Paranormal Witness (2011) s02e05 Episode Script

She had an uneasy feeling right from the very first day.
Jesse? I thought, there's something evil in this house.
It felt like someone was watching her all the time.
I started to think I was going crazy.
I didn't want to say, I think you're insane.
Let's go see a Doctor.
You see them? I didn't want to say that.
It kept getting more and more intense.
Mari-Lynn? This is crazy.
Mommy? I really wanted out of that house.
I was married previously to Robyn.
We were married for 25 years.
She was diabetic, so she was very hard to care for the last couple years.
You know, it was very difficult.
She passed away just after she turned 50 years old.
But I bounced back pretty quick.
It was maybe a year later I met Lynn.
I honestly didn't think it would evolve into a relationship the way it did.
Pick anything you like.
She picks out this ring, you know, and I was like, well, you want to get married? We got married within a year of meeting each other.
It was a whole new life for me.
I never had kids, and I.
.
I always wanted to have a little boy.
And now I had this beautiful woman and this little boy, and I finally get the family that I wanted.
Things couldn't be better.
Mark was still living in the same house that he and Robyn shared.
Isn't it beautiful? It was a beautiful house on a beautiful piece of property.
I felt really privileged.
To have gone from having nothing.
.
To marrying a man who could give my son and I anything we wanted.
Jesse, let's go in the house.
Ready? Let's go in.
Whoa.
When I went in the house, I was amazed.
Mark owned an antique store.
There's paintings and vases and antiques.
I'd never seen so much beautiful furniture in one place, but I was very nervous.
Don't touch anything, Jesse.
I was worried Jesse was going to break something or damage something that was irreplaceable.
Welcome to your new home.
It was very dark.
The blinds were shut.
There was no life.
It just felt dead.
She was uneasy right from the very first day.
She was freaked out by all the Angels that Robyn had collected.
Figurines, pictures, china cabinets just filled with Angel figurines.
They were all over the place.
Jesse, don't touch, okay? The house was still all decorated by Robyn's hand.
After she died, I hadn't changed anything.
Robyn had her own room upstairs.
She had it all decorated up.
You know, I had a bed up there, and she would go up there, and she hung out in there.
He asked Jesse and I to stay out of it.
Jesse! I didn't want people going in there.
It was her room.
Let's go find your room, Jesse.
Robyn, she and I have very different tastes in how we like to decorate.
And I really, really hated a lot of the things that she had in there.
At first, I was reluctant.
You know, I didn't really want to change it all.
But after a while, I was like, we got to get rid of these things.
He said nothing in the house really meant anything to him any more.
He's in the business of selling things.
So anything in the house could be sold.
Let's have a garage sale.
I mean, you know, let's get rid of these Angels.
I was taking down a lot of Angels and putting them in boxes.
And I just couldn't wait to get rid of them.
I always felt uncomfortable, maybe like I shouldn't be there.
At first, it was just a feeling.
Very uncomfortable, like eyes were just on me.
- Thank you.
- Oh, thank you very much.
It was a very successful garage sale.
I was shocked at how many people like Angels.
We probably sold about 75.
Jesse and I were waiting for Mark to come home.
.
And he was playing.
Jesse.
Jesse.
He was just standing there.
And he looked up at me and said.
.
Mama, there's a lady in the tree.
There's no lady in the tree, Jesse.
And there's blood.
This came out of the blue.
And I honestly.
.
At that point, I wasn't sure what he was talking about.
So I saw that he was disturbed by this.
And I said.
.
You mean lady.
.
You go away.
You leave my Jesse alone.
And he just went right back to playing.
But curiosity got the best of me, so a couple minutes later, I said, Jesse, is the bad lady gone? And he looked up and he looked across the yard, and he said, now she's in the road.
It frightened me because he was so young.
Because I knew he couldn't make something like that up.
Come on, Jesse.
Let's go to the house.
- You better get going.
- Mm-hmm.
Oh, yeah, okay.
Bye.
Have a good day.
