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00:04Buried alive, in total darkness, with no way to escape, invisible forces with demonic intent
00:14that control your mind and body, and ordinary objects with supernatural powers that leave
00:22a trail of death and destruction. Fear, the universal emotion, human emotion, it is often
00:33essential to our very survival. Our biological drive to stay safe is designed to help protect
00:38us from danger, both real and imagined. We might be startled or even amused at times by
00:47loud noises, dark places, or confined spaces. But what happens when the stuff of nightmares
00:55is not a dream, but instead a terrifying reality? Well, that is what we'll try and find out.
01:18All over the world, various cultures practice a period of mourning between the time of a
01:23person's death and when they're finally laid to rest. This is the time to pay respect, to
01:28process one's loss, and in some cases, to quell the fear that the dearly departed might still
01:36be alive and prematurely placed six feet under. The fear of being buried alive. It was a fairly
01:45common fear. Up until 20th century, medical practices meant fewer people were in fact buried alive.
01:53It was most common in 18th and 19th century Europe and America, mostly due to the medical practices and
02:04the burial practices at the time. This was when medical diagnoses could get things wrong.
02:10And people were in fact buried alive, and stories of that became sensationalized, and therefore the
02:18panic would spread.
02:21In the 19th century, the great fear of being buried alive was partly because this was the age of cholera.
02:28Cholera causes severe diarrhea, which can deplete all the electrolytes in your body,
02:32and extreme cases can induce a coma. So sometimes people appear dead, and they're actually in this
02:40sort of vegetative state, and they can come out of it. But if you bury them, then you've buried them
02:46alive. And that is a terrible death. Historically, the thought of being trapped in a wooden box beneath
02:53thousands of pounds of dirt with no possibility of escape was so widespread that this fear was actually
03:00given a name. It's called taphophobia.
03:04Taffophobia is the idea of simply just the fear of being buried alive. Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote
03:11about premature burial, was terrified of being buried alive. Fredric Chopin, the composer, wanted to be
03:17stabbed in the heart and bled out to make sure that he was dead when doctors believed that he was.
03:23And even George Washington was so afraid of being buried alive that he had written in his will that
03:28his body had to remain in bed for three days after they thought he was dead to make sure that
03:34he didn't
03:35come back. It was estimated by the 1890s that some two percent of people being buried were buried alive.
03:45Now this is a gross exaggeration, no doubt. But it was believed at the time, enough so that organizations
03:53like the London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial was founded in 1896. Then they lobbied
04:00Parliament for greater diligence on the part of doctors to make sure that doctors were verifying death.
04:08Despite doctors' best efforts, it was simply difficult at the time to determine whether
04:13a person was alive or dead. And so in order to ease people's minds, authorities in Europe
04:19were forced to take drastic measures.
04:25Vienna, Austria. Within this storied city lies the Vienna Central Cemetery,
04:32the second largest cemetery in the entire world. In the heart of the cemetery stands a small building
04:38that today houses a museum. But in the 19th century, it was referred to as a Lichen House.
04:46The Lichen House was a kind of mortuary where corpses were kept for a period, typically about three days,
04:55and watched over by attendants to make sure that a person was truly dead and wouldn't be buried alive
05:02in a state of coma or catalepsy.
05:05Those who worked at the Lichen House, the undertakers mainly, could ensure that people are not being buried
05:10alive. They had several measures. They could use, for example, a heart step knife. And there was
05:17basically a treatment that you could order by doctors. And then one doctor had the possibility,
05:23the option, and the privilege to step the knife into your heart to make sure that you're not going to
05:29be
05:29buried alive.
05:31In modern times, it may sound a little disturbing to hear that doctors once stabbed their patients
05:36in order to determine whether they were alive or dead. But the truth is, the hysteria about being
05:42buried alive was so prevalent that an entire industry sprang up to help calm such fears by
05:48producing bizarre contraptions that were known as safety coffins.
05:54If you were afraid of being buried alive, the solution was the safety coffin.
