Original subtitles

[William] Deadly forests.

Haunted houses.

[children laughing]

And mountains where visitors...

never return alive.

Are there such things as evil places?

Places that are really born bad.

There are those who believe that

not only is such an incredible notion possible,

but that there are literally thousands of these places...

all around us.

But how could a seemingly harmless destination like an amusement park...

really be thought of as cursed?

Well...

That is what we'll try and find out.

[theme music playing]

[William] In central Japan, 60 miles southwest of Tokyo...

lies the Aokigahara Forest.

Located at the base of Mount Fuji,

it is considered by the Japanese to be sacred.

Although, in recent years, many believe

that these woods have become not a holy place...

but a place of evil.

Each year, shockingly high numbers of people

come here to end their own lives.

So many in fact that the place has become known as the Suicide Forest.

If you ever walk through any other woods or forest,

you'll always hear the birds, and you hear rustling,

and you hear all sorts of things.

But not in Suicide Forest,

in Suicide Forest it's just completely and absolutely silent.

I didn't see a living thing other than those plants,

and I certainly didn't hear anything.

So, it's the silence that really hits you at first.

It definitely had a different feel to it,

and that kind of raises the anxiety.

A lot of locals will tell you that as they grew up near the forest,

they were told never to go there.

It's a dark, scary place.

It's not a place for you. Stay away from it.

[Dominic] Aokigahara literally translates as the "field of green trees".

This forest is also known as the Jukai, the "sea of trees".

Many people go and commit suicide typically by hanging

or also by prescription drug overdose.

Officials have stopped publicizing the numbers so as to not encourage

more people to go there, but it really has become a magnet for suicides.

[William] At the entrance to the park,

signs are posted advising those who enter the forest

with suicidal thoughts to stop and turn back.

It is a warning meant to prevent people from being swallowed up

by the darkness of this place.

A darkness from which there is no return.

These signs tell people, "Please don't commit suicide, think of your parents,

think of your family."

They give you information on who to call if you need some help.

So, it's very clear that this is a concern of theirs.

They know it's a problem.

And they ask you, please, don't do this.

And you'll see those signs everywhere,

which remind you of how prevalent the problem is.

[Dominic] Aokigahara is also a non-camping forest,

so camping is strictly forbidden.

Yet, people who contemplate suicide

sometimes bring their tents.

We do have lots of these traces

of the departed that remain in the forest.

From personal effects to thread marking the paths.

Part of the mistake of Suicide Forest is quite often,

people who want to commit suicide will wear these ribbons

because they haven't figured out

whether they really want to do it or not.

So, they'll tie the ribbon, and if they change their mind,

they could find their way out.

But if they don't change their mind...

at the end of that ribbon, you may find a body.

[William] The Suicide Forest has one of the highest suicide rates

of anywhere in the world.

But unlike other such places like the Golden Gate Bridge

or Niagara Falls,

where people jump to their deaths...

Here they come to experience a different

and arguably more disturbing method of release.

In Japanese belief,

any person who dies has to receive a proper, um, ritual treatment

in order to transition to the world of the dead.

If they don't receive this very specific, generally, Buddhist rights,

there's a belief that the soul of the deceased person

will linger in the physical plane of existence.

If someone commits suicide on the spot,

it's believed that the yurei, the ghost will be hanging around that spot

where they committed suicide. They're tied to it, there.

So, it becomes a potential dangerous spot if other people are just walking through it.

They can get lured by theyurei

who's gonna influence them somehow

to commit suicide themselves.

Aokigahara becoming a suicide spot

is a relatively recent phenomenon

that started in the 1960s.

It can be traced back to a novel called the Tower of Waves,

in which two of the main protagonists

could not live out their love,

and then decided to commit suicide together in this forest.

This is one of the reasons why the forest became a very famous suicide spot.

[David] It's rather strange that they say around a hundred bodies a year

are found in that place.

And it begs the question, "Is there something about the place itself

that attracts people to go there to commit suicide?"

