Chainsaw History - Part Two: The Haunting Truth About Ed and Lorraine Warren

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

{ Discover more at ChainsawHistory.com — access our full episode list, delve into bonus content, and support our show with a paid subscription! }Grab a crucifix and burn some sage! Jamie and Bambi (finally) wrap up the enigmatic tale of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Learn how a historically accurate version of The Conjuring would have ended with Ed getting punched in the face and thrown out of the Perron family home. Visit the most famous haunted house in the world—the Amityville Horror—which taught the Warrens the value of book and movie deals. Meet the author who dedicated his life to discrediting the Warrens. And learn the dark secret that Lorraine Warren tried to hide when she signed the deal for The Conjuring.In this episode recommend people donate to Feeding America to address growing food insecurity in our country. We also express support and solidarity with the Atlanta Forest Defenders and encourage you to learn more and help stop Cop City.

It's fucking chains on this three time. Drugs are definitely picking it. Hey, you know, I need the drugs in order to be able to tolerate the shit and the life and especially, you know, even just the topic. So let's get quiet. Yeah, we start with a song this time. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da Yeah, that was clunky and it didn't rhyme and I defend that because those two do not deserve any more effort I have just you just try shit and keep blazing forward. That's the Ed Warren way The way that I'm giving you today. All right, so I know you're just delighted that we get to rejoin the romantic

supernatural adventures of Eduardo the exorcist and his psychic sidekick, Lorraine. Yeah, I mean, she's psychically sensitive. But now I'm like, even if I wanted to believe that before, now I don't. Well, yeah, and I, as if you keep watching the Conjuring movies, Lorraine's powers grow with each movie to where she's just a straight up X-man in the third one. Like she is just doing like crazy-ass full-vision psychic shit. Okay, because in the Conjuring she just seemed to get like a head- Yeah, no, it was more mild and more understated. Yeah, it's like I can feel things.

I'm starting to not feel good. And then they had this whole, you know, and then Patrick Wilson was always like, there's a danger, you know, she could get too connected to something. Well, yeah, he was like, he wanted her out of there. Like he was the caring husband. He couldn't afford for anything to happen to her. The most precious thing in the entire world. Madly in love that they've been since they were 16 years old. Yes, since they were kids. All right, everybody. Welcome.

Welcome to Chainsaw History, the podcast where we rummage around in haunted houses and Scooby-Dewer Way, just showing that they're, it's all a bullshit. It's a Smokin' Mirror. It's just the old man who owns the abandoned amusement park the whole time. Wah, wah. I am your host, Jamie Chambers, and this is my sister, Bambi. Hello.

We're a comedy podcast. I'm not a historian, but I did watch the real Ghost Busters every afternoon and drink Ecto Cooler. So. So you have Diabetes? I'm legit. Yes.

That is where the 50 extra fans came from. Because that was like just pure sugar and dye. Hmm. Diabetes. If you go to chainsawhistory.com, you like just pure sugar and dye. Hmm, diabetes. If you go to chainsawhistory.com, you can find ways you can support the show, find our back episodes and bonus content, like the Value of Series, where Bambi reads children's history books to me

that we were forced to endure in the 1980s. And we also have a series called No Time for Love, Dr. Jones, where we explore the historical adventures of a young Indiana Jones. Well, eventually, all the way to Old Indiana Jones, but I was about to say there was some old man Indian in there and I don't recommend it. I know you miss my old Indie voice soon, but today we're going to get back to the real life ghost banishing and demon fighting duo Ed and Lorraine Warren. Oh yeah. So in our last episode we mostly talked about their background in early start.

So to recap real quick, in the official story, Ed and Lorraine were Catholic school sweethearts. A normal all-American couple in the 1940s, except he'd been dealing with and learning about spiritual entities since he was about five years old, and the rain has X-man powers to see through time and to read the auras of the living and the dead. You forgot also the power to get headaches spontaneously and to randomly feel things. After Ed survived his boat exploding and forward, the pair became traveling hobo artists, drawing and painting a collection of haunted houses, grabbing stories about demonic possession.

Over time, they kind of established themselves as the reigning experts of the spiritual and the demonic, at a time as America became more and more interested in that sort of thing. So, and then that would eventually go straight into the satanic panic of the 1980s. One of my favorite times I lived through. Oh, yeah, it's definitely my favorite moral panics. So, we also talked about one of the earliest notable cases and first conjuring cinematic universe of villain Annabelle. Who in real life is a 1970 era raggedy and all from a department store?

That was probably maybe allegedly paired with a half-ass story stolen from the Twilight Zone. The, no, it was straight up ripped off for Twilight. So now we're all cut up, ready to go and dive into it even more. So, yeah, just let, just let, think fondly for just one more moment about Patrick Wilson and Vera Framiga, the nice cinematic warrants that are kind of cool. I find it very hilarious that the doll that I have, Millie, that sits in my living room, is looks like creepier and closer to the cinematic

Annabelle than the little fluffy pillowy. We could we could we could tart that doll up into a like a ghost doll if we wanted to. I would never want to. I would never do that to Millie. So just like last time the research on this one was a lot of articles and interviews and I'll link to all of this in the show notes. Did watch the documentary Devil's Road on Max and I read the authorized sort of biography called Demonologist by Gerald Brittle, who later ensued the Warrens and Warner Brothers.

And in fact a bunch of people said the Warrens and Warner Brothers once there was a lot of money on the line for a lot of this stuff. Yeah, I'm sure and I hope they won. Yeah, please don't read his stupid book. I did it for you people. And one other thing I have to do is offer a content warning, unfortunately, referring to grooming and sexual assault and abuse. So if those topics bother you, you might either want to skip this one or at least skip toward the end. I'll let you know when that stuff's coming up. What does that mean I can leave? Sadly no, you're stuck here. Well, but those things bother me. So I guess I'm taking one to the team.

They bother me too, but I had to learn about them. I did, that's a thing. I didn't go looking for this. This wasn't what I wanted. This is supposed to be a fun story about haunted house grifters. So before we jump back into the ridiculous case histories, I think it's worth taking a moment to consider the worldview that shapes how these two approach and discuss the paranormal. They are not Sam and Dean Winchester using crosses and rocks salt and whatever works just because of like folklore and trial and error. Okay, for the record, I would much rather see

Jensen Ackles shoot ghosts with a sought-off shock on full of rock salt than like of a real Ed Warren just yelling and throwing. Screaming as demons and a face. Screaming and throwing a crucifix, running like a bitch. Oh, dear. So yeah, Ed Warren is aggressively Catholic. Maybe one of the most aggressively Catholic dudes

have ever encountered in both real life, like in person, or just learning about them. And of course, Lorraine is his most fervent and loyal supporter. So while Ed says he believes in documenting cases and capturing evidence, he is quick to point out that he is a demonologist, not a parapsychologist. Quote, much spirit phenomenon is invisible and unmeasurable. The outward manifestation represents only a part of the much bigger picture that can't be measured with testing instruments. Though parapsychology has given us much data on unusual phenomenon

and its link to man, it is still never approached in the understanding of the true principles of metaphysics governing most spirit phenomenon. In fact, as a rule, the parapsychologist does not believe in the existence of spirits, sometimes even to the point of being ridiculous." Okay, so he's going to talk about other people being ridiculous. Yes, he's like the people who are trying to do any kind of science because he says that's just an illegitimate approach. You can't apply natural law to the unnatural world, the supernatural world. He's like, duh, you dummies. You can't, like he even said at one point, like they want me to catch a ghosty in a bottle you

can't do that I mean that's kind of the way you talked about it. So in the war and way of thinking any approach that doesn't acknowledge Catholic doctrine as the literal truth of the way to deal with these things you're just getting in your own way. It's not it's not my fault my religion that I was born into and raised in was just happens to be the the objectively correct one and it is one of the funny things like if you actually think about the conjuring movies and you was just happens to be the objectively correct one. And it is one of the funny things. Like if you actually think about the conjuring movies and you were just like, assume this is a parallel world where this is like in this world, everything's real.

