-August 18, 2002. -December 12, 2011.
-August 29... -December 1...
-June 15, 1991. -It was the scariest night.
-It was the scariest night.
It was the scariest night.
It was the scariest night of my life.
MAN: I was being violently assaulted by the most powerful
and terrifying entity I have ever seen and felt.
WOMAN: There was a presence in my house.
I had never been so scared.
MAN: This evil spirit wanted to do me serious harm.
WOMAN: The shadow was like the Devil himself.
I was paralyzed.
He wanted to possess me.
I knew in that moment,
I have to get the [bleep] out of this room.
[ Child giggles ]
[ Clock ticking ]
I see it right here.
In 2007, we purchased a home.
It was our first home.
Everything was going great.
We were all happy -- me and my husband, Fernando,
and my two kids, Bernie and Valentina.
My husband had a good job, and then I started working,
so we decided to buy a house.
We moved from 1-bedroom apartment
to a 3-bedroom house.
It was big. My kids had their own rooms.
So, what do you think? -I love it! I'm so excited.
It's so good, yeah?
My daughter was so happy.
My son was 4 1/2.
He was very happy to have his little room.
We put everything in the house,
enjoying to be like us, like a family that we are.
Okay, kids?
Boop!
[ Whoosh ]
[ Ominous music playing ]
[ Whoosh ]
It was a long day.
I take my daughter to her room,
tuck her in.
Okay, remember, we still have prayers.
Okay.
We pray.
-Thy will be done. Amen. -Amen.
I kiss her goodnight.
My little boy...
he has autism, so he goes to bed with me.
After tucking in the children for the night,
I went to relax and watch a little bit of TV.
And we're watching, you know, a movie...
[ Laughs ]
...a comedy movie. -[ Man speaks indistinctly ]
I started noticing, in the air,
the environment of the house,
something weird.
[ Ominous music playing ]
But I looked around and I didn't see anything out of place.
[ Whoosh ]
I feel that the room, it felt cold for me.
[ Whoosh ]
In the corner of my eye...
I saw this shadow,
a black shadow.
It passed by and disappeared.
But I just tried to ignore it.
It was a long day, and I was just imagining things.
[ Knock on window ]
[ Whoosh ]
Mom! Dad!
My daughter comes screaming out of her room,
yelling, something knocked on her window.
No, I wasn't, I swear! I saw it!
GLORIA: And she was shaking, and I said, "What did you see?"
And she told me, "It's an ugly face.
I don't know how to say it. It's an ugly face."
She saw this scary face.
We went into her room.
Fernando, check the closet.
VALENTINA: Do you see anything?
-But I swear, I saw it. -GLORIA: It's okay.
See, nothing is there. Nobody's there.
I don't see anything, either. I don't -- There's nothing here.
Okay, baby. I don't see anything.
We check outside the window.
Nothing was there.
I'll go check outside.
My husband went around the house to see what was out there.
Nothing was there.
But since she was so scared of seeing that face,
we decided for her to sleep in our room.
VALENTINA: Thank you.
[ Clock ticking ]
GLORIA: Fernando went to work at his night shift.
I'm married for 16 years and a half.
I have two beautiful kids.
All my life... [ Sighs ]
[ Lighter clicks ]
...I've been a spiritual person.
I believe in spirits.
I believe when you die, there's an afterlife.
I have a gift.
I have a gift that I could...
feel the spirits.
I got out the spirit board.
I took it out 'cause I wanted to see
what was really there, 'cause I felt it.
I felt that something was there.
I felt the energy, a heavy energy.
The spirit board is to communicate with the spirits.
But if you open a door,
something bad comes out.
[ Clock ticking ]
GLORIA: I felt a presence of a spirit in my house.
I asked them, "Who are you?"
Nothing happened.
The second time, I asked, "What is your name?"
Nothing happened.
The third time, I got mad and I said, "I know you're here.
Show yourself."
[ Wind howling ]
And the spirit board started moving...
towards the F...
U...
T...
U...
R...
E.
"Future."
And then the planchette started moving.
It spelled out...
"hazy."
"Future hazy."
I just got up.
[ Blows air ]
I felt that, already, that something was there with me.
I put it away.
I started doing my routine.
[ Whoosh ]
I just felt, again, this heavy...
heavy thing in -- in the kitchen.
[ Footsteps ]
And I hear footsteps approaching.
They're very slow and heavy.
[ Footsteps continue ]
I see a shadow standing, but I cannot see the face.
Me, in my head, saying, "I have my kids here.
I have to protect them."
I felt scared.
I didn't know how to stop this thing.
I yelled... I am not afraid of you!
Show your face! -..."I'm not afraid of you!
