[Dan narrating]
[tense music]
What if I told you that an ordinary night in LA
was the scene of an unexpected battle?
- Anti-aircraft batteries up and down the coast
are now shooting everything they have skyward.
- This isn't a war zone,
this is Los Angeles, California.
The whole city starts to panic.
- Or that a mysterious fireball in the dark sky
sparked an unusual encounter.
- Hovering in the sky above them
appears a massive, brilliantly lit saucer-like craft.
- And it starts to emit a strange noise,
and that's when all hell breaks loose.
- How about an overnight tourist attraction
to die for?
- You can have a snack in the kitchen
where the murderer raided the icebox.
- Many visitors feel eyes on them
when there's no one there.
Needless to say, not much sleeping takes place.
- These are the stories of what happens when darkness falls
that are so strange,
they are truly unbelievable.
[dramatic music]
Amid the chaos of the French and Indian War in 1754,
a quiet Connecticut town is thrust into an overnight event
so unusual it would become part of its lore for centuries.
- It's 1754.
We're in Windham, Connecticut,
one of the original 13 British colonies.
The French and Indian War is raging.
The British are fighting hard
to prevent the French from encroaching on their territory
from the west and from the north.
- But the French are relentless
and they also have the support
of a number of Native American tribes to back them up.
Now everybody in Windham is terrified.
They've heard the stories of these awful attacks
from Indian tribes on other colonies.
- [Dan] On a sweltering summer evening
just as darkness settles in,
a terrifying sound rings out from the forest
and wakes up the entire town.
[frogs croak]
- The residents of Windham are freaked out
because it's like nothing they've ever heard before.
It's sort of this deep throaty hum
that seems to be getting louder and louder
and closer and closer.
- The villagers quickly conclude
that these must be the war cries
of the invaders that they have been warned about,
coming to kill them in their beds.
- [Dan] Fearing the enemy is closing in on them,
residents turn to their leaders
Eliphalet Dyer and Jedediah Elderkin.
- There's a reason that these two men lead the militia,
they're brave souls;
and quickly they form a scouting party
and run into the darkness of the forest
to find out what they're up against.
- [Dan] The deeper they go into the forest,
the sounds get louder and oddly more personal.
- They hear words repeated like,
"Let's kill them. Let's kill them."
Some say they hear the name Dyer, Dyer,
or Elderkin, Elderkin;
almost taunting the militia
to come out into the woods.
- The forest is pitch black.
A dense fog is hanging in the trees.
Nobody can see a thing.
- They follow their ears to this grumbling chant
and when they feel like they've zeroed in on the source,
they open fire.
- They're firing, reloading and firing again,
literally blindly into the dark
where they think the noise is coming from.
- [Dan] Gradually, the noise
of their would-be marauders fades.
The Windhamites begin to celebrate their victory.
- Finally, when daylight breaks,
it gives them a chance to peek through the trees
to see what they've been firing at all night,
and their foes are not at all what they were expecting.
- [Dan] American bullfrogs.
The colonists find thousands of them
dead in a tiny pond.
- What the locals heard
was not the war cries of fearsome enemies,
but the roaring calls of lusty frogs.
During the night, a hoard of big male bull frogs
descend on this one tiny wetland,
croaking like mad in an attempt to attract a mate.
[bullfrog croaks]
- Fellow colonists think,
how ridiculous was it
that these towns folk sent their militia
against a group of frogs
and the citizens of the town
become the laughing stock of 18th century America.
- [Dan] Luckily, this town has a great sense of humor.
- [Thor] Instead of playing down their folly,
they amplify it
and put a bull frog on the town's official seal.
They even put a frog on the local currency.
- Just when you think this story is about to fizzle out,
the locals take it even one step further,
when they build a bridge over nearby Willimantic River.
- The residents place enormous 11 foot copper frogs
on the pillars on either side of the bridge
to commemorate that almost fateful night.
[bullfrogs croak]
- Centuries after Windham's amphibious alarm,
another nocturnal phenomenon grips the skies Eastern Europe.
[tense music]
- In 1941, Hitler's Blitzkrieg has brought
so much of the world to its knees.
Europe is in serious trouble.
