The Dead Files (2011) s06e03 Episode Script

He hates them.
He's always in a rage.
I feel like I live in a house of Hell.
"You're mine.
You can't escape.
" There's a black mist coming out of the wall.
I'm seeing the blood on the walls.
He was pretty ruthless.
And I felt two hands, like that.
And it just goes whoosh.
Its goal is to kill all these women.
"You're mine.
You can't escape.
" My name is Amy Allan.
What's happening? I see dead people.
It seems like a devil.
I speak to dead people.
He's pissed off.
And they speak to me.
I felt real fear.
But there's only one way to know if my findings are real.
I think she's being murdered.
I rely on my partner.
I'm Steve Di Schiavi.
I'm a retired New York City homicide detective.
Serial killer pops in my head.
And I know every person, every house has secrets.
Nobody believes me.
It's my job to reveal them.
- Do you think there's still bodies there? - I do.
But Steve and I never speak We never communicate during an investigation.
Until the very end.
You got problems.
I got news for you.
When we uncover if it's safe for you to stay This is our house whether they like it or not.
Or time to get out.
This is their house, the house of the dead.
I'm in Hanover, Pennsylvania, about two hours outside of Philly.
I'm on my way to meet with a woman named Deanna.
Now, she sounded really desperate on the phone.
She thinks the house is slowly trying to kill her.
I'm hoping Amy and I can get to the bottom of this and help this woman out.
Before Amy arrives, I look for any leading information.
Family photos and religious icons could influence her findings, so it's important that I cover or remove them all before she begins her walk.
There's something here, but I don't know what it is.
I'm hearing it goes way, way back.
It goes way, way, way back.
It affects the women mostly, but it touches everyone around them.
Either they lost their kids or their husband or their lives.
And I think that its goal is to kill all these women.
Deanna, you sounded pretty hysterical on the phone when we spoke.
Now that I'm here, I need you to tell me what the hell is going on.
I want my home back.
I feel like I live in a house of hell.
I'm so tired of it.
I'm so done of it.
What's going on? I'm seeing apparitions.
I'm seeing shadow figures.
We're seeing black mists.
I'm hearing growls.
I'm being bit, scratched.
The attacks that you've had, how often do they happen? Every day.
Geez.
Why don't you just move? I'll be damned if anybody is gonna run me out of my house.
We're gonna get this fixed.
Well, I like this attitude, to be honest with you.
How long you living here? Seven years.
Okay, and you live here with your husband.
Yes, Tom.
And it's just the two of you? Yes.
Initially, my first daughter lived here, but she had to move out.
She had to move out? She couldn't take it.
Okay, so, seven years has this being going on, or has it had progressively gotten worse? It has progressively gotten worse.
I've got to the point where I won't even sleep upstairs anymore.
I don't even sleep with my own husband.
Where are you sleeping? I'm sleeping in the spare bedroom.
Okay, is it easier for you to sleep there? No.
I have no safe haven.
No matter where I go in this house, I can't find relief.
I'm seeing this woman.
Oh Overwhelming panic, overwhelming fear, and got to get away, got to get out, got to get away.
This is a living woman? Yes.
Moving from room to room to room to room, trying to be Well, if I go here, will this help it? Will I go here, will this help it? Will this make it stop? Will this make it stop? Will this make it stop? And the thing this thing's saying, "No, it doesn't matter where you are.
I'll find you.
I'll find you.
" Uh, "You're mine.
You can't escape.
" And I hear a deep male voice.
Is this the thing that tries to kill women? Yes.
Ugh, I feel like he comes up from the grave.
He was alive.
He was a a living person once.
Ah, this is it's very creepy.
It's very this is [bleep.]
creepy.
But did things get better when you moved down here? No.
Like, one time, I was laying on my side, and as I was asleep, I just felt a stroking, just stroking my hair, stroking, and then when I opened up my eyes to look, there was this woman in period dress, late 1800s.
She looks like a farmer or some kind of, um, housekeeper.
Okay, so, if you saw a sketch or a photo of her, would you recognize her? - Oh, yes.
- Okay.
Anything else going on in here? Yes.
When I wake up, this is what I have on me in the middle of my back.
Could you have possibly done this to yourself in the middle of the night? No.
This is as far as I can reach.
Is there anything else that you are experiencing here? Yes, I have this one particular dream that just keeps recurring.
