Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 333: Mathas VS. The Warrens Part 1

Episode Date: January 18, 2026

Mathas tells the boys all about some of his least favourite people, Ed and Lorraine Warren, in this multiparter. CHILLUMINATI is a weekly comedy podcast hosted by Mike Martin, Jesse Cox and Alex Faciane. Hold on to your tin-foil hats and traverse the realms of the mysterious, supernatural, spooky and sometimes truly horrible - and your third eye will never be the same!Subscribe to our Patreon to support us and for extra content like full video episodes, weekly Minisodes, exclusive art, and more at http://patreon.com/CHILLUMINATIPODThank you to our sponsors:ZocDoc: https://www.zocdoc.com/chillMike Martin - http://www.youtube.com/@themoleculemindset Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - https://www.youtube.com/@StarWarsOldCanonBookClub/Editor: DeanCutty Producer: Hilde @ https://bsky.app/profile/heksen.bsky.social Show Art: Studio Melectro @ http://www.instagram.com/studio_melectro Logo Design: Shawn JPB @ https://twitter.com/JetpackBragginSHOW NOTES:The main source used in this episode is "The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren" by Gerald Brittle

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Chuluminati podcast. I don't know the episode anymore, and I'm slowly forgetting the episode as we go on. Anyway, as always, I'm one of your host, Mike Martin, joined today by my own personal Ed and Lorraine Warren, Jesse and Alex. Hello, hello, boys. What do you mean by weird Ed and Lorraine Warren? What do you mean by no one told me that my voice was weird last episode? Oh, well, dude, I didn't like, okay, here's the, here's the real, here's the drama, right? you signed in and you sounded exactly like you actually sounded worse than what you sounded like in the final episode because not only did you have the list but you were like uh like muckbang level like when you when you like did anything at all around you i could like hear you touching your clothes and like little things moving around you what why so then no so then you changed your mic and to me you sounded

Is that how you think I sound all the time, Alex? No, you didn't have a lisp to my ears. You sounded to mine. You sounded crisp to me. And you didn't say nothing. No, here's my, here's the reason I said nothing. Everyone betray me. No, say here's the thing.

I fell up with this world. The reason I said nothing is because you had clearly flown, you were really tired, and you had said you had cotton mouth really bad. So I had just assumed you were having like really bad. I just had a dry mouth. I wasn't like. I just was, I was like, it's rude if I like, oh my God. So long story short, so long story short, no, everybody who actually contacted me with concern. Jesse is not experiencing a neurological issue. He's fine. This, the old specter of death has not caught up with him yet. And that was just, that was just a little, like, I don't know what, whether it was on Riverside or where, but there was a noise filter somewhere that got you so good. Here's the thing. though. No, it was your mic, right? I was, I did tests and I was on geekenders as well,

same problem. And I was like, all right, so Discord's having the problem too. So I went and I tested on the PC I was on. Fine, sounded great. No issues at all. I don't, I cannot tell you. Your mic to me sounded, I would say, not quite as good as this mic that you're in right now, but like close to it when it was working properly. Something had occurred. I have no answers. I really want to test it, but I also was like, F it, I don't care. And that attitude of F it don't care got me exactly one week of people being like, are you okay? There's something wrong?

Yikes, dude. We need funding to get you a new microphone. What we need, my jaw's all messed up. I'm going to need funding for this. Go fund me to fix Jesse's mouth. $10,000 a month to your fix Jesse's jaw. It has been wired shut because we have old West. style medicine. Right. Right. Yeah. Now, uh, it has been great for social media. I will say that.

Yeah. Uh, everybody's been, everybody's been profiting. The geekenders especially, I feel like made out this week huge with it. All those shorts, I am, it's so embarrassing. Luckily, luckily, like I did like 98% of the talking last week. Uh, so that you did that us read a bunch of stuff. Well, a little bit. There's full segments of me where I sound like a, like I'm putting, on a voice and it's almost offensive. It literally, it literally, to me, it helps me immerse myself

a little bit more because it felt like it wasn't you. Right, right. It's good character. Right. Yeah. It's good character. It's like, I forget who it is. Kubrick or whoever said you got to put like bullshit in your shoes. So when you walk, it looks uncomfortable. So you can, you don't, because you don't, because you can't act uncomfortable. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got to be uncomfortable.

So, you know, you can make us comfortable. This year's Webby's. Don't forget. about Chulamani for this year's Webbies. I don't know. I don't know. For King of the Web. For this year's King of the Web, send that money our way. Weirdly, the rich get richer ass contest. Send it, send it our way. Yeah. Until then, it's you at Patreon who support us. Isn't that right, Alex? Yes, it is. And you know something else? This year is all about surprises and good stuff. And we're about to announce all kinds of new stuff. we just put out the show that we just did.

I edited it myself. It was a great night. Our live show. Our live show. I think it came across really fun. So if you're a patron, go there. It's there. You can listen to it now.

I've been, you know, pimping it for a couple weeks now. But I think you should go listen to it. For some reason, we put up the last show. Nobody really checked it out. If you were a patron, you can check it out. And eventually we're going to put out last year's live show, not the 2025 one, but the 2024 one that we did the previous year, as probably in the feed for you guys soon.

I think it's up there. It's there for patrons, but we're going to put it out for everybody soon. Alex, can you confirm a thing for me? Yeah. In the live show that you just put up on Patreon, is Crendor as funny as I remember because, dude, holy crap.

