The Dead Files (2011) s02e03 Episode Script

Scandal in the South

There's a lot of screaming.
Secrets were buried.
You can hear, like, an echo in the ground.
The land is tainted.
There's something right over my shoulder.
He was like a tyrant.
He liked to hang people.
Definitely there were people who died on this land.
He was shot.
I just see blood.
He made a mistake and he paid the ultimate price.
Now they're gonna get her.
Bad things happened.
There's something down there.
My name is Amy Allan.
A lot of dead people are here.
I see dead people.
This is not good.
I speak to dead people.
.
He is very pissed off.
And they speak to me.
.
The house is angry.
But there's only one way to know if my findings are real.
He's killed people.
I rely on my partner.
I'm Steve Dischiavi.
I'm a retired New York City homicide Detective.
.
He got shot at his house? And I know every person, every house has secrets.
Aren't you terrified being here? It's my job to reveal them.
That sounds like something out of "The Exorcist.
" But Steve and I never speak.
.
We never communicate during an investigation.
.
Until the very end.
.
It's bad.
When we uncover if it's safe for you to stay.
.
I'd like some answers.
Or time to get out.
Amy and I conduct our investigations separately.
We'll never know each other's findings till the very end.
It's my job to find out the history of each location, interview the witnesses, and see if there's any correlation to Amy's experiences.
We're down in Cartersville, Georgia.
I got contacted by a woman named Cynthia, who just this year moved into her dream house with her husband and her three boys.
Problem is, they're starting to see apparitions, they're hearing things, and there's stuff going missing in the house.
The whole family's terrified.
So I'm going over there to meet her now, see what I can find out about it.
Before I get to a location, I enter a meditative state.
I call this opening because it allows me to open up and receive information from the dead.
There's this big guy.
Like, he might be 6-foot, but, like, he might be taller.
He's a big guy.
And he's standing by two graves.
And then I could hear, like, screaming.
Damn it.
Before Amy enters a location, I go in and either cover or remove anything that can influence her findings.
This house is filled with a lot of personal items, so it's important that I take my time to remove everything.
Once I clear the house, Amy can begin her walk.
They're upset.
Who are "they"? The dead people.
This is not good.
Now, Cynthia, you said you were in the house about five months.
- Mm-hmm.
- Okay, what happened that made you think there was something wrong? Loud stomps in our bedroom, women weeping, apparitions.
Things that set the whole house a little on edge.
Now you gotta be frightened for your kids, I would think.
Definitely.
We just wanna make sure that everybody's okay here.
When was the first time that something unusual happened to you in the house? Right off the bat when I started sleeping here, I realized I was hearing a child cry.
It was just a very deep sob.
It was loud enough to me that it would wake me.
There are young people.
There were children.
Seeing all these children.
And they're running and hiding, running and hiding, because they're afraid of something.
.
Happening to them.
They're running and hiding because they're afraid that they're gonna get hurt.
But you don't know by what? No.
You explained on the phone about.
.
Things missing in the house.
Things that go missing are very frequently in the upstairs bedroom.
My husband things.
.
He'll place them on his side of the bed, and they'll magically be on my side of the bed in the morning.
There's a.
.
Person who's stealing things.
He's still here.
My youngest son played hide-and-go-seek with a couple of little children outside that we never could find.
And the neighbors informed us that there are no children that live in this area.
There's, like, running children.
Running, and children are running.
They were kind of, like, devious.
They would just play pranks and stuff, like, I think to get attention.
For some reason, it makes them feel like they're alive.
I wanna ask them why they're here, but they won't answer me.
I don't know who's taking stuff because I don't really see the kids taking anything.
I wanted to blame them, but I don't know who's taking these things.
So what do you know about the house? The main legend with this house is that in the '20s, there was a Sheriff that lived here, and he, um, he liked to hang people, - and.
.
- Wait, wait.
Come again with that? He was hanging black men outside the window in the kitchen.
Okay, so there was this man.
He's thin.
This is not the big guy.
