Somebody help me!
[Mikey] I felt like I was losing her.
Jolena.
[sinister whispering] Hello, little girl.
And that's when all the...
paranormal things started to happen.
[Richard] There was nobody else in the building.
[growling]
And I noticed this growl.
[growling]
There was a lot more to come.
Daddy!
Do you see him now?
I'm seeing what she was seeing.
Did you just do that?
This cold chill going down my body.
[screaming]
[growling]
[groaning]
[Richard] It really challenges your core beliefs.
[Mikey] I was paralyzed.
[screaming]
[screaming] Jolena.
I thought I knew what fear was,
but I didn't.
[theme music playing]
[narrator] It is 2002 in this Midwest US city.
Mikey Thomson, a registered nurse
is just finishing his shift in the ER.
Hey, how's it going, man? How're you feeling?
[patient] Pretty good. I had a bit of blurriness in this eye when I woke up.
We meet people on the worst day of their lives.
And I have moments to get to know them and earn their trust.
Pretty easy there, right. Pretty simple procedure.
Everything's good? You can still see everything?
What drives me is, getting them through that,
hopefully having a positive outcome
and then, sending them back home to their normal lives.
[indistinct conversation]
I love it. I'm kind of right where I need to be.
[narrator] But Mikey never imagined that the hospital he works at...
- Help me! - [doctor] I need a gurney.
[narrator] ...would be the source of the darkest time of his life.
[Mikey] So, that morning, my uncle was there
to help me work on the house that we just bought.
Just gonna go out front for a few minutes. You okay over here?
Okay, I'll be right back.
[sinister whispers]
[Mikey] My uncle setup some closet doors we've taken down to paint
asked me if I could help him reposition a couple of the doors real quick
so we could continue painting the other side.
[music box playing]
[sinister whispers]
We set up a couple more doors, flipped them around
and I said I'm gonna go back in and check on my daughter.
Jolena.
Where'd she go?
Jolena.
Saw the doors to the back were open.
And at that moment, I knew.
Jolena!
[frantic screaming]
Jolena!
[Mikey] And she was floating face down on the deep end.
[voice trembling] I really practiced this and I thought I'd be okay, sorry.
[Mikey screaming] Jolena!
[breathing heavily] No.
I reached down into the pool
and I grabbed her by the dress
and I pulled her up out of the water.
She was gray.
She had the most beautiful strawberry blonde hair,
and her hair, even the color of her hair was dull.
I took her and I started doing mouth-to-mouth
and compressions.
And there was so much water coming out of her tiny body,
to this day, I don't know how she had so much water.
It was in my mouth and it just kept coming out.
And I kept breathing, and I kept pushing and doing compressions.
I just wanted that water out.
I couldn't wait for an ambulance.
I drove her to the hospital where I worked.
I was holding her in my arm,
driving with my knees and I was breathing for her
while I was driving.
Help me.
[screaming] Somebody help me.
Somebody help. She's not breathing.
- Please. - [female doctor] God, Mikey.
[Mikey] She's not breathing. She's not breathing. Somebody help.
Please help me.
They all know it's me, they know it's my daughter.
[Mikey sobbing] Please help, she's not breathing.
Oh!
DOA.
The doctor said she's dead on arrival.
- [Mikey sobbing] - [doctor] Oh my god, Mikey.
[Mikey sobbing] No, Jolena.
Jolena.
I saw nothing but white.
Brilliant white.
I could see my daughter
in this white, walking away from me.
[sinister whispering] Hello, little girl.
Jolena!
I was screaming her name
because I wanted her to turn around and come back to me.
I felt like I was losing her.
[screaming]
I kept fighting for her
because I believed that there was a chance that we would get her back.
She finally turned around and looked at me.
[Mikey screaming]
[sighs]
- I need a gurney. Okay. - [Mikey] Please help her.
And that's when I came back up, opened my eyes.
We're gonna do everything we can, okay?
[doctor] Okay.
All right. Ready? One, two, okay.
I couldn't get... I couldn't get it together.
[doctor] Let's go.
Come on.
[Mikey] Took off down the hallway
to go get started on, you know, trying to revive her.
[voice over P.A system] Security, please report to reception.
[Mikey] All of these people had to interview me...
I don't know. I came--
...and ask me what happened to determine
whether or not, you know, it was negligence.
I don't care about their questions at this point
because I'm waiting. She's still dead.
