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Lindley Street Haunting
In November of 1974, Ed and Lorraine Warren were contacted
by the Goodin family to investigate the strange activities going on inside their Bridgeport home. Tales of moving and
floating furniture, desecration of religious objects, and a demonically possessed talking cat were described in great detail
by the homeowners. Before the end of the year, hundreds of curious onlookers and reporters from all over the globe descended
on this small four-room house to witness the bizarre haunting. At the center of all these supernatural goings-on was
a ten-year-old girl named Marcia, who could supposedly foretell when this strange activity was about to take place.
The History
According to our research, Gerard and Laura Goodin moved into the small
home around 1960. Gerard Goodin was a factory worker at Harvey Hubbell and he and his wife adopted Marcia following
the death of their only son. They were described as over-protective parents who rarely allowed her to leave the house
alone.
Marcia has been described as a troubled child who had problems with
social interaction in school. According to:
"She was also described as a deceitful youngster with an unhealthy
interest in the occult . . ."
Marcia had a pet orange and white cat named Sam who, in the fall of
1974, was recovering from a medical procedure when we began "acting strangely, as if he were trying to talk." Marcia's
father actually claimed that the cat would "kick at the basement door, yelling, "Let me out, you dirty Frenchman, you dirty
Greek!"
These activities were gradual in their acceleration, having begun approximately
two years after Marcia was adopted in the late sixties and became more fierce by December of 1973. A full year later,
the Goodins contacted the Warrens to come and investigate their home.
Tales of furniture being thrown, family members being injured and the
family cat shouting ethnic slurs were just a taste of the reported malevolent activity that was occurring inside the home
on Lindley Street. When the Warrens arrived in November of 1974, they reportedly witnessed all of these occurrences
and more. Ed Warren said, "As far as we're concerned, those were evil spirits in that house."
As word traveled regarding this case, the Goodins appeared to genuinely
enjoy the publicity. According to witnesses on the scene, the Goodins "ate up the publicity like popcorn. They
invited reporters into the house, and were even guests on Tiny Markle's radio show." A reporter named Tim Quinn worked
on this story and reportedly witnessed a chair move a few feet inside the home. Quinn was quoted as saying, however,
"I think the little girl was clearly very happy with the attention and I get the feeling so were her parents. I don't
think they wanted this to end."
On November 24, 1974, a Bridgeport patrolman responded
to a "trouble unknown" call at the Goodin home. When he arrived, Laura Goodin opened the door and pointed toward the
disheveled living room. The officer thought that she had been burglarized, but she replied, "No, this is always going
on."
The officer called in the fire department, believing
that the movement of the furniture could possibly have been caused by an unsafe construction of the house. When the
fire officials and a city engineer arrived and inspected the premises, they found no structural problems "and ruled out the
possibility of renovation work at the nearby St. Vincent's Medical Center" as having caused the disturbance. While Gerald Goodin was a guest on a local radio station, he described the events
of Sunday, November 24th as: "Whatever it was, it was acting like a demented person and I felt I had to get my
family out of the house."
The fire department chaplain, Reverend Edward Doyle of St. Patrick's
Church, went to the house and blessed it. "He later stated at the time of the blessing [that] he saw nothing that led
him to believe evil spirits were present."
Then fire chief, John Gleason, reported that his men "witnessed dinner
plates rattling, pictures jumping off the wall, a television set falling over and a heavy leather chair jumping at least six
inches off the floor." A seminary student who was present at the home and keeping a log of the day-to-day activity prepared
a twenty-two page reported one year later which detailed an incident where Bridgeport police reportedly saw a "refrigerator
rise about six inches off the floor." Other instances occurred that were included in the original police records.
The most demonstrative evidence of demonic presence, however, occured when a plastic crucifix reportedly "exploded from the
wall" (the Warrens actually collected the fragments into a small box which now graces the shelves inside their Monroe home).
Lorraine Warren recalled, "Never in my life did I ever see so many police officers get down on their knees and ask for a priest's
blessing as in the Goodin home. They were really at God's
mercy in that house and they knew it."