He says, "oh, so you're here to talk to me, are you?" Maybe he was the owner at some point.
Bad things happened.
- Mm.
- You all right? This room just kinda.
.
It's a little much for me.
I can see that.
Your whole demeanor just changed.
Yea.
Take a deep breath, relax.
I'm here.
I'll go in.
All right, I'll go into the room.
Okay.
So this is the room you consider evil? Or.
.
Yes.
Yeah, this was my art studio.
I managed to work in here maybe two weeks, and.
.
I was working on something, then all of a sudden, my heart started racing and my face flushed and I'm sweating and I couldn't breathe, and I just.
.
I had to get out.
There's something right over my shoulder just saying, "get out of here.
" "You're.
.
You're in my way.
You're in my space.
" "This is mine, and you need to go somewhere else.
" There's also a female that's involved.
Her head was messed up, so maybe she had depression.
She would go outside in the garden and cry.
All the time, crying.
You had mentioned something about the top of the staircase.
Almost everyone has encountered just feeling like there was someone there with you on the staircase, and your hair on your arms will stand up.
It's a woman presence, like a.
.
A.
.
A sad feeling.
She wanted to get out of the.
.
Situation that she was in.
I'm hearing.
.
I'm hearin'.
.
What are you hearing? - Mm.
Oh, God.
- Well, what are you hearing? Uh, "murder.
" So here's the thing about this place.
There's a lot of energy here, but it's not being.
.
Revealed, and that's really frustrating to me.
Sometimes when an entity knows I'm in the vicinity, it'll try to obstruct my senses.
And that's what I'm experiencing right now.
Someone or something does not want me to know what has really happened here.
There is a lot of interference going on, and I'm not exactly sure where it's coming from.
But I feel like.
.
It's another dead person.
The large figure appears here pretty regularly.
Does it wake you up? Or you're awake first and then.
.
No, it wakes me.
When I'm asleep, he'll be beside the bed.
And if I have any skin exposed, I'll have an icy cold touch or.
.
You know, he'll.
.
He'll pet me, and I.
.
I don't understand that.
How do you sleep at night? I don't.
There's, like, someone.
.
I think it's a male, and it's a dark figure.
And this is the entity.
He.
.
Doesn't want anybody to know about him.
- Mm-hmm.
- So he hides.
The accident being seen.
.
They don't want to be seen? No.
Big, big, big, big, big mistake.
But it's happened, and this is not good.
So, Ben, I was talking to your wife Cynthia, and she explained some pretty bizarre things going on in the house.
What about you? You had any issues? When we first moved in, I fell asleep on the sofa, watching a movie.
And when I woke up in the middle of the night, there was this large, 6-foot-5 guy that was just standing over me.
Did you think it was an intruder? At first I did, because, I mean, all I could see was this.
.
Like, a shadow figure.
Mm.
And when I seen it, it gave me the chills, it creeped me out, and I ran upstairs.
She's having some weird things happen to her.
I mean, she's getting touched.
Yeah, that's what's got me worried the most, is if she's getting touched.
You know, I don't want the kids to experience it and stuff.
I had a dream that I actually sat down at the kitchen table and had a cup of coffee with the guy.
And in that dream, he had told me that the house that is sitting here right now wasn't the house originally.
That's a little odd.
How about the rest of the house here? Any.
.
Any strange things? My worst part's the outside.
Really? I used to do landscaping and working a lot of cemeteries.
It almost gives me that same eerie feeling of walking through a grave-site or something.
I kinda know what the ground is supposed to feel like.
.
- Okay.
- And.
.
It just feels hallowed.
I don't understand that.
You can actually almost hear, like, an echo in the ground when you're walking.
They're upset because their secrets were buried.
There was a lot of stuff covered up under their land, buried under the ground here.
And there was a lot of screaming.
Um.
.
So you don't know why? Or.
.
Well, they're getting murdered.
I'm meeting with Cynthia's former tenant Julian.
She tells me he got scared and left the house after just a couple of months.
Julian, can you explain to me what happened to you when you were here? There was one night, it was, like, my first real time being at the house by myself for basically the whole day.
