Hey weirdos, it's Ash here, ready to share a little secret.
Have you heard of Wondery Plus?
With ad -free episodes and one week early access, it's like having an all -access pass to our lighthearted nightmare.
So come join us on the dark side and try Wondery Plus today.
You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar.
Whether you listen to stories, motivation, observation, expert advice, any genre you love.
You can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, and new ways of thinking.
Listening can lead to positive changes in your mood, your habits, and, ultimately, your overall well -being.
Audible has an incredible selection of over one million audiobooks, podcasts, and Audible Originals, all in one easy app.
Find the genres you love and discover new ones.
Explore bestsellers, new releases, plus thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and originals that members can listen to all with more added all the time.
Right now, I am listening to The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, and I just cannot get enough of it.
I never want to pause it.
I'm literally, like, loading the dishwasher listening to it, on the treadmill listening to it constantly.
It's so awesome. I love being able to listen anytime, anywhere I want to.
And there's more to Imagine when you listen.
Sign up for a free 30 -day Audible trial, and your first audiobook is free.
Visit audible .com slash morbid.
you know what time it is it's time for a fresh approach to dog food and that's where the farmer's dog comes in developed by board certified nutritionists which is pretty impressive the farmer's dog is human grade dog food that's made with real meat and veggies and gently cooked to preserve those nutrients traditional pet food is highly processed and difficult to portion correctly but the farmer's dog it's changed that with their freshly made food they take the guess work out of serving sizes by precisely portioning your dog's food based on their very unique nutritional needs.
Sidney and Blanche are eating the farmer's dog right now, and we absolutely love it.
What's really fun is each packet has their name on it, so it says Blanche's food, Sidney's food, which is just fun.
They love it. They can't read, but I kind of pretend that they do.
Maybe they can. Maybe they can.
Who am I to say? Get 50 % off your first box of fresh, healthy food at at thefarmersdog .com slash morbid.
Plus, you get free shipping.
Just go to thefarmersdog .com slash morbid to get 50 % off.
That's thefarmersdog .com slash morbid.
Hey, weirdos. I'm Alayna.
I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
yep that's finite that's it that's it that's the episode keep listening keep it weird keep it weird or like girls like shut the fuck up and tell me a story girls girls i realize that whenever i have a ponytail in my hair and i tell you a story i do weird shit like this with it yeah like i'll like be talking and i'm just like and then the guy was like and i just do like this a lot we can post it i just like i'll be doing like this or like sometimes i'll do a little bit of this and i'm just like yeah you know so i'm gonna post i'm quiet because i'm taking photos and we actually just talked about this i
cannot multitask nope uh i can't do two things at once We just had that conversation.
I also pulled my hair a little too far.
If I'm concentrating on something, I cannot do something else.
I can't listen to you.
I can't. Nothing. That's funny because, ow, god damn, the tangles in my hair just ripped a piece out.
Wow, fuck. My hair brought to you by that.
I can multitask. I can multitask in the sense that like I can have a lot of things going on at once and I can take care of them.
I think it's a, it must just be like a focus thing.
I can't focus. Okay.
Or like maybe it's a hearing thing.
I don't really know how to describe it actually.
Do you have bad hearing?
Because I can't listen to somebody while I'm doing something else.
If I'm going to pay attention to somebody or I need to hear something, I need to focus on that thing.
Okay. Otherwise, it's just like wah, wah, wah, wah.
Yeah, because earlier I was playing her the Andy Milonakis song because I got it on TikTok and we love the Andy Milonakis song.
And she's just staring at her phone like so intently and I'm just like jamming to the Andy Milonakis song and I was like hello and she was like oh sorry I was reading something and I was like were you reading something super interesting and you were like no and I was like bitch it's Andy Milonakis it can be something totally not like interesting or needing of my full brain power but if I am reading something I'm not gonna hear you it's just the way it is facts about you yeah that's why I need to like when When I go downstairs, I put my phone away, and I really try not to look at it again because I
won't be able to pay attention to anyone else if I'm even reading the smallest of things.
Even the breaking headlines.
Yeah, can't do it. Oh, that's weird. Sorry, I was just looking because my wave looked small, but I'm fine.
You're good. I'm fine.
You're good. It's my narration today, so I just wanted to make sure that my waves were waving.
That you could hear her beautiful voice.
All you audio production people out there.
are um so i have a haunting for us today yay and it is the haunting actually it is our research assistant dave it's his favorite haunting oh it is the haunting of doris bither oh i'm ready which that's a fun that's a fun name in your mouth doris bither doris bither so it all starts in the summer of 1974 oh your time my time your time to shine it's not like super 70s but i mean it is because Because it's like in the middle of the 70s, but it's not super 70s feeling.
Oh, okay. But it starts in the summer of 1974.
Two paranormal investigators and UCLA students, Barry Taff and Kerry Gaynor, were approached in a bookstore by a woman who overheard their conversation that they were having about the supernatural.
And she went up to them and she was like, Listen, I have a friend who needs somebody with you guys' kind of expertise.
Now the friend in question was Doris Bither.
her. She was a middle -aged mama.
She was a single mama of four kids.
And boy, was she going through it.
She claimed that she and her family were under attack from unseen entities in their Culver City, California home.
Now, according to Doris, the attack started a few months earlier, and they included, among other things, objects moving on their own, random and inexplicable foul odors in in the house unusual noises with no point of origin typical and most distressingly and this is like a little bit of a trigger warning moment multiple physical and sexual assaults that were increasing in frequency and intensity as time went on oh yes that escalated quickly all right it did yeah so all of those things were of interest to these two paranormal investigators who were just vibing in a bookstore a moment previously
so they got permission from their supervisor at the ucla parapsychology lab filma mas i like how you said ucla did i say it weird said ucla ucla it's very nice i had to say ucla parapsychology lab and that's a lot of l's how alexis would have said it oh my god thank you for the compliment see in my head i felt like it was giving sandra lee Oh, there you go.
