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,
and some ghosts who haunt the land are driven
by a single terrifying thought...
- What about me? - Vengeance.
Ah! No! No!
If you've been told that
there's nothing there in the dark, that's not true.
Is there anybody here? Oh!
They're going to fight back to exact revenge.
Something is wrong.
- Jerry! - Claws ripping at me.
- We got to get out of here. - They're here to do evil.
Hello?
This story is just so bizarre.
I've never heard anything else like this.
This mountain has a very evil feel to it,
and almost everyone that goes up there can tell you that.
One of the reasons that ghosts stay on this side
is in a pursuit of justice.
Ghosts will stick around
and actually influence the outcome of certain scenarios
where they feel vindicated so that they can move on.
These mountains
separating the U.S. and Mexican border
near San Diego are exceptionally dangerous
for border security officers on the lookout for smugglers.
There's an area up on Otay Mountain,
it's called the White Cross,
where the Mexicans would come up every Sunday,
and they would, you know,
do their prayers at the White Cross.
It stood about 10 to 12 foot tall,
and it had been erected there in memorial of all the people
who had lost their lives trying to cross the mountain.
Patrolling this area is a treacherous task,
especially at night,
but agents Luis Santiago and Rocky Elmore
are up for the challenge.
It's very important to work with someone you know you can trust
and you can count on because when things go bad,
other help is not going to get there in time.
But tonight Rocky isn't here,
and Santiago is heading up the mountain alone.
On March 28, 1995,
I was scheduled to work with Agent Santiago as his partner.
Unfortunately, I'd been working that area
really hard for sevel nights,
so I got overheated, and I'd become ill,
and I had to stay home and miss my shift.
The canyon is probability just about the darkest place
I've ever seen in my life.
Down in the bottom, there's no visibility whatsoever.
You walk totally by feel of your foot.
You were taking a big risk if it was dark.
Very mountainous terrain, very dangerous,
loose rocks and hazardous trails
and a lot of dangerous animals out there,
rattlesnakes and cougars, mountain lions.
But it's not just the animals
they have to worry about.
The area is apparently teeming with spirits.
Things that go up on that mountain at night
that can be very scary, questionable, ghostly.
People are afraid of what they can't see,
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.
But the biggest danger is the criminals.
That was a good place for bandits
and the smugglers to come prey
on their human cargo coming over.
You would occasionally encounter a smuggler
with a handgun or a knife.
It was also a place where agents got shot at.
And there was countless rapes and murders and robberies
happening there.
Some of them were very gruesome.
It's Agent Santiago's job
to chase down these dangerous smugglers.
You don't know if they're armed.
You don't know if they're going to fight back.
Agent Santiago ran uphill toward the top of the cliffs.
Santiago is facing a desperate criminal
while his backup lies sick in bed.
And, in the middle of the night,
I heard a rhythmetic beeping inside my room,
sounded kind of like a distress call.
I looked at the clock, and it said 12:02.
I started looking for it and realized
it was coming from my work radio.
But when I realized that the radio was actually off
and it was still beeping, thought,
"Well, maybe it's got a short,"
turned it on and off a couple of times,
and that fixed the problem.
The next morning, I got up feeling much better,
but I had a phone call...
And I was informed that Agent Santiago
had gotten killed that night.
An officer heard him scream
and saw his flashlight tumbling down the cliff...
And they estimated the time of death
two minutes after midnight.
And then it hit me...
That was the time that my radio was beeping.
The night of his death, investigators come out,
try to surmise what had happened to him,
and they came to the conclusion that he had
just simply lost his balance and that it was an accident.
But Rocky and his fellow agents know better.
We all thought somebody was up there, and somebody pushed him.
Santiago may be dead, but he is not gone.
One of the reasons that ghosts choose to stay on this side
is to seek justice.
They want to find an end
to something that they left unfinished.
It was very bizarre because
usually when you hear ghost stories,
it's a form of entertainment.
Because usually it's someone who lived 200 or 300 years ago.
Nobody alive today actually knew them.
But, in this case, this is somebody
we had just been working with.
We knew this guy.
Agent Luis Santiago
is brutally murdered by a smuggler while on patrol.
When you lose someone that's a friend,
you know, what are you going to do?
