All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 17, 2014 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
54:06
Edition 170 - "The World's Most Haunted House?"

This time - Magician William J Hall who has investigated one of America's best-knownpoltergeist cases...

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world.
On the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Thank you very much for your feedback on recent shows, including the last one, Grant Cameron.
Not everybody loved that show.
Many of you did.
But some of you had a variety of points to make about it, so I'm going to do some shout-outs and address some of your points about that show and others on a future edition.
But we've got a lot to talk about this time, so I'm not going to do it right now.
Thank you very much to Adam Cornwell, my webmaster at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool for his hard work ongoing on the show.
Adam, thanks for that.
If you want to get in touch with me, send me a guest suggestion, give me feedback about the way I'm doing these shows and the guests I have on them, then I'd only be too pleased to hear from you.
Go to the website wwwthnexplained.tv, www.theunexplained.tv.
Follow the link and you can send me a message.
And if you'd like to, you can leave me a donation for the show too to allow this work to continue.
Remember, we are the independent media.
We do the stuff that the mainstream guys simply can't do.
They have no idea.
But we are blazing a trail here and reaching people across the world.
And thank you very much for all of your support and the nice things you keep saying about this show.
And believe me, whatever you want to tell me about this show, I take it on board.
So thank you for your feedback.
Now, this time we have the story of what is claimed to be the world's most haunted house.
Now, when I trained to be a journalist, they taught us to avoid superlatives and avoid claiming anything is the biggest, the best, the longest, whatever.
Because there would always be somebody else coming along saying, uh-uh, in fact, mine is the longest pier in the world.
Or I've flown this distance faster than anybody else.
But in this particular case, maybe that definition is justified.
We're going to be talking about an investigation by a man called William J. Hall, Bill Hall, who's investigated one of the most frightening hauntings, possessions, poltergeists, whatever you want to call it, in United States history.
Very similar to a show that we did recently on The Unexplained about the Enfield poltergeist, I think about three years ago, where we met the lead researcher into that 1970s case, a man called Guy Lyon Playfair.
I went to his home.
This case in Bridgeport, Connecticut, is very similar, but potentially scarier.
So if you're easily concerned or easily upset, then maybe you ought to skip this edition.
If you like a story of this kind and you have a questing mind for the truth, then maybe you should listen.
At the moment, we're going to be talking to Bill Hall, William J. Hall, about what is supposedly the world's most haunted house and the book that he's written about that coming soon.
Like I say, thank you for your contacts.
WWW.theunexplained.tv is the one-stop shop if you want to get in touch with me or leave a donation, whatever.
Just want to say that I'm still shocked by the recent news of the death of actor Robin Williams, apparently, as far as we know as we record this by suicide.
What a terribly sad piece of news.
Good morning, Vietnam, a movie that inspired me.
But everything this man did seemed to turn to gold.
I first, like many of us, discovered him in Mork and Mindy, Nanu Nanu, and all the rest of it.
And for me, the movie that made the greatest impact was not one of his most famous movies, and it was a movie that you may well be aware of because you're listening to this show and you're interested in this kind of stuff.
The movie was called What Dreams May Come.
And to summarise the plot, and it's very moving, it's about a man who dies, and his partner, at the end of it all, simply can't take it and she commits suicide.
Well, it seems that suicides are, because of their own mental state at the time, confined or consigned in this movie to not a nice place.
So Robin's task, his character's task in the movie, is to go across from the place that he's in on the other side, which is a nice place, and try to rescue her.
And he goes through a lot of travails and tribulations to get to her, and eventually they're together.
And he finds her, and they remember each other, and they decide to reincarnate.
It's a beautiful movie, and thinking about it even now makes me quite emotional.
But the death of Robin Williams, well, another one of the great characters of my life gone.
Terribly sad news.
And I just wanted to, I know we don't normally talk about these things here, but I just wanted to remark on that here.
Very, very sad.
And millions of people reflecting on that today as I speak these words.
Okay, let's get now to William J. Hall, Bill Hall, in the eastern time zone of the United States and talk about the world's most haunted house.
Bill Hall, thank you very much for coming on The Unexplained.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
Whereabouts are you, Bill?
I know you're in the East Time Zone, Eastern Time Zone, five hours behind UK.
Whereabouts?
I'm in Plainville, Connecticut, which is a small little town next to the capital of Hartford.
Right.
Okay, so you're really, you're kind of within the orbit of New York where you are, aren't you?
New York's not that far away.
Not that far, no.
And I knew somebody from that area some years ago, and they grew up on the big New York media.
It reaches out as far as Hartford, doesn't it?
Yes.
Yes, it does.
Okay.
And what is your background?
What's made you an investigator of matters like this?
Well, I've been a magician since I was seven, although when I was seven, I was very poor at it, but that's when I started.
And I was always interested in these kinds of strange happenings.
I think that's part of the wonder of it.
I mean, a lot of people say, you know, or think that all magicians are skeptic and non-believers.
And I would say skeptic would be true, which I think is good to be skeptic, a healthy skeptic.
But, you know, we also are a group that, you know, is searching for wonder.