I'm in a cemetery, and as I'm looking through the cemetery, these five monks levitating, no feet, come straight for me.
Then out of nowhere, this, like, a shadow man.
He's super tall.
He's got the black cloak.
He shot up from the ground, just pomp! And at that point when he shot up, I was pinned down, and then I opened my eyes like, "Deanna, it's a dream.
"Get out of this.
It's a dream.
Wake up.
" And when I woke up, he was standing at the at the side of the bed, looking at me, about 7' tall, red eyes.
He had, like, a hat.
And as soon as you saw him, you know it's evil.
What'd you do? Oh, my God, I just started bawling, put the covers over my head, just, "Dear Lord, get him out.
Get him out.
Dear Lord, please help me.
" Then what? Then he said, "Your Yahweh cannot help you now.
" What the hell is that? It's another term for God.
She thinks they're dreams, but they're not dreams.
She's [bleep.]
awake.
He holds her down, and he's telling her, "I smell you.
I taste you.
I've got you.
" He comes to the side of the bed.
He's always, like, over her, hovering over her.
He manipulates how he's seen.
He can look like smoke.
He has a hat, a black hat.
His face is rotting.
He's smelling me.
It's giving me chills down my back, but it really is very disturbing.
Oh [bleep.]
And this is the room you used to sleep in with your husband.
That's correct.
So, now what would happen up here that you're not sleeping up here? I was coming up the steps, and then I felt two hands just, like that.
- So, that hard? - That hard.
I was shoved, and I just fell right off.
I mean, my feet were kicked off, and I hit the wall.
And I landed on the floor down there.
I couldn't breathe.
The wind had been knocked out of me.
It felt like something was just sitting on me.
I could not move, and I had excruciating pain.
You must be frightened every time - you've got to come up these stairs now.
- Yeah.
It feels like somebody's literally going like, "Oh, you're not coming up here.
Oh, no, you don't.
" Like, I just feel that coming down the stairs towards me.
Oh, this is I'm seeing the sniffy guy.
He's much more aggressive downstairs.
Here, he's almost like a seducing, like, soothing, but it's bad.
It's fake.
It's so he can figure you out and he can destroy you.
Tom, I was talking to your wife, Deanna, and, uh, she told me about the horrific things she's going through.
Now, you guys aren't even sleeping together, really, anymore, right? She's sleeping downstairs? Right, she's sleeping downstairs now, yep.
It takes its toll on, uh, me.
I'm sure it's taking its toll on her.
And what about moving? - You ever take that into consideration? - No.
Nobody's gonna tell me to get out of my house.
Are are you a skeptic at all? Certain things, I can't find a reason for or an answer for.
Okay.
I'm skeptical, but, yeah, I'd still like to find the answers to things.
Okay, but you've had some experiences, is that right? Yes.
I hear footsteps and then, I don't see anything.
Where'd you hear the footsteps? Uh, it sounded like they were walking on the roof when we were in the bedroom.
And when we're in the family room, it sounds like they're going up and down the steps here to the basement and to the bedroom.
Do you ever think somebody's breaking into the house? I don't think that, 'cause I do have a security system.
I would know if somebody broke into the house.
Okay.
Has anything else like that happened? Deanna and I were upstairs in the bedroom, sitting and talking one time, and, uh, I heard voices.
Like, I would say something, and it would repeat.
And she would say something, it would repeat it, like, mocking us.
That I can't explain, 'cause I heard it.
She heard it.
Was anybody else in the house with you guys? No, just her and I.
It couldn't have been somebody from outside.
They wouldn't have been able to hear you.
Right, and they wouldn't have been able to repeat what we were saying 'cause they wouldn't have heard us.
I hate it down here.
I hate it.
I see, like, a teenage girl getting the [bleep.]
beat out of her.
By who? It's a short man.
Uh, he's kind of pudgy.
He has, like, some kind of job that puts him in a position of power over people.
Oh! Oh, oh! I think this man has a heart attack here and dies.
This is a different guy than the the guy, the other guy.
He's always It's it's like you can hear this guy, ah, 'cause he's always yelling.
You'll hear, like, him, like, stomping around down here, or, like, causing a ruckus, like, yelling.
He's angry, this one.
He's, like, always [bleep.]
angry.
