The Entity: What Really Happened to Doris Bither?

In 1974, Doris Bither was living with her four children in Culver City, California, when something terrifying began happening inside their home. Objects moved without anyone touching them, strange lights appeared, and transparent human-like figures were seen around the house. Doris’s children also saw them. Her son Brian remembered the figures appearing as they sat watching television, sometimes simply walking past them. He described them as looking like fog before becoming clearer, taking on the shape of a human figure. These figures were seen so frequently that the family began to ignore them, believing they were harmless.

Over time, the figures became something more threatening. The children were pushed, scratched, bitten and pulled by something they could not see. Brian remembered one of them being slapped by an invisible hand.

Doris seemed to be at the centre of the attacks. She was slapped and beaten, and as the intensity of the attacks increased, she was picked up and thrown around. The attacks left bruises on her body, but there was no visible attacker. Doris came to believe there were three entities responsible for the attacks. Two were smaller, while the third was much larger. During the most disturbing attacks, the two smaller entities would hold her down while the larger one sexually assaulted her.

Brian’s bedroom was next to his mother’s, and he remembered hearing things being thrown while Doris screamed. When she emerged from the bedroom, he saw bruising on her legs and inner thighs. On other occasions, he said the children actually saw their mother being attacked, watching her body react as though a man was hitting and throwing her around, even though nobody was there.

By the summer of 1974, the attacks had become so aggressive that Doris was looking for someone who might be able to explain what was happening. In August 1974, Doris met Barry Taff and Kerry Gaynor. Both were involved with a parapsychology laboratory run by Thelma Moss at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. After hearing Doris’s story, they interviewed her and agreed to visit the house.

Taff and Gaynor made their first visit on August 22, 1974, and returned several times over the following ten weeks. It did not take long before they began experiencing unusual activity themselves. During one early visit, a frying pan flew from a kitchen cupboard and across the room. Taff said they examined the cupboard afterwards but could find nothing that explained what they had seen.

More paranormal activity followed. Objects fell from shelves, strange smells appeared, and cold spots were noticed around the house. Taff and Gaynor also saw strange lights, particularly in Doris’s bedroom. As reports of the strange activity spread, more people became involved in the investigation. This included others connected with the laboratory, as well as friends and acquaintances of those involved.

The strangest and most active events happened during one of these gatherings. Taff described seeing greenish lights moving around Doris’s bedroom before growing and appearing to form the upper torso of a human figure. Around 25 people were present and, according to Taff, all witnessed the same thing.

The investigators tried to photograph the activity using Polaroid and 35mm cameras. Some photographs contained bright areas and lines, while the most famous images show a large curved band of light passing through the room close to Doris. Taff pointed out that the light showed no bends or angles as it crossed the corner of the room, which he believed showed that it was in the centre of the room rather than being projected onto the walls. An infrared camera was also used, but the film was accidentally overexposed and produced nothing useful. Despite the number of people present when the human-shaped figure appeared, no clear photograph of it was captured.

The investigation eventually concluded without an explanation. Doris later moved away, but Gaynor said the unusual activity continued around her. Taff suggested that Doris herself might somehow have been unconsciously causing the phenomena through what parapsychologists call recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis, or RSPK. This theory is sometimes used to explain poltergeist activity, suggesting that objects and other physical disturbances are being caused unconsciously by a living person, usually the person at the centre of the activity, rather than by a ghost or spirit.

Four years later, Frank De Felitta used Doris’s story as the inspiration for his novel The Entity. The book was adapted into the 1982 film starring Barbara Hershey, with Taff and Gaynor serving as technical advisers. A considerable amount of artistic licence was taken with the story, including the researchers recreating Doris’s house at the university and attempting to trap the entity using liquid helium, neither of which happened. The film also made the sexual assaults a much more central part of the story, and more visible than anything witnessed during the real investigation.

For many people, The Entity, either through the book or the film, was how they became aware of the Doris Bither case. However, the events actually witnessed and documented during the investigation were very different from the story that eventually became famous.

The investigation produced evidence of something very different from the story eventually depicted in The Entity. Taff and Gaynor witnessed objects apparently moving on their own, unusual lights and other poltergeist-like activity, but neither witnessed Doris being sexually assaulted by an entity. Those accounts came from Doris and her family. Taff remained convinced paranormal activity did occur around her, and later made clear that the investigation did not provide evidence of the sexual assaults that became such a central part of the book and film.

The paranormal activity that Taff and Gaynor did witness is harder to dismiss. Their accounts were being discussed during the 1970s, before the Hollywood film made the story famous, and there is no evidence that either man deliberately fabricated the case. The claim that around 25 people witnessed the human-like apparition would appear particularly strong, but there aren’t 25 independent accounts of what happened. Most detailed descriptions come from Taff and Gaynor, and not everyone present was a UCLA researcher; some were just friends and acquaintances of those involved in the investigation.

The UCLA connection itself is genuine and confirmed, but often exaggerated. Thelma Moss did operate a parapsychology laboratory within UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, but UCLA has since described it as unsanctioned and unfunded. This was not a formal UCLA Department of Parapsychology conducting an official university investigation.

The photographs also have possible conventional explanations. Sceptical investigator Kenny Biddle found that some anomalous photographs appear to have been taken using a flash, while others used as controls were not. He also demonstrated that a strand of hair close to the lens and illuminated by the flash can produce a curved shape remarkably similar to the famous arcs. Parts of the arcs appear in front of people in the photographs, suggesting that whatever created them was close to the camera rather than surrounding Doris.

There were other questions that can be asked about the investigation. The large number of people that sometimes attended made it difficult to control the environment. The infrared film was ruined, and the apparition was never successfully photographed. Brian Harris later supported parts of his mother’s story, but his account was recorded around 35 years after the events and contained some contradictions.

This still does not explain everything Taff and Gaynor said they witnessed. Explaining the photographs does not explain a frying pan flying across a kitchen or what a room full of people believed they were seeing when they reported strange lights. Taff’s RSPK theory could potentially explain some of the paranormal activity, particularly objects moving or being thrown around the house. It is harder to apply to the deliberate attacks and Doris’s description of three separate entities.

The real Doris Bither case was very different from the story eventually made famous by The Entity. The investigation produced eyewitness reports of objects moving, strange lights and human-like figures, while some of the physical evidence, particularly the photographs, has possible conventional explanations.

What remains are the experiences reported by Doris, her family, Taff, Gaynor and the other people who were present during the investigation. Some parts of the case can be questioned or possibly explained, while others remain unexplained more than 50 years later.