It's tough, but we also know that's the nature of our job.
But his partner, Rocky Elmore,
has a powerful sense his story isn't over yet.
The night of his funeral,
I went to bed that night, probably about 10 o'clock.
Again, I was woken up in the middle of the night
by the same rhythmetic beeping
I had heard on the night of his death.
I picked up my walkie-talkie,
and it was beeping the same fashion.
And, this time, I turned it on and off a couple of times
to try to get it to stop, and it wouldn't stop.
I looked over at the clock, and the clock said 12:02
just like the previous time.
And I felt that there was a presence on that radio
that wanted me to push the talk button
and say something.
But I didn't have the courage to do it.
These radios don't go off by themselves.
No reason his radio should have beeped.
I knew this was no coincidence,
and there was shivers just going up and down my spine.
Rocky wonders if Santiago
is trying to contact him about his death.
They can actually connect to people in what I call cords
where they'll actually draw energy from people.
It happens quite a bit.
I mulled it over many times,
how things would have changed had I went to work that night.
Would I have prevented him from going over,
or would it just simply happen the same?
Couple of nights after his death,
I reported to work as usual.
Things started to happen up on the mountain.
The night was dark, very, very dark.
There was no moonlight at all.
I asked myself many times,
"Why would he be trying to contact me
over the radio like that?"
Sometimes, I wished I had answered to find out,
but I just couldn't do it at the time.
Now the screams of terrified border jumpers
open a chilling new chapter.
When I got up top,
the entire group was just standing in the road, frozen,
and some of them were still crying.
One of the people in the group said
they had been stopped by a border patrol agent
who identified himself as Agent Santiago.
Santiago?
They said, "He's covered in mud and blood,
and he's very pale,
and he told us to come up here and wait,
and we were so frightened that we did."
When I heard of the story of Santiago's ghost,
I had chills up and down my spine,
and my hair was standing up on my arms.
And this is only the beginning.
Over the next 7 months, more tales of the angry ghost
haunting the mountain terrify many
who try to cross the border.
Soon, it had become fairly common knowledge
that groups were reporting being stopped
by a phantom border patrol agent...
And he always identified himself to them as Agent Santiago.
The people crossing soon began to call him El Phantasma.
I've seen a lot of cases
where ghosts continued to operate
in their jobs that they had while they were alive.
They feel such a connection,
and that job was such a big part of their identity
that they either choose not to let go of that,
or they can't let go of that.
But many believe that Santiago's ghost
has a more sinister reason for stalking the area.
Everyone started to think that maybe a signal is being sent,
something was being told that he had not received justice...
and he couldn't move on because something wasn't finished.
The spirit of Santiago is hunting for vengeance.
It's vindication, I think.
A lot of ghosts feel like they have to seek that justice,
and they choose not to leave until that happens.
Rocky Elmore's partner, Agent Luis Santiago,
is murdered by a smuggler while on duty.
Now his ghost haunts the land, seeking vengeance.
Well, a spirit might seek revenge on somebody
if their life was taken prematurely.
There's a message to be conveyed,
and that was, "I was murdered, and I'm crying for justice."
After the sighting of Agent Santiago's ghost,
there was always a presence back there that, you know,
that seemed like Santiago might still be there, haunting.
Every time I would see a single person
crossing the border up on the mountain in these areas,
I would wonder, "Is that a real person,
or is this going to turn out to be a ghost sighting?"
The sightings of Agent Santiago carried on for about 7 months,
and then, one night in January,
they came to a very abrupt and permanent end.
When the smuggler who murdered Santiago
is back on the mountain,
Santiago's ghost is ready to exact its revenge.
We're often asked if a spirit could kill you,
and our answer is, "Yes."
On the very same cliff that Agent Santiago fell from,
a group was detected coming up with a smuggler.
No! Mercy!
He was on top of the cliff, screaming for help.
No!
There was one dead body at the bottom of the cliff.
The person killed that night
was that smuggler that killed Santiago.
Agent Santiago avenged his own death.
The death of the smuggler
ends the terrifying visions
of what the locals called El Phantasma.
After that night, there were no more sightings
of Agent Santiago.
His ghost was never reported again.
But Rocky still doesn't understand
why Santiago reached out to him.
