The Dead Files (2011) s04e08 Episode Script
Spellbound - Buchanan, Virginia
There's this darkness.
And it makes me feel sick.
I started to feel like I was being choked.
Very, very painful.
[ Woman screams .]
I've been pushed down the steps.
Some kind of physical abuse.
They could have been dismembered.
Does not want us here at all.
It's just waiting to just tear us apart.
There are secrets here that some don't want discovered.
They're being watched.
My name is Amy Allan.
This thing likes death.
I see dead people.
This thing's, like, a monster.
I speak to dead people.
And he's pissed off now.
And they speak to me.
His head was cracked.
But there's only one way to know if my findings are real.
This guy was murdered.
I rely on my partner.
I'm Steve Di Schiavi.
I'm a retired New York City homicide Detective.
I cannot help you unless I know the whole story.
And I know every person, every house has secrets.
You saw her? It's my job to reveal them.
Why would you stay here? But Steve and I never speak We never communicate during an investigation.
Until the very end.
[ Echoing .]
Stop it.
We uncover if it's safe for you to stay Woman: I want to know the truth.
I want to know what's happening.
Or time to get out.
[ Crying .]
I told you there were ghosts in this house.
Di Schiavi: Amy and I work the same case, but from two separate angles.
I gather witness testimony and uncover secrets about the property's past.
While Amy communicates with the dead.
I'm in Buchanan, Virginia, about We've been called in by a scared mom named Tysha.
She tells me that whatever's on her property is attacking her family, and making everyone sick.
Hopefully, Amy and I can get some answers for her.
Anderson: Before Amy arrives, I need to clear the area of any leading information.
This house is filled with photos of a young family, so I need to remove them all.
To avoid influencing Amy during her walk.
Allan: This place is really busy.
There's, like, a ton of [Bleep.]
people around that are dead.
Like, how many? I would count, like, 15 people that were walking by.
There's a lot of pain and despair here.
- Around the whole property.
- Okay.
I think something bad happened in there.
Di Schiavi: You know, Tysha, this kitchen doesn't look lived in.
What's the story? The activity in the house just became outrageous, and it just became too much for our family.
And we decided to build a modular house three years ago.
Is that the other structure that I saw driving up? Yes, Sir.
Okay, so let me ask you a question, did it get better when you moved over there? No, not at all.
So, give me an idea.
What happened while you were living in this house? We have everything from, like, seeing apparitions and noises.
I've actually been choked before.
And I have nightmares all the time.
I cannot sleep.
On the phone, you said this was affecting your health.
Yes, Sir.
The doctor said that he had diagnosed me with a chronic pain condition called Fibromyalgia, and My pain was just so amplified, I was getting to where I couldn't function at all.
Now, what about everybody else, are they getting affected health-wise? My two children I have a middle son that has Asperger's.
- And my little one has autism.
- Oh, geez.
- All right.
So you got your hands full.
- Yes.
Do you know any history about this place? - We think it was built in 1847.
- Wow.
My father-in-law lived here as a bachelor for a very long time.
Now, is your husband's father still alive? No, Sir.
He passed away.
Okay.
I'm sorry to hear that.
Did he ever mention Oh, yes.
- He did? - Yes, Sir.
And what did he make of it? I think he had a lot of fear of things, too.
- He did? - Yes, Sir.
Did you and your husband ever consider moving off the property? Financially, it would be impossible for us to move.
And I would never be able to do that.
It would break my heart.
Okay.
So, do you want to move back into this house if we could help fix things? Yes.
It seems like there were a lot of people here.
It's stressful.
Very stressful.
__.
[ Chuckles .]
__.
That would not be good.
This place is crawling with dead people, who have the ability to affect the living in horrific ways.
And I think it would make you terribly ill, terribly ill to live here.
And it makes me feel sick.
[ Door slams .]
What sort of stuff do you think people would experience here? Men's voices.
Arguing.
Seeing apparitions.
Tysha: Watch your step.
Geez, you weren't kidding.
This really is a dungeon.
This is probably the worst place.
I just do not come down here.
I have terrible feelings Just dread, sadness, um, pain.
We were told, actually, that slaves were kept down here, as well.
- Down here? - Yes, Sir.
- Have you ever seen anything down here? - I've seen apparitions.
Yes, Sir.
I've seen a man with, like, dark pants, and he just kind of walked across the floor And just disappeared.
So, what are you actually feeling right now? Uh, really nauseous, kind of light-headed and dizzy.
All right, you know what, let's get the hell out of here.
Okay.
I see a lot of black men who are dead, who are lined up, and somebody's throwing water on them.
Like, just throwing water on their bodies.
In particular, there's a woman A black woman who's Splashing the water on them.
Does not want us here at all.
I don't think there are people here who like white people.
Like, get out.
[ Door creaks .]
I just feel very uncomfortable, and um Like I feel like she can do stuff.
Could she be dangerous? I think so.
So, what happened here? This is the most active part of the house that we have.
One night, I was up here by myself and I had fell asleep.
The bed started vibrating, and then I started to feel like I was being choked.
It was like somebody was sitting on top of my chest, pressing down with their two thumbs on my adam's apple.
Was your husband in bed with you? - No.
He was downstairs.
- Okay.
Well, anything else happen up here? The scariest thing that probably ever happened, my son River he was seven days old And I actually fell down the steps it was like I was being pushed And had him in my arms.
- Did he get hurt? - No.
I just grabbed onto him as hard as I could and just went down the steps on my back.
Did you get hurt? I had some bruises on my bottom and my back.
Yes, I did.
Now, you mentioned that some of the stuff that's happened here - is happening in the new house.
- Yes, Sir.
I'm gonna have to go and take a look so you can show me where it's going on.
- That's fine.
- Okay.
Now, Tysha, you mentioned you're in this new house, what, three years? Yes.
Going on three years, yes.
- And nothing's gotten better? - Tysha: No, nothing's gotten better.
Exactly the same thing that has went on at the old house goes on over here.
I still have the activity of the pushing on the bed.
How heavy are we talking? Like Like a child would be jumping from the head to the foot.
- Like a small child jumping on the bed? - Yeah, yeah.
So, basically, all the [Bleep.]
people, that were over at the other place came over here.
