I didn't, at that point, know if I was alive or dead.
This was just the start...
of a very harrowing experience.
Had this horrible sense of somebody following me.
All of a sudden, I could hear a faint baby cry.
[baby crying]
[screaming]
It was like being in a nightmare, but I was fully awake.
He said that something was coming for me.
Go away!
[Marlon] If you had asked me before,
"ghosts don't exist, what are you talking about?"
Whatever it was wanted me to be afraid.
I didn't want to believe that I had seen a ghost.
[screaming]
This was a life-changing experience for me.
[theme music playing]
[screaming]
[narrator] In one of the city's
largest hospitals,
nursing assistant, Marlon Brandon,
is starting his shift.
[Marlon] I worked on the neurology intensive care unit.
These are people that are in critical care
for neurological reasons.
It could be because they had a stroke,
a traumatic brain injury, be it a neurological disorder
that cause people to become paralyzed.
These were very, very critical care patients.
I get the most satisfaction from knowing
that someone is better off after they've encountered me
than they were before.
Maybe they were hungry and they're not hungry any more.
Maybe they were cold and I gave them a blanket.
So, it's like immediate gratification,
and I enjoy it so much.
[narrator] One day, Marlon has an encounter
with a patient that will change his life.
-[James] What's going on? What are you doing? -[nurse] You're okay.
- You're on a hospital. - [James] No, no, no!
[nurse] Relax, relax, relax, we're going to take care of you, okay?
[James] I can't be here!
They were wheeling a young African-American man
in on a stretcher.
It's a really big kid,
like maybe a football-player type.
He looked confused,
I could really feel his restlessness
and his agitation.
- [nurse] Relax. Lay down. - No, no. I can't.
- [nurse] You gotta lay down. - I can't be here right now!
- I can't-- - Mind if I step in one sec?
[James] I can't be here right now.
Hey, brother, brother, calm down. I'm with you, all right?
Because he was so young and because he was so afraid,
I said, why don't I just do a one-to-one with him.
Maybe, a familiar face,
somebody that kind of looks like him,
kind of speaks in his own jargon,
could calm him down.
You're in the hospital.
We're going to take good care of you. Everything is going to be okay.
- [James] Okay. - You're okay, all right?
[narrator] Marlon finds some time
to talk to the young man.
Honestly, I'm fine, man.
Do you remember what happened?
No.
I mean, last thing I do remember,
I was shooting this music video.
[Marlon] He collapsed on the set of a music video
that he was directing and choreographing.
It was about police brutality.
It's really important issue, man.
There's a lot of brothers dying every day.
They brought him to the E.R.
and they determined that whatever his issue was,
was neurological.
[James] If you guys don't let me go out
and finish that,
it's like I'll leave those brothers hanging.
It's like...
It's like their deaths, they didn't mean anything.
He said, "I can't be admitted to the hospital right now,
I'm in the process, I have to make this video."
It's serious, all right?
But your health is more serious.
We got to know each other.
We bonded in a way that I believe
was very beneficial for him.
All right, boss. See you around, yeah?
All right.
[Marlon] I got to feel his energy.
Hey, I'll be back
in a couple of hours, all right?
- [James] All right. - We'll talk so more, okay?
Cool.
[Marlon] He had a very, very good energy.
I had no idea what was coming.
[narrator] Soon after James arrives,
Marlon learns something terrible
about his condition.
It's not looking good.
[Marlon] James, we was assessing him,
he had a very, very rare neurological disorder,
and it was something
they'd never seen in anybody that young.
I'm sorry, Marlon.
[Marlon] He could pass away at any moment.
I was very upset. He was so young,
he had his whole life ahead of him.
An hour and a half into my shift
I had to go from one building to the other.
I had this horrible sense of somebody following me.
I looked back, I didn't see anybody.
But the energy, it was like, really, really scary.
[narrator] Marlon suddenly gets the feeling
that he should check on James.
[Marlon] I saw James standing outside of his room.
What's going on?
I'm good.
Come on. I know when something's up.
I'd never seen him scared, but he looked terrified.
Feels... Feels weird in there.
It was a feeling of panic, of dread.
Yeah, something doesn't feel right.
[Marlon] What are you talking about?
I look behind him,
and the best way to describe it
was like a hooded figure.
My heart was almost palpitating.
Woah.