05:58And this began very simply with a bell tied to a string that went down under the earth into the
06:04coffin. And if you were buried alive and you woke up in a coffin, you could pull that string,
06:09the bell would ring, and hopefully somebody would hear it and come dig you out. And this tradition is
06:15where we get the expression saved by the bell. If you had more money, safety coffins could get more
06:21elaborate. They could add air tubes, they could add windows, so you would have some lights inside
06:27the coffin. And there were even cases of people buried with a key in their pocket so they could
06:32unlock the casket from the inside if this happened.
06:37There were loads of patents taken out for these safety coffins, and they would include devices like
06:43little flags that could be raised. Sometimes safety coffins included food or water. They would have
06:49breathing tubes. They might even include periscopes.
06:54One of the best known ones really belonged to a doctor named Timothy Clark from Vermont.
07:00He came up with his own safety coffin device. He had a set of stone stairs installed next to his
07:08grave
07:09that could be opened up by a concrete block that was sitting beside it. That way,
07:13anyone could get down to rescue him if he needed to be rescued. But the real kicker to the whole
07:20thing was
07:21that he had a glass window installed directly over his face, set into the stone. However,
07:28he died in 1893, and the doctors did not make a mistake. He really was dead.
07:34Safety coffins may seem like a quaint fad from a bygone era that has no relevance in our world today.
07:41But believe it or not, there have been some recent cases in which people appear to have been
07:47mistakenly buried alive. Being buried alive is very, very rare, at least in our own time. But it does still
07:57occasionally happen. As recently as 2018, there was a case in Brazil where a woman woke up in her grave
08:05and is thought to have survived for 11 days there. Being buried alive doesn't happen nearly as often
08:12as it used to. But if you think about it, waking up in a coffin would be probably one of
08:17the most
08:17terrifying things that could ever happen to you. The very idea that a small mistake due to negligence or
08:25misdiagnosis could cause one to be buried alive is a terrifying thought. But it's often what we
08:33can't see that instills fear the most. Like in the case of an ancient predator who still lurks beneath
08:41the ocean's surface with a frightening history of hunting for human flesh.
08:51Beach Haven, New Jersey, July 1st, 1960. 25-year-old Charles Van Sant is swimming in the brisk Atlantic
09:01waters off the coast of this resort community when he's suddenly attacked by a massive shark.
09:11lifeguards pulled and sat from the water and see that his left thigh has been stripped of its flesh by
09:17a massive set of razor sharp jaws.
09:21The story is that they had to almost wrestle him away from the shark as they pulled him ashore with
09:25the shark following him still. His father, who was a doctor, operated on him or tried to save his life,
09:30but he died of a flesh wound to bite on his thigh actually and loss of blood.
09:39The gory death of Charles Van Sant was the first recorded fatal shark attack in U.S. history.
09:46And then on July 6th, a mere five days after Van Sant was killed, there was another attack along the
09:55Jersey Shore. Charles Bruder, who's a 27-year-old Swiss native who was in the army, went for a swim
10:04and 1,200 feet out in the middle of the day was attacked and bitten by what appeared to be
10:10about
10:11an eight or nine foot great white shark that severed his legs and a part of his torso. By the
10:17time the
10:17lifeguards got out there, there was hardly anything to lift into the boat. This second deadly attack
10:24was widely reported in newspapers across the country and set off a nationwide panic.
10:31Many people believed it was no longer safe to swim in the ocean off the coast of New Jersey
10:37and several beaches were closed by the authorities. The public reaction was hysterical. There were calls
10:44all the way up to President Wilson. Woodrow Wilson had a cabinet meeting and talked to the early
10:49men who founded the Coast Guard about eradicating all the sharks on the East Coast. Bounties were given
10:55by towns and cities and anybody that could kill any shark could get $100. You had fishermen going out
11:03catching and killing sharks and it wasn't just in New Jersey. It was all up and down the eastern seaboard
11:10and even infiltrated into the coastal states, Texas, Louisiana, and as far as the Pacific Coast of North America.