There has been a non-aggression pact
in place with the Soviet Union
for two years at this point,
but Hitler's got his eyes on Moscow;
he wants it.
He has tank divisions,
he has the Luftwaffe in the air,
he has 3 million soldiers
ready to march on the city and take it.
- Stalin sees this build up and he's worried.
Does he have enough soldiers to fight them off?
- [Dan] Enter Marina Raskova,
the Soviet Amelia Earhart,
with a possible solution.
- Marina Raskova is a decorated civilian pilot.
She teaches flying and she meets women all the time
who say that they wanna be combat pilots.
- At the time, women aren't allowed to fly into combat.
They are allowed to say, for example,
shuttle aircraft around airfields
or fly them in transfer operations,
but never in enemy action.
- Marina, who has the ear of Soviet premier Joseph Stalin,
writes him a letter.
If he will allow an all female combat squadron,
she will then step up and lead it in battle.
- Stalin agrees and on October 8th,
the Red Army gets its first regiment
of all female bomber fighting units.
- Even though women have now been allowed into combat,
it's not gonna be easy for them.
Where their male counterparts fly
the modern twin engine aircraft built for dive bombing,
the women have beat up two seat crop dusters
that have been retrofitted to fight in the war.
- These are old recycled biplanes
and they have to make do with that as a combat vehicle.
But the women don't back down
and they train for 14 hours a day;
flying, repairing and learning their new equipment.
- [Dan] Then after only a few months,
the women are ready to hit the skies-
but not during the day.
- The older, slower model aircraft
that the women are flying
would be sitting ducks
for the German anti-aircraft during the daytime,
so the women are flying at night;
using the cover of darkness for stealth.
- [Dan] On June 28th, 1942,
the first ever all female bomber squadron takes off
with an important first mission.
- The first aircraft in the squadron
fly out ahead to attract the Nazi search lights,
which are desperately needed
to light up the inky black sky
so the rest of the squadron can see their target.
- The following teams then hit their engines to idle
and glide in silently to attack their enemy.
Then, when the Germans begin to fire away at the sky,
it reveals their positions;
allowing the next wave of women
to swoop in and destroy those positions.
- Over two nights,
it is reported that they destroy
an entire German regiment and their food and fuel supplies.
[tense music] [artillery fires]
Gliding with their engines idling
creates a swishing sound,
which some of the Germans on the ground
said sounded like witches on their brooms.
- [Dan] It's this signature sound
that actually gives them their nickname:
the Germans call them the Nachthexen, or Night Witches.
- During the remainder of the war,
the Night Witches fly over 20,000 missions
and lose only thirty pilots.
- The Night Witches terrify the Nazis so much
that they start a rule
that any German pilot that's able to shoot one down
automatically gets the very highest honor,
the Iron Cross.
- [MJ] Sadly, Marina never sees
the end of the Second World War.
She dies in service on January 4th, 1943,
when her plane crashes during a snowstorm.
She was 31.
- Marina Raskova is given
the first state funeral of World War II
and her ashes rest in the Kremlin.
- After a long day of hard work in the woods
in November of 1975,
a group of lumberjacks head home.
But as they're driving through the darkness,
something unusual catches their eye.
- Mike Rogers, the foreman,
is at the wheel and he's trying to concentrate
while driving down these dark roads.
The other men who are crammed inside this pickup truck,
well, they notice something else:
a light cutting through the darkness
in front of their vehicle.
- At first they think it's the moon,
but then they see the moon is in the opposite direction.
- [Dan] Mike slams on the brakes
and they wonder what on earth this could be.
- Hovering in the sky above them
appears a massive, brilliantly lit saucer-like craft.
- Travis Walton, a 22-year-old logger,
jumps out of the cab
and through some compelling force,
instead of running away from the UFO,
he runs towards it.
- Travis stops directly under the craft
and it starts to emit a strange high frequency noise,
and that's when all hell loose.
- The truck itself is starting to shake
and vibrate and get tossed around a little bit,
and they start panicking.
They start yelling for Travis
to get back in the in the truck, but he doesn't.
He just stands there, mesmerized.
- And as he's watching this,
to his friends' horror,
some beam of light shoots down from the vessel
and zaps Travis.
- Mike, who's still in the driver's seat, flips out.