I was absolutely terrified.
The same sense of fear that I felt,
James also felt, and he ran from it.
The thing went up into the ceiling
and disappeared.
In James' room, if you look out the window,
it was the roof of another building.
If you had asked me before, I'd say,
"what are you talking about? Ghosts don't exist."
What--
[bleep]
[Marlon] It was snowing, and I could see
human, bare footprints in the snow, on the roof.
Even if there was some explanation
for someone else being out there,
they wouldn't been out in that deep snow
in their bare foot. Even if someone said to me,
"oh, they were doing maintenance on the roof."
Well, maintenance workers in the snow
would've had boots on.
There was no possible logical explanation
for why I was seeing footprints.
If you had asked me before this incident,
I would've absolutely told you, "it's not true,
I don't believe in that kind of stuff,
it's all superstition, ghost don't exist.
What are you talking about?"
But this was a life-changing experience for me.
[narrator] A few days later, on Marlon's next shift,
he's anxious to check on James.
I'd gone away, and when I came back to work,
I went in, you know, "where's my boy?"
The bed was all made up,
and all of the monitors were disconnected,
[voice breaking] and I just remember...
I, uh...
I'm sorry.
I just remember this feeling of sadness,
because it's... you're taking care of somebody every day
and then you go and look and there's an empty bed
there and... Uh...
He passed away.
He was, like, this full of life,
energetic person
that was working for this noble cause.
He wanted to make this video
to bring attention to police brutality.
And it was just so sad to me that, you know,
he passed away before he could complete it.
[narrator] A week later,
things are only getting stranger for Marlon.
[Marlon] A man was admitted
to neurology intensive care unit
with Guillain-Barre syndrome.
My name is Marlon, I'm here to help you out.
Man, how are you doing?
He was paralyzed from the neck down.
There was no movement, no sensation in his arms,
legs or anything below his mid-shoulder area.
Man, are you okay?
It is absolutely, medically, and physically impossible
for him to be moving.
[grunting]
But what really made
the hair on the back of my neck stand up
was the fact that his feet
were moving in a very, very specific
rhythm structure.
I don't want to be in any damn music video.
I said, "what the [bleep] are you talking about?"
I saw him. He was here.
He was here in this room.
He said there was a young African-American man,
he described him to a T. I knew it was James.
Tell him to leave me alone and go away.
[Marlon] I don't know what the hell was going on.
James was haunting this unit.
I think if this person would've been able to finish
his music video,
we would've been set at peace.
So much of his energy, and his heart and soul
was invested in this project.
It's not easy to walk away
from something we're so invested in.
[narrator] Later that month,
a terrible blizzard disrupts the hospital.
[Marlon] We had what's called a "code white,"
when the snow is so bad
that nobody can leave the hospital
because we need you here,
because nobody else might be able to get to work.
They were converting family waiting areas
into makeshift places for the nurses to sleep.
There wasn't any room there for me,
so I went back into the unit,
I remember taking a large recliner.
About 20 minutes might have passed,
I was sort of like in a twilight sleep.
I could feel this sense of agitation again,
like I had something to do.
I was so terrified, I was frozen.
I knew this was the kid that had died.
I saw James standing in front of me.
I know it was James, so I followed him.
He went into the nurses' lounge,
into the waiting area where the nurses were asleep.
I couldn't believe it.
They were dancing.
I was terrified at the moment, beyond any fear
that I've ever experienced in my life.
They had, like, this very choreographed movement,
and everybody was doing it at the same time.
It only lasted for about ten seconds.
Marlon, why the hell
are you playing that music for?
We're trying to sleep.
[Marlon] She came up and started yelling at me
about waking everybody up with this music.
There is no music.
There is no doubt in my mind today
that this kid was roaming the halls of this hospital
trying to complete this music video.
And, somehow, I know that his energy
or his spirit influenced the nurses to dance.
[Chris] That's very hard to give up,
where so much of your heart and soul
was going into a project that you couldn't complete.
In Native American cultures,
when a person is, for instance,
completing a quilt or doing some beadwork,
they'll employ someone from the tribe
to finish their work,
so their spirit doesn't remain.
So their spirit isn't tied to a place
where they do have unfinished business.
[narrator] The next morning, Marlon is still blamed.
Listen, Allie. I know what I've seen.