And the door flew open and the doctor came out.
We have a pulse, Mikey.
[gasping in relief]
Come on.
[Mikey] We determined based on the events that she had no pulse,
no respirations, no nothing
for 20... approximately 26 minutes.
I knew that without oxygen, the brain and the major organs for so long, that
I was just going to bring home the shell of who my daughter was.
[monitor beeping steadily]
You awake?
I was rubbing the palm of her hand
and I was just coaxing her, talking to her.
Hey, Jolena.
You made it.
And she went like this, and grabbed it.
And I knew right then that she was gonna be okay.
That was my sign.
It was going to take time because of everything she had gone through.
But she was gonna ultimately be okay.
[sinister whispering]
[narrator] Mikey soon learnt that it is not only his daughter
that has come home from the hospital.
[Mikey] Shortly after we had got her home,
I started noticing things immediately.
She was different.
[sinister whispering]
[Mikey] She made it to the entryway...
Hey, are you okay?
...and she stood there frozen at the front door.
There were noticeably different things about her demeanor.
And that's when all the paranormal things started to happen.
[sinister whispering]
You okay?
Definitely not as playful as she was,
kind of lethargic.
And I went to bed.
[distant screaming]
[screaming]
I had...
night terrors.
We had a funeral and we had buried her.
[bones cracking]
[Jolena screams]
I could hear her screaming in the middle of the night.
[Jolena screaming]
[Jolena screams]
In the panic, I jumped out of bed...
[Jolena] Daddy.
I thought she was having a bad dream or,
I didn't know what was going on.
[Mikey] Hey, hey, Jolena. You okay?
Come here, come here. I'm here.
And she was shaking
uncontrollably almost like she was febrile.
Like, she had a fever, and your body is shaking and you can't stop it.
[Mikey] It's okay. It's okay.
I got you. Nothing's going to happen. It's okay. I'm here.
Everything's fine. Okay.
I was holding her
and trying to calm her down and console her
because I could feel almost as if someone was standing next to me
that wasn't there. I could feel the presence of someone there.
The air got thicker, it was heavy in the room.
But, it was empty.
[music box playing]
[sinister whispering]
[Jolena] Go away.
[Mikey] It's okay.
[Richard] Generally children are more attuned to the paranormal.
They still believe in the magical world.
They still believe in fairies and dragons
and those kind of things.
We haven't yet taught them how not to believe.
And I believe that that in turn makes them more attuned
to the presence of the paranormal.
Everything's all right. Okay.
[Mikey] So, all I could do
to comfort her was to, just hold on to her
so that she knew I was there.
This went on, with the night terrors, almost nightly.
It's all right. It's all right.
And, the waking up screaming and inconsolable shaking.
[indistinct screaming]
[narrator] The night continues to bring horrors to Mikey as well.
I was reliving the whole event over and over again.
I woke up drenched in sweat, every night for me.
[narrator] And now, the day offers little protection
from the darkness growing in their home.
[rustling noises]
[Jolena sobbing]
I woke up one morning because I thought I'd heard the door.
Did you close the door?
[Richard] It's very common that when somebody has recently died
to experience the sound of voices, the sound of laughter
in places where nobody should be.
And doors may begin to open and close themselves.
And this is what Michael and his family
began to experience in their home.
[footsteps approaching]
We could hear footsteps coming up the stairs to our bedroom.
[sighs]
[sinister whispering]
Joe, is that you?
I heard someone talking and I thought it was Julie
and there was no one there.
That wasn't mommy.
What do you mean it wasn't mommy?
It was a little man.
I didn't know what to think as there was nothing there.
What is going on in our house?
What is happening? This has all started happening
since we brought Jolena home from the hospital.
I think we just need to give her some time.
This can't go on. She's terrified.
[Mikey] I believe in the paranormal
Um, I've had, you know, experiences myself as a child.
They were unexplained.
Uh, I've always believed in something else.
Especially with everything that was happening to my daughter.
- There has to be something that we can do. - [Jolena] Go away.
- What? - [Jolena] You're scaring me.
[Jolena] Go away.
Jolena.
[Jolena] You're scaring me.
What's wrong, you okay?
Tell me what's wrong.
And she's not looking at me.
She's looking in the corner of the living room.
Go away, where you used to come from.
I don't like you.
- [Mikey] Jolena. - [Jolena] I hate you.
[Mikey] What's going on?