He and the rest of the crew
get the hell out of there,
leaving Travis behind.
- [Dan] Then a flash of light streaks across the sky
and the strange flying object is gone
along with their friend.
- They rush back to town and alert local police.
A search party is assembled
for a period of five days,
and there's no sign of Travis anywhere in the area.
- On the evening of November 10th,
Travis's sister's phone rings
and on the other end of the line is Travis.
He says that he's calling
from a phone booth from another town,
and that he's disoriented
and he can't find his way home;
so his whole family rushes to go get him.
- When Travis is told
that he's actually been missing for five whole days,
he's totally stunned.
To him, it just feels like it was a few hours.
- [Dan] For help filling in the blanks,
Travis agrees to see a hypnotist.
- Under hypnosis, Travis recalls being zapped by the light
and then describes how he's drawn up
like a rag doll, limbs dangling.
- Once on board,
he says that he's examined
in what looks to be almost like a hospital room.
There's three beings there all under five feet tall,
and they have that typical alien look:
big heads, big black eyes.
It's what a lot of people call a gray alien.
- At one point, Travis recalls
a sensation of intense pain
and a feeling of suffocation;
and he remembers leaping off the table
and fighting with these entities,
which causes them to run out of the room.
- And this is when he meets
what a lot of people in the community call the Nordics,
which are very tall, beautiful aliens.
- With superhuman strength,
they push Travis back down onto this table.
Travis then blacks out.
- The next thing he knows,
he wakes up wandering a road in another Arizona town,
cold, confused, disoriented,
and finds his way to a service station payphone.
- [Dan] Despite a healthy dose of suspicion,
some ufologists consider Travis' experience
to be the most credible abduction story ever told.
- In 1978, Travis writes a book about all this
called, "The Walton Experience."
It's actually one of the first books
written by an abductee
and when he tells his story,
there's real sense of almost post-traumatic stress disorder.
I don't know whether or not
he was literally abducted by aliens,
but I know he believes he was.
- It's one thing when a single person
claims something attacked them from above,
it's another when 1.5 million people witness it.
- It's February, 1942,
just months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
killed 2,400 Americans
and drew the United States into the Second World War.
Residents stateside are wondering if they're next.
- This fear and anxiety puts cities on lockdown,
especially coastal cities like Los Angeles.
On the 23rd of February,
a Japanese submarine is actually spotted
off the coast of Santa Barbara.
It takes some shots at the Elwood Oil refinery.
[artillery fires]
- There's minimal damage
but it sends everyone into a panic,
especially along the west coast,
because now we know that an attack could really happen.
[tense music]
- Authorities aren't taking any chances
and so the enforce a nighttime blackout.
- The idea is to not be a target.
And lights, unfortunately,
are a great way to get hit by air or by water.
- [Dan] These blackouts go off without a hitch,
but not for long.
The next night on February 24th, at 2:21 AM,
Angelenos are suddenly awakened
by the sound of air raid sirens.
- The military has picked up something on radar
about 120 miles west of LA.
This lines up with eyewitness accounts
of a massive craft being seen in the sky.
It is oblong and moving at 200 miles per hour.
- Within minutes, troops have
a massive battery of anti-aircraft guns at the ready.
At 3:06 AM, search lights converge
on this strange object over Culver City.
- The 37th coastal artillery brigade
is given the command to start firing.
They are now shooting everything they have skyward.
- Shortly afterwards,
almost every single coastal defense in the area
is firing at this thing.
Finally, after 58 minutes of a nonstop barrage,
a ceasefire is called.
- This isn't a war zone,
this is Los Angeles, California.
And as you might expect,
the whole city starts to panic.
The police switchboards are flooded with calls,
the highways are gridlocked,
people are freaking out.
- Property damage is reported throughout the city
and there's even a death toll.
Three people died from stress induced heart attacks
and another three people died in car accidents.
- [Dan] As the sun rises the next morning,
residents are baffled.
What exactly happened last night?
- On the front page of the morning papers,
there's an iconic photo of eight spotlights
meeting together to show
some sort of massive well-lit craft overhead.
Some newspapers claim it was the Japanese,
but despite the aerial barrage,
no Japanese planes are found
on the ground the following day.