The kid in the I.C.U., he got up and he was right here.
The kid that died.
That's what happened.
I tried to explain it.
I said, "listen, it was this kid
who needed to complete this video so much."
The kid who died, he got up. He was right there.
Sure he was, Marlon. Sure he was.
[Marlon] So, she reported to the unit manager
that the patient care assistant
on duty that night came into the waiting area
playing this music and waking everybody up.
I got written up for playing this music,
there were four different statements
from people
that they were hearing this music.
Everybody heard the same song.
And it really, really creeped me out.
Prior to this, my belief system
was, there was no ghost,
there was nobody hanging around anywhere.
Now I know that not to be true.
Energy never dies, it just changes form.
And I know that there are ghosts.
At some point in all of our lives,
we're going to leave our body.
And we may not go over to the other side.
People, for whatever reason, linger around
and their spirits still hang around.
And I know this to be true.
Hauntings are real.
[growling]
[narrator] Late on a summer night,
Emily Walsh arrives at a hospital emergency room
with excruciating abdominal pain.
[Emily grunting]
[Emily] It was mostly in my stomach.
Although, just my whole abdominal area
was suffering from it.
[narrator] Doctors quickly determined
she has an inflamed gallbladder
and requires emergency surgery.
It was some of the worst pain
I've ever experienced in my life.
I definitely never had surgery before,
so of course, I'm going to be scared.
[surgeon] We're going to get started here, Emily.
[Emily] They were going to put me to sleep,
so that I could get this procedure done.
He went into my neck with a needle
and the tube inside of it,
and instead of hitting the vein
that he had hoped to...
[monitor beeping]
[nurse] Oh, my God! Oh, my God.
[surgeon] There's profuse arterial bleeding.
[Emily] He actually severed my carotid artery
and put the tube inside that.
[monitor beeping]
Now, all of the sudden, I could die.
And it's not from my gallbladder, it's from a mistake
that was made trying to fix my gallbladder.
[surgeon] Prep the clotting agent.
[Emily] Every second it was in there
it was risking me for a stroke or becoming braindead.
I was scared.
The fear of not knowing
if I'm going to live or die at that point.
[demonic voice] I'm here for you.
[Emily] I didn't, at that point,
know if I was alive or dead.
[demonic voice] Emily...
I felt like I went to the other side.
[demonic voice] It's coming...
[surgeon] The bleeding stopped,
- it's under control. - [demonic voice] ...for you.
[Emily] I had this kind of out of body experience.
[surgeon] Okay, good. It's under control.
[nurse] Yes, she looks like she stabilized.
[Emily] The only way
that he could get the blood to stop flowing
was to, basically, strangle me.
[nurse] You're going to be okay, Emily.
Just rest now.
Which was extremely traumatic,
because, unfortunately, losing my twin sister,
that's how she was killed.
When my sister was 21 years old,
unfortunately, she was killed by her ex-boyfriend.
As awful and as terrifying as this experience was for me,
this was just the start
of a very harrowing experience.
[thunderclap]
[narrator] As Emily is wheeled to the recovery room,
a massive storm hits the city.
The wind was heavy and howling,
it sounded like screaming.
[wind howling]
I mean, the hospital
is flickering their electricity,
so the room was really dark and a lot of the light
was coming through the flashes of lightning
through the window.
I saw a person outside my window.
[demonic voice] Emily! Emily!
[Emily] He screamed my name.
[demonic voice] Emily!
He just kept saying, "it's coming, it's coming."
[demonic voice] It's coming for you.
[panting]
[Emily] It frightened me,
and I just tried to push it off,
because at that point,
that's the last thing I can deal with,
is more of being afraid.
I had my fill of being afraid for that night.
[demonic voice] Emily...
It's coming...
Emily...
For you...
[Emily's Mom] Emily.
[Emily] Mom!
- How are you? - [Emily] Hi.
It was the first moment that we had
that we could actually talk to one another,
where I wasn't being jabbed with needles
or being interrupted.
I'm okay.
[thunderclap]
So, when I felt up to it, I got out of that hospital bed
and I walked my way, painfully and slowly,
to the family room,
hoping that it would feel more like home.
But it was raining really hard,
thunder and lightning.
Lots of alarms going off.
The weather is crazy.
It was affecting the electricity
at the hospital.
[Emily's mom] Quite the storm.