[Mikey] Hey, what's going on? Who are you talking to?
I asked her, "What are you hearing? What do you see?
What is scaring you?"
[distorted voice]
A little man.
So that moment we knew that she was seeing something that we could not see.
She's seeing something that's causing her to be horrified.
It's coming.
[distorted voice]
[screaming] Ah!
- Is he gone? - I think so.
Jolena, it's okay.
As a father, I went into protection mode.
I wanted to find out what this is and fix it and get rid of it.
But first, I had to comfort her.
We sat down in the chair and I felt so guilty
because I couldn't do anything.
I didn't know what to do.
[distorted voice]
Daddy?
- Do you see him now? - Mm-hmm.
[distorted voice]
At that moment in that chair, I'm seeing
what she was seeing.
[distorted voice]
I was paralyzed literally with fear.
[breathing rapidly]
I was able to get up out of the chair and I ran upstairs to the room with her
and we stayed the rest of the night in the room.
So, "Little man" is attached to Jolena.
Not to the house, not to Mikey but to the little girl, specifically.
This was one of a better term a kind of paranormal parasite.
Something that was looking to latched on to a human host and would then feed from it,
then leach it's energy.
And it saw the perfect target and a perfect opportunity in Jolena.
[Mikey] When I was at the hospital...
I could see her walking away.
I felt like she was somewhere else, already.
And I was trying to call her back,
from that place.
And I've always felt like,
it may be during that time that something else
attached itself to her and came back with her,
from the hospital.
It was opportunistic. It saw an opportunity to latch on
to someone that was a doorway into our plane of existence and it took it.
[Mikey] I was angry.
I was angry the little man is still lingering,
He still affecting her and I wanted him gone.
[narrator] The following night Mikey takes matters into his own hands.
- It's time to get rid of the little man. - Mm-hmm.
- Are you ready to get rid of him? - Mm-hmm.
Is he here?
Mm-hmm.
And I again see what she was seeing.
Be careful, daddy.
[distorted voice]
It was just a mass of black negative energy.
Like, I've got to physically, get rid of little man.
Let's go. Let's go.
And then I held on to him and I grabbed her hand and we marched
down the hallway to the bathroom.
[distorted screaming]
The only thing I could come up with
was to grabbed that and ball it up,
and hold it so that it couldn't escape.
[distorted screaming]
You're gonna have to flush.
So, we're gonna flush him away.
Go away.
She was now empowered and helping me
help get rid of him for her, forever.
She was involved in this.
[screaming stops]
She was strong and she was angry too
and she was ready to get rid of him for good.
[gentle music]
What Michael does by taking little man and his daughter hand in hand to the bathroom
and then having her specifically flush little man down the toilet.
What he's doing and what Jolena is doing is expressing the intend to get rid
of this thing with being on her back.
It's breaking that attachment and getting it out of their house.
[Mikey] She was a different little girl.
That's it. It's pretty great, right? It's realistic.
- Daddy. - What? Come on.
She was confident, she was happy, she was...
There was a positive change in her and I felt that change, and for me that was...
I knew right then that we did it.
We got rid of what, little man was
and, um, she's gonna be okay.
And I felt like a success as a father,
you know, trying to help my child who was suffering,
going through something like that, that was a victory.
It was a big win.
[sniffles]
Jolena is now a happy 19 year old student.
The things that haunted her as a child are no longer there.
[Jolena] Daddy, I'm scared.
I know that there are
unexplainable things out there.
[door squeaking]
Paranormal event's happening
all the time, whether it's visual, audible,
or hearing things or seeing things or feeling things,
they are out there and they're real.
[growling]
[narrator] It's 2013 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Richard Larocco works at a hospital with an onsite optometry office.
We help people that basically have very impaired vision.
We pre-test them. We get them ready for the doctor.
Tell me what you see.
[woman] O-M-G-F-E.
I've always wanted to help people and try to give them the best vision that they can.
There's so many issues that we have to deal with and diagnose and treat every single day.
[monitor beeping]
One night, I was closing. There was nobody else in the office,
I was the only one.
[distorted voice]
I noticed this almost kind of, like, negative presence behind me.
It was quite alarming.
I looked around. There was nobody there.
Hello? Anybody here?
I thought maybe, I was having a bad day, maybe,
something was off with me.
The employee restroom, the light turned on.
That wasn't me.
How could this light go on?