- Love you.
- Love you.
I was downstairs in the kitchen.
.
And I heard a cry.
So I stopped, and I listened.
I thought maybe I was hearing things.
I just tried to brush it off and.
.
And go back to work.
Jesse? I thought it was odd, because immediately as a Mother, I think, oh, my son's crying.
And then it hits me.
.
He's not even here.
Where's this crying coming from? It was within the house.
It wasn't coming from outside.
I went into every room.
And there was nobody or nothing there.
I heard a lot of noise coming out of Robyn's room, the room we were never to go into.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
I had a horrible feeling.
The blinds were flapping, and it was very cold in there.
The windows were both opened and there was so much stuff across the floor.
I could not figure out how that got opened.
I came home, and I thought, what the heck is going on here? It looked like someone had been in there rifling through everything.
Mari-Lynn, why did you come in the room? Look, it's a mess.
I didn't want rain coming in, getting on Robyn's stuff.
I was angry about it.
- I just found it like that.
- Well, look at the room.
He clearly didn't believe me.
I thought, well, maybe it's just me.
I started to think there was something wrong with me.
- Did Jesse.
.
Did he do this? - No.
She was saying, no, it wasn't her and it wasn't Jesse.
- Who else could it be? - Did you do this? No, I didn't come in here.
Mark and I were lying in bed.
.
And all of a sudden I woke up.
You could hear children laughing, playing, and I said to Mark.
.
Do you hear that? He just laid his head back, shut his eyes, and he went, yup.
What is it? We have a swing set right outside our window.
It sounded like they were right outside playing.
I don't know why I kept looking for these things I was hearing.
But when you hear a child, your instinct is to go look for it.
There was nothing.
I don't know what I was thinking I was gonna find.
Then Hansel threw down one handful after the other out of his pocket.
Well, it was hard for me to put Jesse to bed.
His room is right across from Robyn's room.
Okay, time for bed.
And so, for the longest time, I wouldn't put him to bed.
I kept him with me.
And Mark's like, absolutely not.
You have to put him to bed.
- Good night.
- Good night.
We were sitting in the living room watching television.
Jesse started screaming almost like he had been hurt.
It was that kind of a cry.
He had only been up there for a few minutes.
And I'm like, what's he screaming about? Mommy, Mommy, Mommy! Mommy.
Jesse, are you okay? He's just screaming, pointing at the closet, Mama, Mama.
There's a lady in the closet.
Oh, Jesse, there's nothing there.
You just had a bad nightmare, okay? Mommy, Mommy, Mama, Mama! He's terrified.
He's crying.
His face is beet-red.
I didn't know what to do.
I couldn't see what he was seeing.
You're gonna be okay, all right? - Mari-Lynn.
.
- Mark told me to put him back to bed.
He just wanted attention.
No, he's really scared.
I have to stay with him.
I was like, kids see things at night.
I mean, I always thought there was ghosts in my closet too.
I can see why Mark felt that way.
But I knew better.
So I laid with him for a while till he calmed down.
And.
.
I was so mad at Mark that he made me put him back to bed.
I felt like I wasn't getting any support.
It's really hard, as a Mom, to watch your child be terrified.
.
And terrified of something you don't know what it is.
It was Sunday morning, and Mark was at the store.
I had decided to catch up on some housework.
It was something big and heavy, and you could hear glass break.
- Jesse, are you okay, hon? - Yeah.
And so I went into the kitchen.
And the water was on, just full blast, both faucets.
Jesse couldn't have done that.
He wasn't tall enough.
And as I was shutting that off.
.
There was banging at the garage door in the laundry room.
You could see the door move.
Like something was trying to bust the door in.
So I just mustered up all the courage I could.
.
And I opened the door really fast.
There was nothing happening in the garage.
No breeze.
There was nothing there.
There was something just beating on the door.
Beating on the door, and the door was moving.
I could see the door move.
And all of a sudden, the lights were flashing.