Like in that world, the Catholic religion is objectively true because you know, you're like, you ed saved that woman who floated off the ground. Was going to murder her own kids. Yeah. By speaking. By doing an exorcism that he admitted himself, he wasn't authorized to do. And the real Ed Warren has been said many times.

Like all like Lorraine was almost offended that they portrayed at doing an exorcism by himself in that movie because he would never take the authority of a priest. In fact, they usually had like four of them around when they were doing that sort of thing. Okay. So once again, it has to be the Catholic way. Any and a non-religious approach is illegitimate. He's also clear that making things right with God is the best way forward and to avoid anything

even hinting of the occult. So my Dungeons and Dragons playing ass is screwed. Well, you know, I have like, you know, moles and skin tags and things. And you know, some of the, I have a actual, a large mole on my breast. So I would have been burned at the edge. We're gonna be talking about, so we're gonna be talking about a witch soon enough. We're coming up on the witch, because we're gonna be talking about the conjuring, the actual story in a minute.

So anyway, the demonologist describes the warrants helping the foster family, who accidentally summoned a dark spirit with a Ouija board that got from like Sears or whatever. Ed's solution was to spray everything with holy water and wave around a crucifix and threaten the spirit with exorcism so it ran away. Okay.

Get the fuck out of here, demon. The name of Jesus. He then gave his instructions to the family. Quote, Everything depends on your future actions at explain once they came in. Any improvements, you may have thought about making in your lives

oughta begin right now. Certainly, he told Meg, there should be no more rituals of any sort. All the occult books and conjuring paraphernalia that were in your bedroom belong in the garbage. Unquote. He then recommends a priest blesses their house like immediately to prevent the spirit

from sneaking back in once Ed's back is turned. Quote. The sneaking back in. Yes. The spirits are always creeping right back in. There's a creep. Okay, so this is, okay, so this is some scubidation. Quote, most of all, Ed's trust,

your best protection in the coming weeks and months is to develop positive interest as a shield against the negative. If you religious minded people consider going to church as a family once a week, as a show of sincerity. Unquote. Because you know what's going to church always mean to you since you're... No, I've never had a negative emotion in a church

never once in my life. And you know everyone there is full of positivity and sincerity. Yeah, and all speak the truth. Never abuse anyone. I have no idea what's going on in Ed Warren's head or heart. I can only make my guesses. So this is all my opinion allegedly. He believed or and and so he I'm telling you he commits knowing hoaxes and frauds throughout this whole story nice with the Annabelle thing we just talked about made this bunch of shit up but I believe he kind of rationalized it in his head is because he saw increasingly that people being afraid of the devil made them run straight to the loving arms of Jesus and mother Mary okay

so he could tell himself that by scaring the crap out of people, he was saving souls and bringing people into Mother Church. I'm saving love. Yeah. I'm saving the world. And if he just happens to make a few bucks along the way, you know, a man's got to eat. Honestly, that would be the true Catholic way.

From the documentary Devil's Road, Ed had this to say, you would be shocked at how many Catholic priests don't even believe there's a devil. It's all in the Bible. Within every 10 words, you have a psychic word, apparition, ghost, devil, demon, evil. People say Ed Warren hides behind his beliefs of Catholicism. I don't hide behind them.

I use them because I've seen and I've heard and I've felt the things that it's talked about. Unquote, that's the Ed Warren mindset. The Catholic is shit way. Oh, so. Dokey. Now with all that other way, you wanna talk about some fucking haunted houses?

Finally. Let's do it. I'm really into haunted houses. And this is the house from the movie you watched. This is the parent Family from the Nesper website quote in January 1971 the parent family moved into a 14 room farm house in Harrisville Rhode Island where Carolyn Roger and their five daughters began to notice things happening almost immediately after they moved in it started small Carolyn would notice the broom went missing or seemed to move from place to place on its own. She would hear the sound of something scraping against the

kettle in the kitchen where no one was there. She'd find small piles of dirt in the center of a newly-clean kitchen floor. The girls began to notice spirits around the house. Though for the most part, they were harmless. There were a few, however, that were angry. Fun quote. Okay, so wait, there were spirits going around sweeping the floors. Apparently, pollen up dirt. Well, I mean- Just so it's easy to put a dustpan.

It seems like- I was about to say, can- Shit! Can I get that ghost? Can I get the house cleaning ghost one that- The room book goes. The one that likes to dust and sweep. That'd be fucking fantastic.

Now they said like the day they moved in, they saw the apparition of an old man who vanished, that they multiple people saw some old dude. That was the first ghost sign that they got like on move-in day to this farmhouse in Rhode Island. Okay. So an old man that likes to do a housework? That was thinking. So this of course, this is the story that inspired. Moving to my house, old man. this is the story that inspired my house, old man. Is the story that inspired the conjuring. And so over time, the phenomenon got more intense.

The documentary Devils Road declares the parents, quote, desperately seek help from Ed and Lorraine, who are known for their paranormal investigations and doing battle with the demonic, unquote, a local reporter named Laura Didio said, quote, the mother Carolyn seemed to be the focal point of with a lot of negative energy. I remember coming here once with the warrants and Carolyn said, and this always stuck with me and still does, years later, she went to cut open an orange

and blood spurred it out. Unquote. I heard that and my thought was, was it a blood orange? Yeah. Mom was also seeing apparitions. Yeah, this is the 70s. Maybe that she just never seen a blood orange before she picked up the wrong kind of orange, the grocery store, but she was a fucking yokeal. Right. So over time, they saw that old man on move in day, but they saw what mostly mom started reporting seeing the apparition of an older woman. So this isn't from an August 1977 story published in the Providence Journal, the local newspaper

and Providence Red Army. Quote, Mrs. Perrin said she awoke before dawn one morning to find an apparition by her bed, the head of an old woman hanging off to one side over an old grey dress. There was a voice reverberating, get out, get out, I'll drive you out with death and gloom." Unquote. Yeah, I guess I'd be scarier than the old man. It's an old man, ain't I? The old man, and who does this housework?

Yeah, doors started slamming or they become stuck open. A disembodied childlike voice would cry, mama, mama. So, Andrea Parent, the oldest of the five girls, who apparently, like at least about 10 years ago, was living here in the Atlanta area. And I guess Carolyn the mom was living with her here too. Had been the most vocal about telling a story.

So Andrea is the oldest of the five daughters. She at this point has three, a trilogy of self-published books about living in this house. And you learn later that she was one of the consultants and turned over notes and got paid money money money for the conjuring. Okay. Yeah, so credible witness. Although I have to say, mom, personally, if I had gone nuts and tried to kill my family, I wouldn't want to go tell the world about it. But here's the good news.

She never tried to kill her family in that part which just completely made up for the movie. Like a lot of this stuff was. The movie was very fictionalized even by what the warrens and the parents like actual story is. So it's like even if you believe that this story was bullshit, the conjuring is one extra layer of bullshit because it doesn't even try to stick to the official events. It just takes the best little

pieces of it and then makes out the rest to make a more compelling movie. Well, I mean that's that's how the best stories are. And so that's how we're going to go. So but right now we're going by what Andrea, the oldest daughter, is having to say, so she published these books. She even hints that some of the ghost abused the family sexually. Whoa, let's just say there was a very bad male spirit and five little girls, unquote. That's all she'll say about that. I mean, that's usually more of a dad thing.

