I had an uneasy feeling from the time I pulled into the parking lot.
I knew that he was uneasy.
That feeling you get when something sneaks up on you?
Hey, buddy.
The hair, everywhere on my body, just kinda stood right up.
[rapid beeping]
[woman] One night, the call bell just rang.
It's from a newly-emptied room that the resident just passed away.
I felt alone and scared.
Like, you're being watched.
Whatever we were dealing with, was not good.
Cat got your tongue?
[shrieking]
We needed to get out of there.
What was that?
- [screeching] - [screaming]
[man shouting]
When I heard that sound...
[warbling]
...it scared the [bleep] out of me.
[screaming]
[screams]
[screeches]
[screaming]
[narrator] On the East Coast of Canada,
historic Prince Edward Island
is home to some of the oldest settlements in the country.
I grew up in a small town, um, in Prince Edward Island.
Just a really quiet town on a quiet little island
was, basically, my childhood.
[narrator] On a summer afternoon,
Kara and her young son arrived to visit her grandfather,
who has just moved in to a long-term care home.
Wanna go see Poppy? Yeah?
It was one of our first hospitals on Prince Edward Island.
Was resurrected in 1933,
and was then turned into a long-term care facility.
I could feel the tightness of my son's hand, holding my right hand.
And I knew that he was uneasy.
I had an uneasy feeling from the time I pulled in the parking lot.
As long as I can remember, I've always seemed to have some kind of sixth sense,
if that's what you'd like to call it.
Things like, just walking into a certain room,
or into a certain building or house,
and have this overwhelming feeling of some kind.
Like something might happen to somebody,
or something was gonna happen, and then... It does.
And trying to express those things to other people,
was really hard for me
because it just seemed like it wasn't something that was normal
that everybody had.
[indistinct radio chatter]
As we walked in,
it was like he went completely mute.
He didn't wanna go anywhere.
So, I had to, like, keep reassuring him
that we're just gonna have a quick visit with Poppy, say hi,
check out his new place,
and then we'd be on our way to have an afternoon together, at the park.
But first, I wanted to go and see my grandfather.
Hey, what's going on?
This lady that we came across,
it was like, she was looking at us,
but she was also, like, looking through us at the same time.
Okay, come on, let's go.
Let's go.
Come on.
So, we get inside of the elevator,
and my son moves a little bit closer,
and I can feel him kinda holding a little bit tighter.
So, I knew that he was under some distress,
and that we weren't gonna stay very long at all.
Hi, Poppy.
We had a little visit...
And we waited out in the hallway
for the elevator to come up to the third floor and get us.
Hello.
What's your name?
Don't be shy.
This older lady, she was very, like, in my son's face.
Cat got your tongue?
He wanted nothing to do with it.
Let's go.
There was definitely something about this woman,
that made us both extremely uneasy.
[Kara] Let's go.
[boy] I don't like that place.
[Kara] He just kept saying, "I don't like that house."
"I don't like that house, there are scary people. I don't like that house."
[whispering]
He looked at me, and he said, "Do we ever have to come back here?"
Okay, well, you know we don't have to come back, okay?
I truly felt like
my son-- he had the same thing that I had
whenever I was younger, and he could experience things like I could, too.
Come on. Let's go.
Like all children, Kara's son
is more sensitive to the paranormal than adults are.
He's yet to develop the calluses that we have over our senses,
he's yet to allow the world to convince him
that things like this are just fairy tales,
and belong in story books.
After a year of me and my son visiting the building for the first time,
it was in our local paper, and on our news and stuff
that now that the new facility was built
the old one was being torn down.
[narrator] The centuries-old building quickly falls into disrepair.
[Kara] It sat there for, probably, a few years,
completely vacant.
One night, me and my brother were, um, coming from a friend's place.
And we drove past the building.
I'm driving, so I look to my left, where the building is,
Why is that light on?
That light shouldn't be on.
And I see a light come on upstairs.
There shouldn't be anyone in this building.
There's absolutely no power to this building, whatsoever.
There's no access to the building.
The doors were all boarded up.
- [growling] - [both exclaim]
My brother turned his head and looked at me, and said,
"Holy [bleep]!"
[screeching]
And my brother's seen it too.
And we both sat there and just looked at each other,
and didn't know what to say.
Kara!
I knew it. It was almost like there was a validation.
