The Dead Files (2011) s04e09 Episode Script

Death Valley - Death Valley Junction, California

There's a lot of past violence.
Somebody's terrified.
I'm afraid of being hurt.
I've been touched.
She definitely makes physical contact.
Three scratches starting to draw blood.
- Something went through me.
- She throws a fit.
You need to get out of here right now.
They're just in hell.
Living people have messed with the dead here a lot.
That was a mistake.
They're being watched.
My name is Amy Allan.
This thing likes death.
I see dead people.
This thing's, like, a monster.
I speak to dead people And he's pissed off now.
And they speak to me His head was cracked.
But there's only one way to know if my findings are real.
This guy was murdered.
I rely on my partner.
I'm Steve Di Schiavi.
I'm a retired New York City homicide Detective I cannot help you unless I know the whole story.
And I know every person, every house has secrets.
You saw her? It's my job to reveal them.
Why would you stay here? But Steve and I never speak We never communicate during an investigation.
Until the very end.
Stop it.
We uncover if it's safe for you to stay I want to know the truth.
I want to know what's happening.
Or time to get out.
I told you there were ghosts in this house.
Our clients turn to Amy and me when they've run out of options.
I dig into the property's history, looking for witnesses and hidden details of the past While Amy conducts her own investigation speaking to the dead.
I'm in Death Valley Junction, California.
It's about 90 minutes outside of Las Vegas.
Less than 20 people live in this town.
One of them, a guy named Rich, called us in.
He runs a historic hotel that's connected to an opera house And says the activity there is so bad, he's losing employees and guests.
He's afraid of losing his business, and I'm hoping Amy and I can do something for him.
Before Amy arrives, I clear the area of anything that could influence her findings.
This hotel has a large collection of historical photographs, and antique memorabilia that have to be covered or removed.
When I'm finished, the location will be ready for tonight's walk.
So, I don't even know where to start because I'm kind of overwhelmed.
But I do feel like there was unusual deaths.
There are people in the ground.
I get, like, many people dying.
They can't breathe.
They can't breathe.
They just suffocate to death.
And somebody said, "we walk upon the bodies of the dead and their souls, too".
Now, Rich, when we spoke on the phone, you sounded pretty concerned about the business here and maybe losing it.
- What's going on? - We've got Voices, full-blown apparitions It's even gotten physical at this point.
We've got scratches, people being touched.
I'm losing employees.
I'm losing business.
They're leaving in the middle of the night, or they're deciding not to stay here at all.
- Do you live on the property at all? - Yeah, I do.
- You do? - Yes.
Okay, do you live alone? No, actually, my girlfriend, Mary Lee, who works with me here, as well, is here.
- Why don't you just leave? - Leaving is not an option.
I've got my life invested in here.
I made a promise to the founder of this particular place Okay.
And I gave her my word that I would stay here and - Carry on her vision and legacy.
- Who owns it? - Her name's Marta Becket.
- Okay.
- She's 88 years old - Okay.
And she's got a famous opera house here.
As well as many other structures on this property here.
And she owns all 268 acres of the facility.
Okay.
I'm just getting, like A lot of people being treated like [Bleep.]
A lot of people being murdered.
So much has happened here over the years.
This is not good.
This this is not good.
As far as guests go, what have they complained about in the bedrooms? They complain of voices.
They also have a shadow figure that they see at the foot of their bed, as well.
Now, you mentioned scratches on some guests.
An older man came to me, and he was right-handed And actually had two scratch marks across there.
- Have you seen them? - Mm-hmm.
What about his nails? Were they sharp, long? They were short and well-manicured.
What else has happened? Guests are coming back to their rooms after the day, and the maids have made their bed and it's like somebody has actually sat down on the bed, and there's even hand prints on some of them.
Are you sure it's not one of the employees coming in and maybe just relaxing, or maybe trying to get another employee in trouble? You know, I've asked them, and I don't think so.
Do guests get pissed off because they think somebody's been in their room when they weren't supposed to? Absolutely.
There's a woman who goes in all these beds.
She goes in all the beds.
