It looked like an older woman that was standing there next to her.
[demonic screaming]
[screaming]
[grunting]
I see this figure. Half of his face was burnt off.
[woman] I'm seeing shadows.
Help me.
Now, I'm starting to get scared.
[man] The whole house is on fire.
Wake up.
[demonic grunting]
[glass breaking]
It looked like somebody pushed her.
[demonic screaming]
It's either fight or flight and I was ready to fight.
Things were about to get worse.
[theme music playing]
[ambulance sirens]
It was the summer of 1999.
Umm... I was working as an EMT.
All of my aunts were nurses, so,
it was just something that I wanted to do, following their footsteps.
[narrator] EMT, Ryleigh Black,
and her partner Mike arrive at a hospital
for a routine patient transfer.
It was the third shift,
so it was around 12:30 in the morning, 1'o clock in the morning.
[Ryleigh] This was a simple transport call.
I was picking up a was in her eighties.
All we had to do was take the patients
down to hospice,
which was only about, maybe, 15 miles down the road.
Hello.
[gasping]
Anybody here?
[Ryleigh] There was a vibe. It...
You just felt it the moment that you walked in.
It's like hair on the back of your neck would stand up,
you are like getting a little shiver here and there,
you know like, woo... we shouldn't be in here.
[loud breathing]
There's usually someone at the desk waiting for us.
I thought it was strange that the night nurse wasn't at her nurse's station.
[screams]
Do you smell that?
I changed my socks.
I swear.
Even the smell of the hospital was off.
It didn't smell like a hospital. It smelled musty and old.
Alright, well, um...
Our patient's in 314. Why don't we just grab her and go?
When my partner and I went into the room 314,
we found her sleeping in her bed.
[woman screams]
We heard a scream come from down this hallway.
It was a really dark hallway.
It was about, maybe, a hundred feet from where we were standing.
It was almost like a terrified scream.
At that time of night, you don't hear that kind of a
wail coming from anybody,
you know, they are in hurt or danger.
So we backed up out of the room,
and we looked down the hall
and we heard someone ruffling about a couple doors down.
[gasps]
We ran into the night nurse.
She was really scattered and scared.
Are you okay?
There was something in there.
Tell me what happened.
She was floating.
Floating above the patient,
down the hall.
I was thinking that it was just the new nurse. She freaked herself out.
She freaked herself out.
There's nothing that's going on here.
Okay, Mike will escort you back to the nurse's station.
[narrator] As her partner comforts the nurse,
Ryleigh makes her way back to 314.
I could hear something coming out of 314.
This was kinda weird because the lady was sleeping.
I could hear shuffling around the floor of her bed.
It was not common for that to be heard because of the bed alarm
that was underneath the patient.
When it went off, she got up, so I knew she wasn't out of bed.
Hello, hey.
It looked like an older woman that was standing there next to her.
She had on looked like what was a old hospital gown.
You're not supposed to be in here.
[grunting]
[screaming]
She turned around and hissed at me
and it really scared me.
[continue screaming]
[screaming]
[crying]
I saw it.
It's in room 314. We have to get the patient out of there now.
Call security.
The phone...
There was no phone line.
[walkie-talkie beeping]
Mike! Mike, this is Ryleigh, over.
We need to get the patient out of there.
[Indistinct speech]
Mike, do you copy?
Something came across my radio that I thought was interference
because I couldn't make out what was being said.
Keep trying security. I am going into the room.
[gasps]
I was looking for my partner and he came running up the hallway.
I came to get you.
[panting]
I saw something in the room.
Said that he walked past a room and he heard something moving in the room,
and when he looked in there, he saw something floating next to a patient there too.
We have to grab her and go right now.
My partner and I looked. It looked like whatever it was
the spirit was trying take the hand of the woman that was sleeping in the bed.
[screaming]
My partner and I were standing in the doorway.
The door slammed right in our face.
Hey, listen!
It was like somebody on the other side was holding it closed.
Let us in!
When I get scared, I just go into the second mode of survival skills
that you have when you are faced with something like this.
Hey, let us in.
It's either fight or flight, and I was ready to fight.
When I finally had a chance to open the door, it was like somebody unlocked it.
And it just opened with ease.
When we walked into the room, it was a different
feeling, different vibe than it was like 30 seconds prior.
Um, we checked her pulse.
We realized that she was no longer with us anymore.