So, there's just, like, this one kid who Jumps around.
And the other one follows him.
[ Children laughing .]
And they kind of, like They attempt to be seen.
They're all over the house.
So, what about the kids? Are they experiencing anything, or Yes, my son Blaze.
He keeps talking about seeing the same little boy apparition.
Describe it to me.
Blaze said he has a white shirt that buttons up with overalls.
- Okay, have you seen it? - I haven't seen the little boy.
It's pretty bad when, you know, you think you're gonna build a new home and have, maybe, a new beginning, and the same things are still going on.
A black woman hates me so much.
[ Sighs .]
I'm in, like, a lot of pain here.
Very, very painful.
Very, very, very painful.
What kind of pain? There was something about her head Her neck, and her back, and it's Are you afraid of her? I'm not really allowed to talk about it.
Allan: I'm in, like, a lot of pain here.
What kind of pain? Something about her head, her neck, and her back.
Are you afraid of her? I'm not really allowed to talk about it.
Why can't you talk about it? She has a way of preventing it.
This black woman wants to communicate to the living what's happened to her, but she says she doesn't trust me because I'm white.
She also has this bizarre ability I've never encountered before, and it makes it impossible for me to reveal details of her painful life.
I've never felt So much hatred.
Di Schiavi: So, Troy, I was talking to your wife.
She said that you grew up on the property.
Troy: Yes, Sir.
I've been on the property pretty much since I came into the world.
Okay.
So, what have you experienced up here? Well, we put all new drywall in, and we had it stacked up against the wall.
And it started to shift over onto me.
And I spun around to try and get out from there, and I jumped And it all came down and smashed me down and pinned this foot down to the ground.
That's a lot of weight.
And excruciating pain.
And my son had walked in right as that was going on.
That's why it was scaring me so much.
Could have killed me.
It could have killed him.
So, this drywall couldn't have got just pushed? - Like, I mean - No.
I mean, I'm a brick mason.
- I deal around construction all the time.
- All right.
So, what else have you experienced up here? I've been pushed down the steps.
Busted my arm up pretty good.
Tysha told me she got pushed when she was holding the baby.
Tysha also got pushed, same place, same step.
So, when you got pushed, did you feel like somebody shoved you? Yeah, it did.
Did feel like somebody pushed right in the small of the back.
A good boom.
Well, I'm hoping that we can get some answers to what's going on, what's causing it, and how to stop it.
Yeah, before something bad happens to one of the kids.
Okay.
The black lady She says, basically That she's given warnings.
What kind of warnings has she given? Like, there's been some kind of physical abuse.
Towards the adults.
Like what? I feel like she like, hitting Making them feel pain suddenly.
She's not a very tolerant person.
[ Chuckles .]
Di Schiavi: So, why'd you bring me in this room? I was relaxing on the sofa, and I seen a big, big mist right here A blackish-colored mist.
And I've seen that same mist throughout the house.
And you've seen that since you were a young man? I was 8 or 10 the first time that I'd seen it.
And now you're seeing it again as an adult? Yeah.
You guys are the first people that I've talked about this besides my wife.
Okay.
Now, talking to Tysha, she feels that her physical ailment was actually brought on by the house.
- Do you believe that? - Yeah.
At first, it wasn't too bad.
It seemed like the longer we were here, her health just slowly started going down, you know? I mean, you could look at her and see she don't look like she's in bad shape, but she's in a lot of pain.
Do you ever think about just moving? That really, honestly, never crossed my mind or anything because it's something I hold dear to my heart.
This place had been in my family for so, so long.
And I've fought tooth and nail, and Tysha has fought tooth and nail, to keep the property.
And you have the two boys you want to Pass the property on to? [ Sniffles .]
Now, what are you hoping for at the end of the investigation? What are you hoping we can get for you? Just to get straightened out.
[ Sighs .]
Figure out what's going on.
[ Sniffles .]
- [ Voice breaking .]
I need a minute.
- Okay.
There's, like, no redeeming quality here For this place.
It just shouldn't shouldn't be anymore, period.
I don't think that the dead people that are here want this place to really even exist anymore.
Why? I don't know.
They get [Bleep.]
agitated.
[ Man screams .]
And they're yelling, burn this [Bleep.]
to the ground! Tysha told me that she thinks her property used to be a big slave plantation.
I'm on my way to meet with a local genealogist to see if this is really true, or a local legend.
Is it true that the property I'm investigating was a plantation at one time? - It was.
- Okay.
They raised tobacco.
And slaves lived a very hard life.
They were fed very little.
They got up early in the day.
They worked all day long, from daylight till dark.
What about medical treatment? There was probably not very much medical treatment, for the slave or the landowner because medicine wasn't like it is today.
Do we know who owned the first plantation on the property I'm investigating? - The Burks family.
- And how many slaves did they have? - We show that there were 60.
- And how do we know that? Well, I have this document here from 1855.
And it talks about the slaves that he owned in his inventory.
Were they ever educated? They were not schooled.
As soon as they were old enough to walk, they were probably working, as well.
If they died on the property, would they bury them on the property? Yes.
There's a lot of black boys like, young boys.
Like, I'd say 12 and under.
I do see, like, a school of some sort Very small.
But I don't think The black kids would Would be being taught anything.
I think a lot of them are buried around here.
I do.
I think a lot of them are buried around here.
There were 34 graves in all.
And most of them were children's graves.
After meeting Rena, I knew these archives would hold some pretty appalling stories about the Burks family slaves.
But as I dig through them, I discover something completely unexpected.
Some of the slaves had the same last name as the owner of the plantation Nicholas Burks.
You know, I've got to wonder if they might be his kids.
I'm headed back to Troy and Tysha's property, to meet with a local Professor of African-American studies.
Who says she can answer some of my questions.
That paperwork I sent you about the plantation, I mean, what do you make of the five or six young kids with the same name as the plantation owner? It was more common than people like to think.
One thing did strike me, though, that one of the five children with his last name This person, Monroe was listed as Mulatto.
Which is someone who's mixed race, and that suggests to me that it's very likely that he was the plantation owner's son.
- Now, was it consensual? - Not necessarily.
I mean, rape was very common.
If you own a human being, you can do what you will to them.
