Haunted

A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES

My name is Jason Hawkins.

My life has been a nightmare.

And I've had to learn to live with the fact

that I'm haunted by the woman in white.

THE FOLLOWING IS A TRUE STORY

When I was a child, my mom did her best, I think, to shield us

from understanding that we were poor.

My dad was following work. He drove a truck.

And I remember living in motels

as we were moving around, trying to get situated.

TINA JASON'S OLDEST FRIEND

One of my earliest memories is staying in a motel.

They had a little restaurant in the parking lot.

So we're down there in the restaurant, having breakfast,

and a man had come running out of one of the motel rooms,

buck naked and covered in blood.

JASON R. JASON'S BEST FRIEND

He took a fire ax and he killed somebody in the parking lot.

Ran up and hit him in the back of the head with the ax.

The guy then charged the restaurant.

So, one of my early memories is

everybody pushing against the doors

and trying to keep this man from getting inside

while he's hammering at these glass doors with the ax.

Eventually, the police show up and shoot him in the parking lot.

And you witnessed the whole thing?

All of it.

TAMARA JASON'S DAUGHTER

That was the final straw for my mom.

And after a lot of hunting and a lot of working,

we wound up moving to an apartment in Anaheim.

For our family, it felt like landing, it felt like this was salvation.

And as we were moving in, I recall the neighbors looking at us,

but I couldn't read the expressions on their faces.

We weren't being greeted. We weren't being made to feel welcome,

but they weren't glaring at us in anger either.

So, we move in, we get settled, didn't feel comfortable, didn't know why.

It started with the closet doors.

I would close them at night...

...and I'd turn around, they'd be open.

Within weeks, I began to get an uncomfortable feeling.

ERIN JASON'S GIRLFRIEND

And I couldn't articulate it.

I couldn't put it into words. I just began to feel uncomfortable.

Shortly after that, I would occasionally hear somebody call my name.

It started as hearing whispering.

Who's in there?

Jason.

Jason...

Jason!

Who's in there?

- Jason. - Who's in there?

Still to this day, I mean, I'm shaking right now, just...

Without even seeing anybody, you could feel it.

- You can feel it. - Yeah.

There was something there, and it knew my name.

So, I went to my mom about it.

I said, "Hey, I'm hearing, like, somebody talking.

Are you calling me? Is something going on?"

"No, you must be hearing the neighbors through the walls. It's the TV."

Blew it off. You know, "Don't worry about it."

That was a real common one for me.

- Get some apple juice. - That's great, honey.

They just brushed it off.

They just made me feel like...

like shit.

I attempted to talk to my friends about it, and they laughed at me.

So...

I learned to stop talking about it.

And there were a couple of instances going forward

that made things worse.

I began to hear from my parents that I was getting up at night,

that I was sleepwalking.

As time progressed, I got this incredible sense

that something bad is coming,

almost like a premonition of something bad about to happen.

And I began to realize that

these feelings were emanating from the closet.

My logic was, keep them closed.

So, one night, I'm laying there and I hear

the closet doors.

That was the first encounter where I saw her,

the woman in white, hanging in our closet.

Didn't know who she was. I didn't know what she wanted.

The sense of hatred coming out of her

was overpowering.

This would happen every fucking night.

I needed help.

You know, I'm maybe eight,

and nobody around me will listen.

I'm trying to tell people.

I'm trying to get somebody,

anybody, to help me.

I made the mistake of going to my father.

His response to things of this nature

was to whip you.

That's his way of making it stop, I guess.

He punched me in the face.

His response was,

"You little bastard."

These are the people who...

are supposed to protect you and love you.

I became aware of the fact that nobody was going to do anything.

And then things got worse.

This became our nightly routine.

One of the things I try to do,

and this was suggested by my friend's dad, he suggested church.

"Communicate with God

and tell Him what's going on."

Okay. I'm desperate.

So I got baptized. And I was so happy.

I felt like this was a real turning point.

I continued to pray.

I continued to go to Bible study.

And every fucking night

the woman in white would appear.

And, eventually, I reached a point that I stopped praying and started cursing God.

Because how could this happen?

How could a God continue to allow this to happen?

Every single night,

for six years.

And I couldn't get anybody to believe me.

As this went on, I began to get desperate.

I wasn't sleeping.

I just couldn't...

couldn't sleep in that room.

You know, when you hear people say,

"Hey, I live in a haunted house. It's cool."

Yeah, fuck you. You live in a haunted house. It's not cool.

It's not fun.

It's not amusing. It's not a cute story to tell your friends.

I began to get desperate for something, anything.

And we were at a garage sale, and they had a Ouija board.

So, we put our fingers on it, the way you're supposed to do.

And all it spelled out was "hurt you,"

over and over and over.

"Hurt you."

I... I felt like something was happening.

I felt very, very much in danger.

What?

Aah!

My mom comes in and rinses the tub,

and doesn't say anything to me.