03x13 - A Ghostly Affair

[bunniefuu]

I had a home that was everything to me.

[Gasps]

[Haunting music]

We really had no idea of the things that we would discover in the house.

We had never seen anything that violent.

[Whispering] Rebecca.

It was like someone were saying, I'm here.

I'm here.

I'm here.

[Electricity crackling]

[Screaming]

There's somebody there.

As much as I wanted her to not be there...

[Whimpering]

She was there.

There's nothing here.

No, honey, come on.

You know, this will be a huge move for me.

In 2005, I was given the opportunity to interview for the deanship of the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Arkansas Monticello.

Let me just hear them out.

My wife, Rebecca, was wary of moving away from Oklahoma.

When Mark first started applying for jobs, I told him I would move anywhere but Alaska or Arkansas.

And so he puts me in the car to go to Arkansas.

I'm a city girl.

[Sighs]

Rebecca and I turned down North Main Street, and immediately we were impressed by these beautiful...

Um, circa 1900 Victorian mansions.

Well, we came to one in particular that caused us to stop the car.

It was love at first sight.

Wow.

[Chuckles]

I just said, Mark, I will only move to this town if you buy me that house.

I knew that I would only be happy...

In such an isolated location.

If I had a home that was everything to me.

We really had no idea of the things that we would discover in the house.

We moved to Monticello in the summer of 2005.

We really were fulfilling our desires.

Thanks. Let's go. Let's go.

And now we had the house of our dreams.

That wasn't the fairy-tale image that I took from it.

I didn't feel so much like a Princess as I did a scared little kid.

The house is enormous, and you feel very vulnerable to it.

I felt mesmerized. I felt very spellbound.

I just laid down on the floor on my back...

And just had that moment for myself of, wow, I own it.

[Eerie music]

[Gasps]

[Crystals rattling]

Can you take these and put them over...

Yeah.

There?

Just rearrange them how you want, okay?

A little after we had just moved in, we had decided to sort of rearrange the house.

[Vacuum humming]

[Electricity crackles]

[Vacuum powers down]

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the record spinning.

And it was going faster and faster, I mean, just as fast as it could go.

I hadn't cranked the record player.

Rebecca hadn't cranked it.

There was no explanation for why the record could possibly be spinning.

[Low grinding]

Ah!

It just stopped spinning instantly.

That was very, very strange.

It didn't make any sense.

Seeing something like this really...

Set in my uneasy feeling about the house.

[Ominous music]

One of the things that the kids and I have always done for recreation on the weekends is...

To get out our metal detector...

Okay. Hey, slow down, now.

Slow down, Jake.

And to go around, seeing whether we could find anything in the ground.

There could be some really neat stuff here in this old yard.

I was out by the front sidewalk. I was listening to music...

[Lively music playing]

Josh, where are you? You back there?

As I approached one of the big old rose bushes...

[Metal detector beeping]

Oh. Wait. Hey, over here. Guys, found something. Come on.

The metal detector started making its high-pitched beeping sound.

Over here. Go ahead, Josh.

Get down there with your... there you go.

[Lively music playing]

[Music stops]

The music just all of a sudden stopped.

Ooh, found something.

Ooh, what is that?

As we broke apart the soil, we discovered an old penny from 1948.

See if there's something else in there.

Pull it out. What is it?

And we found an old pillbox.

Wow, this is something else.

Oh, look at that.

This?

Wow. What is that?

And we found an old lipstick case.

[Whispering] Rebecca.

I heard someone, a woman's voice, say, "Rebecca".

I felt this strong sense that someone was watching me, and I turned and looked up at the house.

[Dramatic music]

I thought I saw something in the shape of a woman in the window.

[Feedback screeches]

[Lively music playing]

And then the music started again.

[Eerie music]

I felt that the house itself had its own...

Presence, I guess.

We had been in the house maybe a month, and we decided to have a yard sale.

And my friend Desi said she had some things she wanted to get rid of too.

I was just walking up the stairs.

As I got closer and closer to the house, and I looked up.

And in the bedroom window, I saw Rebecca.

Hey, Destiney.

There was no way that she could have made it from upstairs in the bedroom to the door in, you know, a matter of just a few seconds.

I just saw you in the window.

No, it's just me in the house right now.

And I said, well, I wasn't upstairs.

I've been at the back of the house, pricing these items for the yard sale.

There was no doubt in my mind that I knew what I saw.

I started taking my boxes into the foyer.

I saw Rebecca.

Hey, Rebecca, I could use your help getting some of that stuff.

It's not a whole lot, but I could use some help with some big boxes and everything.

And then so I just walked out. I expected her to follow me.

She wasn't there, and I was like, oh, I guess she maybe didn't hear me.

[Ominous music]

I walk back into the house with my second load of boxes.