Some guy's, like, slapping this woman a lot.
Beating her up pretty bad.
It seems like he is wealthy, and it's also like she's nothing.
Is there any way of figuring out who might have been the mother of this kid? There is someone on the papers that you sent, that looks like she could be a good fit for his mother.
- It's a woman named Louisa.
- Okay.
And she was 45 years old the same time that he was 18, listed together.
- So the age range works.
- Okay.
And they were also recorded as running away during the same period, possibly together.
What would have happened if they got caught? Whippings to torture to threatening to sell your family off To sell you off down South.
They could have been dismembered.
Now, what kind of a woman would even take a risk like that? A brave one.
The domestic slave trade was at its height.
The soil was dying out, and farmers around here and planters were struggling economically.
So they switched from Mostly doing crops to doing human trafficking.
So, she witnessed a huge export of her family and friends.
That would be one of the reasons why she took off, I guess.
Absolutely.
That ultimate freedom or the risk of not being sold down South.
Or maybe being separated from her son might have been enough to make it worth leaving.
There are so many emotions With this black woman that it's hard to Talk with her.
She is just showing me, like, that The only good thing in life were were children.
That was the only thing that made her happy.
She didn't want anybody else to be here, so she did things to try To set that in motion when she was alive.
There are secrets here that some don't want discovered.
They should learn from history.
[ Sighs .]
What's going on? She doesn't want me down here.
I'm in, like, a lot of pain here.
In my research, I found out the property's tragic history didn't end with slavery.
I turned up a guy by the name of Starke Robinson, and it seems he lost a lot of family members.
I'm on my way to meet with a local librarian who did some digging.
And he says he's got some information that'll really help my case.
Nathan, what were you able to find out about this guy, Starke Robinson? Well, actually, we were able to find out quite a lot.
We found out that he is a native-born Virginian, born in 1826.
He was a plantation owner.
He enlisted with the Confederacy, and after The Civil War, of course, going back to the plantation, life wasn't gonna be the same.
So, in 1870, he buys the property that you're investigating now.
Now, I also noticed through the paperwork, he had some loss.
Yes, he in fact, had three wives throughout his life, and he outlived all of them.
His first wife died before The Civil War in 1857 when she was just 30.
His second wife, Ellen, in 1871 just a year after he buys the property She died of complications that occurred during childbirth.
Okay.
And the child that she gave birth to also passed away at that time.
We have some of the cemetery records here.
After Ellen dies, not long after, Starke marries her younger sister, Elizabeth.
- Okay.
- And then she lived until 1904.
They were together over 30 years.
I'm getting these two little white ladies, and they're sisters.
Anderson: Do you know what kind of connection these women might have, to this location? I feel like they owned it at some point.
One of them is young.
She's from, maybe, like nineteen oh five or nineteen ten.
She has dead children.
And then somebody said, well, you know, in the end, there's just blood, anyway.
Sickness and death.
That's it.
I don't like it at all.
If we look at the cemetery records that we have, we can see That Starke actually ended up outliving Four died in childbirth.
So, this guy Starke kind of had a rough go.
Yeah.
He actually dies in 1915.
I have the death certificate here.
He's 89 years old, which in Now, would they have been buried on the property? Yes, and in fact, there is a cemetery on the property, not far from the house that Robinson lived in.
There's so much residual information.
I know there's other deaths here because they're saying, like Like, at one point, they show me, like, literally, like, the floors are covered in blood.
For whatever reason, all the people that lived here Met with darkness and tragedy.
There were several entities that stood out during my walk.
But what has me the most concerned, is the bizarre scene I encountered in the basement.
There were several dead black men laying.
Mm-hmm.
There's two black women.
They're pouring water on the bodies.
- Amy, is this what you saw? - Yes.
Di Schiavi: After days of investigating our clients' property, Amy and I are ready to reveal what we found.
Amy, I'd like you to meet Troy and Tysha.
This is their house and property.
It's very close to their hearts.
Troy's family's had this property since the early 1930s.
The only problem is Tysha and her two young boys, have been having health problems.
And they want to know if there's any way they can stay.
This house is very important to both of them.
So, with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Amy, and have her talk about her walk for a little bit.
Allan: When I first got here, there were like 15 dead people walking by the car.
It was extremely stressful just how many there are on this property.
And the main feelings that kind of permeates this entire area was sadness and despair and pain.
And I did get that there were a lot of people buried here.
Well, we have bouts of depression.
Okay.
Well, there have been a lot of people that have lived and died on this property.
But this may influence what you saw, so I'm gonna hold off for now.
Okay.
When I was upstairs, I did meet two sisters.
They were from the early 1900s.
They owned this property at some point in time.
And I felt sickness and death with them.
One of the sisters had children who died.
And I think that if people see them, they're just kind of like a mist.
Why don't you explain the mist to her? The mist I've seen has been kind of a black-color mist.
Where did you see that? Right above this doorway.
In the basement a lot, too.
Okay.
I could tell you about at least four people That I know that are buried on the land here.
When you mentioned sisters there was a guy named Starke Robinson who bought the property here and the house in 1870.
He moved here with his wife, Ellen, who, within a year, actually passed away at a young age.
About five years later, he married her sister Elizabeth, who died in this house.
- Now, you mentioned dead kids.
- Mm-hmm.
This guy had 14 children, seven of them which died before he did.
- Four of them died at childbirth.
- Geez.
So, Starke, his two wives, and one of the children are buried on the property.
Wow.
- That make sense? - Oh, yeah.
The one thing that became apparent was that Some of the dead from this house go over to the new house.
Specifically, I saw two boys.
And they're always running around, laughing, and just messing around.
I got them being very active in the hallway over there and in your bedroom.
Wow.
That's part of the reason we're here, Troy and Tysha have been living here for 10 years.
They lived seven years in this house.
- Okay.
- But things got so bad They decided to build over there, but Same things just continued to happen.
Your son is seeing - Apparitions of a little boy.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
Not good.
What else did you see? So, when I went into the basement, which is not a good place No.
I saw 4 to 10 black men that were dead.
They were all lined up, and they were extremely thin Almost like the pictures from, like, the holocaust victims.
And there were two women that were throwing water on their bodies.