- A short time after the war ended,
a Japanese military leader
confirmed that they never flew an aircraft
over the city of Los Angeles during the war,
which leaves one big question:
what exactly were they shooting at that night?
- The Civil War left no shortage of bloodshed,
but after one of its deadliest battles,
something strange appeared on the battlefield
only visible after nightfall.
- It's early April, 1862,
and the Battle of Shiloh is being fought
on the border of Tennessee and Mississippi.
The Confederates launch a surprise attack
against the forces of the Union led by Ulysses S Grant
and over 100 000 Confederate and Union soldiers
battle over the next couple days.
- The Union ends up coming from behind to claim victory
but when all is said and done,
23,000 soldiers are dead
and sixteen thousand are wounded,
laying on the battlefield.
- Many of them have opened gashes prone to infection,
that will bring them even closer to the edge of death.
- But when night falls,
something really utterly strange begins to happen.
The soldiers lying on the ground
notice that their wounds begin glowing
a strange greenish hue in the dark.
- [Dan] The men are terrified.
A glowing wound must surely mean death.
But during triage,
something unexpected begins happening.
- The field surgeons start to notice an intriguing pattern.
It seems that the men with wounds that glow in the dark
heal faster and suffer fewer infections
than those whose wounds do not.
The soldiers start to think
that a divine force has intervened,
that they've been saved by God.
They start calling it Angel Glow
for its amazing healing properties.
- [Dan] For the next 100 years,
the truth behind this miraculous phenomenon remains unknown
until an unlikely investigator figures it out.
- In 2001, high school student Bill Martin
goes to the site of the Battle of Shiloh
and he's pretty curious;
he wants to solve the mystery
of what this Angel Glow was.
- [Dan] After taking some soil samples,
Bill brings them home to his mother,
a microbiologist for the US Department of Agriculture.
- Fortunately for Bill,
his mother happens to be an expert on a strange bacteria
that glows in the dark called Photorhabdus luminescens,
or p. Luminescence for short.
This bacteria is known to live
inside of tiny soil dwelling roundworms called nematodes.
- It turns out that the nematodes
are finding their way into the soldiers open wounds
and in their process
of literally consuming their open flesh,
vomited up the luminescent bacteria.
- The crazy side effect of these nematodes
is that they're essentially delivering antibiotics
and ultimately increasing their likelihood of survival.
- Generally speaking, these microscopic creatures
can't survive inside the human body; it's too warm.
Luckily for these soldiers,
they had fallen on the battlefield
on a very cold night.
Their body temperatures dropped
and that's why the bacteria could survive long enough
to cleanse their wounds
and give them this seemingly angel glow healing property.
- So perhaps an angel was looking out
for the soldiers after all,
just in the form of a vomiting worm.
There might also be someone watching over
our next medical miracle worker.
- In Ogdensburg, New York,
there's an award-winning surgeon and urologist,
53-year-old John Bongiovanni.
In 1980, Dr. John suffers a terrible car accident
and because of that accident,
he loses his sight.
- [Dan] For most, going blind would be
the end of their career as a surgeon,
but not for Dr. John.
- Only six months later, he's back at it.
Not only is Dr. John going back to work diagnosing patients,
he is performing surgeries on patients completely blind.
- He performs eight surgeries
and he has assistants- like fellow doctors or nurses,
there to talk him through the parts that require sight.
- There are parts of surgery
that require more feel than others,
but you always need to see what you are doing.
- This is a urologist;
he's performing surgeries through someone's rectum,
through the tip of their genitals.
I can't even believe that he thought this was okay.
Despite being terrifying
and unethical that he's doing this,
it's pretty incredible
that he is able to pull this off.
- [Dan] Remarkably, Dr. John continues practicing
for another three years,
until the Board of Regents gets involved.
- The Board of Regents finds Dr. John
guilty of professional misconduct
for performing operations while blind,
and strips him of his ability
to practice medicine in the state of New York.
- In their defense though,
the hospital says that
in the eight surgeries he performed blind,
in only one did a nurse notice some slight bleeding,
but all the others were considered a complete success.
- Even with a record some surgeons would envy,
Dr. John Bongiovanni's technique
raised more eyebrows than scalpels.
