It was the fulfillment of a dream, seeing something go from nothing.
To this massive home that I built.
[Distant footsteps]
I woke up to the sound of what I thought were footsteps.
[Tin rattles]
Who's there?
[Glass shatters]
Something just grabbed the camera!
[Gasps] Oh, my...
Whatever it was, it was right there in front of me.
How could there be ghosts in my house? It was brand new.
[g*nsh*t]
He's here.
Who the hell is in this house with me?
Is that you, Sharon?
[Screaming]
[Gasping]
Don't break the hold.
Back in 2002, I was working as a private investigator.
I was doing asset searches, skip traces, and finding missing persons.
But I was kind of tired of trying to find out if husbands were cheating on wives and stuff.
I was suffering from tremendous burnout and had to do something different.
It'd always been my dream to build a house with my father.
See, my father was a builder, and ever since I was a child, he had always been building houses.
And the house that I was born and raised in was a house that he had built.
He found this lot in the L.A. Times classified section.
And he says...
It's ridiculous, David. $40,000.
And I was like, $40,000 for the lot?
Where is this? In... in... in the middle of nowhere?
And he goes, no, it's up in Beverly Hills.
I was thinking, this is impossible. $40,000?
The lots in this area are a half million dollars and more.
$40,000?
Believe it.
He goes, here is the address... dot, dot, dot, Cielo Drive.
It's right here.
Whoa.
I said, this is it.
You know, it's a great area. It's up in the hills.
It's like where I grew up. It's very natural.
So I fell in love with the place.
At that point, my eyes drifted down to the end of the driveway.
And I'm thinking to myself, where have I heard the name Cielo Drive from?
But I was hell-bent on taking him up on the offer and building this house.
[Mellow music]
It was the fulfillment of a dream and seeing something go from nothing.
To this massive home that I built with him.
There is just a sense of...
Of accomplishment.
I decided that I wanted to have a housewarming party.
You're listening to W.K.D., Los Angeles's very own golden oldies radio.
I liked to entertain, and I liked to have friends come over.
So sit back, turn up the volume, and don't touch that dial.
[Bluesy rock playing]
[Radio static]
[Bouncy music playing]
[Knocking on door]
I hear a tap at the door.
I'm not expecting anybody for hours, and...
[Knocking on door]
[Knocking on door]
There was no one there.
And I go outside, and I look up and down the drive.
[Dog barking]
And there's not a soul there. There's not a car. It's vacant.
It's dead empty.
[Upbeat music playing]
[Crowd chattering, laughing]
There must've been about 50 to 60 people hanging out and partying.
Having drinks and whatnot.
[Knocking on door]
Hey!
Hey! How are you?
So good to see you!
Good to see you.
Kiss, kiss, mm.
It was this great party, great people.
You know, I always say that you can judge people by their friends, by the company they keep.
And... and this was just a great bunch of people.
[Laughter]
The house was beautiful, and I was impressed.
I can't believe he built it, you know.
This house is amazing.
Thanks, thanks.
He has an open door policy that just makes you feel welcome when you come in.
I think he has a saying that says, come as strangers. Leave as friends.
At one point I went into the kitchen.
[Electronic music playing]
[Voices whisper distantly]
Something kind of caught my attention.
But I didn't quite see who it was. I just saw that it was a man with dark hair.
And I was trying to think... you know, I know a lot of people up at this party.
I should know who that was that was walking by.
But it's not making any sense in my brain.
This window sits about 20 or 30 feet off the ground.
It's absolutely impossible for somebody to have walked by that window.
Later that night, I mean, we were all upstairs hanging out and partying, Jeff was over near the kitchen.
[Glass shatters]
The glass of wine just came flying off the bar.
I saw it fly out.
And there was nothing there. There was no one in the kitchen.
It was troubling at first...
Concerning to say the least.
But out here in the vast pacific ocean...
I met David through a friend, and when I first met him, I...
Was kind of entranced by him.
I'm getting tired.