There are people down there that really hate white people.
Well, it makes sense.
Back in its heyday, this was a tobacco plantation.
Hmm.
And from the 1830s up until around The Civil War, it was owned by the Burks family.
They had up to 60 slaves.
And the basement of this house was some of their living quarters.
- To tell you how they were treated and - I know how they were treated.
I sketched that scene in the basement.
Geez.
Take a look at that.
Wow.
I've always known that there were slaves on the premises But it's sad to see that in the picture.
It's sickening to me.
Do you know why they were throwing water, because there were flies on them or something like that? - Maybe.
I don't know.
- Okay.
These guys feel really uncomfortable down in that basement.
Is this the reason why they're feeling uncomfortable? Well, the thing is, is that the larger lady is still down there.
She's very, very present.
And she doesn't want anybody in there, especially if they're white.
I'd never felt hatred like that from an entity in my life.
One thing that she kept saying is that she wants the living to learn from history.
And then she showed me children, and said that they were the only good thing in her life.
And she didn't want people here.
She didn't want to be here, because she knew when she got here that this was not a good place.
A couple things you said, made me think of a slave that used to live here by the name of Louisa.
She was about 45 years old.
And there was another slave by the name of Monroe who was about 18.
Now, this slave was half white, half black.
And the paperwork has them listed as being two runaways.
They ran away at the same time, basically.
Now, from what the historian I spoke to said, she was probably raped by one of the plantation owners.
She had this child that was half black, half white And they took a big chance and they ran away.
Now, if you ran away back in those days on a plantation, you got caught You were either sent to another plantation, which was a lot worse than here They'd dismember you, or they kill you.
That's really sad.
Her presence is extremely dangerous And incredibly powerful.
She's also trying to give you guys warnings.
What kind of warnings are we talking about? To get out.
I was in extreme pain.
I did feel that there was probably some physical abuse towards the adults here.
You saw physical abuse towards the living adults here? Yes.
It's not that she is doing it directly.
She controls the dead here.
Troy: We was redoing the room up there, and there was a lot of sheetrock Like, couple thousand pounds.
And it was all pushed against the wall, and the whole thing came over on me.
My aches and pains have gotten worse, big-time.
I shouldn't be feeling this beat down, like I'm 60-some years old.
How about the kids? Do you think their health issues might have been related to the house? Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Getting worse.
One of them, he has autism, and the other one has Asperger's.
And you've been in a lot of pain.
Oh, yes.
It's, like, all over.
- Mm-hmm.
- It gets worse.
There's moments that it seems like I'm away from the property, it's not as bad.
Well, she's extremely powerful, yeah.
She is the hoodoo practitioner.
What is hoodoo? Hoodoo comes from Africa.
And it was certain tribes that had gone through the Christianization.
When you first said that, I thought you meant Voodoo.
No, Voodoo is a religion.
Hoodoo is not a religion, but a system to place spells.
And she put them into place while she was alive, to ensure things would go the way she wanted them to in death.
Because hoodoo is all about gaining power.
And now she's got all this power She's got all these dead people that she controls.
And she had put a binding spell out.
What do you mean by that? Well, I couldn't have full communication with the dead.
Like, I couldn't talk about being whipped.
I could not talk about what I was experiencing at the time.
Which is weird, because her message is the main message that needs to be heard.
Well, if she has a message she wants out, what is it? What does she want from them? She wants the house demolished.
Allan: Her message is the main message that needs to be heard.
Well, if she has a message she wants out, what is it? What does she want from them? She wants the house demolished.
That ain't gonna happen.
I'll just keep on with her, I guess.
I'm not gonna tear nothing down.
She's not the only one who feels this way.
All of the dead want it gone.
So, how many ghosts do we have? I would say hundreds.
I'm I'm very concerned.
She wants this house gone.
She's bound everybody else around her all the other dead people.
I'm keeping the house up.
I'm not tearing my house down.
I don't give up on anything.
Plus you had plans on one day passing this on to your kids.
Sure.
I'll be damned if I let any kind of stuff like that stand, into anything that I got to do with my kids, you know? You know, you're like me in a way.
You look pissed.
Yeah.
I'm a really hard-headed guy.
And we'll butt heads for right now, I guess.
If he wants to butt heads with this woman, what could happen? You're in for it.
[ Chuckles .]
Yeah.
I'm not backing down from where I'm at right now.
I've worked too hard to be where I'm at right now.
I'd be letting a lot of my ancestors down.
Tysha: I don't know.
I mean, I'm really confused by the whole You know, we've tried to protect this place, and everybody's tried to be respectful to the place.
You're white.
She won't listen to what you're saying.
Period.
End of story.
Told you there was a lot more to it.
This has been probably one of the most intense investigations we've done.
And obviously, this has been a lot for you guys, but the most pressing question here Is it safe for you to stay on your property and pass this house along to your kids? For that, I'm gonna turn it over to Amy, see if she has an answer for you.
Obviously, the easiest way to go would be to demolish the house Which it sounds like you're not going to do.
So, my other suggestion would be to Find a hoodoo practitioner.
Because this is about gaining power.
You get another hoodoo person in who would want to attain her power.
And they're gonna take her with them.
Because they're gonna then have access to her power.
So, your advice to them is to get somebody that practices hoodoo that Won't be afraid of this, but want the power? Right.
Would want to take her.
I mean, I don't think you look up the yellow pages for something like this.
I mean, it is hard to find someone who practices true hoodoo.
But maybe going to the universities, they might know practitioners.
Okay.
That's where we'll start, then.
If we get this other one to come in here and kick her ass Is all these other spirits that's underneath her, will they be let go and everything? Yes.
Di Schiavi: Let me ask you a question about this house.
Should they stay away from this house until I'm not.
I'm over here all the time.
- You're not even gonna try to stay away? - No.
Mm-mm.
If I were you, I would probably be very, very, very careful if I came into this house.
So, we'll take it a day at a time.
So, are you guys gonna follow Amy's advice and find a hoodoo practitioner? Yeah, most definitely.
Most definitely.
Oh, yeah.
Tomorrow.
Not gonna let her win.
She's done too much damage already.
Allan: I can't force Troy to do something he doesn't want to do, and I don't know if he fully understands what he's about to take on But I'm afraid he's about to.
