Paranormal Encounter: The Becker Haunting | When NBC Televised an Exorcism — Ep. 67

A Televised Exorcism Mystery

What if I told you that in 1971, a Chicago television crew walked into a family's home to film an exorcism? The cameras captured a medium slipping into a trance, a room filled with people wearing crucifixes, and a gust of wind that sent curtains moving across the room. Years later, the man who lived there watched the footage again and became convinced that something else had been caught in the background. A figure standing in the doorway. The footage still exists, but it's brief, grainy, and strangely incomplete. We hear Edwin and Marsha Becker describe a house where phones came off the hook, objects moved, and a woman's voice could be heard crying in the night. We see a medium enter a trance while a small group tries to drive whatever they believe is there out of the building. But the broadcast only gives us a few minutes. The larger story came later through Edwin Becker's account of what happened before the cameras arrived, and what he said continued after they left. They thought they were buying a home and an investment, but instead, according to the Beckers, it became a place where phones came off the hook, objects moved, voices were heard, and the history of the people who had lived there before seemed to reach into the present. What makes this case unusual is that part of it was filmed by NBC. We can still watch the Beckers describe what they believed was happening, and we can still see the ceremony intended to drive the spirits out. But the broadcast is only one piece of the story. This is the story of the Becker haunting, the televised exorcism that brought their home into millions of living rooms, and the blurry figure Edwin Becker later believed was hiding in the footage. And this is State of the Unknown.

Moving In And Early Disturbances

The first things the Beckers noticed were small enough to dismiss. Edwin later filled in the beginning in his book True Haunting. He said he first saw an advertisement for the property in July 1970, and the family moved into the two-flat on December 1st. In Chicago, a two-flat is a building divided into two separate apartments, usually one on each floor. The Beckers lived upstairs and rented the lower apartment to tenants. Marcia was pregnant and they wanted a place to raise their child. The building was also an investment. Edwin hoped the rent from downstairs would help cover the mortgage. The house didn't begin as a haunted house. It was simply the home they'd bought and were trying to make work. Most of what we know about the early disturbances comes from Edwin's later account. True Haunting was published in 2011, four decades after the events, while the NBC report preserves only a few minutes of what the couple said and what the crew filmed. At first, the problems were easy to explain. A phone would be off the hook. Something would go missing and turn up somewhere unexpected. Edwin said he found a garage key bent into an L shape. Marcia reportedly saw her electric mixer lift into the air. Any one of those things could have had an ordinary explanation. A receiver might have been knocked from its cradle. An object could have been misplaced. Even the mixer might have malfunctioned somehow. But the details kept accumulating. The sounds were harder to shrug off. The Beckers said they heard a woman crying. Edwin later described being woken by it, and he mentioned that sound in the NBC report. He also wrote about hearing what sounded like a couple arguing on the back porch. At first, he assumed the voices belonged to the neighbors. That would have been the natural explanation. A two flat in a city neighborhood isn't a silent place. People come and go, and sound travels through walls, floors, windows, and alleys. An argument outside can sound much closer than it really is. But Becker said the argument kept returning at about the same time and lasted about as long each time. Eventually he started wondering whether it was coming from inside the house. That was when the reports began to feel less like isolated incidents and more like a pattern. The uncertainty became part of daily life. They could go to bed without knowing whether the next interruption would be a misplaced object, a sound from another room, or a woman's voice coming from somewhere inside the house. There were tenants downstairs, too. In Becker's book, they're named Dave and Ellen. They had their own apartments and their own routines, separate from the Beckers upstairs. That mattered because reports weren't coming only from the family who owned the building. Becker said Dave complained about loud crashes upstairs while the Beckers were away. When Edwin and Marsha went up to check, he remembered finding the rooms in order, but the pets were huddled together. I've always found that detail interesting. People often say animals notice things humans miss, especially in stories about haunted places. I don't know whether that tells us anything about the paranormal, but within the Becker story, the animals' reaction made the incident feel different from an unexplained noise. We only know about that event through Becker's account. There are no separate interviews with Dave or Ellen in the material we have, but their involvement changed the situation. The tenants were hearing things too. Becker said he first tried to deal with the house in practical ways. He wasn't looking for a ghost. He asked a parish priest to bless the home. The blessing ended when the sprinkler holding the holy water burst as the priest raised it. The priest left without finishing and later declined to come back. We don't have his side of the story. For the Beckers, though, the failed blessing wasn't just another strange incident. They had tried to make the house feel ordinary again, and even that attempt had ended in a way they couldn't explain. The priest's refusal to return left them without the kind of help they'd expected to have. They were still living in the building, still caring for a baby, and still trying to decide whether they were dealing with a plumbing problem, a neighbor, a wiring issue, or something that didn't fit any of those explanations. By then, the problem had spread beyond one room. It was affecting the whole house. In the

