Episode 207: The Bridgeport Poltergeist
Marcia Goodin
In the year 1960, Gerard “Jerry” Goodin purchased a small, four-room bungalow on 966 Lindley Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He lived here with his wife, Laura, and their young son, Gerald Jr. Jerry worked as a maintenance man while Laura was a housewife. Unfortunately, their son had cerebral palsy and died from complications of the condition in 1967 at the age of 6. Less than a year later, the Goodin’s adopted a little girl named Marcia from Canada. Life seemed decent for a while despite dealing with the tragic loss of their son, but it wasn’t very long after Jerry and Laura introduced little Marcia into their family that strange things began to occur. For instance, in the year or two after Marcia was adopted, she had been caught sitting on her floor, rocking back and forth and speaking in a “strange language.” When asked what she had been doing, she claimed she was talking to her deceased grandfather, and he was giving her the message that he was unhappy she was adopted.
Marcia had not had it easy as she continued to grow up. She was Native American and had been adopted from a Native tribe in Canada, so her features stood out to her classmates and Marcia was bullied as a result. The bullying continued and escalated with children making fun of her appearance, race and the fact that she was adopted and soon school was insufferable for her. It wasn’t until Marcia was in the fifth grade, in 1974, that the bullying came to a boiling point. She was kicked in the back, hard, by a classmate and as a result sustained a significant back injury, forcing her to wear a back brace. Her mother, trying to help keep her daughter safe, pulled Marcia from public school and opted her to have an education at home. Some people speculate that it was Laura Goodin’s overbearing parenting style that may have been partially responsible for the events to follow.
Shortly after Marcia’s injury, things started to get really weird at the home on Lindley Street. For several years now, the family had been dealing with a strange “booming” sound coming from inside the house. Jerry described it as if the house was being “stoned” and looked into every possible option to get the sound to stop. After having the foundation inspected, the plumbing and the electric looked at, and even after replacing the furnace in its entirety, the sound would occasionally come back to annoy the family beyond comprehension. It eventually seemed like this was just something the Goodin family had to deal with. What they did not know was that soon, this sound would be the least of their worries.
The sudden influx of paranormal phenomena began on the night of November 21st, 1974. The Goodin’s had their neighbors, the Holsworths, over to their house for dinner. While they were eating in the kitchen, they were all alerted to the sound of something shattering in the other room. Upon investigation, it was discovered that a window in the bedroom had broken, and it looked to have been broken from the inside. This was weird, but the Goodin’s and their guests moved on. It wasn’t until the next night that more strange happenings occurred. The family had been relaxing in the living room after dinner, when suddenly they heard a crash in the bedroom. When they investigated, they discovered the curtains on the ground and the shade pulled all the way up. Laura went and fixed these things, but before she could even make it out of the room, they fell once more. One source even states that after this, Laura left the curtains on the ground, and later discovered them in the kitchen. The next day, Jerry discovered Marcia’s little television set fallen from its normal shelf, screen down on her bed. No one had been home all day, and the cause of this strange detail was puzzling. What was even weirder, however, was that after discovering this, Jerry walked into the kitchen only to watch as dishes flew out of the sink, floated in the air, and then crashed into the floor. This was all while Laura was attempting to unload groceries, which were sitting on the kitchen table. She watched as the table began to rise on one side, as if someone was lifting it. Before long, the whole table flipped over and sent her groceries right to the ground. As if that wasn’t enough, she then watched as the refrigerator lifted a few inches into the air before coming back down to the ground.
Now, the Goodin family was becoming more and more scared. They were watching as picture frames randomly flung to the floor, and the chairs they were sitting in rise several inches off the ground. The frequency in which these strange events were happening seemed to be intensifying, and they really had no clue what to do. It was one morning, just a few days after all of this bizarre stuff began, that Jerry got the attention of his neighbor, John Holsworth. John was actually a member of the police department and Jerry, very desperate, asked him to come over and help him out. It was only after John witnessed three chairs in the living room move on their own that he immediately called in back-up. Before anytime could blink, the Goodin home was filled with visitors. Four officers showed up, and once they witnessed some paranormal activities, including one of them being hit in the chest by a crucifix hanging on the wall, they called in more help. Soon, firemen were present, as well as a priest, Jerry’s brother, and a paramedic who had come to assess Laura as an object had fallen onto her foot and bloodied it.
