The Tina Resch Story

It all began with a flash... not lightning, not supernatural energy, but the harsh glare of a newspaper camera. March 1984, a modest home in Columbus, Ohio. A teenage girl sits on a couch, eyes wide with terror, as a telephone flies across the room, captured midair by photographer Fred Shannon.

The photograph would become one of the most famous paranormal images of the twentieth century.

Skeptics called it a hoax... Believers called it proof... And at the center of it all sat 14-year-old Tina Resch. A girl whose life would spiral into one of the most tragic and mysterious tales in the history of modern hauntings.

The House That Wouldn’t Stay Still

It started simply enough, the way you would expect most hauntings to. The Resch family’s small suburban home in Columbus was ordinary by every measure. But by early 1984, strange disturbances had become a nightly occurrence. Objects moved on their own, dishes shattered, and electrical devices switched on and off without warning.

At first, Tina’s parents assumed it was childish mischief. But when they saw chairs topple, lights flicker, and knickknacks fly across the room with no one nearby, the laughter immediately stopped.

Neighbors began hearing the commotion... loud thuds, crashes, shouting. Soon the local press caught wind of it, and a photographer from The Columbus Dispatch arrived to see if the rumors were true. His name was Fred Shannon.

The Moment Caught in Time

March 1984. Shannon set up his camera in the living room, waiting. For nearly an hour, nothing happened. Tina sat quietly on the couch, her parents chatting nervously. Then, without warning, the telephone leapt from the side table and flew toward her, captured perfectly in midair!

Shannon didn’t press the shutter intentionally. The flash triggered automatically when motion hit the field. The result was one of the most chilling photos in modern paranormal history:

• Tina, her mouth open in mid-scream, head turning as the phone arcs toward her.
• The receiver cord taut, frozen mid-swing.
• No one nearby. No visible trick.

The photo ran in The Columbus Dispatch the next morning under the headline:

“It Came From Nowhere.”

Within days, the story exploded across the nation. Reporters, skeptics, and paranormal researchers descended on the Resch home. Everyone wanted to see the girl who could make objects fly.

The Poltergeist Theory

The word poltergeist comes from the German 'Poltern' - to knock or rumble - and 'Geist', meaning ghost or spirit.

But in parapsychology, a “poltergeist” isn’t always a ghost. It’s often associated with psychokinetic energy in general. Unconscious, physical manifestations of emotional stress.

Tina Resch, by all accounts, was a troubled girl. She had been adopted as a toddler and struggled with behavioral issues, anger, and feelings of abandonment. Researchers speculated that her emotions might be fueling the disturbances, acting as a human lightning rod for the inexplicable.

The theory made sense... at least more sense than ghosts. But it didn’t explain everything. Because sometimes, the phenomena happened when Tina wasn’t even in the room.

Investigators Step In

As national attention grew, professional investigators joined the fray. Among them was William G. Roll, a parapsychologist who had studied similar cases for decades, including the infamous “Dixie Poltergeist” and the “Columbus Haunting.”

Roll set up controlled tests in the Resch home. He witnessed objects move spontaneously, lights flicker, and toys slide across floors without visible cause.

Reporters who came to mock the story left uneasy. One described feeling “a static heaviness in the air” before objects shifted. Even skeptics admitted, reluctantly, that not everything could be explained away as trickery.

But the world was watching, and scrutiny has a way of twisting truth into spectacle.

The Accusation

As weeks passed, the skepticism sharpened. During one visit, a reporter claimed to have caught Tina tugging a lamp cord to fake movement. Another claimed she kicked a table when she thought no one was looking.

The press turned. The girl once seen as a victim of the paranormal became a “hoaxer.” Tina later admitted that she had faked certain incidents. Not to deceive, she said, but to keep the attention of the researchers who had started ignoring her when nothing happened.

“If I didn’t do something, they’d leave,” she explained years later.

But even after her admission, multiple witnesses, including Roll, maintained that many of the phenomena could not have been faked.

Especially the photograph. The phone was midair, its cord tight, the motion caught in perfect synchronicity. Shannon himself stood by it until the day he died. “I was there,” he said. “That thing moved before anyone could blink. No tricks, no strings, nothing.”

