01x01 - The Poltergeist Girl

[bunniefuu]

♫♫

Boyer:
Today is the anniversary
of my daughter´s m*rder.

I´ve spent over half
my life locked up.

I´ve spent more time in prison

than I´ve spent out there
in the real world.

I don´t really think about
how much stuff

there is in my life
until I start telling people.

And the look that comes across
their face

is like, "Jesus Christ."

When I was
a 14-year-old kid,

things started
happening in my home.

The first thing was,

I woke up in the morning

and I thought my alarm clock
had gone haywire or something.

And so I just unplugged it.

♫♫

I went on and got dressed,

and I went downstairs
to watch cartoons.

♫♫

And the TV volume
kept blaring...

Woman: There was no interruption
of Vice President Bush´s...

...or changed the channels.

Cartoon character: Hey!

President Reagan:
...Uncle S--

...Uncle Sam...

My mom was
in the downstairs powder room,

and she kept yelling,

"Who´s messing
with the television?"

So we unplugged the television.

But he has a spine of steel.

But it just kept playing.

My dad is just like,
"What the hell happened?"

♫♫

And from there, it went crazy.

The lights turn on and off,
and there goes the glasses.

flying across the room.

♫♫

What was going through my head?

"Oh, sh*t.

Our house is possessed."

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫

Woman: Hello.
This is a free call from...

Boyer: Christina Boyer.

An incarcerated individual
at Pulaski State Prison.

To accept this free call,
press one.

To refuse this --
Banning: Christina.

Tomorrow is the opening.

So how do you feel
about all of this?
Boyer: Uh-huh.

♫♫

Banning: I´m Jan Banning.

I´m an artist.
A photographic artist.

From the beginning,
I´ve done my own projects.

They were always
sociopolitical items.

After a lot of effort, I managed
to get permission to photograph

in Pulaski State Prison,
the women´s prison in Georgia.

I took portraits without any
judgment based on the idea

that there is not
a fundamental difference

between them
and you or anyone else.

Then I came across the story
of Christina Boyer.

In the beginning,
it basically just fascinated me.

What drives a woman to k*ll
her 3-year-old daughter?

That´s strange.

Whether she was
indeed innocent or guilty,

I wanted to get into that head.

But if you want to understand
Christina,

you can´t just start
at the moment when Amber died.

You have to put it into
the context of her whole life.

When Christina was about
14 years old,

apparently what people describe
as paranormal events happened.

Stuff started to move.

But I am uncomfortable to talk
about the paranormal events.

In my world,
these things don´t happen.

Jeannie, for example,

is a person who can say
much more about that.

♫♫

I wonder what this is doing
in here.

♫♫

Oh, God.

You have to see it
to believe it.

She did every one of these.

Look at that. Tina did this.

I guess you had to be there.

I think that was
my famous comeback,

was,
"I guess you had to be there."

And I guess you did
have to be there.

I did experience things, and I
have experienced these things,

and I´ve seen things that are
unbelievable to anybody else.

I mean, defy physics.

So, yes, I am accused
of being a witch.

The only thing I have to say
about that is, if I was a witch,

I´m not a very good one

because Christina
would be out of jail.

Voilà.

So my take on the whole
paranormal thing with Christina

is, she was frightened about it.

She had no clue
what was going on.

Are poltergeist to blame?
Demonic possession?

Or was it all
an elaborate hoax?

The "Unsolved Mysteries" episode
about her

was a fairly good snapshot.

I didn´t know what to think.

We were studying in theology
about devils and all this.

And I thought, "That´s got to
be it. That´s got to be it,

or this house is haunted."

Resch: I turn it off.
The picture was still there,

and the sound was still there.

So I unplugged it,

and when I unplugged it,
the same thing.

Things were happening so fast,

you really didn´t have time
to think about it.

It just seemed like she had
no control over it.

But she was, in a way, doing it
with her mind.

