Episode Recap: Sacred Ground

Christi's stroke made for one of the hardest days for her family, but when she was released from the hospital, it was the first day of their new lives. After living in a rental, the family had finally found a beautiful permanent home.

One thing that always stood out for her husband, Nelson, was the basement. It always gave him a creepy feeling.

Their daughter, Amber, was excited to finally put her own bedroom together. She had two plush "kissing" bunnies connected at the paws that had been an Easter gift. She placed the bunnies on her dresser while she finished unpacking a box. While her back was turned, something happened. She found the boy bunny sitting on the floor, disconnected from the girl bunny in a manner that required physical force. How had they been torn apart? An upset Amber went to her mother, but Christi dismissed it as an accident: they'd just moved, and things can get broken in a move.

Christi had been issued a CPAP machine to help regulate her breathing as she recovered. Her doctors made it very clear to her that if she didn't use the CPAP, she might be taking her own life into her hands.

One evening, as Nelson was making a sandwich, he caught a whiff of an unusual yet strangely familiar smell. As he followed his nose, he realized that the door to the basement was wide open. As he looked down the stairs, he realized it was the smell of cherry pipe tobacco. But why would there be the smell of tobacco in a home where nobody smoked? Nelson pushed the door until it clicked shut ... only to find it open again as he was locking the house up for the night.

Another day, as Christi was outside hanging clothes on the line to dry, she saw something in the blinds of Amber's window. It almost looked as though someone was holding down the blinds in one spot with two fingers. She went into the house to investigate, and when she reached Amber's room, she was hit with a blast of cold air. Even still, not a soul could be seen in the room. When she looked at the blinds, she could see the impression of two fingers in the grain. Something had been there, but what?

For Amber, the house was an exercise in troubled sleep. Every night at the same time, 2:45AM, something happened to wake her up. At first, she thought her brother, Matt, was playing tricks. One night, when she was awakened by her bed violently shaking, something grabbed her foot under the sheets. Amber grabbed her covers and went downstairs to be closer to her parents' bedroom. When she got downstairs, she began to hear a little boy giggling, and then something exclaimed into her ear, "Get out!" She screamed for her parents, convinced there was someone in the house. Nelson searched the place but found nothing.

A few nights later, Christi sank into a warm bath that quickly turned into a nightmare. Muddy, murky water flowed from the tap, and nothing she tried stopped it. She screamed for Nelson, but when he finally heard her and came running, the bathroom door was locked. When he finally got the door open and rescued Christi, Nelson tried as hard as he could to rationalize how something like that could have happened.

One night shortly after Amber's birthday, she was playing a dance video game. One of the dance moves in the game was to turn around; when she did, she saw the shadow of a little boy across the room. Curious, Amber walked over to the little boy and noted that he looked Native American. Suddenly, the manifestation startled her and she screamed for her mom. However, when Amber turned back to the boy, he was gone. Amber tried to convince her mother that there was a ghost in the house but nobody would believe her.

One night, Nelson woke to whispers. Something told him that he needed to go into the basement, where heard a rhythmic thrumming ...

While Nelson was investigating the basement, Christi’s CPAP machine went off by itself. She woke almost immediately, gasping for breath. As she fought for air, she screamed for Nelson as best she could. When he finally came running, they both tried to figure out what happened to her CPAP. Christi flipped the switch back on, and it worked as though nothing had happened. Christi went to get a glass of water, still groggy from gasping for air. She heard an odd chanting that she couldn't quite process. As she was walking back to the bedroom, she saw a man standing in the dining room. She got to Nelson as quickly as she could, telling him there was someone else in the house. Nelson grabbed his gun and went to hunt down the intruder. Yet again, he found nothing. Christi went to Amber's room and apologized to her daughter for not believing her.

In an attempt to lift their spirits, Christi and Amber went to visit Christi's parents. Nelson stayed at the house with Matt, who had football camp. After the girls had left, Matt took an archery target out to the backyard to practice his bow skills. When one arrow went over the target and into the trees, he walked into the woods to look for it.

As Matt searched for the arrow, he heard a second set of footfalls on the leaves ... and suddenly felt as though we was being hunted. He grabbed the stray arrow and sprinted back to the house, only to find the door locked. He nocked an arrow into the bow and headed around to the front of the house, convinced that whatever was hunting him was a predator. He finally got to the garage and keyed in the security code. The garage door opened and Matt ducked inside. He held the nocked arrow, ready for anything that might try to rush him as the door closed. Finally, he was inside and safe.

Late one night, Nelson saw something that he first thought was Matt, but when he told Matt to go to bed there was no reply. As the dark mass slipped by the door, Nelson reacted, grabbing the pistol from the nightstand. He stalked through the house trying to find the source of the shadow but found nothing.

A few days later, Matt went into the basement to retrieve hunting equipment for himself and Nelson. While he was downstairs, he got that same hunted feeling that he'd felt out in the woods. He heard the basement door click shut. As he turned his attention toward the stairs, Matt saw someone standing in front of him. Steadying himself, Matt barreled through the manifestation and up the stairs. He was stopped by the locked basement door. When Nelson finally opened the basement door, Matt told his father that Amber was right. Neither of the men could deny that something was telling them to get out of there.

When Christi and Amber returned from their trip, they were happier than Nelson had seen them in a long time. Christi no longer needed her cane to walk and felt better than she'd felt since the stroke. The minute she walked back into the house, however, Christi began to decline. Nelson apologized to her and told her that something definitely didn't want them there.

Remembering Amber's comment about the boy appearing Native American, Christi did some research, finding a store in town that specialized in Native American items. Christi spoke to a woman at the store and told her of the happenings in her house. The woman told Christi that it wasn’t a surprise, as the house was on land that was important to several local tribes. She lived on sacred ground.

When Christi asked if there was anything that she could do, the woman offered four amber stones that, if put on the four corners of the property, had the potential to help. She also told Christi to perform a smudging on the home to encourage the departure of negative energies. Christi did as she was instructed, hoping to send a confused family of Native American spirits on the right path. For a while, it appeared to work. The house felt lighter, and the family had some hope that they could get back to a more normal life. Then Christmas rolled around ...

The family put up the tree and lushly decorated the branches. It was almost as though the tree was tempting fate, and fate won. Christi woke in a panicked gasp for breath, convinced her CPAP had failed again; the machine, however, was working. That next morning, as Amber was bringing presents down from her room, she stopped dead in her tracks: All of the decorations had been stripped off the tree.

That was the last straw. The family moved out, and never looked back.