Rebecca was still just standing there.

Could use some help, please.

I'm like, hey, did you not hear me?

Rebecca? No?

You know, I spoke to her, but she never spoke back to me.

And I was like, okay, whatever, you know?

Hey.

Rebecca comes in from the back of the house.

I mean, I was so confused.

Then I'm very upset.

Rebecca, why have you been ignoring me?

I was practically begging for you to help me come get some of this stuff out.

Desi, when did you ask me for help?

I don't know who you're talking to.

At this time, I was just like, ugh, you know, what's going on?

Destiney.

I'm just wondering if I'm losing my mind.

Here, let me help you.

I believed her.

I believed that she saw me somewhere in the house and I wasn't really there.

[Music]

Something odd occurred.

There was a broken glass on the kitchen counter.

It wasn't on the floor. It wasn't in the sink.

I thought that maybe one of the kids had broken the glass.

Did any of you break a glass this morning, last night?

Both: No.

But the kids said they hadn't broken a glass.

And I really didn't have any reason not to believe them.

The glass seemed to have broken overnight when everybody was sleeping.

And then every day that week when I went down to the kitchen...

There was a broken glass on the counter.

It was strange that it kept repeating itself, just every morning.

But each day, it was the same thing.

[Dog barking faintly]

One night, I was just walking down the hallway...

[Dull thud]

[Dull thudding]

I heard footsteps coming from the attic.

[Dull thudding]

Everyone was asleep but me.

[Breathing heavily]

I did not dare look up into the attic.

I went back into my bedroom and closed the door.

[Faint clinking]

I heard ice cubes clinking against glass...

As if someone were walking down the hallway, and had just gotten a drink from the kitchen.

[Ice cubes rattling]

There was no way that it was my little brothers, my dad, or my stepmom.

They were just across the hall, asleep in their beds.

[Fan whirring]

[Ice cubes rattle]

Then I felt there was company in the room.

[Faint click]

And the fan turns off.

[Fan whirring]

And then it turns back on again.

I was petrified.

[Whirring rapidly]

I could see the buttons being pushed in, as if someone were pushing them.

But there was no one there.

Click.

Click.

Click.

It was like someone were saying, I'm here.

I'm here. I'm here.

[Electricity crackling]

[Panting]

I was terrified.

I...

I knew for a fact that there was something in the house.

Bronte didn't want to be in the house.

So we decided to go on vacation.

She told me on more than one occasion about things that were happening in her room.

I have to admit that I wasn't terribly worried about it.

You know, she's an 11-year-old girl, and I thought that it was probably just her imagination working overtime.

Okay, guys, let's go.

We never leave the house alone.

So we invited one of Mark's students, Reagan, to come and house-sit for us and watch the animals while we were gone.

The Spencers are a very lovely family, and I had grown quite close to them.

And I was approached to house-sit for them that summer.

[Eerie music]

I wanted her to feel comfortable to come in the house and stay in the house as much as possible.

I didn't tell Reagan specifically anything that had happened in the house.

[Thunder booming]

[Electricity zaps]

[Rain pattering]

And I was trying to figure out, why would they put this picture in there...

[Phone rings]

And then build these two walls around it?

Rebecca calls me, and she asked me if I wouldn't mind going upstairs to the attic.

To make sure that the roof wasn't leaking, make sure the buckets weren't overflowing.

Okay, yeah, sure.

Okay, bye.

So I thought to myself, I really don't want to go up there...

Sorry, Howdy.

But I would do anything for the Spencers.

[Thunder booming]

[Eerie music]

I grabbed a chair and propped it up against the door.

It helped to leave that door open to get more illumination.

[Water trickling]

As I walked up the stairs, it was...

I could hear that the rain was hitting pretty hard.

[Thunder booming]

There were some buckets that were about to overflow.

I was too nervous to look too far.

Because it was just a spooky old Victorian attic.

[Ominous music]

Howdy.

Howdy.

Howdy, come on.

Come on, boy.

Howdy, where are you?

[Door slams]

Ah!

The door slammed shut, leaving me and the dog in total darkness.

[Dull thudding]

[Music]

Come on, boy.

Howdy, where are you?

[Door slams]

Ah!

[Dull thudding]

I just felt this overwhelming sense of panic.

I feel like I got to run down, you know, try to get out of the attic, but at the same time, I've still got this dog up here.

Howdy.

Come here. Come on.

Come on. Howdy, come on.

Howdy!

Howdy. Come on.

Huh?

[Dog growling]

Please, Howdy.

[Dog growling]

Oh.

Oh, what are you doing here?

Come on, Mister.

I grabbed the dog, and I just ran for the stairs.

I slipped over. I was terrified.

I needed to get out of the attic immediately.

The chair had moved.

And I see this person go into the doorway of Mark's study.