Headlines soon followed and the spectacle drew crowds from all over
the country and the world. Traffic woes followed as well and the police were forced to cordon off the street, arresting
people who refused to leave.
The Reverend William Charbonneau, who taught a course on the occult
at St. Joseph's College in West Hartford, arrived at the home and also claimed to have witnessed many strange things.
According to Charbonneau, he had studied the paranormal at a university in Rome and had been called upon many times to exorcise
demons. Reverend Charbonneau claims that, as he was interviewing the ten-year-old Marcia, she had shouted at him to
turn around and, when he did, he witnessed a bureau slide rapidly from one side of the room to another of his own accord.
He also claimed to have heard "an ugly voice singing Christmas carols" in the basement. The voice had been coming from
Sam the cat. "Whatever was happening", he stated, "it was centered around Marcia, because she could 'sense' the occurrences
as they were about to happen. But she definitely did not create them." Later, he also claimed that he was "thrown
out of the city before he could do anything about it," (referring to the poltergeist activity in the Lindley Street home).
He had reported that police superintendent Joseph A. Walsh had threatened him with arrest if he ever came back to Bridgeport.
On November 26, 1974, Walsh had had enough. While the Warrens
were reporting that "Marcia's unhappiness [had] caused the disturbances", that evil spirits were attracted to her "angry
aura", the police superintendent announced that the haunting "was a hoax perpetrated by the young girl." He said that
Marcia "confessed to making the furniture move when people's attention was diverted and making the cat talk through ventriloquism."
The announcement by Walsh immediately dispersed the crowd
and the frenzy over this story finally died down. Today, there is still some question as to the police records that
were supposedly misplaced or just made to "disappear". According to most officers on the police force at the time, this
is simply not the case.
The Investigation
GHOST members arrived in Bridgeport on a mild, sunny day in September.
The exit for Lindley Street is well-marked and it didn't take long for us to find it. Locating the house without its
actual address was difficult, but we were able to ask around and were finally on our way to the historically haunted home.
We had been told by several people that the house looked pretty much
the same as it did back in the day, that the two lion statues on each side of the entrance walk were still there. We
used this as our guide, hoping to locate a rather dilapidated, morbid looking abode, overgrown and generally creepy.
We drove until we reached the end of the street and stood momentarily baffled.
Our luck changed when we spotted a mailman as he was delivering his
packages on foot. We approached him and inquired about the infamous dwelling. He immediately laughed and pointed
back down the avenue. "It's the house at six-six-nine. Right in front of a condominium complex . . . last house
before the parking lot entrance." He was most gracious and proceeded to tell us a delightful little tale. "It
was several years ago that one of my co-workers was delivering mail on this street and he happened to come upon the house
when he noticed that the nine in the address had broken on the top and had toppled upside-down." It was a moment before
we realized what he had been referring to: the number of the Beast - 666! The story was quite a good one and we
were anxious to get back down the road to view the house and hopefully speak with the inhabitants.
Trekking back down the street, we quickly came to the dreadful
realization that our grand suppositions surrounding the Lindley Street house were grossly over-played. The house was
a simple, one-floor, four-room home that appeared nearly as large as a supply shed.
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As you can imagine, we were a bit disappointed. With
determination, though, we pressed on and rang the doorbell. A very nice woman answered the door and I introduced myself
and spoke to her briefly about our mission there. The woman opened her mouth and her words were completely in a
foreign tongue. I asked her if there was any chance that someone in the home spoke English, but she appeared confused.
With even more disappointment, we thanked her kindly for her time and apologized before saying 'goodbye'. Our chances
at an on-site investigation of the Lindley Street house were thwarted for the moment. Until we can return with a translator,
the investigation will have to remain a mystery.
Conclusions
While we did not have the opportunity to perform our investigation
of the house, our research makes us fairly confident that we are dealing with a massive hoax here. Two things have led
us to this conclusion.