11:22Less than one week after Charles Breuder was killed, on July 12th, three more people were attacked by what
11:30many witnesses claimed was an eight or nine-foot shark. Curiously, all five of these incidents took place
11:37along a 50-mile stretch off the coast of New Jersey. Because of their proximity and the similarities
11:44between eyewitness accounts, many began to wonder whether the horrific attacks could have been the work
11:51of a single killer shark. The New Jersey attacks are so strange because sharks don't kill people
11:58with any kind of regularity and nobody witnesses it with any kind of regularity when it happens.
12:03But the concept of the rogue shark that kills or injures one person and that gets a taste for human
12:10flesh and goes after another like a serial killer. The Jersey Shore may be the best evidence we have
12:15that that's ever happened. On July 14th, 1916, two weeks after the first fatal attack,
12:22a taxidermist named Michael Schlazer caught a seven and a half foot, 325 pound great white shark off the
12:30northern end of the Jersey Shore. After cutting open its stomach, authorities found what appeared to be
12:37partially digested human remains. There are many who believe that this great white shark
12:45shark was responsible for all five attacks that took place, four of which were fatal.
12:51Fatal shark attacks on humans are seldom predatory for feeding. So what was going on that would
12:59cause a series of five attacks over a 11-day period? What was behind all of this? People panicked.
13:07No one wanted to go in the ocean. So its effect on individuals, citizens, was enormous. And it was
13:17something that to this day still has an effect on us. The 1916 Jersey Shore attacks helped to popularize
13:26the notion of sharks as deadly man-eaters. More than 50 years later, the killings inspired the 1974 novel
13:34Jaws by Peter Benchley, which became the basis of the blockbuster film made by Steven Spielberg
13:40that terrorized generations of beach goers.
13:45But despite their bad reputation, the truth is that sharks rarely killed humans. According to statistics
13:54gathered by the international shark attack file, on average, there are only five fatal shark attacks
14:01worldwide per year. So why does the belief persist that some sharks are a serious threat to humans?
14:12Sharks, unsurprisingly, have terrified people forever, because sharks live an enormous amount of
14:20their life out of sight. Unlike terrestrial species that we can see, sharks live underwater. And the
14:26only time that we really interact with sharks is when they come to the surface. And that tends to be
14:31in antagonistic circumstances with people. Traditional island cultures have had multiple deities
14:37that have shark appearance. And that comes from an inherent fear that we are at risk of sharks. They have
14:45this power of life or death over us. Sharks are apex predators. The idea that sharks can be celebrated in
14:54their culture might seem a bit odd. After all, they do kill people. But there's a couple of things to
14:59consider. One is that they are recognized as apex predators. And this is something that people often
15:03aspire to. Also, the idea that these are apex predators, and you'd better understand them.
15:10Over the years, sharks, especially white sharks, have been portrayed as killers. Unfortunately,
15:17people are killed from time to time. It has been postulated that white sharks hunting have similarities
15:24into the tactics utilized by serial killers. Serial killers use what is referred to as an anchor point,
15:32which is where they will sit and watch and pick their victim. White sharks do the same thing.
15:40White sharks like to hunt stealth where the intended victim can't see them.
15:47A lot of people often look at sharks and think that there's nothing going on. But great whites are
15:53intelligent animals. We've watched great whites attack seals. And you'll find the older great whites will
16:00pick out specific individuals, usually young ones. It's very methodical. So it is 100% possible that
16:11some sharks like the taste of people. Are there certain sharks that specifically and methodically hunt
16:19people? Some marine biologists have suggested it's possible. But if this theory is true, then what's
16:27even more disturbing is that a killer shark may keep stalking people for a very long, long time.
16:36Great whites can live to be 80 plus years old. There's some accounts of specimens being over 100.
16:42They study their subjects just like a serial killer. They learn from their mistakes just like a serial
16:49killer. That's terrifying. Coming face to face with a predator like a great white shark would be
16:57terrifying to say the least. Just imagining an encounter with a dangerous creature can trigger
17:04our primal fear of being overtaken by something much stronger than us. Like in the case of a powerful
17:11presence that can possess the human soul. Bavaria, West Germany, 1973.