All of a sudden, I heard a really loud thud.
It made me think at first somebody was in the building.
You know, somebody had went through the window or something.
So I grabbed my gun and I started looking around and I never found anything.
So you never found where exactly the sound came from? No, I sure didn't.
And when you were searching, did you actually hear it again or was it just the one time? It was just that one time.
I mean, you're frightened about the house? Yeah.
Honestly, yeah.
I felt kind of frightened.
Did you leave after that? Yeah, I sure did because it felt like there was somebody watching me on the back of my head that didn't want me there, so I left.
Now Cynthia's got three little boys.
You think it's safe for them to stay here? No, because, you know, there is something here.
What do you think it is? It's hard to say what it is.
There's definitely something.
I looked.
.
I looked around, everything of my best of knowledge to try to come up with a logical explanation, and there wasn't any.
How do the dead interact with the living, Amy? Noises.
The noises are definitely the kids.
Know that.
The kids are making the noise with the floors and the stairs and the this and the this.
I know it's the kids.
I think they're the ones who make stuff move.
They know how to do that.
So what.
.
What sort of things do they do? Knock something over.
I went to the Courthouse to do a little research, and I found that a Chief of Police did in fact live in Cynthia's house in the 1920s.
According to his death certificate, he was fatally shot.
I'm assuming he was killed on the job.
Now I have to find out who killed him and why.
Chief, I'm doing a background investigation on a home, and I came across some records that indicated he was a Police Chief and that he was murdered.
I figured the only people that would really know about that, being a former Detective myself, would be the police in town.
Do you know anything about that case? It's Chief Joe Ben Jenkins.
He was 65 when he was shot and had been Chief for 12 years.
The land was always tainted.
Things were always messed up in this area.
And that's why people are mean to each other, you know, do bad things, because the people that were murdered here.
.
It was a bad situation.
Definitely there were people who died on this land.
Where was he murdered? He was murdered outside his residence.
- He got shot at his house? - At his house, yeah.
The land is tainted.
It was a bad situation.
Definitely there were people who died on this land.
This is a picture of Chief Joe Ben Jenkins.
He was murdered outside his residence.
Do you know anything else about him? He had six children, some of them, I believe, were still fairly young at the time of his death.
Some of the kids would've been home when this happened.
Yeah, they could've been.
Was he coming home from work? What.
.
What were the circumstances? He went outside to deal with two black males.
.
A man named John Willie Clark and his brother, who were parked outside in, uh, what ultimately turned out to be a stolen car.
What's the story with him? Did he work in the area? He was an escapee from a Murray County work camp.
So he was in a stolen car, sitting outside the Chief's home, drinking.
The Chief went outside, apparently, to arrest him.
John Willie Clark attempts to crank his car and leave.
The Chief retrieves his pistol, and as he's pulling them out of the car, a struggle ensues over the pistol.
- Okay.
- And during that fight, a round is fired and hits Chief Jenkins under the eye, goes into his brain, kills him instantly.
So he gets killed outside the house, fighting over his gun.
.
And then they fled the scene.
Okay, so they.
.
They leave, and I'm assuming now there's a manhunt for John Willie Clark and his brother.
Quite a number of people were out.
In fact, the Mayor and the County Commissioner had put up a $1,000 reward, which would've been significant at the time, during the depression.
Wow.
I wasn't expecting this.
It's 1930.
It's prohibition.
They're in a stolen car, they're drinking, and they're in front of the Chief of Police's house.
Do you know if John Willie Clark had any interaction with the Police Chief prior to going to jail? Yes.
He's pretty pale-looking, and he's wearing a very nice suit or something, and it's dark.
He's.
.
A little threatened.
I think that he was kind of like a tyrant kind of guy.
Very controlling.
He was.
.
He was.
.
He was controlling.
He was controlling.
I'm about to meet with the City Attorney David Archer.
He's the town's unofficial historian.
I already know about Chief Jenkins.
Now I need to learn about the other part of the story.