I feel like he's gonna attack me, like he's gonna beat the [bleep.]
out of me.
What's going on up here? Deanna and I were sitting at the kitchen table, and she was telling me about all the bruises she's had on her arms.
And I was just kidding, said, "Oh, it's probably the ghost did that to you.
" And it wasn't long, I said, "Hey, I feel a burn on my arm.
" And I had a long-sleeve shirt on, rolled up the sleeve, and I had a single scratch mark across it.
What about the cats? - Were you playing with the cats at all? - No.
No, and our cats are declawed, so they couldn't have scratched.
Anything else? We were sitting in the family room, and the cats were here in the kitchen, making weird noises.
So, we both got up.
Deanna turned the kitchen light on, and coming out, like, right in this area, there was, like, a black mist coming out of the wall, and it wasn't long, it just, hanging there.
And then, it just started twirling like a tornado, and it went right up.
I think the spot's still there today, right up in there.
I can see it.
Have you tried painting over that or We did try painting over it.
It didn't it doesn't cover it.
Has anything else happened in here? I get foul odors every so often, and it smells like urine, fecal odors, and kerosene every once in a while.
No septic tank problems or anything like that? Nope, we're on, uh, town sewer.
No problems with the pipes backing up or anything? No, never a problem with that.
You walk into it, and it just kind of takes your breath away.
What is this thing? Oof.
Like a rush.
I see, like, this person comes out of that room, is like, "Hello.
" "Uh-huh," goes in here, is, like, walking out here, and then all of a sudden, like, the door flies open, and the living people here see a black mist.
This is the angry guy from the basement, and it's stinky, a really bad smell.
And it just goes whoosh at the person.
He has hostility toward women.
Yep.
I feel like he's capable of harming someone.
One of the first calls I made was to a local author who knows Hanover's history backwards and forwards.
He told me the original settler of Tom and Deanna's property was literally destroyed by the land.
I'm heading over to meet with him now to see what he means.
The original settler was a man named John Digges.
He was an upper crust, connected, well-to-do person from Maryland, owned some plantations there.
He was granted 10,000 acres of land in 1727.
This whole 10,000 acres was called Digges' Choice.
Where on this map would my clients' house be? Right here.
Okay.
He had a fairly sizable plantation that he farmed, but he also wanted to sell the rest of the land and make as much money as he could off of it.
The problem was, there were other settlers that were coming in along the edges of this property instead of buying land from him.
He didn't like that very much.
Okay.
So, sometimes, he would try to make them pay for the land.
Sometimes, he'd try to force them out.
He and his sons would go out with guns - and try to run 'em off.
- Wow.
- He was pretty ruthless - Okay.
With the way he enforced it.
I'm seeing the sniffy guy when he was alive.
Can you describe him? Uh Power.
I feel, like, judgment.
Or he felt he could judge and, um, control people.
Yeah, I see him.
I see him, I see him, I see an older man.
He had this power to control their destinies, and that's what he's still doing.
And and he says, "I could smell it.
I could smell it, and I could taste it on them.
" Smell what? Oh, fear.
He hates them.
He [bleep.]
hates them.
Now, Jan, you mentioned on the phone that the land basically destroyed Digges.
What did you mean by that? Well, in 1752, Digges sent his two sons to intimidate one of the settlers, Martin Kitzmiller, that Digges felt was trespassing, basically.
So, Martin calls for a son of his, his name was Jacob, to come help him.
He came with a shotgun, and in a struggle between Dudley Digges, one of John's sons, and Jacob, the gun accidentally went off, and Dudley was shot and killed.
Okay.
Here's an article that appeared in the "York" paper a couple of days after the shooting.
Martin and Jacob Kitzmiller immediately turned themselves in to authorities.
There was a coroner's inquest and a trial, and basically, the trial destroys John Digges.
The two people that he thought murdered his son are acquitted.
They were acquitted? - Yes, it was considered accidental.
- Okay.
And the judge ruled that most of this land wasn't even his.
Wow.
Added insult to injury.
It it breaks him.
So, now, what happens with with Digges? He moves shortly after the murder to Maryland, pretty much broke, and dies in 1760.
Do we know where he's buried at all? All we know is he died in Maryland.
Okay.
Now, do we know where Dudley's buried? Yes, he's buried on the property, Digges' Choice.
It's one person alone in here.