The Photograph That Wouldn’t Die

The photo became an icon of the paranormal. Studied, debated, and reprinted for decades. Experts analyzed the lighting, the shadows, the angle. No clear evidence of tampering was ever found.

Even skeptical photojournalists conceded that if the image was staged, it was an act of uncanny precision for a 14-year-old under constant observation.

The moment it captured remains unsettling. Not because of the flying phone, but because of Tina’s expression. A mix of fear and exhaustion. Not the face of a trickster, the face of a girl who’d seen something no one believed.

The Collapse of the Circus

By the summer of 1984, the Resch home had become unlivable. Curiosity seekers lined the street, shouting taunts. Reporters camped on the lawn. Television crews begged for exclusive access.

Under relentless scrutiny, the disturbances stopped. Or maybe they were forced underground? Buried beneath the exhaustion of exposure...

The investigators left. The press moved on. And the Resch family was left to pick up the pieces. But for Tina, the haunting never truly ended.

The Aftermath

Years later, Tina’s life took a darker turn. She married young, divorced, and struggled to raise her own children.

In 1992, tragedy struck when her infant daughter died under suspicious circumstances. Tina was charged with murder and eventually convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

To many, the case confirmed what skeptics had always believed. Tina Resch had been a manipulator all along. To others, it was proof that she had been haunted from the beginning, destined for tragedy.

Her defenders, including William Roll, argued that Tina had lived a life shaped by trauma, exploitation, and disbelief.

“We studied the phenomena,” Roll said. “We never studied the person enough.”

Tina later told interviewers she had been “used”; by investigators, the media, and even believers who wanted a story more than they wanted to help.

“They all got what they wanted,” she said. “Except me.”

What Was It, Really? To this day, the 1984 Columbus case divides believers and skeptics alike.

Three possibilities remain:

1. A Teenage Hoax

A bored, attention-starved girl craving validation, clever enough to fool seasoned journalists and scientists... at least for a while.

2. A Psychokinetic Event

A spontaneous burst of telekinetic energy, triggered by emotional trauma. The “human poltergeist” theory supported by Roll and other parapsychologists.

3. Something Else Entirely

Something unseen, opportunistic... the kind of force that feeds not on fear, but on chaos. A presence that attaches itself to turmoil, using people like Tina as conduits.

Each theory explains something, but not everything. The photo stands as a silent contradiction... too convenient to be random, too strange to be fake.

The Girl Behind the Legend

It’s easy to forget that behind the headlines, there was a real child. A 14-year-old sitting in a modest Ohio living room, scared and angry and confused, while the world demanded proof that her fear was real.

When skeptics called her a liar, she became defiant. When believers called her chosen, she became trapped. And when the world finally moved on, she was left with a lifetime of unanswered questions. And a photograph that refused to fade.

Today, that image still circulates online and in paranormal archives The frozen moment that turned a frightened girl into a cautionary tale. But look closer at that picture, past the flying phone and the blur of motion, and you’ll see what still unnerves researchers after all these years:

Tina isn’t looking at the phone. She’s looking past it... at something else. Something no one else saw.

The Legacy of the Poltergeist Girl

Nearly forty years later, the Tina Resch story remains one of the most perplexing in American paranormal history.

Psychologists cite it as an example of media influence and emotional contagion. Skeptics file it under the “exposed hoaxes” category. Parapsychologists list it among the top documented poltergeist events of the 20th century, alongside Enfield and Rosenheim. Each side claims victory. But none can explain why, in that one frozen photograph, something impossible is undeniably happening.

Maybe Tina did fake some of it. Maybe all of it. But the tragedy of her life; the endless scrutiny, the collapse of her family, and the way her name became synonymous with fraud. Proves that some hauntings don’t need ghosts. Sometimes, the haunting is the aftermath.

Closing the Veil

In the decades since, the world has grown more skeptical, yet more fascinated than ever with what lurks beyond the explainable. But if you stand back and look at that photograph; that grainy 1984 image of a teenager and a flying telephone, one feeling still creeps through:

Something was in that room. Whether it came from inside her or far beyond her, we may never know. The flash captured it for a single heartbeat. The rest of us have been staring at it ever since...