First, it is obvious that police records play an important role in
a case of this magnitude. Initially, we were intrigued by the story of the disappearance of police records and were
genuinely interested in finding out if there was any truth to that story. In digging for the honest truth, we were lucky
enough to speak with two police officers (one retired and one on active duty) who were both on the force during this spectacle
in 1974. The officers corroborrated each other independently, stating that no records were ever covered up or made to
"vanish" and that the official reports are still a matter of public record. Author and part-time ghosthunter, Donald
Carter (who extensively researched this case for his newly released book, Connecticut's Seaside Ghosts) sent a message to Creepy Connecticut, stating the following:
"The Bridgeport
Police report was never covered up, law
enforcement records are periodically purged after a period
of years to make
room (this was especially the case before
computers). The BPD [Bridgeport Police Department] case # is 74-79962 and a word-for-word
transcription of this police case can be found transcribed in Paul Eno's book, "Faces in the Window".
Walsh supposedly visited the home himself and cajoled the Goodin until
they finally confessed as to the hoax. When the announcement was made, every major newspaper, magazine and television
news station picked up the story, including the Hartford Courant. On November 27, 1974, one day after the announcement
by superintendent Walsh, Courant reporter Laurence Cohen wrote, "A 10-year old Bridgeport girl confessed Tuesday to haunting
her own home, police said." The headline said it all: "GIRL ADMITS TO BEDEVILING HOME". On the same day,
the New York Times stated the following, "Walsh says 10-yr-old girl is responsible for 4 days of noises and moving objects
in private house; some observers had attributed noises to supernatural objects; police say girl's father, Gerald Goodins [sic],
has agreed to take the girl to psychiatric clinic." ((S), N 27, 41:1)
If we are to believe some of the claims that official records disappeared,
then we must also believe that the army of police officers which believers say witnessed all this activity, must also have
come forward with their version of what happened. However, there is a gross shortcoming of these accounts and one
wonders why all these law enforcement officials that got "down on their knees [to] ask for a priest's blessing" somehow had
a change of heart and decided to remain quiet. I don't buy that Walsh was a tyrannical policeman bent on covering up
a colossally amazing demonic show. I believe he was, however, certainly worried about public safety and had nothing
but that in his mind when he urged the Goodins to come clean.
Additionally, where is all the photographic and video evidence of this
reported phantasm. At their fingertips were hundreds of cameras and dozens of film crews; yet the supporters of this
story failed to capture anything on film. While we have found insinuations that there are still photos of supposed levitations
and objects flying about the room, it's quite difficult to believe that with all the available news crews, not one video of
such activity appears to be in existence.
Secondly, in December of 1973 (the exact time that the whole Marcia
shenanigans appear to have begun) a very controversial Hollywood film was released in wide distribution known as "The Exorcist".
Fans of the film will know that it was based on the book of the same name. William Blatty (the author of the 1971 blockbuster
novel, as well as the screenplay for the film . . . for which he won an Oscar) claimed that the story was based on a true
story which took place in Mount Rainier, Maryland in the 1960s. As would later be revealed, the tale by Blatty
was proven to have been terribly embellished and, in fact, based upon a case that may very well never have taken place at
all. Of course, like any Hollywood script, sometimes a story just isn't exciting enough and re-writes and revisions
are necessary to make it thrilling for the movie-going audiences. In this case, it appears that the original story may
not have even occurred in the first place.
In the film, you may recall that ethnic slurs, family injuries, defiled
religious items, and levitating objects were common fare. Throw into the mix that Laura Goodin was described as a "high-strung,
devout Roman Catholic" and a young girl as the catalyst for all the demonic influence and, suddenly, things begin to appear
contrived.
Hopefully, we will be able to return to the house on Lindley Street
and examine the inside of the home with our equipment. However, I feel that we may be as sorely disappointed with what
we find internally, as we were with the exterior of the house. We'll cross our fingers.
GOOSEBUMP FACTOR: 0
Barry A. A. Dillinger
September 11th, 2007
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