Like, I knew that there was something with this building.
I knew it, and I knew it from day one.
Me and him were walking around the building
and we're checking out if there's anything possible
that we could debunk this light with.
[Kara] There's something else there.
[brother] I don't know.
[Kara] There was absolutely nothing but darkness.
And stillness, and quietness.
That was all that was there.
[Kara] You saw it.
[brother] I don't know. I don't know what I saw.
- You saw it. - I saw something.
[breathing heavily] Okay, well, we'll just go.
[soft tapping]
As we start to move, we heard this light tapping.
And we both stopped and looked at each other,
and we're like, "Do you hear that?"
[tapping continues]
It went from a tapping to a, like,
thumping knock on glass.
Like what you would hear somebody knocking on a pane-glass window.
[growls softly]
She was just standing there, literally, staring at us.
She looked very lost.
She was lost, or she was lonely,
or she was looking for somebody to notice her.
[gasping]
Do you see her?
[whimpering] Uh-huh.
My brother-- Literally, he was frozen like a statue,
just staring up at this window.
[growling]
And I remember feeling, like, that "fight-or-flight" aspect.
Like, do I run, or do I stay? Like, I don't know what to do.
[gasps]
[shrieks]
- [screaming] - [screeching]
We both jumped.
- [screaming] - [screeching]
[screeching]
I have never been that scared in my life.
We just bailed.
Broadly speaking, there are two types of haunting.
The residual type, and the intelligent.
The residual type is nothing more than a form of paranormal recording.
The intelligent type of haunting, on the other hand,
seems to have a personality.
It's aware of you.
It will sometimes talk to you,
it will interact with you,
and in certain cases, it may even choose to harm you.
[panting]
And we kinda just stopped to, like, catch our bearings for a second
and, like, take a deep breath.
What the heck was that?
[stuttering] I don't know.
[Richard] Many reports of ghosts and hauntings come out of nursing homes
and long-term care facilities.
And there are many reasons for this, but I think the most prevalent
is that there is a great deal of death in those kind of locations.
And where you find a great deal of death,
you often find a great deal of paranormal activity.
[Kara hyperventilating]
[Kara] My brother was starting to head towards the car
but I had this feeling like I wasn't ready to leave.
Like, there was something that was keeping me there.
- Kara, let's go. - Just give me a second.
I was not ready to leave that building.
I had to go and check out this door.
[breathing heavily]
I could feel the cold steel up against my skin.
What are you doing?
I don't know what came over me, but I knocked on the door.
[knocking echoes]
[brother] Are you crazy? Let's get out of here!
[Kara] Sorry to bother you.
We didn't mean you any harm.
I wanted them to know my intentions.
"I'm sorry if we bothered anybody.
We'd just seen a light,
and we were just taking a peek around and looking,
and we didn't mean any harm, and we're leaving now..."
Okay.
Okay, let's go.
- [bangs on door] - [gasps]
- What was that? - [door rattling]
- [thumping on door] - Oh, God.
[whimpers]
Boom! Boom! Boom!
[thumping continues]
[thumps louder]
[gasping and screaming]
We just ran as fast we we could.
[Richard] Kara and her brother
have been exploring the old hospital
And suddenly, whatever is in there, wants them out.
And it shows this very clearly, and very angrily.
Whatever they're dealing with now, wants them gone.
And it makes no bones about telling them.
I have never been that scared,
I have never felt that way before
and I've never experienced anything like that before, ever.
- Car keys, hurry. - Go, let's go, let's go!
I'm looking for the keys, okay? I'm looking, I'm looking!
I didn't even wanna look at the building.
I just wanted to get out of there.
I didn't even wanna look back.
[gasping] Okay. Oh, my God.
[whimpers] What was that?
[panting]
[brother] Why would you try to talk to it?
-[Kara] I just-- I felt something, okay? -You felt--
[Kara] What's happening? I got a feeling about this place, I told you!
[screeching]
[brother screaming]
- [Kara] What's happening? - [brother continues screaming]
What-- What's happening?
Burning! Burning!
[screaming] Burning!
He was in panic mode. Obviously in pain.
- What happened to you? - It's burning!
He was screaming at me that it felt like somebody was burning him with a lighter.
Is the only way he could explain how the pain felt.
On the back of his neck.
Let me see. Let me see. Let me see. Let me see.