And if we can't find it for real, we try to make it happen for other people.
And what I would say about a magician is that if anybody knows how things can be faked and how sleight of hand or sleight of circumstance can be used, then a magician would know.
Yes, it's, you know, and in the paranormal, I believe to really investigate it.
You know, and again, you know, an experienced person investigating in there are some phenomena where, you know, a magician wouldn't be needed, but there's plenty where one would be.
Also, I would want a psychologist or psychiatrist there because I know Dr. Andrew Nichols wrote a great book on this thing.
And there's some cases that would have fooled me that were actually related to mental illness.
It's very easy for us to mistake things like that.
And then there's things where a lay person just wouldn't know.
Like a lay person wouldn't see when Uri Geller bends a key.
But for a magician, it's very obvious the moment where it's bent.
And it's not a matter of opinion.
It's a matter of knowing the skill.
Now, that's interesting.
I know Uri Geller quite well.
He's been on this show a number of times, and he's done those things.
And lay people were all very impressed.
But I've also seen people try to debunk him over the years by claiming that it's all sleight of hand and the spoon is swapped for one that is bendable just at the point where he bends it.
No, swapping is not, you don't need to swap a spoon to bend it.
And actually, there's plenty of magicians that are much better at bending spoons and keys than Geller.
Geller actually is not the most skilled as far as sleight of hand at all.
But what he has is believers.
You know, if somebody believes, then you don't have to do things with the same kind of eye on you as I would if I was doing a paid show.
People would be looking for how I do things.
And when you believe, you kind of relax your mind and you're not looking for that.
And you're not skilled to.
So, I mean, it's not an opinion to say he bent the key.
If you have a film that's uninterrupted, I can show you the very moment that it's been.
And once it's pointed out, then you would say, oh, yeah, he did bend it then.
But otherwise, you wouldn't know.
Well, that's a whole other debate for a whole other time.
I know that whenever I put Uri on this show, I get a lot of mail, and a lot of people like him around the world.
And I have to say, you know, I like him.
I've met him many, many times.
I find him very personable.
I think he's got some kind of mental energy going on that I've never been able to figure out.
The spoon bending, I've never been able to figure out either, but a lot of emailers make their suggestions.
But I don't want to talk about that now.
And I was leading you down that path by talking about magic.
All right, let's get into this case now that you've investigated here.
One of the people who've written, actually towards the back end of your book, says, one of the people who've researched all of this says, what I believe really happened here might reach to the core of reality.
I don't know who it was who said that.
It's in the book, and it's a quote about your work, and it struck me as being at the very core of all of this stuff we're about to talk about.
Yes, that's very, very true.
Yeah.
And that was Paulino, who was the 21-year-old seminary student at the time when this took place in 1974.
Okay, so he was a guy who, it seemed to me reading the book, he was very much in the thick of it until the professional investigators got involved.
You know, once they got involved, he wasn't quite so involved, but boy, stuff happened to and around him when he got involved.
We'll talk about that in just a while, but it does seem to me that he was one of the key people.
Yes, definitely.
Okay, now, here we have a case that we've probably heard before when we're talking about poltergeist.
We have a perfectly ordinary suburban family in a place in Connecticut who buy a home, they have a son, they move into that home, and life is punky-dory for a while, then their son dies.
And it seems to me that point is the point at which things seem to turn.
Have I read the book right?
Pretty much.
I would say the real point that it turned was shortly after adopting Marcia from Canada.
That's when the phenomena began.
There was no phenomena before that time.
But certainly the son dying was pivotal to the story because they had to do everything for that child.
And that overprotective, overbearing parenting was part of the stress and frustration that went on in the family after Marcia was adopted.
You know, part of her isolation and frustration.
Because the death of the young son was unexpected.
He took a turn for the worse.
He took ill, took a turn for the worse very quickly, and they lost him.
It clearly had a huge, as you would expect a huge impact on them.
Then they adopted a girl.
And as you say, that is when the path to all of these events began.
Yes.
Yes.
She was, it was said that she was abused and she was adopted from Canada.
She was a Five Nations Indian, full-blooded Seneca of the, I'm sorry, Iroquois tribe.
And she was adopted by them.
And they were basically raising her very similar to the way that they were raising the young boy, which is, I mean, they had to do everything for him.
He had cerebral palsy.
He couldn't talk or walk or anything.
And so now they get Marcia and they're, you know, they're scared something's going to happen to her and she can't go out by herself.
And so, you know, she doesn't have friends.
She's isolated, very shy, lonely.
And when she gets to school, she's given a very rough time.
We'd call it bullying over here today.
And by the looks of it, that's what it was.
Yes, yeah, definitely.
She was picked on every day for a year by, you know, boys and girls.
And after about a year, she got beat up by a boy and was out of school for about six weeks.
So here you have the overbearing parents, Especially the mother.
The mother was, you know, she was daddy's little girl, but the mother, of all things, was extra overbearing.
And of course, the one that usually was around, so naturally, she was, you know, they had the bigger feud, even if silent, you know, because she was very withdrawn.
But so you have six weeks of her being around the house after all the being picked on and being beat up.