The largest of the turtle family.
Yeah?
Yeah. I think I'm gonna go up.
I mean, he was good looking and bigger than life, I guess.
You gonna come up?
No, I'm gonna watch the turtles.
With few natural predators...
I'll see you up there.
Okay, good night.
I decided to go to bed a little early. I had to be up early the next day.
[Water running]
[Clock ticking]
Over the last ten years, its natural environment has been slowly decreased.
A little later on that night, I was drifting in and out, you know, at that almost asleep state.
[Door creaks]
I heard the door open.
I assumed it was David.
David?
And he didn't say anything, which was weird.
Someone was right there.
And then... they... it was gone.
It was really scary.
Were you just upstairs?
Were you just upstairs?
No, why?
I saw something or someone.
I don't know what to make of it.
Come on, sit down. Where?
There's something happening here, and I'm not so sure I know what it is.
There was nothing there.
He seemed very affected by what I was telling him.
It bothered him.
Being an ex P.I., this was important for me to understand what was going on.
This wasn't a job.
This was something... as the old saying goes, it was something personal.
I had to figure out what was going on in my house.
So I did some investigating.
I started digging through the old newspaper articles to see if there's anything that might give me an answer.
I'm having to read through articles about murders and whatnot.
And then I came across one article that caught me totally by surprise.
And then it dawned upon me.
Cielo Drive was, in fact, the location and the name of the street...
Where the Charles Manson murders had taken place some 30 years earlier.
I realized I was living near where these terrible murders had taken place.
But why would the Manson murders have anything to do with my house?
I mean, I'm four houses down the street from where the murders took place.
The house was torn down in 1992.
My house is brand-new.
There's no physical connection between where these murders took place and my house.
That evening I invited my friend Jeff and Kashmir to come over to watch a movie in the theater room.
[Majestic music playing]
It turned out to be Planet of The Apes, which I've seen a million times, but it doesn't matter.
Just seeing it in somebody's home on the screen sitting in a couch, it's wonderful.
[Voices murmuring distantly]
We heard these voices coming from the intercom.
[Murmuring continues]
Is anyone there?
David goes up to the...
To the intercom to answer them, but they're not talking back to him.
It was just this... this quiet, constant talking.
I couldn't make out what they were saying, they were just sort of talking...
To themselves, it sounded like more than one person.
[Murmuring continues]
The intercom system works through the house.
Who's there?
You have to be inside the house to use it.
So whoever it was was inside the house.
[Voices murmuring over intercom]
You guys stay here. I'm gonna go check it out.
I slowly crept up the staircase.
[Voices murmuring]
I'm looking for somebody. I don't know who it is, I don't know what it is...
But there's somebody in this house, and I'm scared to death, to be honest with you.
I'm hearing voices and footsteps inside the room.
I grab my r*fle, my little .22 caliber r*fle.
[Voices stop]
There's no one there.
David was still upstairs...
[Voices murmuring over intercom]
And the talking continued.
But it didn't just continue, it moved out, away from the intercom...
And started moving into the room.
[Supernatural voices crying out]
There was anguish and terror in the voices.
Who could be talking?
What is it?
And then it disappeared.
[Voices whispering distantly]
[Gasps]
[Sighs]
False alarm.
Oh, my God.
No, David.
You missed it.
What?
There's no one in this house. This house is empty.
There's no way. There's no way.
Let me go check it out.
You stay here with Kashmir.
Sure.
The voices were so loud, and it was like he was in the room, right here.
I'm walking up the stairs...
And I make it to the second floor.
[Static-filled radio broadcast]
And I hear something.
And it sounded like somebody switched the radio on.
And then there's this raspy... [breathing deeply]
You know, very labored breathing, like a death rattle.
[Tin clinking, woman screaming]
I feel this blast of air, and it just comes rushing at me.
[Music playing distantly]
[Music stops]
The thing goes right over my head and heads up to the top floor.
Everything that's going on now around me challenges everything that I ever believed or didn't want to believe.
