In the sun-drenched suburbs of Los Angeles, where dreams are made and shattered under the glare of Hollywood lights, one modest ranch-style house in Canoga Park has become a portal to unrelenting nightmare. For nearly four decades, whispers of restless spirits have echoed through its walls, but now, in a chilling escalation that defies explanation, the ghost of 10-year-old Judith Barsi — the wide-eyed child actress who voiced the plucky Ducky in The Land Before Time and starred in Jaws: The Revenge — is said to be manifesting with a vengeance, her innocent pleas for peace twisting into cries that shatter the silence of the night.

Breaking News (2025): Paranormal investigators, tipped off by the current residents, have captured irrefutable evidence of poltergeist activity in the very bedroom where Judith was shot in the head by her father, József Barsi, on July 25, 1988. Shadowy figures dart across security footage, doors slam without touch, and a child’s faint giggle — eerily matching Judith’s archived voice clips — echoes from empty rooms. But it’s the darker presence, the hulking silhouette of a raging alcoholic, that has experts warning: the father’s malevolent spirit isn’t just lingering — it’s fighting back, turning the home into a battleground for the damned.

The Bernal family, who purchased the three-bedroom bungalow in 2001 for a steal, thought they’d found a fresh start. Francisco, a construction worker, his wife Ruth, a schoolteacher, and their three kids — including 10-year-old Gaby, the same age Judith was when she died — moved in with dreams of backyard barbecues and lazy Sundays. The house, nestled on a quiet cul-de-sac off Topanga Canyon Boulevard, looked like any other: faded beige siding, a tidy lawn, and a garage that once held family bicycles. But within weeks, the idyll curdled into horror.

“It started small,” Ruth Bernal recalls in a voice still trembling from years of suppressed fear. “The garage door would creak open at midnight, like someone was coming home drunk and furious. We’d bolt it shut, only for it to yawn wide again by dawn. Then came the cold spots — icy blasts in the hallway, right where… well, you know.” She trails off, her eyes flicking to the spot where József gunned down his wife, Maria Virovacz, before turning the .25-caliber pistol on his sleeping daughter. The air there still feels wrong, she says, like the walls themselves are weeping blood.

Gaby’s ordeal was the most heart-wrenching. Assigned to the sunny corner bedroom — unwittingly Judith’s old sanctuary — the girl began suffering night terrors that no amount of nightlights could chase away. “I felt eyes on me, always watching from the closet,” Gaby, now 34 and a graphic designer in San Diego, shares over a crackling Zoom call. “I’d wake up screaming, convinced a man was standing at the foot of my bed, bottle in hand, muttering in Hungarian.” To cope, she strung dreamcatchers like cobwebs across the ceiling and invented an “imaginary friend” named Joseph — a name so close to József that it sent chills down her spine when a nosy neighbor finally spilled the house’s blood-soaked history.

The revelations hit like a sledgehammer. Judith Eva Barsi wasn’t just any child; she was a phenomenon. Discovered at five ice-skating in a mall, the Hungarian-American girl with the button nose and infectious laugh skyrocketed to stardom. By age eight, she’d booked over 70 commercials, guest spots on Cheers and Growing Pains, and her big-screen debut as Thea Brody in Jaws: The Revenge — a role where she dangled bait for a vengeful great white, oblivious to the predator lurking in her own home. Her voice work sealed her legacy: the lisping, optimistic Ducky in The Land Before Time (“Yup, yup, yup!”) and the orphan Anne-Marie in All Dogs Go to Heaven, films released posthumously, their joyful innocence now laced with unimaginable pathos.

Behind the sequins and spotlights, however, festered a nightmare scripted by addiction and abuse. József Barsi, a former plumber turned stay-at-home tyrant, had emigrated from Hungary in 1951, fleeing communist shadows only to drown his regrets in vodka. As Judith’s earnings swelled to $100,000 a year — enough for the family to buy their dream home in 1985 — so did his rage. He saw his daughter’s success as a theft of his own unfulfilled dreams, berating her for “ruining” family time with auditions and accusing Maria of pimping out their child for fame.

