Case Files Week: Revisiting the Entity Case

Some paranormal cases gather public attention following books and movies, but The Entity case as it has come to be known was studied by a team of researchers including parapsychologists, giving it even more credence.


Paranormal investigator, Barry Taff, did not realize what he was getting into when he began to investigate a most extraordinary case in Southern California in 1974.  

It was the oddest of circumstances that brought Taff and his associate, Kerry Gaynor, to the home under investigation. Gaynor was in a bookstore discussing the paranormal and a woman approached him, having overheard the conversation, and told him that she thought her home was haunted.

When they arrived, they noted the woman lived in squalor with her four children; three boys ages 16, 13 and 10 and a daughter who was 6. 

It seemed like a case of serious psychological issues, as she had been abused by parents and by several men in her life. The conditions in the home also showed a degree of depression and neglect. To the investigators' evaluation, it seemed the sons held some resentment toward their mother and family dynamics were abysmal. 

When they got to interviewing the mom, Doris, claimed she ran into ghosts in the home and had been raped by them. She was able to produce some bruises on her thighs and other witnesses who said they had seen apparitions in the home. It got even more convoluted and troubling when she described two little ones holding her down with the big one raping her. 

Ultimately, they decided to bring in people, equipment and cameras to do a real study in the bedroom and see what was up. They had no idea this would become one of the most noted cases of haunting ever.

They sat Doris down in the room with the researchers and cameras and asked her to call it forth. With some swearing and coercing on her part, lights started showing up in the room. Then, a green mist began to form in the corner. It began to swirl and grow. From the mist, the upper half of a man shape began to show itself. Reportedly, one of the investigators fainted upon seeing it.

The cameras were going at high speed and yet they did not capture this. They did capture a light arc and some orbs. 

The events continue on to include the son saying that when he played Black Sabbath and other dark-feeling rock songs, activity picked up. Taff was said to have observed this phenomena, as the lights and orbs picked up. Interestingly, if you look at this, it makes sense. A child of a woman who is prone to attracting activity, could also have such a gift. Playing angry music likely expressed his own repressed anger and made even more energy for the "entity" to feed upon. 

For about 2-1/2 months, the team witnessed poltergeist activities and strange lights and then it began to taper off. 

It was reported that Doris was an alcoholic and belligerent and there were many confrontations in the home. 

This could have been a case of what I like to call "scapeghost," where a family or family member does not wish to make change or take personal responsibility on emotional issues and then turns the blame to a ghost. What they do not realize is that they themselves, with repression and denial, escape and substance abuse, have helped to feed the activity

Barry Taff came to the determination over time that this was not a true spectral rape, but a poltergeist incident. This is interesting to me because I went to a lecture he gave where he discussed poltergeist activity being raised in the presence of seizure disorder and an active alcoholic might very well be another ideal conduit when it comes to the brain's chemical reactions or even the connection between brain activity and actions in the environment. 


Many decades later, interviews with the sons shed more light on the phenomena. There had been some psychokinetic type activity prior to moving into that particular home. It seemed that Doris herself was a "magnet" for physical manifestations from apparitions to object movement. It is highly likely that her children today, if they manifest the same denial, anger, and substance issues, would likely have their own problems with activity. 

Poltergeists are an interesting subject of study. They do not seem to occur without members in the household who have some unusual brain chemistry - whether it's emotional issues, trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, anger problems, or substance abuse. The interesting concept here is that, with the right chemistry and latent abilities, one can create movement of objects or perhaps they can attract spirit activity that can be energized by the very milieu of the activating person's brain.

I find the Entity Case very interesting because I witnessed poltergeist activity my whole life in different places, but at specific times. My sisters seemed to have activated much during their fighting years in their teens. I went on to witness it in my own homes over the years, depending on when I was holding in anger and not expressing it. I saw it as nonsensical movement of objects, a broom moving a few feet on its bristles, a cigarette cartwheeling through the air, cans falling from a shelf; and they all seemed at the time to have a feeling of "magnetism" to them. I felt as if somehow they were moving as if guided by magnets that were my very unexpressed frustrations. 

