Doris Bither, the woman raped by a ghost

Doris Bither was an American woman at the centre of a great mystery and one of the most documented paranormal cases in history: the woman raped by a ghost.

The story of Doris Bither

Doris is a woman of about 30 and her life is a mess. She is a single mother of 4 children by different men, she had a difficult childhood, she has suffered violence, she uses alcohol and drugs and has emotional problems. She and her children live in a house in Culver City, near Los Angeles, that has been condemned and is falling apart.

One day, in August 1974, she is in a bookshop when she hears two men talking about haunted houses. So she goes up to the strangers and tells them that her house is haunted too.

Doris did not know it yet, but those men were Kerry Gaynor and Barry Taff, two researchers from the parapsychology lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA, then run by psychologist Thelma Moss.

The two seem interested in her story, but after hearing about the woman’s life they begin to have serious doubts about her claims. They have her fill in a 16-page questionnaire, but Doris stays evasive and even refuses to give her age. “It was clear Doris was deeply unhappy,” Taff would later say. All the same, they decide to take a look at the house, which they visit on 22 August 1974.

Once inside they see that the house is foul-smelling, full of rubbish and dirty dishes. Doris does not seem to cooperate with the two researchers, and treats them with hostility, much to their surprise.

After all, she was the one who had told them about the hauntings. Without her cooperation the study cannot go on, and the two researchers leave.

A few days later, however, Dr. Taff gets a call from Doris asking for help again because things are getting worse.

The entities

Doris claims there are 4 entities in the house, responsible for the paranormal events.

One of them was seen fairly regularly and was harmless. It was the spirit of an old man often seen by the children. They were so used to seeing him that they called him “Mr. Who”.

During their visits the researchers say they noticed some of the phenomena Doris describes: objects falling off shelves by themselves, foul smells, cold spots in the house and a frying pan that, on the second visit, flew across the kitchen.

According to Doris, though, these are not ordinary poltergeists but truly evil forces that have begun to physically attack the family.

There are three evil entities and they physically assault the members of the Bither family, especially Doris, who suffers the most violent attacks.

While the children are pushed now and then, Doris claims that one day, while two of the entities held her down, the third raped her.

Gaynor and Dr. Taff find this hard to believe. According to some versions of the story, witnesses saw Doris being slapped and struck by something invisible and then pulled and held against the wall, and friends and children spoke of bruises and bite marks.

Examined by a doctor, Doris is also said to have shown the injuries typical of rape. It should be said, however, that the researchers never investigated the alleged assaults, which had taken place before they arrived, and Taff himself has said he does not believe they really happened.

Dr. Taff then puts together a team of investigators, about 25 people linked to the lab, including photographers, to document the case. The visits go on for ten weeks. When nothing happens for days, Doris begins shouting at the entities to provoke them.

Those present say they saw lights moving around the bedroom, expanding and contracting until they sometimes filled the whole room. According to some accounts, a green mist began to spread through the room and the torso of a man formed, without arms, legs or head.

Unfortunately the infrared film they had brought was accidentally overexposed and made useless. The only evidence left is a few photos taken with a Polaroid and a 35 mm Canon. The most famous shows Doris sitting on her bed, with an arc of light above her.

The explanations

Taff was convinced it was a genuine paranormal case. Of the roughly 4,800 cases he studied over his career, he said, almost all had “unusual but conventional” explanations, while Doris’s was unique. His theory was that she herself, without knowing it, was generating the phenomena, like a kind of living poltergeist.

Sceptics disagree. An analysis of the photos put the lights down to common photographic mistakes, such as a thin object close to the lens, the exposure dial turned by accident or problems during development, and none of the patches of light match the trail a moving light would leave. Four decades later, investigator Benjamin Radford concluded that the case is explained by a family in deep distress, poor investigation methods and the researchers’ tendency to see what they expected.

After the studies

The research ends without any conclusion, Doris receives no help for her addiction or her emotional problems, and she decides to move to Texas.

According to her son, she died of a lung problem. For years the date given was 1995, but more recent sources say 1999.

Writer Frank De Felitta based his book The Entity, published in 1978, on the story, and it became the 1982 film “The Entity” starring Barbara Hershey, on which Taff was a technical adviser. In 2026 a second film came out, What Happened to Doris?, with Heather Graham as Doris and Mimi Rogers.

Sources

• Wikipedia, Doris Bither case
• The Austin Chronicle, review of What Happened to Doris?
• Bloody Disgusting, First look at Heather Graham in What Happened to Doris?