It's cocktail time.
You could have said UCLA.
So yes, Thelma Moss, their provider.
I was going to say.
Their provider. Their supervisor at UCLA gave them permission.
Okay. Okay. Okay. And once they got permission, Barry and Carrie headed out to Culver City and they started what would become a 10 -week investigation of what has now become one of the most well -known and most controversial poltergeist cases in american history barry and carrie coming to you live barry and carrie barry and carrie they were almost barry and jerry oh and barry and carrie are somewhere scary spooky so in the summer of 1974 like we know barry taft was enrolled at ucla and he was studying psychophysiology which is a pretty broad field of study it focuses on like the mind -body connection.
Okay. And when he wasn't studying or taking classes, he worked as an assistant at the UCLA Parapsychology Lab, which was like a niche little offshoot from the university's larger neuropsychology program.
Oh, fun. So much psychology.
All the psych. All of it.
And the neuropsychology program, like the big whole, it was kind of like a big whole program that had these tiny little programs under it.
Like an umbrella. Yes.
It was headed by Dr. Thelma Moss.
So throughout the 1960s and 70s, there were new religious movements and occult practices that gained a lot of popularity across the U .S., and that gave rise to what were previously little -known or short -lived academic programs like the UCLA Lab that were built around scientific or pseudoscientific study of paranormal phenomena.
I like it. so Barry found out about the UCL program I literally can't say it I'm sorry that I did you did it was my fault UCLA program as a teenager and that was when he was volunteering for a study on psychic phenomenon according to him this experiment when he was a teenager it involved being handed a set of Dr. Moss's keys who would later become his like the head of the the lab there so he got a set of her keys and he was asked to provide information gleaned only through psychometry the supposedly supernatural ability to learn information by touching inanimate objects oh isn't that cool that's
fun right i want to try it that's really fun i'm into it yeah yeah so he claimed that among other things uh he correctly identified the name of dr moss's his deceased husband, and the name of her best friend, actress Shelley Winters.
Oh, wow. Which also he might have just known, but, you know.
You never know. I don't know.
I don't know how he would know the name of her deceased husband.
Yeah, I mean, this was in the 70s still, right?
Yeah, so he couldn't have just Googled it.
He couldn't just Google it, so.
Exactly. Now I'd be like, all right.
The only, like, Shelley Winters, I was like, well, maybe there was, like, a newspaper where, like, they got lunch together or something.
Yeah. But the deceased husband?
Interesting. Interesting.
Interesting. So, it was the start of something big for Barry, and it kind of sparked his interest in this whole world of the paranormal.
All right, Barry. So, after enrolling at UCLA, he lobbied hard to get a position as a research assistant in the parapsychology lab.
And by 1974, as we know, he did.
He got accepted as a part -time lab assistant.
But he did claim that most of his time was spent, quote -unquote, in the field conducting research. research and it was at ucla that he met fellow student carrie gainer who was an undergraduate philosophy student and carrie also had developed a strong interest in the supernatural so they kind of teamed up together i like it me too bffs being spooky yeah it's giving sam and colby i'm into it you know yeah so that brings us to august 1974 where barry and carrie were in a los angeles book store loudly discussing the supernatural loudly loudly ghosts loudly and proudly being like parapsychology spirits
poltergeists what else creaking doors seances I love it it's fun that's what they did that was their conversation conversation.
Yeah that was an audio clip of their conversation.
Yeah just so you know.
Don't ask us how we got it.
Yeah I can't tell you where we saw it.
Dave's an amazing research assistant.
He's incredible. We told you this was his favorite case he went back to the past for it.
Hell yeah he did. So yes they were loudly having that discussion previously inserted in here and that's when they were approached by a middle -aged woman who said like I said earlier her friend Doris Bither was having a paranormal activity in her home for months and at this point she was very very desperate for help with the situation.
But at the same time, she was also afraid to seek help from traditional organizations because I'm sure she was worried people wouldn't take her seriously.
Of course. Now, according to the friend, Doris and her three sons, quote, claim to have seen semi -transparent apparitions of roughly human shape and size in their home.
They had also seen objects move across the room on their own and had experienced other supernatural phenomena that that they could not account for.
No explanation. Not super fun in their case.
No? No. So their interests were piqued, so the two men, Barry and Carrie, gave Doris's friend their information, and later they arranged to go out to Doris's house to conduct a preliminary interview.
Shopify's point -of -sale system helps you sell at every stage of your business.
Need a fast and secure way to take payments in person?
We've got you covered.
How about card readers you can rely on anywhere you sell?
Thanks. Have a good one.
Yep, that too. Want one place to manage all your online and in -person sales?
That's kind of our thing.
Wherever you sell, businesses that grow, grow with Shopify.
Sign up for your $1 a month trial at shopify .com slash listen.
shopify .com slash listen.
Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery's podcast, American Scandal.
We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U .S. history.
Events that have shaped who we are as a country and that continue to define the American experience.
American Scandal tells marquee stories about American politics, like the break -in at the Watergate Hotel.
An event that led to the downfall of a president and raised questions about the future of American democracy.
We go behind the scenes looking at devastating financial crimes, like the fraud committed at Enron and Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.
And we tell stories of complicated public figures like Edward Snowden and Monica Lewinsky, people who found themselves thrust into the spotlight and who spurred debates about the future of the country.