- We spend a third of our lives in the dark, asleep;
eyes tightly shut
with only our dreams to keep us company.
What if during that slumber
you were more productive and talented?
- It's 1983 in Wrexham, Wales.
Mr and Mrs Hadwin awake one morning
to discover something very odd.
There are drawings all over the living room wall
and they're drawn in what looks like crayon and pencil.
- The only other person in their house
is their young son, Lee.
But when they confront him with the drawings,
he says he knows nothing about it.
- Lee rightfully points out that he's terrible at art.
He couldn't possibly have done this,
even his art teachers say he's not that great
and these doodles and drawings aren't half bad.
- Night after night, it keeps happening.
New art appears in the morning.
Lee swears he has no idea where it came from,
no memory of it.
Soon they realize he's sleepwalking
and drawing in his sleep.
- As a teenager, Lee continues to sketch in the night.
One night he actually draws
three small pencil sketches
that are very clearly Marilyn Monroe,
but no matter what he does,
he can't replicate any of these drawings when he's awake.
- Even into adulthood,
Lee is still sketching in his sleep.
And now when he starts his nighttime art making sessions,
his partner begins filming him as he works.
When Lee watches the footage,
he is utterly blown away.
Not only is he a skilled artist, he's ambidextrous.
- [Dan] Remarkably, the sleepwalking artist
amasses quite a following.
- He has some pretty high profile clientele
like Kim Kardashian
and the Marilyn Monroe Museum in Hollywood, California.
And with this success,
Lee finally embraces it
and calls himself a sleepwalking artist.
- As unusual as Lee's nocturnal talent is,
there's another man with an even stranger one.
- We're in turn of the century Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
Carrie House, who is a nurse,
and her doctor-husband Thomas
have a three month old premature baby named Tommy
and he's not doing very well.
In fact, they don't know if little Tommy's
gonna make it through the night.
- Because they're in the medical profession,
Carrie and her husband
actually have lots of doctors
in the house on this critical night
to see if they can save little Tommy,
but there's no consensus.
They start arguing about what to do next,
but Carrie's not ready to give up.
She's ready to try anything,
including something pretty unconventional.
- [Dan] Carrie calls in her cousin, Edgar Cayce, to help.
- He has no medical training.
In fact, he's not a doctor at all;
but Edgar has been able to diagnose ailments in his sleep.
He can close his eyes,
go into a trance
and tell you what is physically wrong with people;
sometimes without touching them at all.
- [Dan] When Edgar arrives,
he doesn't waste any time.
Without so much as a glance at Tommy,
he simply finds a quiet spot and preps for sleep.
- Right before Edgar closes his eyes,
he tells Tommy's father to take some notes.
According to Edgar,
he can never remember what he says during these trances
and then Edgar begins to enter this hypnotic trance.
- First, Edgar gives a rundown of all the vital signs:
blood pressure, heart rate.
When it's compared to the actual readings,
he's bang on.
Then Edgar describes the child's condition
as if he's somehow seeing the organs in his mind's eye.
He says the child has some sort of epileptic condition
that causes extreme nausea and vomiting.
- [Dan] Then comes the very bizarre solution.
- Edgar says that Tommy should be given
a dose of belladonna,
a very poisonous and toxic herb,
and then wrapped in a hot poultice
and this will help draw out the toxin.
When Edgar wakes up,
he can hear the doctors and the family
and they're having a big argument.
- Carrie, Tommy's mother,
really wants to try this.
She is all in.
The doctors, even her husband are telling her,
"You will kill this child.
This is murder,
if you administer this high level of belladonna."
Carrie reminds them that they have
literally tried everything else
and nothing has worked,
so essentially she says,
"If I have to poison my son to save him,
that's what I'm gonna do."
[tense music]
- Almost immediately after taking the belladonna,
Tommy's seizures stop
and he falls into what seems to be a deep sleep,
then Tommy wakes up.
He's drenched in sweat,
but his cheeks are pink and he's breathing normally.
Edgar Cayce probably saved his life.
- [Dan] News of his talent quickly spreads
and soon Edgar Cayce becomes a household name.
- Everyone wants a piece of Edgar,
everyone wants him to diagnose them,
including Woodrow Wilson,
Thomas Edison, Nicola Tesla;
and so he kind of becomes this medical rock star.