Although the ghost is gone,
Rocky is still haunted by the experience.
I realize how scary that really can be...
How terrifying it is to go into the woods at night
and realizing that there really are spirits out there.
There really are things you can't explain...
And they're not nice.
They're very, very evil.
The ghost of Agent Santiago
was able to avenge his murder.
But there are other spirits out there seeking vengeance,
and they don't care who receives their wrath.
You just knew something bad happened there,
and I do believe they're here to do evil.
I have come across angry spirits in the past...
Just tell me what happened.
Nothing that would be as brutal...
Ah!
As the one...
Oh, God! Oh!
That happened that day.
Jerry!
Jerry, what happened?
Rocky's friend and partner, Luis Santiago,
haunted the mountain where he was murdered
until he achieved vengeance.
No! No!
A spirit with a mindset of revenge could be very dangerous.
It depends on how deeply they feel
about what has happened to them or why they want revenge.
Jerry and Stephanie Ayres
are headed out to find the spirits
of those whose lives were cut short
and may still have a score to settle.
I mean, all your life, you know,
you've heard that there's ghosts,
and, you know, we just want to know
for sure what's out there.
The ruins of this building are almost all that
is left of a horrifying legacy.
In the beginning, it was called Walcott Mills.
In 1895, the mill burned down, exploded.
Years later, the state hospital purchased the area.
It was known as an asylum.
There was a lot of abuse in there.
There was...
Females were having babies from the doctors.
The dark stories say that they were born alive,
and they were killed and thrown
in these unmarked graves in this place.
There was over 200 children buried up there.
The hospital was torn down decades ago.
Only remnants of the original structures remain.
Some people claim that there was horrible energy there.
We wanted to see it for ourselves.
I've been a paranormal investigator now since 2010.
Jerry and Stephanie Ayres
are professional ghost hunters.
My wife and I formed a team
called Supernatural Investigators of Minnesota.
Well, we want to prove that spirits exist.
A lot of people don't believe in them.
We know they're here. We see them.
We sense them.
SIM's mission is to document and prove their existence,
that there is something out there
that can come into our reality.
The minute you get out of the car at this area,
the feeling there is very oppressive, very sad.
It is.
Experienced investigators don't go anywhere
without the right equipment.
Instruments that I like to use, a K-2 meter.
That can pick up the energy of a spirit.
The K-2 meter measures
the electromagnetic frequency of different areas
in the places that they're investigating.
This is really a good way to help prove what's going on.
Got everything?
Yeah. All right.
Our voice recorders can pick up voices, plain and simple.
It might be something that you can't hear with your own ear
such as through a radio signal or something like that,
but through EVP, electronic voice phenomenon,
session, on a voice recorder,
you should be able to pick up what they're saying to you.
Ready to go? Yep.
Let's do it.
When we started walking through the woods down this trail,
it almost felt like there was something
watching you from within the trees.
Jerry, do you feel that?
It's like...
Listen, let's get out of here. Okay?
Come on.
This area is a very desolate, sad place.
This is a graveyard.
There's really no telling how many children are buried there.
You can feel these negative, sad energy.
It's a feeling of hopelessness.
It was just like you were being assaulted by all these souls.
This is heartbreaking.
That place hit you across the face.
It says, "You've got something here.
Now that you've went all this way,
what are you going to do? Are you going to run,
or are you going to stand and find out what's there?"
You could feel that something was in there,
more than one something.
There was many somethings.
It was kind of uncomfortable.
We need to get ready.
When we go to places that are haunted,
one of the first things that we do is smudge.
Smudging is a art that the Native Americans
came up with thousands of years ago.
I like to smudge myself with sage
to keep all the negative entities off of me.
Sweet grass opens up for your ancestors from the past
to help if you need it.
And I think it's important to kind of
bring that energy around yourself,
you know, kind of imagine a bubble around yourself
and filling it with energy
that protects you from the other energy that's there.
I think entering a place like this can be
a very dangerous proposition.
A lot of people were held against their will.
This creates a different energy with the souls
that remain there...
And you could feel the energy in that place,
and once you start walking through and asking questions...
Is there anybody here?
Then that's when the excitement
starts to pump into you.