So I think the spirit that was there,
it wanted to take her soul with it,
wherever it was going.
This could be an entity,
whose job it was to escort the recently departed
to the other side.
The spirit might have appeared to be very malevolent
because it had a job to do and it wanted to do so without any distractions.
We finally got the phones working and the radios were working,
so the security came up.
And they opened up all the doors, uh,
to the patients rooms and checked every single patient's room on that floor,
and couldn't find anything.
When we left that hospital, I was shaken.
I had to take a moment to catch my breath and I was shaken so bad.
[Ryleigh sobs]
I will never go back there again
to even deal with another patient.
I would send somebody else to go
because I don't wanna experience that ever again.
[exhales]
Yeah.
I had nightmares about it for quiet some time.
It took a long time to forget what I'd seen, what I'd heard,
and what I felt and what I smelled.
It's...
It's just something that takes time to get over,
time to accept,
time for your brain to mull through it,
to see what it can process and what it can't.
The paranormal experiences will always stay with me.
I have all these questions now that I didn't have before.
[loud bang]
[grunting]
[narrator] Utah's mountainous terrain
is a popular destination for outdoor enthusiasts.
But dangerous activities means
a steady stream of patients at this small hospital.
The hospital has recently hired
20-year-old pharmacy technician, Devin Bean,
to help fill prescriptions.
[Devin] It's rewarding in way of like,
a sense of accomplishment.
Being able to be there for others,
and for me, that's always loved doing, always loved listening and helping people
[narrator] Twelve years previous,
Devin is a happy eight-year-old
- enjoying a games night with his family. - [indistinct chattering]
I remember a family game night.
Um, I was eight years old at the time.
[bulb shattering]
[man] Whoa. Whoa.
[woman] Oh, my God!
[Devin] All of a sudden, the light bulb came flying out of the lamp.
It's physically impossible.
My other siblings, they were a little bit older than me,
and they were basically covered in mystery.
Well, it must have been this,
maybe, differential heat expansion or something.
[girl] Or it could have been a ghost.
No sweetie, there's no such thing as ghosts.
[table falls]
[Devin screams]
My father was like,
"Oh, ghosts don't exist. That stuff is all fake."
And as soon he was talking about that,
the TV stand crashed.
It's okay. It's okay.
It was truly terrifying
I remember my father looking in awe. e TV stand and the glass
I'm gonna go get the broom.
He was like,
"Okay, let's clean this up and go to sleep."
Game night was just the first part of what was to come.
In certain cases,
paranormal investigators will look
for the presence of children.
Children are emotional and
hormonal cyclones of energy.
And there is a theory that some opportunistic entities
can latch onto the energy
and use it for their own purposes.
And when you have a family of children
growing up like this, that's a lot of potential fuel for a haunting.
[narrator] But game night was just the beginning.
[Devin] One night, I remember going downstairs to get myself something to eat.
We have this Island in the middle of our kitchen.
And I had left a gallon of milk on the island.
[loud indistinct noise]
[breathing heavily] What?
The milk jug had been thrown
from the island on the kitchen.
[breathing heavily]
I was like, "Oh, maybe it's just one of my siblings playing a prank on me."
Ben? Karen?
I remember walking around the corner and looking,
and to my disbelief, there was nobody there.
[breathing heavily]
I was feeling scared and I didn't know what to do.
I wanted to talk to my mother but she was asleep.
[floor thumps]
[Devin] My body couldn't move.
I wasn't able to scream for help.
[low growling]
I remember hearing someone whispering my name
in an evil tone.
[voice] Devin. Devin
- [growling] - [breathing heavily]
[Devin] I see this tall, dark figure.
[growling] Devin!
Half of his face was burnt off.
- [gasping] - [roars]
[screams]
As soon as I saw his face, he was gone.
[bird cawing]
And the next morning,
after seeing that and going through that,
I felt crazy.
I felt like no one could ever experience
the exact same thing that I just saw.
Sweetie, what are you doing?
What's wrong?
[Devin] I... I saw, uh, something...
What, sweetie? What did you see?
I saw a man with a burnt face.
As soon as I said that,
I remember seeing this stone look on her face.
Are you okay?
She, at that moment, looked terrified.
She didn't know what to say.
- What's wrong, Mom? - [gasps]
[Devin's mom] Um, I'm okay, sweetie,
but [breath trembling] I saw something, too,
and I need to tell you.