And it makes me feel sick.
I started to feel like I was being choked.
Very, very painful.
[ Woman screams .]
I've been pushed down the steps.
Some kind of physical abuse.
They could have been dismembered.
Does not want us here at all.
It's just waiting to just tear us apart.
There are secrets here that some don't want discovered.
They're being watched.
My name is Amy Allan.
This thing likes death.
I see dead people.
This thing's, like, a monster.
I speak to dead people.
And he's pissed off now.
And they speak to me.
His head was cracked.
But there's only one way to know if my findings are real.
This guy was murdered.
I rely on my partner.
I'm Steve Di Schiavi.
I'm a retired New York City homicide Detective.
I cannot help you unless I know the whole story.
And I know every person, every house has secrets.
You saw her? It's my job to reveal them.
Why would you stay here? But Steve and I never speak We never communicate during an investigation.
Until the very end.
[ Echoing .]
Stop it.
We uncover if it's safe for you to stay Woman: I want to know the truth.
I want to know what's happening.
Or time to get out.
[ Crying .]
I told you there were ghosts in this house.
Di Schiavi: Amy and I work the same case, but from two separate angles.
I gather witness testimony and uncover secrets about the property's past.
While Amy communicates with the dead.
I'm in Buchanan, Virginia, about We've been called in by a scared mom named Tysha.
She tells me that whatever's on her property is attacking her family, and making everyone sick.
Hopefully, Amy and I can get some answers for her.
Anderson: Before Amy arrives, I need to clear the area of any leading information.
This house is filled with photos of a young family, so I need to remove them all.
To avoid influencing Amy during her walk.
Allan: This place is really busy.
There's, like, a ton of [Bleep.]
people around that are dead.
Like, how many? I would count, like, 15 people that were walking by.
There's a lot of pain and despair here.
- Around the whole property.
- Okay.
I think something bad happened in there.
Di Schiavi: You know, Tysha, this kitchen doesn't look lived in.
What's the story? The activity in the house just became outrageous, and it just became too much for our family.
And we decided to build a modular house three years ago.
Is that the other structure that I saw driving up? Yes, Sir.
Okay, so let me ask you a question, did it get better when you moved over there? No, not at all.
So, give me an idea.
What happened while you were living in this house? We have everything from, like, seeing apparitions and noises.
I've actually been choked before.
And I have nightmares all the time.
I cannot sleep.
On the phone, you said this was affecting your health.
Yes, Sir.
The doctor said that he had diagnosed me with a chronic pain condition called Fibromyalgia, and My pain was just so amplified, I was getting to where I couldn't function at all.
Now, what about everybody else, are they getting affected health-wise? My two children I have a middle son that has Asperger's.
- And my little one has autism.
- Oh, geez.
- All right.
So you got your hands full.
- Yes.
Do you know any history about this place? - We think it was built in 1847.
- Wow.
My father-in-law lived here as a bachelor for a very long time.
Now, is your husband's father still alive? No, Sir.
He passed away.
Okay.
I'm sorry to hear that.
Did he ever mention Oh, yes.
- He did? - Yes, Sir.
And what did he make of it? I think he had a lot of fear of things, too.
- He did? - Yes, Sir.
Did you and your husband ever consider moving off the property? Financially, it would be impossible for us to move.
And I would never be able to do that.
It would break my heart.
Okay.
So, do you want to move back into this house if we could help fix things? Yes.
It seems like there were a lot of people here.
It's stressful.
Very stressful.
__.
[ Chuckles .]
__.
That would not be good.
This place is crawling with dead people, who have the ability to affect the living in horrific ways.
And I think it would make you terribly ill, terribly ill to live here.
And it makes me feel sick.
[ Door slams .]
What sort of stuff do you think people would experience here? Men's voices.
Arguing.
Seeing apparitions.
Tysha: Watch your step.
Geez, you weren't kidding.
This really is a dungeon.
This is probably the worst place.
I just do not come down here.
I have terrible feelings Just dread, sadness, um, pain.
We were told, actually, that slaves were kept down here, as well.
- Down here? - Yes, Sir.
- Have you ever seen anything down here? - I've seen apparitions.
Yes, Sir.
I've seen a man with, like, dark pants, and he just kind of walked across the floor And just disappeared.
So, what are you actually feeling right now? Uh, really nauseous, kind of light-headed and dizzy.
All right, you know what, let's get the hell out of here.
Okay.
I see a lot of black men who are dead, who are lined up, and somebody's throwing water on them.
Like, just throwing water on their bodies.
In particular, there's a woman A black woman who's Splashing the water on them.
Does not want us here at all.
I don't think there are people here who like white people.
Like, get out.
[ Door creaks .]
I just feel very uncomfortable, and um Like I feel like she can do stuff.
Could she be dangerous? I think so.
So, what happened here? This is the most active part of the house that we have.
One night, I was up here by myself and I had fell asleep.
The bed started vibrating, and then I started to feel like I was being choked.
It was like somebody was sitting on top of my chest, pressing down with their two thumbs on my adam's apple.
Was your husband in bed with you? - No.
He was downstairs.
- Okay.
Well, anything else happen up here? The scariest thing that probably ever happened, my son River he was seven days old And I actually fell down the steps it was like I was being pushed And had him in my arms.
- Did he get hurt? - No.
I just grabbed onto him as hard as I could and just went down the steps on my back.
Did you get hurt? I had some bruises on my bottom and my back.
Yes, I did.
Now, you mentioned that some of the stuff that's happened here - is happening in the new house.
- Yes, Sir.
I'm gonna have to go and take a look so you can show me where it's going on.
- That's fine.
- Okay.
Now, Tysha, you mentioned you're in this new house, what, three years? Yes.
Going on three years, yes.
- And nothing's gotten better? - Tysha: No, nothing's gotten better.
Exactly the same thing that has went on at the old house goes on over here.
I still have the activity of the pushing on the bed.
How heavy are we talking? Like Like a child would be jumping from the head to the foot.
- Like a small child jumping on the bed? - Yeah, yeah.
So, basically, all the [Bleep.]
people, that were over at the other place came over here.
So, there's just, like, this one kid who Jumps around.