- Out of profound gratitude,
Carrie and Thomas House built a hospital in Virginia Beach
to focus on the treatments
Edgar channeled during his readings.
Cayce's last reading was for himself in September of 1944
and he told himself that it was time to rest.
Only four months later,
he dies of a stroke.
- What Cayce does in his sleep is astounding.
Certainly beats having that recurring nightmare
of going to school with no pants on.
- You're regarded as one of
the greatest authors to ever live,
then you pass away,
leaving behind a final masterpiece
without its long-awaited ending.
What now?
The answer, it seems,
is nothing short of unbelievable.
- It's June, 1870 in Kent, England.
Charles Dickens is trying his hand
at writing a whodunit, a thriller.
He calls it "The Mystery of Edwin Drood,"
and he's keeping tight-lipped about the details.
Dickens is one of the most popular writers of the day.
He's written "Oliver Twist," "A Christmas Carol,"
among many others.
"Drood" is Dickens' 15th novel,
but his first mystery
and it's being published in serialized form;
in installments.
- [Dan] Before publishing that much anticipated ending
revealing the killer's identity,
Dickens suffers a stroke and dies.
- Of course, the world is mourning
the death of a great author,
but the public is still hungry for more.
Dickens takes the finale and the murderer to his grave.
- Just two years after Dickens' passing,
across the pond,
there's a printer living in Brattleboro, Vermont;
30-year-old Thomas Powers James, or T.P. for short.
T.P. moves into a boarding house
and his landlady is a big believer in spiritualism,
and invites him into her weekly seance,
which is held in her parlor.
On the night of the seance,
T.P. is handed a pen and a sheet of paper.
He is told that on occasion,
spirits will speak through a person
in a process called automatic writing.
In essence, you have become the spirit's hands,
their vessel.
- [Dan] T.P. closes his eyes
and soon feels the pen moving on its own.
- When he opens his eyes, he's astounded.
T.P. had written down information
about all of these strangers,
things he couldn't possibly have known.
The locals are pretty impressed,
so they invite T.P. back the next week,
and he agrees.
- Again, T.P. begins automatic writing.
This time the spirit introduces himself
and you won't believe his identity.
- [Dan] It's none other than Charles Dickens.
- The attendees are blown away and so is T.P,
who by the way,
has no formal education
and not a literary bone in his body.
T.P. meets with this landlady's seance circle a third time,
but this time, T.P. reports
that Dickens has asked him for a great favor.
- T.P. has been commanded
by the spirit of Charles Dickens himself
to finish "The Mystery of Edwin Drood,"
but the ghost has one more demand.
It all must commence on the night of Christmas Eve.
- [Dan] T.P. agrees
and on the night of December 24th,
he retires to a dark private room
to finish Dickens' final chapter.
- According to T.P., when he settles in his chair
and closes his eyes,
he feels an icy hand on his hand.
Dickens is taking over.
T.P. begins writing furiously,
the story just comes pouring out,
but apparently the collaboration does not go smoothly.
The two men have a spirited debate.
- The people outside his door
claim that they can hear two men arguing,
one of them T.P. and one of them Charles Dickens,
who's angry at T.P. for his creative input in the story;
which obviously Dickens does not like.
Word gets out about these nightly arguments
and critics speculate that perhaps T.P.
isn't communing with spirits,
but rather drinking them.
- [Dan] In spite of the critics,
finally on October 25th, 1873,
T.P. James completes the work
and turns in 1200 pages of a manuscript for publication.
- The publisher is thrilled with all the free publicity.
He puts out this handsome leather bound
volume of the book,
"The Mystery of Edwin Drood"
by Charles Dickens and Thomas Powers James.
The book is a hit in America,
but the Brits aren't so quick to believe
T.P.'s story of Dickens asking him
to finish his final masterpiece.
They accused T.P. of being a poser,
a fraud, and a bad writer to boot.
- [Dan] However, there is one surprising ally
who comes to T.P.'s defense.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame
is a proponent of spiritualism
and he thinks the work is a masterpiece.
- Doyle swears that this book
doesn't just read like Dickens,
it is authentic Dickens.
He says that Dickens would be really offended
by all this criticism.
