When Ghosts Attack: Voices of the Dead

I've watched Destination America's When Ghosts Attack a few times, and it tends to scare the crap out of me, but two of my five most popular blog posts are about the show, so of course I'm going to keep watching and writing about it. This time I chose an episode called "Voices of the Dead."

On May 7, 2003, in Chesapeake, Virginia, Elaine Irving moved into a new house with her family. She thought the house was her dream home, but strange things started happening soon after the family moved in; they'd occasionally hear footsteps in the kitchen and the sounds of pots and pans being thrown, but when Elaine checked, all the pots and pans were still where she left them. Six weeks after they moved in, daughters Crystal and Brittany decided to use a Ouija board one day (always a bad idea) and asked if there were any ghosts in the house. The placard moved to "YES" before Elaine came in and told them not to play with it. On July 15th, the family was burning stuff in the yard, and Elaine threw the Ouija board on the burn pile despite Crystal's protests that spirits might be let out if they burn it. The whole family had terrible dreams that night; Crystal and Elaine both dreamed about a woman banging on the window, begging to be let in the house. Crystal woke up when she felt someone pulling her hair, but no one was there. On the night of October 4th, Elaine was woken up by a hand grabbing her shoulder; she turned over to see if it was her husband and was horrified to find out that it wasn't. Elaine was watching TV on Mother's Day when something started shaking the recliner she was sitting in; when the chair lifted off the floor, Elaine screamed "Get out!" and the chair was returned to its original position. On February 1, 2005, Crystal was taking a bath; she had put a lit candle next to the bathtub, and when the flame went out, she was sure that something was in the room with her. She felt something push her, then the bathroom mirror fell off the wall (landing faceup instead of the way a mirror should land when it falls off of a wall), so she decided to get the hell out of there. She was pushed again before she could get out and landed on the broken glass from the mirror, cutting her leg. Elaine heard her screams and came to check on her, and Crystal started screaming again because it felt like she was being stabbed...then the words "HELP ME MARY" showed up on her leg as if someone had carved them there. Elaine asked a neighbor if he'd heard anything about her house, and he said that a man named Dewey Pendleton used to live there with his mother, who died in the house. Dewey went to work one day, and Mrs. Pendleton's nurse, Mary, showed up late; Mrs. Pendleton got tired of waiting and decided to use the restroom on her own, but she fell and hit her head on the sink. When Mary showed up, she could hear Mrs. Pendleton yelling "Help me, Mary!," but Mary couldn't get into the house, and the old woman died. Two weeks later, Elaine and the girls were helping make wedding decorations at the house next door when Elaine's stepmother left to go back to the Irving house for a few minutes; she was gone longer than expected, and when Elaine went to check on her, she found her stepmother dead on the floor from a heart attack. Elaine decided that the family could no longer live there and moved out three months later. The house was torn down, and no one ever built a new one on the property; the Irving family has not experienced any paranormal activity in their new home.

Historian Erin Wallace took on the task of restoring the historic Magnolia Hotel in Seguin, Texas, and asked her sister, Shelley Wade, to help her on weekends. Since their story is on When Ghosts Attack, I'm guessing that things didn't go exactly according to plan. A serial killer/pharmacist named William Faust stayed at the Magnolia Hotel in 1874; he was in love with his wife's sister, and while he was staying at the Magnolia, he decided to go kill his wife after telling her to stay with friends in New Braunfels. After swinging his ax in the dark, he accidentally killed his friend's 10-year-old daughter instead and only hit his wife once, blinding her. On March 9, 2013, Shelley stayed by herself at the hotel for the first time (in an apartment connected to the hotel), and she heard a door open, so she relatched it and got back in bed. The door opened again, so she latched it again and pulled on it to make sure it wouldn't open again...but of course it did. Shelley thought it would be a good idea to have a priest bless the hotel, so Father Robert Hall came to help on April 18th; the priest thought it was strange that he started sweating when he read aloud from The Bible, and he soon heard the sounds of children laughing and crying upstairs. He blessed those rooms, and the laughing and crying stopped whenever he would stop reading briefly. He decided to get more incense from the car, and when he passed the rooms he'd blessed, he was shocked to see that the rooms were now a mess (broken glass, overturned chairs, etc.). Shelley showed up, and Father Hall told her that something in the hotel didn't want Shelley to stay, then he left. Shelley swept up the glass and went to get the dustpan; when she came back, the glass was all over the floor. At 3:15 a.m., Shelly woke up and felt like something was strangling her; she ran into the bathroom to get some water and saw that she had scratches all over her neck. On April 20th, Shelly's friend Robbie Prince came to look at the hotel and asked to see where William Faust had stayed; he got a weird feeling as soon as he stepped into Room 3 and decided to tell Faust that he was going to burn in hell for what he did to his wife and friend's daughter (yeah, that sounds like a great idea). The woman that was in the room with Robbie suddenly felt like her eyes were burning, so she covered them with her hands, and when she moved her hands away, she had streaks of blood around all over her face. Robbie then felt like someone punched him in the chest, and he found a welt there; he knew that he had been attacked by William Faust. Shelly still stays overnight, only because she's helping her sister, but she stays away from Room 3; paranormal activity still goes on there, and according the hotel's website, they will start offering ghost tours of the Magnolia soon.

http://www.hauntedmagnoliahotel.com/Home_Page.html

I watched this episode during the day (as I always do with When Ghosts Attack), but I still got chills and had to look over my shoulder a few times because I was so creeped-out. This show scares me, but I love it. : )

My rating: 9/10