She went on to tell me
that when she gave birth to my older sister,
she was put in a surgical operating room,
and she saw the exact same tall, dark entity
with half of his face burnt off.
[breathing heavily] No, no.
[Devin's mom sobbing] It was terrifying...
[Devin] As she was telling me that,
I had many things racing through my mind.
[Devin's mom gasping] It's okay. I believe you.
[Devin] I was feeling like
maybe this thing has followed us since then.
I was thinking,
"Maybe this thing has something
that it wants from my family."
[both breathing heavily]
[Devin's mom] Don't be afraid, sweetie.
I was kind of in disbelief
because it was just so crazy to me
that this thing was real and it was no longer
just what I thought was my imagination.
It wasn't my mind playing tricks on me.
I'll protect you.
I felt my stomach drop
because I knew that this thing was actually here.
I knew things were about to get worse.
[growls]
[Richard] Until the birth of Devin's oldest sibling,
there was no haunting associated with his family.
But during that particular birth,
Devin's mom saw the first sighting of this apparition.
An apparition which had a severely burned face.
Whether this entity was simply resident
at the hospital for some reason
and attached itself to Devin's mom is unknown.
But one thing's for sure.
After that night,
he and his family would never be the same again.
[narrator] Twelve years later,
Devin is now working at the same hospital
as a pharmacy technician.
But the family is still struggling.
[dog barks distantly]
[Devin] Over the years,
I noticed that this negative, dark entity
had affected our lives,
and infested its way into our house.
[Devin] I remember coming home from a shift at work.
[loud clunking]
[door creaking open]
There was this loud, like, booming sound.
[loud clunking]
[loud clunking continues]
[footsteps approaching]
[footsteps approaching and receding]
[Devin] I remember hearing footsteps.
[footsteps approaching and receding]
And every time I would check, there was nothing there.
[narrator] The dark presence is affecting Devin's family.
[Devin] Me and my family had a lot of bad luck
from my dad getting injured at work
to my mom having a lot of health issues.
I started getting bad anxiety.
Ended up being diagnosed with depression.
I knew everything was connected
to whatever this thing was.
I was angry because at this point,
it was affecting my entire life.
I remember thinking to myself
that I have to find out what's going on.
I have to find this entity
and find its roots and get more information.
[narrator] Driven to the breaking point,
Devin takes matters into his own hands
by returning to the very hospital room
that is the source of his family's distress.
[Devin] I found out the exact room
my mom had given birth at.
I was determined to go in there and get answers.
Who are you? What do you want?
[Devin] I heard nothing, but then I reviewed it.
[Devin over recorder] Who are you?
[voice] I am the guardian.
After asking for its name,
I got, in a deep, dark voice, saying, "The guardian."
[Devin over recorder] What do you want?
[voice] We all have our favorites down here.
Again, in the same voice, "We all have a favorite here."
And that, to me, was, like, mind-blowing and shocking.
It felt like it picked my mom,
and then, eventually,
let itself into my entire family.
Get the hell out of our lives.
You won't show yourself because you're not even real.
[hissing]
I regretted my decision to say that.
Oh, Devin, Devin, Devin, Devin.
[narrator] Returning home after work that night,
Devin discovers that the dark entity
has met his challenge.
[Devin] The whole house is on fire.
[Devin groaning, breathing heavily]
[coughing]
My father was at work.
Mom? Mom!
I knew I had to get my mother
and my siblings out of the house.
[all coughing]
- [girl speaking indistinctly] - [Devin] Put this on your head
- [Devin] We gotta get out of here! - [Devin's sister] Let's go.
[Devin] I told my mom, "We need to get you out of here,"
and grabbed her portable oxygen tank,
and helped her out and had my sister follow.
But my little brother wasn't outside with us.
Luis! Luis!
[coughing] Luis!
Hey, wake up! Luis, get up.
[Devin] How can he be asleep?
Luis, get up. Get up! Get up!
[Devin] I felt like everything in the world had stopped.
I felt like my heartbeat stopped.
- [Devin] Luis, get up! - Devin. Devin, Devin, Devin.
[Devin] I have never experienced
that type of fear in my life.
Devin, Devin.
I saw the shadow man in the flames.
I felt like everything was moving in slow-motion.
[Devin] We gotta get out of here!
Finally, I just had to smack him
in his face to wake him up.
- What? - Come on, Luis, let's go.