Jesse! Jesse, where are you? Mama, Mommy! - Jesse? - Mommy! And at that point, I could see my son is really afraid.
So I picked up the phone, and I called Mark at the shop.
Mark, you have to come home.
She's in a panic.
She's crying, please come home.
I just thought, what is going on here? I don't know.
You have to come home, please.
I just remember thinking, this is crazy.
Come home.
Please come home.
Come home.
I felt like I was just frozen in fear.
I didn't understand why Mark wouldn't come and get us.
I was starting to wonder if she wasn't having a nervous breakdown.
I felt like I was insane at that point.
What if I was crazy, and they locked me up or something? I don't want to ever lose my son.
Oh, Sweetie.
I was a little surprised when she started talking about being afraid or not being comfortable in the house any more.
Because that wasn't at all like her.
We're gonna sort this thing out.
My sister was studying psychology in college.
And.
.
She brought some books over and we also got on the Internet.
I would show her what the symptoms were exactly, and we went through them.
People with Schizophrenia that have hallucinations do not experience them the same way that Mari-Lynn was.
They weren't speaking to her or telling her to do things.
It's not you.
My sister's the only one who, I could trust I felt, at that point.
I'll go have a look around.
So I asked her to look around.
Okay, I'll be back in a minute.
It was a very lovely house.
There was a lot of very beautiful things there.
My eyes were just wandering everywhere.
.
Room by room.
As I was approaching the door, I started feeling a little bit different.
My heart started racing.
And I just felt very anxious.
I call it that fight or flight type of feeling where you just kind of want to turn around and run right out of there.
Mari-Lynn was down there waiting for me, and I told her what I was experiencing.
She said that was the same room where Robyn was when she was sick.
- Why don't we go get some lunch? - Oh, no, I can't.
I have to pick Jesse up in an hour.
When she told me she felt weird around that area, I thought, well, it must be Robyn.
She's still in there, or she's still here.
She doesn't want to leave her house.
I did tell Mark, and again, he just brushed me off.
I kept saying, no, it can't be.
It can't be Robyn.
I didn't believe that.
Robyn would never do that.
You know, she's not that kind of person.
A little while later, I started working with Mark at the antique store.
Anytime I wasn't in the house, it was great.
My son was at school.
He was safe.
And I got to be with Mark most of the day.
- Comfortable? - Yeah.
Yeah, good.
So I felt a lot safer too.
It's a beautiful store.
It's in an old historic building built in the late 1800s.
It's very big.
.
It's 10,000 square feet, two levels, and it was absolutely beautiful.
Okay, next I'd like to put the clock in front of the store.
Peter started out as a customer.
I bought every single Beatles album that was in the shop.
And she saw that, and we started talking.
And I said, I wish I could hire you, but you're not in my budget right now, and he said.
.
I'll work for free.
This would be fun for me.
Lynn and I were working on one of the windows in the shop.
There was this picture frame that was leaning against the counter.
Just kind of lifted up and feel over.
You saw that happen? This picture just picked up.
And kind of flew across the room and.
.
And landed face down.
Peter and I just looked at each other.
Did you see that? I just was thinking, what the hell was that? What the hell just happened? Peter and I were closing the store.
And just as we were leaving.
.
We heard some footsteps upstairs.
- Did you hear that? - We just stopped, and we listened.
We have accidentally shut lights off on customers before, not realizing they're in there.
Someone must be upstairs.
But I knew we had gotten all the customers out of the shop.
We checked the monitors on the camera.
There was nobody up there.
But there was still very clear footsteps walking.
I'm gonna step up there and have a little peek.
My heart was beating pretty fast.
I just didn't know what to expect.
Something pounded.
It made me jump out of my skin.
I'd never seen him react like that.
I didn't care what was back there.
I was gonna get out of there.
I was frightened, thinking it was out of control.
It wasn't going away.
It was getting worse.
Mark went in and looked around the shop.
And there was nobody there.
It was scary for me.
I didn't want to say, I think you're insane.
Let's go see a Doctor.