The lights are set on a motion sensor. A person has to walk in,
and leave for the lights to turn on and turn off.
Hello? Anyone in here?
[growling]
How could this light go on and off?
Nobody's in there.
I'm the only person in the office.
That was what's really horrifying at that moment.
I wish the lights was just the end of it,
but I was wrong.
There was a lot more to come.
[distorted growling]
I walked into the file room to grab a patient's chart.
And I noticed this
almost undertone growl...
[growling]
Over behind my right ear.
[growling]
I, uh, can't even put into words, I'm getting,
I'm re-living and I'm getting goosebumps right now.
- [growling] - Ah!
It's telling me, "Don't be here".
Get out.
Lord, please protect me, please protect me Lord, please.
Being raised Catholic,
the first thing that you do when you're scared is you always pray.
[exhales]
I remember praying saying, "Please protect me".
Whatever is trying to harm me, whatever is with me,
whatever is trying to scare me,
just please stop it.
Please stop it.
I remember going to work the next day.
Hey, Richard, everything okay?
Yeah, I'm alright Barb. Thanks for asking.
I was just absolutely exhausted.
Drained...
mentally, trying to figure out what's going on.
In the back,
we have, uh, kid's section and have kid's classes. So we decorated for the kids,
and there's this little girl purse.
All of sudden,
this purse,
flies off the shelf and just drops.
Did you, did you just do that?
My co-worker says, "It must have just fell."
It must have been the air conditioning trying to justify
and rationalize in our mind. How this could've just happened?
So, she picked it up,
put it back on the shelf.
The purse flies off again,
lands in the exact same spot.
Just, this cold chill going down my body.
That internal alarm saying "Something is not right."
I need some fresh air.
What else is gonna happen if I sit here?
I gotta get out of here.
What Richard is experiencing seems like a classic case of poltergeist activity.
[growling]
Poltergeist activity is pretty uncommon.
And it's usually quite spectacular.
Classic examples of this, are objects being flown from shelves.
[narrator] After collecting himself,
Richard is back inside and confides in his co-worker
who reveals the hospital's built on a former graveyard.
Richard's place of employment is built on top of an old burial ground
and yes it might seem like a cliche, but the truth of the matter is,
that locations built on top of human remains
are more haunted than places that aren't.
There are many examples of this
throughout the literature of paranormal research.
I was not prepared for what was to come.
I leave for the night to get a sense of relief.
Almost like the heaviness is lifting.
I remember going to bed, and I remember praying.
Amen.
And I go to sleep with a little sense of peace.
[sighs]
That was very short lived.
[bang]
[sighs] What was that?
I've no idea.
[Larocco] So. as I'm walking down my hallway,
I just remember hearing this sound, tchum, tchum, tchum, tchum.
It's the sound of the dryer spinning.
So I went to the dryer and I noticed the setting's set at zero.
But yet the dryer's still going.
[dryer tumbling]
Come on, come on.
[dryer continues tumbling]
I go over to the fuse box and I shut the fuse to that area.
And the dryer stops.
[growls]
There is something in the dryer.
This is impossible.
There is no possible way this can happen.
Did I do this?
Am I bringing something home? What's going on?
[growling]
[Larocco] And all of a sudden, I heard this growl.
I'm trying to rationalize and wrap my mind around it.
[Estep] Growls don't generally come from human spirits.
So we are looking at something that is non-human in nature.
And almost certainly something aggressive.
[Larocco] Fear, not knowing what's gonna happen next.
I had a little table set up for praying.
And I remember having beautiful flowers and a candle.
I had set a prayer card of Archangel Michael right there.
[soft growl]
[growls]
[screaming]
I thought I knew what fear was.
But I didn't.
In this moment I just started to question my own faith.
This was truly terrifying.
I've never been that horrified in my life.
It was right here and the energy behind me,
it was almost like somebody was right up against me.
[growls]
And I realized,
what was occurring in my office,
came with me home.
[growling continues]
And it's now starting to terrorize me in my own home.
[growls]
Non-human entities is something
that has not woke the earth in human form.
[growls]
This isn't the spirit of a once living person
that is passed on into the next realm.
This is more to psychic equivalent of sharks, tigers
and sometimes other predatory animals.
[Larocco] I remember going to work the next day.
It was... actually kind of relaxing and calm.
I really didn't sense the energy.
I didn't sense any heaviness.