[Devin] We gotta get out of here.
[Luis coughing]
Run, Devin.
[Devin] I remember seeing him smile.
Devin, Devin. De...
I remember seeing him disappear
and fade into the flames.
With Devin having confronted the Burnt Man
on his home turf,
now the Burnt Man pushes back.
He's going to deal with Devin and his family
in their safe place, their own home,
by burning it down around their ears.
Devin and his family are terrified,
their lives are threatened.
One could only imagine that the Burnt Man
is loving every minute of this.
He's loving all of the fear,
all of the terror, all of the commotion.
And they are lucky to escape
from this inferno with their lives.
[sirens approaching]
[Devin] I had this feeling of sadness and dread
as we were standing on our front lawn...
watching my house being burnt down,
and all of our personal belongings
being destroyed in this fire.
[siren wailing]
But at the same time, I felt relieved
because we all escaped without any harm.
No damage to our lungs from the smoke, nothing like that.
I still am amazed.
[Devin] I think, with the fire happening,
that's something that this entity did.
I felt like that was his plan,
and he wanted people inside there.
Like, I felt like he wanted bloodshed.
But after the house fire,
I have not seen this entity.
I haven't had any occurrences with him.
It was like that weight that was on my shoulders,
with the depression and the anxiety,
it was like years of that was lifted off my shoulders.
As tragic as this fire was
with Devin and his family losing everything,
all of their possessions,
all of their sentimental items,
and their very home itself,
there is one, small ray of light.
They are, at last, free
of the Burnt Man's malign influence
and they can start their lives over in peace.
[Devin] This has changed my life,
I feel, for the better.
It has made me appreciate the little things in life.
Appreciate my family a lot more
and love them even more.
It made me realize
that family is something you can't put a price on,
and something that will always be there for you.
[siren wailing]
[grunting]
[howling]
[speaking indistinctly]
[narrator] The people hit hardest
by the Covid-19 pandemic
are the elderly
and those in long term care.
[woman] Covid infection rates
are on the rise.
[sirens wailing]
[man] The East coast of America
has been slammed
by a tidal wave of Covid.
[narrator] EMT
and firefighter Jamie Adams
has just heard a call to duty.
[indistinct chatter]
The Covid pandemic had hit
and the governor in my state
had put out a request
for medical volunteers,
anybody that has any medical training.
I really wanted to help.
Not sit back
and watch the news everyday.
Room 17,
she needs to be flipped on to her other side.
- Got it. - And I just
checked 13 and 15,
they're [indistinct].
I was placed in a long term
living facility...
[alarm beeping]
No, take care of that,
the other stuff later.
[Jamie] I was just overwhelmed.
[heart monitor halts]
We started losing residents.
[narrator] By her third week on the job,
Jamie was exhausted.
[Jamie] One night,
we finally had a couple minutes to sit.
And I remember putting my head down
I saw, out of the corners of my eyes,
at first, these shadows.
I'm thinking, it's gotta be the shield.
So, I take my shield off
because, "Is it playing tricks on my eyes?"
I'm seeing shadows
at both ends of the halls.
What's going on?
Did you see that?
[door creaking]
I'll go this way,
and you...
Yeah.
There's gotta be a reason for it.
So, I go down
to the other end of the hall
[door creaks]
She's watching one way,
I'm watching the other,
[footsteps approaching]
[gasping]
- I can hear footsteps behind me. - [footsteps approaching]
[breath trembling]
[breathing heavily]
[footsteps approaching]
- [door slams] - [yelps]
Did you hear that?
Now I'm starting to get scared.
[woman] Help me!
[footsteps approaching]
[woman] Help me!
[door slams]
[woman] Help--
[thud]
We hear this...
very
loud scream
that was female that says, "Help me."
And it was very clear.
We're walking down the hallway,
and physically checking
every single room.
[narrator] They check one final room.
Even though Jamie's coworker
recalls the room's patient
having passed away recently.
She... She passed.
[Jamie] That scream wasn't a patient.
That was in this room.
[door opens]
There's nothing.
There's nobody there.
When we start to take a look
at the relationship
between paranormal activity
and this phenomenon of pandemics,
we do see an increase in paranormal activity
or reports during this time.
We've got a situation
where people are in a heightened state of fear,
they're panicked, they're worried.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed
and thought energy is energy.