Boyer: Joan and John, they
adopted me at the age of 2.

Lagle: Joan and John Resch
were freaked out about it,

and being religious,

that framework said,
"This is demonic."

And they began to believe that
she was possessed by a spirit.

The supernatural occurrences
around Tina,

it was not her doing it.

She would stammer.
She would stutter.

She --
You could see the fear.

It was obvious she was
flat-out terrified of it.

And in my book,
they´re classified as demons.

They got spooked because
it´s not a human doing it.

It´s a spirit.

So they called in a priest
to exorcise,

of course, this demonic presence
from her and from the house.

Boyer: Shows you how distraught
my parents were.

My mother had called in
the pastor from my church.

We were
in the formal living room.

Stuff would happen again,

and he was very unnerved
by that.

They had their hands on my head,

and they were doing
all kind of praying.

And while they were doing that,
things in the kitchen

were going haywire.

And basically they just felt

like whatever they were doing,
it was not enough.

And he said, "There are some
things we do not understand."

And there really wasn´t
anything else he could do.

Lagle: After the priest
was not successful

in stopping whatever
was happening,

Joan decided to call
The Columbus Dispatch.

A photojournalist
did come to their home

to try to document
the phenomenon.

This afghan lifted off
the floor, and zip,

and covered her head.

But the force did not want
its picture taken.

Very slowly
with my finger to the camera,

my eye continues
to go over.

Bingo.

Boyer:
That first picture, that was
the phone going across my lap.

I was real pleased about that
because I felt validated

because you can plainly see
my hands are not on the phone.

I did not see her aid
its motion

or help it in any way.
It moved from left

to right in front of her
on a level, even trajectory.

How do I explain it?
I don´t know.

Boyer: Now here was proof
that I didn´t do this.

This wasn´t my fault.

And that was just validation
for the whole world.

The home of Tina Resch and
her adopted family has become

for them a house of horror.

A 14-year-old Columbus girl
is tonight

being talked about
by people all over the country.

I don´t know what I think.
I don´t know.

♫♫

Everybody wanted to see
what was going on.

It was like
"Showtime at the Apollo."

Manguiat: I do remember it being
in the newspaper.

It was like, "Oh, my gosh,

I know somebody
that´s on the news."

So...

Several of us
went to Tina´s house.

We didn´t see any activity
while we were sitting there,

but we were getting up to leave,
and out from the side of my eye,

you could see either a spoon
or other type of silverware fly

and hit the wall.

It was like,
"Oh, wow, that just happened."

Boyer: Once
the paranormal stuff happened,

I was bullied in school.

Kids wanted to throw me down
the stairs and tell me to fly.

They hummed the tune
from "The Twilight Zone."

Naturally, because people really
like sensational things

that would
probably frighten anybody,

of course, there was the gaggle,

everybody else in the world

that was interested
in parapsychology.

♫♫

♫♫

Powers: We are near the home
of the Reschs.

The house felt like
it was absent of all joy.

It felt depressive, stilted,

in spite of the fact that
there was a 14-year-old there.

I got into the work
that I was doing in 1984

with Dr. William Roll.

Hauntings
and poltergeist incidents

do not necessarily occur in old,
dark, abandoned mansions.

They can occur any time,
any place.

When he got this call about
unusual activity, he asked me

if I would come with him
as his assistant.

Powers: Dr. Bill, William Roll,
came to the United States

after getting his PhD
at Oxford

and went to work
with the scientist

who invented parapsychology,
Dr. J.B. Rhine.

Dr. Rhine wanted to turn this
into a scientific endeavor.

He said, "We have to be able
to measure these things."

And Dr. Roll felt
exactly the same.

Dr. Roll had spent
his entire adult life

studying unusual cases
where objects seemed to move

on their own
without any human involvement.

And in the old days, that used
to be called a poltergeist.

♫♫

Woman: Steven, help us!

What´s happening?!