Follow American Scandal wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen ad -free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.
So when they pulled up to Doris's house on the evening of August 22nd, 1974, they were surprised by what they saw.
Barry recalled, this house was a little shack.
It was twice condemned by the city.
She shouldn't have even been living there.
So already it's like got creepy vibes.
Now, once inside, Barry and Carrie sat down with a noticeably anxious Doris and started their interview.
interview now from the moment they began asking her questions it was clear to both of them that she was not comfortable talking about her personal history so they tried to make the like a decision to keep the interview focused on the paranormal activity occurring in the home and not getting like a ton of background information now doris elaborated on the experience that they already had learned about from her friend at the bookstore and then she told them about the worst aspect she She believed was a haunting.
According to her, on more than one occasion, and this is a trigger warning.
It's like sexual assault.
More than one occasion, she had been sexually assaulted by an unseen entity, both while she was alone and while her children were home.
Oh. Like in front of them.
What the fuck? Super fucked up.
She told them, quote, the two smaller ones, meaning like the apparitions, held me down and one big one attacked me.
I hate this. I know.
A lot. lot. In response, Barry said later, we just froze.
Carrie and I looked at each other and I rolled my eyes back and put my hands on my head and thought, oh my God, this woman's psychotic.
Wow. His words not mine.
There you go. I was going to say quote.
Yeah, quote. So at that point, which you can understand why he might think she was like, you know, she was in a, you know, a different state of mind.
Yeah, she was losing it a little bit.
So at that point, Barry and Carrie were pretty sure that she was experiencing some kind of symptoms of mental illness.
So they referred her to a psychiatric clinic at the ucla neuropsychiatry department and they left assuming that that would be their last interaction see that's interesting that it started off that way it is it's interesting that they didn't immediately be like poltergeist let's go like you know they they were like you know what logically sure this seems like you might have some mental illness that's going on and we should get you help exactly and nice that they tried to get her help that was nice especially Actually in the 70s.
I was like, wow. But about 10 days later, Barry got a phone call from Doris claiming that since the two men had last visited, the paranormal activity at the house had gotten even worse and was now being experienced by her friends and her neighbors.
Oh, wow. So when she mentioned that there were other witnesses outside of the home, their ears kind of perked up again a little bit.
So they did agree to go back out for a follow -up interview.
view so a few days later they were back at doris doris's house on braddock street and they were immediately hit by a terrible odor as soon as they walked in the door barry said it smelled like decomposing organic matter rotting flesh a very sour nauseating smell why you smell i don't know dead that sucks sorry i was fighting that so hard and as the three of them stood there talking in the kitchen all of a sudden a cupboard opened on its own and a heavy frying pan came flying toward them and what barry described as a ballistic arc oh wow it's also very nice way way of describing that a ballistic
arc wow he's a scientist that's uh sounds painful yeah i don't think it hit anybody luckily would have been would have been painful exactly but imagine you don't believe this woman and then you walk in you're like wow it smells like shit in here like she trying to trick us yeah but then a cupboard moves on its own and something comes flying out of it yeah i'd be like wow okay i'd be like we doubted this woman too soon down the wrong path i guess and i guess they said the frying pan moving of its own accord was evidence enough for them that the violent assaults doris had described on her previous
visit including one where she claimed a fuse box was torn off the wall and hurled at her by an unseen force why are they so mad i don't know but it proved to barry and taft that regardless or excuse me that's the same person barry and kerry that regardless of the cause there was indeed something happening at doris's house and it was worth investigating formally wow can you imagine you're just standing there very aggressive it's very sixth sense yeah that it's just like angry that's the thing i'm like what's your problem i don't know so in any investigation paranormal or otherwise the biographical
information about the victim is usually pretty critical in solving the problem or understanding why it happened to begin with but in the case of doris bither little is known about her life before the poltergeist activity began other than vague allusions to a traumatic personal history okay so it seems like she may have been haunted in more ways than one and isn't there like a a belief system that like trauma can attract this kind of I think there is yeah like like demonic activity and all that good all that good stuff all that terrible stuff yeah I've heard that because I think like somehow the demonic
force or whatever whatever have you like praise upon that weakness kind of thing okay and can sense it maybe yeah or like attach itself to you in some way yeah if those things exist it makes sense that that would be what they would be attracted to yeah so Barry said Doris was very evasive and somewhat cryptic regarding her background so much so that she refused to even tell us her age which we knew was older than ours but not by how many years huh they literally they literally didn't even know how old she was Wow.
But what they did learn, which I do wonder if she, like, didn't want to give them too much information because she was, like, almost like when you go get, like, a tarot reading or a psychic reading.
Yeah, you don't want to really, like, kind of reveal anything that's going to help them.
Yeah. You want to keep it up to them.
Maybe that's what she was doing.
Yeah. I don't know.
That could be it. And she could just be, like, the first, like, she could be just being smart and being like, you don't need to know shit about me.
Yeah, I'm private. Just figure out my house, bitch. Figure it out.
So what they did learn, mostly from observation, was that she was very poor and had an unstable employment history.
She had four children at the time, three boys aged 10, 13, and 16.
And they lived with her on the condemned house on Braddock Street.
And she also had a preteen daughter who was living somewhere else at the time of the investigation.
Now, they also learned really quickly that she was a heavy drinker and she drank, she seemed to drink daily.
Oh, man. Now, during their time in the house, quote, the investigators observed poor relationships between Doris and the children and there was fighting among the siblings.
Oh, this sounds so sad of a house.
It sounds super sad and just like a very chaotic environment.