Yeah. Yeah. So none of this is good. And there was plenty to tell. So in the movie, the conjuring, the family moves in and like over an implied period of like weeks, maybe a month, this stuff starts building up until the war ends have to like really intervene or these families screwed because mom's going to kill the kids. But in real life, they moved in the house in 1971 and stayed until

1980. So literally nine or so years. Yeah, you can tell scared they were. Yep. And the supernatural allegedly fucking with them pretty much daily, according to Andrea. Yeah, you can tell I'm scared they were. Yep, and the supernatural allegedly fucking with them pretty much daily, according to Andrea. Well, that's the thing. It's like if it were just like, get out as they swept the floors, I could see them being like, yeah, I don't know. However, it's like, if you want to say that five children were being molested in that house by ghosts,

wouldn't you want to get your kids out? So that's just one thing to think about that they did stick around for nine years at one point, financial difficulties. They had apparently, because when they moved in, it wasn't just that house, they had a shit lid, like hundreds of acres of land that came with it. And they sold off a big chunk of it

during that nine years to get by during hard times. So... Then by wouldn't they have sold the house with that chunk, kept the other chunk and built a nicer, not haunted house? That's an interesting question. I mean, maybe I'm just a problem solver. All right, so from a July 2013 issue of the Providence Journal, quote,

in the movie, Carolyn seeks the help of the Warrens. But Andrea said the Warrens were brought in by a paranormal group in Rhode Island and one day just arrived at the front door. Mrs. Warren came into the house knowing nothing, Andrea said, but she added, she stepped in the kitchen and said, I feel a dark presence, and her name is Beth Sheba. The warrants later concluded the Harrisville House was haunted by Beth Sheba Sherman, who had lived there in the 19th century. She had been practicing Satanist according to the Warrens account in the journal, who had murdered her young daughter as a sacrifice to Lucifer, so that she might remain on the premises, to haunt the house forevermore. The woman followed established black rituals and took her own life. She hanged herself, hence her apparition to Mrs. Perrin, according to the Warrens. Unquote.

Heavy emphasis on those last words, according to the Warrens. I was about to say, didn't they say it was an old man? Well, it started as an old man, but then the Warrens, literally basically, sort of the official... The story sort of comes to the point, like, and I say, real, with the biggest air quotes ever, but the official Warren-approved story that kind of matches up with the biggest air quotes ever, but the official Warren approved story

that kind of matches up with Carolyn and Andrea Perrin is that there's this witch and there was these benign spirits, but the witch was also using the benign spirits to torment the family too because she was the head ghost or whatever. If that makes sense. Oh my God, so even when you die,

you can go, you can get like bullied into like having a You have still have to go to work and have a boss. You don't like all right old man ghost You must now sweep the floor to creepy pile. That'll really fuck with her Now touch the little girl They'd do anything quite as dramatic as the fucking thing on top of the wardrobe that jumps down. Scared you, shit out of you. This is one of the few things.

The conjuring was good about not doing a lot of straight up jump scares, but that was one of the few cheap ones and it kind of earned it because at that point, it was just setting all this mood. And then finally, when it did, there's like, oh God. That's not good. And you're looking inside. You're thinking it's gonna jump out from inside

and instead it's on top of the goddamn thing. Fuck you, James Wan. Yeah, and what it was was very unsettling. It was a very unsettling moment. Like I was ready for it and you still. Now, he did a good job of making it ready for it and still getting it. I'm getting it.

It was a good one. He's a good director. He made the insanity of Aquaman at least still entertaining. All right. So we established this as they so they've identified this suicide murder which is the head ghost. This is the reason why the parent family are all messed with. So this is all part of the official story. So the one's barge into the house one day and begin asking questions, poking around, making declarations about what's going on. The rain's like doing her transmedium thing. She roams around reading the oras.

So Ed decides the next move is to hold a science to contact any spirit hanging around. See, what's up? So Carolyn, the mom is instantly on board for all this, but Roger, the truck driver, dad, ate so keen on it. What's going on? So he sort of reluctantly dragged into this. Well, I mean if you were molesting your daughters and spirits were being blamed, what you would be you wouldn't feel good about being exercised. What the fuck? So what are these weirdos doing

here? So they ought to hold hands and sit around the table. So Lorraine does her psychic medium thing where she's like presence, you know, reveal yourself, give us your name doing you're talking to, you know, the unseen. And then while she's doing all this, and suddenly things got real weird, real fast. So Andrea Perrin describes this experience to USA Today in July 2013, all part of this promotional blitz for the conjuring. Quote. Now, so she's saying that she was hiding, watching the say on.

She wasn't supposed to be there, but she was like hiding behind. Oh, but she saw it. But she's hiding by, she's hiding by the corner. Quote, I thought I was going to pass out, Andrea says. My mother began to speak in a language not of this world. Her chair levitated and she was thrown across the room

Unquote now from the devil's road documentary quote Roger's petrified for his wife Something's happening to her that he's never seen anything like this. So he runs to her But Ed stops him Ed believes she's under demonic attack and then if Roger intervenes in any way He could put himself in danger at that point Roger's furious and he punches Ed in the face Because he's hell-bent on helping his wife. And then Rodger kicks Ed and Lorraine out of the house and they're not allowed back and again. Unquote.

So imagine that the conjuring had ended with Ron Livingston punching Patrick Wilson in the face and telling to fuck off and never come back. That's how it would have ended if it matched the real story. Yes, so far. You haven't sold me on ghosts. You possibly have sold me on like pedophilia though. And mom might be a little nuts. So yeah, we're gonna get into some of that.

And like, you know, whether mom, like she said her mom's chair levitated, like they turned that into the scene in the basement at the end of the movie where a chair lifts it up and turns literally fucking upside down, a little bit more dramatic than her chair flew back and then fell to the floor and then she started speaking in tongues. The movie version of course had Ed saving Carol and cleansing the house but performing an exorcism and as we establish real Ed would never step on a priest's frock like that. That, and apparently in order to cleanse the house,

you have to like get permission from someone. Mm-hmm. You don't have that a little bit too in a minute. So instead the family just lived there for like almost a decade. Like as long as I was in Wisconsin, those people lived in that haunted house. And then when they moved, apparently everything just stopped

both in the house and with them. It just was just over. When asked the obvious question of why the family didn't move, the one you asked at the very beginning, because remember, they're according to Andrea here, the oldest daughter, they wake up every morning to their bed shaking and like the stench of rotting meat.

She said, Andrea said, quote, I hear that question most every day. I think we were supposed to have this experience and share it with the world, unquote, for some sweet, sweet residuals from Warner Brothers. This was supposed to happen because now I'm ridg off this. Well, if not rich, at least made some money. I'm rich off the school. Well, if not rich, at least made some money. But, okay, yeah, again, if spirits were molesting my children, I'd move. That's a really good point, especially when you can sell, like, they were able to sell hundreds of acres of land and they could have just sold the whole thing.

Yeah, there's definitely an argument to be made if this is all for real, because it really seems like some of the families kind of kept their mouth shut, but Carolyn, the mom and Andrea, the oldest daughter of the ones who were like, la, la, la, la, talking about all this, and they were the ones who were very much participatory in the promotion of the conjuring, and as they were seriously financially benefiting. No, dad wasn't a child molester, not at all. So I, you know, I am not here to slander or blind.

This is all just speculation. No. And again, I don't think that dad was molesting his daughters either. I think that this is just a bunch of fucking horses. So, so, but you know, I would love nothing more than do, like extensive historical research to confirm or debunk the specific claims, made by the Warrens and Andrea Perron's books.

But you know what, I don't have to, because a hero, a fucking legend stepped into this story that I was not expecting, who did all of the work, even if she did it all in self-defense because she's just a fucking frustrated old lady. So let me introduce you to this, this little side story. So when the conjuring came out in 2013,

so we're 10 years into the conjuring cinematic universe at this point, Warner Brothers really wanted to lean into this hole based on a true story angle. And the fact that the Warrens really have had a reputation ever since Amityville, at least for people are into that sort of thing. Like I'd have heard of the Warrens when I was since I was a teenager. They were always in like the inquirer and shit. So the Warner Bros. really wanted to like lean into this hole, you know, this is, you know, maybe a little bit exaggerate, but it's still based on the true story of what happened.

