The Dead Files (2011–…): Season 3, Episode 13 - Betrayed - full transcript

Steve and Amy try to help a family in Southern New Jersey who believes their house is haunted by an evil entity. Steve s discovers evidence that in the late 1800s, a nearby sanitarium was run by an unbalanced doctor who believed he could help patients live forever. Meantime, Amy encounters the true source of the family's problems... an enormous shadow man, who does everything in his power to drive her out of the house.

He's big, and he is powerful.

He knows that there's people here.

I was immediately freaked out.

It is mean.

Pure hatred and anger.

It scared the living crap out of me.

It has bad intentions.

He was diagnosed with psychosis.

- That's no way to live.
- No.

- Are they dangerous?
- Yes, they are.

They're cursed.



They're being watched.

My name is Amy Allan.

This thing likes death.

I see dead people.

This thing's, like, a monster.

I speak to dead people.

And he's pissed off now.

And they speak to me.

His head was cracked.

But there's only one way to
know if my findings are real.

This guy was murdered.

I rely on my partner.

I'm Steve Di Schiavi.

I'm a retired New York
City homicide Detective.



I cannot help you unless
I know the whole story.

And I know every person,
every house has secrets.

You saw her?

It's my job to reveal them.

Why would you stay here?

But Steve and I never speak...

We never communicate
during an investigation.

Until the very end.

Stop it.

We uncover if it's safe for you to stay...

I want to know the truth. I
want to know what's happening.

Or time to get out.

I told you there were ghosts in this house.

Amy and I work on the same case, but
from two separate perspectives.

I dig into the property's past,
bringing its dark secrets to light.

While Amy communicates with the dead.

When we're finished, we present our
findings to the clients and each other.

I'm in Egg Harbor, New Jersey,
just outside of Atlantic City.

We were called in by a woman named Jessee.

She tells me her husband,
who's usually a tough guy,

is terrified to go to
certain parts of the house.

Even worse, her three small children
are starting to be affected.

I'm hoping we can help
this young family out.

Before Amy arrives, I need to remove
anything that could influence her findings.

And this house is filled with photos
of a family and their young children.

Once these items are cleared, the location
will be ready for tonight's walk.

I felt, like, this huge...

Being behind me.

And I thought it was a big shadow person.

But when I looked, I knew
that it was just a guy.

And um, he...

Wants to slit my throat.

All right, Jess, so, when we spoke,

you said the whole family's
having issues here.

- Right.
- Tell me about what's going on.

The kids are starting to see things...
shadow figures.

My husband is completely freaked out.

And it's just escalating.

Are you getting affected by anything here?

Yes. I see it more than most.

You do? When you first
moved in, did you start

experiencing stuff, or is
this happening later on?

- It was immediately.
- Why did you guys stay?

We couldn't financially afford to leave.

I had put my life savings into the deposit,

and then we just couldn't go anywhere else.

Now, the kids... how old are they?

- 6, 4, and 2.
- What's going on with them?

My son... he will not go into
his room for any reason.

He doesn't sleep in there, nothing.

- Is he sleeping with you guys?
- Yes.

Okay, does he ever mention why he
doesn't want to stay in his room?

He just says he doesn't like it. Like,
there's just someone in there with him.

What about the other kids?

My daughter... she's been sick for
over two years, and nobody knows why.

Doctors didn't give you a reason?

They tested her from leukemia to
everything, and nothing ever came back...

No ear infection, no, like,
crazy stomach thing, nothing.

It's heartbreaking, and that's
why we called you guys...

Because it's escalated to the point to
where now my kids are being affected.

Uh, there's a sickness here.

Something bad.

If there's gonna be anywhere where
there's a sickness, it would be here.

I don't like it at all.

It's from the stuff...

Outside.

It lingers here. It lingers here.

There's been this thing that has...

Um, always been around.

It's not just this house.

It follows them.

Everywhere.

Three months after we bought the house,

I had a dream that there was
a kid standing in my closet.

I followed him out of the bedroom, through
the living room, into the kitchen.

He stopped at the basement
door, opened the door.

Went like this for me to
follow him, so I did.

I followed him down the first
two steps onto the landing.

I stopped at the landing in my dream.

I watched him walk the rest of the
steps and turn into the basement.

Okay.

I woke up from my dream. I
was standing on the landing.