17:26Annalise Mikel, a 20-year-old student at the University of Würzburg, claims that she's hearing disembodied voices
17:35and seeing visions of the devil. Before long her family comes to believe that Annalise suffers from a
17:45condition that defies understanding. Demonic possession.
17:52Annalise Mikel was indeed tormented by a possessing something. She spoke in a horrendously growly voice.
18:13Her eyes seemed to go black and she had a great aversion to holy statues which are a great many
18:22in the house
18:22because they were very high as Catholics.
18:27And she was taken to a doctor who said she might be epileptic.
18:33And she was taken to a psychiatrist. And nothing changed in her life. In fact she was getting worse and
18:42worse.
18:43Her family believed from the beginning she was possessed. The catholic church accepted that framework
18:49and engaged in the exorcism. Ultimately Annalise Mikel died of starvation and dehydration over the course
18:58of numerous exorcisms. This was a case where that belief directly led to her death. What we cannot say
19:06for certain is what was really going on. I can't say that she for sure was not possessed or for
19:13sure was.
19:14The story of Annalise Mikel is perhaps the best known case of an alleged demonic possession.
19:22But what happened to her? Was she actually possessed by demons?
19:29And if so, how does one identify when a person's mind and body have been taken over by Satan?
19:37During the course of my career, I've witnessed a number of cases of possession that have made my life.
19:43But I definitely started as a skeptic. I certainly never thought I would see anything sort of paranormal or
19:53diabolic. A priest who I guess knew I was Catholic, I don't exactly know how he got my name,
20:02but he came to my office when I was at Cornell Medical College and he said,
20:07Dr. Gallagher, I'd like you to evaluate someone for me who I think has a demonic attack.
20:18And I said, well, with all due respect, Father, you know, I'm an academic psychiatrist and I'm
20:26pretty skeptical of those sort of things. And I remember what he said to me, he said,
20:30you're the perfect man for the job because we want somebody who's skeptical. Of course,
20:36in the years since, you know, 25 plus years, I've seen so much that I'm not a skeptic anymore.
20:44There are very strict criteria, which clearly have to be present to distinguish
20:52the case from a psychiatric or a medical disorder. You have to see something that is inexplicable
21:00in terms of purely materialist science, things that could not possibly manifest in
21:09somebody who doesn't have a diabolic attack. The first case sent to me was a woman who claimed
21:17that she would be lying in bed and she would be pummeled by invisible forces.
21:27She and her husband were convinced that she was attacked by demons.
21:35So we did a number of medical tests on her because she had bruises all over her body. And at
21:42the end
21:42of my evaluation, since she was a very sane, lovely woman, I said to the priest, look, this doesn't seem
21:51like a medical or psychiatric case. It doesn't seem possible. Mysterious bruises inflicted by invisible
22:00forces. While that may sound like something out of a Hollywood horror movie, the truth is that accounts
22:07of possession have been recorded for thousands of years. Any scholar can tell you cases of demonic
22:15possession go all the way back to the Bible. When Jesus had to cast the demon out of a man
22:22into a
22:22herd of swine, who then ran off of a cliff and into the water. Very famous story in the Bible.
22:28And stories of demonic possession, they're not confined to Christianity.
22:33The idea of possession is inherently tied to the idea of Satan and demons and is an attempt by Satan
22:39to
22:39take over your personality, to ultimately control you. Satan's end game, according to the Bible,
22:45is to draw as many people away from Christ as possible. So his end game is to get as many
22:50people
22:51to move from God to him. So his ultimate role is as a tempter.
22:57The film The Exorcist is believed to have really brought attention to the idea of possession. But
23:03it's not that those ideas started with The Exorcist. Those ideas spread with The Exorcist.
23:10The Exorcist was actually based on a real case. It was a 12-year-old boy who was possessed, not
23:17a girl.
23:18How did he get possessed? Using a Ouija board for months. Start doing something occult. That creates
23:25an inner vulnerability to evil. If you're using magic that does not come from the Lord, you might not
23:32know this, but you're actually invoking the powers of Satan, whether you believe it or not.
23:38How did he get possessed?
