My Horror Story

we planned this camping trip to devil's den state park.

I owned an antique refurbishing company in downtown portland.

We saw this shadow move over our heads.

Kevin: When I bought the box, it has some scratches,

as though something had tried to scratch its way in.

Like that, a beam of light struck me in the chest

and in the head.

All hell broke loose.

I started to see black forms.

He whispers to me, "man, those ain't no little kids, terry."

she said, "and they chose you."

and...

I don't know why.

Lori: We walk into the house. It felt like home.

Erin: I met this really lovely girl.

Woman: My daughter was going to share her birthday.

Terry: And there were a billion stars out, just gorgeous.

- The room got cold. - Something's not right.

Man: I know what waits for me in the dark.

Lori: We weren't alone in this house.

Erin: I saw somebody staring right at me.

Lori: Blood coming out of his eyes.

Terry: We're under the control of something.

Woman: I felt like I was dying.

Maddox: she wouldn't wake up,

and she wouldn't respond to me, and her little body was cold.

Man #2: It was pure evil.

People need to know that they're never really alone in the dark.

kevin: I'm an artist.

I didn't realize I was an artist

until a little bit later on in life,

but I had a calling for art, working and fine art,

but also buying and selling it.

I owned an antique refurbishing company in downtown portland.

I had a showroom upstairs.

Downstairs, I had different stations

to do the refinishing of antiques.

A lot of the items that I would acquire

at estate sales or auctions.

Business was going very, very well.

Surprisingly well.

I had attended an estate sale in the southwest portland hills.

The items had belonged to a woman who had passed away

who was a holocaust survivor.

In the backyard, there were these lots of items

that had been grouped together

so that rather than buying things one at a time,

you would buy the group.

I was bidding on a lot that contained items that I needed

for the refinishing work that I did,

and I won it.

After I had made the purchase

and was going through the individual items to leave...

...I found this wine cabinet that had a little lock on it.

To me, it didn't look like something

that really belonged with the rest of the items.

I didn't think this was something the family

wanted to include.

I went to one of the granddaughters where she said,

"oh, I see you got the dybbuk box."

I didn't know what she was talking about, but I said,

"well, yeah, I'd like to give it back to you.

I don't think it was supposed to be included with the lot."

she said, "no, no, no, no. You bought it.

A deal is a deal. It's yours. You're taking it."

she started to get noticeably upset,

almost to the point of hysterical.

I thought that was very strange, but I thought,

"she's going through a lot of grief right now."

I didn't want to push it.

I said, "okay," and I loaded the box into my truck

with the rest of the items and left.

I took the items down to the basement

and took the box back to a work bench...

...And I managed to open the box.

It had some things inside that were completely out of place.

It had two locks of hair, two dried rose buds...

...Two pennies from the 1920s, a little silver goblet,

about three and a half, four inches tall,

and it had a sculpture of stone

that had the word "shalom" in hebrew.

The first thought I had was these

were keepsakes of an old lady.

The back of the cabinet had hebrew writing,

the shema, which is a prayer.

I put some lemon oil on the box to bring out the grain.

I closed it up, and I didn't really give it

a lot of thought that day.

My manager jane had showed up

and I took off to go and find some more stuff.

it was about 15 minutes after I left the store.

I got a call from jane telling me

that somebody was in the basement of the shop,

tossing items, breaking lights, swearing.

She was hysterical.

That's something that's very unusual for jane.

Nothing shakes her. She's a rock.

As I was telling her to call the police...

...My phone went dead.

I went inside.

Jane was in the corner of the showroom.

She was so hysterical and scared.

She swore at me and walked out.

After jane left, I went to the basement.

The first thing that I noticed

there was the smell of cat urine.

I don't own a cat,

but the smell that I'm talking about was so strong

that it almost makes your eyes water.

And then I walked in.

The basement was torn apart.

There was nobody there.

terry: I was active duty in the air force

from 1973 to 1979.

My entire six-year enlistment was spent

at whiteman air force base in western missouri.

I was trained as a medic and certified as an emt.

most of my time at whiteman air force base

I spent working the night shift in emergency room

driving an ambulance with my friend tobias.

We worked the night shift together for several years.

If there was an auto accident or if there was a plane crash,

we would be there on the flight line.

at the time, I was 22 years old, I was married already.

Toby wasn't married.

We played cards on our off time, barbecued.

Whiteman air force base was a strategic air command base

and it housed a squadron of b-52s

armed with nuclear weapons

and a squadron of

intercontinental ballistic missiles.

That part of western missouri was very rural,

almost desolate.

I had a black and white camera

and I enjoyed photographing wildlife.

Unfortunately, when you're stationed on a nuclear base,

there's not a lot you can photograph,

so I was eager for an opportunity

to go someplace where I could use my camera.

Toby came up with the idea, let's be outdoorsmen

and let's go find a place in the wilderness.

Let's go to this place called devil's den.

We can go camping and you can photograph.

I can watch the night sky.

Neither one of us had ever been camping in our lives,

but it was going to be two nights,

turn around and come back.

We were just absolutely elated.

He grabbed a little map from the tourist kiosk

and we drove northwest...

...And just kept driving towards devil's den state park.

We crested the hill and it was like, "wow."

we came on this meadow, just gorgeous.

We just drove six hours.

I'm going to get out and explore a little bit.

we'd walked about four miles on a rough terrain.

It was just magnificent.

we had dinner and a can of beer and sat back.

By now, it's nighttime.

And it was just gorgeous. They were a billion stars out.

we were sitting there chatting and just kind of relaxing.

There had been these crickets and tree frogs

and the night sounds that you hear in the forest.

that was all gone. It was silent.

The stillness unnerved me.

This isn't right. It didn't feel right.

suddenly, my friend toby says, "hey, man.

Were those lights there before?"

on the western horizon, there are three points of light

each about as bright as the north star.

We're debating what they could be.

We were familiar with aircraft lights.

But these things were stationary.

We must've been talking about them

for a couple of minutes and then they moved.

It grew and the points of light expanded.

This thing is moving with purpose.

It became pretty clear that it was headed in our direction.

We saw this shadow move across the meadow.

This thing came...

And stopped over our heads.

kevin: I got a call from my manager jane.

somebody was in the basement of the shop tossing items

and breaking lights.

The basement had just been torn apart.

But there was nobody there.

all of the lights had been broken out,

something that jane could not have reached.