Buried.
He's buried very close, very, very close.
I'm seeing blood.
Where? On the walls.
It's making me anxious.
It's making me anxious.
Uh I feel trapped.
I feel scared.
I feel like I can't breathe.
I feel like I'm choking on my tongue.
I'm seeing the blood on the walls.
I'm seeing the blood on the walls.
So far, I've got a family that's being terrorized by unexplained activity in a property that's been the cause of bloodshed.
But I need to see if there's anything else.
Searching through old property records, I find a woman named Lydia Small, who used to live on my clients' land.
Turns out, she lost four children to drowning accidents, three of them in the same quarry.
I'm heading over to meet with a local genealogist who says Lydia Small's suffering on my clients' property didn't even end there.
Well, Stephanie, thanks for meeting me.
I came across these articles about this woman, Lydia, who lost four kids to drowning.
Yes, yes, she did.
The first one was in 1890.
It was her daughter, who was, um, a year and a half.
They had had a well in the backyard.
The little girl wandered out and fell down into the well.
That was the first of the four.
The second incident, sadly, involved two of Lydia's children.
Her 4-year-old son, Dewey, and her 7-year-old daughter, Florence, were playing down by the edge of the quarry.
Dewey fell in.
Their older sister, Irene, who was 12, jumped in to try to save him, and both of those children drowned.
All right.
So, that's three drownings, but what was the fourth one? The fourth one was Florence.
She and her mother were along the edge of the quarry, once again, picking raspberries, and Florence, too, had fallen into the quarry and unfortunately drowned.
So, let me get this straight.
She loses three kids to drowning, two in the quarry, - and she takes another kid near it.
- Yes.
So now, you mentioned on the phone that she had a lot worse tragedy in her life.
The drownings of her four children were just the start.
In 1907, she had a son.
His name was John Jacob, and he died of what was at the time called convulsions.
And then sadly, shortly thereafter, she lost her husband, as well.
He worked at the quarry and was actually crushed to death when a cable car full of bricks came back and fell on him and crushed him.
So now, after all this tragedy with this woman, what ended up happening to her? Well, on April 18th of 1939, Lydia herself passed away.
This is the notice that appeared in the newspaper.
She just wore out after dealing with the loss and the hardship that she'd suffered all those years.
Her body just eventually gave out.
There's a woman that's, like, really losing it, like, losing her [bleep.]
Uh, she's just always, like, crying, and then I see a casket coming out.
I see a casket coming out, and then I see this woman Just a mess.
It's almost like she goes into denial.
"That that didn't happen.
It didn't happen, no.
" I think there's a lot of things that happened one right after the other here.
I think she lost somebody.
I think she gets sick.
It's like she might have made herself sick from not getting over everything.
I feel, like, this illness in her body, like her stomach is affected.
She wastes away, but I don't know if that's, like, from her emotional loss.
Right.
Because I feel this extreme anger and this extreme sadness.
I encountered many entities during my walk, but two stood out the most.
First, the crying woman.
You could see more of the whites at the bottom.
A very high forehead.
Thicker here, and then, they taper off pretty thin.
Next, I described the creepy man tormenting a living woman in her bedroom.
The bed sits catty-corner.
This male comes out, but it's like smoke, mist.
He is leaning over her.
It's very strange looking, very creepy looking.
Is that what you saw? Yes, that's what I saw.
Now that Amy and I have completed our investigations, we're ready to reveal our findings to each other and our clients for the first time.
Amy, I'd like you to meet Deanna and Tom.
They're married.
They live in this house.
They've been living through hell, basically.
In the last few years, it's gotten real physical.
It's affecting their health and, actually, their marriage at this point, and that's why they called us in for help.
So, now that Amy knows just a little bit about what's going on, I'm gonna ask her to tell us about her walk.
One of the things that I got when I first came into the home was that this house is extremely unsafe for women.
Women in this area have been affected for a very long time, and bad things will happen.
And then, I saw a lot of dead women who are suffering.
But the one that stood out the most to me was freaking out, crying.
She was, like, yelling a lot, and then the door opened, and a casket came out of the front door.
What I gathered from her freaking out and yelling was that, whoever that person was who died, she felt, you know, it was it was extremely sudden.
So, I felt, in the end, she became sick from not dealing with this death.
There was a woman that lived on your property line.