23:39Most people who are possessed, in a sense they've invited it in, wittingly or unwittingly.
23:46Possession is the most dramatic attack of a demon upon a human being. And in a way,
23:56spiritual warfare should be a concern of everybody. That we're all sort of in a battle in our own souls
24:04between goodness and evil.
24:12It's frightening to think that a person could be controlled by an evil entity.
24:18And while it's difficult to determine if possession is a spiritual or a psychological phenomenon,
24:24and perhaps even more terrifying, it's the biological aberration that can turn the deceased
24:32into the walking dead.
24:37The Sterre Haiti, 1980. In this small village, Angelina Narcisse was going about her day when she
24:44was approached by a man claiming to be her brother, Clairvius. It may sound like a heartwarming tale of
24:50reunion, but there was just one problem. Clairvius Narcisse had been dead and buried for nearly 20 years.
25:00Clairvius was a Haitian man, born in 1922. In the year 1962, he went to a hospital.
25:09His symptoms had been a severe fever, fatigue, and he'd been coughing up blood. His heart stopped,
25:16and he stopped breathing, and was declared dead and buried.
25:2220 years later, a man claiming to be Clairvius showed up at his village and approached his family.
25:30In many respects, his story did check out. He bared a physical resemblance to the deceased.
25:39He went by a nickname that was only known to him and his sister when they were very little kids,
25:44and so he was able to relate certain details of his former life that seemed to add up.
25:53But if Clairvius Narcisse died and was buried, then how on earth was he alive and able to track
25:59down his sister almost 20 years later? Well, according to Clairvius, the reason he was not lying dead
26:07in his grave was that a voodoo priest had transformed him into a zombie.
26:15In Haiti, a zombie is an individual who's had their soul stolen by sorcery, causing them to be
26:21sort of flung into a perpetual place of purgatory through this incredible transition of death,
26:29rebirth and return to the living, induced by the folk poison known as a pood zombie.
26:37It was a plethora of ingredients, including various plants and the toxin from a fish.
26:44It selectively blocks sodium channels and nerves, bringing on paralysis until the moment of death.
26:52And yet critically, if you get through that, you have nothing to worry about.
27:05In Haitian folklore specifically, the zombie is not a villain, but a victim.
27:12In these cases, people are turned into zombies and forced to work on sugar cane plantations in Haiti,
27:19and elsewhere in the Caribbean, but primarily Haiti. And this has been a legend going back
27:24many, many years, centuries in some cases, certainly since the slave trade. And it was all considered
27:30to be just sort of a legend until 1980, when Clairvius Narcisse emerged. He told the story,
27:37it made huge news, as you can imagine, because this is a first person account of somebody who was a
27:42former
27:42zombie, right? So this is wild. This is crazy. According to Clairvius, he had been paralyzed by a
27:51voodoo priest. This was a result of being drugged. And this paste mixture that he was forced to consume
28:00kept him in this death-like toper. Narcisse was buried, and the priest then dug him up from his grave.
28:12And enslaved him on a sugar cane plantation for 20 years. From the Haitian point of view,
28:19the fate of a zombie is said to become an indentured servant. And losing your soul, losing your identity,
28:27your personal autonomy, combined to make this a fate worse than death. The story of Clairvius Narcisse
28:35being buried and then revived as an undead zombie made headlines around the world. Numerous experts
28:43investigated the case in hopes of shedding light on what exactly took place. The first question on
28:51everyone's mind was whether Clairvius had only appeared to be dead because he was drugged, or if there was
28:58some truth to the idea that he actually died and then was revived by the power of voodoo.
29:08What made the case of Narcisse unique was one single thing. He had been pronounced dead
29:15in an American-directed philanthropic institution, the Schweitzer Hospital.
29:21And his family members had witnessed the death and authenticated it at the time. So all these lines
29:30of evidence led scientists to go public in the 1980s, saying they felt they had found the first
29:37medically verifiable instance of zombification.
29:42The doctors who had initially declared Narcisse dead were no longer at the hospital 20 years later
29:49when he returned. However, many doctors looked into his case and did test and proved that it was in
29:57fact him. Why the premature diagnosis and why he was buried prematurely is unknown. And where he was for
30:0620 years is unknown. But there are photos of him sitting on his own gravestone.
