The vast North American wilderness
is home to evil forces
thought only to exist in nightmares.
But the terrible creatures that roam here
are all too real.
Some of these horrific beings stalking the forest
are flesh and blood.
Others exist in a space between this world...
Mom, look!
And the beyond.
Who's there!
I was kind of creeped out a little bit.
Just wondering, you know, what was following us.
Did it follow us back, or did it stay there?
Ghosts feed off of that fear energy.
He slowly started to grin like the Joker on "Batman."
I was just kind of shocked about it.
And when I saw it, I immediately got scared.
The dead may be buried,
but that doesn't always mean they are gone.
A ghost or a spirit that finds themselves trapped,
straddling realms
between what we call the living and the afterlife...
Those that intend to stay to stay there are fine,
and they're where they're want to be.
But sometimes there are ones that are trapped,
and they feel trapped.
Ghosts can get dangerous.
Michelle Lopez and her family...
Husband Jason,
children Chinar and Christopher...
Head up north to a rented cabin for a relaxing weekend.
The reason we took this trip to the cabin
was in the summer
just to get away from the city,
get some fresh air,
some quiet time, spend time with the kids.
We actually picked the cabin because of its remote location.
I thought, this is perfect.
You know, there's, like, nobody around.
It's very remote, just surrounded by woods.
But the woods can hold terrifying secrets
as the Lopez family knows all too well.
Michelle and Jason have always had
a deep interest in the paranormal.
Both contend ghosts walk among us.
I believe that the spirits are here
because some of them can't, for some reason, pass over.
Something's keeping them here.
They don't understand they're lost here.
They don't know how to get over.
Sometimes they just need help.
Shortly after arriving to the cottage,
they decide to head off on a paranormal adventure.
It was a bonus to find out
that there was a cemetery not too far away,
so we decided to go and check it out.
Maybe we shouldn't have, but we did.
Go over there. I'm gonna take a picture.
Smile.
Not everyone is up for the quest.
Like her mother,
Chinar is tuned into the ghost world,
but it scares her.
Whenever there's a presence of a spirit
or something paranormal around,
I can feel it.
Like, when I'm, like, quiet and doing my own thing,
I can feel it.
My daughter, she is terrified of
anything to do with the paranormal.
Are you coming with us?
No, I'm gonna stay back here.
Are you sure?
You never know what's out there.
Old cemetery, old spirits.
Exactly. No way.
Okay, see you later.
The family makes its way into the woods
and quickly realizes they are anything but deserted.
It was quiet,
and I could hear footsteps.
We thought, okay, maybe it's just, like,
teenagers in the bushes,
like, messing around or whatever, right?
So we were, like, "Okay, whatever."
So we just continued to walk.
We're walking, and we could hear it again,
so we stopped.
And I told my husband,
like, "You need to go check out the bush over there."
Hello!
Is anybody there?!
Hello!
He's, like, "Hello, hello!"
And he peeks around the bush,
and there was, like, absolutely nobody there.
There's nothing.
Are you sure? Yeah.
So I was, like, "Okay, well, that's weird."
It wasn't even windy.
The trio carries on
and finally arrives at their destination.
The cemetery was in a wooded area.
It was quiet.
There was no one else around.
But this is no ordinary cemetery.
They learn this burial spot is steeped in tragedy.
They have a plaque there that says, you know,
it's a mass grave for all the cholera victims
that died in the early 1900s.
There was quite a few children's headstones.
It was just sad, you know,
seeing all the children's headstones there
and realizing how they suffered and died there.
Those poor children.
Once again, Michelle, Jason, and Christopher
get the sense they are not alone.
I could hear the rustling in the bushes
and footsteps of what sounded like somebody behind us.
Mom. You okay?
My son was, like, hiding behind me,
and we didn't want
to have something happen to us or anything, right.
Sometimes a ghost will manifest involuntarily
because something about what they're watching
has triggered them.
Those kinds of spirits
usually come from a horrible accident,
an unexpected death, a tragic death.
They weren't ready to go before their time,
so they have ended up in this... in this realm.
Are you okay?
Yeah.
Someone's here.