She's been here for a long time long time.
I see her getting kicked.
She's getting destroyed.
I just see men beating her face in, and she's naked.
You have any idea why? She's dirty.
She was doing drugs.
There's, like, nothing you can do to cover this up.
It's a mess outside.
It's a mess in here.
Now, this is the older part of the hotel? It is, Steve.
This is a side that's not open to the public, generally.
It hasn't been used since the '30s or '40s.
And we affectionately call it Spooky Hollow.
It's always been called that, so we just carry on the tradition.
So, are you experiencing stuff in this part of the building? This side of the hotel is totally different.
It's got a different feeling.
There's an overwhelming male energy that tends to not like people in here.
Does this thing frighten you? I do try to avoid it.
It's not comfortable for me.
So, there's a man here, and he He's very much in charge of everything.
I think he really hates living people.
Well, I know that that's his space.
I don't think he likes people back there.
Feeling like somebody's standing right there And just feeling, like, terrified Absolutely terrified.
Is he actually dangerous? When he feels like the living are [Bleep.]
with him.
He can become whatever scares them.
He can take your breath away.
He can make you feel that fear in your stomach.
What else is going on? A lot of paranormal people like to come back here.
What do you mean, paranormal people? Well, people that are doing investigations on their own, or they want to have an experience.
They like to come back here.
Rich, do you think that you might be making it worse by letting these investigators come in here? I think maybe that it's a possibility.
I actually had a friend who came here who's kind of an investigator.
She asked for a sign, you know, show me that you're back here.
And they ended up being scratched, and, so, she went ahead and showed me, and what I saw were three scratches - Okay.
- Right across the back.
And actually starting to draw blood.
- On her back? - On her back.
He's been tortured by the living.
He wallows, and He has no intentions of going anywhere else And I think that this place has been investigated.
The living people have messed with the dead here a lot In really negative ways.
That was a mistake.
What is it exactly that you do here? Well, I'm an artist, and I volunteer my time to come up and do reproductions of the original signs that were on the hotel.
Okay.
So, when you come up, you stay overnight? I do.
It's like my second home.
So, tell me what you've been experiencing, then.
I have experienced a lot of different things here.
From seeing apparitions I've heard voices I've even been touched.
So, when I do stay here, I don't sleep well.
All right.
Now, what's the most terrifying experience you've had up here? First time I was here, there's a corner right next to where I was working on a sign.
I suddenly felt this energy come into the corner that was Really menacing Like a mob mentality, and I could hear them say "Lady, you need to get out of here right now".
It's a really strong feeling of anger.
It can get so strong that it It makes me feel sick to my stomach.
Like where you get nauseous or something? Get nauseous, I feel dizzy, and sometimes almost as though I'm gonna pass out.
In this area, there was a group of men.
There's a lot of fighting.
This is a long time ago.
This is maybe People are asking for help.
A lot of pain physical pain.
It's just too much.
It's just too much.
The hallways of this hotel are crawling with dead people from a long time ago.
They're in a great deal of pain, and I'm experiencing their suffering.
I feel like I'm sick.
I can't walk.
I can't move.
There's too many things that have happened here.
Like, some people are really sick, and then there are some people who are Hurting themselves.
And there are some people who kill each other.
Like, it's just a [Bleep.]
disaster.
So, Mary Lee, I understand that you and Rich live together.
- Right.
Mm-hmm.
- And you and him run the place.
- Exactly.
Yeah.
- Okay.
Now, Rich is concerned about the business Losing business because of what's going on here.
Well, we've had people leave.
Just like that? - I won't stay here.
- You won't? - You live on the premise right? - Mm-hmm.
On the property? But you wouldn't stay in the hotel.
Mm-mm.
So, can I assume you've had experiences here? - Yes.
I've had several.
- Okay.
I've seen shadows, apparitions.
- I've been channeled.
- Channeled? What does that mean? Where something went through me.
I've been afraid to, like, be in different places by myself.
Things, recently, have gotten worse.
It's just really hard.
I think that people see a lot of dead people here.