.
John Willie Clark, the murderer.
John Willie Clark was driving a stolen vehicle.
There was a uh, pretty widespread hunt for him, but he disappeared for several days.
Now if I read correctly, he gets shot during the manhunt? Yeah, someone shot him in the leg, and he was given medical treatment before the Sheriff brought him to the Bartow County Jail.
A group of people went to the jail.
There were 40 to 50 individuals that had masks on.
They opened the cell.
.
They told John Willie Clark to, uh, come with 'em.
They took him downstairs, they bound him, and the next morning, John Willie Clark was found hanging.
John Willie Clark, uh, obviously knew Cartersville a little bit because he had been arrested here a few times.
Apparently.
You know, the police force in Cartersville at that time consisted of four officers plus the Chief.
- It wasn't a real big force.
- Mm.
It could be that he had been arrested several other times, and it could be he had a grudge against the.
.
The Police Chief.
But I think John Willie Clark was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
He was stupid, he was drunk, he made a mistake, and he paid the ultimate price for it.
And so did the Police Chief.
So now I'm hearing this screaming.
There's a lot of screaming.
Who's screaming? Well, this is, like, taking place outside.
I felt like someone had a brown glass bottle, and drinking, drinking this stuff.
There's a lot of people scattering, running, screaming.
I just see, like, the wound and.
.
Like, all this blood.
There's a lot of screaming.
Who's screaming? Well, this is, like, taking place outside.
These people are running.
They're scattering, running, screaming.
And then there's this woman coming forward, and she used to work here.
She took care of everybody.
She ran the house.
Respectable people, decent people.
Something about this story does not add up, doesn't seem right at all.
You got two black men, one of which just escaped from jail.
.
Sitting in a stolen car in 1930s Georgia during prohibition, and he's drinking.
I'm going to meet with a local historian.
.
Ed Bostick.
I'm hoping he can shed some light on this whole mystery.
Well, Ed, thanks for meeting me, but, uh, I gotta ask you, why in the cemetery? This is the grave-site of Joe Ben Jenkins.
.
The Police Chief who was murdered in 1930.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.
You got two black men, stolen car, drinking during prohibition.
- One of them just escaped from jail.
.
- Right.
And he's sitting in front of the Police Chief's house.
Right.
Why? Is it a bad timing on their part? Is it a coincidence? There's local gossip that Will Clark's wife was in the house, that she had been employed by the Jenkins family, and that the Chief had been making untoward passes at her, maybe groping her, and Will Clark was there to retrieve his wife.
There's a lot of drama.
Like, almost like a forced marriage.
Who is this relationship between that you're talking about? It's this man and this woman.
- The thin man? - The thin man, yeah.
He.
.
Had issues.
He's, like, O.
C.
D.
and controlling and kind of, uh, tyrannical.
So we don't know if.
.
Even if this was true, if it was consensual between the Chief and her.
It's a fairly common story among the black community of Cartersville that Will Clark was somehow justified in going there, that he was defending his wife's honor.
French Detective novels have a saying about this.
In French, it's "cherchez la femme," which means "look for the woman.
" You know, now thinking about what you're saying, it makes more sense to me that.
.
Well, he may have broke out of jail and then was drinking to get enough.
.
Enough courage to go in there and confront this guy.
That seems a more likely explanation to me than coincidence.
How did it look for a white Police Chief to be coming on to a black woman that was even working for him, for that matter? It would've been scandalous.
She wanted to get of this.
.
Situation that she was in, and she didn't like having, you know, to have sex with him.
He repulsed her.
She hated him.
It was disgusting.
I'm trying to figure out who these people are that you're talking about.
- It's the skinny guy and the lady.
- Okay.
And then she's just showing me in a bed.
She's in a bed and she's dead.
She's dead.
She's dead.
I encountered several entities on my walk, so I decided to have a sketch artist draw the most prominent two.
First, the big man.
.
Is his hat way down on his head? Does he squint? Or are his eyes.
.
- Yeah, kinda squinty.
- Pretty.
.