[George] It probably started off as just a dense force,

but as more and more people kill themselves in this place,

I think the evil permeates all over the place,

and it's probably affecting people who go in there.

[William] Evil? Permeating the atmosphere?

Could such an extraordinary and frightening notion be true?

I think everybody has gone to a certain spot,

and they feel uncomfortable with it.

They just don't know exactly why,

but they just don't feel right.

They feel like something's wrong here.

This doesn't feel good to me.

It's kind of evil.

There are certain regions that have had bad things happen to it,

and you could feel it.

We have to realize that the human body is one of the most

ultimate pieces of scientific equipment.

You have so many different types of sensors on your body.

You can see, smell, hear, taste, feel.

And all that information that you're receiving from your environment

causes you to feel the way you do at any given second.

So, if your body is not feeling right,

and your brain is telling you something's not right here,

it is possible that it is an evil location, right?

[William] In recent years, scientists studying the morbid phenomenon of Japan's

so-called Suicide Forest have suggested that the answer to the mystery

might be not a paranormal one but geological.

One of the really interesting things about Suicide Forest

is it didn't exist

until the last massive eruption of Mount Fuji,

which is more than a thousand years ago.

And that's what laid out this enormous bed of lava that eventually hardened.

There are chambers within the ground, and in these chambers

is where people will go into and commit suicides.

Some of them will just take pills and lie down,

and eventually, you'll find a body inside one of these chambers.

There's a possibility that the volcanic region, the rocks, the basalt,

might have some sort of piezo-electric type material within them

that could generate electric and magnetic fields.

And it's also known that electromagnetic fields do impact the brain activity.

I would think from the evidence that this geomagnetic field

is having some impact on mass depression.

The connection between magnetic anomalies

and chemical reactions in the brain

could lead to a type of depression

that would enhance suicide.

You can imagine a person who is suicidal or thinking about suicide,

but is fundamentally uncomfortable of the idea,

moving into one of these areas,

and this interaction makes them just comfortable enough

that now, they will carry through on the suicide.

[William] Could hundreds of ritual suicides

really be the result of magnetic anomalies in the brain...

caused by the unique properties of volcanic rock?

Or as many Japanese themselves believe,

could the cause be something even more incredible?

There's an old saying that says,

"What we do in life echoes in eternity."

If we have a forest where hundreds of people

have gone to that forest to commit suicide for over 60 years,

could the dark energy of all of the departed souls be lurking there?

And could that energy be what is attracting people to come to the forest?

[William] Tragic souls of the departed luring others in to join them.

A far-fetched notion, perhaps, but no more bizarre than what has been happening

at the Aokigahara Forest for the past six decades.

And no less disturbing than what happened to a group of hikers on a mountain top,

nearly 4,000 miles away.

A mountain that the locals have named "Don't Go There".

[William] January 1959...

Nine mountaineers from the Ural Polytechnic Institute

embarked on a perilous journey through Russia's Ural Mountains.

Their destination?

A remote mountain peak known as Otorten,

which in the local Mansi language means, "Don't go there."

[Paul] They went out on this very strenuous trek or mission

to show that the mountain could be conquered.

As far as we know, they were all experienced.

Igor Dyatlov, who was in charge of the group,

had about seven missions to his name, similar missions.

They were supposed to just study the mountain

to show that they can withstand

the incredible cold in this desolate place and come back.

[William] A few days into their trek,

the hikers moved through a mountain pass

with high winds and poor visibility...

causing them to veer miles off course.

Realizing their mistake and faced with the bitter cold of the coming night,

they choose to stop and camp on a slope called Kholat Syakhl,

which in Mansi translates to the "Mountain of the Dead".

[wind blowing]

[Paul] It's a very windy area.

When I say windy, the winds are horrible.

And they should not have put the tent on that slope.

They could have done it easily

about 100 meters away in the forest.

They went against all the knowledge

that the experienced trekker should have,

so why would they put it out there?

What drove them? Nobody knows for sure.