Show your face! Who are you?"
And then, he disappeared.
[ Breathing heavily ]
I thought he left me alone
and left my family alone.
But, no, I was wrong.
[ Switches click ] [ Breathing heavily ]
I went to the restroom to...
[ Water running ] ...go wash my face.
I washed my face.
[ Continues breathing heavily ]
I see, in the mirror, that it's not my face.
It wasn't me.
I saw the reflection of a face that was not my face.
I looked very pale.
My eyes were, like, black.
[ Voice breaks ] I got scared. I got scared, to be honest.
I got scared.
I felt that it was inside me.
I felt sick.
I'm trying to fight back,
to get out that thing that was in me.
[ Vomiting ]
When I vomit,
black thing just came out of me.
[ Vomits, coughs ]
[ Panting ]
It smelled bad.
It smelled like... When something's dead?
It smelled like that.
And when I washed my face fast again...
...I saw my reflection again...
myself.
My body went back to normal.
I went back to normal.
I felt that I had to -- to fight this thing,
to fight whatever was trying to attack me.
I-I-I had to be brave and fight it back.
[ Clock ticking ]
I'm fighting with something you think that you cannot win.
[ Switch clicks ]
I turn on the lights, all of 'em.
[ Switch clicks ] I was afraid of the darkness.
I left everything, every light on. Every light on.
[ Switch clicks ]
I go back to my bedroom.
[ Switch clicks ]
I get into my bed.
My kids are there with me.
[ Switch clicks ]
They didn't know nothing what was going on.
And I see all the lights going off,
one by one.
Everything's getting dark and dark.
Everything went black.
And then my heart started beating fast.
I hear heavy footsteps. No. No, please.
[ Footsteps approaching ]
I felt that he was coming back, but...
...more aggressive.
[ Clock ticking ]
GLORIA: There was a presence in my house,
and it was focused on me.
I had never been so scared.
[ Voice breaks ] I opened my eyes...
...and he was in front of me.
His face, it's black like a charcoal.
His eyes looked black in the front and red around.
Breathing... [ Exhales slowly ]
Breathing.
[ Gasping ]
I was paralyzed.
I couldn't move. He had my hands like that.
[ Cries ]
I couldn't talk. I couldn't move.
He was right in front of my face.
I wanted to close my eyes,
and I just felt tears coming on the side of my eyes,
trying to look at my kids.
And I couldn't move 'cause that thing was on top of me.
The shadow was like the Devil himself.
I'm feeling scared.
He wanted, like, I guess, to possess me.
I was praying in my head.
Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo,
santificado sea tu Nombre... and Ave María.
I said it, like, three, four times.
Padre Nuestro, Ave María.
I was saying, "Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen."
And the seventh time when I said, "Amen"...
[ Whoosh ] No. No. [ Cries ]
[ Inhales sharply ]
...he disappears.
I breathe.
[ Heartbeat thumping ]
And I see him standing...
...in front of my bed...
...looking at me.
I was still afraid.
And when he -- he turned around...
...he disappears in the wall.
[ Gasps ]
Kids, get up, get up, get up!
I just got my kids, woke 'em up, and got out of the house.
Let's go. Let's go, let's go.
And that was the scariest night of my life.
I think that the Devil was around the house already,
but I think by using the spirit board,
it gave him more... like, more power.
I went to this church
and, um, and I talked to the priest
and told him that I needed help.
And the priest himself just looked at me
and told me to get out.
I don't know what he saw in me.
So after that, we sold the house,
with everything in there.
With everything.
Never went back.
There's some people out there that they don't believe.
For those people that they don't believe in spirits
or ghosts or demons, there are.
There are spirits. There are ghosts.
There are demons out there.
'Cause I go back...
at that year, and...
[ Crying ] It was a bad experience for me.
A very bad experience that, um...
But I saw this thing...
[ Exhales deeply ]
...that I would never, never forget.
Each time that I speak about this,
it's like, the more I start to remember.
I wasn't alone. I wasn't by myself.
There was something else in the room.
I knew that if I didn't get out of here now, I never would.
I had to stop it.
I have no idea what the hell was there.
But whatever that was, it was definitely an evil presence.
[ Birds chirping ]
My partner, David, and I decided to move in together.
He was living in a building right downtown,
right on a busy street.
The space is big, beautiful, unique.
The building itself is 150 years old.
A lot of character to it.
[ Creaking ]
[ Whoosh ]
It's had many incarnations.
It was initially used as a hotel.
It's been used as a doctor's office,
a tattoo parlor.
At some point, it was used as a flop house.
People were just sort of living there.
But it's a strong, old building with really, really good bones.
And considering how old it is,
there's some kind of majesticness about it
that still sort of holds up.
