Interview Recordings - The Moffitt Family Poltergeist Case

  

Deborah Moffitt has been a guest on a variety of paranormal-themed radio shows and Internet podcasts to speak about the bizarre haunting experienced by her family during the late 1980s and early '90s in Southern California.  The incidents described are usually categorized as that of 'poltergeist phenomena,' including messages written with soap on a bathroom mirror of the family's house.  Deborah's case study Unwelcomed was published in 2015 and a fictionalized version of the case, A Deadly Haunting (2014), was written by Joie Albrecht.  A website for the earlier book presents a page of links to video interviews.  The Moffitt Family 'poltergeist' case is the topic of the five preceding articles at this blog.

Upon listening to some of Deborah's interviews, some of the moderators engaged in conversation where superstitious assumptions were casually reiterated and accepted.  Some ambiguous expressions that can be heard are "portal"/"portals" (usually leaving unconsidered what aspect of 'nature' is involved with such a 'portal') and "spiritual attachment."  These terms convey suppositions that overlook spiritual concepts of an omniscient God and each individual human being having a 'guardian angel.'

Often when people talk or write about 'demons' (or 'djinns' for that matter) in a general and credulous manner, I find myself wishing that specific incidents or precise sources of information would be cited so that the basis for the perceptions might be understood.  The articles at this blog always identify sources of information, sometimes showing how parallels can be found between various documented cases of 'paranormal' phenomena.  Some examples of these articles are "The Bells and Witchcraft Legends", "Metaphorical Correlations Among 'Paranormal' Cases" and "Flying Saucers and 'The Nine Pattern'".

One audio recording featured at the A Deadly Haunting Videos web page is a national 2014 "Coast to Coast AM" interview of Deborah and Joie by guest host Dave Schrader.  One statement by Deborah articulated an attempt to find some explanation for the commencement of numerous mysterious incidents experienced by the family.  She mentioned about her husband's ill grandmother: "We believe that the lady [from Guatemala] that was taking care of her performed some type of ritual — we think was Santeria from what was found in the home when she left — and tried to keep her alive."  Other experiencers of poltergeist and 'talking poltergeist' phenomena have also tried to identify some basis for the commencement of mysterious occurrences that may seem unprecedented to anyone without knowledge of other cases.

A symbol that manifested—not only on the mirror but also at times written upon or gouged into walls and even carved into the carpeting—was described by Deborah as "a triangle with like a kite tail in the middle at the bottom."  The interview resulted with a photograph being posted at the radio show website —

 

This photograph was captioned "Symbol of Mr. Entity" with the information shared:

"Coast listener Leo from Columbus, Ohio, shares this photo of his 'triangle with a tail' tattoo—similar in appearance to the symbol associated with Mr. Entity described during tonight's show.  According to Leo, this is an alchemy logo which means 'changing lead into gold.'"

   

Among the links at the A Deadly Haunting Videos webpage is one for a "30 Odd Minutes" video interview.  This 2014 presentation involves interviewers Jeff Belanger and Andrew Lake costumed in uniforms while seen sitting inside a depiction of a flying saucer interior for "Mission 159" featuring Deborah (via telephone) and Joie.  During the interview, there were technical difficulties with Joie's audio communication.  Deborah stated during the interview about the haunting entity:
 

If we went on vacation, if we went on  — say we went out to dinner.  When we got home from dinner, on the table would be the waitress's nametag [from] where we had eaten.


So he always gave us a sign that — you know, you can leave the house but I'm always with you.


Yeah, there were quiet periods.  Especially around Christmas time.  For some reason, around the Christmas holidays everything would stop and everything would be nice and quiet for a few weeks.


. . . the only reason its [the story] coming out now is because my husband passed away.  He was the last one that was frightened of this.


For 25 years I couldn't talk about him [the entity].