Let me see. [gasps]
Oh, my God.
His neck was red raw.
Like it was scalding.
Like somebody had scalded him with...
hot boiling water.
Oh, my God!
There's a handprint burned on your neck.
There was... What looked exactly to be like the handprint.
As if somebody went like that on the back of his neck.
Ho-- Hold still. Hold still.
Hold still. [breathing heavily]
That's when I took a couple of pictures
of what I witnessed on the back of his neck to show him.
Okay.
[breathing heavily]
And I took my cellphone and I showed him the pictures
of what was on the back of his neck.
And he went white.
Like completely white.
What happened?
[Kara] Whatever it was, had physically touched one of us.
And that was really, really scary for us.
Kara's brother experiences the alarming sensation of his neck beginning to burn.
And when Kara takes a look, she sees that there is a handprint on his neck.
Generally, we see that in the case of an aggressive spirit,
or at the very least, one that's willing to inflict harm on the living,
in order to make its presence known.
Whatever touched him, meant him harm.
The woman in the window.
It was her.
So, what Kara sees here is the figure of the old lady, standing in the window.
Tap-tap-tapping on the glass.
Trying to attract her attention.
And then, a handprint on her brother's neck...
God!
...tells us that this isn't residual.
There is something intelligent in that building.
And it is willing to hurt the people that come to it.
[whispering]
When I'd seen her, she looked familiar.
I realized that it was the lady
that me and my son encountered outside of the elevator that day.
Don't be shy.
Cat got your tongue?
It was her!
The old lady could possibly have been trying to get our attention
to tell us, "You should leave now, and not push your limits."
- [screaming] - [screeching]
Like a warning.
It's a warning that whatever we were dealing with, was not good.
[breathing shakily]
[screeching]
[screaming] We gotta get outta here! We gotta get outta here!
[hyperventilating] We gotta get outta here!
[whimpering]
And I remember grasping the steering wheel of my car
and just kinda, like, white-knuckle driving.
I fully believe that...
If we had stayed, something horrible could have possibly happened,
and that we got out at just the right time.
And that we were lucky that my brother only got away
with the hand mark on the back of his neck and nothing else.
You know that things, growing up, that I might have seen
or that I might have felt,
that I didn't know what any of those things were before...
This experience clarified to me,
that it's real.
- [thumping on door] - [screaming]
And that there is something more out there than what we see every single day.
[whispering]
[growling]
[narrator] The city of Thunder Bay
is on the western shore of Lake Superior.
On land long inhabited by the Ojibwe people.
Where I live, it's right on Lake Superior.
And it's widely known that the Ojibwe people used the land as ceremonial land.
[narrator] Cliff Shawanamash worked at a long-term care facility
caring for the area's elder residents.
[Cliff] I'm a recreational therapist
and what that means is, I assist elderly people
in enjoying the last little bits of their lives in the home.
[laughs] There's your first man down.
Growing up, I wasn't the greatest grandson,
I didn't see my grandmother a lot
and after she passed, I always regretted that.
So... Working here, I have 200 grandparents.
And they treat me as such.
- This one? - No, you gotta move your king.
You get to see them at their best times,
all the way up to their worst times, and then on their way out.
And then when they're leaving, we're very happy for them.
It's not as gruesome as everybody thinks it is.
[narrator] But one night, on the job,
Cliff begins to notice unsettling sights and sounds.
[Cliff] It was about two months when I first got my... My first experience.
[whispering] Hey, buddy.
Over my right shoulder,
I felt a cold breath on the side of my face,
kinda like when somebody leans in to whisper in your ear.
[whispering] Hey, buddy.
Hey, buddy.
[Cliff] I heard a loud whisper just say, "Hey, buddy."
That feeling you get when something sneaks up on you in the darkness,
or anywhere, and you can just tell something's there...
The hair everywhere on my body just kinda stood right up.
Right on end.
I felt my heart quicken
but I was trying to be calm.
I don't wanna make the residents panic.
We're kinda trained not to show any emotion.
This was the day that things all started to change.
I see a black... mass.
It looks like a person walking by, going into the cloakroom.
I know what I saw.
And I-- I was 100% sure that there was a person in there.
[narrator] Cliff's conviction wavers when he finds the cloakroom empty.
I wish I could tell you it ended there,
but it did not.
That's when I started to get the chills.
