The vast North American wilderness
is home to evil forces
thought only to exist in nightmares.
The terrible creatures that roam here
are all too real.
Many think ghost hunting is fun and games.
They're wrong.
Treating spirits without respect can have dire consequences.
I'm the most scared I've ever been in my life.
My only instinct was to run...
Shot toward us, was coming to get us.
'cause I was terrified.
The worst thing that can happen
when you go looking for ghosts
is that you find them.
There's always been something about that night and scared me.
With the whole development
of all of the paranormal shows and all of the ghost hunting,
it's become almost, like, a hobby for a lot of people,
to go out and interact with this paranormal energy.
Let me tell you, it can be very dangerous.
Not many people come out to the lake
at this time of year,
not unless they have a good reason,
like Josh and his wife Carol.
The plan was for me and my wife to go out for a night
that we wouldn't forget.
I remember it was dusky, and there's, like,
this fog that was on the lake, and I do remember that.
That was kind of eerie.
Josh has agreed to meet with his friend Bob,
who has promised the adventure of a lifetime.
- Hey, man. - Hey.
Nice night, huh?
He's the one that had all the knowledge.
I didn't know anything about the area.
He didn't tell me a whole lot ahead of time.
All right. Let's do it. - Hop in.
I just kind of went with him and trusted him on it.
He promised a good, scary night.
Too cold for this crap.
The whole idea of exploring haunted areas
without being reverent to the spirits that are there
can end up in a very, very dangerous type of situation.
But he told me going out to that area, Sugar Loaf,
that I'd be guaranteed to see something that night.
I can tell ahead of time it was gonna be
an interesting night, one way or the other.
And the car ride is quiet at this point.
We're in the middle of nowhere. It's dark.
There's no houses, nobody around.
Great. No service. Wonderful.
This was 2003.
We're out rural area in Oklahoma.
There were, like, no cell towers.
None of us had a signal.
My wife was a big nonbeliever.
She was the exact opposite of my friend Bob.
My wife is really getting frustrated, you know,
"This is really boring. I could be sitting at home."
Going out with him,
I just really felt like I was in my element there.
I've always wanted to find out the truth
in what's really out there.
There were some things that happened in my childhood
I couldn't explain, and I had a real religious family,
so I really never got to seek those answers.
All you could really hear on the drive over there
is the crunch of the gravel under the tires.
He had stopped the car in a manner
where we're actually facing this field and hillside,
and he's got his bright lights on.
I've heard about this place.
I really wanna check it out, you guys.
Come on. - This is just a bad idea.
- Come on. - Let's go! Come on!
They head up a deserted hillside...
Or rather, supposedly deserted.
Local legend has it that ghosts reside here.
As much as I wanted to take it seriously, at this point,
I'm just trying to have fun with the night.
Crazy stories about this.
Now I regret feeling that way because the way I was acting
is probably what led to why it scared me so bad.
Guys, I really don't know about this.
Come on. You'll be fine.
It's important for you to have your energy
in the right place before you do this.
If you don't, some of the dangers can be being
physically or energetically attacked by spirits.
I think we're getting close.
Come on. Come on. It's okay. Come on. Come on.
You okay? - No.
Looks like a good spot.
My wife is talking about how it's a bust.
Nothing's happening.
Be patient, Carol.
This is such a joke.
Okay?
Guys, can we just go, please?
We came all the way here.
- It's so cold. - Come on.
Bob is trying to shush us and telling us, "Wait a minute."
You're not gonna want to miss this. Trust me.
Exactly at midnight, this light comes on
in the middle of the hillside...
and it just kind of stays in one place at first.
What's that?
I remember it hushed my wife up pretty quick when it came on.
It hushed me, too.
And the light began swaying kind of back and forth.
That's when I mentioned, "It kind of looks like
"an old lantern, like an old kerosene lantern,
somebody walking through the woods."
I don't know if it's because I had a attitude,
"Nothing can touch me,"
but I scream out to it.
Let's find out.
Hello!
