♪♪
jason: We were all trying to decide if it wasn't just,
you know, our imagination.
Aah! Oh, my god! Go!
I knew I had just made a mistake.
I might pay for this now.
We got to get out of here.
This is insane.
I knew whatever that was... It wanted me.
My god.
Did this thing actually attach itself to, like, my soul?
I command you in the name of jesus christ!
♪♪
I felt like that we went from being the hunters
to being the hunted.
[ creature shrieking ]
I never heard anything like that ever.
It was crashing through the thorn bushes.
It was coming towards us.
He had a white wig on, like a judge.
At that point, I was trying to hold back panic.
[ creature snarls ]
♪♪
my name is matthew gagan.
It all started on a 45-minute drive from orlando
on the east coast.
We were hanging out at my girlfriend's house in palm bay.
Here we go.
Like you're street performing. You're making big bucks.
Here we go. Here we go.
It was the summer of 2010 right before my sophomore year.
My name is jason coster.
Coming in, mattie.
Ohhh.
I've known matt for probably about 12 years now.
We met when we were in middle school,
and we've been, like, best friends ever since then.
We had no plans that night, you know,
was just looking for anything to do.
Hey, guys.
Look at what I found in the attic.
And then that's when his girlfriend had the idea.
A ouija board? Yeah.
You want to give it a go?
You know, I was curious just to see if maybe it did work.
♪♪
it was midnight, almost 1:00 a.M.,
around in that time.
Okay. We have to wait until 3:00 a.M.
That's the dead time, and that is when
the spirit world is closest to our own.
Jason: So I was like, "this isn't real,"
like, not thinking anything is going to happen.
♪♪
we have a couple of hours to kill.
♪♪
we should go to a cemetery.
She actually said, "hey, you know,
there's this supposed haunted graveyard not too far."
what do you guys say?
"we can go do this until 3 a.M."
you know, it's summer. We were all in high school.
We were just looking for a good time.
Let's go then. Come on.
♪♪
the graveyard itself is surrounded
by nothing but woods for miles.
Jason and me, we had been drinking and everything,
so we were all kind of giddy,
but it was a nervous atmosphere, as well.
♪♪
okay, if we see anything, I'm out of here, okay?
I'm not holding my breath.
I'd never been to a graveyard other than, like,
a funeral, you know?
Never been in the middle of the night
to do some stuff like that,
so I was excited and a little nervous
'cause it was my first time doing that.
♪♪
jason!
[ laughter ]
so we're just joking around and laughing
and trying -- "ah!"
katie! Geez!
Trying to scare each other.
Can we just go see some graves, please?
Come on!
It's like the adrenaline of just being scared.
It was fun to us.
[ laughing ] stop it!
Are you freaking serious? Leave me alone.
Jason: The first thing you notice is all the graves on the ground.
There was, like, a little children's graveyard.
You could see on the plaques that the deaths were, you know,
like, just a couple years apart from after they were born.
Aah! Oh, come on.
I said stop it.
♪♪
hey, jason.
Come look at this.
♪♪
the mausoleum stood about 12, 15 feet.
It was closed, and the lights were all off in there.
It brought my curiosity out.
Matt, be careful.
Matt tried to peek in and see.
You couldn't really see in there 'cause it was so dark.
I'm going in.
Matt: I tried yanking on the door.
I tried, honestly, breaking the door open.
Ah, come on, man. We're wasting our time.
But it wouldn't open up.
Let's go.
♪♪
right after we tried to open the mausoleum door
was when he was like, "oh, guys, I really got to pee."
nature calls.
Matt, where are you going? Go in the forest.
Matt: Instead of being a respectful person
and going off to, like, the fence line or something...
[ splashing ] too late, now.
Aw, come on, man. Stop.
...Stupid teenager,
I decided to just pee all over these graves.
We were like, "oh, you know,
that's probably not a good idea, man."
but he did anyway.
Hope I don't go to hell.
[ laughing ] it's too late for you now.
♪♪
after I had finished, the whole atmosphere changed.
Everything changed.
Like, you felt like you were being watched.
♪♪
we keep walking, and then we start feeling cold air,
like, cold breezes hitting us.
You feel that?
It's florida. It doesn't get that cold.
Matt, check the trees.
Jason: Whenever that breeze would hit you,
you would see the leaves on the trees move,
but just in certain spots, like where we were standing.
So, I was a little creeped out.
My grandmother used to say that a cold wind
passing you was the dead.