The violence escalated in shadows. József once held a knife to Judith’s throat during a Bahamas shoot for Jaws, snarling she’d better return or he’d “end it all.” Bruises bloomed on her arms like dark flowers; she’d confide in friends, “My daddy’s miserable. I’m afraid to go home.” Maria filed police reports — three arrests for drunk driving, one for brandishing a gun at a neighbor’s dog — but always recanted, terrified of losing the house or custody. Child Protective Services visited in May 1988 after Judith’s psychologist flagged emotional scars, but Maria’s promises of divorce and escape to a rented apartment in Panorama City rang hollow. She couldn’t bear to leave the life they’d built on her daughter’s back.

July 25, 1988, was a sweltering Monday. Judith, fresh from voicing Anne-Marie, had spent the day at a friend’s, begging to sleep over. Maria refused, citing József’s “bad mood.” That night, as Judith slumbered in her unicorn pajamas, József snapped. He shot Maria once in the hallway, her body crumpling amid family photos. Creeping into Judith’s room, he pressed the barrel to her temple and fired — a single, muffled pop that extinguished a star. Dousing the house in gasoline, he retreated to the garage, lit the match, and ended himself with a final bullet. Firefighters pulled three charred bodies from the inferno three days later, the smell of scorched dreams lingering for weeks.

The Bernal family, armed with this ghost story, soldiered on for 19 years. But the hauntings intensified: footsteps thudding like drunken stumbles, whispers in Hungarian cursing the “little whore,” and Gaby’s “Joseph” evolving into full apparitions — a spectral girl with blonde pigtails pleading, “Don’t let him find me.” Pets refused the hallway; electronics fritzed near the bedroom. Desperate, the Bernals appeared on Quibi’s Murder House Flip in 2020, enlisting designers Joelle Uzyel and Mikel Welch to exorcise the darkness through renovation.

The makeover was a ritual in paint and light. Gaby’s room got French doors to the backyard, banishing the closet’s gaze with amethyst crystals for “calming energy.” The hallway bloomed with recessed lights, erasing shadows where Maria fell. “I felt the bad energy dissipate,” Gaby said post-renovation, the dreamcatchers finally coming down. The family breathed easier — until 2023, when the spirits roared back.

It began with subtle sabotage: tools vanishing from Francisco’s workbench, only to reappear doused in what smelled like cheap whiskey. Then, the voices — not just Judith’s giggles, but guttural snarls, “She’s mine!” in broken English. Security cams caught it all: a translucent girl skipping down the hall, pursued by a towering shadow reeking of sulfur and sorrow. Paranormal team lead Elena Voss, who consulted on the case pro bono, describes the dynamic as “classic unrest: the victim’s soul trapped by the killer’s guilt-fueled rage.”

Voss’s crew, using EVP recorders and thermal imaging, captured a breakthrough in October 2024. In Judith’s old room, a Class-A apparition materialized — a girl in a pageant dress, her voice warbling, “Yup… but Daddy’s mad.” Moments later, the air dropped 20 degrees, and a guttural roar shook the foundations: “No one takes her!” The footage, grainy but undeniable, shows the shadow lunging, only for the girl’s form to flicker and flee toward the backyard doors — the very escape route renovated years prior.

Experts now theorize József’s spirit, anchored by unrepentant fury, views the house as his domain, with Judith’s gentle haunt as an eternal taunt. “He’s not at peace; he’s possessive,” Voss explains. “Alcoholics like him rarely let go — in life or death.” The Bernals, undeterred, have installed sage bundles and salt lines, but Gaby admits, “It’s like she’s protecting us now, warning before he lashes out.”

Hollywood hasn’t forgotten. Don Bluth, director of Judith’s animated swan songs, dedicates annual tributes, once noting, “Her voice was pure light; to hear it echo in death… it’s profane.” Burt Reynolds, who voiced Charlie in All Dogs Go to Heaven, called his final scenes with her “a goodbye I never wanted,” the dog’s spectral farewell mirroring real tragedy.

As 2025 unfolds, the Canoga Park house stands as a monument to stolen innocence — and a warning. Renovations may brighten rooms, but some stains seep through walls, demanding reckoning. Judith Barsi, the girl who dodged sharks and befriended dinosaurs, now dodges a father’s ghost in the home that should have sheltered her. Will the hauntings fade, or has the poltergeist war just ignited? One thing’s certain: in the City of Angels, even the dead refuse to stay buried.

The Bernal family clings to hope, whispering “Yup, yup” as a mantra. But in the dead of night, when the garage door groans open once more, they wonder: Is it Judith reaching out for play, or József, stumbling home to claim what’s “his”?