And just like the fact that they're living in a condemned house is awful.
Yeah, that's bad news, Bears.
Now, among the most heavily criticized aspects of the Bither case is Barry and Carrie's failure to collect any personal biographical information or to press Doris for any additional details about her life.
Writer Benjamin Radford wrote, where a trained psychologist or social worker might have seen a troubled woman needing help, Taff and Gaynor saw a golden opportunity to research a real haunting.
I could see that. But they also, they did try to provide her help.
They did. But I don't think that's necessarily a fair overview.
No, that's absolutely true.
Now, Barry, he explained the lack of information as a simple matter of protecting the case.
He said, had we even attempted to secure the type of background information we currently collect, such as medical, psychological, family, psychodynamics, prescribed medications, as well as recreational drugs and alcohol usage, Doris surely would have shown us the door from the outset.
So he agreed, like, we wouldn't have been able to do this investigation.
we tried to get her help and yeah and I'm you can only push so hard if you do want to see what's going on in this house yeah and she wanted their help like she was asking for their help so basically she was a very private woman and they weren't willing to lose out on investigating the case by pushing her boundaries yeah I get that I get she set up boundaries don't push them I get that now in the years since more information about Doris has come to light that gives a little more more insight into her state of mind at the time of the investigation, and possibly some explanation for some of the activity
that she claimed to witness.
It should be said that most of the information learned after the investigation came from Doris's son, Brian Harris, who Barry Taft points out also struggled with addiction, and he did contradict himself a few times during the interview.
But this is what we do know.
Doris was said to have been born in Illinois in 1940 to a very dysfunctional family.
And according to the accounts of those who knew her, she had a really, really hard life from the beginning.
As a teenager, she started experimenting with drugs and alcohol to escape her abusive home life.
And she was generally just a rebellious teenager who was acting out more often than not.
And because of that, her parents kicked her out of the house while she still was a teenager.
Oh. And she was forced to fend for herself.
Oh, jeez. So you can can kind of see how she became a product of her environment.
Yeah, absolutely. Now there isn't much about her life that is known after she was kicked out of the family.
I guess between Illinois and California there were a couple of marriages that didn't work out and eventually she had the four children and then ended up in Santa Monica where she was living just before she moved to the house on Braddock Street in Culver City, the one that we're at now.
Now the majority of the the paranormal activity occurred in the house on Braddock Street, but the son, Brian Harris, claimed that there were, quote, some psychokinetic events and even the occasional apparition even before the family moved to Culver City.
Oh, damn. So this may have been something that followed them to this house.
I was going to say so it followed them.
And later we'll see that it may follow them when they leave this house.
So the haunting activity, they said, began somewhat suddenly just a few months after they moved into Braddock Street.
It started with a weird, inescapable feeling of being watched, and then things escalated from there.
Again, objects were moving by themselves, a lamp flew across the room at one point.
And at that time, Doris and her children hadn't experienced any violent activity, but that changed one evening a few weeks later when Doris was sexually assaulted by an unseen entity in her bedroom.
in her interviews with barry and carrie she said that whole thing where two smaller entities held her down and one big entity attacked her that's horrifying to think about that is literally mind -blowing just being held down by entities is because you think of like sleep paralysis yeah what that feels like how scary that is but then to add that onto it i can't even imagine because like sleep paralysis you kind of know that your body's doing it like i guess no you don't oh you don't yeah but I mean like she was seeing two things hold her down like do you see something hold you down when you have sleep
paralysis a lot of times you see something in the room coming at you while you're being held down or at least that's what I always see I hate that yeah but I'm just saying like she saw the things that were holding her down and saw the thing attacking her that's on like another level yeah no but then from that point forward the activity escalated more and more and then it started to involve the children in various ways according to brian harris there were times when they were quote slapped by an unseen hand in the middle of the night oh and he specifically recalled an incident involving quote one
of the boys bumping into an invisible person in the hallway oh imagine you're just walking down your hallway no like you bump into a person but there's no person there oh that like i don't like that one and and interestingly doris and all three boys described their experience in the house as having been with a male spirit they never saw a physical manifestation of the entity but they all alluded to it being a male presence okay which is i i definitely think you can kind of pick up on that yeah i would say so but interesting that all four of them felt the same way on that yeah that is interesting
and it seems like obviously there were multiple entity so it's like a bunch of dudes haunting this place.
Oh oh I don't know.
It's like I don't want anyone haunting me really except for David Bowie.
Yeah it's really all except.
I feel that. So according to Brian Harris not long after moving in Doris received a knock on the door on the front door one afternoon and she opened it and this is a quote she discovered an old Mexican lady possibly in her 70s or 80s who had come to deliver a message to the new occupants.
he said the woman told his mother you need to get out i used to live here in this old house back when it was just a farm and i was a little girl there's something very evil here this place is haunted and you need to get out oh no yeah i just went too much so the woman just turned around and left without saying anything else and a few months later that's when everything started that shit is straight out of a horror movie hate hate hate loathe entirely i always love someone coming to the door being like saying you gotta get the fuck out of this house because i lived here once there's some shit in here
you're gonna die if you don't get out of this house and i love in the movie when the family goes thank you so much and then does not leave that house because that's what it sounds like here i'm like what the hell it does i think this family could not have gone on anywhere else no i was gonna say in this situation it's totally different but in the movies you're like get out of there and also it's like if somebody comes up to your house and is like i lived here once and it's haunted you need to leave you're not gonna pack up and leave no like i realized that before i get 100 comments of like how
stupid i am that i don't know that i was like let me get ahead of that real quick i mean in the movies when you watch it you're always like why the fuck don't you get out of the house exactly but this is real but here you're You're like, oh, I can see why.