Like, I physically got out of the bed
and followed this kid in my sleep.

Were you on medication at
the time for anything?

No. Nothing.

- Were you drinking that night?
- No.

There's nothing that would
have made you do that.

Nothing at all.

Anything else in here?

I wake up because I hear people talking.

- They start out in my dream.
- Okay.

And then I wake up, and I still hear them.

So then I'll get up to go
investigate, and there's no one here.

It's got to be tough for
you to sleep in here.

Yes.

And there was a time where, for a
straight year, I slept on the couch.

- That's no way to live.
- No.

What are you looking at?

They kind of look like
little, tiny jellyfishes.

With, like, the long tentacles.

They're on the ceiling.
They're always moving.

They're always around.

They're trying to organize
themselves to become a being.

What sort of things can they do to people?

They are aggravating.

They would cause stress,
a sense of unease uh...

Insomnia.

- Are they dangerous?
- Yes, they are.

This is the most hated room
in the house by everybody.

Okay, so what's going on down here?

My son and I were walking down the stairs.

I turned to him like two
stairs from the bottom,

and right past this doorway, a
very large, very black figure

walked right past the door very slowly,
blacked out the light bulb completely.

Then it kept walking and disappeared.

Nobody else was down here, it
was just you and your son?

- Just me and him.
- The bulb couldn't be faulty...

- Be loose or anything like that?
- No.

Okay, what did you do?

My son immediately turned
around and hauled up

the stairs and went
screaming to his father.

I was immediately, like, freaked
out, and I ran up the steps.

I don't ever like to have my
back to the basement, ever.

This is a thing that's been
following these people forever.

It is mean, and it has bad intentions.

There's some kind of weird
revenge thing going on here.

The man who wanted to slit my
throat will not leave me alone.

I think he hates women and is
furious that I'm in his space.

It just keeps feeling like I'm
getting punched in the stomach.

This guy, he is...

Attached to women and causes
problems in their lives.

- Like what?
- Torments.

Scare them. I think he tries to kill them.

It just keeps feeling like I'm
getting punched in the stomach.

The punching in the stomach is this male...

Who, initially, I thought
was a shadow person.

I got to get away from this guy.

The guy from inside...

He is being kind of belligerent.

It's, like, pounding on me.

It's like, get the [Bleep] out.

Like, get out of here. Get out of here.

Get out of here. Get out of here.

He's, like, totally wiping me.

What do you mean?

Sometimes you meet the ones who really
don't want to talk, and they'll just...

And then you, like, try
to get into their minds,

and then they'll just wipe you,
like it's just this blank slate.

Like there's nothing.

That hasn't happened in a long time.

So Fred, I was talking to your wife, Jess,

and she was telling me what
was going on in the house.

Your daughter having some ailments.

We didn't know what it was. I don't
really talk about it that much.

It was just a rough point in our lives.

One of the other situations is my son.
He never sleeps in his own room.

I don't want him to have a bad
feeling at that young of age.

I mean, that's got to be tough for you as
a father knowing that you can't fix it.

That's why we need your help.

Can you show me some places in the house
where you've been experiencing things?

Absolutely.

We were coming back from a
barbecue, walking up to the house.

We came up on the front porch,

and I seen a shadowy figure
appear through the curtain.

Okay.

I seen the shoulders, the head, the
outline of the whole entire body.

- It scared the living crap out of me.
- Now, you don't look like you scare easy.

But that scared you.

It scared me enough where
I had to call my 4'9 wife

to come up to the front porch
and go inside the house.

- Really?
- Yeah.

Is this the first time you
saw something like that?

No.

In the kitchen, I just happened to see
a shadowy figure, again, peer over.

He's looking at me. I'm looking at him.

I yell at my wife thinking it's
my wife playing a joke on me.

She comes out of the bedroom
looking flustered as could be.

I was like, what are you doing? She's
like, I'm putting the kids to bed.

So you've seen this thing two times.

Actually, two nights ago, I had a dream.

And in that dream, in the corner of the
bedroom, there was a black shadowy figure.

It almost looked like the Grim Reaper.

And it just kind of went for me,
and I woke up at the same time.

I had the chills from head to toe.

Okay, so this guy is pissed.

Pure hatred and anger.

The shadowy figure that wiped my mind
doesn't want me to know anything about him.