[speaker] Security principal to reception.
[Emily's mom] Are you chilly?
[Emily] The room started to get very cold very quickly.
It was absolutely freezing.
[thunderclap]
[growling]
[demonic voice] Emily...
[Emily] As we were just trying to relax and talk,
there was a form standing by the bookshelf.
And it was kind of like a shadow,
but kind of like a person at the same time.
[demonic voice] Emily...
[thunderclap]
Emily...
[screaming]
- What is it, Emily? - Uh...
I told her, "well, it's going to sound crazy",
but I saw a ghost."
It's not uncommon for those who find themselves
literally at death's door,
and sometimes, stepping through it
and then coming back,
to return with enhanced sensitivities.
[demonic voice] Emily.
[Richard] They may see spirits,
they may hear disembodied voices.
They may just have a sixth sense
that they didn't have before.
It's as if the experience
of going beyond the veil and returning,
unlocks some kind of special sense
inside the human mind.
And once those blinders come off,
they never go back on again.
[demonic voice] It's coming for you.
He said, "it's coming for you,"
that something was coming for me.
Maybe I'm just losing my mind, I don't know.
I could barely breathe, I was so afraid.
I was completely terrified.
That just creeped her out.
She wanted to get the hell out of there
and go back to the room that we were staying in.
I think that I was so full of anxiety
from everything that was happening,
that I was feeling pretty jumpy.
The temperature started to change.
There was no denying that that room was freezing.
And I felt like something was watching me.
[demonic voice] Emily.
Emily!
He's standing at the end of my bed.
His face looked melted, almost like it was burned.
It made me sick to my stomach.
[whispering] Mom.
Mom!
I remember trying to get her to wake up.
- Mom! - And I couldn't do it.
Go away.
I had been through so much, I didn't want any more.
[demonic voice] It's coming for you.
[Emily] I felt like he was kind of trying
to warn me, though, and that frightened me.
And all of the sudden, a nurse comes into the room.
Hi.
[Emily] And she walks over to the bed
and walks right through him.
[nurse] How are you doing, dear?
[Emily] And he was there one minute
and then gone the next.
[nurse] Everything looks all right here.
And that was the last time I saw him.
[interviewer] And what did you say to the nurse?
[Emily] I mean, obviously, I probably looked shocked,
but I recovered and I told her
that she had just surprised me.
Because I didn't think that it was a good idea
to let on that I was experiencing
anything paranormal.
[nurse] I'll come back in a few hours, dear.
Emily.
Mom, he was here.
When my mom finally woke up...
Who was here?
It was a man, he was at the foot of my bed.
...I frantically told her what happened.
Right there, he was tall, his face was gone,
- burnt off or something. - Oh, Emily.
It was awful, mom.
It was... If felt so real...
I felt completely overwhelmed
and I actually got up
and I left the hospital for a while
and I sat outside on a bench for probably an hour
before I was willing to go back in to the hospital.
How the heck do you expect to sleep
when you're being woken up by dead people at night?
[narrator] After a sleepless night,
a visitor comes to see Emily's roommate.
It was a rough night. It was a really rough night.
[man] He came here to visit,
- he visited her last night. - Yeah, it was--
The girl next door, she had some visitor
with her all night.
It was past visiting hours.
[Emily] A visitor came into the room
for the man who was in the bed beside me.
I must have been three or four hours...
[Emily] He was telling her that late in the evening,
that I had snuck a man into my room.
He had a black leather jacket. He was right inside there.
[Emily] As soon as he started describing
what the guy was wearing...
It wasn't right,
there was something off about him.
[Emily] ... my mother and I looked at each other
with, like, eyes wide. Like, "holy [bleep]."
[man] I didn't know what he was doing,
it was past visiting hours.
I mean, to have that validation in what I saw.
[woman] Oh, my God, Stanley.
[Emily] And the two of us, we were scared.
We just kind of sat there completely dumfounded
for quite a while.
[woman] They should at least get you a private room.
[thunderclap]
[narrator] The next night,
brings the return of violent storms.
And new horrors for Emily and her mom.
[growling]
[gasps]
[Emily] I remember being afraid to look up,
because I felt a presence in the room.
[demonic voice] Emily! It's coming for you.
[growling]
[Emily] You could hear
this awful sucking, grinding noises.