So I feel like You know, if the people say they see something back here I think that they would feel kind of out-of-body-ish And Very uncomfortable And not themselves.
Mary Lee, let me ask you a question.
Have you expressed to Rich how upset you are? He knows I'm afraid, but I don't think he realizes how afraid.
And why is that? Because we're here so much, I don't want to feel like, um Like I'm a chicken.
I don't think that he realizes That um, I'm afraid of being hurt.
_.
- Okay.
- I'm really, really scared.
I spoke with some locals who told me, Death Valley has a rich mining history And that one used to operate right next to the hotel.
I'm heading over to meet with a local historian, who also happens to be a Park Ranger to see if he's got any information to help my case.
Bob, I understand that the hotel I'm investigating used to be a mining area.
- Is that correct? - That's correct.
Okay, what kind of mining are we talking about? They were mining for a very rich form of borax.
It's an industrial product that's used in welding.
- What was it like for these guys here? - Brutal.
These men were working in tunnels on average about 4 feet high.
Wow.
Just wide enough for two men with picks and shovels and dynamite.
There were no specialists.
You had to know how to plant dynamite.
So I assume there had to be some accidents and deaths associated with the mine.
There had to be accidents and that kind of a thing, there had to be collapses.
Oh, it was a pretty short and pretty hard life.
And there's these people who are trapped.
There's a lot of men, and the men are are wrecks.
I keep encountering this large group of men all over the property.
Each time I see them, I begin experiencing their pain, both physically and emotionally.
You can move better if you crawl.
Because otherwise, it's too difficult.
Because your legs are useless, especially at the end of the day.
Everybody's [Bleep.]
miserable.
They're just in hell.
Do you have any idea what was on that property before the hotel was there? A lady by the name of Shotgun Kitty - Okay - Ran a brothel and a bar.
That's her and her husband and two kids.
Now, where'd the name Shotgun come from? She got the name Shotgun Kitty because, evidently, she didn't go anywhere without her shotgun, and she was known to be an extremely good shot.
She ran the town, basically.
I mean, these miners made a minimal amount of money, you know, pennies a day.
And what little they did have, they would spend at Kitty's businesses.
They'd spend it in the brothel, or they'd spend it in the bar.
She ruled the roost.
When Shotgun Kitty said something, that was it, you didn't argue with her.
I don't care how drunk you were or anything else.
There's this older woman.
She's, like, probably in her 50s.
She's rather short.
She's kind of chubby.
I feel like she was a caretaker.
If she was an owner, she was very, very hands-on.
She just feels like, yeah, that's mine, and I need to still be in charge.
Like, she was very business all about the business.
She's unhappy about how this place is run, and it's almost like her dream is just falling apart before her eyes.
So, she's pissed off that [Bleep.]
not being the way she wants it to be.
But she's not trying to help.
She's just making it worse.
What is she doing that's making it worse? When she sees something not being done the way that she wanted it done, she throws a fit.
She definitely makes physical contact.
I'm at the library to see what I can find out about the property I'm investigating.
Digging through the archives, I uncovered an article about a hotel employee named Thomas Blower who took his own life in 1947.
The location where he hung himself The Amargosa Hotel.
Now that I know someone who lived and worked at the Amargosa hung himself, I need to find out more details about this case.
I've contacted a local who calls himself a historic explorer.
And says he's got lots of information to help me out.
Tim, why'd you bring me to this part of the building? The gentleman, Thomas Blower, that you're investigating, actually hung himself in this area.
- Right here? - Correct.
Okay.
So, what were the circumstances behind the hanging? In 1947, he was a During lunchtime, when everybody else in the staff was having lunch.
He came down here, tied a rope, and hung himself.
What would make a 65-year-old which is kind of old for a suicide Do that? He might not have been very happy with the outcome of his life.
In what way? He is actually kind of an interesting character.
Even though he was listed as a janitor, he did a lot of traveling.
He actually traveled a lot between Canada, The United States, England, and Australia.
This is a 1930s travel voucher for a Mr.
Thomas Blower.
It shows that he actually crossed from The United States into Canada, with $2,500 in 1930.
