The Entity Part 1 with Xavier Ortega

Ever notice that feeling your worst also seems to happen at the worst time in the worst places? Like sudden nausea at 9 p.m. when you're out of town. Really? Now? Fortunately, with Hartford HealthCare's HHC 24-7 app, you can get answers, diagnosis, prescriptions, even speak live with clinicians anytime, anywhere. So maybe there's never a good time to be sick, but at least the best care is always there. Download the app at your app store or hhc247.org. I'm U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. We all seem to be in a rush these days, from work to driving our kids around. But when you're behind the wheel, please, do not speed. A few minutes saved by going faster is never worth the risk. So follow the speed limit, enjoy the drive, maybe bring some snacks for the kids, and know that along the way, you're getting quality time with your family. Paid for by NHTSA. Legends Network. Listen to the Astonishing Junk Drawer exclusively at patreon.com slash Astonishing Legends. Getting used to the Brady Bunch factor. I've been to Point Pleasant twice, but I've never been to the festival. Someone made a joke about the Mothman. For the guys on this screen, except for you, Matthew, you know, the 90s were like yesterday. The guy that directed the last film was the creator of Earthworm Jim. Dr. Napal told them that Steven Spielberg had said to him, when you're done with this, I'll take a look at it. It's so hard to explain this and not sound like I'm crazy. I'm impressed Scott found that. Hey folks, a content warning tonight. This episode contains discussion of sensitive topics including rape and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual violence, support is available. You can contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 for free, confidential support 24-7. Astonishing Legends would like to thank ZocDoc, Squarespace, BetterHelp, Mint Mobile, our contributors at Patreon.com, and you, our listeners, for making tonight's show possible. In August 1974, the muted screams and crashes piercing a quiet neighborhood in Culver City, California, would get noticed by the world at large. Something was very wrong inside the modest home of a young mother living with her family. For the neighbors on the street and the passers-by, the first thought was probably domestic violence. Should someone call the police? But it wasn't that at all. At least not in the way we understand it. This was a haunting that would challenge the boundaries of paranormal research. This was the home of Doris Bither. A woman whose case might never have been investigated had a conversation not been overheard in a bookstore. Dr. Barry Taff, a respected researcher known for his skeptical approach, and his colleague Kerry Gaynor, representing UCLA, would wind up investigating that little house where Doris alleged she was being repeatedly assaulted by spectral entities. This is the case that would come to be known as the Entity Haunting. Initially dismissive, Dr. Taff's scientific skepticism would soon be put to the test at the Bither home. What happened there over the course of the investigation defied conventional explanation, even for seasoned paranormal researchers. The phenomena reported and allegedly witnessed were both diverse and disturbing. An inexplicable, pervasive odor of decay resisted all attempts at identification. Objects moved seemingly of their own accord, including a heavy iron skillet flying out of a closed cupboard. Unusual luminous anomalies, described as lime-green lights, were seen moving at high speeds through the house. Perhaps the most unsettling was the manifestation of a large, shadowy figure in Bither's bedroom, witnessed by multiple observers, including Dr. Taff, but unable to be photographed. As the investigation progressed, the events escalated in frequency and intensity. Walls covered in gridded black poster board to track phenomena were reportedly torn down overnight. Electrical disturbances culminated in a fuse box being wrenched from a wall. This two-part special will delve deep into the story of the Entity, examining evidence, eyewitness accounts, and the lasting impact on those involved. But what sets astonishing legends apart is an exclusive interview with Javier Ortega, the webmaster and author behind the renowned paranormal blog, Ghost Theory. Ortega, who has been silent on the subject for nearly a decade, is the only known researcher to have developed a relationship with Bither's family members. Through extensive interviews with two of her three sons, Ortega has uncovered information about the case that has never before been revealed to the public. We don't always get access to exclusive unpublished information on a legend as famous as this one, but when we do, we can't wait to share it with you, dear legenders. The Entity haunting continues to provoke questions about the nature of reality and the limits of scientific explanation. And now, thanks to Javier Ortega's unprecedented access, you will be the first to hear what was really happening to the Bither family during this ordeal, which ultimately would last a lifetime. Welcome back to Astonishing Legends. I'm Scott Philbrook, and this is Forrest Burgess. When I talked to James, I did tell him that he and I were going to share the story, but I made him a promise that whatever I write, I was not going to let anybody change it because I was sticking to the truth. Tonight's guest, Javier Ortega, on Interviewing Doris Bither's Son. Join us tonight for part one of a world-exclusive interview with Javier Ortega about one of the scariest hauntings in American history, The Entity. And we're back. That we are, folks. It's the spooky season. Our absolute favorite time of year. But with great spooky comes great responsibility. Oh, well put, sir. I like it. I don't know what that is, but we have a lot to do, and we want to deliver a lot. Well, we do. We do have a lot to do. We do have responsibility tonight, honestly, to this story. I suppose that's true. Especially. We have an amazing show. We're going to get to it shortly, but we did want to mention a couple of quick things. The biggest one being that our Halloween hoodies and long-sleeved tees are back in a brand new, never-before-seen colorway, and they are awesome. Oh, indeed they are. You know, they came out great this year, and, of course, they glow in the dark. As we do every year, these are hand-silkscreened to order, so that means they don't even get made until you order one. So get to our store as soon as you can if you want one, because they're only going to be available until midnight Pacific time, Saturday, October 26th. After that, they'll be gone forever. Now, since these are printed when you order them, if you wait until closer to the end of the order window, there's a small chance you won't get it by Halloween. But you will get it before too long after you order. Yes, so just head to astonishinglegends.com and click on store at the top of the homepage to see those. In other news, we also just launched the Astonishing Legends Network webpage, too, for that one guy that was mad we didn't have one. Yes. So one other place where you can listen to every show on the Astonishing Network. Check it out. And if you want to see or hear me, he's got a YouTube channel, too. Out of paranormal context, I was just on a two-part series of the Fine Dining Podcast, and fine is in quotes on that, folks, because Michael Ornelas, who hosts it, is on a quest to visit mediocre restaurants all over the country and talk about them. So we had a blast doing that. He came to North Carolina. Both parts are out now, so look for the Fine Dining Podcast with Michael Ornelas wherever you get your podcasts. Here's a short clip from one of the episodes. This kind of food creates a fog immediately. Yes, it does. Yeah, yeah. One that stays with you all day. I am actively giving myself Alzheimer's. Yeah, right. Alzheimer's? Alzheimer's? Did I say it weird? You did, but that's one of the early signs. Oh, no! And we have a surprise for the end of the month. A new show. It's finally here. The first episode will be posted on October 29th. More details next week, but get ready. It's been a long time coming. Man, there's a lot of info this October. Okay, last thing. As many of you know, my home state of North Carolina has been hit with a biblical level of destruction from Hurricane Helene. And our good friend Micah Hanks, who lives in Asheville, was right in the middle of it. We wanted to let everyone know that we're finally back in touch with him, and he is doing just fine, as is his home, in spite of the fact that as of the time of this recording, he's been without power for 14 solid days. Oof, it's what I call home camping. Geez. Well, fortunately, all Micah needs to survive in the wild is a flashlight, a knife, and some fire. That's what he said, anyway. But yes, he's okay, and even posting episodes about what's going on up there. So find and subscribe to the Micah Hanks Show for updates. Which you should have been doing already. And also, if you'd like to help out the victims, just listen to the special announcement we posted a week or so ago in our feed. It has options for that. We're sure Micah is sharing those as well. Yes, and sending our heartfelt sympathy to those displaced not only by Helene, but Milton as well. Stay safe out there, folks. Okay, well, we've got a great show for you tonight, so where do we start? Well, I'm just real excited about this, because a lot of people think they know this story, but they literally, literally, to overuse the word literally, and also this cliche, they don't know the half of it. Well, one thing that we discussed with Javi, and you and I, and since the beginning of our show and doing our research, is that much of the information that people think they know about a story is really just, well, it's, I hate to use the term, but it's creepypasta. It's just cut and pasted from other sources, and they all lead back to something spurious, usually. So here, we have a chance to speak to somebody who talked to the people who were there, the actual family, and got right to the root of this thing. Whereas all these other articles you read about it, that's just all secondhand, and I'm not sure where they point to. And as Dr. Barry Taft says, a lot of people have been claiming to have been part of his investigation team with UCLA, and they weren't. Yeah, he had never heard of them. No, he knows about 10 people that are publicly saying that, oh yeah, I was on that investigation team, and I work with them, and I was in the lab, and I was this and that. And he's like, they were not. Yeah, this is a genuine scoop with one of the most informed people on the case alive today. The information that you're going to hear tonight about the Doris Bither case, otherwise known as The Entity, came almost entirely from her own children, and 99% of it has never been shared anywhere in the world before now. Right. You have to realize most of the information that the public knows about is from a book and a movie, and the book was- Right. With considerable fictionalization. Exactly. And so it took a lot of liberties, but people think, oh, it came from the book, and not really realizing that book did not get to the source of the info. So welcome to the spooky season, folks. Sarah, roll our interview with Javier Ortega. Let's welcome Javier Ortega to the show. Javier, are you there, sir? I'm right here, Scott. It's great to actually connect with you. I am so excited about this show because, you know, we've been doing this 10 years. We just had our 10th anniversary, and it's safe to say that, you know, we've covered a lot of stuff, and we've uncovered some really cool things over the years, but really only one series I can think of where we got a scoop or an exclusive, and that was the BetSphere, where we managed to connect with some family members who had experienced that whole thing. Right. I've heard of that. We found some family members, and they had x-rays and all this extra information that nobody had ever seen, and that was pretty exciting. What you're offering here for our listeners is a chance to look inside the case of Doris Beider in a way that nobody ever has. You've done so much work, and I just wanted to say from me and Forrest, we are truly grateful that you're agreeing to share it with our audience. We're also very lucky and fortunate and grateful to get somebody who has spent a lot of time researching one particular phenomenon, let's say. And with Tom Maxwell, it was blood falls. We just happened to lock into meeting somebody who is like, I have studied this for a few years. I've got so many notes, and that's the case here where you are the one individual, I would say. All the research we've done, no one else knows as much about the case and the family especially and the interviews you were able to get, because I don't think they really talk to many other people by their family as a whole than to you. Is that correct? That's correct. They kept that quiet. At first, there was the investigation part of it, but after that was done, they pretty much just remained silent for the rest of their life, never speaking about it. My involvement in this is when they reached out to me. It created a lot of turmoil at first. Well, let's talk about that. People are going to want to know why they reached out to you, and why don't you tell our audience about ghosttheory.com, which is pretty much my favorite paranormal blog of all time. Thank you. I want to know when you started it. I remember we were visiting it all the time when we were starting the show. Just you would look something up, and it came up every time. You just had... I had everything, man. I had everything, all the cases. It's so cool. When did you start that blog, and what's its current status? I started Ghost Theory in 2008. Okay. My background has been in IT. It still happened that with my work, I started to really think about the paranormal phenomenon. And I've always been interested in ghosts and UFOs and everything like that since I was a child. But with technology, I started to sort of make a connection between the afterlife and the computer systems. Because in my head, it was kind of almost similar. How people explain residual hauntings as something tragic happening, an event, and then somehow being recorded in the hard drive of time. Right? Right, right. Right, right. And these images and whatnot, it's just like, they keep replaying. And for me, it sounded just the way a hard drive would work, you know, with ghost images and just blocks and sectors and whatnot. But then, like, as technology progressed, I started to see, like, more and more similarities between that