Full Transcript for S09E37: Anger is An Energy Pt.1 of 2 (The Tina Resch Story)

darkness at bay. One day, as she will later claim, a real-life monster appeared in the darkness of her room to do things to her that left her feeling confused, ashamed and terrified. When Tina later said that at the age of 12 she had told Joan that her adopted brother Jack was molesting her, Tina alleged that Joan slapped her across the face and told her to never speak about it again. By the spring of 1983, Tina, now 13, had graduated from the dark room in the basement to a regular bedroom upstairs and Jack had since left the house. But little else had changed. At some point, Tina got into another argument with her foster mother Joan. Tina wanted desperately to know what her birth mother's name was, but Joan apparently refused to divulge it. When Tina got angry, the force of it was all-consuming. It shot through her like a power surge, and once it started, there was no containing it. Finally, realising that she was getting nowhere with Joan, she stormed up to her room and slammed the door behind her Inside, as she would later tell it, her friend Tina Scott was sitting on a sofa at the far end of the room, smiling up at her. Scott was 11 years older and had gone out with Tina's brother Craig, one of Joan and John's biological children. Tina loved her and often confided in her when things got especially bad at home. The pair had even shared that very bedroom when Scott stayed with the family a few months before. The only thing was, Tina Scott had been killed in a car crash three weeks earlier. By March 1984, Joan and John had four foster children living with them, six-year-old Lisa, the two-year-olds David and Mary, and a six-month-old baby called Anne. Tina, who was now 14, later described being physically punished by Joan and said that by this point, since she was too big to smack, Joan had begun asking John to administer the punishment instead. One evening in March, Tina and Joan got into another argument, and John was apparently called in to punish her. That night, however, Tina grabbed a knife from the kitchen and threatened to stab John if he didn't leave her alone. Later, Tina lay in her bed in the dark. staring at the numbers on her digital clock radio as her heart continued to race with adrenaline, when suddenly, according to Tina, the numbers began to move, flickering from one to the next, just like they did when she set the time. But she wasn't touching it. Just then, music suddenly blared out of it, causing Tina to jump. In shock, she wrenched the plug from the wall, and immediately plunged the room back into silence. Tina was apparently left staring at the device in utter confusion. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean-Smith. Down at the offices of the Columbus Dispatch newspaper on Monday, March 5th, 1984, Journalist Mike Harden was at his desk when he got a call from an anxious-sounding Joan Resch. Mike remembered Joan from the year before, when he'd written an article about her and her work as a foster mother, for

which she'd won awards. Joan was calling him because she didn't know what else to do. Something strange was happening in her house, she said, that she couldn't explain. It had started with flickering lights and running taps. but now objects were moving around the place, some being thrown violently by some kind of invisible force, and she was beginning to worry that the children might get hurt. She didn't know how exactly, but it seemed to be centred around her adopted daughter Tina. They'd tried a pastor, electricians and even the police, but nothing had made it stop. Perhaps if it had been anyone else, Mike would have hung up the phone there and then but hearing the genuine fear in Joan's voice. Instead, he told her to sit tight and wait for him to get there as soon as he could. A short time later, he was standing in the Resch's kitchen with Joan, Tina and older brother Craig, as they took him through everything that had been going on over the last few days. They told him about the electrician who'd come round to fix the lights that kept on flickering on and off, only to find nothing wrong with the wiring. and how he spent all Saturday afternoon taping down light switches that he was convinced were somehow switching themselves off and on. They told him too about the chairs that slid around the kitchen table with nobody in them, and the crack from the empty dining room as Joan's wine glasses began to fly off the bar one after another, bursting against the walls until the carpet glittered with glass. An incredulous Mike was taking notes as they reeled off one incident after another when a stack of papers on the end of the table apparently shot out across the room right in front of him. Mike jumped in alarm. See, said Joan, that's what I'm talking about. Then Joan led him through to the living room where one of the younger kids was playing. Mike, Joan and Tina each took separate seats as he asked them more about what had been going on Just then, a toy cot flipped into the air and clattered into the ground, breaking it. Mike was utterly gripped. A short time later, Mike was on the line to his colleague, Fred Shannon. the paper's senior photographer excitedly telling him to get out to the house as fast as he could mike was at the door to greet fred when