30:13There are many theories as to what caused Clairvius Narcisse to be declared dead
30:19and then seemingly brought back to life. Ultimately, what happened to him remains a mystery.
30:25But many Haitians are convinced that Clairvius did in fact rise from the grave.
30:34And for some, his story is a reminder that the distinction between the living and the dead may
30:40not be as clear-cut as we commonly think. When we imagine zombies in the 21st century,
30:48we tend to imagine the dead rising from the grave to prey upon the living. That is not the case
30:54in
30:55Haitian voodoo practices. Zombification in voodoo was not something that was done to the dead. It was
31:01something that was done to the living. It was turning the living into a fugue-like state, a death-like
31:09state. But they were not reanimated corpses. Narcisse never doubted that he'd become a zombie.
31:17In Haiti, a zombie is a complete pariah who walks the edge between life and death and will do so
31:23for the rest of their existence. And so this idea that a person could be brought back to life fills
31:33all
31:33of us with mystery and trepidation and dread. The prospect that any of us could become a reanimated
31:41husk of the dead husk of our former cells is a haunting image. But just how one joins the ranks
31:48of
31:48the walking dead is debatable. Is it a biological response? A psychological phenomenon?
31:57Or could there really be something to the power of a deadly curse?
32:07Cincinnati, Ohio. Just outside the city on a normal suburban street in an ordinary neighborhood
32:15is the home of Greg and Dana Newkirk. From the outside, their home is
32:21not much different from any other house on the block. But inside, it contains something
32:30quite extraordinary. Because there is a room in the basement that is filled with a collection of
32:37strange objects sent by people from all over the world that are believed to be cursed.
32:46Greg and I lead normal lives and we go about our life the same way that everyone else does. We
32:53just
32:53happen to be caretakers for very strange objects. The way that we got started collecting cursed objects
33:00was complete accident. It wasn't something that we had set out to do. Never would have imagined myself
33:07doing this. We were just interested in general weirdness. My wife and I investigate all manner of
33:16high strangeness. And we were both very interested in the idea of cursed objects. We slowly gained a
33:24reputation as being particularly good people for this. And so anytime anyone had a problem with an
33:30artifact, they would come to us and say, I don't know what to do with this. This thing is affecting
33:35my life. Will you just take it off my hands? It'd be easier to just give it to you and
33:39let you deal with
33:40it. So we built up this collection of very bizarre things. Visitors to the Newkirk's home are given
33:47ample warning that the basement is filled with objects that are cursed. We have a lot of haunted robes.
33:57But curiously, every day, the Newkirk's receive requests from people who are eager to view
34:03their cursed collection. You'd think with cursed objects you want to avoid them. But there is a
34:09draw to them. When an object is said to be cursed, another word you could use is special. It's special.
34:15If this chair is cursed, it's different from every other chair in the world. And that makes it unique,
34:20that makes it interesting, and that draws our attention every single time. And the fact that that
34:24specialness is that it hurts people, that appeals to a certain macabre streak that we all have as
34:30human beings.
34:33People think of cursed objects as being kind of fun and spooky, but working with them, it feels a lot
34:40less about that and a lot more about that kind of heavy responsibility to keep some of these objects
34:45with us under lock and key and maybe out of the wrong hands. And maybe in a place that's safer
34:52not
34:52only for everyone else, but for them. The Newkirk's collection includes several objects that are
34:58considered to have the power to inflict harm on anyone who comes near them.
35:05This is the cursed deer skull. We drove down to Nashville to pick up from a woman who saw this
35:12in an antique store and took it back to her office. And almost immediately, her employees started
35:19getting sick. One of her employees was hit by a car. And then the wall that this was hanging on
35:25actually fell down and took half of the building with it.
35:29There are certain objects specifically in our museum that without people knowing why they feel
35:35the way that they feel, they will definitely have heart palpitations, anxiety. We've had people
35:42almost faint. We've had people throw up. We've had people dry heave. People have very visceral
35:49physical reactions to being around some of the objects.