And I remember saying, "Huh, maybe it's gone, maybe it's over,
maybe I'm free."
[cell phone ringing]
And then I get a call.
- [woman] Richard. Richard. - Hey, hon. Everything--
- [woman] I'm so scared. - Why, what's happening?
Richard, you're not going to believe this. Oh, my God. Richard.
It was my wife.
And I pick up the call and I said, "Hi, honey. How you doing?"
She says, "You have to come home immediately."
And I say, "Well, why?"
She says, "Well, um, a decorative glass vase we have..."
[growls]
- [shattering, screaming] - ...shattered into hundreds of pieces
"for no apparent reason."
She says, "You have to come home right now."
She says, "I'm scared."
- [woman] Richard, I need you. - All right. Just stay calm, honey, okay?
- Come home right now. Richard. - I'm on my way, baby. Okay?
[Larocco] I couldn't get home fast enough.
Lara.
[Larocco] I remember looking at her.
- What happened? - I don't know what happened.
And it was almost like she was in a state of panic.
It shook her inside so much.
I tried to calm my wife down and also myself.
Because again, now, I'm scared.
It's gonna be all right.
- It'll be all right, honey. - Okay.
It's gonna be all right, hon. All right, hon?
I promise, we're gonna make it through this.
[growl, scream]
Richard.
- Richard, what's wrong? - [Richard screaming]
So as I sat there, I noticed this sharp pain.
- What's happening? - [Richard screaming]
[Larocco] I look down.
Three deep scratches on my arm.
And it was very painful. It was almost like you got stung by a bee.
And the burning and the intensity hurt so much.
[groans]
Richard, what is happening?
[Larocco] The feelings I'm going through, it's now almost testing my faith.
It really challenges your core beliefs.
Saint Michael.
The Archangel, defend us in battle, protect us from...
[Larocco] So I close my eyes and I started praying...
May God...
...for protection.
And as I sat with the burning and the pain
and trying to figure out what was going on...
It was gone.
No pain, no marks, no burning.
And we looked at each other, like, "What is going on, what just happened?"
[growl]
It's here now.
[fire crackling]
Richard, what do you see?
[Larocco] I noticed down the hallway,
that there is almost like this flickering of light, almost like, kind of like a fire.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
[fire crackling]
Come on. Come on. Come on. Run. Run.
[growl]
The flames were coming up and shooting up.
And they were going up the wall.
[fire crackling]
So, I took the flowers and I poured the water to extinguish the fire.
I noticed that,
the cloth that was on the table was not damaged.
The candle itself, the glass was black, but that was it.
Richard, look.
[Larocco] This prayer card of Archangel Michael,
that was the only thing that was damaged.
I prayed to Archangel Michael and now it melted his card.
[growl]
What are we gonna do?
What are we gonna do now?
The most alarming aspect of Richard's experience is when he finds fire.
Now, spontaneous fire starting is a classic type of poltergeist activity.
So this appears to be a very specifically targeted attack against Richard.
It seems very personal.
I truly understand what the word haunted means
because I'm living it every moment of my life.
My work.
[growl]
My home.
I can't even get sleep.
I'm haunted at every moment.
[narrator] At their wits' end, Richard and his wife sell their home and move.
It seemed like making these big, life changing decisions and choices
almost freed us from this negative energy.
[Larocco] Going to another location and leaving our home,
that fear started going away.
And it's almost like we recaptured our lives back.
We had control of what we once lost control of.
With everything that occurred and everything that I went through,
and the fear and the sense of hopelessness,
the sense of my faith is letting me down,
I realized the only thing I can do for myself is make a commitment.
And that commitment was to become an ordained minister.
I am now a full time Reverend.
This is the most fulfilling thing could ever do in my life.
It gives me the opportunity to work my soul's purpose
and my journey and help others on such a deep level.
[growls]
[indistinct]
I believe all of this was connected to the people in that graveyard.
They didn't want any of this connected to their resting places.
You were disrupting us.
[growling]
Now we're gonna disrupt you.
[indistinct]
You're not gonna rest 'cause we can't rest.
[growling]
Becoming a minister,
it's truly the best decision I ever made in my life.
It regained faith,
gave me hope, gave me peace,
gave me clarity on my spiritual journey.
But also gave me the level of confidence and awareness
that I would never be victim again.
[growls, speaks indistinctly]
That I could stand in my power and protect myself
from whatever comes my way.