rather late in the evening.

I had just come back from running.

One of the lights came on.

And a light went off.

And then another room light came on.

And that went off.

And it would start coming on a little bit faster.

And then it would go off quicker.

And I thought, "this is a little strange."

And then...

I'm looking at three floors here.

It would take, like, 20 people to stand by the doors

flickering these lights on that fast.

But then as I'm looking, on the second floor,

I could see somebody.

It looked like it was a boy, a young boy.

And I thought it strange.

I thought it a little bit odd.

The following day, I saw Edwin.

I went over and talked to him.

- Hey, ed.

- Hey, Mike.

- Looks like you had your hands full last night.

- I was kind of baffled by what he meant by that.

- He looked, and he said, "what?"

I said, "with the little boy

that was playing in your house last night."

- And I said, "Mike, I don't have any kids."

- I was shocked, 'cause I know I watched a child play.

- I didn't quite understand what was going on,

what... what this all meant.

[Metal clanging]

I can hear, right by my pillow, a tapping.

[Metal clanging]

It started getting louder and louder.

- Honey?

Do you hear that?

[Clanging continues]

- And all of a sudden, it stopped.

[Door creaks open]

The closet door was moving.

And all of a sudden, it stopped halfway.

We couldn't figure out, for the life of us,

what was going on.

[Door slams]

[Pounding on door]

Boom, boom, boom.

- Bang, bang, bang.

- There was someone physically knocking on a door.

[Rattling and pounding on door]

I literally have a baseball bat.

[Pounding continues]

[Pounding on door]

- He yanked that door open so fast.

- I'm walking out into the second floor.

There's nobody around.

There's no one to be found.

[Loud thumping]

Doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo.

- It was not heavy enough to be, like, a full-grown person.

It wasn't that heavy.

It was like a little child just running around.

- [Screams]

- And the door just literally went... slam.

- It's okay. It's okay.

- [Gasping]

- How could this door slam that hard?

It's impossible.

It was like something wanted to make itself known.

- The following day, Edwin had to work.

I was left alone.

I'm in the basement.

I sort everything in differently sized containers.

I'm down to my last container,

and it has a blue top.

I put the container down.

The lid is there, but the container isn't.

The container literally disappeared

in front of my face.

[Rustling]

All of a sudden, I heard this noise.

[Child laughing]

It was like a little child's laughter.

It felt like it came from close to the cistern.

I felt something is almost calling me to it.

To my right is the container.

[Footsteps pattering]

And I see this dark shadow.

It went right by me.

It scared the heck out of me.

At this time, I'm starting to think

that something is in the house

and it wanted for us to know that it was there.

- We would always, you know, hope and pray

that someday we would have kids.

- It was sad.

I mean, I went through a lot of, you know,

grief and disappointments.

- It didn't quite pan out.

It was just not meant to be.

- My son Joshua was happy-go-lucky,

into everything.

He loved to play, into sports.

Sweet kid. Sweet, sweet kid.

Couldn't ask for a better kid.

The moment we moved into our new apartment,

I noticed him looking at the big old house,

but I didn't think anything of it.

We just moved there.

He's looking and... You know, at our surroundings

and trying to get familiarized with the area.

I didn't think it was anything to worry about.

- Mommy, can I go play with the little boy?

He wants to come and play catch with me.

- I said, "well, I want to meet his parents."

And he goes...

- Let's go, then.

- Josh, give mom a couple days, okay?

I'm gonna get the apartment set up.

We'll go tomorrow, yeah?

- Okay. - Okay.

Hello.

A couple days after, we met Lillian and Edwin.

- Hi. I'm Lillian.

- Hi. Katie.

- Hi.

- Can I play with your son?

- I'm sorry. I don't have a son.

- Yes, you do.

I see him up there.

He wants to come and play with me

in the big hallway.

- Um... I just took a step back.

- So you've seen a little boy?

- I wanted to know more information.

I wanted to know names.

I wanted to know ages.

- What does he look like?

- Just a boy.