he arrived was it safe asked fred as he stared past Mike's shoulder and took in the unnervingly empty hallway beyond. From how Mike had explained it to him, Fred was worried that the place might be haunted, but eventually Mike convinced him to go inside. And from there, things only escalated. A wine glass from the dining room cupboard shattered, with apparently no one in the room at the time. Then six metal coasters were flung at a wall. It soon became apparent that much of the activity seemed to happen whenever Tina was around or close by. Fred and Mike moved into the living room to get some pictures of Tina as she perched on the end of a recliner when the sofa opposite seemed to suddenly shunt out toward her. Then a loud boom was heard coming from the kitchen. Fred and Mike rushed through to find a bronze candlestick at the base of the back door. and a large mark where the stick had clearly collided with it. When they stepped back into the hallway, they gasped at the sight of the ceiling lamp that was now swinging wildly. Just then, Tina appeared in the living room doorway, seemingly as surprised at it as they were. Up to that point, the men only ever seemed to catch the tail end of the strange events, rather than actually seeing it happen. so instead of trying to chase it all around the house, the men asked Tina to stay with them in the family room in the hope of catching something more concrete on camera. They hadn't been there long when the family's phone was suddenly flung through the air over Tina's lap who was sitting close to it on the recliner. But once again, neither Mike nor Fred had seen it move before it was already in the air. Then it happened again and again the pair missed it taking off. So Fred aimed his camera at the phone and forced himself to stay focused on it until something else happened. For 20 minutes he stared through the viewfinder, but the phone refused to budge. Getting bored, he lowered the camera suddenly and had just turned away to speak to Mike, when once again the phone shot out violently, followed by a yelp from Tina when it smacked into her. Fred and Mike cursed their luck again. It was almost as though they thought that whatever it was was waiting for them to look away before bursting into life. Having missed the moment of the phone taking flight one too many times, Fred tried something different. He raised the camera and trained it on Tina and the phone for only a moment before letting it seem as though he was dropping it down while actually keeping the lens aimed at the same spot. Then Fred turned his head and pretended to look away. At the first hint of movement, he pressed the shutter button. Once again, the phone handset flew out across the room. When the picture came back, he'd caught the moment perfectly. The handset in mid-air, six feet from the table, with its coiled cord stretched across the arms of the chair, and Tina sitting underneath it with a startled look. and her hands up in the air in apparent shock. On Tuesday 6th March, Mike Harden's story ran on the front page of the Columbus Dispatch, with Fred's now famous photograph of the flying phone beside it. Mike's article made it clear that Tina seemed to be at the centre of the apparent paranormal disturbances. The following night, Mike came by and found Tina sitting by the fireplace in a sombre mood, twisting a crucifix round and round in her fingers. She'd been given it by a concerned family friend as protection. Tina told Mike that she was starting to wonder if it was all some kind of punishment for her anger, since it usually happened when she was really mad, she said. Sensing the toll that all of it seemed to be taking on her and the

rest of the family, Mike decided to see what he could do to help. Though some were beginning to speculate that it might be the work of a demonic spirit, Mike wasn't convinced. To him, the fact that it all seemed to be centering around Tina suggested that perhaps something else was at play. Something that she was maybe unwittingly responsible for. To that end, he contacted the parapsychology unit at Duke University in North Carolina and and was eventually put through to William Rohl. Rohl was 57 at the time. Having been born in Germany shortly before the Second World War, he escaped with his mother to Denmark, before later studying philosophy at Oxford University in England. In 1957, Joseph Banks Ryan, the founder of modern parapsychology, brought him to Duke University, which in 1984 was home to the most famous parapsychology lab in the world, known as Duke's Institute of Parapsychology. By 1984, Roll was its director and was perhaps most well-known in the field for helping to coin the term Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis, or RSPK. Roll used the term in the aftermath of a 1958 investigation of a young boy who he believed had real psychokinetic powers. But when Mike Harden first called him about what was happening in the Resch's home, Roll was reluctant to get involved. Having studied countless similar cases before, he felt there was nothing left to learn on the matter. Eventually, however, Mike managed to convince him that it might yet be worth his time and Roll agreed to fly out the following week. The next day, with more and more media outlets becoming interested in the story, Joan and John Resch held a press