And so it's why the conjuring films always roll the credits over photographs of the real people in places, so every Conjuring movie ends with the real pictures and little clips and little bits and pieces to kind of sell the legitimacy of the story. It also means that they didn't want to change the names of the real people or places, which made it really easy for anyone interested to look up the real conjuring farmhouse and they did. So paranormal researchers, YouTubers, lucky lusin' other weirdos just constantly showed up on the property wanting to snoop around the barn, look in the windows or just bug the owners and ask them questions about ghosts. Now, this owner, these owners who are a retired couple, who lived in this house for decades, suddenly because of this fucking movie,

people are in the fact that no one even made a bother to protect their privacy in any way, just suddenly people are showing up day and night and fucking with them and making them feel unsafe. Lovely, I hope these people sued the shit out of someone. So these poor old couple had for the first time in decades had to say the way to post our house, they'd put no trespassing signs, ropes and chains up everywhere that they didn't want, and even still like she said she didn't, she used to like going out into her garden or sitting on her fucking porch and

enjoying the fact she lives in a beautiful place in this historic hundred years old farmhouse and instead these these fucking assholes coming in from everywhere because they watch this movie and it makes them interested in the paranormal and they want to do their tic-tocs. See, it's why we can't have nice things. So however, this lady, Norma Sutcliffe, my new fucking hero, is she, she's like a retired, I think, I therapist, like a counselor, I believe from what she said, decided to roll up her sleeves and call everyone out on their bullshit.

She worked with a local journalist and spent months pouring through historical records, genealogical information, and old newspaper files. Norma did the work and produced the receipts. So, and I know this is going to shock you, but it turns out the warrants and the parents are completely full of shit. No. Do you mean there wasn't a witch? So yeah, no, was not a witch. So Norma took her research and put out a one hour and four minute YouTube video discussing this and just throwing it putting the screenshots of all of her research on the screen as she's talking. Just as just an old lady just laying it out backed by fact. So yeah, I fucking love Norma. She claims that Carolyn Perrin desperately wanted to move

and started and concocted. She was the first one that came up with this, that Shiva Sherman, the witch story, just taking a person that she found out about who'd lived in the area. So this is quoting Norma's video. She claimed that best Shiva had been in Honald. She was not, that she had Norma's video. She claimed that Beth Sheba had been an adult. She was not.

That she had lived in our home. She did not. She claimed that Beth Sheba, when she was young, killed an infant with a knitting needle, and according to her, a hearing was held to see if there was enough evidence to bring her to trial for murder. No evidence of the death or a hearing hearing anywhere has ever been found including the Superior Court Records. Caroline claims the community knew all about it and that the town's people ostracized

Bashiba for actually murdering the infant for sacrifice and a satanic ritual because she was really a witch. That Bashiba had made a pact with the devil to keep her beauty. No evidence in any historical record, or from any local historians, to do the actual work. Well, that's kind of how things, yeah. Now this, this all tried. So yeah, it turns out that Besheba not only didn't hang herself in the barn, but she never even lived directly like in that house. You know, was there even a lady named Beth Sheba?

Oh, yeah, there was a real lady named Beth Sheba Sherman. That's what it was a cool. She clearly picked for having that kind of witchy neat name. Yeah. so yes There was indeed a woman named Beth Sheba Sherman The only real unusual thing about her is she married in her 30s, which is kind of unusual for the 1800s She had several kids most of them died of your typical childhood horrific illnesses

That were all over the place back then But she did have one horrific illnesses that were all over the place back then. But she did have one son that grew to adulthood, had his own family. So this poor woman died after a stroke as an old lady, just a few years after her husband. She was like, she literally lived to be in her like 80s. Okay. She did not hang herself. So this is a bunch of slander.

And not only that, but her funeral was presided over by like a prominent local Baptist preacher. So. Oh, so you slander in the Catholic now too. So like just like those poor old ladies that Matthew Hale sent its to death back in her trial of which is episode, poor Bishiba is another innocent old lady

falsely accused of witchcraft by assholes. Well, at least she was not actually hung. She just got to live her life, feeding a person. Yeah, and then it was done. Yeah, and despite just having a witchy name, she was just a normal ass person doing normal ass things. Yeah. So, yeah, the only, the tragedy of her life is just she lost several children,

but it's like that was very common back then, especially if you're a kind of a semi-backwards, you know, 1800s family living in Rhode Island. Well, I mean, it's not super uncommon to lose a pregnancy now. That's it now, but then it was turned into she murdered her own children, even though one of them was fine and got married and all that, but whatever, it's all that's all bullshit. So anyone who wants to check out Norma's incredible work in the sake of skepticism, I'll be linking to her video in the show notes. I literally watched the entire thing last night. Listen to every word she had to say, which she ended on a day of tribe about science and

reason should be our guideposts and like rock on Norma. Wow. I hope she's still doing okay. This video is, you know, it's like nine years old. I do know this that they did give up and I don't know the circumstances. They did move, you know, whether whatever happened to Norman or husband Jerry, hope they're okay, hope they just moved somewhere where nobody would bother them, but apparently whoever owns the property now is just trying to do a tourist trap. They're like, if people are going to flop- That's all it's going to be good for anyone. Well, if people are going to be showing up anyway, charge them fucking money.

That's what I would say. That's why they fill in part of that documentary in that anyone. If people are going to be showing up anyway, charge them fucking money. That's what I would say. That's why they film part of that documentary in that house because those people are now like, yeah, just pay us money. You can do whatever the fuck you want. This totally yes for real haunted house, sure, sure, sure. But yeah, she totally rips the apart and proves that the Warrens and Andrea were just incredible liars. And very clearly for profit.

I mean, at least for profit lying is a lot more explainable than not for profit lying. But speaking of which, so this is this early story and this is when the warrants like, you know, when they do investigate the parents, this is when they were just starting to do like their college lecture bit this is before they're the idea of even selling the stories has kicked in because this is the one where they learn their lesson let's talk about the Amityville Horror. Funny enough do you know I've never seen the Amityville Horror? I've seen it so long ago I only have vague memories of the actual movie and I didn't watch any of the remake

I didn't watch any of the spin-offs, but but as you know Still like just by reputation. Yeah, I know I know have the most famous haunted house in America Maybe even the world and and the brave priest that Takes in the demon at the into his own body and then throws himself out the window. That was the exorcist. Is that the exorcist? That's the exorcist. The exorcist has nothing to do with the warrants directly but also incredibly important. I was about to say there were so many flashes of movies. I believe this is the case that launched the warrants down the path that would eventually lead them to

Starring characters in their own film franchise. Is the amity the amityville horror That's the dude that killed a sibling his family killed his whole family. Yes, we're about to talk about that There we go. Yep. I knew I'd get there eventually stroke brain The horror started very real as you just said because near the end of 1975, the very year I was born, a guy named Ronald DeFoe, went by Butch, you know, Long Island, New York. He was arrested for murdering all six members of his family in their Long Island home, whom he shot in the back of the head with a rifle during the witching hour, three o'clock in the morning.

Just over a year later, George and Kathy Lutz purchased the Dutch colonial house at the bargain price of 80 grand. This is like big house and a nice neighborhood. Right there, near the water and long island. When a bunch of people get slaughtered. When a family annihilators kill the shit let a people including kids, that tends to drive down the property value.

Yeah, I mean, mm-hmm. So the Lutz family move in, and then a month later, they announced to the world they were abandoning the house because it was haunted as, fuck. Okay. So, according to the Nesmer website, a priest was brought in to bless the Lutz's new home

because they're Catholic. And here's a little spoiler for you. Every single family we've talked about are Catholic. Now you might remember if you watch the conjuring, she's like, oh, we're not religious. I'll let her know. Yeah, she was like, we're not really religious. We totally have five kids because we're not Catholic.