And now you have the overbearing mother that she stuck with.
And that's when the phenomenon really took off.
Before there was little things.
It was, you know, the banging on the walls actually took place for a few years before it went public, which is actually an interesting thing to the story that really backs up the facts of it is that the police lieutenant backed up the family and said, oh, yeah, we've received, you know, the complaint from them, you know, November 71.
So, you know, about the bangings on the walls, the outside and inside of the walls.
The police were very heavily involved in this.
I mean, today, I think if you called the police about stuff like that over here, they probably wouldn't do anything about it.
But in those days, police attended, didn't they?
They went there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it was a police officer and a neighbor that called for backup.
So the off-duty police officer was their neighbor.
And, you know, they were screaming on the porch for him.
And he got in there and saw all this stuff happen, refrigerator floating and whatnot.
And he didn't know what to do.
So he called for backup.
And those guys didn't even know what they were going to see.
They were told that there was a disturbance there.
Go check it out and call us back in a landline so it's not public.
So these disturbances all started around about 1972.
You said back end of 1971.
It started with a pounding in the house.
I think there was some knocking on the front door, too.
But that's nothing to what it later became.
So the police attended at the beginning of this and tried to get to the bottom of it.
What happened?
Well, the police arrived and saw all sorts of things happen.
They saw a refrigerator flow.
They saw a TV that was in mid-air that started slow like a pendulum and got faster and faster.
This was not, we talk about a television set these days, and you think about a little flat screen thing that you can lift up with one hand.
This is like, you know, your kind of general electric 23-inch big wooden cabinet, massive television set, and this thing keeps lifting itself up, tilting itself over, smashing itself down, doing all sorts of stuff that something that heavy and that big shouldn't be able to do.
Right, right.
And as a magician, that's what really impressed me because reading the newspapers, it's tough to tell what people actually saw versus what they perceived.
But, you know, I interviewed Joe Tomek, who was one of the first responding officers, and he had told me that that TV was swinging like a pendulum or the hand of a clock very precisely.
It wasn't bobbing and weaving or anything like that.
I mean, this thing, it was like it was on this little U-shaped roller coaster kind of thing.
And what he did is walked up to it and walked around it and tried to see what the heck is this.
Yeah, the one thing that impressed me about him was this man.
And he wasn't, you know, the other, I think there was another officer who was a good deal more scared than him, but he was a man without fear, wasn't he?
Yeah.
And in fact, most of them were.
You know, there really was just the one off.
I mean, they all, to varying degrees, became frightened, but most of them, they didn't go in there and just, I mean, they were definitely excited, definitely amazed, but most of them went to the phenomena.
And that goes for lay people, too.
Most people didn't see things and run out of the house.
Most people saw something happen.
They went over to it because it was something they couldn't understand.
And they wanted to try to find, you know, why or how it happened.
So even Marcy's tutor that was supplied by the Bridgeport School District, I mean, you know, when things happened, she went over to them herself.
I mean, she was a little private investigator there.
She was in her 20s and she wasn't running out of the house.
She was trying to figure it out.
So, I mean, these weren't people who were all ready to believe and, you know, would believe in anything.
And, you know, these were hard-nosed, you know, police officers that were, you know, trying to get to the bottom of things and quickly had to realize that this stuff was real.
I mean, when the refrigerator floated, they didn't just, you know, say, oh, my God.
They tilted it.
They looked underneath.
They looked on top.
They went downstairs, looked at the ceiling.
You know, they really did a good job in trying to find an answer to something that didn't have one.
I mean, this is something that I've never heard of before, something the size of a refrigerator.
We talk about a refrigerator in the 1970s, and they were a little bigger and chunkier than perhaps they are today.
But nevertheless, you wouldn't even try and lift a small one today.
And yet this thing was floating in the air.
And fair play to the cops who went there, that they wanted to check it out and see if there was some kind of rational explanation to it.
Something else might be going on here, some kind of foul play going on.
You know, they really got stuck in, apart from one guy, and I think the quote was, I wrote it down somewhere, there's nothing going to get me back into that house, something like that.
Right, right.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, certainly, you know, a few of them were frightened, but I don't want to depict them as a frightened bunch because, you know, and I applaud the work that the police department and fire department did at the time.
It really was, of course, an unprecedented situation for them.
But yeah, I mean, they were sitting around the table, and it's funny because Joe tells me the story.
He says, you know, I was asking him, you know, what do you think?
Do you think this is a bunch of baloney or what?
And he said, you know, he said, meanwhile, you know, the guys are pointing and waving their hands hysterical.
And he looks behind him and hears the refrigerator come back down, you know.
You laugh, but if we were in that situation ourselves, I'm not sure how I'd react if I was there.
I think probably my rational sense would stay with me and I'd want to investigate it, but I'd be scared.
And this thing was very much a community thing involving police, priests, later reporters, right at the beginning, neighbors.
Like you said, it was a neighbor who was involved in the first reporting of this.
This was something that everybody seemed to get involved in.
Yes, soon the whole country.
But what started with the neighbor was a police officer and a friend, well, they called a friend.