The movie "Poltergeist"
had come out

only a couple of years
prior to this happening.

Poltergeist was the German word
for a rowdy or noisy spirit.

They´re here!

In the mid-´80s...

there were horror movies galore.

No one knows
where it came from.

And I think people imagined,

"Oh, it´s got to be
very spooky."

For example, the idea
that there are witches, people

who possess otherworldly powers.

It is he who commands you!

Lagle: At the time,
there were always some movie out

with ghosts and possessions.

And what was the one
that her head turned around?

It spun around.

"The Exorcist."

...with the Father
and the Holy Spirit.

Movies like "Carrie," where
the school catches on fire.

Tina had had some
spontaneous combustion events

around her, too.

Powers: There was no real
knowledge about this.

People around the world wanted
to explain to the Reschs

what was wrong,

that they needed to put dimes
on the frame around a door

to scare away demons.

One woman called and explained
to me very, very calmly

that she is certain
she saw a UFO over their house.

But Bill believed that there´s
nothing supernatural about this.

It´s a rare,
rare human experience

because of uncontrolled

electrical discharges
in the brain.

And because it is so rare,
it´s difficult to have

a researcher
investigate it because,

you know, who are you
going to...

I almost said,
"Who you gonna call?"

Probably shouldn´t do that.

Boyer:
What you doing there, Bill?

I am putting in tape

into my tape recorder.

Because paranormal phenomena
is not predictable,

Bill had to move into their home
and park himself there

and wait
for something to happen.

♫♫

Oh, sh*t!

And it´s...

♫♫

Boyer: Bill came in,
and any time something moved,

he wanted to measure it, where
it started from, where it ended.

I felt like I was more of
a freak than anything,

but he put
a different spin on it.

It wasn´t so much
in a negative way.

He tried to change the way

that I viewed it,
as something special.

Have I seen objects go from
zero movement to move?

No.

Have I watched things
suddenly show up in places

that I know they were not?

Yes.

So my answer to a skeptic
is, join the club.

I don´t know
what´s going on either.

I just was trying
to pay attention

to a 14-year-old girl...

Yeah. Watch this.

Man: Whoa. A ghost.

Ooh-ahh.

...who was awkward, bubbly...

...incredibly clumsy,

who wore
her heart on her sleeve.

Yeah!

When I would look into her eyes,
I would see somebody

who wanted a really
deep connection to somebody.

And I think she filtered
much of her perception

of the world around,
"Will they like me?"

Looking for another person
to attach her umbilical cord to.

Boyer: I have always wanted to
know who my birth family was.

And I´ve dreamt about it
my whole life.

Christina was left
by her biological mom

when she was 10 months old,
and as we later found out,

her mother
was a heroin prost*tute,

and Christina´s father
was her mother´s pimp.

All information according to
Christina´s biological sister.

♫♫

So this is the box

sent from Christina to me

with her keepsakes
and personal belongings in it.

Okay.

See what we have.

I actually have a photograph
of me as a teenager

sitting exactly like this.

I look identical to Christina
in this picture.

Look like identical twins.

I´ve been looking for Christina
since I was younger.

At the age of 7 or 8,
me and my other two siblings

just started questioning
family members.

We knew better
than to ask my mom about her,

because every time we did,
we´d get beat.

The story is,
Christina got very sick.

My mom took her to the hospital.

The nurse checked Christina out
and then walked out of the room.

And my mom just left Christina
sitting on a bed

and walked away from her
and never went back.

She had absolutely no contact

with any of us from her
biological family at all.

Boyer: When I found out I had a
sister, I started crying

because I´ve waited
my whole life to meet my family.

I wanted to know
everything about her,

everything I could
possibly know.

She started telling me stuff
that had happened with my mother

and all the things
that my mother did.

And I was floored.

Us children were raised Wiccan.

Everybody´s got their own
opinion on the Wiccan religion,

and some practice
the white light,

and some practice the dark side.