world of the tech and also what was emerging as far as the paranormal world when it comes to, like, you know, are we in a simulation? Is this all real? What does this mean? Oh, I want to cover simulation theory so bad. It's like, I feel like there's so much out there about it now. Like, so many theoretical physicists are talking about it now. But it makes sense, right? Yeah. I mean, at least in my eyes, like, there is a lot of similarities in that. Yeah. And so, I was working in IT, but I've always had a passion for writing. And when I started the blog, it was back when nobody was blogging back then. I don't think WordPress was around. Yeah. So, everything was kind of just static. And I remember the first story that I wrote was about the witches in Mexico City. Yes. There was a video that was floating around back in the early days of the modern internet, I would say. Yeah. And that got me interested, you know, because I got the videotape and I translated it. And I had it on my blog and that generated quite a bit of a buzz. Yeah. Before that, though, around 2005, I had come across the story of Doris Byther. At the time, I was living in Culver City, California. And it was during one of my days off. I think I was doing some just random, like, Googling and searching on the web for ghost stories. And this story happened to come up because I was probably, like, maybe three miles away from where I lived at the time. Yeah. Where this happened. And ever since then, I just became enthralled in this story. And back in 2005, 2006, when I would try to dig up information, there was no information on this story. And I didn't know if it was real, if it was not, if it was fake. And then in 2008, when I had Ghost Theory running, I wrote a blog post about Doris and her story with all the information that I had found online. And the information that I found online had her full name because before that, I think she was known as Carla Moran. Oh, right. Which is the character name in the book or the movie, I believe. Right, right. And then, based on my early research, I found out her name. I found out the address of the place. And I took a drive and I went out there. It got me motivated to write about this case. And I did. And the story blew up. Yeah. It blew up. It was published everywhere. It was published on KFI, the radio station in Los Angeles, on coast to coast. And it gathered so much attention. From that point on, I think Ghost Theory just has always had a core audience throughout the years. And I've been blogging since. I have over 2,800 articles. Wow. I think I'm a blog. Impressive. That's amazing. Most of mine. But, of course, I had some editors that worked for me. A few people. Yeah. Like Scott McMahon. Rest in peace. He passed away a few years ago. Okay. But we're very good friends. And we used to write articles together for Ghost Theory. I had Gary, Gary Popella, Henry Patterson, Lindsay. Yeah. I just had so many people just come in and out of Ghost Theory. But they've all helped, you know, make Ghost Theory what it was. And I say what it was because there was a point in time where I kind of just fell out of the scene. Yeah. I stopped blogging and I stopped just updating Ghost Theory, you know? Well, it's interesting. I mean, it figures that you're in IT because one of the things about the site, when you go there now, it auto-populates, like, the hottest things that are being clicked on or whatever. Right. And Doris Byther is right at that. It's just constantly still floating up there near the top. That's the one that people are reading. It's still getting hit. Yeah. I check the Google Analytics and I see the searches for Doris Byther. I see it for The Entity. And it's still generating a lot of buzz, you know? Would you say that that, in terms of intriguing stories for you, is that the most intriguing one you feel like it seemed to grab you the most that you decided to dig into? To be honest, it changed my life, that story. But there were some other stories that I covered in Ghost Theory that I did enjoy a lot. One of them being the San Pedro haunting with Jackie Hernandez. That's the one where the guy was in the attic and the cord wrapped around his neck? That one, yes. I want to cover that, too. And friends of ours have covered that, but we have not yet. Might have to have you back for that. I don't have as much knowledge as I do with the Doris Byther case. Yeah. But I did talk to the investigators. I did interview the investigators. I befriended some of them. Oh, cool. And I read the case files, you know? Yeah. It was very interesting. That case does have the hitchhiker effect, where a ghost might attach to you and follow you around. Because speaking to the investigators, they had that happen to them. And I was like, okay, well, this is not something that I want to participate in. Or, you know, I just, you know. Well, of course, the next question is, did you have that fear or start to get that fear the deeper you got into Doris Byther's case? In the beginning, no. Because I was curious and I wanted to find so much information on this case. But as the time passed, it started to affect me, yes. I started to have some issues because of that. When you left Culver City, where did you go? And tell our listeners where you are now, because I don't think we've ever had a guest on from your current location in the show. Actually, I know we haven't. Currently, I'm in Albania. But from Culver City, I bounced around. I moved to New York. I lived there for a few years. From New York, I moved to Greece and Europe. And from Greece, I lived in Turkey. I lived in Bulgaria. I lived in Romania. I love history. So, Romania has a lot of good history, you know, when it comes to, like, the dictators and past politicians. But as well as, like, you know, Transylvania. Transylvania has, you know, an appeal to that. Well, that's what they say about Albania is that there's a lot of still standing historical buildings and locations, some ruins. It's like what people don't realize about Turkey. I think there's more, you know, ancient world ruins that compete with Greece, but it's just not as well known to most of the Western world. I haven't explored the ones here, but I have read about them. In Greece, there's so many Roman and Greek ones that I've just, you know, that I've explored. You mentioned kind of stepping out of the game. We don't have to go deep on this, especially if it's going to come up more later. But, like, what made you step away? Was it this case? I think this case did contribute a lot to it, a lot of stressors. But it's the changing landscape, I think, of online. And I think you guys can agree with me that, you know. Oh, yes. A few years ago, just Google dropped the ball and they changed the way they would present or crawl for websites, you know. Right. And I've noticed that a lot of my posts were not getting traffic anymore. Right. My site was on the second, third, fourth, fifth page in Google. Yeah. And instead it was replaced by YouTube videos. Right. Before that, though, I was having some issues with copyright infringement because Ghost Theory has just so many posts. And it's like you said, we have covered a lot over the years. Many people took my post and they regurgitated them on their blogs or made a quick, like, you know, 15, 20 minute video on YouTube and got all the views from based off of my research and my work. Monetizing your work. Of course. Yeah. And I was penalized by Google for they said that I was faking my clicks or something like that. They penalized me and all this stuff. So I was kind of just turned off by it. Yeah. And it seemed like the more I would fight, the more I would post things, the more I would get negative feedback from the public. It was changing a lot. Yeah. Yeah. There was critiques about my grammar, critiques about my writing style, critiques about this. And they were missing the whole point of what I was trying to say. So I got tired of defending all that. Yeah. I mean, everybody who goes on and puts themselves out there, it's become more and more of a brave thing and less of a brave thing to critique and attack people hiding behind an internet connection. But that's where it has devolved into is just a bit of a mess and it's very negative or can be. This case was also very sensitive for a lot of reasons, just personalities and I think the people that you talked to and, again, not getting into legal stuff, but also there's a spiritual aspect of it. And it invokes a lot of emotions, good and bad, with people and how they react to it. I did get a lot of negative reactions to that. I got a lot of death threats, just things coming up. But I also understand that the audience was changing. I don't feel like, well, at least back then, people were not willing to read, sit and read through like a long post. They'd rather just watch a video. So it just, everything started changing. Plus, when I got into the case of Doris Bither, it started to really affect me. I was having nightmares. You know, I was having nightmares. I was just doing odd things. Like I found myself driving by the house at odd times. I would sometimes sit in my car, just park across the street and just sit there at night. You know, I would walk the block at night. I would never really approach the house, but I just found myself doing strange things. I don't know why I was doing these things, but it all started just like being a little bit too heavy because the subject matter is very dark and it's very heavy. I decided to just take a break and I started martial arts and I became good at martial arts and I became an instructor. So that led me to a different path in life where I taught self-defense in all these different countries and all over the world. And it, you know, it was a good break for me for my mental health and I really enjoy that. You hear a lot of that from paranormal investigators when they get too involved or wrapped up in any case or just even a book or a project. Is that it takes a lot out of you, not only creatively, but physically and mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and that you have to step away at some point, but always keep an interest in it. But you need to get away and give yourself some breathing room from the thing that you were so immersed in. When you were near the house, did you ever get any kind of vibe, any kind of visceral? No. No. If I did, if I remember, it was probably just self-induced. Yeah. I've always approached things very respectfully. I wasn't trying to invade anybody's privacy, but, you know, it's just the curiosity got to me. Sure, sure. But it's like I said, I can't explain why I was doing these things. I can't explain why I was having nightmares. I mean, with the question, were you worried about yourself, about the hitchhiker effect with that? Of course, the hitchhiker effect is something I feel like has come out more lately, but, I mean, maybe you were aware of it at that early stage. I mean, were you thinking about that? Like, am I getting pulled into this? I was. I was. And it was a concern of mine. But it's like I said, I've always approached things very respectfully. I've done things to take care of that, as far as I'm aware, like, you know, just using sage. Yes. You know, just things like that, that people say that works. I tried all that. Right. Just to keep myself sane. And I think it worked, you know? Yeah. I didn't have any hitchhiker effect or anything like that, but the effects were negative on my mental health. During that time, I lived in downtown L.A., and downtown L.A. had, like, this renaissance. Yes. Everything was being rebuilt and everything, so there was a lot of ghost stories coming out of those places, too. Yeah. So, if I lived in a building, there was something haunted going on in that building. I would hear what the neighbors say, whatever. So, I felt like I was constantly surrounded by all that stuff, you know? Right, right, right. Protein bars often feel like you're choosing between taste and nutrition. If it tastes good, you flip it over only to discover it's made with a whole paragraph of ingredients you've never heard of. Or artificial sweeteners do all the heavy lifting. It's basically dessert in disguise. You shouldn't have to choose between tasty and nutritious. And that's what makes Aloha stand out. Aloha protein bars nail the delicious and nutritious. They're USDA organic and made with ingredients that actually grow somewhere. It's their whole taste-that-grows philosophy. Plant-based ingredients grown in the ground, thoughtfully sourced, and built to keep you satisfied. Their peanut butter cup bar has 14 grams of protein, 10 grams of fiber, and only 5 grams of sugar. Which is wild considering how delicious it is. Made with no artificial ingredients or fillers, just something that tastes good and works the way it's supposed to. So if you're in the mood for something truly craveable and nutritious, try any of Aloha's protein bars. Grab one at your local grocery store or head to aloha.com. Ever notice that feeling your worst also seems to happen at the worst time in the worst places? Like sudden nausea at 9 p.m. when you're out of town. Really? Now? Fortunately, with Hartford HealthCare's HHC 24-7 app, you can get answers, diagnosis, prescriptions, even speak live with clinicians anytime, anywhere. So maybe there's never a good time to be sick, but at least the best care's always there. Download the app at your app store or hhc247.org. Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You'll love this podcast. Prepare to listen. Just kidding. It's Jen. Let's get back to the show. Leaning into what you said about respect, one of the things that I would like to do is set the stage for our audience about how we're planning to cover this, which is really the way that you've covered it. And we're definitely going to talk about the investigation and Dr. Taft's investigation and that sort of thing. But there's a million shows out there already that have dissected that component of it. And that's also something that we've done multiple times in the past. What's intriguing to us about this particular case and the way that is the way that you're presenting it and how it is about the by their family. So we'll be treating the family with respect, following your lead on that, telling the story in a respectful way. There is a lot of very sensitive things connected to this case. And we want to protect that and walk a fine line with it and look past the whole like thing. Forrest, one of the things that Forrest always says on the show and has been saying for years, which I love, is like everyone's, you know, wants to get a ghost in a jar. They want to trap the ghost and show the world that they've got the ghost in the jar. And that's not where we're going here. We really want to look at the big picture of the case. So my first question for you along those lines is, how do you feel that the work you've done on this case is different from everything else that's out there in the world about it? If you go online and you type in Doris Byther, you're going to get a lot of information. A lot of it, it's pretty much the same thing, right? What we know about the case, about the haunting, about the investigator's involvement in the case. I was fortunate enough to talk to Doris' sons and get a perspective from inside that house when things were happening and how they felt, how they managed to survive such an ordeal without ever getting a resolution or any real attention to themselves, to their mental health, to what was happening, you know what I mean? And I think with the story that I have, it can give the audience or people this picture, paint this picture of what the Byther family faced during those few weeks, I would say, or months, I would say, in that house. A lot of times when we cover a case like this, we want to find the information we can and tell the story, especially when we're interviewing somebody such as yourself. We don't want to make you tell a story that you've told a thousand times in other places. So we got a bonus here because there's a couple of things. One is there is very little out there. Like if you go what's on the internet, you know, and some people have made it into 45-minute podcasts and longer or whatever, but there's really not a ton of info. It's just a lot of, there's a few events that are publicized and then a lot of speculation. The other thing that's a bonus for us is that you haven't been all over the world telling this story to a million people. So you're not burnt out on doing it in this format. Thank God. So we're glad to, we're glad to. You guys are the first ones that I've talked to about this. Okay. And, you know, and I started this in 2008. So it's been what, like 16 years or something about research and just being invested in this case. And I kept it to myself. I mean, there's been a blog post here and there that I made, but I, it's very little information that I gave out, you know, because I felt I wasn't ready. I hadn't finished the book. So now that it's finished, like, you know, I feel like I have a story to tell and it's not my story, but it's story to story. And I think the world needs to hear it. I obviously think that's great. I'm still surprised you wrote us back. I mean, you could have very easily, this could have been a couple of years ago and you might have just not even responded. Just be like, I don't want to do that right now. So I guess we were in the right place at the right time. I've had a lot of people contact me about the case at one of these interviews. And I've just, like you said, I ignored them. I wasn't trying to be mean or anything like that. I just, you know, I wasn't in the right space. Somehow I found your email the other day and it was just, it clicked. I felt ready. I felt at peace. It was strange, but it was, it was nice. Like, there's a bit of kismet going on, I think. Right. A lot of times the stories come to us. And when we get a chance to interview somebody who is the preeminent source and authority on a subject, we have to grab it. The other thing that we like to do is talk to the best source we can to set the record straight and help with that as well, as much as we can. So let's tell our listeners who do not know the story, Doris Byther's story, or have not, are not familiar with the entity, which is, you know, the book and movie, which came out a long time ago. What is the story that's at the root of everything we're going to discuss? The Doris Byther's story is a story about a woman who is attacked, raped by unseen entities. And she contacted researchers for help. They tried to assist her in those ways. But I think the main thing we got out of it is that they were trying to just find evidence or proof of a paranormal. Her case is probably one of the biggest cases that I've ever read about spectral rape or spectrophilia. And it's a hard subject to talk about. But the Doris Byther case is just that. It's about a woman who is being attacked, who is being brutally attacked, I should say, by these unseen entities. And she's asking for help, and she's not getting the help that she needs. And that's how she lived her life. So how did the case start? How did she first, because it seemed to me in reading your posts about it, that there were things going on, but it didn't really get to the outside world for a period of time before these researchers were brought in to try and assist with it. How did that unfold? To answer your question, I don't know. I sincerely do not know when it started. I mean, I can speculate, but I can tell you this, you know, she was born around 1941, I would say, in Mound City, Illinois. And as you guys know, Mound City is full of like, you know, Native American burial grounds. And there's all these legends, lores and whatnot associated with that. When Doris was born, she was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. The doctors had said that she came out, her face was purple already. She was like a 60-year-old basically. And many people, well, I would say that speaking to her sons, they're under the impression that her journey into the paranormal began the day of her birth. The location, the incident that happened and all that. I don't know if I can agree with that or not, but I do know that it does play a big role in her psyche. And in her mentality, when it comes to the approach of the paranormal. So Doris Byther comes from a family that was very strict and, in her words, morally corrupt. They were churchgoing parents, but they were very hard on her. And from what I gathered, she had a very difficult childhood. And she ended up running away from Illinois, basically, in her early 20s. She moved across all the way to California. Doris' dream was always to be in the entertainment industry. She had a passion for music. She loved to dance. She was an artist. She was a dancer. And she really liked Tina Turner. And her goal in life was to be a backup dancer for Tina Turner. She arrived in Los Angeles, I think it was in 1965 or 1966. Back then, it was a different culture in L.A. And she worked in the Sunset Strip as an entertainer. Like, she would dance in clubs. The Whiskey of Go-Go was a very famous club. She was a dancer there. And she tried to make a name for herself in the entertainment industry. Of course, that didn't happen. She got involved in the paranormal as soon as she arrived in L.A. Like, you know, she worked at the Whiskey of Go-Go. She worked at various other clubs. And she worked at Norm's, that diner on Santa Monica Boulevard. Oh, yeah. Santa Monica and Lincoln. You're right. Yeah, it's time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Santa Monica and Lincoln right at the 10. Right. I have eaten there numerous times. When you mentioned this in our pre-interview, I looked up. It was, I think, torn down or it was closed or torn down around 2013. Oh, really? So it's been gone. Yeah. You probably haven't seen Santa Monica in a minute, but it is radically different, even from the early 2000s. Oh, wow. Yeah, so. I used to go to Norm's as well for that. We all did. Yeah, we all did. Everybody did. I love a diner. And that was the coolest one. It had, for listeners, we'll put some pictures in the links and the show notes and everything. But it had a very cool sign, you know, sort of the Rocket Age vibe or whatever. It was just retro. Yeah. Yeah. It's right off the freeway. You can just, like, you know, swoop right in and whatnot. Yeah. But yeah, no. So she was, I didn't understand this one in our pre-interview, but I thought maybe that was later. But you're saying that she was concurrently doing these things. She's waiting tables. She's dancing. She's doing whatever she can to make ends meet. Correct. And by the way, this really humanizes her. It makes her into a person. Like, so many people move there and are still moving there to this day with these dreams of becoming, you know, famous or dancers or whatever. However, and the reality of it is, you know, you wind up doing this kind of work on the Sunset Strip or in restaurants. You're waiting tables and all that kind of stuff. It's a hard reality because so few people actually wind up moving up into, you know, to true fame and fortune. But everybody is trying. I'm going to just dive right into the story and tell you guys what happened. In 1966, she had a nanny or a babysitter from the, I want to say the Caribbean. Her name was Cecile Thomas. Cecile Thomas was, around that time, 1966, I think she was already in her late 50s or 60s. And she would take care of the children, the boys, while Doris, she went to work. In that household was Doris. She was the head of the household. She had three boys and one girl, James, Michael, Roger, and Samantha. In 1974, when the investigation happened, I think James was 16, Michael was 13, Roger was 10, and Samantha was 6. So back in 1966, 67, they were much younger, of course. Samantha wasn't born back then. But Cecile Thomas would take care of the boys. And she would always, like, you know, she was a very good nanny, according to them, very loving and all that. But she did introduce their mother to the Ouija board and say, on this, the only reason to do that was that they were trying to get answers as to, like, you know, her life, what she should be doing, trying to get some sort of guidance. For Doris, at the beginning, it was just entertainment. So it was a fun thing to do on a Friday night, you know. You turn off all the lights, you light candles, you set up the Ouija board, and you ask questions. And that's how it began with her. I was born in 1969. But I remember, at least in the late 70s, at least, which was past this point, but people were still, everybody was buying the Parker Brothers Ouija board. Right. It wasn't Toys R Us. Yeah. I remember seeing it as a kid. Like, yeah, they were selling it. I mean, they probably still do. Yeah. Yeah. So many unfortunate stories start with, and then we got out the Ouija board. Yeah. And I never knew until we got in touch with you that there was any connection to that from this famous case. Like, I did not know. Did they mention that in the movie? To be honest, I don't remember if it's in the movie or in the book. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Yeah. But in my research in the case, I did, like, you know, when I talked to Doris' son, James, he was the one who was telling me about Cecile Thomas. And I wanted to find out who she was. So I was doing all this research. And James had told me that Cecile was, that she had worked for the NYPD back in the 1940s or 50s as a psychic. NY, New York. Yeah, she moved to New York first and she worked for them. This is what James had told me. I tried to do some research. I couldn't find anything in NYPD archives or records or stuff like that. But I did find a piece of information that showed her name in a registry as coming in from the Caribbean islands, Cecile Thomas, around that time in New York City. So I knew at that point that, you know, what James was telling me, that there was some truth to that, that I can go back and research this and pull this up. As far as I know, the first paranormal experience happened to Doris was in 1966, 67. She was dating this guy, the first name Mark. I don't have his last name. But Mark worked for the aeronautical lab in Santa Monica back in the 60s. So he was an engineer. He was high up there. Very hardworking guy, but also a notorious alcoholic. I'm talking about like from what James told me, he would be drunk 24-7. He would go into work, drunk, but do his job, come home, you know, and just be functional alcoholic. One day, Doris had gone home from work. Her boys were asleep. And she found Mark passed out in the living room floor. He was drunk. He was just out cold. She was frustrated and annoyed. So she wanted to drag him into the bedroom, but he was too big. And Doris, mind you, she was a small stature, petite woman. I want to say she was like 5'1", maybe 5'2". So Mark was this huge guy, six foot something, and she couldn't move him. So she went to the linen closet to get like, you know, a blanket and pillow just to cover him off or whatnot. When she came back into the living room, she was startled when she saw this floating figure, a hooded figure that was floating right above Mark. They had no feet, no nothing. It was just that she could see the hood and some red eyes or like what would appear to be red eyes staring back at her. And it disappeared. And she didn't think, of course she was startled. She was afraid. She didn't bring it up at all until she told James this was a few years later. But that was her first paranormal experience that I have in my notes. It was over him, but it was engaged with her. Correct. I don't know what that means, but it was floating above him, but looking at her. Did James say she had seen facial features or was it more amorphous? No, just a black figure. She could tell that it was a hooded figure and it had red eyes. Okay. Are we talking about the house that was on Braddock Street in Culver City? This was previous to that, right? Correct. This is an apartment in Santa Monica because she moved around a lot in Santa Monica and L.A. prior to that because of, you know, it was just, she had an unstable job. So when she met Mark, she found some stability in that. So she was able to have a place, two, three bedroom place and all that. But his alcoholism got in the way of a lot of things. Mark became very bitter and would snap at the boys. And that's something that, you know, it rubbed the doors the wrong way. Like the first time he did it, she kicked them out. And I think the second time he snapped at them, that was it for her. She always put her children first. It was for her. And he had to go. She kicked them out. And once he was out of the picture, she found herself struggling again. But back then, she had a landlord by the first name of Mildred. I want to say Mildred Barnes. I'm kind of forgetting the last name, but it was the first name is Mildred. And Mildred knew Doris' predicament and she tried to help her out. She told her, you know, I have this house. It's in Culver City. Nobody's living in it. It's small. It needs some work, some repairs. But you and your children can move in there, you know, and I'll give you guys a discount. And Doris was just happy. She was happy that she finally found a place that, you know, she could put her kids in and try to, like, you know, pick up the pieces from her