And the other one follows him.
[ Children laughing .]
And they kind of, like They attempt to be seen.
They're all over the house.
So, what about the kids? Are they experiencing anything, or Yes, my son Blaze.
He keeps talking about seeing the same little boy apparition.
Describe it to me.
Blaze said he has a white shirt that buttons up with overalls.
- Okay, have you seen it? - I haven't seen the little boy.
It's pretty bad when, you know, you think you're gonna build a new home and have, maybe, a new beginning, and the same things are still going on.
A black woman hates me so much.
[ Sighs .]
I'm in, like, a lot of pain here.
Very, very painful.
Very, very, very painful.
What kind of pain? There was something about her head Her neck, and her back, and it's Are you afraid of her? I'm not really allowed to talk about it.
Allan: I'm in, like, a lot of pain here.
What kind of pain? Something about her head, her neck, and her back.
Are you afraid of her? I'm not really allowed to talk about it.
Why can't you talk about it? She has a way of preventing it.
This black woman wants to communicate to the living what's happened to her, but she says she doesn't trust me because I'm white.
She also has this bizarre ability I've never encountered before, and it makes it impossible for me to reveal details of her painful life.
I've never felt So much hatred.
Di Schiavi: So, Troy, I was talking to your wife.
She said that you grew up on the property.
Troy: Yes, Sir.
I've been on the property pretty much since I came into the world.
Okay.
So, what have you experienced up here? Well, we put all new drywall in, and we had it stacked up against the wall.
And it started to shift over onto me.
And I spun around to try and get out from there, and I jumped And it all came down and smashed me down and pinned this foot down to the ground.
That's a lot of weight.
And excruciating pain.
And my son had walked in right as that was going on.
That's why it was scaring me so much.
Could have killed me.
It could have killed him.
So, this drywall couldn't have got just pushed? - Like, I mean - No.
I mean, I'm a brick mason.
- I deal around construction all the time.
- All right.
So, what else have you experienced up here? I've been pushed down the steps.
Busted my arm up pretty good.
Tysha told me she got pushed when she was holding the baby.
Tysha also got pushed, same place, same step.
So, when you got pushed, did you feel like somebody shoved you? Yeah, it did.
Did feel like somebody pushed right in the small of the back.
A good boom.
Well, I'm hoping that we can get some answers to what's going on, what's causing it, and how to stop it.
Yeah, before something bad happens to one of the kids.
Okay.
The black lady She says, basically That she's given warnings.
What kind of warnings has she given? Like, there's been some kind of physical abuse.
Towards the adults.
Like what? I feel like she like, hitting Making them feel pain suddenly.
She's not a very tolerant person.
[ Chuckles .]
Di Schiavi: So, why'd you bring me in this room? I was relaxing on the sofa, and I seen a big, big mist right here A blackish-colored mist.
And I've seen that same mist throughout the house.
And you've seen that since you were a young man? I was 8 or 10 the first time that I'd seen it.
And now you're seeing it again as an adult? Yeah.
You guys are the first people that I've talked about this besides my wife.
Okay.
Now, talking to Tysha, she feels that her physical ailment was actually brought on by the house.
- Do you believe that? - Yeah.
At first, it wasn't too bad.
It seemed like the longer we were here, her health just slowly started going down, you know? I mean, you could look at her and see she don't look like she's in bad shape, but she's in a lot of pain.
Do you ever think about just moving? That really, honestly, never crossed my mind or anything because it's something I hold dear to my heart.
This place had been in my family for so, so long.
And I've fought tooth and nail, and Tysha has fought tooth and nail, to keep the property.
And you have the two boys you want to Pass the property on to? [ Sniffles .]
Now, what are you hoping for at the end of the investigation? What are you hoping we can get for you? Just to get straightened out.
[ Sighs .]
Figure out what's going on.
[ Sniffles .]
- [ Voice breaking .]
I need a minute.
- Okay.
There's, like, no redeeming quality here For this place.
It just shouldn't shouldn't be anymore, period.
I don't think that the dead people that are here want this place to really even exist anymore.
Why? I don't know.
They get [Bleep.]
agitated.
[ Man screams .]
And they're yelling, burn this [Bleep.]
to the ground! Tysha told me that she thinks her property used to be a big slave plantation.
I'm on my way to meet with a local genealogist to see if this is really true, or a local legend.
Is it true that the property I'm investigating was a plantation at one time? - It was.
- Okay.
They raised tobacco.
And slaves lived a very hard life.
They were fed very little.
They got up early in the day.
They worked all day long, from daylight till dark.
What about medical treatment? There was probably not very much medical treatment, for the slave or the landowner because medicine wasn't like it is today.
Do we know who owned the first plantation on the property I'm investigating? - The Burks family.
- And how many slaves did they have? - We show that there were 60.
- And how do we know that? Well, I have this document here from 1855.
And it talks about the slaves that he owned in his inventory.
Were they ever educated? They were not schooled.
As soon as they were old enough to walk, they were probably working, as well.
If they died on the property, would they bury them on the property? Yes.
There's a lot of black boys like, young boys.
Like, I'd say 12 and under.
I do see, like, a school of some sort Very small.
But I don't think The black kids would Would be being taught anything.
I think a lot of them are buried around here.
I do.
I think a lot of them are buried around here.
There were 34 graves in all.
And most of them were children's graves.
After meeting Rena, I knew these archives would hold some pretty appalling stories about the Burks family slaves.
But as I dig through them, I discover something completely unexpected.
Some of the slaves had the same last name as the owner of the plantation Nicholas Burks.
You know, I've got to wonder if they might be his kids.
I'm headed back to Troy and Tysha's property, to meet with a local Professor of African-American studies.
Who says she can answer some of my questions.
That paperwork I sent you about the plantation, I mean, what do you make of the five or six young kids with the same name as the plantation owner? It was more common than people like to think.
One thing did strike me, though, that one of the five children with his last name This person, Monroe was listed as Mulatto.
Which is someone who's mixed race, and that suggests to me that it's very likely that he was the plantation owner's son.
- Now, was it consensual? - Not necessarily.
I mean, rape was very common.
If you own a human being, you can do what you will to them.
Some guy's, like, slapping this woman a lot.