The mother called a friend and that guy, his wife, called the police.
The neighbor, Mary Pascarella, called the Warrens.
And the police officer across the street came and he called for backup.
Police got there.
Of course, they couldn't figure out what was going on.
They called the fire department.
Fire department came.
I think there was a dozen firefighters and two chiefs.
And then they couldn't figure it out.
So they called Father Doyle, who was the chaplain for the fire department.
And the statement was, Father, I'm not drunk, but this is what's going on here.
And so then Father Doyle came and said, something's not right here.
And by this time, we've got to say that there were some really alarming things happening.
And it is a miracle, I think, literally, that nobody was hurt or killed in this, because at one stage, five knives withdrew themselves from the knife holder in the kitchen, threw themselves across the air.
You know, these things are serious.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's, you know, that's a big fear.
I mean, the TV console in the kitchen broke, you know, Laura's toe, the mother.
It just floated down and slammed on her toe, or toes and broke one of them.
And so, yeah, and Marcia, the most dangerous or two of the potentially real dangerous things was when she was sitting on the sofa and the sofa floated up and actually did a somersault.
If the house was bigger and there wasn't a piece of furniture to kind of stop it from fully doing it, I mean, she could have cracked her head open.
Some of the witnesses were saying, you know, they were scared she really was going to hit her head much, much harder than she did.
I think they were all very lucky.
I mean, here's a quote from the book.
All three reclining chairs were flopping, tipping to and fro.
I mean, this was just becoming literally like something from The Exorcist, which, of course, as a book and then a movie was out at that time.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's the first thing Joe Tomic thought was, oh, what are they trying to mimic the Exorcist?
And then when all the officers were seeing phenomena going on at the same time in all the rooms, you know, it got very real.
But, you know, and some of these things that happen, I mean, this isn't, you know, the family explaining it.
This is, you know, the chair flipping.
I mean, you get a room full of people.
She was actually talking to police officers when this happened.
And I really admire that Carly Ownzi and Joe Tomic, the two first responding officers, for having the guts to put that in a police report.
I mean, that's not easy to do.
You know, the captain didn't want to accept it.
And, you know, Joe said, well, that's what happened.
If you want me to write something else, tell me what you want me to write.
But this is what happened.
And he accepted it.
So, you know, those police reports are pretty cool.
And I'm glad I was able to get them.
And thanks to Joe, and boy, retired or not, you could tell he's a good police officer because, you know, at first he's like, who are you?
And then when we got to know each other a little bit better, he said, maybe I'll send you the police report.
Well, it must have been six or eight weeks.
And I didn't get it.
And I said, oh, I'm never going to get it.
And then I went to the mail and there it was, Jay Tomek.
And I said, oh, no, I was like a little kid.
And I opened it up and there's a police report.
And that's the one that now shows in the book.
He kept it.
So, which of course doesn't exist now because they don't keep him that long.
And Tomek, what does he, when he looks back on it all, what did he make of it?
How did he rationalize it to himself, if he could rationalize it to himself?
He tells me that he says he still holds a, you know, maybe it's a 5% or 3%, you know, that maybe it's not real, but he's pretty darn sure that it is.
He really, it's one of those things where he shakes his head.
And he told me that, you know, it's been 40 years and hardly a day goes by that it doesn't cross my mind.
And when I'm ever in Bridgeport, because he still has some family here, he says he has to go buy the house.
And he says, it's just something you, you know, you never forget.
It's, you know, and the part about him kind of testing the entities by asking them to move stuff to himself, that was a pivotal point for him where he knew that, you know, that there was no fakery going on.
Because, I mean, the Warrens were talking to the Goodens, and he thought that was a perfect thing to go in the bedroom, say to himself, go ahead and make some move if you're there and see this stuff happening in response to his request.
And that's something he hasn't told anybody until we talked.
You know, I mean, that's career breaking.
So he's not going to put that in a police report.
Well, definitely in that area.
I think in any area.
My dad was a copper and he saw stuff that is unexplainable.
He came home and told us about it, but I don't think he ever put it in a report.
So that's the climate.
It's part of being in the service.
Yeah, yeah.
And I do hear that some police officers have run across that phenomenon because the police are often called.
Now, over here, we have a case called the Enfield Poltergeist.
It is probably Europe's most famous poltergeist case.
It was investigated intensively by a man called Guy Lyon Playfair, who lives in London still.
I went to meet him and interview him a couple of years ago.
The family involved in this was a very similar family in some kind of ways.
They were not poor.
They were not rich.
You know, they were just ordinary people.
And this thing seemed to center around a girl in the family, and it was thought maybe that's an attractant for whatever it might be.
But the family really went through it.
What about this family?
How did they, you know, the goddamns, how did they get through it all?
Well, it was very difficult.
I mean, at the end of it, Laura had a nervous breakdown.
It was in the hospital, and Jerry had a lot of anxiety problems because he was losing friends.
And people either didn't believe him or were scared of him.
And it was very disconcerting.
I mean, it changed their life.
They couldn't live, their house being vandalized and whatnot.
And they really didn't want the publicity.