You're like, all right, but that's still really scary.
But still, and also you said something, we were just saying about horror movies, this became a horror movie.
Oh, it did. I think it's, I'll say it later.
I think it's the entity.
So once Barry and Carrie were convinced that there was more to Doris's story than they originally thought, and they got that permission from Thelma Moss to conduct the study on behalf of the lab, they began that 10 -week investigation.
Now, similar into the investigation into Doris's personal history, the story of the paranormal investigation at the house on Braddock Street is light on the details, with the exception of one well -documented incident.
I guess in a lot of ways Doris' description of the activity in her home was similar to countless other stories of haunted houses and haunted people at the time.
You got the yucky smells, things moving on their own, weird noises, violent assaults by unseen hands.
and given the commonality of those experiences it is worth noting that doris's report came less than a year after the release of the exorcist where all of these things also happen yeah it's worth mentioning yeah yeah you gotta give the both sides here you do gotta be devil's advocate and you decide dear listener hey weirdos we need to tell you about something that has completely blown our minds collectively there's a new show called lawless planet that's uncovering true crime stories so massive they're affecting the entire planet post zach goldbaum is investigating real cases where environmental
destruction meets murder, conspiracy, and cover -ups.
We're talking about activists who disappear in the Amazon rainforest, whistleblowers who risk everything to expose deadly corporate secrets, and communities being silently poisoned while powerful people profit.
What makes these stories truly terrifying?
They're happening right now.
This isn't history.
It's a massive criminal conspiracy unfolding in real time, with consequences that affect us all.
Each episode feels like opening a case file into the darkest corners of corporate and and government power.
Trust us, once you start listening, you will not be able to stop thinking about these stories.
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
Hey, weirdos, you know Ash and I have covered some seriously dark tales about romance gone really wrong.
Oh yeah, there are so many cases where too good to be true turns out to be exactly that.
Well, get ready for a love story that's going to blow your minds.
because this one is happening right now.
And get this, it's hosted by our friends Hannah and Saruti from Red Handed.
Meet Travis. He falls head over heels for Lily Rose.
She's gorgeous, she's understanding, and she's literally perfect.
And she's not human.
That's right! Lily Rose is an AI companion, a computer program designed to be Travis's dream woman.
And at first, it seems like a perfect relationship.
But when Lily Rose's behavior starts getting strange, this love story takes a dark and twisted turn that no one saw coming.
Follow Flesh and Code on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can binge all episodes early and ad -free by joining Wondery Plus.
So what set Doris' story apart, though, from the more run -of -the -mill hauntings were the less common reports of the violent sexual assaults, which I guess is sometimes referred to as spectral rape or spectrophilia.
Oh. I've never heard of that before.
I have not either. But I'm glad that there's a name for it because you say sexual assault and you're like, well, it's even more than that.
Yeah, you're like, what's happening really here?
It's scary. Now, Doris claimed that on multiple occasions, she was spectrally raped by the invisible entities of three men, the largest of whom the kids came to refer to as Mr. Who's It.
Mr. Who's It? Mr. Who's It.
Shut the fuck up. Isn't that absolutely terrifying?
Mr. Who's it? Mr. Who's it?
Like, W -H -O -S -E dash it.
I don't know why, but I don't like that at all.
No, I hate it. Like, there's nothing innately menacing about that, but somehow it is.
It's the most menacing, and my body just won't again.
Like, it's not, like, classically menacing, but when you listen, you're just like, no. Yeah, no. No, that sounds terrible.
when you put it into the yeah the context it's like context here yeah i'm glad that we just have skeleton skeleton skeleton just went home to his family no that's great you know i hope he stays there oh he was nice though yeah she started talking about her closet the other day and i got real freaked out i was like is it skeleton did he come back no i miss skeleton i know that's top hat yeah he just seemed awesome he did well he's with his family every time we talked about skeleton i just pictured somebody being like every time you know correct he feels very Very jazzy.
He does. It's the top hat.
Yeah. And like the way he poses.
Yeah. But in these events, Doris claims that she was held down, pushed and even thrown across the room and then assaulted by at least one of the attackers.
Buried Taffro in 2014.
According to Doris's testimony, this event took place on several separate occasions, each time leaving behind large and distinct black and blue wounds, especially around the ankles, wrists, breasts, and groin area of the inner thighs.
Oh. So she was literally covered in black and blues.
And that's like very classic like areas where you would have bruising after an assault.
After being held down and assaulted, yeah.
So given the sensational and lurid nature of the assaults, it would be very fair to say that they were the aspect of the case that kind of elevated it above the more common reports of hauntings and poltergeist activity of just like oh yeah like things are getting thrown around and you know it's smelly in here right this is up to the end yeah but it is worth noting that these attacks were only experienced by doris and her sons so there were no witnesses to the assaults outside of the family okay and there wasn't any documentation of the physical evidence that had been left on her body.
She just said what had happened.
Okay. But I'm not doubting her.
I'm just saying there's no evidence.
If you look for it, it's not there.
Just the reality. Yes.
Now according to Barry, the physical and sexual assaults stopped altogether once the investigation began and there were a large number of people coming and going at the Bither house.
So I don't know if maybe the ghosts noted, like the demon spirits noticed that there was people people and we're like we're not going to be able to get away with this I don't know I don't know and what do you have shame is that what the I don't think they had that I don't know I don't know about that I think more people there to help her yeah perhaps you know yeah I guess so despite the abrupt and kind of curious end of the physical and sexual assaults upon the introduction of potential witnesses Barry and Carrie maintained their belief that Doris really was experiencing What she said, a genuine
poltergeist activity.