No, the fucking parents were Catholic. Is shit in all of them were. And it's sort of almost not always a requirement for the Ed and the rain thing because once again, this is having it, you have to accept the Catholic belief system to make this work. They're not going to mess with non-Catholic ghosts. Yeah. Now, even then, once again, there's not all, the, the, the warrants have an actually minor role in the whole Amityville thing, but it has much

bigger role in their lives and their story, which is why I like, you know, you didn't, if you watch the amityville horror movie or even read the book by, by Anson, as I mentioned, even at once, but we'll get there. So anyway, so they move in the house and they're month later, they run away saying the house is haunted. So according to the Netspur website, a priest was brought into Blitz, the to Blitz, the Lutz's new house, and he heard the words, get out in an upstairs room. Sounds familiar. Yeah. Everyone in the family suddenly was like getting into a bad mood. Like everybody's mood change, especially dad, getting angrier and angrier. The mom and dad sort of have health issues. There's foul odors in the air and nasty stains that would appear out of

nowhere. This is middle of December, but it's like clouds of flies would appear. And then there was Jody. Quote, the Lutze's daughter began spending all her time in the room playing with an imaginary friend. She described as red-eyed pig called Jody, who could transform not only shape, but size at times being larger than the house. Jody also claims she could not be seen by anyone unless she wanted them to. Unquote. Same rule as Pete's Dragon, Elliot. You can only see him if you want to. He's just invisible right now. And yes, Jody, the magic spirit pig can be bigger than the house. Okay.

There was also this incident. Quote, George also little woke one night to witness his wife transforming to a 90 year old hag. And the next night she began levitating over the bed. Unquote, Dana Barrett, Ghostbusters style. Okay. So less hot. She became a 90 year old shrieking hag apparently. After the lets got the hell out of Dodge, a local reporter called the Warrens, so they

get the story out about this spooky multiple murder house, turn haunted house. Because at this point, the Warrens were, you know, there were a couple years into this, oh, they speak at colleges, they give, they're the people to call when you want to get an extra story out of this sort of thing. The Warrens are called in. The book, the demonologist describes Ed and Lorraine conducting a walk through of the abandoned home and then scheduling a science a few days later. Lorraine walking through the home is dramaticized at the beginning of the conjuring too, by the way. Other tellings of their first visit are more dramatic. This is Lorraine quoted in Devil's Road. Quote,

visit or more dramatic. This is Lorraine, quoted in Devil's Road. Quote, The media asked me to go on to the second floor and to tell them what I felt. And as I was going up the stairs, I reached a point where it felt as if a force of water was coming against my chest. Almost like a waterfall. It was the worst feeling. I stopped on the landing and held tight to the relic that was in my hand and asked for strength and direction and going forward. It felt ominous to me. There was something in human or very, very negative." Meanwhile, Ed was down in the basement waving around a crucifix and yelling at demons. Quote, as is my custom as a religious demonologist, I took out a crucifix and commanded in the name of Jesus Christ and the blood of Christ, what there was there to reveal

itself. I never had such a quick reaction. I felt as though I was underneath a waterfall. That's how terrific the pressure was in my head and shoulders. Forcing me down to the floor. I went into a religious resistance and then envisioned myself in Christ's light. And again, I commanded it to leave in the name of Jesus Christ. It immediately lifted off." This was the point at which Ed decided they were dealing with a demonic presence in the house.

The Nesper website claims as do the books and movies about the house that the property was once owned by a black magician, and that is a practitioner of the dark arts, not like an African-American guy who does card tricks. Oh, okay. So this was a guy named, supposedly named John Ketchum, whose cursed bones were supposedly buried on the property. There's also a story about Native Americans who died tragically, they're like trapped and died

in some story, soaking the place in negative judy. The always sort of the pop culture thing is, oh, this was buried on an Indian burial grounds, what they would say, but it was supposed be this other story that I have no idea if there's any basis in it or not Just don't know no clue either way There's supposed to be like multiple reasons why the this house is is evil the house itself hates them the house is evil so and of course now multiple murders and is it a chicken or egg thing? Did the murders make things worse or were the murders inspired by a demonic force in the first place?

Why would butch you know kill everyone including his little brothers and sisters? The warrants held a science at the Amityville House with local reporters, but nothing happened other than people feeling a few people felt sick and a cameraman Experience chest pain after walking up a flight of stairs and you know. Couldn't you have just been old and fat? I have no idea. Quite possible. Ed and the rain recommend what else an exorcism, but instead of that the bank

foreclosed in the property and the Lutz family moved out to the West Coast. They moved the tombstones for tin-moved bodies. Then a guy named Jay Anson wrote a massively best-selling book about the haunting that got turned into a hugely successful movie that still swan-sloky spin-offs to this very day. So IMDB describes the 2021 film, Amityville in the Hood quote, an East Side gang uses the Amityville property to grow marijuana when they're attacked by a rival gang and their drug stolen. Soon it's unleashed on the west side streets of Compton

or anyone who smokes it suffers one killer buzz. Unquote, so Amityville has literally reached the point where it's a South Side LA haunted weed story. It, the house itself moved, it changed locations. No, it just, apparently, it's a Southside LA haunted weed story. It, the house itself moved. It changed locations. No, they just, apparently, they just grew, they just grew weed. They grew weed there and then the weed got stolen and taken out to LA for reasons

because they can't get weed out in California. That's okay. Oh, Larry, it's just, but again, this is a stupid movie it was made for like $500. Ed and Lorraine weren't mentioned in either the book or any of the movies, but their connection to the case, like in the newspapers and magazine articles and like little like interviews on news shows and stuff,

it massively raised their profile. This super famous case, suddenly their stock was hugely on the rise. And they learned that giving college lectures and tours of their cluttered basement was fine, but the real money is what that guy, Anson, did, that, you know, it's book deals and movie rights. From this point forward, the warrants were going to get paid. And yeah. And they did. I sure fucking did. God, I mean, they're dead when the

other thing. Now they're dead is the true money is rolling in on their daughter. Good. So, as for the reality of the Lutz home haunting, of course, it was bullshit. Turns out that the lawyer for Ronald DeFoe had pitched the whole haunting scheme to the lutses to share in this lucrative story rights and would provide his client with a kind of novel defense, saying that he was inspired by demons or demonic possession, and even though that didn't go anywhere, it's not the last time that will be tried. So in the end, however, the lutses wanted a bigger share. They didn't want to split it a third ways. So they just went straight to this author, Jay Anson, and the Lutz is split the deal 50-50 to sell their story. So then a series of petty lawsuits followed between all of these

people involved. See, that's the criminal show we need. get to have that many say we're gonna have a cranky judge named uh... uh... uh... in order parano or not our normal unit judge winestein of the Brooklyn u.s district court dismissed a lawsuit by the let's family against a good housekeeping magazine stating quote

based on what i've heard it appears to me that a large extent of the book is a work of fiction relying on a large part in the suggestion of Mr. Weber unquote Weber being Ron Defeo the murderers defense attorney quoted in September 7th 1979 issue of people magazine Weber said quote I know this book is a hoax we created this horror story over many bottles of wine. Unquote. These are good people. These are all terrible people. Remember, there's actual dead people in the story.

They're dead children. I refuse to let Ed and Lorraine Warren take up more than two episodes. We're going to do a bit of a speed round so we can end with some important and awful stuff. Okay. So after Amityville the war ends were kind of in demand. Not only with more cases than they could ever possibly investigate, but an increasingly profitable series of speaking engagements, interviews, and talk show appearances. This is where you start seeing them on television, first on local news, and then later on in national programs, eventually like in fucking Sally

Jesse. There's an Ed in the rain episode of Sally Jesse where Ed almost gets into a fist fight with a skeptic. It's great. Hi. Okay. So they could charge even more for their college lectures, like actual tuition money, going to Ed Warren ranting about demons for a couple of hours.

That has to be a very amusing class. I hope that there were students but demons were a couple of hours. That has to be a very amusing class. I hope that there were students and you know, they got good grades. Well, did you notice in the conjuring, it showed that that classroom they were in was like packed to the gills. Yes.