[William] Weeks later, when it becomes clear that the group

has failed to return from its expedition,

a military search and rescue operation was launched.

They find the campsite abandoned...

and a tent that has been torn to pieces.

Curiously, the investigators determined that the tent

was cut and ripped open from the inside.

And the hikers appear to have fled in socks...

or barefoot.

We are dealing with a group of experienced hikers

who escaped their tent in the middle of the night without any reason,

unless, something happened to their minds.

[William] In search of the hikers,

the investigators moved to the edge of a nearby forest.

What they eventually find has defied explanation for more than 50 years.

[Paul] Four of them were discovered initially and five of them were found later.

And they all died differently.

Some of the bodies died from exposure and were intact.

Some of them were dressed completely.

Most of them were naked, so to say.

Others had horrible wounds on them.

Their bones were crushed inside their bodies.

Others, their skull was crushed.

One woman lost her tongue and parts of her face.

Others were burnt,

like somebody put their feet in the fire

or they put it themselves.

[man screams]

They escaped like some force, something scared them.

[William] The official causes of death for the hikers

claimed that six have died from hypothermia,

and the other three, from fatal injuries

caused by an unknown compelling force.

But the inquiry was forced to an abrupt end by the Soviet government,

and the chief investigator refused to sign off on the final report.

[Paul] There were two investigators initially,

and they were told to shut up and close the case

with the determination that the cause of deaths

was an invincible force of nature that killed them.

[George] In some cases, the fact that some of them died from the bitter cold

okay, that makes sense.

They're in a region that's freezing.

But what about the other people?

Fractured skulls, crushed lungs.

There's something weird here.

[William] What was the compelling force

that inflicted such brutal and grotesque harm on these victims?

While some have speculated that it could have been an avalanche

or even an attack by Mansi tribes,

there was virtually no evidence to support these claims.

Others point to local legends of some kind of monster.

A creature capable of tearing people apart with its voice.

There are descriptions of Mansi

warning people not to go to this mountain, not to go to this area

because the sounds that come from there can kill you.

The entity that lives in that mountain

emits horrible shrieking sounds...

[shrieks]

...that can destroy human beings.

[shrieks]

[William] Recently, a new theory has surfaced.

One that suggests this mountain pass

may be just as deadly as the Mansi name for it implies.

Not because of some supernatural monster...

but for a surprisingly scientific reason.

So, this is a very windy pass on Ural Mountains.

In 2014, there's some study that was done that showed that

the wind kind of whipping through

because the topography cause low-frequency sound,

kind of a hum.

[wind blowing]

And low-frequency sound can cause the eyeball to vibrate,

can cause people to see shadows out of the corner of their eyes,

especially if you're in an environment that is desolate,

which is what that was to begin with.

[Michael] The dimensions and the physics of the actual pass

are likely to lead to very low frequencies,

which is exactly what infrasound is.

Infrasound is just referring to any sound that's below our normal hearing.

But sound itself is just pressure waves and vibration of the air.

So, your body is still detecting it.

Your ears are still reacting to it.

Your eardrums are moving.

And that's still generating electrical signals in your brain,

so there is an impact of the infrasound

that we don't fully understand yet.

[Travis] Being exposed to this sound is fatiguing your body.

Any type of fatigue that's long-term can cause significant psychosis.

In fact, there were several cases on the Mir Space Station

where the Russian cosmonauts were exposed to various vibrations,

and it caused them to actually have psychosis.

I have a friend who worked on consoles for Mir,

and he said that once, one of the cosmonauts

actually pulled a knife on one of the other cosmonauts

because of this type of exposure.

[Paul] It's not like a rock falling on somebody's head.

It's happening inside their minds.

And infrasound is a powerful weapon.

And apparently, it's affecting those who are coming to the mountain.

That's why it is a hypothesis now

that is being explored more and more in Russia

as to the cause of death of the Dyatlov tourists.

I don't subscribe to the theory that heavy winds created an atmosphere

where these people went nuts.

I think there was something else afoot,

something very evil and strange that happened to these nine hikers.