- Shh! Shh! - Who's down there?
Shut up. Shut up.
Oh, so scary, a little light in the woods.
Is that all you can do?
Real funny, guys. - Josh...
- Come on out! - What are you doing?
Shut up. You crazy?
And I look up, and the lantern light is now
coming down the hillside at a unhuman pace.
It's coming fast, the way it just kind of came down the trees
and shot down the hillside and across the field.
- Aah! - My wife screams.
All of us at the same time were all thinking, "Flight."
Go, go, go!
I knew it couldn't be human.
Josh La Rue and his wife Carol
and friend Bob are hunting for ghosts in the woods.
I've heard about this place.
I really wanna check it out, you guys.
Come on. - This is just a bad idea.
Now they wish they weren't.
You'll be fine.
There can be a lot of different dangers
that appear when you're interacting with spirits.
All right. Down. Down.
I've seen people go through possession.
I've seen people have their energy taken away.
- Real funny, guys! Come on out! - Josh...
I've seen people physically attacked by spirits as well.
I got a feeling of terror as soon as it started
coming across that field.
Come on! Go, go, go, go!
And we just booked it into the car.
Go, go, go!
I feel in the pit of my stomach almost the same fear
I was feeling that night.
This is creeping me out more than I thought it would.
Come on, man. Let's go. Go, go, go, go, go!
- Drive! - What the hell?!
- Come on! Get out of here! - Oh, my God!
- Let's go! - Hurry up! Go!
- Keep going, man! Keep going! - Go, go, go!
We're in the car, and they're all getting on me
about yelling at this ghost,
calling it out like that, so all the blame goes to me.
In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have done what I did.
And I could see that she was scared, too,
and at that point, she was really ready to go home.
- Will you just relax? - I told you this was a bad idea!
Get in the car! Just get in the car, okay?
No one listens to me! No one listens to me! Great.
Bob's asking, "Why did we run?
We should've just stayed to see what it was."
We got to get out of here. All right?
- Seriously?! - What?
It's not starting.
Try it again. Try it again. Try it again.
And the truck won't come on.
Not only will it not start, just completely dead,
and no lights were left on, anything like that when we left.
- We got to get out of here. - I want to go back.
I wanna find out what that was. - No, man.
- You're not... - I've got jumper cables.
We're gonna use the jumper cables. Got it?
We raise our hoods and we connect jumper cables
from his car to my truck.
Ready?
All right, Carol. Start it up.
As soon as we connect the cables,
the battery cables just go up in flames...
- Aah! - Like flash paper...
Oh, my god!
Just a flash of fire, ashes, melted rubber on the ground.
- Are you okay? - Yeah, I'm fine.
You okay? - My god.
And, you know, me and Bob are looking at that,
talking to each other like,
"What the heck just happened there?"
When the truck didn't start, and especially
when the jumper cables went up in flames,
my first thought was something paranormal,
something that we tapped into that night,
you know, was keeping us local.
We hear this motor off in the lake.
It's after midnight. It's November. It's cold.
Somebody is out on the lake, but as the noise got closer,
me and Bob both stop talking.
And this boat is coming at us fast at the dock.
This bright spotlight came on.
These two men step off the boat and start walking towards us.
They don't turn the light off, and without the light,
they would still be able to see us.
The moon was out, so it wasn't, like, pitch-black at this lake.
You got a problem here?
Car trouble?
Nothing we can't handle, guys. It's okay.
Looks like your pretty little cables
couldn't handle the shock, huh?
Before me and Bob can say anything, the guy says,
"Well, we got some stuff in our boat."
I was already feeling uneasy
the way that he turned his head towards my wife...
We'll get you fixed up real good.
And says, "Yeah, fix 'em right up."
Me and Bob can't decide which is creepier,
the lights or these two guys.
You guys, wait here.
We got something for ya.
Turn, walk slowly back to their boat,
and they're fidgeting with stuff,
and we can't really see 'cause the spotlight is blinding us,
and the same thing that was going through my mind
was going through his...