Every seat was filled. Yes. I mean, I guess if the weird paranormal couple looked like Patrick Wilson and Vera from a guy, I also would go check it out. Well, I mean, it's gotta be, it's spending an afternoon listening to a couple weirdos talk about ghosts is at least amusing

as opposed to like doing math. Right. And usually they would get all these, you know, typical, you know, 90 year old questions from the audience. And yeah, what, you get, do you get like a credit for that? And of course Ed is thinking, I'm scaring these kids to Christ.

So they learned the lesson of Amityville that there's gold in them in the haunted houses. And so they began hiring authors to write stories based on their case files. It's where we get the books such as The Haunted, Ghost Hunters, We're Wolf, werewolf, graveyard, deliver us from evil and in a dark place, more on that last one in a minute. That's an important one. And some of these stories get optioned and eventually get made into major motion pictures. So next in the timeline, the conjuring two is very loosely based on the haunting imposition reported in the UK in a town called Infield in the late summer in 1977. There was increasing disturbances that caused the single mother to panic. She runs her neighbor's house at one point in the middle of the night saying, She's two daughters and she's all by herself doesn't have a man. Ultimately, it led to a local paranormal society spending like extensive time with the family.

And possibly this co-dependent relationship because one of these investigators is like this guy who's teenage daughter died in a car crash. And then this young girl Janet has the same name as his dead daughter and she has their father ran out of them. So like, oh, there. So this emotional, he seems like he genuinely cared and wanted this family. It doesn't seem like it came from a bad place, but it also means he's not objective at all. The longest were, in fact, if you, any fans of the last podcast and the left, they did a nice series on this one, like talking about this haunting and all this stuff.

So, so ultimately, some of the evidence that includes just photographs that supposedly show that Janet was levitating, but if you actually put them in sequence, it just shows she's just jumping off the bed. You can turn them into a flip book of a girl jumping off a bed. It's not even like very convincing. And also, some of the girls were caught bending spoons

because that was one of the things like the ghosts were supposedly bending spoons in the other room and the girls were caught faking shit. A later on Janet claimed quote, oh yeah, once or twice, I'm not even doing British accent, once or twice we fake things just to see if Mr. Gross and Mr. Playfare would catch us. Ed and Lorraine did not, in fact, save the family from the evil of the nun, but rather showed up uninvited and hung around for a single day Before leaving on their whirlwind tour of England. So literally them being the hero of the conjuring movies is hilarious

because there's other people spent like two years Often like with this family and Edlery were there for a day and now they're made into a movie where they like save these little girls From this from this demon the nun was completely made up as a way to have a new spinoff villain for movies, just like Annabelle. So they turned, they just married this made-up story with this real reported story of a haunting and this little girl getting possessed by this old blue-collar worker who died of a stroke in his chair. So then there was this smearle family of Pennsylvania. And they claimed their little house was haunted for some 15 years, with disturbances starting

small and increasing in violence. Lorraine used her mojo and concluded that the Smurls shared their home with four spirits, a harmless elderly woman, a young and possibly violent girl, a man who suffered and died in the home, and a demon that used the other three spirits to destroy the Smirl family. Unquote. The Smirl family. The Smirl family. While multiple priests are on the record saying that nothing unusual happened when they were performing blessings inside the home that did not stop the warrants from putting out the book The Haunted. It was made into a 1991 TV movie I think was on Fox. And then we get to the subject of the Conjuring 3.

And honestly, that movie is kind of a bait and switch. Because the Conjuring 3, the subtitle is The Devil, made me do it, which is based on one of this famous little pieces where the warrens touched with the legal system, because it was the first time Possession was demonic possession was used as a defense and a murder trial or at least attempted It wasn't actually I was about just it was attempted to use it was not it was not allowed to even be entered as a plea The US court system was like Absolutely not but so like you go into it even even the marketing for the Conjuring 3 makes it look like,

oh, this is gonna be like a courtroom drama mixed in with a Conjuring thing. But instead, no, no, no, they literally just used that part of it to book in the beginning of the end of the movie and then just have write a completely fictional adventure in the middle about the Warrens doing battle with a Satanist which chick. And Lorraine literally,

this is the one where she fully turns to an X-man. We're instead of this subtle bits and getting ahead, she's like seeing full visions and running through the woods, witnessing visions of murders and almost run straight off a cliff. That seems ridiculous. It was also, we're, and the book, we're,

it's not when you just need to get fucked up and enjoy the... It's the first core conjure movie not directed by James Wan. It's definitely the weaker of the three. It's sillier, it's not as scary. I still enjoyed it because I like the characters. And it wasn't bad, bad. It just wasn't as great on a curve. It's just not as good as the first two. But it's also, I said, a little bit silly. It turns them more into like a superhero

story. However, one little side note, I didn't even put this in the script. But in the movie, as part of the events, Ed ends up having a heart attack. Now it's brought on by a demon in the movie. The demon triggers the heart attack, but then it has nothing to do with this cholesterol. The fact that you've looked at Ed and it's like of course that guy had a heart attack. Did he go up a flight of stairs and have chest pain? Oh, come on. So anyways, if Patrick Wilson has a heart attack, it'd be any of the movies. He spends the rest of it like walking with a cane and having a pop nitric glycerin fills

when he gets all stressed out and everything. So later on people who worked with and knew weren't apparently ed Warren, every time he needed to sell that a place was really scary or haunted when he was getting oppressed by the evil energy or if they're having a stance, it's supposed to be really scary. He would fake a heart attack.

Like red fox on Sanford and Sons, and be like, oh, the devil's coming for me. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh is the thing he was doing. So now it makes watching that movie, particularly hilarious, as Patrick Wilson's grabbing his chest and reaching for his pills. Oh my goodness, they started out. It's like, okay, well, she gets a headache and then it was like, he gets a heart attack.

Run! Well, it's like part of the idea is like, in the first two movies, Ed is sort of like the physical protector of rain And now this one sort of reverses the roles and fucks with that a bit So that the rain is charging a headwall and sort of like weakly shuffling behind her Because now she's dark Phoenix. Yes, she's her true powers are starting to come in because now we got to fight a satanist He has a demonic altar and tunnels underneath the ground

Okay, so anyway, so now we're gonna go jump back to the supposed real story, at least the official version that is very loosely inspired the movie. Because once again, the movie just pretty much ignores the story for most of the movie. It just as the beginning and the end is the only time it even bothers with anything based on the official version. Oh, okay, then. So, um, so this is the real, the real story again. Giant air quotes.

So it goes something like this. A desperate mother calls the warrants into help with her son. His name is David Glatzel. Uh, and the warrants guess what? Determine, he's possessed by a demon. Uh, months later, the boyfriend of David's older sister. So David's a possessive boy has an older sister that girls boyfriend, dabs his landlord to death in a fit of rage.

So he's charged with manslaughter and this guy Arnie Johnson's lawyer decided to enter a brand new defense at trial, not guilty by reason of demonic possession, which of course was recommended very strongly by Ed Horan. Now this is all part, now this is Ed has had a longstanding predates this trial by many years of trying to get a court to kind of officially accept some kind of supernatural shit as part of a ruling or as part of evidence that's accepted in something to prove the existence of the supernatural if it's accepted by law kind of like you remember how in the miracle of 44th 34th street house like they accepted Santa Claus because he they took a male that was kind of like everyone's like the thing if I can just get it except ghosts even

once like got him so this was part of his obsession. So he got this in. I would legitimize his spooky, super Catholic beliefs through legal precedent. So, and while I'm not usually a fan of the American court system, I am happy to say the judge instantly rejected this attempted plea, saying it was irrelevant

and unprovable. The answer to him is like no. Correct, yeah, no, fuck off. However, like they were smart enough on the lawyer, on the Ed Warren lawyer for Arnie Johnson's side to do it like on a Friday, getting in front of all the cameras and get a bunch of press to do, yeah, this is the plea. And it took until Monday for the judge to tell them to go fuck themselves. And so it got a bunch, so all over the newspapers, all over the country were like, the devil

made me do it was like the top headline. It was a big story. Even though it was bullshit. And which is why of course because that was the headline, that's why the subtitle of the movie, despite the fact that I didn't really care about that story very much in the movie. Yeah, well, the judge didn't do it. Well, the judge didn't do it. Yeah, well, the judge didn't do it about that story very much in the movie. Yeah, well the judge didn't know. You do get to see it, guys. Dabbed to death.