conference with Tina at their home, as 40 journalists are said to have crammed in to watch. Asked if she was scared by what was happening, Tina replied that she hadn't been at first, back when it was just lights and taps turning off and on. But when objects apparently started flying around the house of their own accord, she suddenly was. Joan and John confirmed that they'd seen it all, and still couldn't believe it was happening. As the press conference continued, Tina was asked to walk from room to room, in the hope that something might happen. The whole thing was only supposed to take an hour, but everyone was desperate to see it all for themselves, so one hour turned into two, and then three. By the evening, the reporters had been in the house for nearly eight hours, waiting desperately for Tina's apparent powers to reveal themselves, and she and the rest of the family were getting tired. But then finally, it happened. At 9.30pm, a lamp suddenly crashed to the floor in the family room, right next to where Tina was sitting at the time. Thankfully, Drew Hadwell from WTVN had his camera trained on the object at the time. Having finally caught the moment they'd all been waiting for, he hurried out into the snow to get the tape back to the station in time for the late news. In his van, Hadwell fast-forwarded the footage to cue up the precise moment the lamp fell, then watched the footage back in slow motion for himself. But as he kept his eyes trained on the lamp, waiting for it to move, he noticed something else too. Tina. Tina. edging closer and closer toward it on the sofa. Hadwell watched on in astonishment as Tina then took a quick glance to see if anyone was looking before reaching up to the lamp and pulling it down quickly to the ground. That night, people all over the country watched the exact same clip as it played out on the news. Tina, it seemed, had been exposed as a fraud. On Sunday, March 11th, William Roll touched down in Columbus with his assistant, Kelly Powers. He had no idea that three nights earlier, Tina had been caught on camera pulling down a lamp with her own hand, and that the footage had been broadcast nationwide. On hearing the news from Mike Harden, who picked him up from the airport, Roll's heart sank. Clearly this was a wasted journey, he thought. But by the time they reached the Resch's home on Blue Ash Road, something about the way that Harden described everything he'd seen with his own eyes persuaded Roll that the trip might be worthwhile after all. When they finally arrived at the Resch's house, Joan and John were there to greet them. Then Roel and Kelly were led inside and introduced to Tina. Roel found her to be both strangely reserved, but also bolshie and confident at the same time. Her superficially outgoing nature masking something else, perhaps. He liked her immediately. The plan was to live with the family for a week to keep a close eye on Tina and hopefully witness some of the many strange events that were said to be occurring. That afternoon, Tina excitedly showed them up to her room where Roel and Kelly would be staying. Later that night, as the pair got into their beds, with Tina taking a bed in the room next door, Roel turned to Tina's digital alarm clock on the nightstand. That's strange, he said. pointing it out to Kelly. The numbers had suddenly begun to flicker up in sequence. Kelly grabbed the clock and gave it a shake, and eventually it settled down. Then Roll switched off the light, and the two men went to sleep. The next morning, there was a knock at Roll and Kelly's bedroom door. Roll opened it to find the hallway empty, and three plastic lemons lying on the carpet outside. A short time later, three loud bangs rang out from the bedroom wall. When Roll checked in on Tina, she claimed not to know anything about it at all. Later, a framed photograph fell off the wall in Joan and John's room. Then two more pictures fell just after lunch. Each time, Tina was in the room or had only just left it when it happened. it was clear to Roll that Tina was clearly faking it. But Roll was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt, since, to his mind, there was every chance that a desperation to prove that whatever was happening was real was pushing Tina to do more and more outlandish things. Even still, by the afternoon, Roll's

patience was running thin. When another series of knocks rang out on the bedroom wall, he snatched up a slipper, and hurled it as hard as he could back at the same wall to let Tina know that they knew it was her. Tina yelped out from the other side in response, but then curiously they heard her stepping out into the hallway and on into her parents' bedroom, followed by the sound of her searching for something. Clearly they thought she was looking for whatever had just struck her wall, and yet she likely had no idea it was a slipper that Roll had thrown himself. Could it be, thought Roll, with a sudden flicker of inspiration, that Tina genuinely believed that she was moving things with the power of her mind? On Tuesday afternoon, after stepping out of the house for a few minutes, Roll and Kelly returned to find the place in complete disarray and Joan in tears. Craig's mattress had apparently been flung off his bed while a glass had been smashed in the kitchen, amongst other things. It was just