Her name was Lydia Small.
This is a stack of articles regarding her loss in life.
What?! She lived here? She lived on the property line.
I think the kid was, drowned in the well right on the property.
son, Dewey, and her 7-year-old daughter, Florence, were playing by the quarry, swimming.
Dewey goes under.
The 12-year-old sister, Irene, jumps into the water to rescue her brother, and she drowned.
Oh, my gosh.
They find their two bodies later on.
So, now, she lost three kids to drowning.
Oh, my gosh.
It gets worse.
was picking berries right by the quarry.
She falls in.
She drowns.
So, that's four kids died of drowning.
Let's move over to 1907.
Now she loses an probably from a high fever, I would assume.
The year after this happens, her husband, Jeremiah, who worked at the quarry sending limestone rock up to the top of the quarry.
Well, the cable snapped and came down and crushed him.
Oh, my gosh.
Now, the whole tragedy with Lydia and what she went through, she winds up dying in 1939, and I think the whole thing just took a toll on her and she Her body just deteriorated down to nothing.
It's pretty sad.
Now, you see a woman, right? Yes.
This woman is, just like you said, just like I told you, very thin, sickly.
So, do you think this is the woman you saw? I don't know, uh, but I did do a sketch.
Wow.
That's her.
That's who I see.
Ooh.
It's all coming together.
I would tell Tom of my stories, and I'm sharing with him.
He's trying to connect to me.
Right.
- But he can't.
- Right.
It's not affecting him like it is me.
It justifies what I've been going through, hell, all this time.
And how do you feel about it? I don't know how to answer that.
It's putting a face to things she tells me, but I don't relate to it because it doesn't affect me, personally.
It affects her.
It makes me feel bad for that woman.
What else you see? I started walking down the stairs, and in front of me, there was a male.
And what I saw was, he was beating up a teenage girl.
This man had and has a lot of issues and anger, uh, towards and with women.
You can hear this guy.
You'll hear, like, him, like, stomping around down here or, like, causing a ruckus, like, yelling And he shows himself like a black mist, uh, smoke.
Oh, my God.
And I was upstairs, and I smelled this horrible stench, and it was him.
We see this big, black mist coming from the wall, and then, in matter of seconds, it turned into, like, a tornado, like, and went straight up into the ceiling.
Matter of fact, there's still a mark there from where it went into the ceiling.
Yes.
Now, you also mentioned to me about the smells.
I smell, like, either smells of urine sometimes, sometimes fecal, and sometimes, I get kerosene.
Yeah.
It's pretty nasty, yeah.
Well, you've seen a lot on your walk so far.
- Anything else go on? - Yes.
The person who was in the basement is not the main culprit here.
Wow.
It was actually an individual I met on the first floor, a male, and what he does is, he literally crawls up out of the grave.
He is extremely creepy.
He sniffed all the way up my back, and it just was really disgusting, horrifying, degrading.
And I was scared, and that's really unusual for me.
He really hates women, and what he told me when, ugh, he got up to my ear was, he was like, "I can taste it, and I can smell it.
" When I started going up to the room upstairs, I felt someone pushing me back, holding me back at the bottom of the stairs, like, a wall going up and, like, two hands coming out and pushing me and being like, "Oh, no, you are not coming up here.
" Well, that's one of the big reasons we're here.
Deanna, tell Amy what happened to you.
One night, I was going up the steps to go to bed, and I was walking up the steps, I just stopped because I felt him.
It was ferocious, and he just came up with such a force, and just went vroom, and I flew off the steps and skid into the kitchen.
She had a fractured tailbone.
Oh, wow.
She actually moved into the downstairs bedroom Yes'cause she's afraid to go upstairs and go to sleep.
Really? Because I did see a woman who was going from bedroom to bedroom, trying to get away from him, and one of the things that I heard him saying to her was, "I've got you.
You're mine.
There's no escape.
" I know he can manipulate the way he's seen.
I saw him at one point coming out as a mist from under the bed, coming up to the side of the bed.
There was a female laying in the bed.
He then took on this form that I saw him with the hat, and he was pushing down on her shoulders, and he was saying, uh, you know, "I've got you.
I smell you.
I taste you.
I know you.
" The impression I got was that the living woman in the bed thinks that she's having dreams, but it's actually happening.
Oh, my God, Amy.