life, you know? You know, all three of us have lived in LA. None of us do now that are talking. But for folks that don't have experience with Los Angeles, this isn't a bad location in terms of proximity and getting around the city. Culver City is not a bad place to be either. It's not. It's not. I mean, that was the beginning of Hollywood. I guess the old Hollywood was Culver City. Yeah. Because MGM was there, right? Correct. It was MGM, right? That turned into Sony. Yeah, it was. Yeah, yeah. Los Angeles in the 60s, as we've talked about before on the show, was a magnet for a lot of people interested in metaphysical ideas. There were a lot of cults that started up. Of course, you had the Manson Gang. Right. The Process. You have a lot of darkness that's underneath that that comes with that sometimes, unfortunately. But you had a lot of people seeking spirituality. Yeah. And can find the freedom to practice that and connect and network in Southern California. And so Los Angeles was a bit of a mecca for that kind of free thinking, again, metaphysically minded people to come out and do their thing and not get a lot of resistance, let's say, from the older parts of the United States at the time. And so, and in Doris's case, it sounds like, you know, just like anybody else that probably people of, you know, who were in their 20s and the 60s were able to kind of indulge in and, you know, Scott and I have talked about this before, also interest in things like Ekinar and Iger Casey and a lot of these things were happening. So it wouldn't be that surprising, I think, for people to hear that you're trying out a Ouija board again for, as a dinner game. But even before that, like, I think in the 40s or something, they had Jack Parsons. I don't know if you guys have read about that story. Oh, yeah. JPL. JPL. What was that, right? Yeah. And tied in the group. There was a lot of that. Yeah. Well, again, if you look at some of the writings of Barry Taft, who was investigating the case, one of the three main people on the academic side, they were saying that there was a lot of activity with her getting into her youth. And so was this introduction to the nanny and doing the seances and playing with the Ouija board, was that uncorking a lot of this or opening further a gateway or doorway into some of these more negative spiritual influences? I believe that it did. There is some strangeness to that. I mean, like, you know, when she was in Santa Monica, this was like 1966, 67, 68, right? Around those times. She had that one encounter with that shadow being with Mark. But before that and after that, she didn't have anything going on in Santa Monica. And it wasn't until, because she was still doing sentences when she was in Santa Monica, but there was no reports of hauntings or poltergeists or anything like that. It was just a fun thing she would do on Friday nights with friends. But it wasn't until Mildred had offered her the house on Braddock Drive in Clover City, which is a 20-minute drive from Santa Monica. You know, it wasn't until they moved in there. And it took two years, actually, two years after they were in Braddock Drive when the haunting started. And in my research, the first thing I did was focus on the location. I wanted to learn everything about Clover City, everything about that house. When I first started to interview her sons, when I was done with interviews, I would go down the street because I lived in downtown L.A. So I would just go up the street to the Los Angeles County Hall of Records and sit there for hours and just pull these books from the shelves. And these dusty books, you know, big pages. I was going through them. And I wanted to see the history of the place. And Clover City back then, Balona or Bayona Creek was wetlands, marshlands. And I think when MGM started back in the day, I think that they were moving around in canoes, I think, to get from the studio to the location because there was just so much water waste, right? Right. So they were using little boats and whatnot back in those days. But my research in Clover City hit a wall when I was told that there was a big fire that happened in L.A. and a lot of these records were lost. So I was able to trace it back down to when that area in Clover City, that house that she lived in was a ranch, just ranch land. And I don't know what I was trying to get at, but I was just trying to go as early, as back as possible, you know, just from the beginning, from the genesis of it all. And this ranch, it somehow, it just, from what I can say, it's that there was a lot of activity there beforehand. So she had moved to Clover City and the distance was 1972 to the house on Braddock Drive. And it wasn't until 1974 when the attacks started. Around that time, she was in financial straits. She still had a job at Norm's, but her days of entertainment and all that were long gone. I mean, she couldn't land a gig. And it was demoralizing to her and it was frustrating. So when she moved to the house, it needed some work. It was dilapidated. For a discount, she decided to move in there and with the hopes of like, you know, slowly but surely just doing some repairs and whatnot. Around 1972, she got assistance from the government, welfare. But back then, I believe the government required you to take a sort of like a class at the college, you know, if you're getting assistance. So what she thought was she was going to take a typing class because she had heard like, you know, having typing skills is kind of the way of the future. Right. So, you know, she worked at Norm's and then in the afternoons and the evenings, she went to the college there and she took typing classes. And that was the extent of their lives in the first two years in that house. You know, it was just normal, everyday things. Nothing was reported. Everything just as usual, you know. Right. She did continue to play with the Ouija board for fun, for entertainment. It was like some sort of thing that she did. But at that time, I think Cecile Thomas, the babysitter, she was not in the picture. She hadn't moved away. So Doris was doing these seances on her own by herself. Was she looking for any type of answers to her life? Or like you said, you were just, you know, again, just for entertainment. Was there more of a specific reason, have you found, for her to be that wrapped up in it? Or perhaps due to loneliness, she's just wanting somebody to talk to, even if it's from the spirit world? According to her son, it was kind of like a mixture of all that, you know. Yeah. A stress reliever. It was entertainment. It was, you know, trying to get some answers, trying to get some directions as to where to go. Because I think when she was doing this with Cecile Thomas, I think she did get some answers. And that kind of like pushed her or motivated her to keep doing these seances, not knowing like, you know, that there could be a danger behind this. Now, you had done some research about the house when you were, I think, at the Hall of Records. And one of the notes when we were talking to you previously, you'd found out that two German men had died in the house. One was of German descent. The other one, I want to say it was German Dutch. But yes, two people had died in that house. I couldn't find out where exactly in the house they died. But there were two deaths recorded in that house. Now, I tried to go further back, but of course, everything was destroyed by that fire. 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So there's a precedent of at least perhaps some spirit activity or, again, it doesn't mean anything as we've found, Scott and I, about hauntings in general that people can move into a house that's just brand new and have stuff, activities, and have activities going on or a place that is really old with a lot of deaths in it, and nobody reports anything. So it doesn't really matter. But in this case, you were trying to find out if there was some prehistory to Doris moving in, if there was any activity or goings-on in the house. And it seemed pretty normal, just an older house. Nothing too dark, I would say, or mysterious, right, going on with the house before she had moved in? No. The landlord, she never had an issue before or after, from what I read. You know, it was just, there wasn't anything going on. It wasn't until 1973, 74 when things started to happen in that house. And it started like the way a poltergeist would start, a poltergeist infestation with like strange smells, knocking on the walls, footsteps. That's how it started in the house. When I talked to her sons, they had told me like in the beginning with the smells and the footsteps and the knocking came, these shadow beings. I want to say, well, I want to say shadow being, singular, one of them, because the kids reported seeing a shadow in the kitchen. The shadow only stayed in the kitchen and only made itself known every once in a while, but they never felt threatened by this shadow. It wasn't doing anything besides staying in the far corner of the kitchen. It would appear and disappear. Or sometimes they would walk by and they would see a person, a man just sitting there in the corner, staring. The outline, of course, a shadow of a man. And this is why, like when I was doing my research, I wanted to get information at where these people had died in the house, what location, what room and whatnot. Because I was trying to at least correlate that with them. I never found that out. But the kids did say that, you know, it was harmless. It did freak them out a little bit, but it just became so normal after a while that they didn't think anything of it, you know? Right, right. But as the time passed, the smells just turned worse. They were more pungent. Well, when you say pungent, are you talking about a progression? Well, generally with these poltergeist cases and infestations, it starts off small. Every, so many stories. It started with like that smell of sulfur, you know, that you constantly read. It was a sulfuric scent around the house. But then that morphed into the smell of human excrement. Yeah, okay. There were phantom smells that they would just, you know, you would walk into a room and you would walk across the room and you would be hit by that smell in the center of the room. But you take a step ahead and there was no smell. You took a step backward and there was no smell. It was just concentrated in this one location. Even with this kind of shadow entity that they were seeing in specific spots in the house, it didn't really give them a bad feeling. It was just like, well, that's just a spirit or something that lives in the house with us. And they were kind of getting used to it. And then was it the same shadow entity that was also evolving into something else, something darker? Or were there now multiple entities that were making their presence known? When the kids started to see that shadow, they tried to keep that information from their mother. They didn't want her to know what was going on. I think James explained that he was just being protective. He was telling his siblings, like, you know, it's okay. It's just something that cast for the friendly ghost. That was the reference he was making. It's the friendly ghost. All four of the kids were seeing it? Correct. So they were, all four of them were independently experiencing something before the story and case blew up into the bigger thing that it became. Right. The weird stuff started happening with James when he heard the kitchen sink turn on. Okay. And it would happen at night and he could hear it, like the full water gushing and splashing and all that. So he would get up, go into the kitchen and everything was bone dry. The sink was dry. Yeah. And he started getting a little bit freaked out, but he kept it to himself. And then he so happened to talk to his younger sister. I think Sammy was five or six at the time. And she was the one who told him first of what she was seeing. And he asked her about it and she said, it's Mr. Who's It? Kind of like, well, who is it? Who is it? It was Mr. Who's It, right? Yeah. And then she told him that Sammy and Roger had first seen it. And they told Michael and Michael told James. So James just took it upon himself to tell him, you know, this is just between us. Let's just keep it to ourselves. This spirit, this ghost is friendly, like Casper the Friendly Ghost. So, you know, trying to calm them down, basically. Right. But that one entity was kind of the only thing that they were seeing that might be connected to all the psychokinetic or poltergeist activity that was occurring in the house, but it's now ramping up. So they were thinking, this is just, oh, that's Mr. Who's It? And he's doing these things and causing the smells, or were they starting to notice or get the sense that there were other things other than Mr. Who's It now operating in the house? Yeah. It was only like a couple of months later when they started to notice these shadow beings that were not in the kitchen, but they would only see these three beings in the hallway and in their mother's bedroom. And these were different. These were different. They were not like, you know, tall, for lack of a better word, skinny, like, you know, shadow person that was sitting in the kitchen corner. These were big, muscular, barrel-chested men, bald head, you know, that type of like shadow being that they were seeing in the hallway. Wow. When I talked to James, he would tell me stories of him just like, you know, being in his bedroom and seeing one of them walk across, you know, down the hall and turn and go into the mother's room. So they would just disappear. And that was it. And the boys, like, they try to keep that to themselves. Eventually, Doris was the one who went to James, James being at the time like 15 or 16, and she confided in him what was happening, what she was feeling, basically. She was seeing the same things, but she did not want to tell the kids. So they were both playing this game where like, you know, we're seeing some weird things. We're smelling this, but I'm just going to keep it to myself to, you know, remain calm. But back then, like, you know, Doris and her son, James, the eldest one, they had a very close relationship. It was very open. You have to remember, this is back in the 60s, the age of like, you know, like free love and the hippie movement and everything like that. There was a lot of feminist movements and, you know, all this stuff. So Doris was very open with James about who she was dating, what she was doing and whatnot. He was her confidant. So we're talking about just her sharing and being very open about what was going on in her life because she didn't have many other trusted people, especially male figures in