He disembarks and notices spray painted on a building, "pay the ghost," the phrase his son uttered before vanishing.

Standing in their son's room, she senses nothing, but then abruptly walks to the window, looks at the approaching storm, and says, "It's here... it has all the children."

Later, Mike walks upstairs to his wife's room, and she addresses him with their son's voice, pleading for help and saying "She's coming, Dad.

Their friend Hannah who was helping them by doing research calls Mike and says: In early New York, on Halloween night of 1679, because of her Celtic worship, a young widow living on the first New York settlement was burned alive with her three children by an angry mob of settlers suspecting her to be a witch.

Since then, every Halloween the ghost of this woman takes three living children from their parents and puts them in an alternate world.

After Mike and Kristen are injured in the taxi by a flock of black vultures, Hannah is thrown out of a window and killed by the malignant entity while trying to leave the institute.

Mike arrives at the widow's cabin and goes down to the basement where he finds the souls of many children who were locked up over the centuries at Halloween time.

All of the other children's souls arrive to help him, and they are able to kill the ghost widow by surrounding her, unknowingly freeing themselves into the afterlife.

In a scene mid-credits, three black vultures appear surrounding Hannah's corpse and she awakens, possessed.

[8] Andrew Barker of Variety wrote: "This somnolent supernatural thriller is a low-energy wash from start to finish.

"[9] Brian Tallerico of Roger Ebert.com declared it a "new low" for Nicolas Cage, and branded the movie a "lazy, boring retread of Insidious.