Lake Mungo

Alice Palmer, 16, disappears while swimming with her family at a dam in Ararat. A search is launched, and soon after, her body is recovered from the lake. Russell identifies the remains, leaving the family devastated and searching for answers.

Alice's body is recovered from the lake and her father, Russell, identifies her remains. The identification confirms the tragedy, but it does little to explain what happened. The family begins to grieve while questions linger.

Ten days after Alice's funeral, the Palmers start hearing unexplained noises in their home. Mathew discovers unexplained bruises on his body, suggesting something is targeting the family. He also begins to suspect that Alice's presence may be more than just grief.

Mathew installs video cameras around the family home to capture what's happening. He films what appears to be footage of Alice and sees other images near the lake showing a figure that looks like Alice. The footage raises more questions about the true state of Alice's fate.

The parents request the exhumation of Alice's grave to perform a DNA test. The results conclusively identify the person as Alice, confirming the body is indeed hers. The discovery fuels a sense of closure but deepens the conflict about what really happened.

June Palmer consults psychic Ray Kemeney for insight into the haunting. He holds a séance with the family but remains unable to explain the sightings or provide definitive answers. The session reinforces the family's search for certainty.

Months later, Mathew admits he faked the ghostly photos and videos of Alice. He says his deception was intended to give the family a reason to exhume Alice's body and bring June the closure she wanted. The truth reveals a troubling dynamic behind the haunting images.

A later home video, recorded while the Palmers were away, shows an image that seems to be Alice. It also captures Alice's bedroom being searched by Brett Toohey, the neighbor she babysat for. The neighbor family eventually sells their house and disappears to avoid prosecution.

Ray explains that Alice had told him, months before her death, about recurring dreams of drowning and being dead, along with her mother being unable to help. He notes that she kept these thoughts in a private journal. The revelations hint at Alice's troubled mental state and the dreams that may have prefigured her death.

Alice's boyfriend, Jason Whittle, provides mobile phone footage from a school trip to Lake Mungo, during which she lost her phone. The footage shows Alice burying something at the base of a tree, suggesting she concealed evidence of what she saw. The discovery propels the Palmers toward Lake Mungo as a way to uncover the truth.

The Palmers travel to Lake Mungo, locate the tree shown in the video, and dig up Alice's phone. The phone's footage shows Alice walking along the shore and encountering a bloated, corpse-like version of herself, mirroring the body later found in Ararat.

The family comes to believe Alice wanted them to know who she really was and what she had seen. They decide to move out of their home, convinced the haunting has ended and that Alice's spirit has moved on.

In a final photograph taken at their last moments in the house, a cloudy figure of a young woman appears in a window. The previously faked pictures appear to show Alice elsewhere, leaving the true nature of the haunting ambiguous and unresolved.