I didn't want to say that, you know? I felt very trapped.
I didn't know where to go.
I couldn't go home.
I couldn't go to work.
This was happening everywhere I was going, and there was no place to get away from it.
It was starting to scare me.
I didn't want to lose them.
It kind of seemed like, you know, they're gonna leave.
Jesse, come on.
We're going in the house.
I really wanted out of that house.
I begged Mark to move.
I want to be able to protect my family.
But I didn't have the resources to, you know, just pack up and go somewhere else.
I should have left.
I should have got out of there.
Oh.
Morning, soldier.
I remember getting up, you know.
.
And I looked down.
I got these three scratches on my hand.
I'm thinking, how did that happen? I looked like someone just went like this.
And about the same time.
.
I saw three marks on my side.
She's got these scratches on her side, looked like someone had scratched us both.
And what scared me is I didn't feel it happen.
It didn't wake us up.
I did not have a rational explanation for any of it.
That evening, I decided to go sit down and watch television with my husband.
I kept telling myself, just watch TV.
Just deal with it.
Get over it.
I felt like someone was watching me.
She's like, I can't sit in the living room.
You know, I'm like, why? They're looking at me.
She's like, well, there's these people looking down on me.
You see them? - Who's looking at you? - Can you see them? I didn't see anything.
I totally panicked.
Jesse, where are you? Jesse? My heart was racing.
I couldn't breathe.
Jesse? I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
Jesse? Jesse? Mommy? I ran to Jesse to make sure he was okay.
I didn't want to scare him.
I realized at that moment it wasn't Robyn.
She was wearing black Victorian mourning clothes.
The little boy had on a little suit from that era.
Robyn wouldn't be dressed in Victorian clothing.
So I knew it couldn't be Robyn.
The night Jesse got burnt, that was the scariest thing I ever seen.
Jesse, dinner's ready.
I'm still freaked out by it.
Jesse, Mark, and I were all in the kitchen.
And I had all the food out on the counter.
And we were all standing there fixing our plates.
Jesse reached up.
And just as he touches this piece of chicken.
.
He starts screaming.
He's like, ah! He was just shaking like he's being electrocuted.
I'm standing there next to him, and I'm like, what's the matter? What's the matter? He's crying.
He's panicking.
My side, my side.
So we lifted up his shirt to see what was wrong.
And this red mark appeared.
It just started to grow as we were looking at it, you know, bigger and bigger.
There's nothing hot around him.
Couldn't explain it.
It's okay, it's okay.
What happened? It was the scariest thing I've ever seen.
I should have taken him to the Doctor, but how do you explain that? I had no explanation.
I couldn't go in and lie.
Mark saw it all.
- What happened? - I don't know! It had a major effect on him.
He finally believed us, but it had to come to that.
For the next few weeks, it was like I was just not there.
Jesse's getting hurt.
We're getting hurt.
What's gonna be next? We bunkered down in the bedroom, Jesse and I did.
We did everything in the bedroom.
It made it worse that it wasn't Robyn, because if it was Robyn, there would be a reason for it.
I got this perfect family.
But now she's afraid to come out of the.
.
The bedroom.
You know, she's scared to come out of the bedroom.
I thought, there's something evil in this house.
Mark, I'm going to bed.
Good night.
I was feeling a sense of pressure building in the house.
They were watching me.
She felt like someone was watching her all the time.
Even though I couldn't see it or hear it or feel it or anything.
I didn't know what to do about it.
I look over, and I see this woman go down into the basement.
And so I went walking over there.
.
And the door was shut.
So I was thinking, a woman in a dress just walked right through this door.
What is going on here? Mari-Lynn? Mark, I'm trying to sleep.
Sometimes when they'd appear, the woman had a baby.
Mari-Lynn? Mari-Lynn? Mari-Lynn? I was starting to see the stuff just like Mari-Lynn now.
So I was totally believing her from that point on.
I knew she wasn't crazy.
And I was terrified because I didn't know what it was, what to do.
.
And how to live in my house.
