Tina Resch (also goes by Christina Boyer, born October 23, 1969) was a central figure in a series of incidents that came to be called the Columbus poltergeist case.
A series of color photographs taken by photojournalist Fred Shannon, and published by The Columbus Dispatch, were purported to show Resch sitting in an armchair with a telephone handset and phone cord flying in front of her.
[2] Parapsychologist William Roll stayed in the Resch house to investigate the case, and claimed that there had been genuine "spontaneous psychokinesis".
Examined closely, the photographic evidence in this case strongly suggested that Tina was faking the occurrences by simply throwing the phone and other "flying" objects when no one was looking.
The editor of The Columbus Dispatch, Luke Feck, embarrassed by the revelation that he and his paper were taken in by so obvious a fake, refused Randi permission to print the photos he had given him earlier, in an apparent attempt to suppress the evidence of Tina's trickery and the newspaper's credulity.
"[2]In a later incident, a visiting television crew inadvertently left a video camera on, which caught footage of Tina deliberately knocking over a table lamp, then screaming as if in fright, an event that had previously been ascribed to the poltergeist.
[11][14] Randi characterized the situation as a hoax by an adolescent girl seeking attention, saying, "examination of available material indicates that fraudulent means or perfectly explainable methods have been employed to provide the media with sensational details about an otherwise trivial matter.
"[15] Randi examined a roll of photos taken by press photographers and said that they showed the girl's foot hooked beneath a sofa that had purportedly moved by itself, and that the glass in a picture frame that allegedly shattered on its own while in her hands was already broken before she ever picked it up.
[23] In 2004, William Roll collaborated with writer Valerie Storey on a book entitled Unleashed – Of Poltergeists and Murder: The Curious Story of Tina Resch.