My Haunted House: The Sorority Sister and the Secret Room

I was scrolling through the Directv guide not too long ago and saw a listing for a show on the Lifetime Movie Network (though the series originally aired on Bio) called My Haunted House.  I'd never watched it, but it sounded like something I would like, so I recorded the episode "The Sorority Sister and the Secret Room."  In college, Jill joined a sorority that was desperate for pledges and offering free room and board; during spring break in March 2010, the other sorority girls left town, but they told Jill that she had to stay and watch the house.  Her first night alone in the house, Jill heard creaking and heavy footsteps, but didn't see anyone when she left her room to check, so she went back to sleep.  The next night, Jill found muddy hand prints all over the walls of the sorority house when she returned from the library and thought she heard someone crying.  She kept hearing noises that night and thought it was a nearby frat party, but soon realized that the sound was actually coming from inside the house; she went to investigate and heard crying coming from upstairs.  Before she could locate who (or what) was making the sound, the phone rang; when she was talking, she looked up and saw a creepy female figure in the mirror, standing behind her.  When she turned around, nothing was there; Jill ran out of the house, and a campus security officer happened to be driving by, so he checked the house and told Jill that he didn't find anyone there and that sometimes big, old houses can be scary.  Jill went back inside (WHY?!) and went to sleep.  Two days later, Jill was watching a movie and left to go to the kitchen for a few minutes; when she returned, she found an old photograph lying on the floor that hadn't been there a few minutes earlier.  She looked at the photo and realized that one of the girls in the picture was the girl she had seen in the mirror, so she decided to get the hell out of there...but that was easier said than done.  Jill packed a bag and tried to leave through the front door, but the lock turned by itself and wouldn't budge when she tried to unlock the door.  The phone rang, and when she answered, Jill heard a voice say "Help me."  Jill decided to check out the attic and see if that's where the crying she'd heard earlier had been coming from, and a box flew off the shelf and almost hit her; when she bent down to open it, she heard a voice whisper "Please don't be afraid."  She looked up to see the girl from the mirror and thought that there was something in the box that the spirit wanted her to see, so she began looking through the photographs she found in it; the pictures were of the girl being hazed by sorority sisters.  Jill searched online for information about a 1987 hazing death and found out about Donna James, a 19-year-old student who was found dead in a field; her death was blamed on alcohol poisoning.  Jill is convinced that Donna's death was caused by hazing and that the sorority covered it up.  Jill decided not to join the sorority, which was a good idea since living with those bitchy sorority sisters sounds even worse than living with a ghost.  

In June 2002, Hayley and Elliott got engaged, and he surprised her with a furnished house he had bought at an auction.  A few weeks after they moved in, Elliott's 9-year-old daughter came to spend a month with them; Jenny wasn't crazy about the fact that her dad was getting remarried, so Hayley was a little nervous to spend two days alone with the girl when Elliott had to leave town for a work emergency.  Hayley was upstairs one day and saw Jenny standing downstairs, weirdly staring at her; the door to the guest bedroom opened by itself, and when Hayley looked downstairs again, Jenny was gone.  Hayley checked the bedroom to make sure a window hadn't been left open; when she turned to leave, the mirror reflected a pair of child's feet behind the curtain, but when she looked at the curtains, the feet weren't there.  She found a a tiny pink bow on the floor, and then Jenny asked Hayley to play hide-and-seek with her.  Hayley noticed that the basement door was open, so she looked for Jenny there, but instead she found a young blonde girl who quickly disappeared, and she later found Jenny hiding upstairs.  The next night, Hayley awoke to sounds coming from underneath her bed; she looked down to see a creepy doll lying on the floor before it was yanked underneath the bed.  She was sure that Jenny must be hiding under the bed, but didn't want to stick her head down there, so she tried looking under the bed with a mirror; as she was doing this, she heard the door creak open and then saw it slam shut.  Hayley checked Jenny's room, but she wasn't there, so she went to the basement and saw Jenny "just standing there, mumbling to the wall."  Hayley kept calling her name, but Jenny didn't respond, so she approached Jenny, who seemed confused after she snapped out of her trance.  Jenny said she didn't remember anything, except that "the wall was talking to her."   One night later, Hayley and Jenny were playing Go Fish when the lights when out; Hayley left Jenny alone to go check the circuit breaker in the basement.  After she got the lights back on, she saw the pink ribbon she'd found earlier lying on the stairs; a hand shot out and grabbed the ribbon, and Hayley screamed.  She told Jenny she had seen a rat, so she wouldn't scare her; she said good night to Jenny and was disturbed when Jenny replied "Goodbye" instead of "Good night."  Hayley later heard Jenny's door open  and tracked her to the basement; Jenny was talking to someone, and when Hayley approached her, she pointed at the wall.  They heard crying coming from the other side of the wall, so Hayley used a sledgehammer to make a hole in the wall and told Jenny to go upstairs.  Hayley saw the blonde girl, but she disappeared; Hayley made a bigger hole in the wall and discovered that there was a hidden room with a bed, a desk, a mirror, and the doll that Hayley had seen in her room.  Hayley called the police, and they took the doll and the sheets from the bed, but said that the evidence was too old for them to be able to find out who had lived in that room.  Hayley thinks that the blonde girl was held there and "wanted someone to know what happened to her."  Jenny later told Hayley that she had also seen the girl and that she has no recollection of playing hide-and-seek or sleepwalking down to the basement.

This show was pretty good and almost as creepy as When Ghosts Attack.  I'll definitely be watching more episodes.

My rating: 8/10

http://www.mylifetime.com/movies/my-haunted-house