She tells us that it's supposed to be a spirit passing by us.
They're lost souls.
You got, like, this feeling that just,
like, ran down your spine, just a chill.
I was excited.
I was scared, but I was excited to see
what the night was about to unfold.
♪♪
I need to take a shot. Come on.
She was hoping to catch something on camera,
maybe some white orbs, you know, whatever she could.
Ready? One, two, three.
Smile.
Ugh, I can't believe you just did that.
Ugh.
♪♪
she just was looking into her camera with, like,
a face of horror, and she said to us,
like, "guys, you need to see this."
those two faces above you, matt...
You could see these, like, two faces
kind of up a couple feet above his head.
Matt: They looked angry.
Like, they looked very mad, like very mad,
and they were just above my head, looking down on me.
They're angry with us, matt!
I got absolutely terrified.
Like, I knew I had just made a mistake.
♪♪
I did something horribly wrong, and I might pay for this now.
♪♪
matt: When I was looking at her camera,
there was this strong gust of wind.
♪♪
and then suddenly, the picture went black,
and it was just -- it was gone.
The flash drive was corrupted.
Like, she lost everything that was on that flash drive.
I was freaked out.
What you did to that grave was really stupid.
We should just leave.
Please.
I was truly terrified, but my adrenaline was pumping.
Like, I wanted to see more.
Jason: He was like, "naw, man."
like, "this is what we came from.
Let's stay and see what happens."
♪♪
[ indistinct whispering ]
♪♪
matt: As we were walking down the path,
the wind started picking up.
[ indistinct whispering ]
this time, we started hearing whispers,
but it was like you couldn't make out
what the whispers were saying.
It was just being carried with the wind.
[ indistinct whispering ]
I started, like, trying to listen harder.
[ whispering continues ]
and it sounded like children.
♪♪
geez, katie!
Jason: Everybody got freaked out.
You couldn't understand what they were saying,
but you could hear it, and everybody heard it.
[ indistinct whispering ]
♪♪
[ thud ]
do you hear that?
♪♪
you could see shadows,
like, just darting back and forth.
[ flashlight clicking ]
♪♪
[ screams ] oh! Oh, my god!
Go! Go, go, go, go! Go!
Matt: She screamed and just started running immediately.
She had seen something over there.
♪♪
we should leave.
Something's wrong. I can feel it.
You had enough?
You know, the hairs on your neck --
back of your neck sticking up.
And I was feeling -- I was pretty freaked out
at that point.
I was trying to hide it well.
I'm good. I'm good, man.
[ metal hinges squeaking ]
you could hear metal scraping back and forth,
and we were trying to figure out
where this noise was coming from.
[ metal hinges squeaking ]
♪♪
there was just this shadow standing there,
and you could see it just push the gate.
[ metal hinges squeaking ]
you could tell that it wasn't a person.
At that point, I was, like, done with it.
I was freaked out.
Matt!
I was like, "dude, this is what we came for,
but I think we've seen enough."
like, "let's get out of here."
come on.
♪♪
she was trying to talk to me, but, like, I was in this trance.
We stirred something up.
♪♪
matt, let's go.
And she said that I felt like ice cubes.
Like, I felt like an ice cube to the touch,
but I was just numb.
♪♪
jason: We circled back around.
We're coming back to the van.
We're walking, and we had to pass the mausoleum
to get back out.
♪♪
we look over and see the light shining first,
and then you seen the door cracked open
a couple inches, and we were like --
we were asking each other, like, "is that the same one?"
like, "wasn't that closed before?"
♪♪
and then we were all like, "yeah, yeah, yeah,"
and we were like, "all right. You know,
the shadow moving the gate and now the mausoleum's open,"
and it was clearly locked 'cause we tried to open it.
But matt doesn't say a word.
He's not even paying attention to us.
You could, like, feel electricity in the air,
and I felt like something wanted me to go inside this mausoleum.
♪♪
what's the matter with you? Come on.
♪♪
the door just slammed shut, like, loudly,
like, aggressively just...
Bam! Slammed closed, and we were like,
"we got to get out of here. This is insane."
big matt is running way faster than us,
and that's when he turns around to see where we were.
And then his jaw just drops, and his eyes were wide,
and he got, like, white in the face.
♪♪
matt: Standing underneath the light was this shadow,
but this shadow actually took a form.
It was angry.
It was mad, and it wanted retribution.
♪♪
what I saw just shook me to my core.