And I hope we get the answers to it.

But again, maybe we don't want the answer.

Maybe because it's so hideous and so evil we don't want to know it.

Did the harsh winds of the Dyatlov Pass

really create a low-frequency noise

that caused the hikers to lose their minds and brutally kill each other?

Or could it be that a mysterious, unknown monster

was responsible for the hikers' deaths.

For the nine men and women whose bodies were found horribly mutilated,

the question is academic.

As far as they were concerned...

evil happened here.

And it's an evil that isn't only found

on remote mountaintops...

but right next door.

And often in the unlikeliest of places.

[William] Mercer County, West Virginia.

Here on the bank of Lake Shawnee

stands the abandoned remnants of what was once a simple,

wholesome, family amusement park.

Opened in 1926, the park thrived for decades,

until it was abruptly closed in 1966.

According to local historians, the reason for the closure

was that what started as a playground for children

became the site of numerous tragic and disturbing incidents.

[children laughing]

In the 1940s, a little girl was riding the swings,

and a soda delivery truck

delivered soda to the concession stand.

[children laughing]

And whenever he did, he backed up into the path

of the swing, and it killed the little girl.

[Patricia] They tried to play it down because it was a child getting killed.

She wasn't the only child who got killed here.

There were several kids that drowned.

One was a really sad story, and I would hope it wouldn't happen nowadays.

[water splashes]

A mother brought her nine-year-old here

and dropped him off to go swimming,

and she went on her merry way.

She came back when the park was closing and she couldn't find her son.

[woman] Come on.

[Patricia] And they looked for the son until 10 o'clock at night.

When they found him, his arm was stuck in the drain of the swimming pool,

and it had sucked him in, and he couldn't get out,

and he had just drowned.

There was another incident where there was a family out on an outing.

They were riding a canoe in the lake.

The canoe overturned, and a little boy drowned in the lake.

[William] Before its doors were closed,

six children had died in the park.

And that might have been reason enough for the park to remain closed...

but it didn't.

In 1985, local resident Gaylord White purchased the property

with hopes of reopening it.

[Jewell] In the 1950s, Gaylord, my husband,

worked here when he was in high school.

He fell in love with it.

So, that was his wish that someday, we would own the park.

And somebody had sent us word

that the heirs had finally decided they were gonna sell it.

That's how we bought it.

We wanted to have a children's ride park.

[William] For years, locals believed that the park was haunted.

Maybe even cursed.

Then, in the late 1980s, the White Family made some curious discoveries.

We started finding a lot of pottery and Native American tools and arrowheads.

Stuff like that.

So, we stopped doing the bulldozing.

We called Marshall University.

They put together an archeological team

that will come down to the park.

They started uncovering bodies.

So, that's when we knew we had a Native American burial ground on the property.

I know that one of the burial sites was a Native American fourteen-year-old girl.

And the belief is that she died from giving childbirth

because the child was buried next to her.

[William] A series of tragic deaths...

at an amusement park

built on the site of a Native American burial ground?

A coincidence?

[children laughing]

As far as paranormal investigators are concerned...

not a chance.

[Dave] The first time I stepped foot on Lake Shawnee Amusement Park,

I felt like I was being watched.

There was an ominous, just negative feeling.

I don't necessarily believe that places are born bad.

I believe that things have to occur for a place to become negative in nature.

[Chris] People said whenever they come to the park

that they see the swings move on their own.

Or maybe they see an image of the little girl that's riding the swings.

[Patricia] Seeing only one swing move when I look at it and no one else sees it,

or it stops as soon as someone else is looking,

that's pretty scary.

More than it's scary is it's unexplained.

We tend to be scientists now.

All of this we know, everything that's going on.

And when you see something that you don't understand,

it gets to be creepy.

[Lloyd] Millions of people have had these experiences,

not just hauntings but also ESP experiences, and related experiences.

These are questions that science should be looking at very carefully and closely.