Voices, Tenants, And A Failed Blessing

spring of 1971, Edwin Becker got to know a neighbor named Walter. They were talking in Walter's basement when the subject turned to the people who had lived in the house before the Beckers. The conversation and everything Walter reportedly told him comes from Becker's later book. Walter told him about a family Becker later called the Verderis. They'd lived in the house for years. There was an elderly woman named Myra. One of her sons had become estranged from her, and other members of her family had died in the building. Becker wrote that one son, Henry, had died young. He also said the wife of another son, Ben, had died by suicide in the basement. Walter reportedly told him that the family patriarch had built the house. Other than Ben's wife, the Beckers were the first people outside the family to live there. That conversation gave the house a past. Before then, the crying and the argument had seemed like separate incidents. After hearing Walter's story, Becker started connecting those sounds to the family who had lived there before. That was his interpretation. The conversation couldn't prove that the voices belonged to anyone who had lived in the house, or that the family history had anything to do with what the Beckers were experiencing. But it gave those experiences a possible explanation. The woman crying might have been connected to the elderly woman Becker called Myra. The argument might have been connected to another part of the family's history. In Becker's mind, the house stopped being just a place where strange things happened. It became a place where something from the past might still be present. The priest wouldn't come back, and the tenants were still reporting disturbances. Becker connected all of that to his decision to seek help from psychics and investigators. He wanted someone to tell him what was happening and what they were supposed to do about it. Becker said Dave reported heavy movement, crashes, or arguments upstairs while the family was away. Ellen later told Marsha that she'd seen a man in the baby's room. Again, we only have Becker's word for what Dave and Ellen saw, but in the story he told, the disturbances were becoming more personal. They were starting to affect everyday decisions. Becker wrote that Marsha took their child to stay with her mother and Tulsa for a short break. While she was gone, Dave said he heard more disturbances upstairs and eventually told the Beckers he wanted to move out. That changed the situation. A strange noise could be ignored. A misplaced object could be put back where it belonged. But when a tenant decided he no longer wanted to live beneath them, the problem became harder to treat as just an inconvenience. The Beckers kept looking for help. That search brought other people into the house, people with their own ideas about spirits, psychic ability, and what might be happening inside the Becker home. Tom Valentine, a writer and radio personality, became involved and connected the Beckers with Joseph Delawise, a nationally known psychic. Becker also described an earlier visit from an investigation group that brought equipment and walked through the building. He said he didn't accept everything that they told him. He wasn't prepared to believe every claim simply because someone arrived with equipment or called themselves an investigator. Then he remembered a woman in the group mentioning bullets in a jar in the basement. Becker said he hadn't told anyone about them and had nearly forgotten they were there. That didn't prove what was happening in the house, but it made him more willing to listen to the investigator's interpretation. Deloise reportedly believed there was more than one spirit in the house, an old woman Becker connected with Myra, along with two men, one older and one younger. Becker said Deloise was especially worried about the younger man. That led to a more serious intervention, a cleansing or exorcism. The Beckers were Catholic, but the people who eventually helped them came from outside their parish. In the NBC footage, reporter Carol Simpson identifies Deloise as a medium and Reverend William Durrell Davis as a reverend with Chicago's Independent Spiritualist Church. Becker's book fills in more of the story. According to Becker, Deloise contacted a priest he knew, Father Wood, for advice. Becker later said Father Wood also had a radio program in that his connections helped bring NBC to the house. That surviving segment doesn't explain exactly how those introductions happened. It does show the result. In 1971, Carol Simpson and an NBC crew arrived at the Becker