I decided I needed to call someone in for help to figure out who this woman was.
And if I was in danger.
I made some phone calls and found two local historians.
We love unusual stories.
What we like to do is find out what in history may have created this unusual event.
When we first got to the store, we were introduced to Mari-Lynn, and she seemed like a very sweet woman.
She was friendly, she was smiling, very courteous, even though, I will say, that she did have a slightly haunted look, if that's an appropriate way to describe it.
I was afraid they wouldn't believe me or would laugh at me, think I was crazy.
I did think she could have been a very troubled woman.
You always have to consider that as a possibility in a case like this.
They were very kind, and they listened to me, and they said that they'd look into the past of what happened in the area I lived in.
We know research.
We're all about research, all about the history that may create the haunting, not just the haunting.
We will look at land records, death certificates, birth certificates, census records.
We do a lot of that, and in this case, we certainly did hours and hours of research.
I was shocked when I learned what they found out.
The antique shop used to be the.
.
"Porter A.
Wright Hardware Store".
It was the center of the town for the time period.
Because it supplied manufacturing and farmers.
- And gossip.
- And gossip.
They didn't have Facebook then, so it was a source of gossip.
We were looking at land records, and we saw that the property where Mari and her husband resided.
.
Had been a farm since the early 1870s.
A young girl by the name of Theresa Styson lived at the farm.
She was living with her Uncle Philip and his wife.
Theresa, time to come inside the house, sweetheart.
They had a young orphan boy who they cared for.
His name was Nate.
Theresa? And it made a very interesting family.
Months later, Theresa became pregnant.
Well, during the Victorian era, that was unthinkable that a single young woman would become pregnant.
So Philip had to send her.
.
He had to send her.
.
To a Sanatorium far away.
Theresa's pregnancy was a tough one.
And her birth was even more difficult.
She gave birth to an infant, a young boy who died.
No one in town knew.
The only one who knew was Porter A.
Wright.
When Theresa was sent away to the sanitarium, the owner of the hardware store was used as a liaison for communications between her and her Uncle Philip.
And how he did that was rather clandestinely.
He would send letters via Porter A.
Wright's store.
And send her them anonymously.
It wasn't long after that, she became very ill.
She knew she was near death.
And it was at that point that she told the people at the Sanatorium, that her Uncle Philip was the Father of her child.
Philip Styson was placed on trial.
And during testimony, it was little Nate, the orphan boy who lived with them, who gave key testimony, very damning testimony.
Philip Styson was found guilty of incest.
Theresa.
But the Judge dismissed it, saying that the testimony was hearsay.
And the trial was dismissed.
When Theresa died, she was just 19 years old.
Theresa Styson was really wronged.
She died.
.
With people thinking she was having an affair with her Uncle.
.
When I really believe she was being molested by her Uncle.
And I don't think that she could rest until her story was told.
It was like peeling back the layers, and every time, you peeled another layer back, something new would happen.
They lived on Philip Styson's farm.
Porter A.
Wright's hardware store is the Holly Antique Shop.
A woman in Victorian clothing holding an infant.
I was seeing her, her baby.
Mari-Lynn and Theresa Styson were living the same lives only maybe 100 years apart.
All these connections were just unbelievable.
They were still there.
Everything just sort of clicked right into place.
She knew that she was where she was supposed to be.
She was supposed to be working in the antique store.
And she was supposed to be living at the house where she is.
She had been validated.
She wasn't crazy.
I mean, there really was a connection between her and this Victorian family.
I don't see them any more.
I don't see the.
.
The woman and the two children any more.
Whoa, slow down.
It was a really terrifying experience for me.
But in the end, I'm really happy and.
.
Almost honored that she chose me.
To tell her story through.
She's a huge part of me and a huge part of my life.
Looking back, you know, I should have done more.
I should have been more supportive.
I should have believed you know.
.
I should have believed Jesse instead of just, every kid's afraid of the dark.
And I treated Mari-Lynn the same way.
I regret that, I really do.