- She looked really excited

that somebody had seen this little boy.

- What's he wearing?

- He's got on a big white shirt, big sleeves.

- I asked him where exactly he saw the little boy.

And he said, "well, I saw him there.

And yesterday, I saw him all the way up there."

- After answering her questions, Joshua said...

- Can I play with him now, please?

- Honey, I don't have any children.

Honestly, I don't.

- All the while, he's thinking that I am the mother

of this child that he's communicating with.

He described him as though he can see him so clearly,

not just through a window or through a sheer curtain.

It's as though he can see him so vividly.

- I didn't believe in ghosts.

But this little boy is seeing him

from across, you know, our yard.

And he's telepathically communicating with him.

You know, this was supposed to be a beautiful, loving home.

This was gonna be something that I've always wanted.

I didn't want a haunted house.

[Wind whistling]

[Metal clanging]

I heard something under the bed.

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

My first thought was, "okay, this could be the child."

[Clanging continues]

I'm not a mom,

but I feel that when a child looks for his mom

and they want to play, that's what I feel.

I needed Internet in the kitchen.

I fed the wire through

behind the wall where the sink is.

But it got stuck.

I put my hand behind the wall.

I felt something hard.

It was this old spoon.

I went in again...

And felt something.

Maybe a total of 15, 20 little pieces of wallpaper.

I kind of admired it.

It had, like, a teal blue with a gold trim.

I left it on the corner of that table.

I go to the laundry room.

Maybe an hour later...

The wallpaper was in the middle of the kitchen floor.

I thought maybe it could be the child.

- Hello?

- I started talking to the little boy.

- Hello?

Are you here?

- I even... I even...

Actually, i... I actually asked it to touch me.

- You can come touch me.

- And... i don't know... My motherly instinct kicked in,

and I thought he would touch me,

and I would feel this little hand.

- Don't be afraid.

Are you hiding?

Can you see me?

Hey.

Don't be afraid.

Are you there?

[Footsteps scurrying]

- It sounds like a little kid running around.

[Footsteps continue]

- Is that you?

[Loud footsteps]

- [Breathing heavily]

- It was nothing I had ever heard before.

It felt horrible.

I was scared. I was confused.

I didn't know what to do.

I just wanted to go back into the kitchen area

and close the door.

[Door slams shut]

- Joshua began changing.

He became obsessed with being outside.

He would literally sit on his bicycle

and stare at the corner of the building.

Getting him to come inside was a constant battle.

- Hey, what did I tell you?

- My friend's up there.

- There's nothing there, honey.

Come in. It's cold.

Let's go inside.

- No!

- Come on.

- Leave me alone!

I hate you!

- He wasn't the same sweet little boy.

His demeanor had changed.

Everything about him had changed.

And I wasn't having it.

I thought if he saw that there was no little boy...

There was no toys, there was no bedroom,

there was no nothing...

It would kind of scare him straight.

- Hello, Katie.

Hello, Joshua.

Please come in.

- Thank you.

- He gave me that impression of being a little scared.

- How are you, Josh?

- This is where the little boy wants to play.

See, mom?

I told you it was big enough to play catch.

- Every hair on my neck kind of stood up.

And I'm going, "this isn't right.

"This... this is... How does he know this?

He shouldn't know this."

- So this is where he tells you to come and play?

- Where is he?

- For a spirit to get ahold of a little boy that way

and put thoughts in his head

and change his behavior

and, you know...

Is, to me, frightening.

This was definitely the final confirmation for me,

definitely.

- A mother's desire to protect a child

goes beyond any love

that I think anybody could ever know.

I was not going to allow this little boy

to come in between me and my son.

So we packed up, and we moved.

[Engine turns over]

- [Muffled screaming]

- I started panicking.

- [Muffled] Edwin!

- I'm like, "I can't move."

I can't look to my left. I can't look to my right.

I can't move my arms. I can't move my legs.

It was just the most horrifying feeling.

- [Screaming]

- Lil!

Lil!

- Get her off me! Get her off me!