yet another snapshot of what had been happening in the house since early March. Still not quite sure what to think, Roel asked Tina to sit down and fill out a questionnaire. As he watched her studiously fill it in for him, a loud crash was apparently heard coming from the dining room some distance away. When he went inside to investigate... he found one of the foster kids' cots tipped over. It was some time later when Roll heard a commotion outside the front door and opened it to find an exuberant crowd of people milling about the driveway. Among them were numerous reporters and photographers who seemed to be crowding around one person in particular, a white-bearded man in a black caped overcoat. Roll knew him at once. His name was James Randi, better known as the Amazing Randi. James Randi was a well-respected magician, but more recently had dedicated himself to exposing paranormal hoaxes. Only the year before, he revealed that two teenagers that had been studied for three years by a parapsychology laboratory in St. Louis but their apparent ability to bend spoons with their mind were in fact magicians that Randy had trained himself to fool the lab. The humiliation was still fresh among parapsychologists everywhere. Men like William Roll didn't like James Randy very much. On seeing Roll and Kelly in the doorway, with a flourish, Randy reached inside his overcoat and drew out a cheque for $ 10, 000. 00 and announced that it would go straight to the Resch family if anyone could make a single object fly through the air without touching it. Among the throng of onlookers was journalist Mike Harden. When Joan then appeared, his eyes lit up at the prospect of finally proving to all these people that what was occurring inside was genuine. But much to his dismay, Joan refused to let Randy inside. For Joan, it had all been one big circus already and she had no desire to add any further to the mayhem. But Mike couldn't help but feel disappointed. The next morning, he ran a story in the dispatch under the headline Visiting Magician Told to Disappear. Later that day, Roll was doing his best to keep a close eye on Tina with his dictaphone in hand ready to record at the first sign of any strange activity. At some point, Tina said that objects were beginning to move around her again. In an effort to keep her close by, Roel asked her to stay in her regular bedroom for a while, the one he and Kelly were sharing, so he could keep a better eye on her. Inside were the two single beds that Roel and Kelly were staying in and the nightstand in between them. On the far side was a bookcase. Naturally, Tina quickly became bored. and began rearranging her books when she unintentionally knocked over a cup of water that had been left on top of it. She grabbed a cloth and began to mop it up. Sensing something brewing perhaps, Roll put down the tea he was drinking on the nightstand and kept his eyes on Tina as she continued to mop up the water on the other side of the bed. Just then, Roll heard a clunk behind him. Turning back to the nightstand, he saw with confusion that his teacup was no longer there. Then he turned to see that the cupboard door behind him that had previously been closed was now open and sitting inside on a pile of clothes was his teacup. Tina apparently hadn't moved from the bookcase the entire time. As he described it in his 2004 book Unleashed, The Curious Story of Tina Resch, in that moment Roll felt a weight lift from his shoulders. Finally, he felt he had seen it, a genuine occurrence of RSPK. Whatever Tina had been accused of faking throughout this entire phenomenon, this he was utterly certain she couldn't have done. Keen to see more evidence of apparent RSPK, William Roll instructed Tina to go back to tidying up her bookcase. Then he placed the teacup back on the nightstand and stood watch. Moments later, he saw the curtain twitch and heard something fall to the ground. He looked down to see a box of Tic Tacs on the floor. He felt the hairs bristle on the back of his neck. Another item had been flung through the air that he felt utterly certain had not come from Tina. Seeming suddenly withdrawn, Tina went to sit on a chair on the far side of the room and sat on it back to front. Then she began to chew on the back of it, which Roel only noticed then was marked all over with old teeth marks. That was where she sat whenever her foster parents came to hit her, she said. And when they did, she would bite the chair for comfort. She called it her comfort chair. Later, after another picture was said to have clattered to the floor, some distance away from Tina at the time, Roll asked her if she knew where it had come from. Then Tina went quiet and rubbed her head. It always hurt, she said, when that kind of thing happened. Now thoroughly convinced that Tina was harbouring genuine RSPK powers, Roll began to plan other ways to examine her. but considering what Tina had told him, he was also concerned for her

