A filmmaker who was able to document America's most famous inbred family has shared their horrifying secrets.
Mark Laita first met the Whittaker family, who are widely recognised as America's most famous inbred family, after being granted access to their peculiar world.
The family have little contact with anyone in the outside world and when Laita first attempted to photograph the family, neighbours threatened him.
He revealed that he travelled to the aptly named small village Odd, in West Virginia, where a police officer led him down an isolated lane, The Mirror reports.
His clips have been viewed millions of times and speaking on the Koncrete KLIPS podcast, he recalled his first impressions of both the family and their environment.
He said: “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, and 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 at 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 inbred family have no education and live in squalor, cut off from civilisation in their backcountry shack.
He found three siblings and a cousin living together in a filthy, squalid home with several dogs.
Some spoke only in grunts or squeals, and were beset with physical and mental health issues and irregularities.
In his YouTube videos, Laita warns any curious folk intending to visit to mock or disturb the family to think again as they will be chased off.
The Whittakers eventually allowed him to take some photos after he offered to take a portrait for them to place in the casket of a loved one who had recently died.
"They are kind of protected by the neighbours and the relatives [who] don’t like these people coming to ridicule them," he added.
"And everybody in the area kind of knows of them and are like, 'let's go over to the Whittakers' and laugh at them or whatever.'"
After his first alarming visit, Laita kept in touch with the family.
In 2020, he returned and shot a film, Inbred family - The Whittakers, which he posted on his YouTube channel, Soft White Underbelly.
The documentary film shows him conversing with the three siblings, Betty, Lorraine and Ray, as well as with their cousin, Timmy.
Another brother, Freddie, had died of a heart condition.
When pressed about their background, Betty won't say if her parents were related and says she didn't know why Ray, Lorraine and Timmy had disabilities
Laita wrote: "There is no way I would be able to confirm that the Whitaker parents were related, but given that this does happen in this part of the country and the Whitakers are the most extreme case I’ve seen so far.
"I would bet that inbreeding was at least partly responsible for the mental and physical abnormalities seen in Lorraine, Freddie, Ray, and Timmy.”
A year later, in a follow-up video, Betty confirms their parents were double first cousins.
Another video released earlier this year features another relative, Kenneth. Laita discusses with him his family members' disabilities and facial abnormalities.
When asked why their eyes don't point forward, Kenneth says: "Might be coal mining."
Laita has helped the family to raise money to pay repairs and improvements at their home. The fundraising is still ongoing as Laita is now trying to buy them a new house.
He said some of the feedback from his work with the family had been critical, calling him "an exploitative b*****d".
But he's defended his work, saying: "I think it's good for people to know that a lot of these things exist.
"Everything can be viewed as exploitative. I'm exposing or creating awareness of what is going on in our country."
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