I started to find it very eerie.
[narrator] Cliff tries to shrug off his misgivings and focus on work.
[thudding]
[door rattling]
All of a sudden, there was rapping on the door,
right in our...
Right in our storage room.
[objects clattering]
Then I heard a couple more noises,
it sounded like things were moving around.
I know for a fact there was nobody there.
'Cause there was nobody in the office.
The paperwork was moved.
[knocking at door]
[rapid knocking]
By this point, I was starting to get spooked.
I was starting to feel very uneasy.
[knocking]
[objects clattering]
[knocking at door]
[narrator] The next day, Cliff decides to get to the bottom
of the strange noises.
I decided to, one day... I'm gonna try and do a recording,
when nobody's around.
[door opens]
[growling]
Then I came back, went into my storage room,
got my phone.
[growling]
When I heard that sound. It scared the [bleep] out of me.
[growling]
I started feeling that whoever or whatever was behind this,
wanted to make theirselves known.
Just as we all know people
that enjoy making others afraid,
The same is true with spirits.
Some of them like nothing more than to frighten.
Because they enjoy it.
[Cliff] I've lived in the bush, and I've come face-to-face with bears,
I've had wolves surround me and...
So, nothing really scares me too often,
but at this point, I was terrified.
[narrator] On his next shift, Cliff is met with a new surprise.
[Cliff] I went back to the office,
and my boss was standing right in front of our storage room.
- What's going on here? - We can't get in.
[Cliff] All the carts are pushed up against the door.
And there's no way for that to happen.
I started to feel kinda shaken, kinda uneasy.
It was quite shocking.
It was next to impossible just to open it,
the way the carts were all jammed in there.
[grunting]
[boss] Who did this?
This is crazy.
So I just pushed the carts away.
I tried to focus on jobs at hand,
and just move along with my day.
Keeping the uneasy feeling as far in the back of my mind as possible.
[objects clattering]
[speaking indistinctly]
Cliff...
I need you to come with me, right now.
Right now?
I thought, "My God, am I in trouble? What did I do now?"
She had this, kind of a--
Kind of an upset look on her face.
Now.
[Cliff] So, I walked back with her.
How is this possible?
And there it was again. All the carts were back up against the door.
The hair on my neck stood up.
It was kind of almost like a panic feeling.
I just got a very uneasy feeling--
A feeling of-- That I wasn't alone,
even though I was standing there with my boss,
but there was somebody else with us there.
[whispers]
[narrator] Soon, the terrifying incidents
start to affect the home's residents, as well.
I hope they let me sleep.
It's so scary!
[cackling]
They were complaining to me that the child will not stop playing
And why won't the man stop this boy from making so much noise?
It's keeping them up.
No...
Please help me.
[Cliff] The hysterical resident is calmed only by Cliff's reassurance
that he will be on-call that night.
[laughs]
[gasps] No.
[buzzer sounds]
You okay, Gavin?
You okay?
[hyperventilating]
- What's wrong, buddy? - Huh?
I was just frozen.
At this point, I was terrified.
I didn't know what was happening.
[narrator] The next day...
Cliff's co-worker reveals she has had a similar encounter.
Jackie, I don't know what's going on in this place.
You're not gonna believe this but...
I saw a boy and a man.
I could tell by the expression of my boss that she felt creeped right out.
I'm sick of this.
[screams]
I was-- I was just-- I was shocked.
I was just staring at this pot,
my heart's just a-pounding.
What are we dealing with here?
- I think it's this boy... - [pot smashes]
[Cliff] As soon as she mentioned the little boy, another pot exploded.
So I kinda figured, okay, this little guy,
he does-- he wants to be known that he's there.
I call my father-in-law and I start telling the story,
and he tells me that prior to there being a home built there,
that there used to be a school standing there.
And while he was going to school there,
he had a best friend, who was actually murdered by his mother.
And then, she committed suicide right after murdering him.
On the same land that the home was built on.
Everything started to click.
It started to dawn on me that maybe this was his safe place
before he was murdered, and he just decided to stay.
[snarling]
This poor, young child died at the hands of his own mother
And it may well be that now he sees Cliff as a father figure.
And that he's teasing him, playing pranks on him,
because he desperately wants his attention.
[Cliff] The dark, looming figure, I like to think of it as
one gentleman that maybe had passed on
but met the little boy
and just sticks around to help him,
or try to get him to move on. He just stands and watches.