mental well-being. He reached out to Rebecca Zinn, a psychotherapist who he knew from back home in North Carolina, to ask if she'd be interested in assessing Tina for him. When Kelly eventually called her from the Resch's home, when Rebecca picked up the call, a horrific screech is said to have rung out of the receiver, deafening them both. Kelly is said to have waited for the crackling to die down before continuing, only for it to flare up twice again, much to everyone's discomfort. When Roll met up with Tina afterwards, who is said to have known nothing of the call, There was an odd look of anguish on her face. It was the strangest thing, she said. Out of nowhere, a painful, high-pitched noise had begun ringing out in her ear that had only then just disappeared. On Thursday, at the Park Hotel in downtown Columbus, William Roll held a press conference to reveal his findings so far. As he explained to the throng of reporters before him, though he couldn't say exactly what was going on, he was certain that Tina wasn't responsible for throwing all those objects. But sadly, despite repeated efforts, Roll had failed to catch any of it on film. When it eventually came time to leave the family, Roll, still eager to learn more, invited Tina to stay with him and his wife Muriel in North Carolina. It was a bittersweet moment for Tina, as Roll noted pointedly in his book, though she was clearly overjoyed at the prospect of some time away from the precious home. At the same time, it hadn't gone unnoticed how eager Joan seemed to be to get her out of the house too. As part of the trip, Roll took Tina to Florida to meet with a self-proclaimed medium named Mary Rossi. Roll hoped that she might be able to help Tina take more control of her apparent powers, but after five days of sessions, nothing strange occurred. During the trip, he also took Tina to Key West for some downtime, where for the very first time in her life, she saw the ocean. They even went water skiing. At some point, after another failed attempt to stand up on the skis, Tina scrambled back into the boat. As she sat catching her breath, She paused suddenly and seemed to stare off into space. Tina Scott was there, she said, right in the boat with them. Once back in North Carolina, Roll sent Tina to see his colleague at the Institute for Parapsychology, Richard Broughton. Broughton had created a machine for testing psychokinesis that he called the Mind Machine, and Roll wanted Tina to test her powers out against it. And so that morning, Tina sat in front of a large computer monitor, watching a digital coin being tossed in the air. Tina's task was to guess the outcome each time. One after another she made her choice, and time after time, the outcome was nothing better than chance. At the end of the session, Tina was picked up by Rebecca Zinn, the psychologist that Roel had approached about doing a psychological assessment of Tina. On the way home, Rebecca, or Becca, needed to make a phone call from her office and asked Tina to wait outside as she nipped in to make the call. A tired Tina sat glumly as Becca, eyeing her through her office door's glass window, picked up the receiver, only for a violent screech of static to suddenly erupt out of it. Becca pulled away in shock, and slammed the phone down. It was the exact same sound that she'd heard when Kelly Powers had called her from the Resch's home. Becca stared again at Tina through the glass, who seemed completely oblivious to it all. She opened the door and asked Tina softly if there was anything on her mind. Tina stared at the floor for a moment. She'd just been thinking about how happy Joan had been to get rid of her, she said. She'd been thinking about her real mother too, and wondering for the millionth time why she abandoned her like she did. Becca gave the girl a hug and invited her into the office. Then two pens suddenly dropped off the table, startling them both. Tina picked one up and laid it down on a bookshelf, telling it jokingly to stay where it was. Moments later, Becca watched astonished, as it suddenly hit the floor on the far side of the room. By then, a little unnerved, Becca suggested they get going and head back to the car. As she led Tina out of the room, Becca later claimed that she saw her phone shoot out from her desk and strike Tina hard in the back. Tina, who'd apparently been at least six feet away from it at the time, screamed out and fell to the floor. More scared now, Becca grabbed Tina's hand and rushed out to the car. But no sooner had they got inside, the horn apparently started blaring on its own. Becca hurriedly thrust her keys into the ignition, started the engine and took off. A short time later, the gear was said to have dropped from third to neutral without anyone touching it. And then it happened again. Having finally made it out onto the freeway, Becca was making steady progress when the car's hood suddenly flew open, almost causing them to crash. Becca hurriedly pulled the car over and came to a stop as Tina sat still beside her. It'll be alright now, she said. Nothing more would happen. But Tina couldn't have been any further from the truth. You've been listening to Unexplained, Season 9. Episode 37. Anger is an energy. Part 1 of 2. The second and final part will be out next Friday, October 16th. Please remember to like and subscribe if you've enjoyed the show. Unexplained is an AV Club Productions podcast created by me, Richard McLean-Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me, Unexplained the book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at Unexplained Podcast and on X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod. Until next time, stay strange and dissonant. Thank you.