But with all the emergency vehicles there and the stories getting out, even without social media, I mean, it just spread around the world.
So it was very difficult on them.
And it must have been very difficult for them being so conservative to have Marcy being involved in any way.
Did they think she caused it?
I don't think they think she did.
But it did kind of center around her, even in the points where it attacked her.
And that must have been difficult for them to really deal with afterwards.
When you say it attacked her, talk to me about that.
Well, the chair was one part, the flipping the chair.
It also, there was, Paulino describes it as, you know, he felt there was four of them and they were acting almost like they were in a pack.
And one of them went to go around him.
He had Marcy in back of him because it was trying to get to her.
And that's when he felt it brush on him and he felt bone structure.
And that was a pivotal moment for him.
Totally, because the description in the book is it's bony like a bird.
Wasn't that?
Yeah.
Yeah, like thin bones.
Yeah.
And he, of course, had prescribed to the old school demonology that Ed and Lorraine believed to.
And this kind of blew him out of the water because it didn't fit any of that.
And he kept that to himself.
So tell me about him, Paul Eno.
He was a young seminarian, right?
And he was somebody who got himself involved in this before really the serious media retention began and the serious investigators started descending on that house.
Yes, yes.
Just to finish the other question, make sure I got it for us.
Yeah, the entity went around, picked up Marcy, and threw her against the wall.
So, and she bumped her head and luckily, again, didn't get hurt too bad or anything.
But in any event, Paul had written an article on the paranormal, and Ed and Lorraine had read it, and they contacted him.
So they ended up becoming friends.
And he was on his way to dinner to have dinner with the Warrens, and he was really looking forward to it because Lorraine was an amazing, amazing cook.
And so he was looking forward to a nice, quiet evening.
And this guy was a young trainee priest, right?
Yes, he was a 21-year-old seminarian.
And matter of fact, in the newspapers, he's referred to as Paul, the seminary student.
He didn't want his last name used because he was scared he was going to get in trouble, which he ultimately did.
But he did get kicked out of the seminary about three years later.
But so he ended up arriving and the Warren said, Lorraine said, are you in a spiritual state?
And he said, uh-oh, you know, I'm getting dragged into a case, he realized.
And they all went with, and they had met Father Charbonneau at their place, who they often work with on cases.
And they all went to Lindley Street, and that's how they got involved.
Ed wasn't going to get involved because they were in the middle of a case.
And Mary said, you don't understand.
There's police cars here, fire engines.
This is the real deal.
This is big.
And so he dropped everything and they went over.
And this was getting really, really frightening at one point.
There was a point where the cat appeared to talk, quote, like a sailor.
And then there was a time when, and I'm quoting here, the force was revealing itself to them, a smoky, yellowish, whitish mist.
And Jerry started chanting a Latin Mass, something that he couldn't, you know, if you'd asked him consciously to do that, although he was a good Catholic boy, he probably couldn't have done that.
But he started chanting word for word a Latin Mass.
I mean, these are terrifying and serious and impactful things, aren't they?
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, that was really, I mean, that really frightened his wife because, you know, to see your husband almost like in a trance or a different state being able to do that, you know, the last time that he was doing that was when he was an altar boy and, you know, he only did the responses.
And so it was, that was weird.
Although I'm told that that's not, you know, my research, that's not too uncommon of an experience for, you know, one of the one of the people to have in a case like that.
You know, so I don't have an explanation for what exactly it is.
You may, but, you know, that does happen.
But yeah, it's very frightening.
And, you know, the whole range of emotions, you know, unlike Hollywood, where it's, you know, everybody's afraid and they cry and that's it.
I mean, there's anxiety, there's depression, there's anger.
You know, there's one point where Jerry just really, really, and part of it was, you know, with that chant, you know, he wanted to find it and fight it.
Because, you know, there comes a point where, you know, you're dealing with this thing and you can't fight it.
And so there's anger involved, too.
It's not just, you know, being afraid.
I would say Laura, the wife, was the one that was more afraid most of the time.
Jerry was probably more anxious and angry.
You know, he wanted to protect his family and he couldn't do anything.
He didn't know what to do.
So there are two stages that follow on from this, it seems to me, reading the book.
One stage is the media starts to get involved and the waters really get muddy when you get the media involved.
And the next stage, or maybe these things happen together, somebody decided it's time we had some very serious academic style research done into this.
So, those things seem to happen more or less at the same time, right?
Well, one was after first came the media, and that expanded and blew it up.
And that's how Boyce Beatty, the lead investigator, heard about it.
He heard about it on the radio when he was brushing his teeth and said, wow, this sounds like, you know, classic poltergeist case.
And he called in for an expert on the subject.
He actually was calling in for Bill Roll at Duke University, and Bill was unavailable at the time.
He was in England.
So he sent two students from Duke, Jerry Solfin and Keith Harari.
And the three of them did the investigation.
And this was after it was deemed a hoax.
So, you know, they didn't get involved in this serious scientific approach until it was a done deal.
It was over.
Most of the crowd went home.
And that's when they called the police department.