No, there's something here.
I can feel it.
Sometimes I can feel certain things.
I can't see them, but I can feel them.
Jason.
So the longer that we stayed in the graveyard,
the energy was just so much that it was...
You could just feel it growing there.
Yeah, let's get going.
Everyone... My son and my husband
were just getting to the point
where they were starting to really get terrified,
so we left.
We would hear something
that sounded like footsteps behind us.
We would all stop, turn around.
There'd be nothing there.
My husband was getting goose bumps.
My son was terrified.
We're definitely not alone.
What are you doing?
Don't turn around.
Michelle is afraid to look behind her,
but still attempts to find out what's there.
We kept walking.
I said, "There's something behind us."
I told my husband, and I told my son,
I'm, like, "Don't turn around.
I'm gonna take my camera.
I'm gonna put it on my shoulder,
and I'm just gonna snap a photo."
I want to get out of here.
Now that she has the photo,
Michelle wants to leave as fast as possible.
And I actually said to my husband,
"okay, like, I think... Okay, this is enough,"
because I thought I was literally gonna, like,
just throw up everywhere.
It is possible to suffer a physical reaction to a spirit,
especially if the person has a certain sensitivity,
is emphatic, or high sense of empathy.
People like that who are particularly sensitive
to that kind of thing
tend to pick up on the sorrowful, angry vibes
that the spirit might be producing.
And their night of terror is only just beginning.
Did it follow us back, or did it stay there?
Mom, look!
I didn't want it to be something malevolent
that could hurt any of us.
Who's there?!
A spirit trapped between two realms
can be very dangerous
when they decide to haunt the living.
The phenomenon of haunting
can affect people on many levels,
not only mentally, emotionally, and spiritually,
but also physically.
While on vacation in the country,
Michelle and her family...
Hello?!
Investigate a cemetery
they think is deserted.
It's not.
There's something here. I can feel it.
And now Michelle is feeling the effects of the encounter.
We decided finally just to get the heck out of that place,
out of the cemetery.
And the whole entire time,
I felt like I was just gonna throw up.
I want to get out of here.
When we finally got back to the cabin,
my husband was relieved that we were back.
When Chinar sees her mother,
she knows something has happened.
It did not feel good.
I was extremely nauseated.
Mom, what's wrong?
I need to rest.
Well, come on, come on.
I went up to her.
And she was, like, "I don't know.
I'm just gonna go lay down.
I'm not feeling good."
And Chinar gets a powerful feeling
that they have company.
I need to lay down.
The reason a ghost would follow somebody home
is to simply convey a message.
"You've been in my territory.
I know where you live, and I'm invading yours.
Don't come back here.
This is what I can do."
I was kind of creeped out.
I didn't want it to be something malevolent
that could hurt any of us.
Michelle's concerns about
whether something has followed her home
are soon realized.
But then everything started up that night.
I'm sitting there on the computer.
My daughter was in her room, and my son was in bed.
My daughter opened up her door.
She froze.
Mom, look!
And she screamed, like... She just, like...
She points down, and she's, like, "Look!"
And this yellow toy construction hat
starts spinning, like, really fast in circles.
I see the hat spinning.
Like, I was just, like, stuck,
like, I couldn't move at all.
Mom!
And it went flying down the hall.
What's going on?
When I grabbed the hat, I'm checking the hat over.
There's nothing on the hat.
It's just a hat.
It doesn't take batteries.
It doesn't make sound.
It doesn't make movement, nothing.
There's nothing to worry about.
I hate it here!
She was so scared.
She was just so terrified,
and I couldn't even calm her down.
The night continues to get stranger.
Whatever followed them home from the cemetery
turns its attention to Christopher.
Everything's okay, Christopher. Go back to bed.
Someone's knocking.
What? Someone's knocking.
I'm, like, "Christopher, go back to bed.
It's, like, 11:00."
"No, mom, somebody's knocking."
I'm, like, "What are you talking about?"
There's nothing there.
Just go back to bed.
Can't you hear them? They're there.
But they don't register with Jason.
Kids are tuned very differently.
They have the ability to see spirits.