Beating her up pretty bad.
It seems like he is wealthy, and it's also like she's nothing.
Is there any way of figuring out who might have been the mother of this kid? There is someone on the papers that you sent, that looks like she could be a good fit for his mother.
- It's a woman named Louisa.
- Okay.
And she was 45 years old the same time that he was 18, listed together.
- So the age range works.
- Okay.
And they were also recorded as running away during the same period, possibly together.
What would have happened if they got caught? Whippings to torture to threatening to sell your family off To sell you off down South.
They could have been dismembered.
Now, what kind of a woman would even take a risk like that? A brave one.
The domestic slave trade was at its height.
The soil was dying out, and farmers around here and planters were struggling economically.
So they switched from Mostly doing crops to doing human trafficking.
So, she witnessed a huge export of her family and friends.
That would be one of the reasons why she took off, I guess.
Absolutely.
That ultimate freedom or the risk of not being sold down South.
Or maybe being separated from her son might have been enough to make it worth leaving.
There are so many emotions With this black woman that it's hard to Talk with her.
She is just showing me, like, that The only good thing in life were were children.
That was the only thing that made her happy.
She didn't want anybody else to be here, so she did things to try To set that in motion when she was alive.
There are secrets here that some don't want discovered.
They should learn from history.
[ Sighs .]
What's going on? She doesn't want me down here.
I'm in, like, a lot of pain here.
In my research, I found out the property's tragic history didn't end with slavery.
I turned up a guy by the name of Starke Robinson, and it seems he lost a lot of family members.
I'm on my way to meet with a local librarian who did some digging.
And he says he's got some information that'll really help my case.
Nathan, what were you able to find out about this guy, Starke Robinson? Well, actually, we were able to find out quite a lot.
We found out that he is a native-born Virginian, born in 1826.
He was a plantation owner.
He enlisted with the Confederacy, and after The Civil War, of course, going back to the plantation, life wasn't gonna be the same.
So, in 1870, he buys the property that you're investigating now.
Now, I also noticed through the paperwork, he had some loss.
Yes, he in fact, had three wives throughout his life, and he outlived all of them.
His first wife died before The Civil War in 1857 when she was just 30.
His second wife, Ellen, in 1871 just a year after he buys the property She died of complications that occurred during childbirth.
Okay.
And the child that she gave birth to also passed away at that time.
We have some of the cemetery records here.
After Ellen dies, not long after, Starke marries her younger sister, Elizabeth.
- Okay.
- And then she lived until 1904.
They were together over 30 years.
I'm getting these two little white ladies, and they're sisters.
Anderson: Do you know what kind of connection these women might have, to this location? I feel like they owned it at some point.
One of them is young.
She's from, maybe, like nineteen oh five or nineteen ten.
She has dead children.
And then somebody said, well, you know, in the end, there's just blood, anyway.
Sickness and death.
That's it.
I don't like it at all.
If we look at the cemetery records that we have, we can see That Starke actually ended up outliving Four died in childbirth.
So, this guy Starke kind of had a rough go.
Yeah.
He actually dies in 1915.
I have the death certificate here.
He's 89 years old, which in Now, would they have been buried on the property? Yes, and in fact, there is a cemetery on the property, not far from the house that Robinson lived in.
There's so much residual information.
I know there's other deaths here because they're saying, like Like, at one point, they show me, like, literally, like, the floors are covered in blood.
For whatever reason, all the people that lived here Met with darkness and tragedy.
There were several entities that stood out during my walk.
But what has me the most concerned, is the bizarre scene I encountered in the basement.
There were several dead black men laying.
Mm-hmm.
There's two black women.
They're pouring water on the bodies.
- Amy, is this what you saw? - Yes.
Di Schiavi: After days of investigating our clients' property, Amy and I are ready to reveal what we found.
Amy, I'd like you to meet Troy and Tysha.
This is their house and property.
It's very close to their hearts.
Troy's family's had this property since the early 1930s.
The only problem is Tysha and her two young boys, have been having health problems.
And they want to know if there's any way they can stay.
This house is very important to both of them.
So, with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Amy, and have her talk about her walk for a little bit.
Allan: When I first got here, there were like 15 dead people walking by the car.
It was extremely stressful just how many there are on this property.
And the main feelings that kind of permeates this entire area was sadness and despair and pain.
And I did get that there were a lot of people buried here.
Well, we have bouts of depression.
Okay.
Well, there have been a lot of people that have lived and died on this property.
But this may influence what you saw, so I'm gonna hold off for now.
Okay.
When I was upstairs, I did meet two sisters.
They were from the early 1900s.
They owned this property at some point in time.
And I felt sickness and death with them.
One of the sisters had children who died.
And I think that if people see them, they're just kind of like a mist.
Why don't you explain the mist to her? The mist I've seen has been kind of a black-color mist.
Where did you see that? Right above this doorway.
In the basement a lot, too.
Okay.
I could tell you about at least four people That I know that are buried on the land here.
When you mentioned sisters there was a guy named Starke Robinson who bought the property here and the house in 1870.
He moved here with his wife, Ellen, who, within a year, actually passed away at a young age.
About five years later, he married her sister Elizabeth, who died in this house.
- Now, you mentioned dead kids.
- Mm-hmm.
This guy had 14 children, seven of them which died before he did.
- Four of them died at childbirth.
- Geez.
So, Starke, his two wives, and one of the children are buried on the property.
Wow.
- That make sense? - Oh, yeah.
The one thing that became apparent was that Some of the dead from this house go over to the new house.
Specifically, I saw two boys.
And they're always running around, laughing, and just messing around.
I got them being very active in the hallway over there and in your bedroom.
Wow.
That's part of the reason we're here, Troy and Tysha have been living here for 10 years.
They lived seven years in this house.
- Okay.
- But things got so bad They decided to build over there, but Same things just continued to happen.
Your son is seeing - Apparitions of a little boy.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
Not good.
What else did you see? So, when I went into the basement, which is not a good place No.
I saw 4 to 10 black men that were dead.
They were all lined up, and they were extremely thin Almost like the pictures from, like, the holocaust victims.
And there were two women that were throwing water on their bodies.
There are people down there that really hate white people.
Well, it makes sense.