And to say, oh, it's mass hallucination

or it's this kind of explanation

without looking into the experience itself,

either the singular or the general patterns,

it's not scientific.

It's highly unscientific.

[William] Is the dark history of the Lake Shawnee Amusement Park

the result of a curse placed upon anyone

that dares to desecrate this sacred ground?

Or was the area always a place of evil?

A place where bad things will always happen...

regardless of what is built there.

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining a place

where some people believe evil not only happens but can actually be measured

not only in fear and suffering,

but scientifically, it can be proven to be as tangible as flesh and blood.

[William] Cayuga, Indiana.

February 16th, 2019.

Paranormal investigator Dave Spinks and his associate Haley Sharp

have traveled here to this small town

to investigate a house that many consider to be the most evil place...

in North America.

Referred to as Willows Weep, it has been the site of a series of gruesome deaths

since it was built in the 19th century.

Brenda Johnson owns Willows Weep.

- Hi, Brenda. - [Brenda] Dave.

[William] She dismissed the rumors about it being an evil place

and purchased it only a few years ago

with plans to renovate it.

- This is my assistant, Haley. - Hi.

It's nice to meet you.

[William] But recent events have convinced her

that she may have made a terrible mistake.

To this end, she's invited Dave and Haley

to come and investigate the house

and see if her strange experiences can be verified.

[Dave] So, how are you doing?

[laughing] Not good standing here.

All night last night, I was sick thinking about

coming over here around this house.

So, tell us a little bit about the house,

some of your experiences here.

Well, when I bought the house, we started working on it.

And then, my son was working on the ceiling,

the boards come flying off at him and hurt him,

and I've been scratched in there.

Six claw marks down my back.

Doors slamming on you, banging underneath the floors.

Well, I understand there's been deaths in this house.

- Can you kind of go through those a little bit? - Yeah.

[Brenda] The man that built the house, he died in the bathtub.

There were two suicides.

And then, another hanging.

And I heard that three men had been poisoned.

About six months prior before I bought it,

there was a man that, he committed suicide in there.

- He fell into the chair. - [Dave] And that's where they found him?

or they found him what, a couple of days later, right?

- [Brenda] Week. - [Dave] A week. Week later. Okay.

[Dave] Do you think what's in that house is evil?

Yes, I do.

- Without a doubt? - Yes, I do, without a doubt.

If it wasn't evil, it wouldn't be hurting people.

I don't think there's nothing good in there.

- Your house was built in the late 1800s, correct? - 1890, yes.

So, regarding the shape of the house,

it's in the shape of a, a cross.

Upside down cross.

[Dave] Strange.

[Brenda] Yes, very strange. [laughs]

[Dave] Do you think the guy was into some weird stuff,

like occult stuff, that built it?

Why would you build a house like it,

if he wasn't into something?

Absolutely.

So, we're getting ready going into this house and investigate it.

- Would you like to join us? - No, no way.

Never go back in there again, ever.

All right. We're gonna go in there and investigate.

All right.

- [Dave] Here we go. - [Haley] All right.

Pretty heavy in here.

[Haley] Definitely.

Well, where you wanna get set up?

- Right here. - Okay.

[William] To see if the house might contain strange anomalies,

Dave and Haley will use a temperature sensor,

which can detect fluctuations in both temperature and electromagnetic fields.

All right, 41, 40 degrees, and it's going down.

[beeping]

[Haley] It really likes this area.

[Dave] Yeah.

[beeping continues]

[Dave] It's going nuts.

[William] The temperature sensor has been dropping steadily,

by as much as nine degrees.

But why?

So, this room is appearing to be pretty active so far.

I mean, the whole house really is,

but we've got a lot of hits right here on this device.

[Haley] This is the chair that Brenda was talking about.

Yeah, look at the blood on it.

It's a really sad, heavy feeling right here too in the pit of my stomach.

Almost immediately, the device started going off in the chair

where the man who killed himself in the house

several years ago was found in.

[Haley] Something there.

[William] Could the strange changes in the temperature of the house

be caused by some explainable force?

