Leia
The man who made America’s most inbred family famous has warned people against visiting them.
The Whittakers, of Odd, West Virginia, have been documented by filmmaker Mark Laita for two decades.
The family has a unique way of communicating – they are known to grunt, bark, and use gestures instead of words or sign language.
And now, in a recent update on the Whittakers, Laita has shared some important advice for anyone curious to meet them.
Laita first encountered the Whittakers in 2004 when he met family members Ray, Betty, Kenneth, Timmy, and Lorene.
His initial visit was met with hostility from protective neighbors. They were armed with shotguns and wary of outsiders ridiculing the family.
Despite this challenging start, Laita persevered and gained the family’s trust.
The filmmaker photographed the Whitakers for his book ‘Created Equal,’ which explores diverse American cultures and backgrounds.
In 2020, he revisited the family to deepen his understanding of their lives.
In an interview on the Koncrete KLIPS Podcast, Laita recounted his experiences with the Whittakers.
He vividly described scenes of the family members, noting misaligned eyes and exhibitions of erratic behavior.
“It was like that little scene from Deliverance that everyone knows. We came around to this road, which turns into a country road, which turns into a dirt road,” the filmmaker recalled.
“Then we come to this trailer and then a little shack on the other side of the road. And there’s these people walking around and their eyes are going in different directions and they are barking at us.
“And then one guy, you would look him in the eye or say anything and he would just scream and go running away, and his pants would fall around his ankles, and he would go running off and go and kick a garbage can. And this would happen over and over. It was out of control – the craziest thing I have ever seen.”
The filmmaker also acknowledged the difficulty in determining the extent of inbreeding within the family.
“There is no way I would be able to confirm that the Whittaker parents were related, but given that this does happen in this part of the country and the Whittakers are the most extreme case I’ve seen so far,” Laita said.
“I would bet that inbreeding was at least partly responsible for the mental and physical abnormalities seen in [siblings] Lorraine, Freddie, Ray, and [cousin] Timmy.”