My great-grandmother and my mom
had the ability

to make things move
without touching them.

My grandmother could make
a coffee mug

move across the table,

and I thought
she was a magician.

When my mom would get angry,
the TV would turn on by itself

or pictures fly off the wall,
and that always scared me.

Boyer:
It was kind of freeing to know

that this was something
that ran in my family,

to know that I´m not a freak.

This was our mother,
Barbara Jean Davis.

My granddaughter is scared
of this picture

because this picture
has a tendency

to fall off the wall
when it wants.

I will leave and come home,
or I will wake up,

and the picture will actually
be turned sideways,

like, in a totally
different direction.

I can´t explain it.

♫♫

Boyer:
Some of the situations
that I had found myself in.

John was a disciplinarian.
I´d run around the table,

and he would pick up
a damn broomstick

and knock the hell
out of me with it.

He would want me to sit on
a chair and not move for hours

so that he could keep
an eye on me.

I was being locked
in my room at night,

and he was knocking the hell
out of me for something.

And my mom was like, "Stop.
You´re gonna k*ll her, John."

His discipline
was with his fist.

It was their way or no way.

I was prepared for prison long
before I ever came to prison.

Tina did tell me
that her adoptive brother

had molested her,

and that when she told
her adoptive parents,

that they slapped her
and didn´t believe her.

Boyer:
My brother started molesting me
when I was 12 years old,

and that continued
for a couple of years.

I told my mother
that he was laying me on his bed

and that he was touching me.

My mother just slapped me

and told me
that I was making up lies,

and why did I always have to be
the center of attention?

He went on to become
a sex offender

and go to prison for sex crimes.

He eventually committed suicide.

I started to buy into the theory
that because so much stuff

had happened
and I suppressed so much,

that this is
the way it was coming out --

in a very destructive manner.

Powers:
This phenomena looks like it
requires both physiological,

emotional,
and relational things

to be going on
to create this -- this force.

The Reschs had had it
with all of this.

They were angry, frustrated.

They saw it as intrusive
and awful,

and they wanted it to stop.

Boyer:
After the paranormal stuff
started happening,

Joan and John,
they treated me differently.

The tension in the home
was a lot worse.

You could tell that
they actually were afraid of me.

My experience of her was that
she was immature for 14.

Her hunger for somebody
to sit with her

and listen to her
was everything to her.

Boyer: ...and...

I´m reminded of the quote
"The only thing worse

than being talked about

is not being talked about."

A painting approximately 4 feet

from where we were standing
fell to the ground.

Woman: Roll says
Tina can move objects by way

of normal brain functions,
mind and reflexes over matter.

Authorities were the ones
who told everybody else,

"Here´s what you have
to think about this."

So the two options
always available in 1984 --

This is a strange
supernatural experience,

or this is fake.

There appeared not magically,
but in the flesh,

a professional magician
named James Randi.

Would you welcome, please,
The Amazing Randi?

His purpose in life,
besides being a magician,

was to go around
and debunk paranormal activity.

Man: Uri Geller is perhaps one
of your most famous victims.

He had a trick where he would --
He would bend spoons.

The old spoon trick.

I´m just gonna hold it
in front of you like this.

Watch what happens now.
It...

-Well, son of a g*n.
-Okay. How did you do that?

A miracle of
a semireligious nature.

Wouldn´t you say?
How did you do --
No, I would not.

How did you do that?

Boyer: Bill Roll had been
well known around the world.

Well, Randi tried to prove
that anything that Bill Roll

was saying
was basically bullshit.

We have come to Columbus
without any preconceived ideas

about what we may
or may not find.

Power:
You just haven´t lived

until you´ve peeked
through the curtains.

There´s a man in a cape
standing outside. Why?

He had a fake check with him

that he offered
to give to the Reschs

if he couldn´t prove
that this was chicanery.