A sudden drop in barometric pressure

caused by the presence of a deep underground well, perhaps.

Or could it be caused by something else?

Something that can't yet be explained?

Well, I'm getting the sickness, the headache.

Definitely something negative in here, in my opinion.

- I agree. - All right, so let's get out of here.

- Let's go. - All right.

[William] Dave and Haley are beginning to suspect

that the stories of Willows Weep being an evil place...

might be based on more than fear and superstition.

[Haley] House is scary.

I wouldn't wanna be in this house alone.

Let's say this house does have some evil in it.

It does not give you a good feeling.

It wants to suck the life out of you.

I've been to many locations, and this one stands out above all of them so far.

In my personal opinion, there are many spirits and entities in this house.

There are human spirits and possibly demonic spirits

that influenced the humans that have lived in this house,

and quite possibly, have caused them to harm themselves.

[William] Once outside, Dave and Haley give owner Brenda Johnson

a report on their findings,

but not before Dave makes Brenda a rather surprising offer.

- I know you really don't like this place. - No.

- And I know that you want to get rid of it. - Yeah.

Because I'd like to purchase the house from you.

[laughs]

Mm-hmm.

Okay. Yes.

[William] Dave is willing to be the next owner of Willows Weep.

- All right. Thank you. - Thank you, hon.

[Dave] I told Brenda, if I own this house,

I can investigate it much further

and much more in-depth,

and possibly come to a conclusion

as to what's causing the evil that lurks within its walls.

That is if something doesn't happen to me first.

Luckily for me, she agreed.

She really couldn't wait to sell the place.

Was Willows Weep really built to attract evil spirits?

For Brenda Johnson, Dave Spinks, and Haley Sharp,

the answer is a very disturbing "yes".

But why would someone deliberately want to construct an evil place?

Unless perhaps it wasn't meant to attract...

demonic spirits...

but to entrap them.

In an effort to create a deadly warning...

that demons are real.

[William] Honduras.

February 2015.

Deep in the heart of the jungle,

a team of American explorers, journalists, and archeologists

make a dramatic discovery.

Evidence of an ancient city that has been lost for more than 500 years.

We were standing there on the banks of this river,

and the archeologist was pointing to this wall of jungle

and saying across the river,

that's the beginning of the lost city.

So, we crossed the river, with soldiers with machetes cutting a path for us.

And all of a sudden, there it is rising up out of the jungle.

Just straight up practically.

It was the most amazing thing.

[leaves rustling]

And then what we saw was a cache of sacred objects carved out of stone

that have been left at the time the city was abandoned.

And this was a gigantic mystery.

Why did these people leave all of a sudden?

[birds chirp]

[William] The expedition announced

that they had uncovered the top level of a vast city,

which has been buried under centuries of jungle vegetation.

Soon afterwards, many began to speculate

as to whether the ruins were those of a legendary place

known to Hondurans as Ciudad Blanca

or the White City.

A place that was believed to have been deserted centuries ago...

because of a deadly curse.

We went to do our ground expedition in 2015.

Many of the local Hondurans

and the Honduran Air Force people, they were with us,

and the Special Forces people said,

"My grandmother and my grandfather

told me all about the lost city when we were kids."

And they said it's cursed.

They said, if you go there...

and you pick any of the flowers...

you will die. You will never come back.

[Tok] In the case of the White City,

there is a very interesting tradition of a Tawahka Indian

who came to live there with them.

And they refused him shelter, chased him out.

And in turn, he cursed the city.

And he cursed that area...

so that it became, basically, a poisonous area to live in.

And the people had to abandon their city and leave.

[Douglas] You know, we heard these stories,

but you know, we're scientists.

We're anthropologists, archeologists, ethnobotanists.

You know, we don't believe in curses.

Or so we thought.

But, you know, sometimes curses are based on the truth.

[Steve] After we completed our first ground expedition,

everybody came back alive.

Nobody got injured.

We're shaking hands,

tipping a beer, and going, "Great, we made it!"

