TINA RESCH
Columbus, March 1984. Dispatch telephone frames. A crew tape of a lamp. Fourteen, a packed room.
082°59'00 W
1. Public Record
North Side, Columbus, Ohio, March 1984. Tina Resch, fourteen, adopted. After a row with Joan, objects moved. Mike Harden of the Columbus Dispatch came, then photographer Fred Shannon. Shannon could not catch it while he aimed. He pretended to look away and made two frames of a telephone in the air in front of the chair. The Dispatch printed them on 6 March. The wires took the pictures. Forty people in a twenty-by-twenty living room. William Roll stayed and spoke of spontaneous psychokinesis. James Randi was not admitted.
A Cincinnati crew, WTVN, left a camera running while they packed. The tape showed Tina knocking a lamp and then shouting. Sceptics read the whole house through that lamp. Roll and the family did not. Tina's later life is a second, harder file and is not this fortnight.
2. Date of Incident
From 1 March 1984. Dispatch 6 March. Camera-left-running shortly after.
3. Location
Columbus, Ohio. Approximate 40°03 N 082°59 W.
4. Official Narrative
No charge sheet on a ghost. Official narrative split: flying telephone in print, lamp on a forgotten tape.
5. Witness Layer
Tina. Joan. Harden. Shannon. Roll. The WTVN tape as the other witness.
6. Recovery Logistics
Two published frames. A tape the crew did not mean to make. No engine in the wall.
7. Assessment
A newsroom-and-living-room file. Keep both pictures and the lamp. A fourteen-year-old in a packed house is already a bad laboratory. Do not let the later biography rewrite the first week. Do not let one lamp close two frames Shannon said he did not stage. The honest page holds all three.
8. Materials & Remains
Dispatch 6 March 1984. WTVN offcut. Roll's notes.
9. Key Personnel
Tina Resch : The chair.
Fred Shannon : The two frames.
Mike Harden : The first reporter.
William Roll : The stay.
10. Aftermath
The pictures outlived the house. Tina's later name and court life sit elsewhere. Columbus kept the telephone.
11. Current Archive Status
Status: Columbus, March 1984. Dispatch telephone frames. Crew tape of a lamp. Split file.
Confidence: High that Shannon published two frames and that a crew tape shows a lamp shoved. Low that either object proves a spirit. Low that the tape proves every earlier hour was the same shove.
Filing note
A packed living room, a photographer who looked away, two frames of a telephone, forty people, a crew that forgot to stop a camera, a lamp and a shout. Randi stayed on the step.
He pretended his attention was elsewhere. Not a séance trick in the write-up. A news photographer admitting the only way the room would perform.