But I've been fighting
off his other attempts,

and I'm starting to see
what's making him so angry.

He's mad because he feels like
he was ripped off and betrayed.

And the crawly things in the room...

I know he wants them to be
here, and he wants them to...

Come together and form a being.

Are you talking about the
jellyfish creatures?

Yes.

Sometimes I gather information that's so
bizarre I can hardly believe it myself.

But I just have to rely on what I see and
feel and hope it'll make sense later.

And they're not good, these things.

They're not.

He's not.

How you feeling that you're here?

I just want to get out. I just want to
leave, I just don't like being down here.

There's always a feeling of somebody
just behind you looking at you.

You have that feeling you're being watched.

Talking to your wife about the basement.
She talked about the incident between...

Her and your son, what they saw down here.

I really didn't, you know,
believe it at the time.

I don't know, but until I actually
physically had to come down here,

then I could understand.

Plus it bothers me that
my son has to go through

- what we're going through as grown adults.
- Right.

I want him to have a childhood and be a
child, I don't want him to worry about...

Is there something in his bedroom?
Is there something in this basement?

You know what? Let's get out
of here, you've been...

Nice enough to come down. I appreciate it.

I think this is his space.

Oh, that [Bleep] will not
come and talk to me.

He's a [Bleep] coward.

Such a coward.

But he's big, and he is
powerful, so it's weird.

Like, he's such a [Bleep] baby. Like,
he won't talk to me or anything.

He wants to be brutal about it.

I think he's very capable of
inflicting pain on people.

He can touch and, you know,

physically do anything he wants
to a person, pretty much.

Do you have any idea why,
exactly, he's doing this?

Mm, because he made a
commitment to uh, wreak havoc.

So he just wants to [Bleep] kill.

And I think he wants to
do it to somebody here.

I made some calls, and I was
able to track down a woman

who used to own the
property I'm investigating.

She told me that she grew up
in Fred and Jessee's house,

but that her time there was
marked with violence and tragedy.

So, Linda, I understand you grew
up in the house I'm investigating.

Yes. It was my mother and my father
and my brother, Louis, and myself.

Okay.

Now, you had mentioned on the
phone there was some tragedy

at home when you were living
there, what happened?

My brother had died. I
have a picture of him.

He had committed suicide.
He had hung himself...

- In the basement.
- In the house?

- Yes.
- Aw, geez.

- How old was he?
- Fourteen.

It was 1970.

Who found him?

My mother went down the basement,
and she found him there.

And she yelled and asked me
to bring a knife down...

Because she had to cut him down.

Oh, geez.

- Did he ever mention any problems to you?
- No.

He was a good kid. He never got
in any trouble or anything.

Okay now, did your parents stay there?

Yeah, but in '92, my mother
died of a rare blood disease.

How did your father deal with that?

I lost him the day my mother died.

After that, everything went downhill.

He said he was hearing voices and
there was people in his house.

He was diagnosed with psychosis.

- When your father died, how old was he?
- 87.

- 87.
- Mm-hmm.

He was like an empty shell. That's
how I always described him.

He was there physically, but
the man I knew he just...

He wasn't there.

There is, like, this old man
that's bopping around, too.

I think this old man is,
like, in his death state.

And he wanders mostly...

Uh, he's confused.

He's old. He's like 80.

Okay.

He does have moments of clarity where...

He knows that there's people here.

But then he gets even more confused.

There is activity in the closet because
he goes in there and he shrinks down.

They look all cute and harmless,
and then they're crazy.

Now that I've got a pretty good idea
about this home's recent history,

I need to find out a little
bit more about its past.

So I've reached out to a local genealogist
to look through the archives.

He tells me he's come up with
some pretty interesting stuff.

Bob, what were you able to find out
about the property I'm investigating?

I was able to take the title
back to the mid-1850s.

When a group of wealthy
German financiers...

Acquired 38,000 acres of land.

And wanted to develop a
town that would be a

land of opportunity for the
German immigrants to come.

All right, so, who wound up settling
on the land that I'm investigating?

Do you know that?

There were two brothers,
Ignatz and Louis Roesch.

They were German immigrants who came over
here expecting the land of opportunity.

There was gonna be parks,
lakes, churches, schools...

I mean, a whole town that they could
come to and raise a family in.

Okay, so what did they
find when they got here?

A little stark reality. I think
it was woods and mosquitoes.

