Fans of Feud are getting a peek into a (very, very dramatized) version of Hollywood's Golden Age, but we're guessing that Ryan Murphy isn't about to add this little tidbit to the already epic show. According to Marie Claire, internet sleuths have uncovered a series of YouTube videos filmed by Bette Davis' eldest daughter, B.D. Hyman (played by Kiernan Shipka on Feud) . The four-video series, A Long Day's Journey Into Light, chronicles Hyman's experience growing up with Davis — and mentions that her mom experimented with witchcraft.
The videos, dated 2015 but filmed sometime during the '90s, describe how Davis would cast spells aimed at her enemies. Fans of Davis now know that the mother-daughter pair didn't have the best relationship, but it seems far-fetched to assume that Hyman would make this up, especially since she adds plenty of detail.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
"[She] would sit on her bed and she had this big metal wastebasket and she would have her secretary get a piece of clothing from someone who had vexed her, crossed her in her view, and she would take this piece of clothing and she would mumble incoherently and she would then set it on fire and hold it over this metal wastebasket," Hyman explains in one video. "[She'd] laugh as it burned and she dropped it into this container."
But it gets even weirder — and darker. In addition to witnessing her mother cast spells, Hyman adds that she saw Davis "transform into a Satanic figure, [with] a Satanic face, long claws on the end of her hands." That's certainly a different look for the actor, who's known for donning glamorous gowns and her signature Old Hollywood look.
After she released a tell-all book in 1985, My Mother's Keeper: A Daughter's Candid Portrait of Her Famous Mother, Hyman and Davis became completely estranged. Davis could not forgive her daughter for sharing dark family secrets and shining a not-so-positive light on her legacy. It seems that even in death, Davis held a grudge. In another video, Hyman revealed that she still gets visits from ghosts and demons — perhaps the same ones that her mother conjured in those spells.
"Even though mother had died in 1989," she explains, "the demons that had been attached to her were still working actively against us."