[Breathing heavily]

[Thunder booming]

[Breathing heavily]

[Dog growls]

[Thunder booming]

[Dog growls]

[Thunder booming]

There's somebody there. [Ominous music]

[Thunder booming]

As much as I wanted her to not be there, she was there.

I ran to my car for dear life.

[Keys jingling]

[Gasps]

I threw the door open and then got out of there as fast as I could.

Reagan called me and said...

That she had had a really weird, strange experience in the house.

Someone else in the house having another strange experience...

Makes you feel like maybe it's not all in your head.

With all the weird stuff going on in the house...

I decided to go and do historical research about the original homeowners.

They were such a wealthy family.

Right.

The Allens were a particularly prominent family.

Joe Lee Allen was the President of a bank.

And they had three daughters... Lonnie, Ladell, and Lewie...

And he really built the house for them.

And this is the picture of Ladell.

Ladell was the middle daughter.

Ladell quickly emerged as a particularly interesting figure in the Allen family.

Ladell's name kept popping up.

Ladell was a woman who had a lot of heartache, a lot of...

A lot of tragedy sort of surrounding her life.

Her dad d*ed when she was little.

She found herself in a bad marriage.

She got divorced in 1927.

Look at this here.

And then her only child d*ed of pneumonia in his 20s.

And then we discovered that Ladell had d*ed in the house.

She d*ed relatively young.

There was the mystery as to why she had d*ed.

Because it seemed that nobody knew why.

So I decided to go ahead and order her death certificate.

With all the strange, unusual things that were happening, I wanted to see if I could link them to Ladell.

We were both skeptics...

Morning.

Hey.

But I was beginning to embrace the idea that there might be something more to it.

Than we knew or we could explain.

I'm beginning to wonder about these things.

And she actually broached the subject of bringing in paranormal investigators.

And I was a little flabbergasted that she even mentioned this.

I felt that I had a professional reputation to protect.

I was The Dean of the largest school at a university.

Rebecca, there's nothing going on in this house.

I mean, I was all about rational explanations of everything.

[Sighs]

You can never underestimate the power of denial.

Okay.

I didn't want them to come in and tell me that what I was seeing was real.

I wanted them to come in and say it wasn't haunted.

A lot of people we work with kind of want to prove their house is haunted, but Mark and Rebecca did not.

They didn't want this stuff to be going on.

Ooh. Wow.

We take a great deal of equipment with us.

Digital tape recorders, electromagnetic field meters, infrared cameras.

Up in the corner there. One there.

And we run those cameras in the dark.

We sent the children to friends' houses for the night.

We decided that we were just sort of in the way, and I said...

We're gonna go see a movie, and they said, that's great.

I honestly didn't expect them to find any evidence whatsoever of paranormal activity.

Bye. The house is all yours.

Good luck.

[Door clicks shut]

[Faint rustling]

[Ominous music]

We get ready to turn all the lights out, because these are infrared cameras.

And they see better in the dark.

I said, has everybody got their stuff?

Everybody ready?

About two minutes.

[Dull thudding]

[Door creaks]

[Sniffs]

I, at one point, smelled a very distinct odor of cigar smoke.

Peter?

Yeah.

And we actually smelled the furniture to see if the cigar smoke was in the fabric.

Couldn't really smell anything.

And it was gone very quickly.

Right.

On my cue, turn the lights out.

Five...

Four...

Three...

[Electricity zaps]

And the light went out, and we didn't turn it out.

What the heck was that?

There was this horrible sound in the backyard.

[Loud cracking]

Could just see these blue sparks flying everywhere.

[Music]

[Electricity zaps]

We could see absolutely nothing out the window.

It was pitch black.

We all got our flashlights, and we all went out the door to find out what's going on.

Oh, my God.

We're barely down the street when the phone rang.

[Cell phone ringing]

Hello.

And Rebecca said, all right, we're coming back.

What happened?

There was this huge tree limb...

That had violently ripped one end of the power line out of the transformer...

And this was a big leafy limb from a completely healthy tree.

This is unbelievable.

I know.

It wasn't dead.

It hadn't been cut or sawn.

It was pulled off the way you would see a tree limb pulled off in a storm...

Although there wasn't any storm.

Something started happening to me.

I started to doubt what I believed.

I started to think...

Well, maybe there's something here.

Something in that house made that happen to stop that investigation.

We had never seen anything that violent.

I mean, ripping a limb off of a tree, that takes an awful lot of power and energy.

If it can do that, what else can it do?

[Door creaking]

It was the middle of the day, and I was in the master dressing room.

[Floor creaking] [Dull thudding]

I just heard these very heavy, distinct footsteps above me.

In the attic.

[Floor creaking]

[Footsteps thudding]

I didn't think that it was a ghost.