We're gonna have to fight these guys.
Me and Bob, we're not exactly fighters,
but we're ready to fight at this point, you know,
wanting to protect my wife.
I had tire tools, and I gave Bob one. I took one.
So we're standing there.
We got our tire tools, like, next to our legs,
trying to conceal them.
We start hearing chains rattling around, like, heavy chains.
The chains rattling was the last straw.
Really, I don't believe any words were spoken.
I think we just kind of looked at each other,
and we both just got in the car.
There was a big enough creep factor that we didn't want
to stick around to see what happened next.
Drive! Come on! Get out of here!
- Oh, my God! - Let's go!
- Hurry up! Go! - Keep going!
- Go, go, go! - Keep going.
Come on!
I knew that it had to have been something paranormal
at that point.
See them?
And I was like, "There's just too much.
"I never want to come here again.
I don't have any interest in seeing ghost lights,
"finding out who these guys were on the boats.
I just want to go back to my normal life."
I wasn't seeking paranormal anything.
After this blood-chilling experience,
Josh vows to give up on his quest for answers.
But vows have a way of being broken.
Felt so terrified, and my body was shaking.
I was white as a ghost.
It was the most terrifying experience of my life,
and we thought it was over.
- Go! Go, go, go! - Keep going, man! Keep going!
Josh barely made it
out of Sugar Loaf Lake alive three years ago.
He promised never to return,
yet the lure of the paranormal hunt
proves too difficult to resist.
Unfortunately, he hasn't learned his lesson.
If you're going to interact with spirit or spirit energy,
you should have a very defined intent
and purpose for what it is that you're doing.
This is not recreation.
This is not something to do for fun.
Bob contacted me in 2006
and said he had a group of Wiccans
that wanted to go out and do paranormal investigations.
"Do you remember that lantern that we saw back in '03?
"Told the story about that night to my group,
"and they're really interested in going out there
"and do kind of a séance,
see if they can't communicate with the spirit."
He's like, "All you have to do is film it.
"You don't have to get involved.
If things start going south, we'll get out of there."
There is a danger.
If people don't know what they're doing
or what they're getting themselves into,
they can open up a spirit or something to let it out.
We get there a little bit before midnight,
and just like before, there's no cell service.
His friends sit in a circle.
And I remember them pulling out a book.
It wasn't, like, an old creepy witchcraft book.
It looked like a new hardcover.
I begin filming their séance.
And just like 3 years ago,
the spirit returns at the stroke of midnight.
And terror come back in the pit in my stomach.
And I remember filming their group, their chanting.
There was, like, no wind, but their candle just goes out.
Everybody gets quiet.
Bob asked me to cut the camera
until they can get this candle lit
and start their séance again.
And I remember cutting the camera,
seeing the light in the field, turning around to face them,
and as they're fidgeting,
they're trying, like, four lighters,
and none of the lighters are working.
And I start hearing a rustling noise behind me.
I feel like, in the few moments
that I turned my back to the light,
that it came down the hillside,
across the field,
was right behind me.
I turned and see the brightest light
that I'd ever seen in my entire life,
a blinding light,
and just as quick as it's there, it's gone.
You know, I'm shakin', I'm freaking out.
In the next moment, way off in the distance,
we start hearing what sounds like children laughing.
The best way I can describe it is, like,
how kids will sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," the song.
One will start singing the first verse,
and a few moments after they start,
another kid starts at the beginning of the song.
One kid would start laughing.
A second or two later,
another would start laughing a different way,
and it was all around us, way off in the distance.
It sounded like hundreds or thousands of kids
just laughing,
but the laughter is getting louder and louder,
and it's getting closer and closer
and to the point that it's deafening.
You know, I'm the most scared I've ever been in my life.
It's the fear that really controls the situation,
and that's what spirits tend to use to control people,
to... to possess people.
All I thought about was getting in that car,
getting out of here, and never coming back.
Go! Go!
Bob peels out on this dirt road, gravel flying.
For about 3 miles, we could still hear the laughter.
