The Ghost in Apartment 14

Jodi learns that missing woman “Marliz” Spannhake previously lived in Apartment 14.

In January 2000, Jodi Foster, 30, and her two-year-old daughter, Hannah, are looking for a new place to live. Jodi spots a “For Rent” sign in front of a charming apartment complex on Parmac Road in Chico, California. During a quick tour of the building, she is overcome with a strange feeling about the place, but she brushes it aside, assuming it’s just residual stress from the process of searching for a new home. At the end of the tour, Jodi asks for an application, and by the end of the week, the two are in the process of moving in.

The first night living in the building, Jodi has a nightmare: a man and a woman are stalking a young woman. Jodi wakes up, covered in sweat and shaken by the predatory nature of the couple in her nightmare, but she has no idea what they were talking about. As the weeks go by, Jodi has more dreams and they grow increasingly detailed and violent. Meanwhile, her daughter has begun to speak to an “angel” that Hannah calls “Myliz.”

One night, Jodi learns from a long-time tenant that her apartment was once the home of a woman who had disappeared long ago, and that, over the years, many people have left that apartment abruptly. Some even say that apartment is haunted.

Within just a few months, Hannah’s strange sightings of “Myliz” and Jodi’s frightening dreams culminate in a terrifying night of poltergeist activity that push Jodi beyond her breaking point. She takes Hannah and leaves the apartment in the middle of the night, never to return. It isn’t until years later, in 2008, that Jodi musters up the courage to truly look into her former apartment’s history. What she uncovers is both remarkable and horrifying…

On January 31st, 1976, Marie Elizabeth Spannhake disappeared while walking home from a flea market on Mangrove Avenue in Chico, California. The disappearance was reported by Spannhake’s boyfriend. The couple had gotten into an argument and Spannhake stormed off on foot, back to their shared apartment. When she didn’t show up at home after 24 hours, she was officially reported missing. After extensive questioning, Spannhake’s boyfriend was cleared, but having only lived in Chico for a little over two months, there was nobody else to question about Spannhake’s whereabouts. It was as though Marie Elizabeth Spannhake disappeared into thin air. Her missing person’s investigation went cold almost as soon as the case was opened.

Jodi provides investigators with information as they reopen Marliz’s case.

Then, in November of 1984, a woman named Janice Hooker confesses something to her pastor in a Red Bluff church that would go on to shock the world: She says that she and her husband, Cameron Hooker, had abducted a young woman named Colleen Stan while she was hitchhiking from Oregon in May of 1977. The couple then trapped this woman and held her for over seven years in their home. Stan was raped and tortured repeatedly and for years kept in a box under the couple’s bed for more than 20 hours at a time. Janice claims that, in an effort to avoid total mental collapse, she finally let the woman go and had to confess.

But there’s more to the story. Janice also claims that before they abducted Colleen Stan, Hooker also forced Janice to participate in the kidnapping and horrific murder of another woman from Chico in 1976. The woman was walking along Mangrove Ave when the Hookers spotted her and offered her a ride home. The woman agreed to the ride, asking them to take her to her apartment at the intersection of Rio Lindo and Parmac Road. Her name was Marie Elizabeth Spannhake, but she went by Marliz. Janice claims that, after hours of torture, Cameron killed Marliz, and the couple dumped her body somewhere in the forest. Even after repeated attempts by authorities to find Marliz’s body, it has never been recovered.

In a stunning deal with the DA, Janice Hooker is able to bargain for immunity from all charges in the Stan abduction case in exchange for her testimony. Hooker stands trial. For weeks, details of Colleen Stan’s horrific years-long nightmare make international news. Stan will eventually be known as “The Girl in the Box.” However, details of Marliz’s death are stricken from the trial — because Marliz’s body was never recovered, there is simply not enough evidence to include this portion of Janice’s story in the prosecution. Cameron Hooker is sent to prison for his crimes against Stan, but never answers to his possible involvement in Spannhake’s disappearance.

After learning all of this, Jodi is reeling. Could Hannah’s angel “Myliz” actually be the spirit of Marliz? Were Jodi’s nightmares psychic messages? Were they in fact the disembodied memories of this poor woman’s last horrible moments? All she can think to do is call the Red Bluff Police cold case department and tell them what she knows… no matter how crazy she sounds. And detectives are shocked by the accuracy of the details that Jodi provides.