It's great. Judge was like, no, absolutely not. I mean, you can't have the, you know, the lawyer. It's like, I'm plead not guilty by the fact that my lawyer's insane. But yeah, I got the headlines and the slew of interviews he was looking for and Johnson went to prison and we got a silly movie like all these years later All right, so now Carl Glatzel was the older brother of the possessed little boy David He claims claimed oh a few years back to and claims to this day the whole thing was a hoax under the warrants or grifters

Even David who still claims that he truly was possessed as a kid, is quoted as saying, quote, Lorraine told me I was going to be a rich little boy from this book deal, and that was a lie, unquote. Oh, so let's jump to a haunting and Connecticut. In 2009, a based on a true story horror movie hit the screens titled A Haunting and Connecticut. It was in turn based on the book, In a Dark Place by Ray Garten, and in turn based on the case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren. This is I think the fourth book in the Ed and Lorraine book series they were doing at this point. This is the story of the Sni-D-C-R family.

Why do all these people have weird ass-less names? It's all part of the charm. I mean, there are smurls, the parents, the glatzels. Uh, yeah, their name isn't even Warren. Yeah, the minis. And then now we've got the, so now we've got the snettakers. The snettaker family. So we've got mom, dad, and a whole bunch of kids

because guess what? Catholic. Catholic. And they don't believe in that birth control. They believe in fucking. They believe in having an irresponsible number of children. So they moved into this rental duplex and discovered to their horror that the building had

previously been a funeral home. Act. Who cares? From the Nesper website, quote, in the basement, they found various mortuary items, including a hoisting apparatus for coffins, a medical gurney, blood drains, and toe tags. Soon enough, the snettakers were reporting all kinds of evil, including sexual attacks, apparitions, and abrupt violent personality changes in

the oldest son, who is undergoing treatments for Hodgkin's disease. So I got this kid with cancer, his personality's changing. Has nothing to do with the chemo. Yeah, and the hormones. And the fucking steroids and all the shit. Yeah, has nothing to do with all the cancer and all the treatments and all the emotional problems that go along with having, you know, cancer. So they discover all the more the funeral home shit in the basement and the

dream for the blood. So at different points, the poltergeist activity and sexual attacks escalated to ghostly anal penetration of both mom and dad. Yowch. And then the goat shoved his face. And then literally said like they threw their clothes because this is ghost dick. Raw, eh. So one day mom got a wedgie and was like, see, goat. So of course, they go begging for the demon hunting bad asses and the rain to come take care of business.

So when they concluded, they got to get out that wedgie, Lorraine. So when the warrants concluded their investigation and did their hocus, focus, they hired Ray Garton, a horror author who had a couple of, you know, decently selling books under his belt, and to write the book that would be turned into a dark place and then later adapt to the movie, haunting and Connecticut. So his novel came out and he was instantly unhappy with it because it was put in the non-fiction section. He has since used every opportunity on the internet to tell people about his experience with the Warrens and writing his book. He has never shut the fuck up about this since the day the book came out.

So he wants everyone to know this book is full of shit. I made this up. I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never , I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never , I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never , I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never , I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never , I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never , I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never

, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, I was never, Now he's, I could have quoted any number of interviews and podcasts. And I heard like five of them, but this is going back to the news group. Remember news groups internet, uh, alt dot folklore, dot ghost slash stories on April 27th, 2000. Garden claims the family had serious problems with alcoholism and drug addiction. And that he, they could never and he

could never determine that the son ever even had cancer and he also just couldn't get their fucking story straight quote I went to Ed Warren and told him my problem he told me not to worry that the family was crazy I was shocked he said all these people who come to us are crazy you You think sane people would come to us? He knew that I'd written a lot of horror novels prior to that. So he told me to just make up a story using whatever details I could incorporate into the book and just make it scary. Unquote.

Wow. Okay, so, okay. Unable to get out of his contract without legal ramifications. So if he couldn't afford, Garten just said, I'll just talk shit about him until the end of time. So he goes on, quote, of the two, Lorraine is the sanest. She's an enabler. Years ago, before their career in the supernatural began,

Ed suffered from mental illness. It was bad enough to keep him from working, and the only way he could make money was to hand print haunted houses on dinner plates and sell them door to door. Once Ed decided that Lorraine was psychic, selling the haunted house plates eventually led to investigating haunted houses. At first they found ghosts, but after the tremendous success of the exorcist, both the novel and the movie, ghosts suddenly became demons.

Unquote. And now he concludes with this mic drop. Quote. Not only are the Warrens frauds, not only did they give a bad name to people who were seriously investigating paranormal phenomenon, I think they're evil because of the way they exploit families already deep into spare

and ready to shatter. I can ignore a simple con job, but the Warrens are actually damaging people who are already damaged, who are desperate and vulnerable, using them for the sake of a book, maybe a lucrative movie sale, or another store to edit their traveling dog and pony show. Before I worked on that book, I'd follow the adventures of Ed and Lorraine Warren faithfully, since I was a little boy. I was excited to work with them. Boy, was at a big disappointment. It's nice to believe there's a smiling, grandparently couple out there chasing demons,

but not when you know they're hurting people for the sake of publicity and the almighty dollar unquote yep fuck these people and this is one that didn't get into my script but i'm actually going to show you so this is from your member the old news magazine show called a current affair all right so this is from an old episode of a current fair talking at the very case we're talking about

and the journalist actually does some journalism and start buying bullshit so like I'm skipping past this you can see in the screenshot I'm talking to the woman so they live in a duplex they had an upstairs fucking neighbor who literally live right above them who if all this shit was going on would know about it she also said they totally knew it was a funeral home the family lived there all the They're talking about how a full of shit it was and then this is what happens. You can hit play This is the journalist actually talking to Ed At this point I ask for the name of a priest to the Warren's client and visited the house

We want to speak to him as an independent source. There is no place. There is no this there is no that one is this because it is not up here Almost rang down. Hey, this is no this, there is no that one is this because it is not up here almost rang down. Hey, this is this is below me. Come on. I don't care about credibility pal. That was the real Edward and how he dealt with even a slight question of like hey if a priest did this, you know, this thing, can I just talk to him? And he immediately pitches a fit and grabs the rain and runs off. He's like, but this will go to your crad of the middle of the day, I don't care. I don't care if it's credible. And you can also tell my Ed Warren isn't actually all that far off

in the way he really sounded. I really, I mean, I love Patrick Wilson's like, Pepperidge farm accident. He does when he's doing Ed Warren, but his show does not sound like the real guy. He sounded like an asshole. That's hilarious. And he was. But now, remember that content warning I put at the beginning of all this? Oh, I thought we'd already know with the sexual assault that you thought we were talking about Goat.

You thought that the ghost anal pin, I'm talking about real shit, not bullshit. Unfortunately, this is the real kind, not the fun ghost. Not ghost rape. Well, I mean, I guess, I hope that the molestation of those, of those girls didn't happen. Well, that is just speculation on our part.