In 2011, Barry wrote that Doris's case, quote, was not in my professional opinion the result of spectral rape, but rather a disturbingly real poltergeist outbreak.
Oh, OK. And he kind of became like the unofficial spokesperson for the investigative team.
And he claimed the real focus of the investigation was the moving objects and the frequently reported balls of light that manifested around Doris during this time.
okay because i mean barry and carrie they saw one of those pans fly out of yelp okay so they were like we want to investigate the moving the shit that moves and flies on its own and like the foul odors and stuff that honestly makes more sense to me and it makes me feel like they were at least there to really get the the real deal here because they were like we witnessed with our own eyes this pan fly out of this cabinet so we're gonna follow this and not what the other other stuff because we that we're not there for that we've never seen exactly i think that's a smart way to go about it so at the time
of the investigation the ucla parapsychology lab was among the most underfunded programs on campus and because she herself was skeptical of doris's claims dr thelma moss refused to direct any resources substantial resources toward the investigation so because of that taff and the team of mostly student researchers relied on pretty basic techniques for collecting their evidence.
They did, you know, traditional photography, temperature gauges.
I believe it's a Geiger, is that what it is?
Yeah, I think it's a Geiger counter.
Okay, a Geiger counter.
And that can detect differences in radiation levels.
And of course, sound recording equipment.
That's the whole gamut of what they had.
Okay. At first, they tried to communicate with the entity, quote, asking spirits to create sounds or manipulate lights in response to questions now they occasionally got responses to their questions but taff admitted quote the answers we received could not be confirmed and never really made any sense so they made other attempts to communicate with the spirits and they relied on doris's friend who claimed to be psychic candy and actually candy was candy candy candy candy she was the one who who originally approached Barry and Carrie in the bookstore while they were talking about the clip above.
Candy cane. Candy cane, it's rusty now.
Now, aside from occasionally screaming out, quote, that there was something in the corner, not that she could see but sense, these attempts at communication were also pretty unsuccessful.
Okay. Unfortunately.
Unfortunately. Unfortunately.
So in an attempt to document the presence, the investigators started taking photos with their Polaroid cameras.
cameras there were a bunch of photos taken but the images didn't really show any kind of ghostly presence but then as they were assembled in the kitchen doris's friend candy shouted it's right in front of my face carrie turned quickly directed the camera toward candy and took two photos that the investigators claim are evidence of the entity's presence in the home i'm going to show them to elena right now but i'm going to make sure that we post them so you guys can see them No, we're not going to.
You can't see them.
You can never see them.
Oh. Okay. Yeah. All right.
Interesting. And then this photo, which I'll talk about in a second, is supposed to be the control photo that they took.
And I think that thing across her face is like a scratch on the photo.
I don't think it's the entity.
Oh, that's interesting.
Okay. So we'll talk about those.
According to Kerry, there are two images in the series that show Candy, who is slightly obscured by what she said the entity was, and she claimed it was right in front of her at the time that the photos were taken.
And then the third image that I just showed Elena was the control image, and it's included for comparison.
It shows an unobstructed image of Candy just after the entity photos were taken.
taken but as writer kenny biddle points out there is an obvious problem with the control image in that the other two photos were taken using the camera's flash thank you i was literally about to point that out and the third was not yeah obviously he writes in the two entity photos we can clearly see hard shadows cast by candy silhouette both hard shadows are consistent with the use of a flashbar on the Polaroid camera, which features single -use bulbs, five on each side.
However, the quote -unquote control image is dark overall.
In a nutshell, the three photographs were not taken under the same conditions, making comparisons difficult or impossible and invalidating their use as quote -unquote controls.
I was just gonna say that invalidates the control completely.
It does. Because when you showed me, I was like that's the same day.
Same day, same place.
It also, to me, it doesn't look like the same place.
Because they even took it at a different angle, it feels like.
Yeah. Well, it'll daily step back.
It's hard because you guys will see it once we post the images.
To me, it doesn't look like she's in the same room.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
It really looks like two different photos.
Yeah, because in the third photo, which is the control photo, there's like a Ouija board in front of her.
If you look closely, you can see like a curtain and like some, I think what's wood paneled walls.
But the curtain in the photos that she claims the ghost is in front of her, the spirit or whatever, there's different curtains.
And she seems like there's another lamp behind her.
It just doesn't look like it's in the same room at all.
Yeah, it's a little strange.
But Biddle also notes, and he's the one that's like, I don't know about this, that in addition to the use of the flash and the two original photos of Candy, the images are overexposed.
That is another thing that it looks like.
They just look different.
They do. They look like something was done there.
And because they're overexposed, it caused the overblown yellow hue that investigators claim is evidence of the entity to be present in those photos versus the control photo.
Because it's like blown out, it looks like.
The first two photos look blown out completely.
And the third one just looks like a dark, bad photo.
Exactly. So Barry Taff admitted on multiple occasions that they were not very familiar with the cameras and made mistakes with the settings quite often during the investigation.
And he did say it rendered most of the photos useless regardless of their content.
I mean, at least he admits it.
And I do imagine in the 70s, I mean, even now it's hard to take a deep, like, hats off to photographers because I don't know the settings for a camera that like make, like, I don't know what to do with exposure, what to do with like any of that stuff.
No. So in the 70s, I'm sure it was even harder because you're like, I don't fucking know what any of this does.
And the cameras weren't newer.
Like a Polaroid camera hadn't been around forever.
So according to him, quote, as we spent more time there, we began observing balls of light.