- $2,500? - Yes.
So, where the hell's he coming up with this kind of money? One of the speculations is that he might've actually been a road agent at the time.
Road agent you're talking about somebody that does robberies? Yes.
A road agent is an individual who would Stop a traveler and take anything of value and then disappear.
Okay.
So, now he's 65 years old, he had money at some point Yes.
And out of nowhere, he goes from being a highway robber, to being a janitor and then hanging himself.
Yes, and to anybody who actually was making the money that, it's obvious that he was making or obtaining That's a major blow to somebody's ego.
Do you want to go in there? Not really.
That's kind of his area.
This angry man wants me to know that he controls this section of the hotel.
He hates living people, and he has disturbing ways of showing it.
When I first saw him, he scared me.
He still kind of scares me.
Like, I know what he can do.
He He did a lot of bad things in his life.
What sort of bad things? He wanted to be respected.
He wanted to be Feared and You know, he was he was.
He didn't care if disrespected.
He didn't care if he took.
He did whatever he needed to do to gain as much power and respect from his people as he possibly could.
He doesn't know how to be good.
I feel pain around my neck.
I feel like He's strangling.
Now that I know about the hotel's troubled past, I'm going to meet up with its current owner.
- Hi.
Marta? - Hi.
I need to see if she's experienced anything strange during her time here.
So, Marta, I was talking to Rich, and he told me that you've been here a long time.
Oh, yeah.
43 years.
Okay, what brought you out here? We were kind of looking for a place to settle out in the west, and I fell in love with the place.
So, you're not afraid of this place? No, no.
I love it.
So, Marta, let me ask you a question about Rich.
He's telling me about some pretty bizarre things that are happening.
Have you ever experienced anything? Well, there was a sound at the foot of the stage, every night when I'd put my costumes away.
It went like this oh! So, you heard a voice? Oh, yes, but it was always when I was alone in here, hanging up costumes.
Okay.
So, has anything else strange happened here? Well, we had a maintenance man, and he came running in, and he said "Marta! Marta! There's a dead man in the sewer house!" Okay.
He said, I just climbed up the ladder and saw him.
He still has his glasses on, but he's dead.
His name was Tom Moore.
And he said he was in the sewer house? The sewer house is a big, white building across the road.
- Okay, so, it's on the property? - Oh, yes.
Did you ever find out what they said was his cause of death? No, it's all been a mystery.
It still is.
I need to check out this sewer house where Marta said a man was found dead.
Turns out, there's a local documentary filmmaker who did a lot of research on his death.
He says there's a lot more to this case than meets the eye.
Well, Ted, thanks for meeting me.
This guy, Moore, were you able to find out if what Marta told me was true or not? He did die, and the reason that I brought you here, is because this is where his body was found, they say in the rafters, apparently.
Now, when did this happen? when the death happened.
Were there any police reports they were able to find out? Well, actually, there's an article on the death of Mr.
Moore.
Okay, so, he was 64 years old, goes missing in mid-July.
This article's in September.
- So, he's missing for two months.
- Correct.
And, I'm telling you, from July to September, those are your hottest months in this neck of the woods.
And up in those rafters, the heat a body would really decompose really badly.
How did they determine who the hell he was? They determined from the dental records.
All right, did he have any identification with him, any money, what was the story? Well, they did find his billfold, but no money was taken, you know, anything like that.
Why a 64-year-old would go up into this thing makes no sense.
They did an autopsy.
They really couldn't figure out how he died.
- Cause of death is undetermined.
- Undetermined.
Could've been a multitude of things.
In New York, it would be an open case.
It's still circumstances undetermined, pending police investigation.
Right, right.
And there's been speculation that it could've been murder That there could've been some foul play of some kind.
Okay.
You know, there's only rumblings that he may have gotten into a fight, and that there was a gun shot.
So, there's a man here, and he gets a gun right to his head.
It's him and this other man.
He was hiding from this guy, you know, but the other guy found him And the guy just shoots him right in the head.
He gets his [Bleep.]
head shot in And he doesn't die for awhile.