And then other family claims they were anally raped. That's their story. That's their story, but yeah. I really wish that Ray Garton talking about them exploiting people and just being awful was the worst thing about the warrants. Oh. It's bad enough that their liars and grifters

and exploiting screwed up family for fame and fortune. But there's, well, this. So in the book, The Demonologist, which told you was published in 1980, it references a woman who works as an assistant to Ed in the Rain. So in this situation, a man called, named Pete, is calling regarding a case that's not important to our purposes here. Quote, Pete telephoned the warrants and spoke with Judy Penny, a young woman who works as a liaison

when Ed in the Rain are out of town. Judy has heard of some hair-raising tales over the phone, but this one particularly scared her. Unquote. Now, this only becomes relevant because of a December 13th, 2017 article in the Hollywood Reporter, which has this to say. Quote. Ed Warren was in his mid-30s when he allegedly met 15-year-old Penny, having not yet gained enough fame as a self-trained demonologist to pay the bills in the early 1960s, quote, Ed Warren was in his mid-30s when he allegedly met 15-year-old Penny. Having not yet gained enough fame as a self-trained demonologist to pay the bills in the early

1960s, Ed was working as a city bus driver in Monroe, Connecticut. Penny was a student at Central High School in the nearby town of Bridgeport, who wrote his bus. The two began an amorous relationship. Penny said in a legal declaration that she gave in November 2014. According to that document, as well as newly obtained recordings of Penny's recollections of events, by 1963 she had moved into the Warrens home. For the next 40 years, she said she had a sexual relationship with Ed with Lorraine's knowledge. At first, Penny stayed in a bedroom

directly opposite the one occupied by the married couple, but eventually she moved in an apartment built for her up above the home. One night he'd sleep downstairs. She sat in a recording. One night he'd sleep upstairs. Unquote.

Oh, yeah. So in his 30s driving a bus, and this teenage high school 15 year old girl starts riding his bus and then he talks her and sex and a relationship and literally working for them as a sort of weirdly indentured servant. Ah, and so again, his wife is just, it's just cool. So all accounts say Ed and Lorraine portrayed Judith as a niece or like a charity case. To this day their daughter Judy Aspera and Tony, the husband, maintained that this woman just lived with the Warrens for four entire decades out of the kindness of their hearts.

Because the fact that she lived with them for that long is just indisputable. Everybody knows that. And like the book says, Judith was the one running the office while the Warrens were off of being important. She wasn't just a sex slave. She was literally there. Yeah, she was sexually. Sort of running the thing. And here's the other little detail that I didn't even put in the script that I meant to. Judy wouldn't know what was going on that house because that, you know, that whole bit in the conjuring where she was at home and grandma watched her while they were off helping the parent family in Rhode Island.

Judy didn't live with her parents. She lived with her grandmother at grandma's house because they were too busy being Ed and Lorraine Warren to raise their own daughter. Oh, nice. So Judy, I don't fault her for wanting to believe the best, but she literally wasn't there. She doesn't know what her parents were really like, because she only saw them, you know, for

visitation in holidays and, you know, spills up at most of the time, she wasn't around. This lady, Judy, which, oh, Judith, that's thing. Both of them went by Judy, which is sort of disturbing all by itself. Yeah. I thought that she was half-edged and the fact that he became a father, like in his late two yards, it's all kinds of fucked up. So, quote, Penny also claimed that Ed was sometimes abusive to Lorraine. Early on she said she witnessed him backhand his wife so hard she lost consciousness.

Oh my god. Quote. And this is quoting her inside the quote. Sometimes Ed would actually have to slap her across the face to shut her up, Penny said in one recording. Some nights, I thought they were going to kill each other. Unquote. Want to know how just how great a Catholic couple

Ed and Lorraine really were? Well, I mean, they already had an in-house sex life, so. In 1978, Judith Penny got pregnant. Quote, Lorraine persuaded her to have an abortion because the birth of a child could become public and any scandal could ruin the Warren's business. Though Lorraine is claimed to be a devout Catholic, Penny said her, quote, real God is money. And a tearful recording obtained by the Hollywood reporter, Penny recalled, they wanted me to tell everyone that someone

would come into my apartment and raped me. And I wouldn't do that. I was so scared. I didn't know what to do. But I had an abortion. The night they picked me up from the hospital after having it, they went out and lectured and left me alone." Trash, okay. Yeah, absolutely. Fucking trash. Yep. Trash.

So here's the thing. Now, ultimately, even though these are like sworn depositions and statements and stuff, they're still, you know, this is one woman saying, we know she lived with them. Yeah. And it's like, you know, I am inclined to believe a, you know, a story, especially knowing that The undisputable details of her age and when she started living in them That's the fact that she was clearly groomed and some shit was going on Yeah, which is really sad and which is the reason she was there for four decades

So and but her stuff is corroborated by their information including lawsuits by multiple parties And it would take a long time and get tangled to get into all of it. But let's just say it gets backed up a couple different places because once again, everybody started suing once a bunch of money was on the line with these movies. So like people, the words were like the guy who wrote the demonologist. He sued them.

This movie producer who was involved with making the original conjuring movie sued over the depiction of the Warrens based on the stuff he knew about. So here's one last detail that will help you kind of maybe decide your opinion about what to believe or what not to believe. Could you see when Lorraine Warren signed her deal with New Line cinema to serve as a consultant for the conjuring and get her piece of that sweet, sweet pie? It included some unusual provisions. Quoting one more time from the Hollywood Reporter, quote,

The films couldn't show her or her husband engaging in crimes, including sex with minors, child pornography, prostitution, or sexual assault. Neither the husband nor wife could be depicted as participating in an extramarital sexual relationship. Talent attorney Jill Smith says she's never seen such specific language barring such depictions. Unquote. It's like weirdly specific language, Lorraine.

And you got to remember that that contract was done before this woman came forward. Yeah. So she was protecting something by insisting on that being there and that's why, you know, this depiction of the Warrens is the most wholesome, in love, married couple. Is a great example of Catholic and great parents with the daughter waiting for them at home instead of the teenage sex slave. Yeah. Or later on just woman who'd been groomed and was just living with them. Judith Penny never received a penny for anything related to the conjuring and it's spinoffs. She clearly hated Lorraine that had weirdly warm feelings for Ed right up until the end and stayed in touch with them like right up until he died. She has quoted as asking herself,

lots of times I think about, why did I do this? Why did I screw up my life like this? Sometimes I get angry thinking about it. How so much was taken away from me? Unquote. Yeah, a lot was taken away from her. Yeah, you were a teenage girl, you were groomed.

Yeah, the life you could have had. Yeah, if you just took a different fucking bus Well, that's loser in it. So yeah, so that's where we're gonna leave things With Ed and the rain warrant. How do you feel? Them now. Well, I mean I started out just thinking that they were Regular shitty people just either crazy or liars or yeah,. But no, no, they're, they're, No, no, I'm really, really grossed out. Thanks, Jamie. No, yeah, no, Ed, actual.

We cannot have nice things. Fucking, you know, pedophile groomer and, but still convinced he was a good person because he was scaring people with his lies in order to get them to go to church. So good for, good for fucking you Ed Yeah, well, you know now that he's in hell So well, thank you

Everyone happy Halloween at this point if you're hearing this is probably Halloween's over uh and Appreciate Kevin and Raven sound studios for hosting us and making us sound good Absolutely. Thank you Kevin be sure to visit our website, chainsawhistory.com, to check our bat catalog, get our other episodes of shows, like the value of a no time for Dr. Jones,

articles, transcripts, bonus content, and more. Just like last time, I would encourage you to give to the feeding America charity, like go into feedingamerica.org and support local food pantries, just like those goofballs who were hanging out with Annabelle on the live stream the other night. And yeah, and just like last time I and previously, and now until we stop cop city, it's stopcopcity.org org Let's stop a police from training in urban warfare. Yeah, I believe that's the way to go So you can also look up the Atlanta Solidarity Fund if you want to help people who get arrested because they're just

Exercising the rights to protest this nonsense going on in their backyard, but Until then, maybe and I are gonna go. I think I got a new strategy for us. We should start podcast recording on the sidewalk and from somebody's house describing it in detail and then use the recording as a way to bribe ourselves in and get more information about the haunting. Yeah, or about just the layout of your home.

Can I know, and in order to fight the ghosts, we're going to need the number, the security code, a fuel alarm system, and the pin number to your ATM. Who are you going to call? The Grifters. So we'll see you next time, everybody. All right, bye. Later. you