A Dark Backstory And Psychic Help

home. By then, the Beckers were no longer simply telling neighbors that something strange had happened. They had a developing explanation for the house, a group of people who believed a cleansing was necessary and a private problem that was about to become public. Whatever happened inside the building would be recorded, edited, narrated, and shown to viewers who had never seen the house and had no way to judge the room for themselves. Becker later said he was surprised when Simpson contacted him. He was cautious about turning the experience into a television story, but after meeting her, he felt she would take it seriously. That was Becker's memory of her. In the broadcast, Simpson explains the ceremony plainly and stays focused on what's happening in the room. The report opens with Edwin and Marcia describing what they said had been happening, a phone receiver coming off its cradle, bent keys, doors opening and closing, and a woman crying. Edwin says he quote, hated to think of what it was. Simpson explains that the ceremony is intended to rid the house of evil spirits. Everyone there has been asked to wear a crucifix for protection. Deloise is introduced as a medium who believes he can communicate with spirits by going into a trance. The camera is in the room with the people taking part. The sound is scratchy and the picture is grainy, as you'd expect from old television footage. We see the group gathered around Deloise while Simpson explains what he's doing. The words spoken during the trance are difficult to make out. The reporter says that a spirit is speaking through Deloise, and Simpson identifies it as an old woman concerned about a number or a combination. The people in the room aren't reacting to an abstract idea. They believe someone is speaking through the medium. They listen, respond, and continue with the ceremony as though the voices come from somewhere connected to the house. But the audience watching at home perceives only part of that experience. The words are difficult to hear, so we have to rely on Simpson's description and on the reactions of the people in the room. At one point, everyone reacts to a gust of air. Simpson reported that the breeze came through an open window and moved the curtains and Venetian blinds. Becker later insisted that every window was closed. If the window was open, the movement may have had an ordinary explanation. If it wasn't, the source of the air becomes harder to account for. Without clear footage, we can't settle which version is correct. That disagreement became important years later when he watched the tape again and saw what he believed was a figure in the doorway. At the time, though, the people in the room were focused on the ceremony itself. The ritual includes a mirror, communion, and blessed salt. Simpson says the mirror is meant to show the spirit that it has no reflection. The salt is spread around parts of the house, including the roof and the garage, to symbolically seal the building against the spirit's return. So the ceremony brings together several different ideas. There's the Christian symbolism of communion and blessed salt. There's the mirror, which Simpson says is meant to confront the spirit with its lack of a reflection. And there is Deloise's role as a medium, communicating with what the people there believe is present. The camera moves through a room filled with people wearing crucifixes. This isn't presented as a private prayer between the Beckers and a priest. It's become a group effort involving a medium, a reverend, a television reporter, a camera crew, and several people who believe the house needs to be cleansed. Becker later said the crew spent hours filming around the house before Simpson interviewed the couple. He said they returned with NBC trucks and equipment for the ceremony. He remembered network staff and executives being there and said one sound technician seemed nervous about what might happen. That comes from Becker's later account. The report we have is only the edited interview and portions of the ceremony, so we don't know how much NBC filmed or exactly how the full day unfolded. The footage does show the sequence Simpson describes. Deloise goes into a trance. People respond to what they believe is happening. There's a rush of air. The cleansing continues with the mirror, communion, and salt. At the end, Simpson says the house has been quiet for several days and the report cuts off. For the Beckers, that quiet may have felt like an answer. For NBC viewers, the story appeared to have reached a conclusion. But Becker later described a different outcome. For viewers in 1971, the report itself was unusual. Later writers have called it the first televised exorcism. That label gets repeated often, although the available sources don't establish that it was definitely the first. What we can say is that NBC put an attempted exorcism on television and treated it as a news story. Four decades after the NBC segment, in 2011, Edwin Becker published True Haunting. The book gives a much fuller account of the house. It describes more activity, several spirits, the family history Becker believed was connected to the building, and in exorcism, he said, had not worked. Much of the familiar version of the story comes from that book. The history of the people Becker believed lived in the house, the tenants' experiences, the psychic visits, and his claim that the disturbances continued after the cleansing. In Becker's telling, the family didn't leave immediately after the exorcism. They moved out in 1972, but continued renting the building for a while. Later tenants reportedly experienced disturbances too, and Becker said he eventually sold the property. That's the order he gives, although we don't have independent records of what those later tenants said. Even after the Beckers moved out, the house remained part of Becker's life. He still had to manage the property, deal with tenants, and make decisions about repairs and money. At the same time, the story he told about the building had become something larger than a difficult rental. It was now the place where the family believed they'd encountered spirits, where a ceremony had been filmed, and where a national television report had presented their fear to the public. In a 2012 interview, Edwin and Marsha talked about what the experience had done to their marriage and family. Marcia said they were a young couple with a