Everybody's pretty much gotten to a sense of normality
with all the weirdness that does happen.
We-- We've all come to grips with it,
and we just kinda live with it, now.
[rapid beeping]
[loud sigh]
[narrator] It's 2018,
and Jenna Santos is working as a nurse
in a long-term care facility
[Jenna] It's a big facility that caters to a 197 people.
It's a beautiful place.
To work and to live, for the residents.
We cater to the elderly.
And we do palliative care.
Hey, Isaac. It's Jenna.
I know for a fact that dying is painful.
How are you doing today?
[breathing heavily]
Are you hurting?
So I kinda advocate for a comfortable passing for them.
'Cause that's our gift to them, to be pain-free.
If you need more, just press the button, okay?
T's sad but it's fulfilling.
Because I'm a compassionate person,
and there's no better course
to put that compassion into action,
but nursing.
[narrator] Jenna feels fulfilled by her job.
But night shifts make her nervous.
[Jenna] It's a lovely floor during the day,
but at nighttime it turned to be a different story.
So, during the night we do hourly checks
to make sure that they're breathing.
I felt alone and scared.
Like you're being watched.
So, one night at around 3:00 am,
[alarm beeping]
The call bell just rang,
and then, I had to look at the monitor
where is the call bell coming from...
And I saw it's from a newly-emptied room that the resident just passed away.
There's no way that someone can go to that room and-- and press the call bell.
Everyone's asleep.
I had checked every resident.
I couldn't explain it.
I was so, so scared.
[beeping continues]
But I have to cancel the call bell
because I know if it continuously to ring...
my residents will get up from their sleep.
There's no one in there.
I know for a fact that
there would be no way that the call bell would ring by itself.
At all.
I'm cold and clammy.
I have, like, shivers in my spine.
I ended up, like, unplugging it to the wall.
[breathing heavily]
[call bell beeps]
It rang again.
I have to muster enough strength and courage just to cancel that call bell.
I really don't know how the call bell happened.
[narrator] The next few shifts bring Jenna no relief.
Maintenance had been called so many times to fix the call bell.
But they said it was an electrical issue.
I know, I know, I know.
Can you just, please-- Please just check it again?
It happened to me every night.
[narrator] As the call bell alarms happened more often,
Jenna's favorite patient is failing.
[Jenna] He was close to dying.
His family would always come and visit him.
And would always tell stories
about how loving and how great their dad was.
[narrator] The next night changes everything.
[loud thud]
The painting that was across from the nurse's station,
right at 3:00 in the morning,
it just fell down.
I was just... startled.
[loud sighs]
I can see a lady in a white gown.
A long, flowy gown.
We don't dress up residents like that.
She wasn't looking at me at all.
She was just standing there, looking at the room.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
A cold chill ran through my body.
I have never been so terrified.
[call bell beeping]
The apparition was gone.
That night, the resident just passed away.
[narrator] The next day,
Jenna finds the resident's daughter, packing his things.
I'm going to miss him.
Yeah.
Me too.
[Jenna] I saw a painting on the wall.
That's the exact woman that I have seen, wearing the same, exact dress.
The long, flowy gown and the long sleeve.
She said, "It was my mother."
So, that's his wife on the painting.
I just stared at the painting for-- for some time.
That I have to really process it.
Jenna sees the apparition of this amazing woman.
And often, when somebody passes away
these apparitions will appear. This will happen.
And it can be a really amazing and wonderful experience for people.
One of the best explanations that I have heard
is that they actually just go into the next room, ultimately,
and that's what the death experience is.
So, their communication with us never really ceases to exist.
[Jenna] I never saw the apparition again.
Since that experience,
nothing significant had happened to me on that unit.
I really do not want to ever experience that again.
'Cause I don't wanna live in fear, constantly,
working in the night shift.
I'd rather to have like a relaxed environment
that I could care more for my residents.
I know I'm scared because it was a ghost
but there's, like, a soothing and nurturing feeling on that ghost
that, like, maybe it's her way
of telling the love of her life
that she's there.
Probably, they need closure too.
They haven't accepted their fate yet.
I'm a nurse, I believe in science.
Everything should be logical, practical, the truth.
But this had happened to me,
and this is my story to tell.
[spooky music playing]