They were met with very
difficult conditions.

Louis had a total of six
children, three of which died.

One of them was an infant.

Louis, died 9 years old
by double pneumonia.

And then a son, William, died
when he was 26 of enteritis.

And I brought the death
certificate of William there.

If they would have had the hospitals
and the proper medical attention,

they could have done something different.

- Sounds like he got screwed over.
- Yes.

Can't imagine this is the life he dreamt
of when he left his home country.

Okay.

This man, who I thought
was a shadow person...

He's, like, hiding. And he
doesn't want to come out.

He's not talking to me, and this
is all coming from his mind.

I'm determined to get into
this dead man's head.

He's so violent and unpredictable
that I think he's responsible

for whatever the people in
this house are going through.

There was something with money
and him and even his family.

I don't know. Like, something from...

A long time ago.

Do you have any idea when this was?

Probably, like, 1850s.

I don't even know if it's
in this freaking country.

He felt betrayed, he felt...

Double-crossed.

Why would he haunt...

And be trying to get revenge?

They're cursed, really. They're cursed.

Yes.

I'm at the library to see if I can find

anything more about Fred
and Jessee's property.

I don't get any direct hits, but
one article catches my attention.

Turns out there used to be a
sanitarium right near their house.

But the records about what
went on there are limited.

So I've reached out to a local historian.

He tells me that the sanitarium

is one of the most amazing
stories in Egg Harbor's history.

During my research, I came
across this sanitarium

that was right near the
property I'm investigating.

What can you tell me about this place?

Well, Steve, we had a place here that was
called the Neutral Water Health Spa.

That was centered on the healing
waters of the creek behind us.

It was cedar water that
comes up from the ground.

It was advertised in several publications,

and people that had all kinds
of ailments would come here,

and walk in the health waters.

They heard that all the
wonderful cures you can get.

What kind of ailments did these people
have that they would go in the water?

Prostate problems, kidney problems,
uterine problems, infertility.

- Okay.
- You name it, they came here for it.

So there were a lot of sick
people on these grounds?

- Yes, basically.
- Do we know if anybody died in this place?

Well, we do have a reference
to one person who came here

that the doctors in the area thought
he was at death's doorstep.

And thought he shouldn't be
accepted, but they took him in.

But we have no reference of how he died.

Whoa.

So there's a lot of people
that are walking through here.

Woo. Lots of illness here. [Bleep]

A lot of people who are vomiting.

Something with preservation, maybe.

Somebody's dying that has
something to do with this...

Group.

I feel really sick out here. I
feel really out of it out here.

I feel, like, lightheaded, dizzy...

Hot, dehydrated, chest pain.

I can't see very well.

Who ran this place? I mean,
was it a state place?

No, it was a private entity that was
incorporated here in Egg Harbor City.

And it was run by a Dr. Charles Smith.

What kind of guy was he?

He was a very charismatic
person, eccentric.

He wholeheartedly believed
in his "fountain of youth".

Was he a legit doctor?
Did he have a degree?

No he didn't have a degree,

and there's nothing on record with
The State Department of Health.

He once said that he was born in 1776,

which would have made him well
over 140 years old when he died.

Any given time, the
Neutral Water Health Spa,

was pretty loaded with
about 100-and-some people.

So he made a good living doing this.

Basically, yeah.

He was quite well-to-do at the end

because just to build this
facility and this house

and everything else that he had
took quite a bit of money.

There is a structure.

I'm getting, like, the people
who had to organize it.

Maybe doctors, maybe...

People that had to put this together.

And there's a dead person here.
I don't like him.

And there's a lot of money around him.

He's very, very sick physically.

And mentally, he's disturbed.

During my walk, I
encountered many entities,

so I had a sketch artist draw
the two who stood out clearly.

First, the old man in the house.

He's probably about 80, very
sick, very, very frail.

How would you describe
the shape of the head?

Fairly round, but then it
does kind of come down...

To a sharper point.

Next, I describe the bizarre
creatures in the Master Bedroom.

These little things...

That kind of resemble a jellyfish.

This is kind of flipped, and then
the tentacles are coming out.

Amy, is this what you saw?

Yes.

Now that Amy and I have
completed our investigations,

we're going to reveal our findings to each
other and our clients for the first time.

This is Fred and Jessee.

