Location: Helvetia is a deserted and remote isolated four-bedroom cabin in the Wilson Pass near Douthat Lake in the former community of Falls Church , now part of the George Washington National Forest near Clifton Forge, a small town on the Jackson River in Allegheny County, Virginia.

Description Of Place: Helvetia is a decrepit one-story hunting cabin deep in the woods of George Washington National Forest not far from the cliffs over Douthat Lake. The ramshackle structure is five hundred yards from the nearest road and almost inaccessible. The interior is almost intact, but most of the windows are gone with the furnishings and decor in ruins. 

Ghostly Manifestations: It was the motion picture industry that perpetuated the isolated cabin as a replacement to the neglected Gothic mansion in the lonely part of town as a scene of horror. The remoteness, cut off from human civilization, certainly heightens one's fears whether it's from a chainsaw-wielding psychopath or evil demons conjured from the pits of hell. The grounds of Helvetia are said to be haunted by a tall gaunt cadaverous spirit that could actually pass as a reject from a George Romero living dead movie rather than a ghost story by Stephen King.  

During the Forties through the Fifties, a number of hunters and hikers in the woods beyond Clifton Forge described being followed and even watched by a figure whose descriptions remained strangely similar: that of a tall cadaverous possibly female figure with long flowing hair sometimes said to be floating above the ground. Those who do not see her instead have described a long mournful crying echoing through the area, enough that the area also attracts Bigfoot hunters, but these accounts were few and far between, even too rare to warrant a serious examination much less a full article. However, in 2013, the accounts required a fresh look by persons unfamiliar with paranormal activity.

"There's just something about the area..." Folklorist Kathryn Mae Witterman has documented many of the stories and legends of the area. "Local settlers knew something around the area of the Wilson Pass and Joylick Draft was a bit off there. Hunters often became lost and disoriented there, settlers camping there felt as if they were being watched by something in the woods... Even the local Native Americans avoided the area close to the lake and advised settlers not to take water from there. Stories like that go back to the 18th Century. Bobbing lights and shadowy figure are not new there."

Most recently, in 1987, a deer hunter walking the area reported being haunted by something he couldn't see. As he was sitting in a deer blind fifteen feet off the ground, he heard something seemingly pacing the tree under him, as if, "something was waiting for him to come down." After a period of uneasiness, he nervously came down and looked around, finding nothing, but as he walked away, he became aware of a shadow walking parallel with him through the woods. Described as "a tall spindly presence like a photo distorted by Silly Putty," the presence stayed with him until he reached the road at which it vanished. The witness thought maybe he was being escorted out of the woods. 

One deterrent to a serious analysis of the area is that the area is remote, and there is no plethora of local residents, but there area a few hunting sheds, shanties and even a number of old caves. There is a cabin on the far side of Douthat Lake that has been rented out through a bait and tackle shop in nearby Hot Springs, and although activity doesn't occur on that side of the lake, the police in Hot Springs do have a report of a woman who tried jogging around the lake only to be terrified and chased back the way she had come by a strange woman in August 1991. Despite the gaps in time between sightings, Witterman believes there are many more tales that never get reported or shared with the public. However, in 2012, all these tales seemed to escalate into the public consciousness after Jeffrey Desange vanished in the hills one winter with his daughters, Victoria and Lilly, after his car slid off the Wilson Pass Highway.    

Three years later when the girls were found living as animals at Helvetia, they were found "isolated (and) starved. They feared and distrusted all physical contact. Their emotional growth was seriously compromised by their abandonment. In order to survive such isolation, the girls (had even) invented an imaginary guardian, "Mama.""   

"I have never believed in ghosts in my life, but...." Dr. Gerald Dreyfuss is a child psychologist at the Allegheny County Mental Institute in Covington, Virginia. "My experiences following the examination of the Desange girls... They completely turned my world upside down and had me questioning everything I ever learned and believed."    

Between 2009 and 2013, the Desange girls served as the primary witnesses to the apparition of the woman haunting the grounds around the old cabin. In fact, the girls go even as far as crediting the mysterious woman as being detrimental to their survival. Describing her as a tall woman with wild flowing dark hair, they never felt afraid in her presence as if they believed she was a regular woman, even drawing her likeness on the walls of the cabin. This sort of bond might even have extended far beyond the cabin to the home of Lucas Desange, a commercial artist and his common law wife, Annabelle, a struggling musician, who took the girls into their custody.

"The house was donated to Lucas Desange to provide a stable home for the girls." Dreyfuss adds. "It's been empty for twelve years, used for familial case studies of patients, and no one has ever reported anything close to paranormal activity until the Desanges moved into it. It was offered for their use to conceal the children from the press and to allow me full time access to their mental and emotional recovery. However, after they moved, Annabelle started describing being watched, inexplicable feelings of dread and glimpses of something... someone else in the house."

