Portals to Hell

Who's there? Who's at the door?

It sounded like it was coming from behind here.

- Oop. You see that? - Oh, yeah.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

is this place a portal to hell?

that's bones.

serious?

katrina: He believes that you're demonic.

So this should really piss you off.

jack: Before this land was known as america,

nations and natives battled over who could claim her abundance.

European colonialists clashed for decades,

exploiting the indigenous peoples,

spawning a cycle of blood and betrayal.

And in this place, the sins of yesteryear is led

to one of the bloodiest massacres in history...

...Leaving a permanent wound on the land.

okay, jack and I are in lake george, new york.

This is our fort william henry investigation.

so fort william henry was built mainly

because of a trade war

that was going on between the french and the british -- mm-hmm.

...And the french had built a huge fort not far from here.

And so, the british decided to build fort william henry.

You know, the fort, in its short time that it stood,

saw a huge amount of tragedy.

You know, the french made a lot of false promises

to the native americans,

especially the ones that they kind of amassed into their army. Yeah.

The deal was you fight for us

and you could plunder the fruits of war. Yeah.

And they didn't really hold true to that.

So the french and the natives attack the fort.

And after a six-day siege, the british surrender,

the french basically just let the british go

with all their plunder promised to the natives.

The native americans decided to ambush the british

and steal all their stuff.

And then they went back to the fort

and killed everyone there

which was allegedly hundreds of people

and then they burned it down.

So crazy, and ever since then,

people have been having paranormal experiences -- absolutely.

For a really long time

and people have been seeing, you know, soldiers,

obviously, is kind of the big one. Yeah.

People have a lot of late anomalies

that they see -- voices, things like that.

Is it just the soldiers?

Like, who else is there? Why are they still there?

Is it the tragedy or is it the fact that

because there was such a tragic thing,

it's opened a doorway to allow paranormal activity to happen?

- Yeah. - I suppose.

So I think we're coming into the fort looking to figure out

if the hauntings at fort william henry

are spirits of people who died in the massacre

or something that has been there even longer.

Maybe something that actually

influenced the massacre into happening. Totally.

- have you investigated here? - No, I never have.

It's been on my list for a while, though.

Is this place, like, a legendary spot to investigate?

Not a lot of people actually come here

because it's kind of a more isolated area. Yeah.

It's also a fort and I don't think

they're always the easiest to get into.

But, for us, they're shutting it down. Yeah.

So we actually have the whole place

literally locked down like a fort.

We are pulling into ye old merry old fort.

all right, shall we go in, meet rob? Let's do it.

- Let's siege the fort. -

okay, so where do we go? Oh, there's a cemetery.

You know, at times of war,

I don't think things are cleaned up all the time.

So, I mean, you had a massacre happening with 200 people

being killed, slaughtered, skinned.

It's very possible that right now we're standing on graves

that were never given a proper burial.

This is the secret british fort entry knock

that only us brits know. -

hello? How's it going, I'm jack.

- Hi, I'm richard. - Nice to meet you, richard.

Hi, nice to meet you, I'm katrina. Hi, katrina.

So we are meeting with rob. Is he here?

Yep. And I'll go get him for you. Okay.

Awesome, cool. Can we come in 'cause it's cold.

Come on right in so you can --

you can wander around for a minute.

wow.

Mitchell: I'll go get rob.

rob will be here in a couple of minutes.

- Okay, great. - Awesome.

- How long have you worked here? - Working here for six years.

And you've done the history, mainly?

I work during the day and I do the ghost tours at night.

Oh, okay. So have you ever had an experience?

I've had a lot of experiences.

Really? Like what?

I have been touched, like,

actually took and got pushed last week.

- You got pushed? - I got pushed.

I was standing over by the cannon over there.

Right here? I'll bring it right over and show you.

Okay.

Somebody came through the door over there and called my name.

And I turned like this.

And I started walking and I took about two steps

and it felt like somebody took and put their foot

right underneath me and tripped me.

And just then it felt

like somebody pushed me at the same time. Wow.

I actually hit the ground and slid from right here

all the way over to the entranceway right there.

I just slid across the ground.

It's the first time I've really been attacked by something. Yeah.

And being here,

I'm amazed every single night at what people get.

People do get full body apparitions, shadow people.

People get their hair pulled a little bit.

And where's the most active place?

Like if jack and I wanted an experience,

where would we go?

For me, it would be down in the basement, the casemate. Okay.

That's where the massacre took place. Mm-hmm.

Just about everybody experiences

at least something down in there.

Richard was talking about how he was physically pushed

and slid across the lobby area.

I mean, that's a very powerful spirit

that can do that.

That's something to really kind of take heed to that warning

and be aware that there is something

sinister and powerful here.

Hi, are you rob? Hi. Thank you. Hey.

So thank you for having us. First off.

Yeah, this has been been on my radar for a while.

So you do the history and the paranormal?

Yeah, I do a little bit of both here.

The paranormal thing kind of just fell into my lap.

What were your thoughts on the paranormal

before you started working here?

- Huge skeptic. Huge. - Really?

Really huge.

This place made you a believer?

It really did.

I had some experiences here that were just way out of the norm.

- Yeah. - You know?

- Should we get rolling? - Yeah.

'cause as much as I love the gift shop,

I really want to check out the fort. Let's take a walk, shall we?

all right, so we're gonna enter here

through our main museum.

- wow. - Ooh.

Although home today to our main museum,

this was actually where the soldiers would have slept

and stayed, doing their daily activities.

And this would have been the heart

of the fort where we're standing right now.

Yeah, this was the main barracks building.

This -- if you could imagine this whole place

being filled with bunks,

soldiers sharing these bunks,

living in messes of six men.

Now were there also women and children here?

Women and children as well

would've followed their husbands from home.

And they would have lived here in the fort, though?

- In the fort. - Wow.

It's funny you try to put yourself in those last moments

that people here had.

And so many of these people that were here were young

and there were women and there were children.

And I keep going back to the terror

that people must have felt here

knowing that there wasn't anything they could do.

So just to make clear, we're in a replica right now. You are.

Okay. It's a reconstructed fort, very much like the original.

- Right on the exact site. - Okay.

This is a very accurate replica.

It looks pretty much how it would have looked

when the original fort was here.

It could be significant when it comes to the paranormal

because essentially the whole building would be a trigger.

So where do we go from here?

We're gonna head right upstairs here

to the second level of our western barracks building.

and up here, believe it or not,

is where many of our staff have the most uneasy feelings.

- Interesting. - Hmm.

It doesn't really look like a bad place. Right.