Back in its heyday, this was a tobacco plantation.
Hmm.
And from the 1830s up until around The Civil War, it was owned by the Burks family.
They had up to 60 slaves.
And the basement of this house was some of their living quarters.
- To tell you how they were treated and - I know how they were treated.
I sketched that scene in the basement.
Geez.
Take a look at that.
Wow.
I've always known that there were slaves on the premises But it's sad to see that in the picture.
It's sickening to me.
Do you know why they were throwing water, because there were flies on them or something like that? - Maybe.
I don't know.
- Okay.
These guys feel really uncomfortable down in that basement.
Is this the reason why they're feeling uncomfortable? Well, the thing is, is that the larger lady is still down there.
She's very, very present.
And she doesn't want anybody in there, especially if they're white.
I'd never felt hatred like that from an entity in my life.
One thing that she kept saying is that she wants the living to learn from history.
And then she showed me children, and said that they were the only good thing in her life.
And she didn't want people here.
She didn't want to be here, because she knew when she got here that this was not a good place.
A couple things you said, made me think of a slave that used to live here by the name of Louisa.
She was about 45 years old.
And there was another slave by the name of Monroe who was about 18.
Now, this slave was half white, half black.
And the paperwork has them listed as being two runaways.
They ran away at the same time, basically.
Now, from what the historian I spoke to said, she was probably raped by one of the plantation owners.
She had this child that was half black, half white And they took a big chance and they ran away.
Now, if you ran away back in those days on a plantation, you got caught You were either sent to another plantation, which was a lot worse than here They'd dismember you, or they kill you.
That's really sad.
Her presence is extremely dangerous And incredibly powerful.
She's also trying to give you guys warnings.
What kind of warnings are we talking about? To get out.
I was in extreme pain.
I did feel that there was probably some physical abuse towards the adults here.
You saw physical abuse towards the living adults here? Yes.
It's not that she is doing it directly.
She controls the dead here.
Troy: We was redoing the room up there, and there was a lot of sheetrock Like, couple thousand pounds.
And it was all pushed against the wall, and the whole thing came over on me.
My aches and pains have gotten worse, big-time.
I shouldn't be feeling this beat down, like I'm 60-some years old.
How about the kids? Do you think their health issues might have been related to the house? Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Getting worse.
One of them, he has autism, and the other one has Asperger's.
And you've been in a lot of pain.
Oh, yes.
It's, like, all over.
- Mm-hmm.
- It gets worse.
There's moments that it seems like I'm away from the property, it's not as bad.
Well, she's extremely powerful, yeah.
She is the hoodoo practitioner.
What is hoodoo? Hoodoo comes from Africa.
And it was certain tribes that had gone through the Christianization.
When you first said that, I thought you meant Voodoo.
No, Voodoo is a religion.
Hoodoo is not a religion, but a system to place spells.
And she put them into place while she was alive, to ensure things would go the way she wanted them to in death.
Because hoodoo is all about gaining power.
And now she's got all this power She's got all these dead people that she controls.
And she had put a binding spell out.
What do you mean by that? Well, I couldn't have full communication with the dead.
Like, I couldn't talk about being whipped.
I could not talk about what I was experiencing at the time.
Which is weird, because her message is the main message that needs to be heard.
Well, if she has a message she wants out, what is it? What does she want from them? She wants the house demolished.
Allan: Her message is the main message that needs to be heard.
Well, if she has a message she wants out, what is it? What does she want from them? She wants the house demolished.
That ain't gonna happen.
I'll just keep on with her, I guess.
I'm not gonna tear nothing down.
She's not the only one who feels this way.
All of the dead want it gone.
So, how many ghosts do we have? I would say hundreds.
I'm I'm very concerned.
She wants this house gone.
She's bound everybody else around her all the other dead people.
I'm keeping the house up.
I'm not tearing my house down.
I don't give up on anything.
Plus you had plans on one day passing this on to your kids.
Sure.
I'll be damned if I let any kind of stuff like that stand, into anything that I got to do with my kids, you know? You know, you're like me in a way.
You look pissed.
Yeah.
I'm a really hard-headed guy.
And we'll butt heads for right now, I guess.
If he wants to butt heads with this woman, what could happen? You're in for it.
[ Chuckles .]
Yeah.
I'm not backing down from where I'm at right now.
I've worked too hard to be where I'm at right now.
I'd be letting a lot of my ancestors down.
Tysha: I don't know.
I mean, I'm really confused by the whole You know, we've tried to protect this place, and everybody's tried to be respectful to the place.
You're white.
She won't listen to what you're saying.
Period.
End of story.
Told you there was a lot more to it.
This has been probably one of the most intense investigations we've done.
And obviously, this has been a lot for you guys, but the most pressing question here Is it safe for you to stay on your property and pass this house along to your kids? For that, I'm gonna turn it over to Amy, see if she has an answer for you.
Obviously, the easiest way to go would be to demolish the house Which it sounds like you're not going to do.
So, my other suggestion would be to Find a hoodoo practitioner.
Because this is about gaining power.
You get another hoodoo person in who would want to attain her power.
And they're gonna take her with them.
Because they're gonna then have access to her power.
So, your advice to them is to get somebody that practices hoodoo that Won't be afraid of this, but want the power? Right.
Would want to take her.
I mean, I don't think you look up the yellow pages for something like this.
I mean, it is hard to find someone who practices true hoodoo.
But maybe going to the universities, they might know practitioners.
Okay.
That's where we'll start, then.
If we get this other one to come in here and kick her ass Is all these other spirits that's underneath her, will they be let go and everything? Yes.
Di Schiavi: Let me ask you a question about this house.
Should they stay away from this house until I'm not.
I'm over here all the time.
- You're not even gonna try to stay away? - No.
Mm-mm.
If I were you, I would probably be very, very, very careful if I came into this house.
So, we'll take it a day at a time.
So, are you guys gonna follow Amy's advice and find a hoodoo practitioner? Yeah, most definitely.
Most definitely.
Oh, yeah.
Tomorrow.
Not gonna let her win.
She's done too much damage already.
Allan: I can't force Troy to do something he doesn't want to do, and I don't know if he fully understands what he's about to take on But I'm afraid he's about to.