Bob was having a hard time driving.
That's how shaken he was.
And about a mile after that...
we all hear a snapping noise from the front of the car,
and the car stopped dead in its tracks.
What? What's going on, man?
I don't know. It just stopped working. It's dead.
What are we going to do?
Everybody is terrified at this point,
and as we're sitting there asking each other
if we heard what we heard, if we saw what we saw,
"Was that children?"
We're sitting there
so enthralled in this conversation
that it takes us a minute to realize
that this laughter is coming back,
way off in the distance but getting closer and closer.
It's following us.
We can't just sit here!
Can't... Just let me think for a second!
They are now sitting ducks
for what's coming for them.
It was the most terrifying experience of my life.
Hunting ghosts at Sugar Loaf Lake
was never a good idea.
Guys, I really don't know about this.
The first time Josh and his friends
came investigating, they were chased away by a spirit...
- Come on! Go, go, go, go! - Aah!
And narrowly escaped two mysterious men.
Now they return three years later,
and things are a lot worse.
The terror just is hitting me so hard.
I really felt like everything was just closing in on me.
I felt like the laughing children
can just reach out and grab me.
Go! Go!
He and his companions
are stuck in the middle of a deserted road
and scared out of their minds.
- What's going on, man? - I don't know.
It just stopped working. It's dead.
We realize that he's not gonna be able
to get this car going again.
What are we going to do?
And now the nerve-shredding laughter of children returns.
We can't just sit here!
Can't... Just let me think for a second!
Bob suddenly gets a signal on his phone.
What is it?
- I have a signal! - Well, like, go, go, go, go!
- Okay. - Call somebody!
Bob dials up his friend Jess.
Hello? Hey. It's me. It's Bob.
There's... You gotta come. You gotta come pick me up.
There's... there's four of us. We're on the road.
We're pulled over to the side.
He asked if she can come pick us up,
and he gives her the location, and she says, "Yes."
Just come as fast as you can.
They realize, to their horror,
they're not the only ones on this road.
And about 5 minutes goes by.
We see these headlights coming down the road towards us.
And they're going really slow.
It's going to take his friend
probably about 15, 20 minutes to get there,
so we know it's not her yet.
And there's two guys in it, heavily bearded.
Both, at the same time, look at each other and say,
"It's the boat men,"
and they just stare at us.
Just like how they showed up at the lake,
they had showed up again.
And they drive by.
We're really freaking out at this point.
We're emitting fear.
We're emitting that energy, and unfortunately,
that's kind of the worst thing we can do
if there is spirit activity,
because that's what they feed off of.
We see headlights coming from the other direction,
and it's them again.
We got the laughter going on.
We got these creepy guys doing God knows what,
and then they come by, both of them, in the truck...
and the one says...
You guys look like you need some help.
But he doesn't offer help. He just keeps on going.
And here we are in the middle of nowhere,
in a car that won't move.
I can't even begin to explain the terror
I'm feeling at this point.
And the truck comes by one more time.
I remember thinking, "This is it."
I can see the headlights coming. All I'm feeling is dread.
It was the most helpless I've ever felt in my life.
You guys look like you need some help.
Josh and his friends are paying the price
for hunting ghosts unprepared, stuck in the middle of the road,
surrounded by spirits, and under attack.
I can see the headlights coming. All I'm feeling is dread.
I really felt like everything was just closing in on me.
I felt like the laughing children
could just reach out and grab me.
And if they didn't reach out and grab me,
that these guys would just stop their truck in any time
and do whatever they wanted to do,
and we would have no way to stop 'em.
This laughter all around us, and we can't run this time.
I only see one of them. Where's the other guy?
This time, the passenger is gone.
It's just the driver.
It was the most helpless I've ever felt in my life,
and the laughter is the loudest that I heard it.
Are they going to do something to us?
They're getting closer. What do we do?
I remember thinking, "This is it."
There's another light!
Before anything else could happen,
we saw another set of headlights coming.
My first thought was, "They're both in a vehicle now."