- Hi.
- Hi. Hello.

They're married. They've been living in
this house a little bit over eight years.

They've been having experiences
ever since they moved in.

But lately, things have
gotten really out of hand.

What's most disturbing is they
got three small children,

and two of them are starting
to have experiences.

That being said, I'm gonna
turn it over to Amy,

and she can explain what she
encountered on her walk.

The first thing that I got was I was
actually pulled to the backyard.

I saw a lot of people there
and a lot of illness.

These individuals were involved with...

Trying to preserve something.

And I saw the people who were trying
to organize this were doctors,

but they couldn't make it work.

Then I saw this one man
standing out, and he...

Was severely mentally ill.

Well, there was this sanitarium
less than a mile from here.

This is the picture of the sanitarium.

This is in the late 1800s.

This guy, Dr. Smith, claimed that he
discovered the fountain of youth.

At any given time, he had over
100 people in this place.

These people were sick that went there.

What they were trying to
preserve was their youth.

- Was he a real doctor?
- No, but you said he was crazy.

He told somebody during a census
that he was 147 years old.

I mean, do you think this
is what you picked up on?

Yes.

What else did you see?

When I walked in the house, I felt like...

The illnesses were a little
bit in the living room.

Then when I went in the
pink room, I felt it...

Really strongly.

And I feel like it's
coming from the outside.

That's my daughter's room.

She's been sick for two years now.

And they just couldn't find
anything wrong with her.

They tested her from everything from cancer
to, like, anything that you can think of.

And then six, eight months ago,
she got her appendix taken out.

Oh, my gosh.

We actually had a nurse that
was a nurse for 20 years,

say that she's never seen a 3-year-old
get her appendix taken out.

It's not fair.

What else did you see?

I saw an old man in the house.
And he's in his death state.

He's just, like, confused, and
he's about 80, really little guy.

His favorite spot is in the
closet in the back bedroom.

He hides in there.

Wow.

That's my son's room.

He's 6. He's never slept
a full night in his bed.

It validates everything he says to me.

Well, there was a guy that
lived here for 51 years.

His name was Louis Brunk.
He died at the age of 87.

I actually spoke to his
daughter, who grew up here.

At the end, he psychologically wasn't
right, and he would talk to his daughter

and say, there's people here, they're
bothering me, they're talking to me.

This is the guy.

And actually, that's his
daughter in the photo with him.

I did a sketch of a man I think
you're going to want to see.

You guys tell me.

Wow.

That's crazy.

I think it's him.

I think it's too close to
dismiss it to be anyone else.

It's him.

When I got here, behind me...

Was what I initially thought
was a shadow person...

Huge, though. Huge.

And then I realized, as he
was walking up behind me,

that it was just a male who was hiding.

His two favorite places are
the basement and the garage.

This guy is very capable
of inflicting pain.

He was very threatened by me being here.

Like, right away, we're out here, and
he comes in, and he's flipping out.

He's, like, pounding on me.
He's like, get the [Bleep] out.

Get out of here. Get out of here.

His goal is to try to screw up...

Your lives.

Now, Jessee had an experience with a
shadow thing down in the basement.

- Right.
- Would you explain that to Amy?

I was walking down the steps with my son.

I get to the bottom step and I turn to him

and right in front of
the light, very slowly,

this large, like, floor-to-ceiling black
mass walked in front of the light.

And it stopped for a good
three to four seconds.

And then it, like, just dissipated.

Coming up on the porch one
time, there was a shadow.

It looked at me. I looked at him.

And the other time, I mean,
I was sitting on the couch,

and she was putting the kids to bed.

Same thing.

The back story that I
was able to get on him.

Was that he's from like 100, 200 years ago.

He was from another country, and he felt...

Like he had been double-crossed.

Something to do with land and money.

And he became extremely vengeful.

Amy, let me tell you about
this guy Louis Roesch.

He came here from Germany
back in the 1860s.

Came here with his wife and his brother.

They settled in Egg Harbor, right under
the land that your house sits on.

Supposedly, this place was gonna have
schools, churches, theaters, hospitals.

They buy it, they come here,
they look at their land...

There's none of that. All they
got are trees and mosquitoes.

Basically, he was betrayed by the
people he gave his money to.

He also had a lot of tragedy. Out of
his six kids, three of them died.

The youngest was a little girl.
She died from appendicitis.