- She was screaming. She was yelling.

- Get her off me!

- She was trying to move her arms.

She was trying to move her legs.

- Get her off!

Get her off me!

- I was petrified.

- Lil. Lil!

- One moment, you're okay,

and then the next moment,

you're just frozen, and you can't move.

- [Gasps] Get it off me!

- She said, "tell her to get off me.

Tell her to get off me."

- Listen to me.

- Get her off me. - Sweetie, listen.

- Get her off me! I can't move!

- Hey, shh. Lil.

Come here. Come here.

It's okay. Hey.

- [Sobbing]

- And I grabbed her, and I just held her.

I said, "there's nobody here, hon.

There's nobody here."

- I did not feel a physical pressure on me.

I didn't feel anything holding me down.

But I couldn't move.

- [Gasping]

- Honey, it's okay.

[Thunder crashing]

- [Screaming]

- [Screams]

- She looked like she was sobbing uncontrollably,

hunched over.

- I felt like it was the mother of the boy.

If you visualize a mother in distress

and she just lost her child,

she's calling out for help.

I felt her loss as though it was my loss.

[Sobs]

Things just went really bad.

I was feeling really heavy.

Very... everything... Just didn't feel right.

I couldn't comprehend what was going on.

- I woke up suddenly.

It's just quiet as can be.

But Lillian is not there.

I went down the corridor, and I started calling.

- Lil?

- I didn't hear a response.

I couldn't find her anywhere.

I thought there was only one place left

that she could be.

So I went down to the basement.

- Lillian.

[Rustling]

- I can hear like a ruffling or shuffling of something.

[Rustling continues]

- Lillian?

[Rustling continues]

- [Breathing heavily]

- She's just digging...

And digging...

And digging.

I didn't know what was going on.

- Lil. - I have to keep going.

- Why? Lil, look at me.

- Something was making me dig there.

- Stop digging.

- She really didn't pay attention

to the words I was saying.

- I felt compelled to keep digging.

- [Breathing heavily]

- Look at me.

Lil, honey, what are you doing?

Stop it, please. Stop it.

Stop it!

Please?

- In her hand, I could see that she was holding something.

She blurted out,

"this is what I was digging for."

- It was a pelvic bone.

It was small enough to be a small child,

a young child.

- It's okay.

- I think what he might have gone through.

Was it something horrific?

Something...

Was he in any pain?

- We were at the point

where we needed to find out answers.

- I need to know who this boy was.

What does he want?

- Because this is a victorian house,

you know, I knew the time period

would be roughly around the 1870s to 1900.

I looked at census records, cemetery records,

birth and death records.

But back in the victorian period,

I found no evidence

that there was any death within the house

of a young boy.

- I was kind of surprised

because I thought for sure something was gonna turn up.

- I was not gonna be satisfied with that answer

because I really wanted to help Edwin and Lillian.

- Eleanor did some more intensive research.

- She came across a more recent secret.

- It was in the '60s that this house changed forever.

- And that's when the other side of the story

started to come forth.

[Knocks on door]

- It didn't initially make sense to me

how a house of the stature of the victorian

could have numbers on the doors.

And then I discovered, in the '60s,

they turned it into a boardinghouse.

But the boardinghouse had a sad history.

It was being used, quite frankly, as a whorehouse.

The woman that they saw sobbing in the window

could very likely be the spirit of a prostitute.

And the child could have been her child.

He would have seen his mother

having to do what she had to do to take care of him.

And he would have probably been exposed

to a lot of anger, a lot of sorrow.

He probably spent a lot of time by himself.

[Water splashes]

- I feel like he's lost.

And the one person he wants to find is his mom.

And I think that's why he targets me.

- All I wanted to...

Was to have Lillian like she used to be.

I had to get her out of there.

I didn't care how much money we lost.

I wasn't gonna let Lillian go through that again.

No way.

[Engine turns over]

- She wanted him found by someone... anyone.

And I was there.

And I found him.

And I think that gave her closure somehow.