Jason: Matt's terrified.
I've never seen him look like that ever.
You know, he's a -- you know, he's the tough guy of the group.
He's always not scared of anything.
And so to see him like that, we were like,
"what is it? What is it? What are you looking at?"
I couldn't formulate any words 'cause I was so petrified.
And then all he can do is, he just points.
We turn around, and that's when we see
the same huge ghost or spirit.
We took off running back to the van.
It starting picking up its hand to point at me.
I could tell that it wanted me to pay for what I had done.
And then it made a dash towards me.
[ indistinct whispering ]
and I just ran, man.
I ran as fast as I could.
[ engine starts ]
♪♪
when I got into the van, my girlfriend said,
"you just saw a demon."
like, "that was a demon, and it was there for you."
♪♪
it was the scariest moment of my life.
I've never been so scared before,
never in my life.
Like, I'm shaking just talking about it.
Every time I tell this story, I get scared, and I shake.
It was scary, man.
♪♪
when we got back to my girlfriend's parents' house,
she was like, "you guys can just sleep here tonight,"
but I was afraid to go to sleep.
♪♪
my brain was still trying to process, like,
"did I really see this?
Did it come for me?"
and I kept thinking till, like, the sun started to come up.
♪♪
I went to go to the bathroom.
♪♪
and when I looked at myself in the mirror,
I just didn't feel like the same me.
You know, I didn't feel like myself anymore.
♪♪
when I went home, I don't know why,
but I just felt like something bad was gonna happen to me.
♪♪
hey, mom. I'm home.
♪♪
and then I thought about how my girlfriend had said
I'd be lucky if nothing attached itself to me
for peeing all over those graves.
I was just thinking. I was like, "my god.
Did this thing actually attach itself to, like, my soul?"
[ knocking ]
where have you been, matty?
My mother -- she is very religious.
I've been worried.
And I didn't want to upset her, but I was petrified.
You know, like, if this thing attached itself to me, like,
if I went to sleep, would it then show itself in my dreams?
♪♪
[ indistinct whispering ]
♪♪
that's when I finally passed out, like, went to sleep.
♪♪
I just woke up at, like, 3:00 a.M.
I couldn't move my body.
♪♪
like, I was like [gasps], you know,
trying to catch my breath.
I felt like somebody was trying to choke me.
♪♪
what was probably just a couple of minutes of time
felt like an eternity to me.
Like, I couldn't breathe.
♪♪
[ indistinct whispering ]
aaah!
♪♪
[ ball thumping ]
when I woke up that morning from the night before,
I was still coming over that fear.
[ thumping continues ]
♪♪
what's up, man?
He's like, "dude."
he's like, "you're not gonna believe this."
something happened last night.
He tells me that he's just glued to his bed, and he can't move,
and he can't move his head or anything,
and he just feels like he's being suffocated.
- Your neck. - What?
Matt: I had these scratches.
It looked like somebody was trying to strangle me
in my sleep.
Well, you could see it start
around his neck area coming down.
You're all torn up.
Matt: It went down to my chest.
I was thinking that he was haunted for sure
because of what he did at that graveyard.
Have you told your parents?
♪♪
- mom? - Hey, matty.
Matt: I told my mom about how I had seen that figure,
like a humanoid figure, a shadow.
We think we stirred something up.
She saw those marks on my neck,
and she decided to call a priest.
♪♪
I grew up christian, but I had bad things
that had happened in my life that I kind of lost my faith.
♪♪
matt...
Do you believe in god?
♪♪
take my hand.
Pray with me.
Holy mary, mother of god...
[ prays indistinctly ]
♪♪
[ indistinct whispering ]
♪♪
listen carefully.
The priest himself said that he could feel an essence
in my house and around me.
There is a demon.
I'm sure of it.
He's like, "you had angered spirits,
and those spirits called for a demon."
you need an exorcism.
♪♪
[ men singing in latin ]
♪♪
matt: I was feeling anxious and nervous.
♪♪
he had these crosses -- little wooden crosses
that he had dipped in holy water,
and he hung them above, like, every room in my house.
♪♪
[ speaking latin ]
he started off, put holy water on me.
Priest: In the name of jesus,
I command you, unclean spirit,
to leave this body!
I felt hot. I started sweating.
Show yourself!
In the name of the father
and the son
and the holy spirit,
I command you -- show yourself!
[ cracking ]
♪♪
leave this body of your servant matthew.
Leave this body!