Uh, and...
And I didn't know what to make of it.
I don't know what's happening here.
I don't know why it is that I'm hearing voices, my friends are hearing voices and footsteps and things.
What is happening here? I don't have any idea.
[Knocking on door]
I've always been a skeptic.
Uh, so...
I'm thinking there has to be a physical, practical explanation for it.
David.
What's going on?
I suggested to David that maybe we should start approaching this methodically.
Let's start documenting this. Let's start experimenting.
This is camera one, day one, in David's living room.
He laid the entire house out with the cameras.
Okay, we are now moving into the living room.
Camera two.
The fireplace.
I don't believe in ghosts and stuff, but, you know something, I'm curious as hell.
Camera three.
David's bedroom.
We have all this equipment. We're all excited.
And we're not really getting anything.
Pint?
It just wasn't a successful investigation for the first few times.
But I know what happened to me, and...
I had told some friends, and they think I'm crazy, and I've got to capture this stuff on tape.
Every couple of days, Jeff would show up and just take over the house.
I started going up there more frequently, thinking just, you know, maybe I'll get something.
Jeff started to get a little bit obsessed.
He's over there so much, and I just started tagging along.
Do you want to use the tripod, or are you just gonna do it hand held?
I'm gonna do this one hand held, but set the tripod up, that'd be great for later.
And one night we were there late.
David was tired, and he just fell asleep on the couch.
There's no one else around.
Panning from left to right.
Coming across to the night table.
And now...
We're at the bed.
What's going on? What is that?
Jeff.
It's like something...
Grabbing it.
It was like he was wrestling with something.
Somebody's grabbing the lens and pulling it down.
What's going on?! What is that?
It's like somebody pulled it.
Jeff.
I'm telling you.
It's like something...
Grabbing it.
It looked like something yanked him.
Something's grabbing it.
It was just... it was crazy.
I was so scared I didn't know what to do.
Jeff.
I...
And then it just stopped.
He was really spooked, and I just knew it was time to leave.
Let's get out of here.
We were out of there. I don't even think we woke David up.
We're both exhausted.
Kashmir has to go to bed, but... but I have to make sure that I got something on video.
So it's 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, I'm in the back of the house with my computer transferring the video.
Panning from left to right.
Now... We're at the bed.
[Distorted tones]
I can hear something that sounds like talking, but it's so low in volume, so I...
I put the footage back, and I start listening to it again.
[Distorted tones]
It's very faint, and...
So I keep going back to see if I really heard what I heard.
[High-pitched squealing]
[Distorted tones]
But you can't see anything on the video. There's nothing there.
But very clearly, you can hear the voice.
Jeffrey, don't sh**t me.
[Distorted voice] Jeffrey, don't sh**t me.
And I just... I...
I just didn't know how to explain it.
Later that evening I went to bed at 1:35 in the morning.
[Distant footsteps approaching]
A couple of hours later in the middle of the night, I woke up.
On one level I'm scared because, you know, when you live in a nice house and people's homes get burglarized.
Burglars in this day and age usually carry a g*n or some type of a w*apon.
[Pensive music]
I grab my r*fle.
[Chamber clicks]
And I walked out my bedroom door looking out the hallway up and down.
[Tin clattering]
Who's there?
[Rapid footsteps]
And I looked into the living room, looked around to the kitchen, I didn't see anything.
[Rapid footsteps]
[Projector ratcheting]
I had started hearing sounds.
[Voices speaking distantly]
They were coming from the bottom floor, from the theater room.
[Voices whispering indistinctly]
I went downstairs to the third level, and I'm holding the r*fle.
I'm... I got the thing off the safety, and I'm thinking, oh, my God, and I'm shaking, going, okay, who's here?
Who the hell is in this house with me?
[Voices whispering indistinctly]
[Whispering stops]
[Projector ratcheting]
I could swear I turned the projector off at the end of the night.
And it's like, oh, I must've been mistaken.
[Glass shatters]
[Projector clacking]
I didn't know what to make of it.