[growling]
[screams]
[Emily] There was this creature,
and it was perched on her chest.
It was the scariest thing I have ever seen in my life.
Get off of her!
- [growling] - [Emily] It was almost like it was sucking
the energy out of her.
[growling]
[Richard] It looks like the paranormal equivalent
of some kind of leech.
Emily's mother is deeply grieved
over the death of one of her daughters,
and grief is a very powerful and potent emotion.
Just the sort of thing
that some kind of vampiric entity
would lash on to and feed on.
Get the hell away from her!
It turned to me and looked at me,
all that energy directed on me and I felt such intense fear.
Get off of her!
[growling]
I just don't think
I've ever been so afraid in my life.
[growling]
[demonic voice] Okay.
It told me, "you're not okay,
you've not been okay from the beginning."
[growling]
"You didn't make it through the first surgery,"
you died when they cut your neck,
everything that happened up until this point
is just a response of your brain
turning off and shutting down.
These are the last hallucinations
"of a dying girl."
I didn't know if I was alive, fighting this,
or if I had died
back when the anesthesiologist
made the cut that changed my life.
That was probably
one of the scariest things in my life.
Right up there with when I lost my sister.
[hissing]
There is no word that would describe
the fear and the hopelessness,
and to feel like
I was going to fall into nothing
and become nothing. And that I was dead.
Whatever it was, wanted me to be afraid,
it wanted me to feel isolated
and it wanted me to give up hope,
and maybe, my life.
[growling]
I think that it feed off that kind of thing.
[growling]
I started to pray for my sister.
Please, come to me. Sister, please come to me.
[growling]
Sister...
[growling]
Sister, if you can hear me, please, come.
[growling]
I'm so scared.
Please, help me.
[angelic voice singing]
Please, hear me. Please, help me.
And all of the sudden, I could hear singing.
[angelic voice singing]
Lights started to shine
through the blinds of the windows,
the most beautiful singing voice
that I could imagine,
and it just filled me full of strength and hope.
[angelic voice singing]
I do believe
that I had an angel on my side that night,
and I do think that my sister had something to do with it.
- Emily? - Mom?
Which I'm grateful for.
Are you okay?
Yes.
[crying] And I just feel like
she would protect me more than anyone.
You okay, Emily?
[narrator] The following morning,
Emily is released from the hospital,
her nightmare finally over.
[Emily] I've thought
about life and death differently
since I've lost my sister.
So, I do feel like this experience
has opened my eyes even more.
[demonic voice] I'm here.
[Emily] Because I've always thought
about, you know, my sister died
and now she's in a better place.
But I didn't really give much thought
to the opposite of that,
to the possibility that there could be
demonic things
or some kind of version of hell.
Get the hell away from her!
Whether or not I believe in an actual hell,
I think that whatever field of existence that it was from,
is not a pleasant place at all.
And I'm going to try my best
to avoid experiencing that again.
[growling]
Please, help me. Please, help me.
[demonic voice] Okay.
[baby crying]
[woman] Baby! Baby!
[panting]
[narrator] It's 2012 in Toronto, Ontario.
[Stephanie] It was a Wednesday in October,
five months pregnant,
and I decide to do my daily routine,
which was go for a walk.
It was always so soothing, so calming.
And because no one ever bothered me
when I went for my walks,
I always go along the same path.
[narrator] But the area has a dark and tragic past.
[Stephanie] We were hit back in the 1950s
by hurricane Hazel, and many families perished.
But I like to walk along that path
because there are memoriums.
I believe that a lot of the experiences
lead up to something happening,
as a warning sing or as just something to say,
"hey, this is coming your way."
As I was walking
and just listening to the birds tweet,
I'm feeling the breeze on my face,
it was a beautiful day.
[baby crying]
And all of a sudden,
I could hear a faint baby cry.
[baby crying]
It wasn't necessarily the cry of hunger
or asking to be changed,
it sounded like a baby almost panicking.
[baby crying]
I was a deer in headlights.
[baby crying]
I wanted to know where the sound was coming from,
but it sounded like it was coming from everywhere.
I was completely immobilized, I couldn't move.
And it terrified me at the same time.
I was just frozen.
My heart started to race.
It was like being in a nightmare,
but I was fully awake.
I was there.
I was present.