- [Dan] Back in Brattleboro,
T.P. James has offered commissions to write more books,
even another by Dickens,
but he refuses and fades into obscurity.
Dickens' legacy, however, endures.
- Legend has it that evil spirits
are more active at night.
While some people avoid these dark entities,
others will actually pay
for the privilege of being accosted by them.
- Over the last 20 years,
ghost hunting groups have popped up all over America.
There are literally hundreds of them
and they look for places that are haunted.
Normally, some of the darker history of America
is associated with these places.
A notorious one is Joliet Prison.
- After opening in 1858 with fifty three inmates,
the prison quickly earns a dark reputation.
It's a tinderbox of rage and revolt,
which leads to full scale deadly riots.
Punishments are severe.
- There are beatings, whippings,
solitary confinement is something that's often used
and it's brutal on the prisoners.
One prisoner even screamed himself to death
while in solitary confinement.
- [Dan] For most, death is the end of the story,
but at Joliet, some souls appear to stick around.
- What seems to be proof of this
comes about in 1932.
People in the community began telling the story
of what they call the Joliet Singer.
- Every night for a month that summer,
there is heard singing- like church hymns,
in a foreign language,
and yet no source of the singing is seen.
No one is there.
Even the guards report the sounds of disembodied voices,
ghostly wails emanating from prison walls,
and footsteps walking through the massive complex.
- The prison prompts a lot of different beliefs
among both guards and prisoners.
They begin talking about the place
actually being haunted.
- [Dan] After being decommissioned in 2002,
Joliet quickly becomes a hotbed
for would-be Ghostbusters.
- Self-proclaimed paranormal investigators
pay good money to sit
in the darkened cells of the former convicts.
- They'll wander up and down the empty hallways,
climb the rusted staircases,
anywhere that they believe there might be
some kind of spirit activity going on.
- The ghosts of old Joliet have been known
to give sudden and intense feelings to visitors,
from a sense of hopelessness to unexplained rage.
- And the only weapon they have
to defend themselves against these evil spirits
is usually a flashlight.
- Based on all the reports and happenings,
Joliet Penitentiary is almost undoubtedly
one of the most haunted places in Illinois
and one of the most haunted prisons
in the entire country.
[dramatic music]
- But there are even scarier thrills to be had
when darkness falls.
Consider spending the night
in a century old house
with a horrific past.
- It is a Sunday in 1912, in Villisca, Iowa.
Six members of the Moore family,
along with two house guests,
return home after a Sunday church service.
The family and the house guests change clothes,
have their supper,
and they are asleep more or less by sundown.
- Unbeknownst to the Moore family,
someone broke into the house while they were at church
and he's now waiting patiently in the attic.
And as the house is dark and quiet,
the assailant comes down from the attic
and kills every occupant
with the blunt end of an ax.
[uneasy music]
- [Dan] The story is so heinous,
it even displaces the sinking of the Titanic
from the front pages of newspapers.
- A nationwide manhunt follows
and even though suspects are identified,
no one is ever convicted of the crime.
Decades pass and in 1996,
the house actually becomes a museum.
- [Dan] The case may be cold,
but some believe the house still holds on
to the fear and violence of that night.
- Many visitors intuitively know that they're not alone.
They feel eyes on them when there's no one there
and they hear disembodied footsteps.
- This is especially true in the attic,
where it is believed the killer lurked
until the family went to sleep.
Not everybody is terrified of rooms
where a blood splattered crime once occurred.
Some pay to experience it.
- Caretakers at the Villisca Ax Murder House
soon realize that there's a real market
for people who want to stay in the museum
in the dark hours after it closes.
- Now you and your horror seeking friends
can spend just under $500
to earn the privilege
to sleep under the roof of the Villisca Ax Murder House.
- You can even have a snack in the kitchen
where the murderer raided the icebox,
laying out bacon and other items
after he had done the dark deed.
- Wannabe ghost hunters set up cameras
and audio recording equipment,
hoping to capture EVPs or electronic voice phenomena.
Needless to say, not much sleeping takes place.
- From pitch black battles to healing worms,
creating a masterpiece in your sleep
or saving a life in a trance,
these are tales from the dark
that are so strange,
they can only be called unbelievable.