They have the ability to feel things
that aren't there.
They have the ability to hear things.
I'm, like, "Okay."
So I stood there, and I'm, like,
"Okay, I'm gonna wait here,
and I'm gonna see if I can hear anything."
So I stood there. I didn't hear a damn thing.
Like, I don't hear anything.
"You can't hear it?" he said. He says to me.
I'm, like, "I can't hear anything."
He's, like, "They're knocking."
Christopher insists he can hear
someone reaching out to him.
They want me.
My husband, he did go out the side door.
It is very dark.
You can't even see your hand in front of your face
when you're outside.
Who's there?!
There was nothing there.
It was quiet out.
You couldn't even hear a bird or nothing.
It was just nighttime.
It was pitch black.
Who's there?!
Jason!
Jason can't see anything.
Who's there?!
But the darkness is filled
with the laughter of children.
Who's there?!
The ghost of a child could be dangerous.
When a ghost child
were interacting with a living child...
they might find something about the living child
that upsets them,
and they might push back.
The night is not over yet.
Mommy, mommy!
The Lopez family went to an abandoned graveyard
to look around.
But now, something has followed them home.
And is reaching out to their son, Christopher.
Ghost children tend to be attracted
to the children of the living
because they can relate.
They're more or less the same age,
and because the ghost children are where they are,
chances are they are confused about where they are.
They passed away prematurely.
They're probably wondering why no one can see them.
But this living child can.
Christopher is woken from his sleep
and compelled to his bedroom window.
Mommy, mommy!
Mommy!
Christopher.
Mommy.
There's two boys playing outside.
What do you mean?
Come back to bed.
There's two boys playing outside.
"There's two boys."
Seriously, you need to go to sleep.
"But I could see them!"
What?
He's, like, "They have blond hair.
There's two of them.
They have blond hair, and I can see their shirts.
They're wearing white shirts,
but I can see through their shirts.
Like, they're playing with my toys."
It started to clue in
that we probably had brought something back.
Maybe it was trying to wake him up
because he wanted to play, you know.
Maybe it was a child that wanted attention.
It was lonely.
I was just hoping that
it was nothing that was gonna harm any of us.
And I decide, "Okay, I'm gonna get out my camera.
I'm gonna check out all the photos that I took."
Desperate to protect her child,
Michelle decides to get to the bottom of this encounter
with the paranormal.
And I start going through the photos.
One of the photos
that I had taken by the cholera mass grave,
you can clearly make out what looks like a child...
Blond hair, squatted down on their knees,
looking down like that, right behind the plaque.
You could see a little blonde-haired boy,
and it looks like he's running.
You can see his arms up like that.
Like that.
And I was, like, "Oh, my God."
The ghosts of the cholera victims
have left the mass grave
and stalked her son to his room.
But what do they want?
They have a story to get across.
There should be no surprise
the ghosts of children would accompany a family
that included children amongst their brood.
The spirits come from
a horrible, unexpected, and tragic death.
They weren't ready to go.
They have ended up in this realm.
They have kind of a foot in both realms,
and they're not quite sure where they want to be
or how to get out of it.
Stay here.
Michelle knows there is only one way to deal with a ghost.
You have to leave!
Confront it.
I'm sorry we bothered you!
And I said, "Whoever's here, if you followed us home,
we apologize for bothering you in any way if we did.
My son is frightened of you.
You're not welcome in this house.
We did not invite you here.
You need to leave."
You're not welcome here!
You can't have him!
Do you hear me?
You have to go!
You have to leave now!
It's always interesting to me
to see ghosts or earthbound spirits
that are children.
I've seen cases where children don't know
that they're actually dead,
or they won't cross over
until someone says it's okay.
Go.
Go now.
Find peace somewhere else.
Go now.
And just like that, the experience is over,
but it has lasting effects.
Christopher, he was shaken up, definitely shaken up.
He was the only one that could see them,
and nobody else could see them.
To this day, he always says that he wants to go back.
But then when it comes down to the time and the day to go,
he wants absolutely nothing to do
with actually being there.