In that bedroom, just like you said, I was having a dream, and I'm in a cemetery.
And five monks levitating, hooded, they come before me, and then they stop.
But this man shot up, huge, masculine, hat, red eyes.
I felt him just jump right on me, held me down, and then when I opened up my eyes, he's standing right there, just looking at me.
And he told me that nobody can help me now, I was his.
I did do a sketch of what I saw.
Ooh.
Yeah.
That's him.
Amy, that's him.
I did do a sketch of what I saw.
Ooh.
Yeah.
That's him.
Amy, that's him.
That's him.
Oh, my God, Tom.
That's the man I told you about.
Oh, my God.
I can't believe it.
Then, when he's got a hold on you, Amy, he doesn't let you go until he decides.
There's no begging.
There's no pleading.
The more upset I get, the more he's enjoying the cat and mouse game.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's how he operates.
Now, she wakes up in the morning, she's got bruises, scratches Matter of fact, here's some of the scratches we're talking about.
Oh, wow.
Now, is this thing capable of causing this? Sure, yes.
Oh, yes.
- This guy was alive at one time? - Yes.
Do you know anything about him or who he might be or Yeah.
He was probably about in his 60s or 70s.
He was absolutely in a power position where he was able to judge others and had the power to control, like, their destinies.
He did terrible things throughout his life.
He is attached to the property, and I think where I saw him coming up out of the grave is relatively close.
He was buried near here.
Well, I got to think about this one a little bit, but the original guy that owned the place was a wealthy guy.
Um, his name was John Digges.
As a matter of fact, I have a map here which was originally called Digges' Choice.
Now, this is 10,000 acres here.
Oh, my goodness.
Your property is right about here.
It goes back to the early 1700s.
This guy was granted this this land.
So, he was a powerful guy and ruthless, you know, in the way he did his business.
When people tried to encroach on his property and settle, he forcibly either removed them from his property at gunpoint, or he made them pay.
Later on, in 1752, there was a family called Kitzmillers that landed on the property, and he sent his son, Dudley, to try to intimidate these people.
And a fight ensued over a gun, and the son, Dudley, was shot and killed.
So, for John Digges, after his son gets killed, uh, basically, things go from bad to worse.
Once this case goes to court, the judge acquits the Kitzmiller kid for the murder, and then tells John Digges, "Guess what, most of this land here is not yours," and winds up taking it away from him.
He ended up broken and broke, basically.
Now, we don't know where he's buried, but I know the son, Dudley, was buried on the property.
Yeah, that is interesting.
Okay.
So, what does he want? His one main goal is to go after the women here.
He said, "I'll go after their kids.
- I'll go after their husbands.
" - Hmm.
He likes to, like, drive them to, basically, madness.
The end goal is to actually have a death.
Oh, my gosh.
So, this Lydia Small thing, with all these kids that died, I mean, do you think this thing had anything to do with that? Yes.
I think so, mm-hmm.
Is he trying to kill her? Yes.
For years, you guys have been in a fight against something you can't even see, but, you know, after our investigation, at least now you know who and what you're up against.
But we still haven't answered your big question Is this a fight you guys can win? For that answer, I'm gonna turn it over to Amy.
So, the first thing that needs to happen is a male witch who's also a medium needs to be called in here.
This person needs to be a very dominant male type, the bigger, the better.
Why does he have to be physically big? Because he's intimidated by males who are masculine.
So, day one, this witch needs to come in, and he needs to call all of the dead women to him.
And then, he and these dead women are going to summon the evil dead male.
You cannot be here.
They are going to put him where needs to be forever, where he can do no more harm to anyone ever again.
Day two, he needs to then assist any of the females that are dead who want to go.
He's going to assist them to make that transition.
Day three, he now needs to come down here and get rid of this individual in your basement.
Does that banish him just from here or from the whole area? Oh, it'll get rid of him from the whole area.
Yes! It's a little bit better news than I was expecting, to be honest with you.
I feel a lot better, because it sounds like a solution's in order.
Oh, relieved.
Are you gonna take Amy's advice? Yes.
Okay.
Absolutely, starting tonight.
Absolutely.
I really hope Deanna and Tom follow my advice and rid their home of the evil that's tormenting them.
I'm worried that if they don't deal with it immediately, their suffering could continue, and they might never find peace.