For me, I was very clear in my mind; I knew absolutely that there was a man in the attic.

I'm in my office, I pick up the phone, and Rebecca says...

[Whispering] There's a man in the attic.

And I said, what do you mean there's somebody in the attic? Who's in the attic?

I heard footsteps. Please come home.

I was thinking that it was maybe a squirrel.

No, I know what I heard.

[Footsteps thudding]

There it is again.

At the same time, though, I am concerned, because Rebecca seems so convinced.

Quick. Hurry.

And Rebecca's not somebody to get scared often.

[Heels tapping]

[Floor creaking softly]

[Dramatic music]

I thought that if I could possibly lock the person in the attic, that they would still be there when Mark got back.

And we could confront the person about why they were in the house.

[Eerie music]

[Footsteps thudding]

If there was a man up there the only way he would have gotten out of the attic was through the door.

Because you can't just shimmy down this house.

[Door clicks open and shut]

Mark.

[Shushing]

She was agitated.

I wasn't used to seeing her like that, because Rebecca's a very strong, secure woman.

I went up the attic stairs with some wariness.

I was... you know, some caution.

[Eerie music]

Hello?

Anybody here?

There was absolutely no sign of a break-in.

I found nothing. There was nothing in the attic.

[Ominous music]

[Music]

[Ominous music]

I smelled cigar smoke, and I could smell it very strong.

I'm just thinking, I know no one in the house smokes anything, much less cigars.

[Eerie music]

I couldn't figure out why part of what I was looking at wasn't there.

It was just blacked out.

I realized that what I was looking at was a dark figure in the shape of a man.

And he had a cowboy hat on the top of his head.

Mark.

And it was very scary. I mean, I was frozen with shock.

Suddenly I noticed the shadow of a person...

And I was the only person in the attic.

I couldn't believe it.

It was as though somebody was leading me.

I see a brown piece of paper.

[Grunts]

[Roaring]

It was gone.

Both Reagan and Desi had seen a woman in the house.

I thought it was very odd that I wasn't seeing a woman; I was seeing a man.

I wanted to know who this man was.

There scattered are all these letters.

And these letters are addressed to Ladell.

These were letters from a man named Prentiss Savage in 1948.

I realized that this is a love letter.

Written to Ladell a couple of months before she d*ed.

I thought that these letters that I held in my hands, were possibly the answer.

To that mystery, that question...

Why did Ladell die?

In March 1948, Prentiss is visiting Monticello.

He and Ladell had known each other.

They had even dated.

But they ended up marrying other people.

[Knocking]

And then they don't see each other for 35 years.

And he writes in one of his letters about what he's thinking.

He's wondering whether she's as beautiful as she was when she was younger.

[Sweeping orchestral music]

And he writes that he wasn't disappointed.

So in March 1948, Ladell and Prentiss rekindle their romance.

His letters become truly passionate.

These last five days will live in my memory always.

As the happiest ones in my entire life.

I love you.

Don't ever forget I'm thinking of you always.

He insists in his letters that he's going to divorce his wife.

When I got to October of 1948...

I noticed a shift in the tone.

He was frustrated with Ladell...

Pressuring him to make progress.

Then he wrote that last letter...

[Sobbing]

And he said...

That he didn't know when, if ever...

He was going to be able to free himself of his marriage.

[Sobbing]

And there was silence.

Ladell's death certificate arrived.

The word su1c1de seemed so large on the page.

The feeling that I had when I read that on the death certificate was just incredible.

It was just incredibly sad.

I was in the attic by myself.

I looked up, and...

I saw a woman coming toward me.

She was looking right at me.

[Dramatic music]

[Music]

[Footsteps approaching].

I was startled.

I look again...

And it's Rebecca.

You need to take a look at this.

Rebecca showed me Ladell's death certificate.

My immediate reaction was horror.

The death certificate stated that she d*ed by mercury cyanide poisoning.

I noticed that it was right at Christmas.

From doing my research, I knew her Mother always threw a Christmas party.

On Christmas night, 1948, Ladell attended her Mother's Christmas party.

[Indistinct chatter]

Prentiss promised in more than one of his letters.

That they would be together at Christmas.

[Knock at door]

Christmas came, and Prentiss didn't show up.

And I believe that that was the thing that pushed her over the edge.

[Dramatic music]

[Glass shatters]

Late in the evening she prepared herself a glass of punch.

She'd used the punch to mask the taste...

Of the mercury cyanide tablets.

[Gagging]

Ah!

[Scream continues]

I felt sad for her, I felt someone should have reached out to her and done something.

I have personally gone from not believing in spirits at all to...

Being completely convinced.

I think Ladell wanted me to find those letters, I think Ladell in essence, showed me where they were.

I think she was ready for her story to be told.

I would like to hope that by sharing her story...

She can finally feel at peace.