35:55Among the cursed objects in the Newkirk's collection is a deadly ring that is claimed to kill
36:01anyone who wears it. A bible used during a failed exorcism and a doll that is believed to spread
36:10illness wherever it goes. But of all the cursed objects the Newkirk's have come across, there is
36:17one that is one that is so harrowing they refuse to keep it in their collection. It is an unsettling
36:24wooden effigy known as the Crone.
36:28The Crone really is the definition of kind of a cursed object. It is a carved statue of a woman.
36:36Someone at some point in time took this object and attached the noose and the nails.
36:42It was given to us by some hikers who found it in the Catskills off the beaten path in a
36:49cave.
36:51They took it home and initially started to experience really frightening things.
36:56Their animals were behaving strangely. They were finding wet footprints on the ground and they didn't
37:02know what to do. Someone who we had worked with previously put them in contact with us and after,
37:08you know, having some communication with them, they sent the Crone to us.
37:13People who would get near the Crone, they would be just overwhelmed with anxiety.
37:21This guy came all the way from Canada to come and see the Crone. He begged us to take it
37:28out of the box.
37:30Almost immediately, his eyes roll up in the back of his head and he starts to bleed from his mouth.
37:36And he has a violent seizure and he has to be taken out by the paramedics.
37:41And that's when Dana and I looked at each other and we said, we have to do something about this.
37:48The Catskill Mountains, October 2018.
37:54After a string of frightening incidents, Greg and Dana Newkirk are convinced that a strange
38:00object in their possession known as the Crone is cursed.
38:07So they've traveled to this remote region of upstate New York to free themselves of the evil object.
38:16The Crone is one of the objects that does fall into that very small category of objects that we
38:21didn't feel like we could handle.
38:24It got to a point where the Crone was just too dangerous for even us to take care of.
38:29And what we wanted to do was bring her back to the Catskills, which is where she's from.
38:39To remove the Crone's curse, the Newkirk's plan was to return to the area where it was originally
38:45found by two hikers many years before, at which point they would remove the nails embedded in the
38:52Crone in a cleansing ritual.
38:56We wanted to bring her back and every time a nail was pulled out, the intention was that we were
39:02pulling that curse out of the object. We hiked into the woods for miles and I set up a circle.
39:14The idea of setting up a circle was basically just to create an energetic space for containing this
39:20ritual. The whole time we were doing this, we were hearing footsteps and strange sounds that weren't
39:29animals around our circle, but we couldn't see anything.
39:36We were absolutely terrified, but we start performing the ritual. I pull the nails out.
39:42Soon as that happens, we feel this almost electric pop in the air.
39:50When we were done, every coyote on the mountain just started howling.
39:56And the ritual was finished. And what we were looking at was just a block of wood.
40:01And we just kind of knew that we had done what we went there to do.
40:07Scholars of religion have long known the power of ritual, that when a group of people get together
40:12and engage in the same set of actions, believing that there's our supernatural origin behind them,
40:17that brings people together. And so special movements that you need to go through,
40:24special sayings or songs that you need to do. It's incredibly powerful phenomena that can help
40:31rid us of the devil or whatever other force has cursed us.
40:37Is it possible that ritually cleansing the crone removed its curse? Perhaps.
40:45But of course, it all depends on whether you believe curses are real in the first place.
40:52Whether you believe in cursed objects or don't believe in cursed objects, they can still have a power over you.
40:59What that power is, to what extent that is, how it kind of comes out,
41:06who knows? But they're still powerful objects, no matter how you look at it.
41:12For people who don't believe in curses, what I would say is, keep believing they're not real.
41:18That's the best defense you have against a curse, is to not feed it.
41:25So, what do you think? Is there a good reason we should take heed of our primal fears?
41:32And follow intuition when our heart starts to race and we tremble, and thoughts turn to dread and impending danger?
41:41There are good reasons for our body and mind to protect us from obvious risks.
41:45But exactly why we've become frightened of dark entities, unseen evil and unholy objects may be better left unexplained.
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