Pretty close? Okay.
He's a stocky dude.
- Okay.
- Like, he's a big, stocky guy.
And the angry thin man.
When you see his eyes, are they fully open? - This part.
.
- Mm-hmm.
- Is, like, rounder.
- Okay.
You said you see him in his suit.
Black jacket, white, very high collar, and a bow-tie.
How old would you say he is? Probably like.
.
45? Is that him? Yep, that's him.
Now that Amy and I have finished our investigations, this is the first time we'll be hearing each other's findings.
Amy, this is their dream house.
They got it about five, five and a half months ago.
They actually lease with an option to buy.
Um, but they've had some issues in the house.
Yeah.
They've got three young boys, and I think the most important question is, - are the kids safe? - Definitely.
And should they spend the money to buy the place? It's going to be difficult for Cynthia and Ben to hear the truth about their home.
But I've encountered a lot of activity here, and it's crucial for them to be aware of what's going on here.
The first thing that I ran into were the giggling kids.
There were two children, a boy and a girl.
These children like to make noise here, especially on the stairwell.
It's like playing for them.
They like to hear sounds.
They were kind of, like, devious.
They would just play pranks and stuff.
Like, I think to get attention.
When I did your interview, one of the first things she told me about is hearing young kids playing, and then chasing literally all around the house and to the neighbor, trying to find these kids.
Our son was crying that nobody would play hide-and-go-seek with him, and all of a sudden, we hear these giggling children.
.
And we can't find them.
That went on for about an hour, and we just went from yard to yard, chasing voices.
Well, the thin man that I ran into has issues with women and likes to intimidate and control them.
He says, "oh, so you're here to talk to me, are you?" Maybe he was the owner at some point.
Bad things happened.
He's tyrannical.
He was a power-hungry little man.
He wouldn't deal with me because I won't tolerate that behavior.
The women in the home affected.
.
- Mm-hmm.
- Far more, far more than the men.
In my studio area, I feel very panicked and sick and start shaking and flushing.
It's.
.
It's extreme.
I don't ever even cross the door.
You mentioned about a.
.
A.
.
Story of a hanging Sheriff.
.
Yes.
That lived here, uh, that used to hang people from the back porch or something.
Alright so.
.
- What? - Uh, yeah.
The legend says that the Sheriff lived here, and he was.
.
He was a racist and he.
.
Hung black men outside the kitchen window on that side of the house.
All right, so let me try to clear things up with that.
With every "legend" and rumor, there's a little bit of truth.
Uh, this guy's name was Joe Ben Jenkins.
Um, he lived in this house for about 23 years.
Uh, he was the Police Chief here.
- Right.
- Um, in September of 1930, um, he heard two men in a car.
.
Two black men in a car.
.
Outside of the house here.
They were drinking.
He goes out in his, uh, night clothes with his gun to confront them.
One of the black men in that car named John Willie Clark wound up shooting and killing the Chief right in front of the house here.
The guy, John Willie Clark, he was apprehended a few days later on.
He was actually.
.
Busted out of jail by an angry mob and lynched not far from, uh, you know, here.
In any investigation, putting a face to those involved is crucial.
For Amy, that means working with a sketch artist.
Her sketch has been kept in a sealed envelope until now, and the homeowners and I are about to see it for the first time.
Amy, after the walk, who did you sketch? The thin man.
I have a photo of the Police Chief.
So why don't you guys take a look at it? That's him.
That's Joe Ben Jenkins.
Makes a little sense.
Why? Just the stature.
The figure that I see is always in black like this, and the hat and everything.
All right, I wanna take a look at the sketch.
Take a look at this.
Take a look at this.
Wow.
That's amazing.
And eerie.
I'm.
.
I'm convinced.
.
- Yep, I'm convinced.
- You know? The thin man in the sketch made life miserable for women, especially the sad lady I encountered upstairs.
One of the people that I came into contact with was this sad woman.
And I kind of got that there was a relationship between him and her.
She felt like she was enslaved by him, and she didn't like to be intimate with him.