And Jerry called and expected him to get, you know, we don't want any part of you go away, but he had to call anyhow.
And instead, Inspector Clark said, oh, thank God you called.
So he was really taken by it.
He said, thank God you called.
When could you come down here?
He said, well, I can come down tomorrow morning.
He says, yes, come down tomorrow morning and met with the inspector, one of the very same gentlemen that announced it as a hoax, and sat with him for two and a half hours going through all the evidence and stuff he had on his desk.
And he said to Jerry, he said, I'm sorry.
I did the best I can with what I had.
I mean, the superintendent put him on the case very late in the game, Inspector Clark, and said, you know, close this thing down.
You know, get rid of it.
This thing is getting out of control.
You know, there's thousands of people out there tying up police resources.
It's dangerous.
Somebody tried to set the house on fire.
You know, it's just really, really getting out of control.
I want you to take this and shut it down.
And he had to do that.
So when he saw the opportunity where those other police officers went in and saw Marcy hit the TV with her toes and make it spin on the carpet, when they had that report, that was the perfect out for him to close it.
And as Jerry said, you did an admirable job.
You had to do something.
You have to get rid of the crowd.
It's unfortunate.
And I often wonder what would happen if those officers did not see Marcy do that.
Would they have had to make it up as a hoax in order to get rid of the people or would it have expanded more?
And it would be tough to say how it would come out of it.
And even if there wasn't one instance where something could be shown to be initiated by Marcy, a human being, there was all that evidence beforehand, documented by the officers who'd been there before, that there was something very different going on here.
Right.
And of course, you know, from a newspaper or public point of view, it's very easy to explain it away because you don't have those level of details that show it can't be that.
And even Marcy in the police report, when they asked Marcy, you know, why did you do that?
She said she wanted to see if the demon would do something.
So, I mean, she even answered why she did it.
She was trying to, you know.
Provoke it.
Yeah, yeah.
So that was even in the police report.
But, you know, I don't, the guys who came in and said, you know, oh, it's a hoax and Marcy admitted to everything, you know, there was no conspiracy.
Those guys did believe that that's what happened.
They didn't see the earlier phenomena.
And to be quite frank, if I was them and I went in that house when they did and saw what they did, et cetera, I would have came to the same conclusion, you know, because they weren't there for the activity.
They figured the other police officers must have been, you know, predisposed because of all the hype and stuff and thought they saw things, but really just saw the end of the stuff happening and not the beginning.
But, you know, if you look at the evidence, that's not true at all.
Yeah, you'd have to dig deep to really understand that it couldn't be a hoax.
And, you know, when you say it's a hoax, nobody's going to question it.
It's when you say it's real that it's going to be questioned and looked deeper at.
So the newspaper, you know, the police, when they announced it as a hoax, didn't have to prove anything.
You know, they didn't have to go back and say, well, you know, all those guys, all those police officers, you know, the 16, 17 of them that, you know, reported all this stuff, yeah, they were all mistaken.
You know, they don't need to prove that.
They just say, oh, it was a hoax.
The little girl did it.
She had a lot of a spool.
And that's it.
You know, they ignore all the other, all the other evidence because it's not pertinent.
You don't question it when people say it's a hoax.
So it was very easy.
They didn't need a...
You don't need a big excuse.
It's a weather balloon.
You don't need a big excuse for that.
And in some ways, maybe the family, maybe Jerry and Laura, were quite relieved in a way because, as you hinted before, if it was dismissed as a hoax, and I think it was on the front page of a paper as being a hoax, if it's dismissed as a hoax, then you get all those reporters off your front lawn and the world's attention is diverted away from you.
Yes.
I mean, I think, and the police that were there were not going to believe them.
You know, they said, do you think it's real?
And they said, yes.
You know, they got Marcy to admit a few things and that was it.
And, you know, the things that Marcy did didn't fool anybody.
I mean, you know, when she went back in the chair herself when she was playing, you know, the witnesses said, oh, you know, she was playing around.
And, you know, what happened?
Well, you know, Laura would reprimand her.
She'd, come on, Marcy, stop messing around.
Don't fool around.
Stop messing around.
This has exact parallels.
It's amazing you talking like this because there are exact parallels with the Enfield Poltergeist case here in the UK.
Went exactly like this.
Yes, I'm very familiar with that case, and I applaud Guy.
Guy Lyon Playfair.
Yeah, for his, I didn't want to mispronounce his name, but yeah, for his research on them.
I have his book.
I highly recommend.
Very good case and documentation.
And, you know, the magician involved in that case.
And, you know, he's a wonderful man.
But again, he was blinded by his own conclusion before he entered.
And so it could work both ways.
You know, you could be blinded to believe or blinded to disbelieve.
And, you know, that's a problem in science today is you make up your mind and then you go out and try to slam the evidence one way or another to prove what you've already decided.
And a real scientist being open-minded is a wonderful thing.
So when Boyce Beatty and the investigators got involved, is that when the audio recording and the photographing started properly?
Yes.
Yes.
There was one audio made with the police officer, which was of the poltergeist bangings, because the officer said, let's record them and maybe that'll help the city discover what the noises are.