[baby crying]
My first instinct too, of course,
is to put my hands on my belly
and just make sure that baby is okay.
My baby was still kicking.
I was so afraid.
And I remember walking. I felt disoriented.
I felt so confused, but almost stunned.
My heart raced.
[narrator] Adding to Stephanie's confusion,
is a growing sense of unease.
Feeling sick, she stumbles home.
[Stephanie] Chris!
Hey.
[Stephanie] My husband looked at me
- and he says... - You okay?
"You look very pale. You looked like
you've seen a ghost."
I don't feel good.
I felt faint, I needed to lay down.
I couldn't calm down my heartbeat at all.
He goes, "we're calling 911, you're going to the hospital."
[dispatcher] 911, what's your emergency?
[narrator] Stephanie is rushed to the hospital
with dangerously low blood pressure.
The baby's life would have been at risk
without medical attention.
[Stephanie] They hooked me up to IVs,
and they kept me overnight for observation.
The night nurse checked my vitals.
I'll be back in a little bit, okay?
Okay, thank you.
I'd convinced him, "let's go for a walk,
just because I need to."
His whole thing was, you know,
"let's go back to the room, so you can rest."
Honey, why don't you just go call my parents?
- You sure? - Yeah, I'm...
I'm just going to keep walking.
I told him, "I'll meet you back at our room."
Okay, I'll do it.
- Okay. - Bye.
Bye.
[baby crying]
All of a sudden,
I heard the same baby cry again.
It sounded panicked.
My heart starts to race again.
I did feel immobilized for a brief second,
something like an instinct was telling me,
"you need to go find this child."
[baby crying]
Just the baby's cry is enough to just make you
want to pick up the child and just make sure he's okay.
[baby crying]
When I got to my room, I was so cold.
And there was a pram in my hospital room.
And it was one of those old, old prams
that you would see from the 1940s, 1950s.
And I can see this baby sleeping,
and all blue.
[woman crying]
Suddenly, I felt like there was something with me.
Baby!
[screams]
- Her scream was bloodcurdling. - Baby!
And she wrapped her arms around her stomach.
It's almost like she wanted to protect the baby,
but she couldn't.
[sobbing]
It's almost like she was wearing
a gown that was old.
Just the material looked so different.
Her eyes were black underneath,
and all I could do was just turn from her
and look inside the pram.
And then they all disappeared.
[crying]
Stephanie reports that she sees
the image of this mother
that's screaming, "baby, baby" over and over again.
[crying]
Baby!
When we take a look
at the history of this hospital,
we had a hurricane,
where there was hundreds of victims
who would traffic through this hospital,
and there was trauma that was going on,
it was imprinting into the environment.
My husband came back as soon as that happened.
[sobbing]
Oh, my God. Are you okay? Hey, hey.
I didn't want to tell my husband so much
about the details, because I felt like
he would've told me, "it's your hormones."
[narrator] Stephanie is kept a second night
for observation.
[Stephanie] Later on in the night,
I had fallen asleep, and I had got up.
And I got into the bathroom.
All of a sudden,
I heard the same baby cry again.
The sound of that baby's cry, it sent shivers up my body.
[baby crying]
I open the door
and I can see the pram still in place.
[woman and baby crying]
And I can see this woman again.
[woman and baby crying]
I'm just looking at her, and she's screaming, "baby".
Baby!
I could feel her pain.
And it felt like my heart was just shattered.
I felt like she lost her baby.
Baby!
She was in anguish.
[screams]
And they disappeared a second time.
I realized I had seen not one, but two ghosts.
And I was confused, scared, and heart-broken.
I couldn't breathe.
I didn't want to believe I had seen a ghost.
[crying]
When I got home, I felt very different.
I felt like I was almost like my old self.
[narrator] With a clean bill of health,
Stephanie takes time
to reflect on the history of the hospital.
[Stephanie] The hospital was four years old
when the hurricane happened.
I firmly believe that this woman and this baby
are connected to the hurricane and the hospital.
The woman and the baby.
That they were there to make sure that I was okay.
I was lured to the hospital
so that I can get medical attention for myself
and for my unborn child.
This experience has taught me
that there is life after death.
And either a spirit or a ghost can teach us something,
either we're going to run away from it,
it will stop us dead in our tracks
for us to pay attention
or it will tell us to move forward.
And I believe it taught me all three.