But at that point, I was so exhausted I just went up and went back to bed.
[Crickets chirping]
[Breathing heavily]
[g*nsh*t]
But he just, psst, disappeared.
It sounded like a bang, an expl*si*n, a g*nsh*t.
It was dark, and there was nothing there.
It was just perfectly normal.
The next day, Jeff comes over, and he says, David, David, I've... I've got something.
I've captured some stuff on some footage.
It's impossible. It's incredible.
[Crackling]
[Distorted voice] Jeffrey, don't sh**t me.
[High-pitched squealing]
[Crackling]
Jeffrey, don't sh**t me.
[High-pitched squealing]
Jeffrey, don't sh**t me.
[High-pitched squealing]
It finally gave me proof that there was physical evidence that there were ghosts in my house.
[High-pitched squealing]
Jeffrey, don't sh**t me.
In a sense, I was really...
Comfortable and happy to know that I wasn't going crazy.
After I saw this video footage...
And the gentleman standing at the foot of my bed.
I kept on wondering who it was...
And what was happening in my house.
The fact that the Manson murders took place 150 feet down the street was the only thing that I could come up with that could possibly be what was going on.
I didn't have anything else to go on.
Being an ex-P.I., I called up my friends at the Los Angeles Police Department.
Appreciate it.
I was brought a box, over 2,000 filed photos of the crime scene.
Candid photographs of the victims...
In the front yard on the lawn.
It wasn't a pleasant experience at all.
But then I found this photograph.
That's the guy that I saw in the middle of the night.
It says Jay Sebring.
He was Sharon Tate's ex-fiance.
And one of the victims.
I saw a flash, like a muzzle of a g*n going off...
[g*nsh*t]
And then the sound that I heard afterwards was in fact a g*nsh*t.
But why was he pointing towards the driveway?
What was this all about?
Maybe that related to Steven Parent...
An 18-year-old high school student who was sh*t in his car.
This is now starting to add up.
And then I came across a full body photograph of Sharon Tate.
She had just done Valley of The Dolls. She was becoming a named personality.
She was becoming more and more of a public figure.
I thought to myself, maybe the voices and the intercom...
Footsteps I heard in the house...
And the voice of the woman in that video footage.
Jeffrey, don't sh**t me.
Jeffrey, don't sh**t me.
What if they were in fact the spirit of Sharon Tate trying to communicate with us?
I had felt like I had come to the end of my rope of what I was capable of doing and understanding.
Right now I need to seek professional help.
I was able to go that evening. I simply got in the car and drove.
Now, being from the East Coast, I had... really had no idea where I was going.
So this is it.
If you sort of take a look around.
I've got some work to do.
Okay.
You can just kind of do whatever it is you do.
All right? Thank you.
Thanks. Thanks.
I felt, if she doesn't know anything about the house, whatever she's experiencing in the house firsthand will be, genuine and organic to her experience.
I was left mostly alone upstairs in the living room area.
[Crows cawing, birds whistling]
I was picking up a strange...
Strange, brittle kind of energy, a harsh energy.
There was something off-putting about the environment.
I couldn't put my finger on it.
[Ambient music]
It had gotten icy cold.
Almost to the point where if you breathe you could see your breath.
I felt something.
That's when I saw her just walking through.
Like she belonged there.
And I expected her at any moment to turn and look at me like another person in the house.
But she didn't. She had totally disappeared.
And I started going down the stairs slowly looking to see where she could've gone.
[Voices whispering distantly]
[Gasps]
Oh, sorry. Are you okay?
I'm okay. I'm okay.
Do you have a girlfriend that's here?
And I'm going, no...
She goes...
Well, I just saw this woman pass by.
I said, who do you think it is?
And she goes, I don't know, but if it wasn't somebody that you knew, then it was one of the spirits.
I said, I think it's time for a seance.
[Pensive music]
I don't really put a lot of faith in seances.
I'm not big on the pretense of being able to speak and communicate with the dead.
