Poltergeist

The Freelings — real-estate agent Steve, his wife Diane, and their three children Dana, Robbie, and five-year-old Carol Anne — live in a new-build tract home in the planned community of Cuesta Verde, California. One night Carol Anne is drawn to a television showing post-broadcast static and begins speaking to it as though something inside is answering. The next night, a white hand reaches out from the screen and the house shakes with a burst of energy. Carol Anne turns to her family and says: they're here. In the days that follow the manifestations are playful — silverware bends, a cracked glass spills on its own, chairs slide across the kitchen floor without being touched. The family treats it almost like a parlor trick, pushing Carol Anne across the floor to watch her glide. They do not yet understand what they are dealing with.

During a violent thunderstorm, things turn. Robbie, who is already frightened of the gnarled tree outside his window and a clown doll in his room, watches the tree come alive. A branch crashes through the glass, seizes him, and drags him outside into the storm, the trunk splitting open to swallow him. Steve and Diane pull him free while the tornado that tore the tree from the ground carries it away. In their absence, the closet in the children's bedroom glows and warps, a vortex opens, and Carol Anne is taken. When the family races back inside she is gone, leaving only her voice calling through the television static.

Steve and Diane bring in a team of parapsychologists from the local university — Dr. Lesh and her assistants Ryan and Marty. In the Freeling home they witness objects spinning in midair behind closed doors and a luminous spirit form descending the staircase. Dr. Lesh determines this is a poltergeist intrusion involving multiple entities, not a single haunting, and that Carol Anne is trapped in a kind of limbo tethered to the house. Steve, meanwhile, learns from his employer that Cuesta Verde was built over a relocated cemetery. The bones, he is assured, were moved before construction began. He accepts this, for now.

Dr. Lesh brings in a renowned spiritual medium named Tangina Barrons — small, formidable, unshakeable. After moving through the house, Tangina explains that the land holds many spirits who have not crossed over, trapped in a dreamlike state and drawn to the warmth of Carol Anne's living presence. Among them is something she calls the Beast: not an ordinary ghost but a predatory, malevolent entity that has latched onto Carol Anne as an anchor to hold the other spirits and prevent them from leaving. It is intelligent and it will not give her up willingly. Tangina identifies the entrance to the other side as the children's closet and the exit as the living room ceiling. She threads a rope between them. Diane, whose bond with Carol Anne is strongest, will go through.