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This was sent in by a viewer. We cannot be sure that
every fact in this article is true, but it is pretty close. If you
haven't seen the movie, please do. It's one of our favorites.
The Carla Moran Story
“The Entity”
Dr.
Kerry Gaynor and Dr. Barry Taff were the first to be approached by Carla
Moran to investigate the paranormal phenomenon at her house, later to be
known by the movie "The Entity." In interviews done by Omni Magazine,
Fate - 1996, and also in the movie documentary Sightings - "Ghost's",
Dr. Gaynor explains in his own words how it all happened and came to be.
It was 1974 when Gaynor began to investigate the
Culver City, California, haunting. "At the time I had a colleague named
Barry Taff," said Gaynor. 'We were working under the auspices of Dr.
Thelma Moss, but Barry and I did most of the research on this case."
Gaynor notes that Moss was a prominent UCLA parapsychologist who is now
retired. Gaynor and Taff made an appointment with the woman from the
bookstore to discuss her case. Gaynor said the first time they visited
the woman they conducted a two-hour interview. But Gaynor knew that she
was holding something back. I kept pushing her," said Gaynor. "Finally
she said that a ghost had raped and beat her. 'We laughed when we left
her home, and I thought she was probably off her rocker. But she called
me back a few days later and said that several people visiting her had
seen an apparition, And this is what we're always looking for
independent verification of the phenomena.
"I'm a scientist and that's how I approach it. I don't take their
stories at face value. Their story is the beginning and I don't discount
it, but I'm there to experience the phenomena and document it." The
Entity case was to become one of the most famous in paranormal research
history. It was so well-documented, in fact, that a movie was made about
it. The 1983 film The Entity starred Barbara Hershey and was loosely
based on the Culver City haunting. Gaynor and Taff served as technical
advisors on the film. The second time Gaynor and Taff visited the Entity
house, things began to happen. Although they never saw the apparition,
they witnessed visual phenomena. "We were seeing little pops of light,"
said Gaynor. "They would happen quickly. We would try to shoot the
camera, but they were happening too quickly and we just couldn't catch
them. We were shooting with a Polaroid and with a 35mm camera."
I was standing in the kitchen talking to the woman's 16year-old son
when a lower cabinet door slammed open and a pan came flying out," said
Gaynor. It flew out and landed about three or four feet from the
cabinet. I immediately tore the cabinet apart to see if there were any
tricks, or if anyone was hiding in the cabinets. But there was nothing.
And that's when everything started. "The lady screamed, 'It's in the
bedroom. We ran in there and that's when all the lights started
happening. That's when we got the Polaroid shots. "The lady shouted,
'The ghost is in the comer'. We snapped the picture, but it was bleached
out and not very interesting. "She shouted again, 'It's in the corner.'
And again the photo was bleached. At this point, I thought the camera
wasn't working. So I took two control pictures. I asked her if the ghost
was gone. She said yes. The picture came out perfectly. A few seconds
later I took another one. Perfect picture. "But then we got the most
interesting Polaroid. The woman said, 'It is right in front of my face.'
Those were her exact words. So we took a shot. And in the photo you can
see the curtains and the buttons on her dress, but her whole face is
obliterated. We took a second picture when she once again said, 'It's
right in front of my face.' Amazingly, her face was obliterated again,
but you could see details in the rest of the picture.
"At this point I wanted another control picture. So I asked if the
ghost was gone. When she said it was gone, the picture I took was
perfect". "On the third night we decided to start with a séance in the
bedroom," said Gaynor. The walls of the bedroom, however, were covered
with chipped and uneven paint. Some of Gaynor's colleagues had commented
that the uneven paint created images in his photographs. So the
researchers covered the walls entirely with black poster board, so that
nobody could make that claim again. They also numbered the black paper
boards with a magnetic orientation and a number.
"Then the lights appeared," said Gaynor. 9 would call out, 'All
right, blink three times on board number two for yes. Blink twice on
board number five for no.' It would blink on the exact board that I
asked it to. At that point the level of excitement really increased,
because it seemed like we were communicating with something intelligent.
