Episode Recap: The Dark Pond

Theirs was a relationship of the Internet age. Shanda had only been looking for someone to hang out with, but when Jason Snyder invited her to come to his house, she decided to make the drive. They hit it off immediately. When she saw the pond tucked in the back of four acres of land, she didn't think anything of the chill she got as she walked toward it. It must have been just her nerves at finally meeting Jason.

After a few months, Jason proposed. Their whirlwind romance worried her parents, but she accepted the proposal. They were happy, and the birth of their daughter, Lily, proved to be the highlight of their marriage.

Something about the pond slowly grabbed Lily's attention as she got older. One day, as Jason was distracted from filming Lily on her new bike, she began riding toward the waters. Shanda ran toward her daughter to keep her from riding the bike right into the water. When they caught her, Lily was staring at a fixed point in the pond, as though she were transfixed.

The odd occurrences began from there, though they were subtle at first. Halloween candy disappeared overnight from a bowl in the kitchen. Lily was in her room, ostensibly alone, when Shanda heard her arguing with someone. When Shanda checked on her, Lily was staring into a corner of her room as though someone was there. Shanda asked her daughter who she was yelling at. After a long moment, Lily said, "the little boy." Shanda thought it was odd for Lily to have an imaginary friend at such a young age, but didn't pursue the subject.

That night, when the family had gone to bed, Shanda and Jason were awakened by their car alarms. Jason got his gun and went to investigate while Shanda called the police. Jason didn't find any hand- or footprints near the vehicles. The police conducted a perimeter search, and found nothing. Unable to explain it, Jason and Shanda went back to bed.

Their sleep lasted right up to the point where Lily began screaming. Shanda rushed to her daughter, but Lily would not say anything about why she was screaming as though she were being hurt. When they finally calmed her down, they managed to get everyone back to bed and sleep. While she tried to tell Lily that it was just a dream, Shanda knew that there was something going on ...

The next morning, when Jason came downstairs to go to work, he was surprised to step in a puddle of water at the foot of the stairs. Jason simply assumed that the ceiling was leaking, though couldn't see any signs of it overhead. No sooner did he clean it up then it was there again. Putting it out of his mind, he headed off to work.

Shanda was resting in bed with Lily when she heard the door open. Thinking it was Jason forgetting something, she called out asking if that was him. There was no response. She walked into the hall and down to a point where she could see the front door wide open. Again, there was no response. Something had opened a deadbolt and come inside the house. She rushed back to the bedroom and got the gun. There was a creaking of the hardwood floor as though someone was walking across it. Her heart in her throat, Shanda called Jason and asked him to rush home as she believed there was someone in the house. Jason looked, but found no one.

After catching Lily again staring out of the window at the pond, Shanda began to wonder what was really going on. Was she really going a little bit crazy, or what? As she stood near the pond, Shanda couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched.

One day, as Shanda was doing work around the house, she noticed Lily suddenly outside where she shouldn't have been. Her daughter was slowly walking toward the pond, entranced. Shanda rushed outside to catch her before she could end up in the deep, dark water. When she finally reached her daughter and gathered her in her arms, all Lily could say was, "Kill me."

Jason sensed an oppressive feeling in the house, and his energies were drained. One night, as he was alone in the house, he was suddenly shoved across the living room and onto the sofa. As he sat there, he felt a burning sensation on his neck. When he went to the mirror, he was stunned to find massive claw-like scratches in that same spot. What was in his house?

One night, Shanda and Jason were awakened by a loud dragging sound from another room. It was punctuated by something that sounded almost like a shotgun blast. When he went to investigate, Jason found that something had ripped up the flooring in the bathroom. Now, things were starting to get really dangerous ...

Later on, as Jason and Shanda were outside working on chopping wood for the fire and Lily played with her ball, something got its hands on the ball. Shanda watched the ball roll slowly toward the pond. Lily walked behind it, entranced once more. Her parents called for her to stop, but she kept going. They caught her before she got into the water, but Shanda now knew that something was trying to get Lily to go into the pond.

Jason and Shanda couldn't afford to leave the house. What could they do to protect Lily? One night, Shanda woke to see a figure in the house and realized she was probably seeing Lily's "imaginary friend" for the first time.

Jason and Shanda called a local priest. Pastor Bill showed up with a woman named Sarah, who had experience with seeing spirits. Together, the duo walked through the house and blessed it with Holy Water. Sarah was also drawn to the pond, and they went down to the water to do a blessing there. Sara sensed evil in the pond and told the Snyders to get their daughter away from there as soon as possible.

Shanda began checking online to see what she could learn about the pond's history. What she found was shocking. One of the stories was about a teenaged boy who had skipped school with some friends. That boy had dove into the pond, but never surfaced; somehow, he got stuck in the mud at the bottom. Shanda realized that this must have been the boy that she'd seen.

It all came to a head one day when, as Shanda prepared lunch, she turned and saw Lily physically yanked from the house and into the yard by an invisible force. At the same time, Jason had been mowing the yard and his riding mower sped up and turned on its own toward the pond. Jason barely escaped before Shanda called him to where their daughter lay face-down in the yard.

Knowing they could no longer protect their daughter, Shanda and Jason listed the house on the market and moved, fleeing from the terrors of The Dark Pond.