[ Whoosh ]
[ Clock ticking ]
[ Water running ]
So it was time for me to go to bed.
I'd had a long day,
and it was probably around quarter to 10:00.
David and I have completely different working schedules.
I'm a teacher, and David is a photographer,
which often means when I'm heading to bed for the night,
David is wide awake, working in his studio.
I had gone to bed this one night,
and just sort of started to fall asleep.
[ Clock ticking ]
[ Heartbeat thumping ]
While I was in bed,
all of a sudden, I felt something.
I woke up to this feeling of the weight
of a person sitting on my feet.
It was as though somebody
just sort of flopped down onto my feet.
[ Creaking ]
But I could feel the full weight of this person,
like my feet were trapped underneath them.
And when I opened my eyes to see what it was...
...there was sort of this moonlight figure and shadow.
[ Ominous music playing ]
It sort of slowly turned around and looked at me.
Pillbox hat on her head, horned-rim glasses on her face,
fur collar.
And I just remember thinking that she was somehow related.
She was looking at me as though she needed my reassurance.
I felt a little bit scared,
but somehow felt completely calm at the same time.
I wasn't afraid at all.
And she turned her head away again,
and when I closed my eyes... [ Whoosh ]
...and opened them again, she was gone.
I didn't feel as though there was anything I had to fear.
But that soon was going to change.
I fell back asleep.
[ Clock ticking ]
I was woken up again because I could hear things...
...what sounded like voices.
[ Indistinct whispering ]
And as I slowly started to open my eyes...
...I could see around the room, there were at least...
...10 people standing around the bedroom.
[ Eerie laughter ]
[ Clock ticking ]
J.P.: I was being visited by 10 ghosts
that were trying to communicate with me,
trying to send me some kind of message.
Again, all sort of shadowed by moonlight, it seemed.
They were all sort of talking amongst themselves.
[ Indistinct whispering ]
Help me.
I couldn't necessarily understand
what they were saying, but I could hear them as though
they were all talking in hushed whispers.
But it seemed as though it was all meant for me to hear.
There were men, there were women.
Some of them young, some of them old.
All of the people that were standing in the room
were in various states of dress.
Some of them were wearing coats.
It certainly looked dated. It wasn't modern at all.
It could've been from the '20s.
Some of it could've been from the '50s.
It just seemed like a real mix of people
from different generations that were all together,
somehow, in this room.
I rolled back over on my side and I closed my eyes.
I just hoped that it would just go away.
And I'm not 100% sure if I fell back into a sleep again,
because the next thing I could hear,
those sounds, the "Shh...,"
[ Indistinct whispering ]
Those words, they were closer.
And when I opened my eyes...
[ Indistinct whispering continues ]
...it -- it felt like it was midday.
It was the middle of the night, but the room, it was so bright.
I was surrounded by them.
They were as close as though somebody was
right in front of me, right here.
They were that close to me.
I'd look to my right, I'd look to my left,
and directly all in front of me, they were all there.
There was at least 10.
They had urgency in their face.
They had urgency in what they were trying to say.
It was like they were shouting out,
over one another, to be heard.
I felt like my heart was racing.
It was too much for me. I couldn't handle it.
What I was feeling was that they were desperate
to somehow pass on information to me.
They were so, so determined to want to,
all of them, communicate with me in that same moment.
The way that they were all speaking individually,
it was like they were there by themselves
and unaware of the fact that there were other spirits
that were surrounding them.
And it was so overwhelming.
[ Indistinct whispering continues ]
Some of them were expressing,
I could see, a lot of pain in their faces
when they were trying to communicate to me.
There was this level of desperation that they had.
The entire time all of this activity
is happening in the bedroom,
David is editing the work that he's done that day,
for deadlines he has to meet the following day.
He's got some music playing.
He's very focused on what he's doing.
It's almost like he tunes out
everything else that's around him.
At that moment, I felt, like, claustrophobic.
I felt completely surrounded.
Like, I also felt that I couldn't move.
This was becoming very, very scary.
It was frightening to me.
This was not like anything I had ever experienced before.
They were terrorizing me, and I had to stop it.
[ Indistinct whispering continues ]
No, you need to stop. I can't understand you.
I can't listen anymore.
You have to stop.
And I closed my eyes,
and I'm thinking to myself,
"You have to leave. You have to go.
"I can't listen to you. This is too much.
I can't hear you."
And when I opened my eyes again...
...they were gone.
I felt completely exhausted, and I fell asleep.
But those 10 spirits,
they were nothing for what was about to happen.
[ Clock ticking ]
I don't know how long I was asleep for,
but I...
I suddenly felt like
there was somebody walking on the bed.