Annabelle also described distant humming coming from inside the two story structure. At times, it sounded like moaning or very distant singing, but she tried ignoring and passing on it as much as possible, considering it typical noises of a house and neighborhood she was unfamiliar with at the time. 

Eventually, the activity took a more sinister turn. Annabelle started having bad dreams with frightening images she had never experienced before in her life. One night, both Victoria and Lilly came racing downstairs terrified and claiming that "Mama was scaring them." Passing it as a dream, Lucas was surprised by one night by what looked like a hand reaching out to him from out of the wall, sending him over the upstairs railing and throwing out his back. Thinking it was an intruder, the police searched the house, but they didn't find anyone.

The family dog, Handsome, meanwhile was reacting to something in the house. The dog had belonged to Jeffrey Desange; Lucas had adopted it after his brother's disappearance, and it had immediately re-bonded with Victoria and Lilly after they were found. Since their return, it was often reacting to empty air, trying to get something's attention, or at times, running through the house in deep fear from something on the premises. Although Annabelle never saw this apparition, she later remarks that she saw something that looked like a huge shadow standing over her in a reflection of Victoria's glasses, but when she looked behind her, there was nothing there.

During his sessions with Victoria Desange, the older of the two girls, both at the house and previously at his office, Dr. Dreyfuss recalls Victoria was always distracted in their sessions. In video tapes, he noticed Victoria was always looking away to a blank area of wall, looking at something that he couldn't see. These sessions were always inexplicably cold, and on his own curious trek one night to Helvetia, he reports he was terrified from the location by a tall gaunt woman with exceedingly long dark hair leaning and ambling out of a door way coming toward him from inside the dilapidated structure.

After roughly a year in the house, the activity eventually dwindled down to the point that the activity was a mere footnote. For a while, Victoria and Lilly thought they had rare glimpses of "Mama" in the house, but her visage is not as potent as it is at Helvetia. Hikers still see a presence wandering near and around the cabin, but most of them believe its just a trick of light and shadow. However, in an odd addendum, even Lucas believes he experienced his brother's ghost while convalescing in the hospital from his accident. 

"I'm not sure what happened to him..." He says. "But I believes his body remains somewhere undiscovered somewhere near the cabin in a shallow grave. I'm hoping if I see him again, I can lay his bones to rest..."  

It should be noted this case shares some cursory similarities with that of Daniel and Jody Sanders of Columbus, Ohio whose nephew and nieces were forgotten for a brief time in the woods of Humboldt County, California around the summer residence of Daniel's brother, Charles. Shortly after hearing about the details of the Desange children, Jody Sanders, a struggling musician and dancer, similarly began suspecting her nieces had brought home a destructive spirit. However, Daniel Sanders, a primatologist at the Columbus Zoo, disagrees.

"I think she just got into some bad weed." He adds.

History: Helvetia was re-discovered in 2009 by Geoffrey Desange, a disgraced stock broker who left his daughters, Victoria and Lilly in the house, as he went searching for help after his car slid off the road. Possibly dying in the woods somewhere, his daughters managed to somehow survive on their own for five years before they were finally found by hunters. Helvetia was a former convalescent home that was once part of St. Gertrude's Catholic Church in Falls Church, a larger mental community that existed in the late 1890s until 1937. Run by priests and nuns, the hospital took care of orphans and homeless people until it was closed down. Helvetia was used as a halfway house for former patients to live as they slowly reintegrated into society; the serene locale and grounds was believed to be more conducive to their recuperation. After 1953, it was sold and used as a hunting lodge. 

In recent years, the cabin has been falsely and erroneously linked with the Buckner Cabin, a location in Eastern Kentucky where a religious family of backwoods farmers terrorized and murdered eight travelers in the 1870s  in an eerie parallel to the Bender Family in Kansas. No one knows where this confusion began, but amateur ghost-hunters still trek out to Helvetia looking for the ghosts of the Buckner's victims. 

Identity of Ghosts: Extensive research by Dr. Dreyfus links the cadaverous specter to a woman named Edith Brennan, a widow who was once institutionalized at St. Gertrude, but who escaped into the woods after striking and killing a nun and escaping with her infant son. Pursued to the cliff and feeling no recourse, she took her life with her child; her body found floating in the water a few days later and her child's body snagged in the branches of a tree overhead in the cliff. Dreyfuss believes Brennan is haunting the woods looking for the spirit of her child... when she is not following other children home. 

Source/Comments: Mama (2012)/ Scary Movie 5 (2013)/ Cabin In the Woods (2012) - Activity based loosely on the activity in the movie as well as on Devil's Backbone near San Marcos, Texas, the Land Between The Lakes near Murray, Kentucky and on Cheesman Park in Denver, Colorado.