They´re going through
this incredible crisis,

and there´s this clown out front
saying, "You know,

I´ll bet they´ll let me in

if I wave a little cash
in front of them."

And that was it for Joan Resch.
That was it.

So they had a press conference.

They thought if they could
describe the events,

these people would nod
their head and go,

"Oh, okay."
And that would be it.

Boyer: My mother was motivated
to prove Randi wrong

because he was essentially
calling them liars

and attacking their character.

Something new,
And they don´t understand.

And since they don´t believe it,
they think it´s a hoax.

Woman:
What do you think it is?

I know it´s not a hoax.
I don´t --

But I don´t know
exactly what it is.

But I know it´s not a hoax.

I can be in a room with 50,000
people, and it will happen.

So it´s not a hoax.

Powers:
But what ended up happening was,

this one-hour-long conference

turned into nine hours...

...but nothing happened.

Lagle:
They´d been sitting there,
sitting there, for hours

waiting for something to happen.

And Tina just felt badly
about sitting there

for all those hours
and nothing happening.

♫♫

Powers: And they had put
their video cameras down,

and they had set down
the microphones,

and they were just there.

And all of a sudden,
a lamp falls over.

Oh, no!

What Christina Resch did not
know was, the cameras

were still recording,
and they very clearly caught her

grabbing the lamp
and knocking it over.

My mom said, "All right,
something´s got to happen,"

because she was getting
tired of this.

And she´s not the type
of person to be pushy

and tell them to leave.

So I sat on a chair
and knocked the lamp over.

My mom took me to another room.

And she said, "We´ve got to do
something." I said, "Okay."

That´s when the story
began to unravel.

Boyer: I just gave them
what they wanted,

but that ended up very badly

because then they were like,
"Oh, my God. She´s a fraud.

We caught it on camera."

Based upon the evidence
that we have,

the only solid evidence
we have is of fraud,

of her pulling over
the lampshade.

That´s the only
solid thing we have.

Boyer: Now, what you caught on
camera was a 14-year-old kid

sick and tired
of being made to perform

and having no idea
how to make whatever it is

that you want to see happen,

because I really don´t
understand what´s going on.

Bill, his attitude about
knocking over the lamp

is, if he had observed so much
that could not be explained,

that that was irrelevant to him.

♫♫

Lagle: Bill was convinced
that it was genuine.

His objective was to have
this big feather in his cap.

He had already formulated
the idea

that he was going to invite
Christina to North Carolina.

She was over the moon.

She gets to leave the house.

Lagle:
Bill designed some experiments
in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

At the time, I was learning
to be a hypnotherapist.

What´s the deal with me?
Let me tell you a story.

I was very excited
about meeting Christina

and the opportunity
to apply my theory of hypnosis

to actually be a catalyst

for reactivating the effects.

Boyer: One of the things that
Jeannie would do

was hypnotize me back
to very traumatic events

that were going on
in the Resch home

for me to basically relive those
moments and have those emotions

come back to try to
trigger things to happen.

I was also assigned the role

of being her 24-7 companion.

Boyer: Bill wanted somebody
that would be with me

so that if anything happened,

there was a third party
that could document it somehow.

So we slept together.

We went to the bathroom,

and we would hook
our feet together

so I would know
she was right there or...

hold hands
under the stalls.

Boyer: There were
a multitude of experiments

that Bill had set up.

They wanted to see

exactly what the extent
of these abilities were.

Some of the more
memorable experiments --

There was a cell
from a sea slug.

The idea was to somehow focus
energy and make it speed up,

make it slow down.

Bill would be real focused
on wanting results.

And so they really put me
through the paces

to see, "Just exactly
what could she do?"

What I saw was,
this is a young girl

who needed psychological help.

Dr. Roll was trying

to egg her
into producing this phenomena,

the very same phenomena that was
causing her relationships

with her family members
to deteriorate.

I was very uncomfortable
with this idea.

So I said,
"No, I´m not doing this."