He feels it for awhile.
Do you have any idea when this is? Mm, I'd say, like, 70s, 80s.
Okay.
The guy who was shot he's very confused.
He's walking around a lot.
He's walking around a lot.
I think he's nuts.
I don't like him at all.
He makes me sick.
Now that Amy and I have completed our investigations We're ready to reveal our findings to each other and our clients for the first time.
Amy, I'd like you to meet Rich and Mary Lee.
They're the couple that actually run the hotel here and actually live on the property.
They're afraid about losing this place because they're very passionate about it.
They called us in because in the last three months, the activity here has gotten really bad.
They have employees that won't stay, some guests come, and they wind up leaving in the middle of the night and just leave the keys by the desk.
They're scared for their safety.
They want to know if it's safe for them to keep this place running, and if they can keep it going.
So, that being said, we'll turn it over to Amy and hear about her walk a little.
When I first got here, it was extremely overwhelming for me Very painful, physically, and uh Definitely, by far, one of the worst locations that I've done.
The first thing that I encountered was A group of sick men.
The feeling that I got from them was the feeling of being trapped.
One person said, you know, if you crawl, you can move better, and it feels like hell for them.
Well, it makes sense.
This was a mining town back in the early 1900s.
They used to mine for a mineral called borax.
These mines were very narrow, like 4 feet, and these guys would have to crawl in And actually stick dynamite in and then crawl back out and blow it up.
The average miner only lasted about 6 months because of the health hazards.
Whoa! So, the next thing I saw over in the bedrooms I saw this lady.
She was very young in her 20s, very thin.
And she seemed to be drugged out.
There's a woman who goes in all these beds.
I just see men beating her face in, and she's naked.
A lot of times, there's different, like, hand prints and uh Somebody sitting in different areas in different rooms here.
- Like someone had been sitting.
- With both hands on it.
On the bed or their hands are on the bed.
After it was made up.
You mentioned the beating, before the hotel was built, there were brothels here.
And, you know, the miners would frequent this place, and they were pretty, you know, rough customers.
Interesting.
Um The next woman I met, I met in front of the hotel, and she was tiny and a little chubby, and she was in her 50s.
She had spent the majority of her time here, and she feels like this place is hers.
And that she still needs to be in charge.
She's very unhappy with how the place is being run.
If she sees something's being done differently than how she would do it, she kind of throws a fit.
And she does definitely make physical contact.
Now, one of the reasons we're here is because your - Customers are getting scratched.
- Mm-hmm.
Different areas of the hotel were having situations where People are actually physically being scratched, drawing blood, and so I'm getting concerned.
You know, my employees are freaking out.
They're being touched.
And, so, that's kind of why I called you guys.
We may go belly-up.
Well, let me tell you about the woman that ran this town, basically, before this hotel was built.
Her name was Shotgun Kitty.
She was 4'11 - She weighed over 200 pounds - Okay.
And I got a photo of her actually in her younger days.
Now, the reason she was called Shotgun Kitty is because she always carried a shotgun with her, and when she ran the brothels, she was always breaking up fights between the miners and the prostitutes.
She didn't take no crap from nobody.
So, do you think this might be the woman you see? Granted, she's much older when I saw her, but other than that I think so.
So, the next thing I saw was a confrontation between two men.
This was in the 70s or the 80s.
So, this one man is sitting in the room And this other man comes charging into the room and Shot him in the head.
So, he's a little confused about What ended up happening, so he kind of stumbles around that area.
I mean, there was only one mysterious death in this area.
Back in the time frame you're talking about, that we uncovered.
Back in '76, a guy named William Thomas Moore went missing in July.
I have his death certificate here.
He was found two months later in the sewage plant.
Right on the property here.
His body was so decomposed that they actually had to go through dental records to identify who he was.
There's local folklore going around that prior to Moore being found dead, there was an argument and that he might've been shot.
So, how'd the rest of your walk go? What did you see? So, the next part is um The hallway.
They have a name for that area called Spooky Hollow.
So, there were a lot of upset and angry dead people.