I command you in the name of jesus christ!
[ snarling ]
they talk about people, when they get possessed,
that the spirit speaks to them.
Release the demon from your servant matthew.
I never heard any voices in my head,
but I could feel the anger.
Release this demon!
I compel you to release this demon!
Ah!
Ah! Ah, ah!
Ah!
[ growling ]
ah!
♪♪
matt: And when I opened my eyes...
♪♪
...I started feeling better.
I started feeling like, you know, it worked.
It was like, "I think it worked.
I think I'm okay. I think I'm in the clear.
I don't think I'll have anything attached to myself anymore."
♪♪
jason: I think the ghosts at that cemetery are not at rest.
I would never go back there because of the crazy things
that we experienced there.
[ screams ] oh, my god.
Go! Go, go, go, go!
That experience molded me
into the man that I am today, I feel.
♪♪
as a teenager, you know, you don't care what you do.
You know, I was -- I was an ****,
but it made -- it humbled me.
It made me more humble.
It brought me back to my faith.
There is spirits.
There is demons. There are ghosts.
There is a god.
There is a hell.
It made me realize that you --
what energy you put out, you receive back.
[ indistinct whispering ]
aaah!
♪♪
I felt like that we went from being the hunters...
[ snarling ]
...To being the hunted.
I never heard anything like that, ever.
Then it was crashing through the thorn bushes.
It was coming towards us.
He had a white wig on, like a judge.
At that point, I was trying to hold back panic.
[ snarling ]
♪♪
my name is ben regney.
I grew up in the woods all around pittsburgh.
That's where I hung out when I was a kid.
One of the first memories I ever had
was making a box fire in the woods with my dad.
He was a big hunter.
So was his dad.
I remember my dad teaching me how to use a bow and arrow.
I shot my first deer when I was 12.
Feels like it takes you back to how we all used to be anyway.
I skin them myself and butcher them myself and quarter them.
It's something more like, you know, primal.
♪♪
I couldn't even count how many times I've been hunting,
but this day was not normal.
♪♪
it was the first day of bow season.
My uncle's property is where we were hunting,
and it's a heavily wooded area --
old oak trees, big pine trees.
My uncle -- he said that he heard weird stuff
back there before,
you know, like screaming in the woods.
[ woman screaming ]
and I probably, you know, kind of dismissed
and didn't believe because,
you know, you got the animals that make sounds in the woods.
That's calming to me.
[ animal shrieks ]
♪♪
[ walkie-talkie crackles ]
brandon: Hey, ben?
Hey, brandon.
You all set?
It's quiet here.
My buddy brandon was on the other side
of the property, actually, so he would have been
a good 800 to 1,000 yards away from me.
Good luck, buddy.
Yeah, keep me updated.
Will do.
I scouted every inch of this place.
You know what I mean?
I just wanted to find the best spots.
But that afternoon, I hadn't seen any deer,
so I waited, and I waited,
looking for some kind of sign.
♪♪
finally, I seen movement.
And I was like, you know, "here we go."
you know, "I got one coming out."
and I actually got my bow up,
and I got ready for this deer to come out.
And it stopped behind a tree.
It would have been 30, 35 yards away from me.
It would have been a good shot.
I would have been able to have a --
if it would have came out broadside,
I would have had a good shot on it.
I seen movement again.
Man, my heart started going.
I'm pumped up now. All right.
And I thought it was the deer coming out...
♪♪
...But it was a man.
It was as if he was floating across the woods.
I didn't see legs walking.
I didn't -- his arms didn't sway.
He didn't look down like you would look in the woods
to see if you're walking on anything.
I couldn't make sense of it.
I picked up my binoculars.
Maybe, you know, I would be able to
figure out a little bit better.
♪♪
[ snarling ]
it looked like somebody from the 1700s.
He's got a judge wig on
and one of those shirts on that's ruffled, like,
down the middle.
[ screaming ]
and I hear this scream.
It scared me, and I was...
I'm never afraid in the woods, you know,
and I was getting scared now.
But then when was watching...
...He disappeared.
Gone.
But I'm still looking. Like, he's got to be there.
[ chuckles ] you know, I'm still looking at this tree.
He's got to be there.
And I'm looking. It's just not there.
He's not there.
I knew I seen something that couldn't be explained.
It was an uncomfortable feeling, so I called my buddy up.
Hey, brandon.
Come to my spot quick.
♪♪
what's up?