But I thought, why not try this?
It's worth a sh*t.
Alma seems to know what she's doing. She seems very together.
If there is such a thing as a professional seance-doer, she certainly seems to be that.
She has full control of the situation.
She has David shut and lock all the doors, the windows.
I still think it's kind of silly at this point, but...
I'm... I'm supporting David.
I'm there for him, and I'll give this a go.
I had never been to a seance before. This was my first seance.
And so I just didn't...
I didn't know what was gonna happen.
All set?
I'm good.
I'm standing back with the camera, and...
She has everybody hold hands.
Everyone, let's hold hands, please.
Whatever you do, we must stay connected.
No matter what happens, you have to stay connected.
Let's close our eyes.
Is anyone there?
[Gasps]
What...
[Gasps]
The flame on the taller candle bent right in half.
[Gasping]
Wow.
Are you getting this?
Yeah.
The other two candles stayed straight up.
I asked...
Is that you, Sharon?
[Screams]
All the lights were out.
The candle instantly went out.
It's okay. I got a light.
[Gasping]
Don't break the hold.
That was the answer. That was Sharon there, she was there.
[Gasping]
Don't break the hold.
Stay connected.
Stay connected.
Don't break the hold.
That kind of changed everything.
It just became very intense.
Stay connected.
What the... someone just grabbed the camera!
Oh, my...
It's like the camera is moving on its own.
Jeff's like...
Shaking his head with total disbelief.
And then I see Kashmir.
Something started jiggling my chair.
I was literally bouncing up and down.
[Screams]
Oh, my God!
She says, somebody just pushed my chair!
Oh, my...
Stay connected.
Calm down. It's going to be okay. Calm down.
Calm down.
Calm down.
Why are you here?
[Distant screaming]
What is that?
It was the saddest, most heartbreaking sort of scream.
[Screaming continues]
[Gasps]
And then across the table, I saw something happen to Alma.
Alma?
What's going on?
I don't know.
She leaned forward, and she...
She was holding herself.
Alma?
What's the matter?
[Gasps]
She stood up, and she's clutching her stomach.
Oh, my... oh!
David, what's wrong with...
What's the matter?
My stomach felt like something had gone through it.
[Gasping]
You okay?
And it was so strong.
Somebody help us.
And it was so painful.
It was also really scary. I mean... what's going on?
Help me.
What?
I was being att*cked.
Help. Somebody help us.
[Gasping]
What's going on?
What... what is it?
[Gasping]
Look.
Oh, it's... help me.
What?
She grabbed her abdomen. She was grabbing her upper chest.
She was grabbing her shoulder blades.
Oh, my God.
[Gasping]
This look came over David.
What? What is it?
He said, she's being stabbed.
[Pensive music]
After everything that happened on the night of the seance, I started to realize...
We were having a shared experience of the victims that we k*lled down the street.
At the hands of Charles Manson and his followers.
Five persons, including the actress Sharon Tate, were found dead at the home of...
Brutally m*rder*d in the glare of Hollywood publicity.
Each with multiple s*ab wounds.
The murders of Sharon Tate and her guests at her...
At 10050 Cielo...
But my house was 150 feet from where the murders took place, so why my house?
Described by one investigator as reminiscent of...
Discovered the crime scene and then ran screaming to neighbors.
I started to think to myself...
Maybe that they were trying to escape the house...
And run down the driveway and seek help from the neighbors.
Maybe it's just the way things are.
Maybe things get looped somehow, and maybe we hear replays of things.
Are you here, Sharon? Show us if you are by a sign.
My chair's going crazy right now.
I just heard something.
I just heard something.
[Distorted tones]
03x07 - The Manson Curse
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"Paranormal Witness" is a paranormal documentary television series featuring "eyewitness accounts" from "everyday people" who claim to have experienced paranormal activity.
"Paranormal Witness" is a paranormal documentary television series featuring "eyewitness accounts" from "everyday people" who claim to have experienced paranormal activity.