The Lopez family left their ghosts behind,
but Rocky Elmore is about to return to a haunted mountain
where another spirit is trapped between this world and the next.
I've had people question me to what I saw that night,
suggesting how I hallucinated, or I imagined things.
I did not imagine that.
I was fully awake, and I know what I saw.
And it was walking right toward me.
Not all spirits pass over to the other side.
Some are trapped here on Earth.
Ghosts feed off of that fear energy.
They feed off of depression.
They feed off of chaos.
They like that kind of energy.
All ghosts are not bad.
There are plenty of... Of spirits
that are good-natured.
But there can be what I can call...
What you might call evil spirits,
I call them negative spirits.
A ghost or a spirit
that finds themselves trapped, straddling realms,
do feel a sense of torment
being in that state.
And this mountainside is full of apparitions,
both good-natured and otherwise.
Well, it's been claimed by the locals
that that mountain is haunted.
Border agent Rocky Elmore
has had his share of ghostly encounters,
Such as when his partner Luis Santiago was murdered.
In some cases,
a ghost returns to where they died.
Santiago tried to contact Rocky from beyond the grave.
I asked myself many times,
why would he be trying
to contact me over the radio like that?
Was it to say goodbye?
Was it to tell me what happened?
Now Rocky has a new partner
and another tale to tell.
This story takes place on top of Otay Mountain,
probably about a third of a mile
from a place called Doghouse Junction.
This mountainside has seen its share of death
for over a century.
The area has had several aircraft crashes...
Medical helicopter, World War II airplanes.
There's just so many things that happen up on that mountain.
We find skeletal remains up there,
almost on a monthly basis.
We've found dead bodies.
There's a lot of death and misery on that mountain.
Tonight, Rocky and his partner Pat
are on the hunt for a smuggler.
Pat and I had been sent up to the mountain.
We were the only two
anywhere near the peak of the mountain
in Doghouse Junction.
There's times I've heard what could have been screams
up on the mountain,
and you can't tell if it's an animal
or if it's a person.
We didn't come up with any footprints,
no sign for anybody.
We didn't hear anything.
Hey, I don't see anything! Do you?
All right.
Let's head back.
The fog sweeping over that
just gave it really a horror movie...
It would have been a perfect setting
to film a horror movie there.
The nights that we were...
That we would work in the fog,
visibility is obviously very, very difficult.
Your flashlights might play tricks around, you know,
shadows being cast.
But typically, you just can't see anything
until you're right on top of something.
Heads up!
It's nothing.
We hiked back up to our vehicles.
Got back up there,
and it's probably around
3:00 or 4:00 in the morning at that time.
Pat said, he wanted to know if it'd be okay
if he took about a 15-minute nap,
and I would watch for him.
So he dozed off for about 15 minutes,
and I watched everything.
You're gonna grab some Z's, it's a good a time as any.
His partner dozes off.
And that's when Rocky finally sees
that they are not the only ones on the mountain.
In the distance,
I seen this figure coming up out of Copper Canyon,
and it was walking right for us.
And I quickly looked over at my partner,
and he was still sawing logs.
This figure actually seemed to be a Border Patrol agent.
He looked like one of us at a distance.
I thought I detected a gun belt and things on it like that.
I thought it was a little bit strange
because no one else was assigned up there.
Patrol, is anyone else out here with us?
Lots of times, you'll go into what we would call a dead zone
where our radio communications wouldn't work.
So we'd be literally on our own.
What exactly is Rocky chasing?
We couldn't call out for help
if something went down, if something went bad.
The biggest danger with the fog for a Border Patrol agent
is that, as he's walking around,
he'll get lost
because he can't find his trails as easy.
He can't find the landmarks as easy.
I'm starting to think that,
well, I probably should have woke my partner up.
Obviously, this is a little bit more
than what I thought it was.
The question is,
who or what is Rocky chasing?
I got close enough to see his actual face.
I thought he was about to speak to me.
Border Patrol agent Rocky Elmore
has seen someone in the thick mountain fog.
Is it a man or something else?
The idea of spirits scares people,
so right off the bat, we're emitting fear.
We're emitting that energy.
