Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories
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DORIS BITHER: The 1974 Culver City Haunting That Became The Entity
In the cramped bedroom of her Culver City home, Doris Bither yelled at the spirits, and the investigators with her watched a green mist form into the upper body of a muscular man. Her eldest son watched something invisible throw his mother around the room, and when he tried to step in, it threw him across the room too. Dr. Barry Taff and Kerry Gaynor doubted Doris Bither's story of three invisible attackers until they saw the bruises across her body. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/DorisBither READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yrrtrmda FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The investigation on August 22, 1974, in Culver City California was to be like any other one Dr. Barry Taff had done. Believing that this would be an open and shut case they showed up at Doris Bither’s house. Not expecting much. Little did they know this would be one of the biggest cases in the annals of paranormal history. (“The Entity Haunting: The True Story of Doris Bither”) *** One of the most mysterious disappearances of the American twentieth century took place when a man named Bruce Nelson Campbell stumbled out of his Jacksonville motel room one night, dressed only in a pair of green pajamas, and was never seen again. (“The Man In The Green Pajamas”) *** A woman moves into a flat by herself and immediately begins to feel an uncomfortable presence around her. (“Tiny Apartment, Big Presence”) *** On a cold January morning, John Hoskins slaughtered three members of his family. (“A Day That Began with Death: The Hoskins Family Murders of 1919”) CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding 00:01:22.328 = Show Open 00:03:14.954 = A Day That Began With Death: The Hoskins Family Murders of 1919 00:10:16.101 = The Man In The Green Pajamas 00:18:31.258 = Tiny Apartment, Big Presence 00:25:00.264 = The Entity Haunting: The True Story of Doris Bither *** 00:39:09.693 = Show Close *** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break *No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast* SOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Man In The Green Pajamas” written by Troy Taylor & Lisa Taylor Horton: https://tinyurl.com/y4a68c3p “Tiny Apartment, Big Presence” written by KatsWhiskers: https://tinyurl.com/yxmb9d67 “A Day That Began with Death: The Hoskins Family Murders of 1919”, written by John Brassard Jr.: https://tinyurl.com/weq3ytl “The Entity Haunting: The True Story of Doris Bither” written by Xavier Ortega: https://tinyurl.com/y8fv25w(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.) WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. Originally aired: February 10, 2019 More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com. This episode of Weird Darkness runs from a 1919 family murder near Prescott, Iowa, to a man who walked out of a Jacksonville, Illinois, motel in his pajamas in 1959 and was never found, a haunted garage flat in Cape Town, South Africa, and the 1974 Culver City haunting that inspired the movie The Entity. It opens on January 15th, 1919, when 15-year-old Irene Hoskins stumbled to a neighbor's farm near Prescott with a gash in her head and said her father, John Hoskins, had clubbed her stepmother, Hulda, and her stepsiblings, Roy and Gladys, with a piece of wooden buggy axle. He survived cutting his own throat, pleaded guilty, and spent most of the next 44 years at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison, where he died in 1963. From there, it's April 1959 at the Sandman Motel in Jacksonville, Illinois, where Massachusetts investment counselor Bruce Nelson Campbell, sick and disoriented after the drive to see his newborn grandson, disappeared in the night wearing only green pajamas, leaving his wallet, shoes, eyeglasses, and car keys behind. Plane and helicopter searches, a dredged Mauvaisterre Creek, hundreds of MacMurray College volunteers, and the FBI never turned up a trace of him. Next, a woman writing as KatsWhiskers describes her small flat in Cape Town, a converted garage where a voice in her right ear said "GET OUT" at 3 a.m., red drips ran in straight lines down the walls two days in a row, and hammering came from a ceiling with no one living above it. The episode closes in Culver City, California, on August 22nd, 1974, when Dr. Barry Taff and Kerry Gaynor visited Doris Bither, a single mother who said three invisible beings attacked her. During a crowded session in her bedroom, investigators reported a green mist forming into the upper body of a muscular man, though their cameras caught only floating arcs of light, and the episode weighs whether Doris's troubled home and her drinking fed the activity, comparing the case to the Bell Witch haunting.
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