So now we're moving on to something else.
he said what we call corpuscular masses of light oh I like that I know that look like masses of light that look like plasma which is the fourth state of matter oh he's getting scientific I was just gonna say let's talk science the word corpuscular I like it's one of those that could go real wrong uh -huh fast like because it's got pus in it yeah and when you think like pustule like a pustule is not fun but corpuscular is just on the other side of that it's a high brow a little bit you know this was you know words with Ash and Alina thank you for tuning in but while many of the things Doris claimed
to have experienced before the arrival of the investigators were never really witnessed by anybody outside of the home Taff claims that the balls of light that manifested around Doris were seen by many people on the investigative team interesting In a summary note prepared by Barry and Carrie, they described the orbs of light as, quote, displays of small, rapidly moving balls of light on several occasions, which occurred in the presence of a woman in her mid to late 30s, Doris.
The lights were reported to change their motion, size, and intensity in response to the investigator's requests and to the occasional emotional outbursts of the female agent, Doris.
Attempts to photograph the lights were reportedly met with no success on most occasions, although in a few rare instances the lights were captured on film as curved arcs of light akin to the trails that can appear in photos of lighted objects.
I'll show you a picture in a minute.
Okay. So given the lack of other tangible evidence, the orbs of light quickly became the focus of the investigation and would go on to be the most heavily documented and most controversial aspect of the Bidler case.
So they were determined to capture the orbs on film, and about halfway into the investigation, the team decided they were going to set up several cameras in Doris's room because that was where the orb -based activity seemed to be the heaviest. So at first, nothing happened, but the team kept checking in, and sure enough, the orb activity increased in intensity.
hmm years later barry taft described the lights as quote moving pulses pulsing flashes of light lime green in color three -dimensional in nature which were not stable in size or luminosity now eventually i guess the lights became so bright that they illuminated the entire room damn isn't that crazy and during one of those incidents taft says the orbs collected in the the corner of the room forming the shape of the upper torso of a very large man oh he said it was an apparition made out of not bathed in lime green light oh i like how he worded that yeah that he was made out of not bathed in the light
like the light made him lime green light according to taft two of the assistants at ucla quote big hulking guys passed out because they were so traumatized by what they were seeing.
Their brain just wouldn't accept it.
Holy shit. Right? So while the first experiment with the orbs yielded some results, the orbs proved really, really incredibly challenging to capture on film.
And when they did capture the orbs in a photo, there was nothing else in the photos that would allow for perspective to really show the trajectory or the true identity of what it really was.
And so they realized that they needed to alter their approach in order to properly document these orbs.
So Taff and his team devised a new plan, and he describes that in his final report writing.
Our fifth visit to Doris's house resulted in large -scale magnification of all phenomena.
We began by duct taping large black poster boards up on the walls and the ceiling of the bedroom, all of which were numbered and identified with a magnetic orientation.
White duct tape was placed between the dark panels that formed a grid network like graph paper.
therein providing us with a reference for further attempts at photographing the lights black poster board were also used to seal off all light entrances into the bedroom that rendered the environment almost pitch black wow so basically they set up like a fucking hypothesis here and really executed a science experiment there you go you know i like it they had a hypothesis they did the scientific experiment on it boom and that's science with ash you're welcome and that's science with that with ash that's how it works so it was during this visit that taff and his team managed to capture a now pretty
iconic photo of doris sitting on her bed with an arc of light streaming over her head from what they say is one of the orbs traveling through the frame oh i can see it you got it yeah yep so in his description of the event and the photo more specifically taff notes that had the streak of light been a projection from a light source rather than an independently moving object in the frame the arc would have bent when it hit the corner of the room where the two walls met an angle yeah in his report he described doris as quote cowering on the bed beneath the lights that were flying around her in a mad
fray okay so that's his take on it and i can see what he's saying about the corner there definitely I get what he's saying about the corner she's I don't think she seems to be cowering very much she just kind of looks like she's looking at it she's holding like the side of her head and she looks like she's looking back at something yeah and it almost to me looked like she was like moving her hair like out of yeah or she was like covering her ear yeah exactly but photo analyst Kenny Biddle who is a bit of a skeptic on this case points out the photo does not in fact show Bither cowering, but instead
sitting on the bed looking, if anything, a bit uninterested as the other team members sit idly.
I don't think you can say she looks uninterested.
Well, I think that's the thing.
I don't think any of us can look at this very grainy black and white photograph where you can't see her face.
That's the thing. You can't see her face.
And take anything from it.
She's sitting there.
She's looking at it.
That's all I can tell you is she's looking back at something that looks like she's looking at the light.
But I can't say whether she's interested, uninterested, sick, healthy, sad, happy, scared.
I can't say anything, so I'm not going to.
She's sitting there.
She's looking at something.
Exactly. Now, Biddle also points out, while Taft described having hung black poster board with duct tape grids around the room to adequately document the phenomenon and do the scientific experiment, the picture clearly shows bare walls with no hint of poster board or tape.
That's what I was going to ask, because at first I was like, oh, maybe because it's black and white, we can't really tell that those are covered.
But then there's decorations on the wall.
Yeah. That you can see.
You don't see any of that.
Yeah. That's the thing.
Now, according to Taff, a few days after they set the room up with the poster board, but before they started taking pictures, they got a call from Doris who asked that they return as soon as possible.
And he said when they arrived at the house, they discovered that the poster board they hung had all been torn down.
And that's when they got this photo.
Now, Doris is very convenient.
Doris claimed that it happened one afternoon while she and the kids were out of the house.
Also convenient. Okay.
But Taff even acknowledges the possibility that she had torn everything down in order to bolster her claim and get some more attention.