One of the photos presented during the interview shows water dripping from a light fixture.  Deborah explained that this was one of several incidents that occurred days after the anomalous flood that briefly turned their interior staircase into a waterfall: "A few days later he [entity] had water coming out of all our light fixtures.  It was just — there was no source.  We had no leaks.  The water was just coming out of the light fixtures, dripping down."  Similar incidents involving anomalous water manifestations are related by the family of the Rochdale Poltergeist case (1, 2) among other testimonials of 'unexplained phenomena.'
 
There is also a 2014 interview of Deborah Moffitt by Rob McConnell in Canada for "The 'X' Zone Radio Show."  Rob's introductory statements include a comment that the book will "change the way we see evil."  Deborah told Rob about some of the complexities of the haunting —

My father-in-law actually wanted the entity to kill my mother-in-law.  That was part of the problem.


We saw my father-in-law doing strange things.  He would go into the bathroom and talk to the entity and then he would erase the mirror.  And then when he left I would ask the entity, "Well what was he doing in here?"  And he would tell me.  He said, "He wants me to kill Lee."

One of the messages seen in a book photograph reads "do your own dirty work."
 
Among other interviews that may be found from a Google search, Deborah was interviewed by Bran and Dave for the "Stary Time Podcast" of November 13, 2015.  At one point, Deborah was asked to explain about Lee belonging to the entity.

He wrote the whole story.  He wrote it.  He would write [on] the whole mirror.  I would read it.  I would erase it.  I would leave.  I'd come back.  This went on for like a half hour because he told me the whole story.  It went — I can't remember it word for word but the gist of the story was that my mother-in-law had been promised to him in a past life as a blood sacrifice.  It was in a monastery in I think it was France he said way back like in the 15 or 1600s.  And there were monks in the monastery that practiced Satanism.  They gave — my mother-in-law was going to be the blood sacrifice.  Somehow something happened and the blood sacrifice didn't come to fruition.  And she got away or something.  But he said it didn't matter that she wasn't killed then because she was promised to him she belonged to him and he had come now in this lifetime to collect her.

It is hard to evaluate the precise meaning of each photo of the mirror writing messages as the photographic record of the communication is incomplete and flashbulb glare obscures some of the extant messages.  Beyond any literal interpretation of extant messages, metaphorical or allegorical meanings might be overlooked by researchers unfamiliar with other documented cases of transcendental communication (with many of them profiled in articles at this blog).  Some of the messages seem to provide examples of intentional travesty in response to the family's certainty that they were being haunted by a demon.  Deborah said during the “30 Odd Minutes” interview: "We were just going to have to try to get rid of him.  That was the only way we were going to survive." 
 
During a 2014 "Late Night In The Midlands" interview by Michael Vara, Deborah mentioned about the entity: "He would tell me about people that he had affected in past lives . . . It would tell me who was going to win political races before they would win, things like that . . . It did happen that everything he did tell me did come to be . . . We had something good in the house that would write on a different wall and it wrote almost in a . . . like having a poem.  And at the end of it, it would say, 'your friend, the holy trinity.'"

Another audio recording that I heard while researching this article was a YouTube video of Deborah Moffitt interviewed by Art Bell in 2015.  During the broadcast, Art reported suddenly seeing a mouse around two feet away from him yet the rodent was gone before he could take a photograph.  Deborah quickly told him, "You know, it's funny because we were infested by rats for two weeks."  She explained in the book: "In desperation I went into the bathroom and asked the entity to keep the rats out of the house.  I never received a response on the mirror, but from that day on we never saw or heard another rat in the house again."
 
Deborah mentioned that during the haunting events her mother-in-law prayed continually.  Deborah said:
 

I think her strong belief in God is what got her through this.  Because she believed that eventually God would win.  So goodness would win.  So I think that's what actually kept her sanity through this was a strong belief in God.

 
Listeners who are closely attentive to the recordings of interviews with Deborah Moffitt may notice occasional instances of 'Electronic Voice Phenomena' (EVP) consisting of abrupt words of unattributable speech of different vocal cadences (such as “NO”) heard momentarily between words of otherwise concordant speech.  As I've mentioned before, readers unfamiliar with EVP will be surprised to learn that EVP communication is commonly noticeable on radio broadcasts and any unedited program recordings, including television broadcasts.