One time, as I reached for hairpins in an open jar on the counter, my fingers were 4 inches away, but one of the pins literally sucked up into my fingers like I was a magnet. It so shocked me, I had to sit down and catch my breath. I watched it just suck up out of the jar to my hand as if second nature. Another time, I was walking towards the oven, and about 3 feet away, my hand out, and the oven door opened. Both times, I was running late, frustrated, and had a lot of anger the past week with nowhere to put it.

This case of the "entity" is one worth studying. That there were professional witnesses and some physical proof, the right contents and events involved, it has a very legitimate worthiness. To some, the very condition of Doris's mind and emotions, substance abuse, and past trauma make the case completely negated, but with so many witnesses, it would seem that there was a perfect storm going on in this woman's life. 

Doris continued on at other residences to have issues and even thought she was pregnant by the entity, showing a degree of need to blame all the mess going on in her life on something else and her being the victim. This meant she didn't have to change any of her addiction or emotional issues. A classic case of what I like to call "scapeghost." 

Is it possible for a person to hang out a kind of psychic "victim shingle" and draw all kinds of bad events to them; this world and the next? 

There's a lot of things at work here - a body of life experiences that may have a cumulative traumatic mark on her very DNA. It is said in studies that an animal whose mother in childhood who was chased with a broom, will end up having the same phobia even though his experiences do not account for fear of broom. It is believed to be laid out in DNA changes that leave some kind of psychic memory. This may have been necessary for us adaptively to pass knowledge down even if the mother died in childbirth. In fact, if we look at the children of the 1950s, the baby boomers whose parents remembered the Depression Era, were excessively consumed with financial gain, excessive overeating, buying goods, homes, cars.... Today's children of divorce might create children whose DNA naturally feels separation anxiety. These are things to consider when figuring out who might be ideal for these "repetitious" lifetime themes. 

So, there could be something marked in Doris's DNA from her traumas, a kind of tag. If you add the change to her brain chemistry from traumatic events and her abuse of substances to not deal with those overwhelming events, and a past characteristic of not standing up to abuse, holding down anger or not even being aware she has a right to be mad, you have an ideal beacon for poltergeist activity. 

Poltergeist activity is different than a usual haunting in that it is a physical manifestation that appears to be attracted to or dependent upon a living human with the right set of characteristics. 

Have you ever walked into a person's home and just felt sadness? Can a person pollute an environment with their emotional content? Can many decades of families living in a home having arguments or having issues cause buildup? Did the Amityville house hold such overwhelming anger and angst? Did the house I grew up in, a Civil War hospital, retain its essence of emotional turmoil and pain? Did it take people with the abilities to psychically imprint trauma in those buildings to create an environment that might activate a sensitive person with the same abilities once they move in? 

There is a huge field of exploration ahead of us as to just what trauma does, not just to the brain, but to the electrical field of the human, the psychic milieu, the very buildings they occupy. 

There is much about the elements that go into hauntings that are vague. I have been working for six years on a haunted formula to understand the characteristics necessary for an ideal haunting vessel, but poltergeist activity, much like shadow people, are not dependent on a "haunted house" to come about; they can show up anywhere.

So, what is the trigger?

It seems to always go back to the living.  The house I grew up in, many people had issues living there and some swore they had none. It seems to take the right kind of living people to activate the haunting characteristics. When someone refers to himself as a "ghost magnet," he is not exaggerating. It would seem that some are better at interacting and interpreting what is going on and, in the case of Doris, might be a beacon for it to manifest like some kind of psychokinetic channeler.

This case, for me, continues to have some interesting characteristics that fascinate and confuse the legitimacy of the case, but with enough professionals on hand to witness, I find it very compelling and worth it as a case to show us some of the complex elements that go into the right "storm" for poltergeist activity. 

I'd personally like to thank Barry Taff for being so brave as to study a line of investigation most snub and especially back in the 1970s and for continuing to add to the body of knowledge in the field. 


1. This could have been a case of a poltergeist fueled by substance abuse, mental illness, or someone who had some psychic skills emerging.

2. This could be a case of a very troubled woman and entire family that had some big secrets to cover up and wished to blame their issues on a ghostly entity they could not control instead of the real issues - a "scapeghost" situation.

3. Some angry spirit had been drawn to a vulnerable woman who made herself open for such visitation. 

4. The very chemistry and connection between family members was ideal to manifest the unexplained.

Movie based on the case - 

The book by "The Entity" by Frank de Felitta (LINK)

A fascinating interview with her son GHOST THEORY


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