4. Game of Lies

Complete story — includes the ending

In 2010, the Barba family move into their own home in Elkton, Maryland. The family consists of the parents, Olivia and Jesse, and their five-year-old daughter Marie. Up until that point they've been staying with Olivia's parents. One day while Marie is playing in the backyard, Marie tells her mother that she had finished playing with a boy named Jackson. Olivia believes the boy to be real and living in the neighborhood. It turns out that Jackson is actually a ghost haunting the Barba home. A few nights later, Olivia wakes up to the sound of banging on the wall. Jesse goes to investigate and finds no one in the house. Olivia eventually finds Marie talking to herself and discovers Jackson to be an imaginary friend, but Marie claims he is very real. Marie starts wanting to sleep in her parents' room, so they set up a baby monitor to keep an eye on her. Olivia hears a man's voice coming from the monitor, but when she and Jesse go to Marie's room, they don't see anyone else there with her. Marie eventually ends up with bruises that didn't come from her falling or bumping into something. Jackson convinces her to keep her mouth shut about the situation. Olivia is horrified when she learns from Marie that Jackson wants her to go up to heaven with him, urging her not to play with him anymore. Olivia finally realizes Jackson is a ghost. Jesse brushes it off as being a phase. He goes to talk to a neighbor about strange occurrences in the house. He learns about an old man who lived there who didn't like kids and eventually died. The old man turns out to be Jackson who was taking on the form of a child to get close to Marie. He shows his true form when Marie rejects him and attacks her. Jesse gets angry and screams at the ghost. The couple calls paranormal investigators for help. Donna Gollab, a third-generation wiccan, discovers that the old man was lonely in life and possibly jealous of seeing a happy family living there. Donna performs a cleansing and removes Jackson from the house.