Um, it was disgusting and repulsive for her.
She wanted to get of this.
.
Situation that she was in.
She.
.
Just hated him.
And she felt like there was no way out.
So that's probably our crying that we here at night.
Oh.
Okay.
We hear the crying woman.
The story goes that the reason John Willie Clark was out in front of this house, was because his wife was having relations with the Police Chief, and she did not want to have relations with him.
It wasn't consensual.
Oh, how awful.
Now some of the rumors about the Sheriff can't be tied to any hard evidence.
But it's clear that he and John Willie Clark did not see eye to eye.
Cynthia, you gotta do me a favor.
I need you to tell Amy exactly what's going on upstairs when you're getting touched.
I'll just be, you know, laying there, trying to go to sleep, and.
.
Anything that's exposed.
.
It's a very light touch, but it's almost like somebody's just admiring me or just kinda hanging out and watching me sleep.
Who's doing that? I think it's the, um, the entity that can steal things, um, because he can physically interact with his environment.
You said he tries to collect things.
Is he trying to collect her? He may want to.
I.
.
I don't think he has enough power to do that.
- Right.
- Um, but.
.
I think that it needs to stop regardless.
Um, because it's inappropriate, period.
There's another entity here who is a sweetheart and thinks that that entity is a monster.
He's big.
He's, like, over 6 feet tall.
- Right.
- He's a big, stocky guy, but he, like, really took care of everything here.
Also, the big guy, the caretaker does not like the kleptomaniac.
They have issues with each other.
They cannot be in the same room together.
- He's a good thing? - He's a good thing.
- He's helping us.
- Right.
He's a very good thing.
- Okay.
- A very good presence.
I've actually had a dream, and a rather large man sat down at the table with me and was talking to me and telling me that everything's okay and that he's here for us.
Well, it's.
.
It's some good news.
Amy, you did a second sketch also, so I'm gonna give you the honors and tell us who do we think this is.
This is the caretaker that I saw.
Can't forget those eyes.
That's the guy that I had coffee with.
And what do you think about this whole thing? Just can't believe it.
Everything that she's heard, everything that she's seen, - you know, is coming to light, and.
.
- And you're not crazy.
Yeah, and we're not crazy.
Guys, you've seen and heard the results of our investigation.
And the most pressing and important question is, are you safe to stay here? Is it.
.
For you and your children, and if it's worth investing and buying the house.
That answer I can't give you.
She's gonna give it.
These are all entities you can deal with.
There are a few people that need to be dealt with here.
The sad woman.
.
I would recommend doing a basic cleansing, which is just going through the entire house, using Sage and salt.
Because a tiny little fragment of her personality is still here, and that's something that is rather easy to remove.
The children.
.
With all the cleansing, they, too, will decide to just leave.
Um, the thin man.
.
I really believe he will leave as soon as he understands he has no power here.
Just tell him to bug off, and eventually he's going to leave.
Who exactly is in that back room causing.
.
My issues? It's the entity who steals things.
I can just tell him to go away? I would ask big Jay to come in there with you.
Big Jay.
.
That's actually the caretaker.
Like, you can say, "I'm going to this room.
" "I want you here with me.
" You know, he's, like, here for you guys.
That will take a toll on this entity, and it will leave.
None of my research uncovered a caretaker.
But if he's protecting Cynthia and Ben, it really doesn't matter.
Now you have a road map on what to do, thanks to her.
.
- Definitely.
- And your dream house doesn't have to be your nightmare house.
.
- Right.
- Anymore, so.
.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah, this is a tremendous weight.
.
- Good.
- To know that.
.
At least I'm not gonna be harmed.
And I can stand up to him, and I have this nice bouncer behind me.
.
- Mm-hmm.
- To.
.
To help me out.
It's really helped a lot, so.
.
- Yeah.
- I.
.
It's awesome.
I understand Cynthia and Ben's fears.
When you've had this many encounters, it's terrifying.
But as long as the stay strong and follow the advice I've given them, they should be able to live happily in their dream home.

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