And that was --
That was when I left.

♫♫

Boyer: Bill rescued me
from the Reschs.

He got me out of
an extremely bad situation,

and I wanted to produce
results for Bill.

I wanted to make him happy.

But her paranormal phenomenon,
it had stopped.

He did not want it to end.

So the only way for it
to continue was for him

to figure out a way
to get it to continue.

♫♫

Curcio:
And that´s how I met Tina.

She came to our school.

She´s not a girl
that you could forget.

She had a vivacious energy,
a very charismatic energy,

very dramatic energy.

There were often
so many negative experiences

in her life.

I really feel that that´s what
caused that psychokinesis,

that -- Or she hadn´t
learned how to harness it.

Boyer: And so they figured
I could meditate

and learn that
there´s energy all around us

and really learn
how to harness your energy.

This is gonna sound
really weird --

and I usually don´t talk
to people about this --

but they would bring people
in, perfect strangers, for me

to try to tell this person
as much as I could about them.

Or...

I felt like I was
disappointing them,

and I could feel their energy
and that they were disappointed.

Bill was more like a savior
to me.

Because of the way
Bill treated me

and the way that I saw him...

Whew!

...I wanted what he wanted.

I was willing to do any test

that you wanted in order
to make you happy.

Getting away from the Resch
home, I ended up thriving.

But when they sent me
back to my parents,

I really felt abandoned.

I felt like I had done
everything they wanted,

and Bill went on
with his own investigations.

And then they just sent me
back into the hellhole.

♫♫

The Resch family didn´t want her
to be around anymore

and wanted basically
to get rid of her.

Boyer: All of the family was
there, but nobody spoke to me.

It was like I was a ghost.

Joan and John had decided

that they wanted to put me
back up for adoption.

And the only option apparently
was some kind of

juvenile detention center.

She hadn´t done anything wrong.
It´s kind of weird

to put a 16-year-old teenager
in such a place.

It´s basically like jail
for teenagers.

So she just ran away.

Boyer:
At 16, I ended up marrying a man

that was severely a*usive,

not only emotionally
and physically,

but sexually, as well.

I ended up leaving him,

and I would run
for the next several years,

trying to get away from him.

I was extremely suicidal
at that point.

If I had not found out
I was pregnant,

I´d probably be dead right now.

Having Amber literally
saved my life.

When I had Amber,
I had a family.

She was my family,
and she was related to me.

And she loved me,
and I loved her.

I was like, "I´m not giving
her up for adoption.

I´m not gonna have her
growing up

wondering why I didn´t love
her enough to keep her.

She´s gonna at least grow up
knowing that I love her."

Amber was a gift.
She loved her dearly.

Boyer: Amber was already
gonna have it rough

because people thought
her mother was a witch

and I was a single parent.
So, you know,

the odds were stacked
against us from the beginning.

I figured if she was with me,
I may be poor

and she may not have everything,
but she would have me.

Lagle: But when you have
an a*usive husband

and trying to care for a child,
it´s just really --

It´s almost
like an impossible task.

Boyer:
Unfortunately, things started
happening in my home again.

Glasses shattering,
clocks going crazy on the wall.

I knew then that we´re about
to have some issues.

Some psychokinetic things
had started happening

that were even more destructive

than anything
that I had seen before.

The thought did occur to me

that Amber has inherited
Christina´s energy,

and she believed that, too.

Boyer: Other people in my family
also have had paranormal things.

Did Amber inherit this
from me somehow?

It gave me a feeling of dread

because I did
not want my daughter

to grow up and suffer through
the same things that I did.

I had laid her down for a nap.

The smoke alarm went off.

I´m petrified of fire.

And I ran down the hallway
to her room

and the smoke was coming
from her room.

We got a frantic call
from Tina.

All she got out was,
"It´s happening.

It´s happening again."

She would put her life

on the line many times
for that child.

There´s no way
she would have k*lled her.

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