"But I was very concerned that somebody was faking it by projecting
light onto the wall. So I said to it, 'If you're really here, come off
the wall. 'I didn't think anything would happen. But then the light
pulled right out of the wall and floated into the middle of the room. It
started spinning and twisting and expanding in different directions
simultaneously. I had nine professional photographers shooting every
angle of that room. It was extraordinary because it was floating in the
middle of the room and the light was dimensional. It is very difficult
to fake something like that. If you project light, you have to project
it onto a flat surface. You can't project light into empty space unless
you have some kind of very sophisticated laser system."
Gaynor said this was not likely a sophisticated hoax because this
house had twice been condemned by the city, and the investigators had
sealed off the entire bedroom. Nobody could go in or out during the
photo session. "What we saw was not what ended up in the photograph,"
said Gaynor. "We were seeing balls of light, but the photo shows arcs of
light over the woman's head". Taff, Gaynor's colleague at the time and
now a Los Angeles parapsychologist and writer, confirms witnessing this
phenomena at the Entity house. Taff described the lights as three,
dimensional greenish-yellow, to-white balls of light. "We never saw arcs
of light. We saw balls of light," said Taff. "However, the camera
captured arcs.'; The team captured a spectacular 35mm photo showing
reverse arcs of light over the woman's head. This photo was published in
Popular Photography magazine. "Popular Photography has never published a
ghost photograph before or since," said Gaynor. "But they published this
one." This photograph was also broadcast on the television show
Sightings in 1992.
Gaynor said he was not able to rid the woman of the assaulting
ghost. "I'm not an exorcist," said Gaynor. I document the phenomena. I
research the phenomena, and I do a lot of counseling with these people."
The woman described the attacking entity as a solid male figure that she
did not recognize. So how did the woman know it was a ghost? "Because
after the ghost assaulted her," said Gaynor, "it faded away." "There
were actually three apparitions according to her account," Gaynor
stated. "Two would hold the woman down and the third would rape, her. It
was horrible. She would call me in the middle of the night screaming,
and I would go over there and she would be all beaten up. She had black
and blue marks all over her body." But Gaynor never witnessed the
attacks nor saw the apparitions in solid form. Gaynor said, however,
that he and several of his colleagues did witness the formation of a
full-figured apparition. 'We saw the head take shape and then the
shoulders. The light extended down to the ground until it became a full
humanoid figure of greenish-white light. Then it just vanished, almost
as if somebody pulled the plug. It didn't fade away. It just vanished.
Everybody was completely in awe and silent as we watched this happen."
Taff adds, "After the apparition disappeared, two young men
assisting our investigation passed out and had to be carried from the
room." "The question, of course is, Were the attacks done by a person,
or were they done by a ghost?" said Gaynor. "And there is no way to
distinguish between the two. The apparition didn't rape anyone else
except the woman. These attacks were very personal. "The attacks only
happened very late at night. One night the woman's 16-year-old son heard
his mother screaming. He ran into her bedroom and saw his mother being
thrown around on the bed. When the son reached over to help her,
something hit him on the head and threw him across the room. He broke
his arm." Gaynor noted an unusual coincidence. When the movie The Entity
was being filmed, the actor playing the role of the son broke the same
arm while filming this particular scene.
The woman was attacked about 15 times during the ten-week
investigation. "But she got stronger," said Gaynor. "And she was able to
realise that she wasn't crazy and that there really was something going
on. She got stronger, and in my opinion, she outlasted it." The woman
moved five times, but the attacking entity followed her. She eventually
moved further away. "As she moved," Gaynor said, "the phenomena
diminished, and after about two years the attacks stopped altogether,"
Gaynor said he cannot prove ghosts exist. But what is proof? "A
ghost in a jar," said Gaynor, "or at least that's what the scientific
community would want." Gaynor said he doesn't feel any need to convince
the world to believe in ghosts. I want the public to know about it, but
I don't have an agenda. I'm not interested in standing on a pulpit and
saying, 'You must believe in ghosts.' Something is going on that demands
our attention. I'm much more interested in figuring it out." |