NBC Films The Cleansing Ritual

baby who just wanted a normal life. Edwin said the experience nearly tore their marriage apart and that he wished it never happened. That later interview gives us a different view of the story. The NBC report focuses on the house. The later interview focuses on what the house had done to the people living there. The two accounts also give the story different endings. The NBC report ends with the house having been quiet for several days. It leaves the impression that the ceremony may have succeeded. Becker's later account says the quiet didn't last. Years later, Becker returned to the television footage. He said the recording showed something the original broadcast hadn't identified. He pointed to a brief shape in a doorway. And identified it as an apparition. That interpretation came long after the cameras had left. Simpson didn't announce it during the broadcast, and the original report didn't present it as evidence. It was Becker's interpretation of what he saw when he watched the footage again. That detail changed the way many people remembered the case. The focus moved away from the ceremony and toward the background. Viewers began looking at the doorway, trying to decide whether the shape was a person, a shadow, a curtain, or something else. In 2024, Skeptical Inquirer, a magazine that examines paranormal claims from a skeptical and scientific perspective, took another look at the footage in Becker's claims. The authors said the image was low resolution and overexposed. Their best guess was that the shape might be part of a curtain moving in a breeze from an open window. They didn't present that as a definite identification. There's a complication, though. Simpson says the gust that moved the curtains and blinds came from an open window. Becker later disputed that any window was open. So even the detail behind the curtain explanation is part of the disagreement about what happened in the room. If the window was open, a moving curtain could account for the shape. If Becker was right that no window was open, that explanation becomes less satisfying. But the footage itself doesn't settle the question. It's too unclear to show exactly what the shape is, and the surviving report doesn't preserve every detail of the room clearly enough to establish what was happening around the doorway. The same article also examined the family history Becker described. The authors found census and genealogy records that conflicted with important parts of the story, including the claim that the family Becker called the Verderis were the only people who had lived there, and that some of the deaths had happened in a house. That doesn't change what we see in the NBC footage. The Beckers were interviewed. The cleansing was filmed. Simpson reported what she saw and heard. A medium entered a trance. People reacted to what they believed was happening, and the ceremony continued while the camera was running. But it does mean we should be careful with the larger story that came later. The history of the house isn't established simply because it appears in Becker's book. The tenants' experiences aren't independently

The Quiet Ending That Did Not Last

confirmed simply because Becker described them. And the shape in the doorway can't be identified with certainty from a blurry recording. The story was retold in 2012 when Sci-Fi's paranormal witness dramatized it in an episode called The Tenants. That brought the case to a new audience, but the scenes in a dramatization aren't another record of what happened inside the house. The story has also been linked to the later film project, The Haunting in Wicker Park. With each retelling, the Becker account reached farther beyond those few minutes of NBC footage. When you step back, it's worth separating what the surviving record actually preserves from what came later. NBC filmed a short report at the Becker's home in 1971. We have Edwin and Marcia describing unusual incidents, and we have part of a ritual performed by Deloise and Durl Davis. The longer story, the repeated disturbances, the tenants' experiences, the family history, and Becker's claims that the cleansing failed, comes mainly from his later book and interviews. The shape in the doorway is also a later interpretation. Becker believed he saw a ghost. Later analysis suggested it might have been a curtain. The footage is just too unclear to settle that by itself. That doesn't erase the story. It tells us what kind of story it is. Part documented television event, part reported experience, and part later interpretation of an image people still can't quite explain. I understand why Becker returned to the recording. If you had lived through years of disturbances in your own home, watched a television crew come in to document the situation, and then later noticed a shape in the background that nobody had talked about, you might return to that image too. In fact, you might watch it again and again. You might wonder whether the camera had captured something the people in the room had missed. Or you might wonder whether the years between the events and the interpretation had changed what the footage seemed to show. What interests me is how the meaning of those few minutes changed over time. Decades later, that same broadcast had become part of a much bigger story

The Doorway Figure And Skeptical Review

Edwin Becker told about the house. The television report didn't change. The story around it did. It isn't simply a question of whether a ghost appears in a recording. It's a question of what happens when an old image becomes the place where an entire experience is concentrated. The Beckers had years of memories attached to that house. Viewers had a few minutes of television. Becker looked at the footage and saw one more piece of the haunting. Other people looked at the same image and saw the limits of an old recording. The image still doesn't tell us which interpretation is right. That's what stays with me about the Becker story. The footage never gives us a definitive answer, but it does preserve the moment when a family's private fear becomes a public mystery. This has been State of the Unknown. If you enjoyed this episode, follow State of the Unknown so you don't miss the next one. And if you have a moment, leaving a rating or review in your podcast app really does help more people discover the show. I also want to thank everyone who's been sending comments and messages recently. I read and try to respond to all of them, and I really appreciate you taking the time to reach out. I'm also grateful to everyone supporting the show on Patreon. It means a lot and it helps me keep making these stories. If you're interested in helping too, the link is right in the show notes. Until next time, stay curious. And who knows? Maybe that

What The Footage Can’t Prove

shape in the doorway tonight is just a shadow cast by the hall light. Or maybe it's the reason you look twice.