He had a 9-year-old they
said died from a cold.

He had a 26-year-old son
that died from enteritis.

Had they been in a developed area, these
kids probably wouldn't have died.

The next thing that I encountered was
when I went into the Master Bedroom.

And what I saw in there was
these things on the ceiling.

And they had, like, little tentacles.

And they become very, very active at night.

One of the main things... they don't sleep.

- Ever.
- Ever.

- For eight years?
- Yeah.

You had a sleepwalking incident.

- I did.
- Really?

Three months after we first
moved into the house.

In my dream, I had woken up, and there
was a kid standing in my closet.

I followed him out, and he
stopped at the basement door.

He walked down the steps,
stopped at the landing.

I stopped on the landing, and I woke up.

And when I woke up, I was
standing on the landing.

And then I called Fred, hysterical.

Something's got to give.

Amy, do you know what those
things on the ceilings are?

They're shattered aspects of the
people who lived and died here.

It's kind of hard to visualize
what I'm talking about,

so the sketch artist did draw it.

That's interesting. Take a look at that.

Oh, my God.

Do you know what those
things on the ceilings are?

They're shattered aspects of the
people who lived and died here.

It's kind of hard to visualize
what I'm talking about,

so the sketch artist did draw it.

That's interesting. Take a look at that.

Oh, my God.

Does it remind you of a dream you had?

That's exactly where it was. Right there.

Identical. That whole shape.

Absolutely. To the "T".
That's how I felt afterwards.

Exact placement.

What's going on is that...

This guy Louis wants these things to...

Become an entity so he can
do very, very bad things.

This Louis or the one from Germany?

The one from Germany... the bad Louis.

Honestly, I don't even
know what to do with this.

His goal is vengeance.

Because he felt double-crossed.

And what he did was he
actually cursed this land.

But when he did this curse,
he actually cursed himself.

So he's, like, in this forever.
He can't get out.

But since he can't get out,
he's gonna continue to do this,

to create problems or illness or
misery or whatever he can do.

Your sleepwalking incident...

Probably him, probably trying to kill you.

Is that why he's always checking up on me?

He's threatened by you.

If he's able to ever get these things...

Together.

- What could happen?
- He'd get more powerful.

He would be able to control them
and also feed off of their energy.

- Was there anything else?
- No.

Well, remember before, I
told you about Louis Brunk?

His 14-year-old son hung
himself in the basement here.

Okay.

Nobody knows why. Talked to his sister.

Why do you think you think you
didn't get the hanging downstairs?

It could be several things.

He could just be gone, or
he could be scattered.

- Do you have a picture?
- Of him?

- Of the son.
- I do.

Oh, my God.

That's who I saw in my dream.

I don't think his son was a bad person,

so I don't think he would lead
you down a flight of stairs.

It could be that he was
influenced by this guy, Louis.

Which is not good.

Jessee, Fred, you got hit with
a lot of information tonight.

And I'm sure some of it's not
what you wanted to hear.

The pressing question is, is it safe for
you to raise your children in this house?

For that question, I'm gonna
turn that over to Amy,

and hopefully she'll
have an answer for you.

You have a lot of dead
around this location, but...

It's really beneficial for you
and the dead that are here...

If you stay and stop the vicious cycle.

What I feel needs to be done here is to...

Contact a local Wiccan.

What exactly is a Wiccan?

Wiccans are, like, a natural witch.

They are all about the Earth,
they are all about nature,

they're all about preservation,
and she or he is going to...

Do some kind of ritual that will negate the
curse that he has placed upon himself.

Will the Wiccan take care of the bad Louis?

Uh, this fractured stuff, and possibly...

- Our poor guy here?
- Yes.

And it'll protect them from his...

Vengeful curse.

Will that take care of this sickness
that's outside trying to get in?

Yes, yes. Mm-hmm.

I would love to help him to be with him.

And even this guy... I would
like him to go with his family.

Just let us go and just
do what we have to do.

Are you gonna take her advice?

- I'm gonna call tomorrow.
- Okay.

What I had to go through, in
myself, which nobody knows...

Other than her, maybe my parents, is
what my daughter's sickness did to me.

I need to do it for her.

It's gonna be taken care
of by the end of the week.

I'm worried that if they don't
deal with it immediately,

their suffering could continue, and they
might never find peace in their home.