her life at that point she could trust to. Or, you know, he was the closest to an adult in the house other than her. So she is very forthcoming with like what's going on in her house, sharing information and they're communicating a lot. Probably. Would you say that she's almost kind of his, her best friend at the moment? Correct. Yeah. She would just share everything with him and he was very open with her. They had a very trusting relationship. Right. I mean, he was keeping all this to himself, you know? And then one day she just, you know, sat with him and told him like, I have something to tell you. And he didn't know what she was going to say, you know, he didn't know if they had to move to another place, if they were being evicted or any of that. Because when I talked to the boys, they did mention that, you know, they were living in very, very, very poor. It was a very poor environment. Right. They had very little money, enough just to eat and pay the light bill, basically. So James was thinking along the lines, okay, here we go. We're going to uproot ourselves and be moved around across the city. But Doris sat with him and she told him like, you know, I don't know how to say this, she said, but I wake up in the mornings with the feeling of having had sex the night before. Now, mind you, I mean, to us, it might sound weird, like a mom saying this to her son, but they had a different relationship. They were very open, you know. James, when he first heard that, I believe he didn't know how to react because I don't know if he thought that maybe she got drunk and didn't remember her hookup or whatnot. But he was still very respectful and just kind of like, you know, trying to ask questions like, what's going on? Right. He's starting to get old enough to understand, you know, what an adult's life is like socially and especially since she was telling him about, you know, her going out and she was being very open. He's getting an idea of like, there's something unusual about this. This is, she's telling me this because it's not just accounts of her going out the night before, not remembering, but he's trying to piece this together that this is significant. Something's going on with mom. Yeah. It was never like that, that she would get like, you know, drunk and not remember things. Right, blackout. But, you know, it wasn't like that, but, you know, James did tell me that she was, she loved men. She loved men and she liked going on dates and, you know, she was young, you know, typical in LA, I guess. Yeah. Sure. She just told him like, there's this feeling that I have in the mornings when I get up and I'm, I'm sore, I'm hurting and I have this feeling and I know that I haven't been with anybody in a while. So there's something going on and that was the first indication of something that was really off in that house, something bad. And when his mother told him that he knew what he had seen, he knew what his siblings had seen as well, but he still kept it to himself because he didn't want to make something worse. You know, he didn't know what was going on. Exactly. And I don't think, I don't even think Doris knew what was going on. You know, she just knew that, that she had that feeling and she would see these shadow beings like from time to time. Going from the, you know, the hallway into a room and just disappearing. Now they had this dog, this German shepherd, um, and the dog was, uh, very sensitive to certain things that would happen in the house. Like the dog would suddenly start growling or just like staring at a window and just, especially the kitchen window, the dog was in the backyard and we just stare into the kitchen window and growl. That was another indication that there was something going on, that the dog was seeing something, you know, uh, it was just confirmation to Jane. And that there's something was up. Now did Doris at this time, when she's starting to confide in her eldest son, James, did she let on that there were other things happening before she was talking about these latest incidents? Was she telling him that basically wondering if she's talking about describing a progression as well? Like, well, you know what? Maybe a few months ago, six months ago, a year ago, something small started to happen. And now this is happening where it's taking kind of a darker turn or did she basically tell him, James, the whole story of her experiences or are they still kind of keeping things from each other? No. As soon as she said that, uh, I think within days or a week or whatnot, it was a short time. She just told him everything. You know, she told him about the incident with Mark and what was happening. He, of course, he knew about the seances and she tried to keep that away from the, from the, her children. You know, she would do the seances when they weren't home, but James knew, I think that's when he started to realize that it had something to do with what her and Cecile Thomas were doing. And he started to suspect something and he started to be very vocal about it to a point where he would get angry, upset, and frustrated with his mom, you know? Well, this is an aspect of behavior that a lot of people who are paranormal investigators that are friends of ours and people who have written into us and stories we've collected would say it's a fairly common thing where when someone starts to develop a relationship with spirit and multiple spirits, or again, using the Ouija board or seances or any other type of, you know, ITC communication, it becomes addictive in a sense, or it can, because you're looking for answers and you're getting some, but you're also being manipulated in a way, but no matter how negative it is, a lot of times people will just stick with it because it is a form of companionship. We talked a little bit about this before, uh, uh, some friends of ours from Warwick Paranormal Investigations in Indiana. Basically, they were on a case where a woman was heavily using a Ouija board, was experiencing an infestation in her house, which is terrible. She called them in to investigate. They tried to find out who they were dealing with and did as much as they could and, uh, tried to cleanse the house, uh, because things were, as you know, she was described awful or health was failing. She couldn't get any sleep. And then they come back sometime later because she said, well, the activity's back. You have to come back and, and check this out again because whatever you did didn't work. And they go to the house and they find the Ouija board under the couch. She was still trying to contact whoever it was she was contacting because she missed that connection. And you hear that also with cases of, uh, succubi or incubi where people are, even though it's a negative impact on their health, still want that connection because it's something. And even though it's draining them, they, they will keep on doing it. It's like an abusive relationship, a paranormal abusive relationship that you can't get out of. Right. And then you keep going back to, because it's a quote unquote, the devil, you know. So in this case, she is still continuing these things. Uh, James, at least knows what's happening. I think the other kids as well, kind of know mom's dabbling and stuff where they, uh, is James keeping that from them still? Or is he now having to relate like, Hey, mom's doing this stuff. We should be on guard. They knew. Yeah. Michael and Roger have caught her, uh, their mom, like, you know, in a silence, uh, several times at night. So they were well aware of what's happening. I don't know if they knew the ramifications of it, the younger kids, James definitely did know what was happening. And I think this is what made him angry because when she told James what she was feeling in the mornings and whatnot, it wasn't like maybe like within a couple of months, Doris came to him again and started to show him bruises. So she was telling the same things like, you know, I'm still having this feeling. I haven't had sex the night before. I haven't been with anybody, but look at the, my thighs. Yeah. The bruises were to, for our listeners, they were on her inner thighs, like up high, right? Inner thighs. She had like, you know, big handprints, uh, bruising in her arms and whatnot. Scary. But she did not know what was happening to her. Eventually these entities started to materialize her manifest themselves for longer periods of time in front of her. And they started to attack her. They would bite, poke, push, and ultimately like rape Doris by there. And this would happen on a constant basis. Doris did not know how to react or how to handle it. And the only thing she did try to do is protect her children from it. Because I believe that deep down inside, when it started happening, Doris knew why this was happening. And in order to fix this, she went back to the thing that causes the Ouija board, you know, in order to get answers. So it's like, you guys were saying, this is like an abusive relationship where like it's bad or whatnot, but you just keep going to what you know. Yeah. Right. And she wanted to get answers as to what was going on. She wanted to tell him to stop or make communications with these beings. And it got to the point where one day James and his brothers witnessed an attack. They were outside her bedroom when they heard their mother screaming. And when they ran inside into the bedroom, they saw Doris being tossed around the bed. They thought she was having a seizure or whatnot, but then they started hearing like, you know, the punches and like smacking and, and just these grunts, these noises. And there was nothing they could do. It's horrible. Yeah. When that happened, James told me that he grabbed his brothers and he kind of closed the door and waited because he was trying to protect them. They were young. Right. Right. And what do you do with that? I mean, and you're seeing them reacting and of course, it's extremely traumatic for everyone at this point, but again, it's not a physical person. So what do you do? I don't know if anybody had the idea to contact paranormal investigators, which weren't as numerous as they are now. No, they had no idea that, you know, paranormal investigation or researchers existed. It was a thing, right? Yeah, they didn't. This story really strikes a chord with me, like in a deep way, because of similarities to my childhood. Now, my mom was not a rape victim, but my parents divorced when I was two and my mom raised me. And this was about 10 years after all of this. I was very young in the seventies. And on top of that, we lived outside of LA near Death Valley, actually China Lake Naval Base. But then my whole, my mom and dad, although divorced, we all moved to Denver. And so there's so many components to this. My parents' divorce was amicable, but there was a hippie component. There was a, my mom and I were absolutely best friends. I didn't have siblings, but it was just like me and her against the world. So I can relate to this. And then in terms of like something happening that you can't do anything about, and it honestly chokes me up a little bit is my mom suffered from horrendous migraines and she would get them so bad that she would, the pain would be so bad. She would pass out and sometimes even throw up. And those have since abated, thank God. But like when I was a kid, she would be in so much pain and I would have to like, look, I couldn't stand it. And you know, it's not right, but it's the same thing in terms of like, I can't, she is in horrible pain and I cannot help her. There's nothing I could do. We couldn't figure out how to stop it. You feel helpless, right? Yeah. And it's a horrible feeling. And it just makes me feel bad for James and these kids and like with whatever is going on here. And if you believe in a paranormal stuff at all, which obviously we do, we're astonishing legends, but like, it's horrible to think about. And it really, I'm really connecting with this, especially the way you're telling it in a way that I didn't expect. I come from an abusive household, I would say. There was domestic violence growing up. And when I talked to James, I had the same feeling that you're having now. You know, it's like, I can identify with that feeling of helplessness. Like you see your mother being attacked or you see this happening to your mother. How do I help her? You know, I'm supposed to be the man of the house or whatnot. I'm supposed to protect her. How do I do that with this? Yeah. And with James, it was just one of those things where I don't know how he managed to cope, you know, because he's a teenager. He's going, he's in high school. This is the seventies. There's so many things going on, you know, around that time. But fortunately, or unfortunately, around that time, Doris had befriended a neighbor by the name of Candace. I call her Candace in the book. And her and Doris just, I think Doris really like leaned on her a lot when it came to this. Now, Candace was not, in my opinion, she wasn't the right person for the support because I think she kind of fueled the flames a little. Knew just enough to get in trouble, make it worse. Right. Because when Doris, like, you know, she would confide in James a lot, but there was this element of like, you know, well, he's just my son. And he talked to somebody else, you know, and that was when Candace, like, you know, started coming over. So Doris and Candace became really good, close and really good friends around that time. And Doris would just tell her everything. And Candace at first did not believe it. But eventually, you know, she came to the realization that what Doris was saying was the truth. Candace encouraged her to use the Ouija board for fun, to get answers to what was going on. Because at that point, I don't think Candace had seen the actual attack yet. Yeah. You know, so she didn't know the severity of it. So she would encourage Doris when the boys were out in school, she would encourage her to like, you know, pull up the Ouija board and let's have a few beers and let's like, you know, play around and see what happens. You know, and I think at that point, it's just making force. Of course, people will say, and we're going to talk about this later, of course, that there was a book written about the case. There was a movie. Again, it's God mentioned every, a lot of people know, especially if you are a Gen Xer, because it was, it was shocking at the time. Yeah. I want to make that clear, by the way, talking out how old I am. I'm Gen X. I'm not a boomer. I don't want to do any boomer stuff. All right. Well, we're all Gen X here, right? Yeah. Are you Gen X off here? I just turned 47 in October 2nd. So, you know. Oh my goodness. Happy birthday. You? Thank you. Happy birthday. Well, it was a cultural phenomenon at the time. Everybody kind of knew of the movie and it was very entertaining. Barbara Hershey was, who stars in the movie, was a well-known star at the time. And so- She did a hell of a job. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very difficult thing to portray any kind of attacks and abuse like that. But people will say, well, first of all, Doris is making this all up. And then, well, if the kids are corroborating the accounts by her, they're all making it up because they're poor. They want to sell a book. They want some book money. They want some movie money. And as we always say, you know, people usually don't fare very well when they try to turn a profit on these kinds of things. And usually because it's so negative, they end up regretting wanting to, uh, or have anything to do with monetization and publicizing these types of events because nothing ever good comes out of them. And so the kids are also now experiencing attacks and these attacks are happening, not just in the bedroom or just at night. They're happening all the time during the day and in different parts of the house and now to different family members. It only happened to the boys and Doris, right? So around, around that time, as things started to escalate, as she starts being attacked, the boys start to being pushed around, I would say. Yeah. Not attacking in those ways, like their mother, but they were being pushed around. There were reports of them, like, you know, going down the hallway and all of a sudden, like seeing that shadow person, like bump into them, like push them. Yeah. Were any of Doris's boyfriends during this time, were any of them physically abusive? We just had, uh, Mark, I guess, who was an alcoholic, but was anybody rough with her? She did have some abusive boyfriends, but it wasn't around this time. Okay. Uh, no. That was after this or before this? After. I mean, who knows how any of this works? And as we used to, as we jokingly say on the show, if you believe any of this at all, but it's, I just was wondering if maybe something detached itself from some boyfriend that she had and stayed behind when he left or something like that. But. I thought about that as well. Like if it was the people she was dating and whatnot, but I mean, it happened earlier in Santa Monica and her involvement with like, you know, Cecile Thomas and the seance and the spirit world. Right. I think was the catalyst to all this, you know, right. It wasn't anybody else's attachment to this story or whatnot. I think it was her. The boys started to feel the attacks from these shadow beings. Now the shadow person or the shadow being in the kitchen, Mr. Who's it didn't, as far as I know, as far as they told me, it never left the kitchen. That's interesting. Yeah. It never really like when it appeared, they weren't scared of it. They started to get a little bit nervous once the other shadows came around because they didn't know. Right. But the other three shadows were the ones that would like, you know, poke them or push them every now and then or whatnot. And that was the extent I think for the younger children. But there was this one incident where they're all home and she had been attacked in her bedroom and in her bathroom. And there was a big commotion, this big ruckus, like, you know, the noise that everything, the boys ran. James told him, you guys stay out here. Let me go check it out. Cause he knew what was happening. Right. Yeah. He goes inside and he sees his mom just like, you know, I think she was on the floor. And as he tried to get close to her, he was pushed or punched with enough force that it sent them flying back across the room, you know, geez. And I think he told me that was the hardest he'd ever been hit. And it, it, it terrified them and it terrified them all. And after that point, I think Doris really became desperate as to trying to find an answer or a solution because now it wasn't just her that was having these issues. It was, she had seen that it was her children too. And it so happened that that's when James just broke down and told her everything. He was like, listen, it's been happening. We've been seeing these shadows, like this shadow in the kitchen and all this stuff, you know, the smells and everything. And it just made her feel worse, you know, cause she's always, always try to protect her kids. But when she got with Candace, she stopped kind of relying or leaning on James a lot. And she used Candace for that particular reason. When they get together, they would have a few beers and they would bring out the Ouija board and, and have seances. And James would come home and he would see that and he would be infuriated. He would start yelling at his mother and they would have these fights, you know, and she'd be like, listen, baby, like I'm trying to figure out what's happening. Cause I, there's nobody, I can't go to the police. Right. Nobody's going to help me. Nobody's going to believe me. So this is the only thing that I know what to do, but he was, he was against it. With her upbringing in a strict religious environment in the household and her rebellious nature and running to run away. And it's being too oppressive. She's not going to go to a religious solution or source. No, that was the last thing she wanted to do. I have this feeling that she might've been sexually assaulted by somebody in church or something when she was a child. I don't know. This is just pure speculation because of the way she detested the church or, or what her parents were doing. Because from what I know, her parents were these like devout, pious, like people, but they were morally corrupt. They were more about climbing the social ladder than taking care of, you know. Within the church and sweeping things under the rug or ignoring them, whatever's going on. Having that facade of being like the perfect family, the devoted family, but behind the scenes, there was abuse. Yeah. They're presenting, trying to present themselves to society. Yeah. Exactly. And I think that was why she did not want any intervention from the church or any priest or anybody coming in but in the house. Yeah. And also, as we've seen people who come in and try to help or dabble, also even some clergy persons can come in and do something and it doesn't always work, but especially with people who only have a limited knowledge or are kind of dabbling in trying to give a supernatural remedy to these infestations can often make it much worse because you're kicking the dust up and you're aggravating whatever's there already. And so when you don't really know what you're doing and you're trying to help, yeah, oftentimes it increases the activity. And so that's kind of what we're seeing here with Candice coming in and offering a little bit of knowledge or trying to get at this with more Ouija board work and more seances. And I can understand from Doris's point, she just wants an answer when, you know, again, this is all so mysterious and nebulous. Who do you turn to for answers? And really, that's the only person is the next door neighbor, Fred and Candice. And together, they sound like they're making it worse. Candice, like, you know, was the only person that she would listen besides James, but the only other adult that would, like, lend an ear and, like, sit there and console her and everything. Now, what's interesting is that when she got with Candice, her messages from the Ouija board started to change. They weren't the same messages from what I can tell when she was with Cecile Thomas. Like, she was getting, like, just advice about, like, what she should do next or what was going to happen in her future, that kind of stuff. That was the involvement of the seances. But with Candice, I remember this one particular incident when James came home and he caught them both. They were tipsy because they were drinking beers. Like, you know. This is so 70s, by the way. This is just the most 70s thing. As a former child of the 70s, just, I can see the candles. I can almost sense this environment. Just because the other thing that I didn't say earlier about the parallels with my own life is when I was young, my mom was broke. We lived in a horrible part of Denver. We had no money. All that stuff completely relate to all every part of this, except for the fact that I didn't have siblings. And also, my mom didn't drink. But, like, still, it just was, like... You understand the environment, right? Yes. I can feel it. And this one day, like, this one incident, James had come home and he already, like, been through a lot, right? He had been punched across the room and whatnot and had seen his mother being attacked. Now, he comes home from high school and he catches them both, like, in a seance. And Doris turned to him with this excitement in her face. She was giddy. She was happy. She was excited to share with him that she had just found out who was attacking her. And James was just, like, blindsided by this. He was, like, he didn't know what was going on. Because, you know, one week she was crying and this was happening. And all these horrible things were happening. They're terrified. Here comes Candace. And then all of a sudden, like, you know, they're laughing. They're getting drunk. And they're getting some answers. And Doris just, like, you know, with her... She couldn't contain her emotions. But she was, like, you know, I finally found out what's going on. I made contact with this dead police officer that is claiming that I had, in a previous life, I had killed him. So he's back trying to get revenge. So Candace and Doris had this plan to kind of, like, ask for forgiveness. Or I don't know what they were trying to do. But that was the angle they were approaching this. That Doris had killed somebody in her previous life. And that now she had to make amends. Yeah. And just, and I'm sure you know this, too, with your 2,800 blog entries. But one thing we've learned from our show is that you never know who you're talking to. And the information you're getting, it seems almost more often than not, is what whatever that thing thinks you want or need to hear to be controlled or manipulated or whatever. And that was James' reaction, you know, to this. He told her, he was like, you don't know what's going on. You don't know if this is true. You don't know who you're talking to, what you're talking to. And he was just frustrated because of having experience and all that. And now having his mom go back to the seance and the Ouija board, which at that point, he knew that was the catalyst to this all, right? The start of this. Protein bars often feel like you're choosing between taste and nutrition. If it tastes good, you flip it over only to discover it's made with a whole paragraph of ingredients you've never heard of. Or artificial sweeteners are doing all the heavy lifting. It's basically dessert in disguise. You shouldn't have to choose between tasty and nutritious. And that's what makes Aloha stand out. 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They head out to Westwood, which is, I don't know, a 15-minute drive from Culver City. Yeah, this is where UCLA is. Yeah, it's where UCLA is. A lot of college students hang out there and whatnot. I think that bookstore is still there, to be honest. I mean, I don't know if post-pandemic it's still there or not, but the last time I checked when I was in LA, it's still there. They went to this bookstore, and they were trying to just find out what was going on, reading all these books and whatnot. And that's when they overheard two young men. Like, you know, they were young in their early 20s. They were discussing hauntings amongst each other. You know, they were going through books and just talking about this case or just haunting and all this stuff. And Candace heard them, and she told Doris, you know, let me go tell them. Let me go approach them that we have this thing going on. They approached them, and they said, well, I have a ghost in my house. You know, they started the conversation. And at first, you know, these two researchers, they were students at UCLA. They were under the supervision of Dr. Thelma Moss in UCLA, which she headed the psychology department. These were parapsychology students. And now, back in the 60s or 70s, nobody knew what parapsychology was. There was no courses. This was kind of like an unofficial department in UCLA. They were studying PSI, psychokinetic abilities, and all that stuff. So, Dr. Barry Taff and Kerry Gaynor were the two researchers. And they spoke with Doris and Candace, but their first impression was like, they're off their rockers. You know, they're drunk, basically, what they were saying. They didn't want to believe it, whatever. But they told them, okay, yeah, we'll go over to your house. We'll check it out. And, you know, and whatnot. Because at that point, they were doing some investigations all over LA. Well, yeah, what comes to mind, Javier, is that I'm sure a lot of people will agree with this, is picturing the paranormal investigation team, the parapsychology team from the movie Poltergeist. Right. Which, by the way, according to Barry Taff, like the guy from Poltergeist, the scientist, the guy who was eating a piece of chicken that, you know, had the maggot, that was based off of Barry Taff. Oh, was it? Okay. Was it Spielberg, right? Steven Spielberg? Yes. Yeah, Toby Hooper directed, I believe. He had heard about the case and about what was going on. So he took a lot from this case to make that movie, you know, he took a lot from other cases as well, right? The Native American burial grounds and all that stuff. Oh, sure. Yeah. No, there's a lot of tropes going on. But as you were talking about, at that time, it wasn't a very well-known thing. It is, of course, now. But back then, especially for any academic interest, it's very rare back then that any academic institution is going to take this seriously. And also that affects the researchers' attitudes about what they're doing and the blowback they're going to get from their peers. And so that colors how they interpret and intake the data and information and investigate themselves where they're trying to be as clinical as possible because they don't want egg on their face at the end of the investigation. They want to be, again, they need to be taken seriously. They need to be, appear credible. But at this point, though, it's kind of a very fortuitous chance encounter. In the bookstore, were you talking about the Bodhi tree that's in West LA? Was that one of them? It's a well-known metaphysical bookstore. Maybe that's it. I bit to the Bodhi tree. I can't remember if it's in Westwood or not the Bodhi tree. It's not. It's West LA. Yeah. Is it? Okay. Melrose, right? Yeah. I haven't been in LA in a long time. I know. Scott's going to look that up right now. Yeah. 85, 85 Melrose. It's West Hollywood, technically. But I can't find a bookstore in Westwood right now that's open. That's an esoteric one. I can't find one. There's that newsstand that's been there forever by the theaters and stuff. This is more for our peeps. And before we continue with the academic interest here, I felt I should mention a couple of our friends. Jill had mentioned to me that Tana had mentioned to her and asked if I had ever seen the latest installment of Unsolved Mysteries, Volume 5, Episode 2, where a paranormal investigator essentially partners up with a spirit named Becky. I just saw that today. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. It's insane. I have not seen it yet myself, but I did read some reviews on it and got the gist of it. And basically, it's a similar kind of thing where a paranormal investigator goes and does an investigation, makes contact with apparently a spirit called Becky, and has some information for Don Phillips, the man who is the paranormal researcher. And Don is very experienced. And I don't know much about his background, but basically, he is in cahoots now with Becky, who has this background story that is wanting to help Don. They find a portal. The word portal comes through. Becky apparently was a school teacher with two kids. They get some ITC confirmation that they are there. And then also another well-respected paranormal investigator, Barry Fitzgerald comes in. But as so often happens, you get a lot of good information from a spiritual source and it makes you go, wow, like I'm getting the real deal here. Same thing with Joe Fisher and the Hungry Ghost. Same thing with Uri Geller and the team at SRI with an unconscious entity named Spectra. Same thing with 2109 from the Vertical Plane. All these cases mention something that gives you a lot of good information. So you pay attention. It's like, okay, I'm getting some answers and this is addictive. And then they pull the rug out from Undia and they give you some false information or something they don't know. Same thing with the Mothman entity or information that you're getting from that movie is that then they're incorrect about something major. And then you doubt it. And then you wonder, is this the trickster element that's happening? Or is this some aspect of interdimensional communication where they're not going to get everything right or they're on another timeline? But same thing you have here in that now you have Doris and Candace and they're getting information and it's exhilarating. Finally, you're getting answers. But as Scott and I always know, and you do too, that you can't trust what the source is or if it's going to be correct. But what kind of messages or information was Doris getting previously that was stringing her along? Did she get names of people before that? Or do you have any information on that? I don't have much information because it was just between Doris and Cecile, right? Right. And because you're connected with the children, but Doris has passed away since then. So there's no way to get that now, right? No, there's no way. And Cecile has been long gone since the 70s. So there is no way. But James did catch him a few times. And from what I gather, it was kind of just like a fun thing to do. You know, the typical questions about like, you know, am I going to get married? Right. What should I do with my job? Like that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. But when she got with Candace is when it started to get more ominous. And it was about the slain officer and all this stuff. And it's like you were saying for us about entities that, you know, will tell you something and but you don't know if you should trust them or you don't know what it is that you're communicating with, you know? And when she got with Candace, it was a lot of that. But to them both, it was an answer. Right. Right. It was an answer to like a question that nobody, they couldn't even ask this question, but they were getting at least something. So that was the addicting part of it, you know? So in the bookstore, they talked to Dr. Barry Tapp and they talked to Kerry Gaynor and they told him what was going on. They were hesitant to go, but they eventually went and their first visit was in August of 1974. It was the first official visit from the researchers from UCLA into the Braddock Drive home. And right off the bat, you know, they go in there and yeah, they could smell the phantom smells, the horrific smells. Their first interaction, they go in there and right off the bat, they're saying, okay, well, this lady is having some severe financial problems and severe mental issues because, you know, the house, according to them, it wasn't squalid conditions. It was falling apart. She was drunk, abusing substances or whatnot and all this stuff. Right. So they weren't really like sure if this is going to turn out to be anything besides like a mental issue thing. You know what I mean? With Doris. But eventually, you know, they started to see things. And when I say things, it's like, you know, it started with like balls of light, orbs of light. And for Doris and Candace, it was very exciting to have these scientists come in, even though they were younger than them. Because I think at that time, Doris was in her 30s. And these guys were like in their early 20s. So even though they were younger, they felt like there was some sort of authority figure in the house that was going to like, you know, help them out. Also not connected to religion. Exactly. Yeah. Not connected to religion. Eventually, like, you know, they started coming around more often, bringing tape recorders, equipment, like, you know, Geiger counters and all this stuff that we use or that people use nowadays, you know. And eventually, it morphed into like manifestations of these entities that were attacking Doris and that Dr. Barry Taff and Carrie Gaynor and others were, you know, witnesses to. When UCLA got involved, you know, Dr. Taff and Carrie Gaynor, like, they went and they reported this to Dr. Dalma Moss, who was in charge of the parapsychology department that supposedly didn't exist back then. And she had a very stern conversation with them. She said, you know, you guys have to make sure that this is legit. You guys have to make sure that, you know, she's not on any medication. She's not abusing drugs, that there's no hoaxing or anything involved because this really falls on the shoulders of like UCLA. And we don't want to stay in like this department that we're trying to hide. You know, that's the last thing we want to be associated with a hoax or anything like that. So she was very strict with them about like, you know, taking notes, recording everything, measurements and readings and everything. What year was this again? This was 1974. Thelma was 56 then. So she's their boss. She's also very senior to them just in terms of everything. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. She was aware of the case. In the early stages, she was not a part of it. Right. It was just Dr. Barry Taff and Carrie Gaynor that were doing all the investigative research, initial research first on site. And sure enough, like, you know, they started to see things. It's hard to see, you know, these three-dimensional like globs of light that would come up from the closet or from the walls and just like spin around and just disappear. The smells and everything. As they get more excited, you know, they start bringing more and more equipment. They're saying, okay, we have something here. They bring equipment. They try to capture these things on life. But for some reason, they're not capturing anything on video. And I'm sure you guys have heard this before. Like, you know, when you're out there, like ghost hunting, whatever, you take a camera and people claim to see this, but you can't record anything on tape or the tape, like the battery drains out or whatnot. And like, let me just say, I've never really done any ghost hunting or anything like that. Cause I, I don't, that's not what I do. But when I was living in Brooklyn, I used to take walks in this cemetery, the Jackie Robinson cemetery. So I would go on walks with my dog and whatnot. And, you know, I always carry my phone with me and I've never had this experience before with my cell phone. There was this part in that cemetery that had these grave sites and they had the Wiccan symbols and everything like that. It was a weird part of that cemetery, just a little section. And I was just reading the dates and whatnot, 1800, 18, whatever. And I look at my phone and all of a sudden the battery dies out. It drains from like a hundred percent to zero in an instant. I'm an IT guy. I've been around technology for a long time. I've never seen this happen before. I've never seen it happen before or since. And that was really, really scary because I tried to, like, I told one of my friends about it and he didn't believe me. We went back in there and sure enough, like the phone was fine. Right. Right. Right. So he was like, you know, he thought I was pulling his leg or whatnot. That's the Cypress Hill cemetery. That's huge. I remember driving by that being like, there's a, it's a big cemetery. Yeah. I had to go for runs there. It's very peaceful. It's very nice. Yeah. But once that happened, I was like, okay, there's something going on there. Right. So I said, you know what, let me just go somewhere else for a walk. Good advice. So when the, you know, Kerry Gaynor and Dr. Taft started to investigate, they ran to the same problems. Like their batteries were drained. They would record, they would all see these lights and try to record them, but they wouldn't capture anything on film. And so they reported back to UCLA and Dr. Thelma Moss was really intrigued by what they were saying, that she paid a visit to the house. When she arrived, her outlook into Doris's life or her living conditions was kind of the same. She thought there was something going on. She thought there was something. And it was then that the researchers, including Dr. Thelma Moss were kind of like theorizing, like maybe this is more of a psychological issue or, because living under those conditions, not having financial means, having four kids, right. To take care of with no help, no partner. They were theorizing that maybe she was manifesting these entities because she had three boys, three young boys who were like, you know, just causing whatever, like as teenagers, you know, would, you know, they were just wild kids. Right. Yeah. So that was their theory at first that maybe it was on her head and she was manifesting these, these, these things. Right. So initially that's like the angle they approached this. One thing I want to point out here or ask you about is that of course, coming from a more academic or scientific standpoint, they are looking at all the factors as they should about her. Well, as, as Barry Taft says in an article that's on your blog is that they were wondering what her medical history was and she was not very forthcoming about her past with them or what her current conditions were other than what they could observe in the home under what they called squalid conditions or, you know, again, she's a working mom and with four kids, it's not going to be spit and polished, sparkly all over. And it's a little rundown, but not what they would picture as, as I'm sure a healthy functioning, non-dysfunctional household would be. And they're wondering if she has any other kind of medical conditions. And so I think as Barry Taft was wondering is that, well, if we knew that we would know if she perhaps had a history of epileptic seizures and maybe that's what's causing the thrashing around. And the question to you is, I wondered if anybody had seen or had claimed to see her levitate, because of course you can fake thrashing around. You couldn't, even if it's psychosomatic, you can flail around or just be having seizures and attribute that to something else. But then you get to the aspect of physics and when you see people levitating or walking up walls, that's the, the dividing line. Had anybody seen her do anything that was non-ordinary physics related? There was no reports of levitation or anything like that. The only thing was that James did see her being attacked in the bed. And he is like, I told you guys, he thought it was a seizure. She was having a fit or something, but no, she, she was being tossed around. She, he could hear like, you know, the hits, the pummeling in it. Yeah. The handprints, handprints and all that. Bruises. Yeah. Right. Which you don't fake. As far as levitation and stuff like that, I, no, it wasn't reported. None of that. Okay. So to get back to your thread of conversation here, what we're talking about is an approach initially by the parapsychology team that perhaps this is a psychosomatic disorder or she's manifesting these attacks in her mind, but she believes them. And maybe the kids are even seeing some thrashing around, but this is due to her either past psychological problems and current ones and the living conditions and her, uh, the financial situation that she's in. And this is just a way of all these frustrations manifesting themselves in these kinds of behaviors and anecdotes. But then that attitude starts to change when they start to see more, let's say other types of evidence, because as a Barry Taft says, it's what you get from his initial observations was that there is something that is paranormal going on, but in that dividing line, maybe not supernatural with her, but definitely there is some psychokinesis going on some poltergeist activity, but it may not be the spirits that she's claiming. Is this kind of, am I getting that right? That this is their attitude starting to change on this? A hundred percent. Yeah. This is exactly what was going on, you know, and it is a good theory, right? That you would think like under duress or under this, like the human mind can do wonders. And like, like, you know, if you believe in remote viewing or psychokinesis, then it would make sense that, you know, under this, what was going on, maybe she could manifest this and like, you know. Right, right. Well, it's, again, it's a more logical approach to start off with. That was, what's funny is that we've seen this in the same with the, the Watsika wonder and, and psychologists at the turn of the century in the late 1800s, early 1900s, in that they weren't thinking it's an actual spirit. It's more likely that this is some kind of psychokinetic power. So they were willing to believe in PK and willing to believe in the powers of the mind that are