You know, everyone survived.

We all had hundreds of bug bites.

Didn't think anything of them.

Until about a month later.

In 60 percent of our crew, including the Hondurans,

they had a bug bite that didn't go away.

It got bigger.

Eventually, it became a big open wound,

a big open ulcer.

A couple of people became very, very ill.

Two of them almost died.

And then we had them diagnosed with NIH,

and they said, "Yes, you have leishmaniasis."

But not even just regular leishmaniasis,

this is an entirely new one.

We just did a genetic sequence...

and it's a really virulent one we've never seen before.

[William] More commonly known as flesh-eating disease,

leishmaniasis is a rare parasitic disease

that is spread by the bites of certain sandflies.

The infliction eats away at the skin of the limbs, nose, and mouth.

The new strain that infected the explorers is particularly aggressive.

And if not treated properly...

fatal.

But even so,

a parasitic disease is hardly proof of an ancient curse.

Or is it?

[David] What's interesting about the legend of this curse

is that it actually does appear to be true.

How can we explain that hundreds of years ago,

a man left a curse saying that

forevermore, people will be ravaged by disease

and all of these things.

And then, we actually see it happen.

[William] Was it merely a coincidence

that the American team happen to contract a deadly

and previously unknown disease

at a site believed to be cursed?

[birds chirping]

Or could the curse have been real?

As far as journalist Doug Preston is concerned,

the answer is obvious.

[Douglas] I used to think that curses were just kind of silly,

but not anymore.

Next time I go somewhere, and I'm told that it's cursed,

I'm really gonna think twice about it.

[William] If evil places really do exist...

is it possible to cure them?

To rid them of the pestilence

that infects anyone who gets too close?

There are those who believe the answer is a profound yes.

And it involves fighting fire...

[man screaming]

...with fire.

[William] Dogotuki Village, Fiji.

July 2018.

Members of a church group set two houses on fire

and burned them to the ground.

The blaze is intended to purge the village of evil spirits

believed to have been responsible

for the recent deaths of 20 people.

These houses were older houses,

but they have been traditionally associated

with magical practices...

and the reports of witchcraft being practiced.

[David] And as they burnt the places down to the ground,

some of the villagers reported seeing a demon come out of the ashes.

And they've reported all kinds of really creepy things

that happened once they tried to burn down those houses.

So, the question is, were they successful

in getting rid of evil in that place?

Or did they actually just aggravate it more

by burning those houses to the ground?

[clanging]

[Tok] Fire, it's a very common means of spiritual purification.

And so many different traditions incorporate fire in some sense...

very often for its destructive properties.

And yet, at the same time, cleansing properties.

I've had a lot of people on my radio show

who have apparently cleansed haunted houses and haunted areas.

They talk about putting sage around the perimeter of the house.

And things like that that chase away the evil spirits.

But by and large, I'm not sure if that works.

I think once a place is haunted,

it's gonna haunt.

It's gonna do what it does.

[David] I think there are energies in life that we don't understand.

Either created through our own minds,

and our own physical energy.

Or perhaps, the physical energy of a place.

There are places where people have died,

either violently or tragically.

And that creates this dark energy.

There might be some negative spirits, some ghosts.

And that force that's happening within it

can also affect people.

[Dave] I've been to some of the most evil and nasty locations

you can imagine.

And I've seen people's lives

ruined by these negative evil forces.

And in my opinion, some of these locations

are stained forever

with the blood and the energy of these tragic events.

These murders.

These suicides.

And to me, that can never go away.

Fire...

cleansing the evil that infects certain cursed places.

Nonsense, right?

As far as you're concerned there's no such thing as evil places.

Well...

Then maybe you'd like to spend the night at Willows Weep.

Hm?

Or ride the swing set at Lake Shawnee Amusement Park?

Or perhaps, you'd like to have a picnic lunch

at Japan's Suicide Forest?

No?

What's the matter, are you frightened?

Or you're just too smart...

to tamper with things in the world...

that are the...

unexplained.