It was at this point that a neighbor called in the infamous paranormal investigating team, Ed and Lorraine Warren. The couple was immediately interested in what they were hearing, and arranged to arrive later that day, paired with more guests: a priest of their own choosing and a young seminary student named Paul Eno, who was interested in the Warren’s work. Additionally, a small crowd began to gather outside due to all the commotion, hoping they too could get a glimpse at whatever was occurring in the home. Before even entering, Ed pulled aside Paul and told him to watch Marcia, as children are often responsible for a hoax but also just as likely to be the source of a paranormal event as well. With this in mind, the new sets of eyes walked through the home, witnessing some bizarre things for themselves, like the moving objects and the floating of heavy household items. Later that first night, as they all sat down at the kitchen table debriefing, Paul Eno noticed a blister forming on Lorraine’s arm. Out of nowhere, it grew to be a second-degree burn, with seemingly absolutely no prompting. It was at this point that the heavy smell of sulfur filled the air - this being a common theme when it comes to paranormal events. This prompted the Warren’s to bring up the idea of an exorcism, which was perhaps more what the home needed than something simple like a blessing with holy water and rosary beads. As they discussed this and pondered the next steps over the course of the evening and into the morning, more reported events occurred. For one, Paul had his hand resting on the chair Marcia was sitting in when suddenly it began to rise up in the air. According to Paul, it felt like something was pushing against him, trying to get the chair to remain in the air, until it eventually let loose and fell back to the floor. Later that evening, the family and the paranormal investigators were in the kitchen playing Monopoly when the smell of sulfur returned, and they were alerted to a strange figure that was before them. They described it as “a large cohesive assemblage of smoky yellowish-white gauzy mist.” It is said that shortly after seeing this entity, Marcia was picked up and thrown across the room.
Meanwhile, the crowds outside the home were growing. At its peak, there were 2,000 people standing outside the home with police barricading the entrances in an attempt to keep the curious on-lookers at bay. News reporters and journalists were not allowed access into the home but stood outside regardless, ready to get the shot or the perfect story at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately, the dreams of the paranormal sightings would soon come to a crushing halt, as there was a sudden change in the story. It happened on the evening of November 26th, when a police officer witnessed Marcia stretch her leg out and nudge the TV stand with her foot, just barely moving it and placing it to where it was nudging her father. After witnessing Marcia attempt to do something that had been reported before as paranormal, the officers confronted her, which led to an unexpected confession from the now 10-year-old. She claimed that she had been a part of it all: the banging on the walls and floors, the throwing of pictures onto the ground, the movement of some of the pieces of furniture. She even admitted to seeing Lorraine burn herself with boiling water, further proving that perhaps even the infamous paranormal investigators were in on it, too.
With this confession, the police publicly announced that this was all a hoax and the case was closed. The Goodin’s refused to have the Warren’s return, partially blaming it on them. Some officers released statements agreeing with the conclusion of a hoax, but some also signed their names to statements claiming that they know what they saw, and a little girl was not the cause of it. Some of the furniture was too heavy to be moved by her, and more importantly, she was sometimes not even in the room when some of the events happened. A large handful of people who had been in that house during times of paranormal happenings also did not agree with this conclusion, and were not quiet in declaring this. In fact, a crowd still remained outside the Goodin home, eager to see something bizarre. On Thanksgiving night, a small fire was set in the backyard of the house, but was quickly snuffed out by Jerry and a police officer. Shortly after, three men were arrested on charges of arson. They explained that they were trying to help get rid of the evil spirits.
Things of the supernatural nature began to slow down and eventually stopped after this supposed confession. On December 10th, furniture began to move again; picture frames would fly off the walls randomly and the TV even toppled over on its own a few times. These incidents began to pick up with more frequency and continued, much to the frustration of the Goodin’s. On December 16th, they received a call from a man named Boyce Batey, who claimed to be a poltergeist investigator associated with the American Society for Psychical Research. By December 18th, Batey was at the Goodin home with a small team of his own paranormal investigators, and after they surveyed the home and talked with the Goodin’s, they seemed to come to a general conclusion. They believed that Marcia was most likely the source of all this, whether she knew it or not. Apparently, poltergeists often use children as an access point to haunt homes. Marcia’s bullying experiences and her angst, paired with the overbearing parenting style of Laura and Jerry, seemed to be behind the presence of such a haunting figure. Batey also pointed out that the more people to come into a space that is inhibited by these entities, the more they get riled up and perform these frightening and annoying activities. So, in short, the more people that the Goodin’s brought in to try and help them, the more opportunities for this paranormal phenomenon to keep happening.
With this conclusion, the year 1975 rolled in and the strange events seemed to slowly settle down into nothing. It appeared that the acceptance of the overbearing nature of their parenting and the refusal of letting so many people into their homes helped slow down the rate of these hauntings. Eventually, it seemed they stopped all together. That year, the Goodin’s attempted to sell their home, clearly hoping for a new, healthy start. Unfortunately, after having their house on the market for a year, they were unsuccessful in getting out and lived the rest of their lives on Lindley Street. In 1993, Laura died in a car accident, and Jerry continue to live in the home until 1997 when he died of natural causes. Marcia, apparently, had left the home as a teenager after she became “upset with her parents,” and is believed to have run away to Canada, where she was adopted from. She apparently died in 2015. The house on 966 Lindley Street remains standing to this day, holding a lot more questions than answers.
Image sources:
patch.com - “Demons in Bridgeport”
nightmarehouses.com “What Happened on Lindey Street”