[ Creaking ]
It almost felt like, if you've ever had, like, a dog or a cat
and they jump onto the bed and they're walking around you,
you can feel the weight of their paws touching the bed.
It initially felt like that.
And that's what sort of had me wake up.
And I was lying on my side,
and I could feel what felt like something was walking around me.
When I opened up my eyes,
I could also feel this cool wetness
as though something had just walked through
the lower part of my legs, between my knees and my ankles.
It felt completely different than the weight
that I felt from the first visitor that night.
It also felt really, really angry and hostile.
I couldn't breathe, it was so heavy and cold.
It felt like a block of ice down my body.
I was absolutely terrified.
And I slowly turned my head over.
I was really confused.
I had no idea what the hell was there.
This thing was black and tar-like,
and it was wet and shiny at the same time,
and it was standing in the middle of the bed.
It was like it was standing through the bed.
I could see the silhouette of what looked like a person,
but without any distinguishing features.
I could not see eyes. I couldn't see a nose.
There were no ears. There was nothing.
And it has arms and hands,
but I can't make out any facial features whatsoever.
But the energy it was giving off
was so, so, so dark and so horrible.
All I could feel was, this was gonna be violent.
And it suddenly reached and grabbed my arm.
[ Eerie laughter ]
J.P.: I was being violently assaulted by the most powerful
and terrifying entity I have ever seen and felt.
It felt like this evil spirit wanted to do me serious harm.
I was so scared, I was petrified.
I knew that if I didn't get out of here now, I never would.
And it suddenly reached and grabbed my arm.
And I was in shock.
I was absolutely terrified.
And it yanked me right across the bed
to the point where I was thrown onto the floor
of the other side of the bed.
And I was terrified.
It was violent, and I was afraid,
in that moment, it was gonna come back at me again.
There was no way that a human could do this.
I couldn't believe what was happening.
It physically dragged me to the other side of the room.
It wanted to do harm to me, to hurt me.
It was so powerful.
I didn't think I was going to get out of this.
I have to get the [bleep] out of this room.
But I knew it was totally real.
I felt it.
I saw it.
I felt how angry it was towards me.
I felt how much it wanted me out of there.
I felt...
how much it hated me.
David! David! David! David!
-What? -I was just attacked.
And David, and he's like, "What the hell is going on with you?"
And I'm breathing and I'm breathing
and I'm trying to calm down, and I'm like,
"Something just grabbed me in the bedroom.
"Something just pulled me across the bed
and threw me onto the floor."
I'm like, "It's angry. It's so angry."
And -- and he just looked at me
as though I was having a nightmare or something,
and I knew, in that moment, he had -- he didn't believe me.
He completely thought I had manifested this in my head.
And he said, "You're having a nightmare. You're fine."
And I stood there and I breathed and I tried to calm myself down.
And as much as I was afraid, I also felt so angry,
like as though, somehow, I had been, like, violated some way.
But I have never felt like that before.
I've never felt that level of hostility towards me
by anything.
Like, it really wanted to hurt me.
I was determined to let this thing know
that it was not [bleep] welcome here,
that this was my place.
I have to communicate with this thing
and tell it to get out.
Get the [bleep] out of here!
You are not welcome here!
This is mine!
Get out!
It felt better in that moment,
that somehow...
matching up with that aggression towards this thing
was somehow going to make it go.
I was so angry, but I was so exhausted.
All I wanted to do was go to sleep.
And I turned the light off
and I turned on the light beside the bed.
I left that light on and I closed my eyes,
and I think just because of sheer exhaustion,
I managed to finally go to sleep.
And that was the scariest night of my life.
I don't know what it was within me
that triggered all of those things to happen that night.
Each time that I speak about this,
it's like, the more I start to remember.
Reliving that moment and the depths
of how sinister that thing was that was in my bedroom,
and really, at the heart of it,
like, what was the message of all of that?
I said to David that I could feel like somebody
was sitting on my feet.
And I described how this -- this woman looked.
He walked into the living room
and he pulled out this photograph
of the woman that I saw sitting on my feet.
And it was his grandmother.
It was like she had come to make sure everything was okay.
And then those 10 spirits that were there,
I thought they were just trying to communicate with me,
and perhaps, really, what they might have been trying to do
was to warn me about what was coming.
And in that moment,
I was thinking that they were just there
because they wanted to tell me about themselves,
and that what they were actually trying to do
was to warn me against this thing.
I don't know. I don't know why any of it happened.
I wonder if all of that was just about trying to protect me,
to help me, to save me somehow.
But thinking about it, it's still...
it's terrifying and it makes me feel unnerved.
And there's a part of me that still worries about
what would be next.