Lemme see if I got this straight...

Did you actually watch it to the end? Otherwise you would have known that there was indeed a ghost and it was Alice.

I doubt I'm going to change your opinion or anyone else's but I'm going to chip in and give my two cents. Apologies if things I say have already been said:

SPOILERS:

There was a ghost. The brother adding his sister's image to the both the film and the video is never fully explained. He himself doesn't even know why he really did this. Maybe an act of rebellion because he doesn't want to believe his sister is dead? Perhaps by adding her to the photos/videos it helps aid in his grief by keeping his sister alive, at least in some small way.

HOWEVER, if you watched the whole movie, you'll see that this was just a white rabbit to have the audience let its guard down. His sister appears in the video when he's on a road trip with Ray. She also appears in all the doctored photos AS HERSELF during the credits. NO PHOTOSHOP. She was there the whole time. And her presence was felt in the house at all times.

The daughter and the mom share some kind of psychic energy, as they both had shared dreams. The mom dreamed her daughter coming into her room and standing over the bed after Alice went to Ray months earlier and dreamed the same thing. Also the end sequence where they both shared the vision of the mom going into the her bedroom. This might sound foolish but normal people experience all kinds of "coincidences" during their normal lives that we overlook. It's only when faced with the evidence of how little of a "coincidence" it is that we begin to realize that something else is at work here. Or perhaps they weren't dreams at all but reality (for the mom). Maybe she only thought she was dreaming. We don't know, and it doesn't matter.

A lot of people are speculating about the threesome affair she had with the family she babysat for. The explanation for this is simple: she had secrets. We're meant to understand that this sweet innocent girl isn't what she seems, that she's hiding a part of herself from the world. I'm surprised others aren't getting this, as I'm pretty sure we ALL hide part of ourselves from others. Do you tell everyone you meet everything about you? About your darkest secrets, desires, fears, experiences? No, of course you don't. This sequence was meant to bring you closer to Alice, to understand she's not just some flat, 2-dimensional character. She has her own backstory, and it helps us to understand a little bit about this next sequence...

The burying of her possessions and visit from her ghost. If I remember correctly, this happened BEFORE she went to see Ray and told him about her dreams. If not, I'm mistaken but the point would still stand. We've all been out with friends supposed to be having a good time and for some reason we don't. We feel down, isolated, apart, and thought we might not be able to explain it, it happens. Sometimes there are no answers for our moods. Sometimes we're just depressed. In Alice's case, it might have had something to do with her private life, the one she told no one about. She knew she'd crossed a line in her life and it fractured her relationships with her friends and family. She goes off on her own to contemplate her mistakes, etc when she comes upon her ghost in the middle of nowhere. I don't care what you say, that would frighten the EVERLOVING SH*T OUT OF ME. Seeing your own ghost, YOUR DEAD SELF? That wouldn't do anything for you? If not, you're a liar. Of course, she's visibly disturbed when she gets back to camp, and since we can only speculate what really happened to her when she met her ghost (since the camera phone footage went haywire), she's trying to work it out in her head. She thinks she's going to die. If I saw myself in the middle of nowhere bloated and fat with seawater, my flesh peeling away to expose the bone beneath, the stench of death hot on my body, I MIGHT speculate that I was going to die. At some point. Why else would my dead self visit me? The point is, here is where her mind fractures, she can't handle it, and she knows (at least in her mind) that she will die. She will become THIS... whatever it was she saw. You ever hear of emotionally distraught people making sane decisions? Nope. And neither does Alice. She buries her things in a private "funeral service" for herself cause she knows no one will believe her story. She's coming to grips with her future death: by burying herself.

On to Ray. He may or may not have been a sham. He obviously hid things from the family and his conclusions say it was because he wanted to help them, and he was "damned if did, damned if he didn't". The point was, Ray became close to the family, understood something was wrong, and regardless of whether he was a fake or not, HELPED THE FAMILY THROUGH IT. With his guidance, the Palmers came to grips with their daughter's death and apparent ghost.

But I think the thing you're missing most about this movie is it's NOT ABOUT ALICE, OR RAY, OR THE NEIGHBORS, OR THE THREESOME, OR EVEN THE GHOSTLY EVIDENCE. It's a film about grief, and how a normal family comes to terms with the loss of a loved one. I for one sat in total grief this whole time. Maybe it's because my family is loving and I'd hate to lose them. Or maybe it's because I have sister Alice's age. Or maybe it's just because I'm a sensitive person. Whatever it is, the movie was a "60 minutes" special on THE PALMERS and how they came to deal with their grief. We see Matthew fake evidence to give himself and his parents peace-of-mind (crazy as it seems, but grief does crazy things to a person); we see Russell bury himself in work to forget about the issue; we see June having nightmares and walking into people's houses, looking for a feeling of completeness and homeliness because her own home is lost now. All of these things are ways in which the Palmers are trying to cope.

So sure this movie didn't have jumpy scares, or quick cut scenes, or even a fast-paced plot, but it didn't need them. It wasn't trying to be these things. I'm sorry if some of you expected one thing and got another when you came out of this film. I for one, was pleasantly surprised, and yes, terrified. I couldn't tell this movie was a fake. Even knowing the movie was just that, A MOVIE, beforehand didn't stop my mind from BELIEVING that this was all real, that it had really happened, that I was watching an ACTUAL documentary. The actors all did fantastic jobs of keeping in character and might be the most realistic characters I've seen on screen. I felt their grief, I felt their fear, and to me, they could have been anybody. This movie was trying to be a mirror for the viewer, using a supernatural twist that isn't really much of a twist at all. It begs the questions, are we all what we seem? How much do I really know about those closest to me? Would those things matter if I lost them? How IS my relationship with my family/friends? How do I come to terms with death? I could go on, but I don't think I need to.

Hope this helps, if even a little. Like I said, I figured most of you have already made up your minds, but I thought this movie was a brilliant piece of work in a world full of sequels and remakes.

are you serious? either you weren't paying attention at all or you watched a completely different movie.

Agreed. The film was simple but effective in that it the audience guessing right to the end and then when we thought we had it figured out. It's revealed there was a ghost all along and we just got distracted.

The performances were good and the film had a convincing style and presentation. I was impressed with how realistic this doc movie was. And I liked that it had me guessing and confused at times. But in the end, there's a bittersweet message here.