unseen and these really remarkable demonstrations, but not going so far as attributing this to somebody from the spirit world, some entity. This is more like the person themselves doing this. And so that's interesting to me is that we're finding this again, a hundred years later that they are seeing this as a, well, she's causing this and it's an unseen force thrashing around, but it's not so much spirits that she's claiming. Because again, that's another level where of belief, another level of belief that maybe parapsychologists are more likely to believe that the human mind is very powerful and can create unseen forces that cause people to thrash around and break stuff and have things fly around the room, even causing light orbs. But spirits are another thing. That's another upper level of belief of woo woo that we can't get to. It does make sense, right? That to theorize this, but the problem that I have with like, you know, paranormal investigators or ghost hunters or whatnot, their approach to things, right? You can't just, I mean, at least from my perspective, you can't go into a place and you just take cold readings or just like, you know, try to get the readings for like electromagneticism or whatnot, because in the end you don't really know what that means. I mean, we all know that there's spikes, you know, that your battery drains and all the stuff, but what does that mean? Yeah. And the approach people should have to this is kind of like the William Roll approach. Yeah. We talked, yeah. Lots he go under too. He would go into these places and like live with the people for months. He was trying to, to get the human element of this, which is, I think it's key to understanding what is going on. And I think if with Doris, by the way, if they would have just focused a little bit on that aspect, they would have probably gotten better results or different results than what happened, as opposed to just trying to get readings of like, you know, their scientific instruments. And as their investigation progressed, because UCLA's investigation in this was about 10 weeks into this house. It wasn't that long, but in the house itself in product drive was only 10 weeks. And in that time, they were bringing in all this equipment. There were vans, cars, parts all over the street. Neighbors were asking what's going on. They were trying to keep it under wraps, but with all the, like the wires and cameras going in and out, you know, they were asking questions, the neighbors, what's going on. And, you know, there is those famous photographs that we've all seen, the people who have researched the case, like, you know, that are online about where it shows Doris by their, like, you know, cowering in the middle of a room and you see these walls of light, like, you know, arcing above her. Right. When that was happening in her small bedroom, there were about 15, 20 people. All students, researchers from the UCLA, they all had, like, devices, they had recorders, they had, you know, video cameras, infrared film, all this stuff going on. Everything was failing. They couldn't capture a lot of things, you know, but they all were witnesses to these things happening. Right. So now let me backtrack a little bit. Doris and them, they love music, you know. They love music. They like dancing. They like entertainment. And James was big on music. You know, back in the 70s, we had some good music. Oh, yes. And one of his favorite bands was Uriah Heap. Yes, Uriah Heap. Uriah Heap, right? Sorry, I butchered it. I never listened to their music, but that was one of his favorite bands. And he was playing the records all the time. Every time he would play this record, the plants around his record player would wither and die. They would dry up. Oh. Instantly. Really? Instantly. And at first, he thought just a fluke or whatever, but he tried it again and it happened. And he brought that to the attention of the researchers. He told them, this is what's happened. They're like, really? Let me see. Go get your record. So he goes, he puts on Uriah Heap on, and it starts playing. And in front of their eyes, sure enough, the plant just dries up. Wow. It dies. Okay. They couldn't believe it. So they're like, okay, grab another one. He pulls another album. I think it was like Coltrane or something. He puts it on, nothing happens. Right. Okay. So then they start talking amongst themselves. They're like, okay, maybe this is satanic because maybe they like satanic music or whatnot. But this is just rock and roll, right? Yeah. But there was that angle to that they were trying to approach. So when all the researchers would come sometimes and try to record things and nothing would happen, they would ask James to get a recorder, a stereo, and play a record because they wanted to see these reactions. And he would. And at times, they would get lights. It seemed like the forces or the entities were annoyed by this particular record for some reason. Can I just read something real quick about Uriah Heap? Yeah. Quoting from Wikipedia, the result of this newly found chemistry was the album Demons and Wizards. Which reached number 20 in the UK and number 23 in the US in June of 1972. While its title and Roger Dean's sleeve both suggested the band was romantically working medieval myth into their songs, and surely songs like Rainbow Demon and The Wizard, co-written by Mark Clark during his short stay, did have thematic links with Fantasy World. A more straightforward, hard-rocking approach was also apparent. Anyway, this is interesting. This could be the album. That album was still hot at that point. Yeah, I never knew that. I didn't know that. Demons and Wizards. And a song called Rainbow Demon. And the Wizards. And of course, with Uriah, there is the biblical connection. Yeah. Uriah the Hittite, he's a character from the Hebrew Bible, the books of Samuel. People can look that up. But basically, he was the husband of Bathsheba. King David lusts after his wife, sleeps with her. They end up having a baby to cover his crimes. He calls Uriah home from war, but he, being a disciplined soldier, he refuses. So then he orders Uriah's fellow soldiers to abandon him in the middle of battle, and he gets killed. So therefore, eliminating the problem for King David. He's also a character, and I did not know this, in Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. Primary antagonist during the second part of the novel. That's interesting. Well, it's just curious about, again, all these things with the spirit world. I mean, you try to have a secular approach, I suppose, as the academics are. And look, they're just coming in as researchers, and people from a university trying to make this a respectable field of research. And then you have something that is a religious aspect, perhaps. And of course, as we were talking about before, a lot of people have a gripe about this, is that modern-day paranormal investigators, I think Barry Taft as well would say this, is that people come in, and instantly the answer is demons. Instantly, it's like, oh, we got demons. I smell this, it's got demons. And look, I believe that there's a possibility for everything on the table. Let's find out what it is first, but I don't go one way or the other in assuming what they are, because you don't know. And you really don't know, even if you're getting messages and you're having unseen entities tell you who they are, giving you names, you still really don't know who you're dealing with. But here, yeah, so that's a curious thing anyway, about the music. If you're still in touch with James in any way, find out which album it was. It might not even be in this album. Yeah, I don't know. I will, though. I'll try to find out, because it's very interesting. I never really delved into that aspect of it. All I knew was whenever they would play that record, it would have adverse effects. Yeah. Right. Anything else was okay, I guess, according to the forces or the entities. So they hate Uriah Heep. But the point, though, is that now you're having an outside objective team come in, and they're seeing real-world effects. They're seeing real-world data and mysterious things happening in front of them. Right. And they're recording it. Right. Whenever they would play that record, they would get something. But also, whenever Doris would taunt these things in front of the researchers, they would get a reaction. Yeah. So they would always, like, coax her and tell her, hey, can you say this? Can you get the magistrate or whatever? In order to get this, because they wanted the evidence, of course, that that was their primary goal, I believe, you know? Right. And sure enough, like, you know... Almost to a fault. Yeah. And sure enough, they encouraged, like, bring out the Ouija board. Let's have a stand out. Let's see what's happening. And sure enough, she did it. She did it with Candace in front of all them. And that's how they were able to see one of the beings manifest itself in front of everybody. They didn't capture it on video because none of it was recorded. I mean, they had the recorders going, but... It didn't work. It didn't show anything. Is this the legendary, the large one that is always talked about that Dr. Taff himself saw? Correct. This is the one that everybody saw, including Dr. Taff. Can you describe the look of that particular being? It was a green, glowing mist that first started, like, wafting into the air. It circled around, and then it got to the middle of the room. It started to swirl, and out of that became the form. They started seeing the muscles. They started seeing the shoulders. They only saw the upper half of the body, the torso, with the head. But they all saw it was a very big male, bald-headed, huge barrel-chested. And it just, it said, here I am, right in front of them. And just like that, it was gone. And that got a lot of people, like, there were some people that fainted in the crowd. A lot of them just did not want to come back. How many people were on site for that? Oh, man. I don't have a total of, I would say, 15, 20? It sounds a little like a gin, in a way. A gin? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, you have the classic edge. I mean, it's a genie. You're picturing the bare-chested genie with the bald head and the ponytail. Yeah. Coming out of it. It's not Robin Williams made funny, either. Like, was it Will Smith? No. Will Smith, sorry. That's also getting back to the spirit of Becky, again, who gave a whole death story about this person who didn't exist. And so Becky apparently died in 1989, not ancient times, but she was wrong about that. And then she disappears. And then I believe they go to a place where a gin was. And again, you're getting some good information, like something that was hidden in an envelope. They can describe the object. So you're getting some psychic information. But there's a gin connection there as well. In this case, though, again, there's a lot of observers seeing something supernatural. And of course, the next question is, and we all know the answer before I ask it, where did all the data go? That's a billion-dollar question, right? Yeah. I have become friends with Dr. Taft for a number of years, you know, and I got a lot of information from him. I was able to go through the case file for Doris Byther. But that was the extent of the evidence, because everything else was kept under UCLA's basement or whatnot. When I tried to contact the people at UCLA, I received no answers. It was a statement pretty much saying like, you know, we never had a parapsychology department and whatever evidence we have, we don't keep that kind of thing. We never had it. But yeah. Right. And the evidence, and we didn't keep it. And we didn't keep the evidence of the thing that never existed. Right. Yeah. And when I talked to Dr. Barry Taft, he told me that for sure he knows that, you know, they're in some basement somewhere. Yeah. Because there were a lot of tapes, there were a lot of audio, a lot of video of the sessions. Whatever happened to that, I don't know. So folks that are hearing this that work at UCLA, why don't you go find those? Probably nobody guarding that right now. So just, you know, drop us a line. We want to get it digitized, just to, you know, preserve it. Please. Yeah. Seriously. I want to say this. The investigation in Braddock Drive was 10 weeks, you know, and that's what everybody knows. That's what the movie is based on. And that's what the book is based on. And that's what most of the information floating out there is based on. But a lot of the other stuff happened after Braddock Drive and when she left and when she cut ties with the researchers and everything that, you know, we learn of, of the other things that were happening to in this case. And that's stuff that nobody knows, but you and the family. That is correct. That's going to wrap up episode 293 of Astonishing Legends. A very warm thank you to our special guest, Javier Ortega of ghosteery.com. We'll be back next week with part two. Find and subscribe to the other shows from the Astonishing Legends Network, The Midnight Library, Scared All the Time, and Richard Haddam's Paranormal Bookshelf. We have links to all of them in our show notes. Our show is edited by Sarah Voorhees-Wendell at VW Sound and co-produced by Tess Feifel, who is also head of research and the social media manager. Our technical producer is Ed Vakola, or as we call him, the mechanic. Special thanks to our announcer, John Bolin. Hi, I'm Kat Meyer. Galaxy-wide, in perpetuity. Hi, I'm Lily Boe. Now here's my segue. When I'm not out driving around with my husband trying to find Resurrection Mary, I get permission to Astonishing Legends to use my voice. 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If you're new to Patreon, you can save money by signing up on the web through a browser or using an Android device rather than Apple's App Store, where Apple is now charging a 30% markup on sign-ups through iOS. No part of this show may be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions. Good night. Raise your hand if you want your nails to look perfect all the time. Me too. I'm Sarah Gibson Tuttle from Olive and June, and this is exactly why we created the Manny System. We wanted to make it possible for everyone everywhere to give themselves a beautiful manicure at home. With our tools and our long-lasting polish, each manicure with our Manny System comes out to just $2. That's right, $2. No more $30, $40, $50 Mannies that you get at a salon and they take hours. Now you can paint your nails on your time and love them more than ever. And by the way, when people ask, who did your nails? Where did you get them done? 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