All I'm feeling is dread, terror.
One way or the other, this is not gonna end well for me.
It pulls up and stops.
It's Bob's friend.
That's her!
You ready? - I didn't feel safe.
I still felt like another shoe would drop
until I was actually in the car.
Let's go.
Go, go, go!
Go, go, go, go, go!
Come on! Let's go! Go, go, go, go, go, go!
I was just so relieved we were going to make it out of there.
I don't think she really had a chance
to really ask any questions.
She was just reacting out of fear.
She was driving. She was getting us out of there.
She went from zero to 60 on the terror meter.
Faster, come on!
She went from showing up to help some friends out
to showing up to help some friends out
and to get the heck out of there.
They're still with us! Go!
And she's driving as fast as she can on this dirt road,
and they're keeping right up.
A lot of us thought that we were going to meet our end
in some form that night.
What is that back there?
And as soon as start driving us back to civilization,
we can no longer hear the laughter
off in the distance.
They're gone.
- What? - They're gone.
None of us had any thought ever of going back out there
for anything for any reason.
Josh drove for miles into uncharted forest
searching for ghosts,
but sometimes you don't have to go very far to find trouble.
You can discover it lurking in your own backyard...
as happens with Alicia and her friends.
I was never really afraid until that one night,
and then it kind of changed the game a little bit for me.
It wasn't until that night that I even thought it was dangerous.
My house sat at the base of a hill,
on kind of empty dirt road.
If you followed the dirt road,
you'd reach a old family cemetery.
The graves are not really legible but 1800s.
They all kind of bear the same names.
Not a lot of people even know that graveyard exists.
My whole life, I've never seen anyone there visiting.
I'm not even sure if there's any current graves
that could be visited.
There was always kind of weird stuff,
especially around my house
and kind of the dark forest behind my house.
So we had just stuff being stacked up in front of doors.
My father, who is a skeptic and doesn't even
really like to think about that sort of stuff
'cause it scares him,
and he found a string.
It was outside of the yard, followed it, followed it
until he got to the back of the graveyard.
The string kind of angled upwards,
and he thought it was a balloon string,
but when he followed it all the way out,
there was nothing there.
But I think that was first story I told,
and that kind of got my friends interested.
We kind of gathered at my house, and I know it was dark.
Are you scared?
We usually waited till midnight or 1:00 a.m.,
until it was completely dark.
Don't worry. Dave and I have done this dozens of times.
All without a night-light, so you're okay.
I think David was one of the first people
that I went ghost hunting with.
He was the one kind of looking for evidence
and trying to find something there.
Just try not to stare into the dark for too long,
or else something might be staring back at you.
I've had experience with the paranormal from a young age,
so this was something that fascinated me
and terrified me at the same time.
You know, one time, we even heard voices
coming from one of the gravestones.
It was awesome. I mean, bone-chilling, but awesome.
Yeah, we screamed so loud.
Tonight, Alicia and David
are making the same mistake as Josh and his friends,
treating something lightly that they should respect.
I've seen spirits that are very territorial.
If people don't have respect for their territory,
the spirits, they will use their energy to push people out.
This time, we brought a newcomer, Brian,
who had decided to come with us.
I don't remember if he asked or if he had just heard
so many stories he had to see it for himself.
Oh, but be careful not to scream too loud.
You never know who's listening.
He was more religious, I think, than both of us,
but it's not something we really thought about before we came.
Come on, Brian. You first.
Until we got there, we realized how scared he really was.
Meant something different to him than it did to us going in.
Dear Lord, we ask You to protect us as we walk
amongst the graves of these departed souls.
It wasn't that we were against him doing it.
It's just something we hadn't done before,
and it kind of upped the ante a little bit,
made it seem more real.
We pray for Your forgiveness.
We wish peace and eternal rest.
When that happened, I immediately was on edge.
It changed the game a little bit,
and it was no longer kind of thing we do for fun.
We say this in Your name.
Come on!
Alicia has always known there was something
lurking in the cemetery in the woods behind her house.