So, we've got this sort of domino effect of people
that are putting and pumping out this fear,
this panic, this illness,
and upset and depression
all into the environment.
[narrator] Jamie starts to question
her own sanity.
I was now starting to figure out
that we aren't alone
on this ward.
That was not,
you know,
explainable.
No, I know.
- It... - It's haunted, I know.
I've seen all kind of stuff here.
The nurse that I was with she's like, "Oh, I see stuff in here
all the time."
[narrator] The next day,
things were only about
to get stranger for Jamie.
- [heart monitor beeping] - We had a couple
that was brought in, they both had tested positive
for Covid,
and they were at a very end room.
And they were in the room together.
He was a very big man.
That gentleman was actively dying.
I'm sorry.
We ask his wife,
"Would you like to say goodbye?"
"Would you like to sit and hold his hand?
We can move your beds together,"
we gave her different options.
Just let me know when it happens.
[Jamie] And she rolls over and goes to sleep.
And the nurse and I looked at each other
like, "What?!"
So we had finally just pulled the curtain
because she made it clear
that she didn't want any part of it.
I had to take care of another resident.
I was gone
maybe five or ten minutes
and in that timeframe
he had passed.
What do you think?
Should we wake her up and tell her?
And, the nurse and I...
"We'll just let her sleep",
because she really has wanted
no part of this.
So we quietly remove the bed
with this body out of there
so that she's not in the same room.
And it was later on that I found out
that this was a very...
different kind of a marriage.
It was almost like a love, hate thing.
And, they did not have a real loving relationship
that the nurses had ever seen or witnessed.
It was just this huge
toxic dynamic.
[narrator] Later that night,
Jamie and her coworker
are at the nurses' station.
[Jamie] And the wife comes walking out
to the nurses' station.
[Jamie] Hey!
How are you doing tonight?
I had Covid.
What do you think?
Okay.
[woman groans]
[howls]
[Jamie] She took a nasty fall.
She went down so hard,
it looked like somebody pushed her.
[groans in pain]
She had multiple fractures...
[groaning]
[man speaking indistinctly]
[groans]
[distorted voice] We used to hate each other.
[voice speaking indistinctly]
All my hair was standing up on end,
I was in complete shock.
I saw...
a black shadow.
[woman sobbing]
You could tell by the size
it was him.
Her husband pushed her.
- [woman sobs] - Jamie?
- [woman groans] - Jamie?
[woman wailing]
I was in complete shock.
[panting]
[heart monitor beeping]
[narrator] After her patient's accident,
-an air of darkness - [emergency alarm buzzing]
started to take over the ward.
[alarms buzzing]
[heart monitor beeps]
I just felt like
this depression had come over
that unit.
You walk off the wing, it felt different
and you walk back into the wing and it's like,
this oppressive
just weight
on you.
And it just got worse
and worse and worse
because you're dealing with death
every single day.
[narrator] Jamie fights through
the dark shroud of death
hanging over the unit
and focuses on comforting her patients.
And these people,
they can't have family come in.
They can't have friends come in,
so they're gonna die alone.
[man breathing heavily]
We are the last touch
that they're gonna feel.
[man breathing heavily]
So I'm sitting with this one resident
and, talking to him
holding his hand,
and I've got my head down,
and I'm saying a prayer,
I'm just asking that he goes quickly
and peacefully.
[heart monitor beep fades]
I'm feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand up,
I just feel like this charging of the room.
[ominous wind blowing]
[heart monitor beeping]
It wasn't...
anything that freaked me out,
it was comforting.
[heart monitor beeping]
[gasps]
[heart monitor stops]
I've got goosebumps now
just talking about it.
I honestly think that it's former residents,
and they're all coming into his room
to say, "We're here with you."
[narrator] The next day,
things started to change.
We came in to work,
we weren't losing any more residents,
I wasn't seeing any more death.
[Jamie] Hey.
How's it going?
[nurse] Actually, not bad.
Well, today's my last day.
Yeah.
It was really nice working with you.
Yeah, until next time.
[Jamie] And I just keep going back
to all of the energy changes
that I felt throughout the time.
I experienced such a wide range
of emotions
and some were so intense.
Being scared,
'cause we don't know what's going to happen
with these people and...
[muted speech]
Feeling completely at peace
when things were finally starting to get better.
It was almost like
these spirits knew
this Covid pandemic was going on.
I think
that they were there
to take care of people
when nobody else could.