And unfortunately,
that's kind of the worst thing we can do
if there is spirit activity
because that's what they feed off of.
Rocky is lured up the trail away from his partner.
Finally, he gets a good look at his target.
And as he got a little bit closer,
it actually started to take the form of like a military,
maybe in a jumpsuit,
some kind of utility belt or something.
Rocky is face-to-face with a man in uniform
who seems eerily out of place on the mountain.
I thought, "well, I guess it would be possible
that there could have been a plane crash,
and nobody knew about it, and he survived it."
But something's not right.
As he come towards me, he was walking totally silent.
I did not hear footsteps.
Considering the terrain,
I should have heard the footsteps.
When he got close enough to see his actual face,
there was nothing unusual about it
to give me any kind of clue of what was about to happen.
Aah!
Ghosts tend to want to play with
these strangers that have entered their world,
entered their home,
and have a bit of fun.
When he started to smile, I also started to speak to him.
I thought he was about to speak to me.
But within just a split second of the smile starting,
it went much wider,
kind of this ghoulish-type grin at me.
It was kind of like the Joker on "Batman."
That smile went way wide.
Very, very shortly after that, his face began to glow.
I don't know if my brain was able
to catch up quickly enough with what was happening.
And then he accelerated and vanished.
The apparition is gone.
The grin he gave me
was like he was pulling a practical joke on me.
"Gotcha. You thought I was a real person,
and I'm only a spirit."
A ghost has its egos.
A ghost has its attitudes,
its addictions, its sense of humor.
It still maintains everything that it had
when it was a human being.
I don't know what I thought at the time
or what I was feeling.
I did what we always do.
We get out the flashlight
and start looking for footprints on the ground.
I looked all around.
But there were no footprints for him.
And when I realized what had really happened
and the significance of it,
fear started to sweep over me.
Come to the conclusion it was a spirit.
Rocky's partner slept through the whole ghostly encounter.
To this day,
I've never told him what happened.
You just don't talk about paranormal stuff
in law enforcement.
He doesn't know what the phantom soldier
wanted from him, who he was,
or how long he has been trapped on that mountain.
But it's possible he died decades ago
when a plane crashed during World War II.
In the case of a spirit who finds themselves trapped,
my feeling is that
they would work on a plan
to communicate with somebody among the living,
bring attention to themselves.
"I'm here, please listen to me."
Rocky didn't choose to seek out
the spirit trapped between two realms.
It came to him.
But Daniel Cumerlato has been fascinated
by earthbound souls
since he was a child
and has always wanted to reach out to them.
As a kid, I always loved ghost stories.
You got to believe that there's something,
the idea that energy exists,
So if you believe in energy,
you should be able to believe in ghosts.
His interest in the paranormal follows him into adulthood.
One night, we were a little bit bored,
me and my wife at the time.
So we decided to use a Ouija board.
All the best stories start with a Ouija board.
The Ouija board has been given a very bad rap over the years
because most experiences of people using it
turn out to be negative ones.
I had set up this little microcassette recorder
in the corner of the table.
And we were doing the session,
and I asked one question...
Spirit, are you there?
And it slowly went up to "yes."
Now, afterwards, we listened to the microphone,
and after I asked that question,
you could hear in the microphone another voice.
It wasn't mine.
It wasn't my wife.
It was another guy right up against the microphone say...
Yes.
That one eerie incident
sparks a lifetime of obsession
and sends Daniel on a terrifying journey.
It's the one and only time
that I saw something hat I couldn't explain.
Ghosts haunt the land.
Unable or unwilling to leave.
Sometimes it's impossible to know what they want.
And other times, it's terrifyingly clear.
There's all sorts of different types of attachment for spirit.
I've seen spirits that are connected to land
because they're just very attached to it.
I don't believe that ghosts stay in our realm for no reason.
I'm safe here,
so I'm not gonna risk going to purgatory or hell
if I'm safe here.
But they choose to remain straddling the realm
of what we call the living
and the afterlife.
Not only is Daniel Cumerlato fascinated by the spirit world,
he gives tours into it,
inviting people to join in as he explores haunted buildings
around his home in Ontario, Canada.