Yeah, I told him first. I said, "brandon,"
I said, "I was looking, and I seen a guy
that was dressed like he was in the 1700s,
and he just disappeared here."
[ laughing ] you're messing with me.
Man, I'm not joking.
He knew I was serious, like, from that point on.
It started getting towards the end of dusk.
It does tend to get darker a lot quicker
than it does outside of the woods.
And I wanted to show brandon where this was at
before it got completely dark out.
He disappeared right by this tree root.
♪♪
it's muddy right there.
I would have seen tracks, no doubt about it.
100% would have seen tracks.
Oh, there's nothing.
There's no footprints there.
I thought that I -- that I seen a ghost.
[ woman screaming ]
♪♪
something's happening, and it doesn't feel right.
It doesn't feel good.
Nothing's been through here.
All I see is our footprints.
It was a sickening feeling.
♪♪
and I felt like I was being watched, even.
♪♪
let's get our gear and go.
♪♪
I was within 35 yards from my tree stand,
and not only that, I mean, I'm standing exactly
where I seen this guy go through while I was in my tree stand,
so I knew exactly where I was at.
At least, I thought that I did.
♪♪
we thought we walked right back at the tree stand,
and we couldn't find it.
The tree stand should be right here.
I never was lost in those woods before.
I knew those woods like the back of my hand.
We must have lost our bearings back there.
What other thing can you think of?
We know all of that woods so well.
But we figured, we're just gonna walk straight,
and, we'll, you know -- we'll just go to a light
and see where we're at.
♪♪
but we're walking, and, you know,
it was 45 minutes to an hour.
We're still back in these woods.
And you got to understand, like,
this is 10 minutes at the most to get out of these woods
every other time.
The weirdest part was, like, what we were walking through
didn't feel like the same woods anymore.
I don't recognize any of this.
♪♪
[ woman screaming ]
we hear this scream.
[ screaming continues ]
it sounded like somebody getting murdered.
In fact, brandon said that that's what it sounded like.
He said, "geez. It sounds like somebody's getting murdered
down in the thicket there."
and it did.
[ screaming continues ]
and it stopped.
It was definitely not an animal.
I know all those sounds in the woods.
We thought, "maybe somebody's back there that needs help."
♪♪
come on, man.
This thicket was made up of thorns.
A person wouldn't be in there.
It didn't make sense to us.
We don't know where we're at,
and now we hear something like that
in the thicket, screaming like that.
You know, it just took us completely off guard.
Pick up the pace here, buddy.
What do we do here? Like, what's going on?
Like, this is getting too weird now.
[ branches snapping ]
that's when we heard something
crashing through the thorn bushes,
pushing stuff out of the way like this to come towards us.
I felt like that we went from being the hunters
to being the hunted,
and I didn't even know what we were being hunted by.
♪♪
and I just was kind of bewildered by the whole thing.
Whatever it was didn't run away.
You know, it wasn't like it seen us,
and we spooked it, and it ran away
like any other animal would do in the woods.
My flashlight ran out.
It was gone.
It felt like something was in there hiding, looking at us.
It was, like, almost like it was playing with us,
almost like you're a toy.
♪♪
hey, let me see that light.
Immediately, I was, like, struck, like...
This is our footprint.
I told brandon --
I was like, "brandon, look where you're at."
I said, "is that the same trees where we started?"
we were standing in the exact same area
where I seen the guy come across.
How are we there?
We didn't walk in a circle.
I mean, it's almost like we just appeared there again.
♪♪
I see my tree stand.
It's right there in the bottom of the tree.
There's our stuff.
I went and got my bow and my pack.
What the hell just happened?
♪♪
[ snarling ]
that's when we heard another scream, but it was different.
[ snarling continues ]
and I never heard anything like that, ever.
Let's get out of here.
When we first heard it, it sounded like
maybe somebody needed help.
The second time we heard it,
we felt like we needed help.
[ snarling ]
yelling at us like it didn't want us there.
♪♪
[ snarling ]
♪♪
we got out in less than 10 minutes.
We got in the truck,
and I don't think that we talked to each other
until we got back onto the main road.
There was no possible explanation
that we could come up with.
♪♪
after that day in the woods,
I know that there's stuff that happens
that we have no idea about, that we can't explain.
I always felt free out there,
but my uncle's land --
those woods after that day were almost like --
turned into, like, these, like, mystic woods from me [chuckles],
something that I wanted to stay away from after that, and I did.
And I didn't hunt those woods after that.
♪♪