And that was done in 1972, I believe.
Yeah, 1972.
And that was given to Ed Warren and Ed gave it to Boyce and Boyce gave it to me.
And actually, when you get the book, you can actually access those sounds as a bonus feature.
So you can hear the actual sounds that the Goodens dealt with, an example of them.
But as far as all the witness interviews, those were all done in December, latter part of December into January.
There was a few done here in Spotty here and there after, but most of all of them were done from December 18th on, including many hours with the family.
And that was, you know, you really felt like you got to know them when you listened to that.
It was quite sad the story because they were really the model citizens of, you know, like the Enfield case, just people trying to get by and do their thing.
And it was just horrible, you know, what was done to them.
I mean, Jerry was just the nicest guy.
I mean, people came out of the woodwork to say how wonderful he was and, you know, the things that he did and just a real nice guy, you know, volunteering his time in the Boy Scouts.
He had no children.
And, you know, he was doing all of this stuff, you know, way before he ever had a family of his own.
And as an altar boy and wanted to be a priest.
And it just goes on and on.
He was just the nice guy, the guy who always went to help out.
And, you know, the mother was a little more reserved and probably, you know, a little neurotic and stuff.
But, you know, again, just your average, you know, family.
But the situation was right with Marcia.
And Bridgeport, by the way, I don't know about the Enfield case, but Bridgeport has a lot of sandy soils and high water tables.
And I believe there was an underground spring, too.
So, I mean, there was a lot of conditions in Bridgeport, Connecticut in general, that make it a pretty big center for this kind of activity.
But, yeah, it was quite unfortunate.
Now, if this was a movie, an exorcist would be brought in, and the exorcist would do battle with the entity, and that would be the end of it.
What happened in this case?
Like, that's good.
Yeah, they never were able to get an exorcism because, well, for a few reasons, they didn't think it would help.
And, of course, it didn't matter anyhow.
There's too much publicity on it.
So, I mean, who would want to really get involved in that?
But Marcy ended up getting back to private school because she was originally at St. Patrick's and went to Reed School after the father had a reduction in hours.
And they managed to get her back at St. Patrick's School with the help of Father Doyle and the school district.
And Marcy settled in back to school and things were at peace there in her situation.
And it went away.
And it was in 1975.
So, I mean, as many of these poltergeist situations go, most of them don't last very long.
Although sometimes if they're involving young people, they kind of focus around puberty, a time of great turmoil, of course.
And if you think it's some kind of entity, then the entity will target the person at that time of vulnerability and change.
Or if you look at it from the other way, it's the person involved in that kind of turmoil and change generating whatever the phenomena is.
Right, exactly.
Yeah, depending on what, you know, what your belief is or opinion.
So what conclusion did the investigators come to?
Oh, well, that it was definitely a real poltergeist case.
And yes, there was, you know, Marcy did do a few things, you know, ventriloquism with the cat, which most people didn't buy.
But, you know, there was audio phenomena, even though it was associated with the cat.
I mean, the reality is I don't believe a cat's banging on the door, but, you know, Jerry didn't know what it was.
The only thing in the basement was the cat.
So, you know, the cat gets blamed, just like the swans were said to talk.
I don't believe the swans talk, but they heard the guttural voice.
So what's nearby, it's a swan.
So, you know, that whole proximity effect comes into play.
But I'm sorry, what was I explaining?
You were talking about the conclusion to this thing.
What happened to Marcy?
Well, she got older.
Jerry and Laura and the house, what became of them?
Well, you know, they tried to sell the house and couldn't.
And it probably didn't have as much to do with what went on in the house as it was just a very tiny house.
I mean, it was only 738 square feet.
It's not the kind of house most people are going to want, especially at a price where they would be able to, you know, get out of it okay.
Very, very little house.
Amazing, the photographs in black and white in the book of the way they lived.
Literally, everything was jammed on top of everything else, wasn't it?
They had no space at all.
It kind of reminded me of the opening titles of, this is going back a few years, but All in the Family, Archie Bunker, and they showed the row of houses.
Yeah, yeah.
And this was a small version of Archie Bunker's house, it seemed to me.
Yeah, yeah, very, very tiny house.
You're right.
Matter of fact, Marcia's bedroom, it was originally a three-room, and Marcia's bedroom was just a closet that Jerry knocked down to fashion into a bedroom for her, which is very, very tiny, obviously.
But yeah, very, very small house.
But they got away from the house in the end.
You said they had trouble selling it?
They had trouble selling it, and they actually stayed in the house because the activity ended and they couldn't sell it.
They did want to get out of Bridgeport just because of the ridicule and all of that.
Well, that must have been difficult for them.
I guess every time they went down to Safeway or to whatever the supermarket chain was back then, somebody would have something to say, wouldn't they?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, they didn't go to church for quite a while because they were being harassed by reporters, by parishioners.
It was just everywhere they went.
And so that was very, very difficult.
And at work, they even had to move Jerry.
They had to move him to a different department.
He ended up working in security.
It was just everywhere they went, it, of course, followed him to the end.
They became a household name, and that's what they were known for.