They're sick and tired of being messed with by the living.
They feel like they're being tortured.
They said that there had been a lot of investigations here.
The living were messing with the dead here in a very negative manner.
I could actually see where that might be a possibility because we do have people that do come here and do investigations.
And I didn't realize that it would affect uh The non-living in that way.
I've been saying all along to leave them alone.
Because it would bug me, living, to have somebody constantly - In your face? - Yeah.
So, I did a sketch of the people that are here.
Um, some are angry, and some are asking for help.
There's a hallway, and There's fifteen, twenty people.
And they're all not looking good.
Well, that's that's pretty creepy.
Got a lot of people there.
Wow.
There was one man who confronted me.
He stood out from a lot of them.
He's very advanced and very powerful, and he's very upset.
He despises living people.
He kind of runs the dead back here.
And he's the one who really lashes out.
There's an area here it's at the very end of Spooky Hollow Where I'm confronted by this individual.
And it's overwhelming to me.
I don't go back there because I feel like I'm invading somebody It's going into somebody else's home you're not welcome to like, that feeling.
That's not good.
What's the story with this guy? He was not very good in life and took whatever he wanted in life.
And he wanted a lot of power, and he wanted respect.
I felt his death, and I felt that it was from strangulation.
- You're kidding, really? - Yep.
There was a man who worked and lived here who was a janitor that actually hung himself right in this hallway back in 1947.
It's interesting that you talk about this.
This is the guy here, Thomas Blower.
He waited until everybody went on their lunch break, and he came back here, and he hung himself.
The funny part about this guy is when I talked to an historian about him, before he was a janitor, he used to travel the world with quite a bit of money.
And he was checking into Canada in Which was basically a fortune back in 1924.
I actually have the manifest here.
Now, you said the guy wanted power and respect.
The guy I talked to said he may have been a highway robber.
To come across that kind of money didn't make any sense.
So, here's a guy that was probably a thief in life, robbed a lot of people.
But he died broke working as a janitor right here and then hanging himself.
- Does that make sense to you? - Well, yeah.
He can make you feel true fear.
He can reach into your mind and project back what will Make you scared, and it makes you want to run.
And he is a fighter, and he absolutely has no intention of leaving.
He's sick of the living messing with him, and He is absolutely ready to fight back.
He wants to drive the living out of this place.
And he's sick of the living messing with him, and He is absolutely ready to fight back.
How frightening is this for you? Last time I went back here, somebody followed me All the way around.
And they kept touching, and I never came back here again.
Mm-hmm.
There's places I just straight will not go Day, night, doesn't matter.
I know we gave you a lot of information tonight.
But the reason you brought us in is, is it safe for you guys to be here, for your employees to be here, and, really, most importantly, your guests.
For that, I'm gonna turn it over to Amy and see if she's got an answer for us.
This place was so occupied by the dead and the residual energy That there's, like, no room for life.
This could be a place where, instead of having Ghost Hunters come, you have people who Are spiritual.
Now, you're going to need a few various holy men, and they need to do funerals and blessings.
Does it matter what denomination the priest or the pastor is? No, it doesn't really matter.
They're each going to do a different type of ritual, blessing, cleansing, or moving on process.
It will clear a substantial amount of people out of here.
But there's still going to be people who don't want to leave, or people who don't click with anybody, people who just want to stay.
So, the angry guy that's back here, will he stay or will he move on? Oh, he's gonna be thrilled about what we're talking about.
He wants to stay, but he wants to be left alone.
You know, the ghost hunting's have just got to stop, or it's gonna get worse.
Okay.
I think we need to come back here and talk to the spirits a little bit and apologize and move it forward.
So, is that why it got crazy here? - Because they were, like, fed up? - They're done.
Yeah.
And, I mean, this isn't gonna happen overnight.
But if in the long run it gets better - Then that's good.
- Yeah.
Let's get started now.
I think it has started.
With all of the dead surrounding this location, Rich and Mary Lee have their work cut out for them.
But I'm confident that if they follow my advice, they should be able to keep their employees and guests safe from harm.

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