We turned on our voice recorders
and, you know, asked a few questions.
Will you speak to us?
Can you tell us what took place here?
There's nothing.
I know, and I really thought there was this time.
So did I.
Is there anybody here?
Despite the unmistakable energy...
There's nothing.
Their equipment doesn't pick up any paranormal activity.
All right. Let's go.
We were blown away
by the amount of energy that was there.
The feelings of sadness,
you just knew something bad happened there.
Okay.
That's too bad.
I really thought we were going to find something today.
Yeah.
Definitely felt like there was something there.
When they return home,
Jerry and Stephanie check their equipment...
All right. Let's see what we got.
Just in case something was trying to contact them
and they couldn't hear it at the time.
Is there anybody here?
Once we're done, I can't wait to tear into the audio
to see what we caught.
You never know what you get, right?
Mm.
All right. Let's go.
What about me?
Did you hear that?
There was a voice of a little girl that said,
"What about me?"
And that was the biggest thrill.
Play it again.
All right. Let's go.
What about me?
It's clearly the voice of a girl child.
That's enough to make my toenails curl, let me tell you.
What about me?
She sounds so sad.
You want to help.
You want to help somehow, and I just knew
we had to go back and find out what the story is.
The ghosts of children are just as unpredictable
as a living child.
You heard that, right? Yeah.
We're definitely going back.
Yeah. Yes, we are. We're going back.
I would never have believed that what was about
to happen to me...
Oh. Oh, god.
Was going to happen.
Jerry, what happened?! What about me?
Paranormal investigators Jerry and Stephanie Ayres
have evidence of a little girl's spirit haunting an old asylum.
What about me?
Did you hear that?
It's good to have proof,
and this is why we got into this field
was because we wanted to have the data, have the evidence.
What about me?
She sounds so sad.
That these spirits are still walking on our Earth.
Yeah, we're definitely going back.
Yes, we are. We're going back.
I just knew that things would be going on,
but I never thought it was going to be at the level that...
Ah!
That happened.
And, this time, they haven't come alone.
Stephanie and I and the rest of our team
decided to make an event out of it.
I was smudging people to try to keep the entities off.
There was a lot of spirit energy there.
I felt like they were looking at us as if saying, you know,
"Who are you? Why are you here? Why are you looking for us?"
But this visit doesn't feel like the last one.
It's definitely more threatening.
It's scarier.
It could've been because there were so many people there,
and, as we know,
entities and spiritual beings feed off of other energy.
And then it's kind of almost like a fever pitch.
I'm going to go check out the grounds now.
Do you want me to go with you?
No. No.
I'll be okay.
Just be careful, please.
Mm-hmm.
We split up.
Let's go.
Hello?
Come on.
When we first walked up to there,
you could feel it immediately.
Our team actually backed up a little bit
and were very, very nervous about going in.
Come on, guys. Come on. Come on.
The big hope is that you're going to pick up sounds
when you ask questions.
It's okay.
My name is Jerry.
I just want to know what happened here.
I started out by saying, "My name is Jerry,
and we're here not to bother you.
We're here to talk to you.
Is there anything you want to say to me?"
I'm sure there's something.
There's something here.
Is there anybody here?
Just tell me what happened.
You can feel the energy around it,
and you can sense that there's something there.
Is there anybody here?
I believe that there are things in this area
that are not nice entities.
They don't belong in this world, but somehow they're here.
Stephanie suddenly realizes
that the little girl is not the only ghost
haunting these woods.
There's nothing.
It was totally dead,
and that's when I felt that there was something there,
but it wouldn't speak to us, so I decided to yell out at it.
It's a move he instantly regrets.
Would it kill you to show yourself?!
Would it kill you to show yourself?
Kill you to show yourself.
Oh! Oh, God!
Oh!
Jerry.
Oh.
No, it's okay. It's okay.
So I said, "Come on. You can do better than that."
Is there anybody here?! Oh!
I made that very large mistake of deciding to provoke.
Provoking spirits, I don't think that's a good idea.
You do open yourself up to a lot of kind of scary stuff.
I just had this terrible feeling that something was wrong
at the other site and specifically with Jerry.
Jerry.
And that's when I started feeling it in my chest.