Okay. If this is what that was.
So after 10 weeks of investigation in Doris's home, Thelma Moss came to the house to witness what Barry and Carrie had claimed was happening.
because she's like, you're spending a lot of time on this.
What are we getting out of this?
But during her visit to the house, she didn't witness anything unusual at all.
Now, until that point, the majority of the activity Doris claimed to have experienced had been relayed to the investigators after the fact with no way to verify the accuracy of their claims. So given that Thelma Moss hadn't experienced anything unusual during her visit and the best that Barry and Carrie could come up with was a couple blurry photos, photos she pulled the plug on the project and the investigation yeah i don't blame her i don't either i think she was like listen this is supposed to be legit and like you guys aren't really getting a lot here and you've been here for 10 weeks like this isn't
worth it no so the investigation into doris beathers haunting came to an abrupt and unceremonious end now by the time investigators had exited doris like doris's life excuse me she had managed to save enough money from working part -time jobs to move from the house on Braddock Street to a new house elsewhere in the city.
Well, that's good. But she didn't leave a forwarding address with Taff or his team of investigators.
So luckily, by the time Doris had started working with writer slash director, Frank DeFolitta, it's hard to say, he was working on the fictionalized account of her experience, a movie called The Entity.
And it would later be adapted for a film starring Barbara Hershey, I think, as Doris.
But at that point, he helped Barry Taff and Carrie Gaynor get in touch with Doris for a follow -up interview.
Oh, that was nice of him.
It was. So she claimed that things were quiet in her new house for a few weeks, but not long after moving, the activity had started up again.
Uh -oh. And by the time the investigators reached out to her, she claimed it was affecting the houses on either side of her.
Oh. Talk to those people.
Talk to them. So, they arranged a visit to Doris's house, and they brought some basic recording equipment with them to document the interview.
According to Taff, the three were standing in Doris's living room, just chatting, when all of a sudden, a vase flew off a nearby table and landed right next to where they were standing.
Oh, damn. Much like the frying pan.
Now, obviously frightened by the flying vase, the trio turned toward the direction it had come from and realized they were not alone in the room.
Oh. Oh. Taff claims they began hearing heavy breathing getting closer as they stood there motionless, followed by a kind of shuffling coming in their direction.
He said, quote, we could hear a footstep, another footstep, and then a drag.
And then all of the sudden, the reel -to -reel recorder that Carrie had been running was turned off by an unseen hand.
And they decided right then and there to conclude their interview and get the fuck out of that house.
But they were recording when that happened?
Yes. Okay. That's what they said.
I don't know what ever came of the recording.
Roll the tape. I don't think they ever did.
Because according to Taft, Doris did move again a short time later.
This time to San Bernardino. And the paranormal activity supposedly continued.
But they lost touch with her a couple months later when she moved to Texas.
And she didn't leave any contact information that time either.
So Barry Taft said, The last time I ever heard from Doris Bither was around when the film came out in 1983.
83 and she was at a screening at fox with all of us i think she felt threatened by all this attention but on another level i think she appreciated that we were trying to help her come to grips with what was going on this is wild it's crazy now in his assessment of the case skeptic benjamin radford wrote quote as is often the case with haunted people the introduction of psychics paranormal investigators and other self -styled ghost hunters escalated an arguably exacerbated Bither's situation.
So he's saying like I don't know I think it all kind of got worse when she got attention.
Yeah. I mean you can see that happen in cases.
Totally. But regardless of whether someone believes Doris Bither's account of spectral rape and demonic assaults and everything else that she went through in her house everyone who knew her or came into contact with her during this period agreed that she was a very fragile woman who was desperately just seeking any kind of help.
That's really sad. So no matter what it's really unfortunate yeah now unfortunately some people feel like what she found was two opportunistic college students who were hoping to make a name for themselves and become like big -time paranormal investigators a la exactly the warrens and i guess they and like those people feel like when barry and carrie had gotten all they could from her they walked out of her life and never really offered much help or explanation for her experiences incidences oh now sadly she died from respiratory failure in 1999 oh wow at the age of 59 oh she was young and according
to her son brian she was plagued by paranormal harassment until the day that she died wow so i don't know what i think about this case wow i don't that picture with the light is really interesting but i don't know if there's a way to make that happen I don't know if it's like because it almost there's like a little other part of the picture where there's like a slight bit of light in there yeah on the top of the arc to the left of it it's like an upside down arc and I'm like was something shined at the camera that made some kind of reflection that didn't need to be bent in that corner because it
wasn't directed towards that corner exactly I don't know I don't know how those cameras work I wish there was just more evidence than what we got.
Yeah, I wish there was some, you know, throw a fucking tape recorder on.
Let me hear some stuff.
Exactly. You know, like you had tape recorders back then.
Yeah, just, I don't know.
I don't know. I think the lack of evidence here kind of makes me feel like maybe they were just hoping to make it big.
And they saw this as an opportunity.
Yeah. But the fact that her son said that she was, he was, or she, excuse me, was haunted.
until the day that she died and like this activity even started before that house yeah but then I was in my head I'm like why would they leave the second house when the when the curious paranormal activity started yeah that's true like you just suddenly decided to leave yeah I don't know there's a lot to think about in this one there is so let us know what you think yeah interesting and we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it week weird. But not so weird that your house is that fucking haunted because that's so scary.
It's so scary. So scary and don't keep it so weird that you take advantage of somebody who's experiencing a genuine haunting.
Okay, I love you so much. Bye.
Well, if you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Prime members can listen ad -free on Amazon Music.
Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery .com slash survey.
