This on was the best growing up, includes police reports
There is another case from Connecticut that was far more well known than the 2009 "A Haunting in Connecticut" film based on the true story.
It all started on Sunday, November 24, 1974, when Gerald Goodin, a 56 year old blue collar worker, and his wife Laura, a high strung and devout Roman Catholic, also middle aged, called police to their home to help them with what they believed was an evil presence, knocking things around and making a complete mess of the place.
It went out as an unknown help call. Police responded. Local reporters later were in touch with those involved, and stories immediately began showing up in the local newspaper, the Telegram, and on the local AM radio station, WNAB. Almost instantly, a floodgate of media interest came from across the Us and Canada - Gerald Goodin was French Canadian.
Soon, traffic was tied up for blocks, police had to cordon off the street, and even arrested some gawkers who refused to leave. Media around the world wanted to know about Bridgeport’s “demons.”
Ed and Lorraine Warren, the best know paranormal researchers of their time, were working the case. They told reporters they believed the disturbances were centered around 10 year old Marcia Goodin, a native girl from Canada who had been adopted by the Goodins a couple of years earlier, after the illness related death of their 7 year old son.
The family had not experienced any problems until December 1973, when Marcia was 9 years old. Marcia had been home six weeks from school from a back injury suffered at the hands of a boy who beat her due to her native heritage. She was wearing a back brace when the Warrens became involved.
"It was something inhuman", Ed Warren told reporters. "As far as we are concerned, there were evil spirits in that house".
John Gleason, Fire Chief at the time, said his men had seen 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 22 page report prepared a year later by a seminary student who performed the rituals of exorcism at the house quoted Bridgeport police records as saying officers witnessed the refrigerator rise about six inches off the floor, a 21 inch portable television set rise off a table and turn around, as well as objects on shelves vibrate and crash onto the floor.
A lounge chair Marcia was sitting in moved rapidly backwards and overturned. A plastic crucifix exploded from a wall in front of witnesses. A cat sang jingle bells in a frightening inhuman voice. Continual pounding noises on the walls were nerve wracking. Demons were thought to be behind the activity.
Furniture was being thrown, family members injured, even the family cat was speaking ethnic slurs. “Things were flying around in the front room when we went in there.” Gerald Goodin told a radio station, describing events of Sunday, November 24, 1974. “Whatever it was, it was acting like a demented person and I felt I had to get my family out of the house.”
Young Marcia was also described as a deceitful girl with an unhealthy interest in the occult. Researchers noted years later, that the events began shortly after the release of The Exorcist, which excited the public imagination with its tale of a demonically possessed girl. This was long before the advent of the internet and knowledge of the paranormal was readily available to anyone.
The Lindley Street case has faded from memory, but in paranormal research circles it remains on of the most documented poltergeist cases in history. One of the police officers has spoken recently on the event, but did not want an extended interview as he stated he was trying to forget it, and put it behind him.
"I saw the refrigerator move. I know what I saw," he said. "A little girl did not do that. Could not do that". Reporter Tim Quinn recalled a strange, eerie experience, underscored by something a firefighter said to him. “People shouldn’t be afraid of this,” Quinn said the firefighter told him, “because if there is a devil, then that means there must be a God, and there must be an afterlife.”