Tonight, she and her friends go hunting
and tempting fate...
to find out what it is.
So as soon as Brian finished praying,
he was a little more bold, but me and David
were definitely more nervous than we had been before.
At least, I felt uneasy,
which wasn't very common going to the graveyard.
We got into the grave,
maybe one-third into the graveyard
when we sort of started to smell that foul smell...
Is it always like this?
No.
Really, really strong, kind of real putrid.
And looking around, and I really couldn't see any shapes.
I could barely see the trees silhouetting the back.
Felt David next to me go a little bit still.
David...
what's wrong?
And I said, "What is it?"
And he said, "There's something in the corner."
I don't see anything.
And it just looked like murky darkness
and maybe like it was moving, and at that point,
I wasn't sure if it was my eyes playing tricks on me.
It's just a tree.
It's not a tree.
It's just a tree.
It definitely sent a chill up my spine.
You know, your heart rate increases.
You get the goose bumps.
It's just that, you know, almost shudder through your whole body.
You just know on an instinctual level
that something's not right.
So I was staring at it
and trying to make out any movement,
but I couldn't really find any movement in the shape.
I stared at it longer.
I kind of saw some sort of shifting or movement.
I felt like I was kind of making out a shape,
maybe legs, maybe shoulders, maybe a head.
All at once, I could see that it was a real physical thing.
It took form,
shadowy silhouette of a figure.
That's when a chill kind of fell over me.
Had the form of a human, but it definitely was not human.
It felt like something was going to hurt us,
and that's exactly the feeling
I had was, it was an aggressive...
like we had done something wrong being there,
and it was gonna make us pay for it.
Shot toward us like it was coming to get us.
My only instinct was to run.
Hurry! Come on! Oh!
I remember just running, being so afraid to turn around...
- Go! - Let's go!
- Go! - That thing is right there!
Because I was terrified to turn
and see something back there.
We just kept running until we reached the house.
- Go, go, go! - Go, go, go!
David! David!
I knew that we had seen something,
and I knew that I felt a real sense
of anger and menace in the graveyard,
and we were all shaken.
I remember Brian was worked up. I don't think he said anything.
And it took couple minutes to kind of relax and cool down.
I don't think Brian said much.
He was definitely afraid, and especially having prayed
beforehand and being a little more religious,
I think that it affected him
maybe differently than the rest of us.
Are you okay?
Think I should go home.
Brian...
Looking back, I definitely felt I'd crossed the line.
Though we only had innocent intentions,
we kind of kept going back
and trying to find more and trying to find more.
I mean, I felt like we were trespassing,
like we were somewhere we shouldn't be,
and I don't know if it was the prayer that riled it up
and made it angry, or what it was.
Ghosts do have emotions in the same way
that human beings do.
They're essentially a human being without a body,
so we can piss off the ghosts
just as easily as we could piss off a person.
After that night, I never went back.
The ghost hunting pretty much ended,
and I just didn't feel like it was safe for us to return.
Alicia and her friends found out the hard way...
You don't go hunting for what you don't understand or respect.
To this day, Josh still doesn't know how the light,
the children, and the boat men are connected.
The territory of spirits varies.
Spirits will create different groups,
and they might not have been together on the Earth,
but they've found each other in that earthbound world.
I would tell anybody
going out to do their own investigations
that you don't know what you're doing.
There's no way to be prepared for what's unknown.
I think that Bob and his friends
got in over their head that night,
and whatever they were doing brought forth something
that they just didn't expect, that they weren't prepared for.
Provoking spirits, I don't think that's a good idea.
You have to treat these energies with respect.
And if that doesn't happen,
you do open yourself up to a lot of scary stuff.
And I think a piece of whatever it was stuck with me.
To this day, it wakes me at night.
I still have nightmares.
It haunts me during the day, too.
Any time I hear kids laughing, fills me with terror
'cause I'll hear what I heard that night.
Just because you can get away doesn't mean that it's gone.
Just because you escape physically
doesn't mean you will mentally.