A decrepit old mansion known as the Hermitage
is one of the most popular.
What remains was built in the 1850s
by the Leith family.
And out of all the locations I've gone to,
it seems to have the most dark or negative energy
that surrounds it.
The mansion was destroyed by fire,
and the only living descendant
was forced out into the streets.
So she couldn't afford to fix up her family's home,
but she also didn't want to leave it.
So she actually lived in a tent outside of the ruins,
just her and her little crippled dog
until the day she died.
Another woman also met a tragic end here
when her lover hung himself in the mansion's carriage house.
She died of heartache shortly after.
She was obviously crushed and broken,
and that energy still remains, especially at night.
The spirits of both these women haunt the grounds,
united together in anguish.
We're often asked how dangerous ghosts can get,
and what kind of harm they can inflict when upset.
A lot of this depends on
the degree of emotion that they...
That they feel.
The lure of haunted ruins
is impossible for some to resist,
which is why thrill seekers flock to Daniel's tours.
The only way to describe it is negative.
That dread or foreboding that kind of surrounds the area.
I hope we don't have too many nightmares, you know,
nothing too scary.
So on that evening in the year 2006,
I had a group.
Thanks very much.
Hope you guys enjoyed the tour.
Time to go home.
I tell you, most of it was pretty calm.
It was kind of like luring me into a false sense of security.
Come on, you guys! Time to go!
I noticed two people.
I didn't think anything of it.
I just assumed they were part of the group,
and I called out to them.
I said, "It's time to go. Please follow me."
And they ignored me.
And when I called out the second time,
it was kind of like they turned a bit,
and they walked right into the woods.
It gets darker and darker
as you're heading into the woods.
The area they walked into,
I was afraid they could hurt themselves.
They might trip and fall.
So I started running.
And two seconds behind them,
I shine a flashlight into those dark woods,
and there's no one there.
There's no way that I wouldn't have heard them run away
or seen them try to run away
if they were playing some kind of weird joke on me.
Hey!
It was almost like they just vanished into thin air.
I'm thinking I'm starting to go a little bit crazy
at this point.
It obviously changed from being a little bit peeved
to being a little bit frightened.
I felt a little bit confused the whole time
as my brain kind of processes through the different levels.
Could they have silently snuck away
in the time that I came over?
Could they have run off silently?
And as I'm checking off all the boxes...
Impossible, impossible, impossible.
Hey!
Come on, you guys!
Come on!
So I ran after them.
And when I caught up, when I saw it,
I immediately got scared.
Hey, let's go! Come on!
I kind of remember the shapes wearing dresses,
so it kind of billowed out a little bit at the bottom.
They were the same height, the same shape.
Really only way to describe it
as if they were mirror images of each other.
Daniel wonders,
are these the spirits of the two women
who died on this land?
I called out to them.
They had turned.
They had walked into those dark woods.
I'm not sure if the energies
were trying to draw me into the woods.
He fights an overwhelming urge to follow the apparitions.
They disappeared into that darkness.
It's almost like they were merging with it.
Then it dawns on me,
I just had a ghostly experience.
That's when I took off.
Funny thing is, I didn't tell anybody
about that experience the night of
because I wanted to go over it in my head.
Daniel doesn't know
why the spirits enticed him to follow
or what horrors they might have visited on him
if he had.
And he can't help but wonder
if they will come back for him
and what their intentions might be.
Every single tour that I lead there,
it crosses the back of my mind,
especially when a night comes closer on,
the night of a full moon.
But it hasn't happened.
Spirits who are trapped between two realms
can be dangerous
as the Lopez family found out.
They are still haunted by the memory
of the ghostly children that came for their son.
If people don't believe me and tell me I'm crazy,
I just tell them that
wait until something like this happens to you,
and then you'll really say "You're not crazy."
Rocky is likewise still shaken by his experience,
but won't let it get the better of him.
We just deal so much with blocking our emotions,
to keep fear from getting in,
because it's scary out there.
And if you let fear get in even a little bit,
you won't get out of your truck.
So you spend a lot of time trying to block your emotions
and keep fear at bay.