And they remained silent after that.
They did one last radio interview in 1975 and then never spoke about it again.
And what became of them?
Well, Laura had died in a car crash in 1993, I believe it was the year.
And then Jerry died, you know, natural causes at the hospital in 97.
Marcia had said she was leaving to find her real parents, and she did ultimately end up back in Canada.
Unfortunately, haven't been able to contact her, did try to find her.
But, you know, it's very, very, matter of fact, the Enfield Poltergeist case is the only case I was able to find where the person when they were a teen actually spoke up as an adult.
It's the only, I don't know if you saw that interview.
It's the only one that I've ever been able to find.
There was follow-up at the end of it, because in a lot of these cases, the people involved in it, especially if they were young at the time and they've moved on, they just want to put it behind them.
Yeah, it's a no-win situation.
You know, people say, well, why don't you interview Marcy?
It's like, well, what's in it for her?
You know what I mean?
It's like, oh, yeah, I was the freak back.
And, you know, you don't want to, you know, you don't want people to judge you.
You're settled.
You have a life, you know, maybe a family.
You know, it's really a no-win situation for them.
And what conclusions do you come to, Bill, about this, having researched it, having written a book about it, having talked to so many people about it?
How do you look back on it?
I look back on it that, well, the way I view the world is now different.
I was never a complete non-believer, but I didn't know.
You know, I never experienced it myself.
A few little things, but nothing to say that I really knew what was going on.
And I could say, yes, the paranormal is real.
You know, I believe in some other things, but I didn't really know.
Now I do because the evidence is just overwhelming.
I can't prove it's a hoax at all.
It would be real stretching and ridiculous for me to even try.
So that's number one, definitely real change how I view the world.
And number two, I guess similar to Roswell, it does show that it really doesn't matter how many witnesses you have, how much evidence you have, people ultimately will not reach the conclusion based on evidence.
They'll reach it based on their beliefs.
And we saw that with Lindley Street.
We saw that with Roswell.
You know, until the evidence becomes such that it touches everybody personally at a level far beyond that it ever has to date, will people come to a different conclusion?
They won't investigate it.
Why would you investigate?
You're not going to investigate the Easter Bunny to prove the Easter Bunny exists.
If you know it doesn't exist, you're not going to investigate it.
So if you've already made up your mind.
So that's the other thing it's taught me is it really doesn't matter how many witnesses or how much evidence you have or did you get video?
You know, I mean, come on, there was video with some of the recent cases that's unbelievable.
The Warrens had unbelievable video that's actually still on YouTube.
You know, Enfield Poltergeist is another great case and example.
And, you know, in the end, people make up their mind.
They either believe or don't believe.
I think at the end of the day, Bill, you have to produce these things to your own standards.
If you feel you've put together a good narrative, a good case, if it's interesting and convincing to you, then that really is all that matters.
Because at the end of the day, like you say, people will always take their own view.
You know, you could walk an alien to their front door and say, you know, meet Mr. Alien, and they would still say this is a fake or a hoax.
So people will believe whatever they want to.
That's right.
And, you know, this book is meant to share with people who do believe, to document this extremely well-documented case.
And number two, to expose it to people who have an open mind.
Because I think if you have an open mind, this is a great book that will give you the proof and evidence that you always want it, that perhaps you couldn't get.
Well, it's very nicely, very crisply written.
I have to say, you know, you document it really well, and it must have taken a lot of hard work, Bill.
If people want to find out about you and the book, where do they go?
Do you have a website?
Yes, worldsmosthauntedhouse.com.
And from there, you can get some free items.
Just, you know, say you know Howard.
Or if you don't, you'll still get them.
Sorry, Howard.
And of course, you can get the book, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your favorite independent bookstore.
And they'll be everywhere.
Fingers crossed, August 2050, official release date, but it is out now online.
And if I phoned you up and I said I was calling from 21st, Century Fox of Warners or somebody, and I kind of like your book.
And would you like to sell it for a screenplay?
Would you be interested in doing that?
Yes, yes.
Okay.
Bill, listen, great to talk with you.
Are you involved in anything else?
Anything else you'd like to investigate, or is this your life's work now?
For now, it's my life's work.
But yeah, there is actually other cases coming to me.
One that's very interesting that involves a journal from the 1950s.
So, I mean, that could possibly be the second book.
So we'll see.
Stay tuned.
Keep me posted.
All right.
And have 21st Century call me because, you know, you got me all excited there.
And then I realized it was still Howard on the phone.
I'll get my people to call your people, okay?
Bill Hall, thanks very much for this.
Thank you.
William J. Hall, Bill Hall, and what is claimed to be the world's most haunted house.
Tell me what you think.
If you want to send me an email with your thoughts, maybe a guest suggestion for the future, anything, go to the website now, www.theunexplained.tv, and my website designed and maintained, created by Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
Thank you very much for keeping the faith with me.
More great shows in the pipeline here at The Unexplained, but until next we meet here, stay safe, stay calm, and stay in touch.
My name is Howard Hughes.
I'm in London.
This has been The Unexplained.
Take care.
▲
Export Selection