It was... It felt like butterflies,
a bunch of butterflies going off,
and then it started feeling like claws
and just started ripping at me.
I couldn't believe this was going on.
And then it kind of stopped for a moment.
My K-2 meter was going crazy.
Ah!
Then the pain started back in again.
Ah!
And it started in my heart and my lungs,
and it was just, like, a ripping sensation.
Ah!
Then that's when I started getting really scared,
and my teammate that was with me kept telling me,
"You need to pull yourself up."
Ah! Don't touch me.
And I told him I wanted to see what was going to happen next.
Jerry is pushing his luck by not leaving,
but he can't help himself.
It was the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
Ah! Oh, God! No!
Stephanie and Jerry return to the grounds
of an old asylum in the woods
to help the spirit of a little girl.
What about me?
Is there anybody here?
Instead, they found something else...
You're not that little girl, are you?
Bent on revenge for what happened to the children
in the asylum.
Oh. Oh.
The dangers of a revenge-seeking spirit
is the amount of energy they have at their disposal
to manifest and share that pain
or that anger in the form of a revengeful act.
It was just a feeling of dread.
It's like, "What is going on over there? I need to know now."
Then, finally, I couldn't take it anymore.
All I wanted to do was run.
I would think, "Could that have been a heart attack,"
but it didn't take my breath away.
Jerry!
Jerry, what happened?
When I got to Jerry, he was pale,
and he was sweating.
Jerry.
His heart was racing.
He was definitely not well.
Can you walk?
The fear coming out of his voice definitely freaked me out.
I don't know what's happening.
We got to get out of here.
My first thought was, "Oh, my God.
We have to get in the car. We have to go now."
Guys, we got to go.
I don't think that that spirit that attacked me
was the little girl at all.
I believe that these things that attacked him
are these supernatural creatures.
I think they were there to protect these poor kids
that had such a horrible existence there at this place.
I don't know what they were,
but I believe they can cause great harm,
and if you provoke them, they're going to lash out.
He finally was at a place
where I thought he was going to be okay.
Are you okay? Jerry?
But it's not over.
Jerry is definitely very confident
when he goes into situations
and, a lot of times, can be overconfident.
Oh! Oh, God!
No. Don't.
He can feel that his energy
is big enough that he won't be harmed.
Oh, don't. Don't touch me.
Don't touch me.
He stayed because he wanted to see what would happen,
and he stayed too long, and the damage was done.
I went to the doctor, and my doctor was...
He was floored.
They came back with the tests and everything to tell me
I had an advanced stage of histoplasmosis,
which affects the lungs.
You have to remember that we are magnetic,
and if we pick that stuff up,
it will stick to our aura, to our energy.
Whatever spirit entered his body,
it has damaged him,
so Jerry decides to return to make peace
with the entity he provoked.
I was very scared and nervous about going back to it again.
I did go back, and I did apologize
for what I had done because that's not me.
I don't do that kind of stuff.
I felt this presence.
It felt bad, you know.
It felt dangerous to me,
and knowing what had happened to him,
I panicked.
What's wrong?
We have to get out of here.
It's still there.
We got to go.
When we started paranormal investigating,
I guess we did know that there was a danger,
that there were dangerous things out there,
that they could hurt you,
and this definitely was the case,
and Jerry's health has been impacted.
He will be on medication for the rest of his life.
He has to be very careful what he does.
The experience is over,
but Jerry never recovers from his mysterious illness.
Like Stephanie and Jerry Ayres,
Rocky Elmore learned that some spirits are driven
by a thirst for vengeance.
No. No. No!
I definitely do believe in the afterlife.
Where Agent Santiago's spirit is right now, I don't know.
I have my beliefs, but I don't know.
I think hauntings affect people because they touch our emotions.
They stoke our fear.
Ah!
They create a situation where our senses
are heightened to such a level...
You're not that little girl, are you?
That it's almost hard to forget.
I do regret the way I conducted myself that one particular day.
Would it kill you to show yourself?
I'm the one who provoked,
and I'm the one who paid the price for it.
Ah!
I think that that paranormal experience
touches a different part of ourselves.
What about me?
Did you hear that?
And it's a part of ourselves that leaves us sort of open
and wondering to really what's going on out there.