A Haunting: Demon Child

I recently watched a 2006 episode of Destination America's A Haunting called "Demon Child," and since I'm freaked out enough by regular kids, I should've known better to watch this while I was home alone at night. Jan and Dale Foster live in western Kentucky with their two children: Cody, 5, and Pamela, 16.  One day Cody's nanny tells Jan that Cody has started using bad language, threatening her, and talking to someone who isn't there.  Could Cody's imaginary friend be...SATAN?!  Jan asks Cody the name of his new friend, and Cody tells her it is Man; when she walks in on Cody having a conversation with no one, she asks who he is talking to, and he responds, "I'm playing with Man." (That's something no parent ever wants to hear.) While fixing breakfast, Jan tells Dale about Cody's imaginary friend, and they turn around to see Cody staring at them like a creep, and when they tell him to eat his breakfast, he starts screaming at them and acting like a little shit.  Later, Cody tells them that Man is 6 years old and "has brown hair, brown eyes, and pale skin."  When Dale asks where Man came from, Cody says, "from behind the park where the lake is, deep in the ground."  Jan asks if something happened to Man, and Cody tells her that Man was taken away from his mother by a man who did awful things to him.  That's when Jan and Dale realize that Man is the ghost of a murdered child.

Jan asks her friend, a Native American shaman, for help, and he tells her that he thinks Cody invited the spirit into the house, and they must revoke the invitation to get rid of it.  He tells Jan and Dale to burn sage and sweetgrass, put olive oil at each of the home's entryways, and pray.  For three months, everything goes back to normal, then Jan hears Cody talking to Man again.  He then gets really quiet, and when Jan goes to check on him, Cody is holding a Polaroid picture of an old woman and a little boy.  When she takes the picture from Cody, he starts screaming at her, and when Jan asks about it, Cody says that Man is the boy in the picture and that Man gave it to him.  And then things get really weird: when Jan drops Cody off to play at her cousin's house, the woman soon calls Jan at work, crying and saying that Jan needs to come get Cody immediately.  When Jan shows up, her cousin tells her that when Cody was playing with her daughter Kaylee, she heard a deep voice, and then Kaylee started screaming.  She ran into the room to find  toys floating in the air around Cody.

One night, Dale catches Cody cutting up his teddy bear, and Cody tells him that "Man said it would be fun."  Cody uses the same excuse when Pamela is searching for her cat and finds it underneath the couch cushion that Cody is sitting on.  Jan is cleaning one day and realizes that Cody has been peeing on everything in his closet; he says that Man said it would be okay and that he doesn't have to listen to his mother.

Cody finally gets fed up with Man when he starts making his bed shake.  After Cody falls asleep in his parents' room, Jan goes into his room and soon awakes to see Cody standing in the doorway.  He hugs her, and Jan sees his body grow into a full-grown demonically-laughing entity, but he looks normal again when Dale and Pamela come in to see why Jan is screaming.  Jan calls the shaman again and tells him that Man is a demon; he tells her to bless the house again and pray specifically for the demon to leave.  She does, and when she comes back inside, she feels a presence.  Jan continues the blessing inside the house and tells the demon to leave and never come back.  The family sometimes hears strange noises and feels like someone is watching them, and they worry that it's Man trying to reappear in their lives.

This episode of A Haunting was pretty creepy...I'm definitely going to watch some more episodes.

My rating: 9/10

http://www.destinationamerica.com/tv-shows/a-haunting