I never laughed so hard. he had the line of the night he had the line of the night during that fucking dating game and it comes across I was literally losing my shit laughing at him while he was editing it perfect I hated because I was I was the guy after

after freaking Eric fucking did his thing I'm like I can't do anything that's funnier than that I gave everybody just like a little list of facts about their guy that they were like so that they could have some like some like stuff to talk from and he just did not deviate one iota

from the list He'd like, he read it word for work. He followed the brief perfectly. And it just, for some reason, it just, it was like magically funny. Yep. That sounds right. Also, we talked to an astrophysicist for a while. It was a crazy night.

It was a crazy night. It was a great show. We talked about the inhumans more than I would have liked. But it was fine. I enjoy how much the inhuman discussion has stuck around in the Chulminati. Zykeist. I wonder if anybody has put their fucking money where their mouth is and red pop. Jenkins in humans with Jay Lee as the artist and just shut the fuck up.

No one has. That's what I'm wondering. Seems like a waste of time to me. Yeah, because it seems like when people talk shit on stuff, they should fucking know about it. You know what I'm saying? So that's my thought on that ongoing conversation. I know this podcast is for.

Exactly. Speaking of, are you ready to learn, boys? This is a topic has been a long time coming. I'm very excited for today. Yeah. In the next few days. I'm excited. You know what I'm excited for is just the solidity and rigidity of

one continuous topic for a long and extended amount of time or four variety show episodes back to back which i don't know very very well done but the amount of like there there's a level of work i understand that goes into having to keep them cohesive keep them orderly make it flow like you you take a break alex it's well deserved you work the idea is that i'm supposed to do it all year but then like the writing happens like right then so it's just just a little bit it's a little bit more It was fun. It was fun. Yeah. Well, we are finally going into a multi-part deep dive into them, arguably the most famous paranormal investigators, ghost hunters, demonologists, whatever you want to call them, of all times. Conton artists, literal movies, like a literal cinematic universe,

which we'll get into in a little bit. I was unaware of how Marvel-esque a cinematic universe. There's the Marvel universe. There's the Marvel universe and then there's like this one in the movie world. It's wild. This is maybe the number two most movies. I guess James Bond, but that's like not really the same vibe. That's just like a guy doing missions. We're talking about an expanded and interwoven universe of ongoing plotlines in the, in the Warrenverse. It's genuine.

I had no clue. Genuinely was shocking to me. Right. They are, like I said, arguably the most famous. We're going to be deep diving into them in multiple parts. And today, really what I want to do. day to be about is how the Warren's wanted you to see them. The main source for today's episode is the book called The Demonologist, The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren. And I'm actually

going to have who wants to be Vera Farminga right now, the actress who plays Lorraine Warren in the conjuring universe. This is her little, I guess you call it a review, a little blurb about the book itself when she used it as research for the movie. This, who's this me? This is whoever wants to be Vera Formiga? It's you. Primarily, my research relied heavily on the nonfiction book, the demonologist. Despite its popularity, I found that book was hard to acquire. It is unlike any book I have ever read.

It is a book about mystical theology. In it, one learns just how and why mystical phenomena occur. It scared the daylights out of me, profoundly. The preface insists that it is not dangerous to read and that knowledge is power. Whatever. I felt a sense of terror every time I cracked it open. I never read the book in the sanctity of my home. I could only read it in flight, funnily enough.

Somehow, I felt safeguarded in an airplane. I don't know. How to get burned. How to get burned! Fantastic job. I think that blurb enough does, it shows exactly how the Warrens pitch themselves in a lot of ways. That alone, the fact that this book about them was so terrifying

that she could only read it on a rickety plane that could plummet to her death at any given moment with dozens of the others on board why is the plane so rickie what do you mean what happened to this plane is into a world in your head that i'm concerned about the plane in her mind other than her own psychology was safer than the house that she was in because she's worried about ghosts i guess haunting them but if if you believe what ed talks about in these books the demon could bring the plane down and kill you anyway so why are you reading the book on the plane but we'll get into it That is bring the plane down. Dude, we'll get into it.

But genuinely, though, in the movies today, listen, Ed will tell you the demons will, like, make your car crash. It'll, like, make things glitch in whatever vehicle you're in, and it could be very dangerous. You don't want to fuck with that shit. But yeah, if you go see a horror movie today or one of the conjuring movies, that is the universe of Ed and Lorraine Warren, Marvel superheroes of the Macawain. In the collective pop culture consciousness, we now know them. as Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. And they look just like that too. But I sent you boys a video right before we started.

And you can see them in their prime how. He looks like Mr. Dink, dude. He doesn't look like he doesn't look like Patrick Wilson. I was going to say, could you explain what the Warrens actually look like to our audio listening or audience here? If Mr. Potato Head had a body.

No. No. Let's be real. He's Dave Thomas. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's perfect. literally Dave Thomas.

Like the Midwest as a man. Like the Midwest as a man. And then she looks like a sort of like a play. What's the, you know, the Harry Potter professor that's like really strict. Umbrage. Yeah. Yeah. If you took off her, like the outfit she's wearing in this and instead put her in one of those like 1840 style like school marm outfits.

She's every school teacher in your imagination. Or what's the future. You know, the Futurama with Bender. Yes. Where they go to his to Mama or whatever. It's a little like moms. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that's the vibe. It's freaking Patrick Wilson and Vera Farminga, handsome, loving, like beautiful movie couple. And they're depicted as devout Catholic couple

who charge head first into the darkness to save any innocent families from the forces of hell or the demons trying to take over and ruin their lives. Like supernatural? I've never seen supernatural. Well, like, like Hellboy, like demon hunters? Like, dude, the way they pitched themselves?

Like Gerald, the Witcher? We're going to talk about it. Yeah, we'll see. You're going to see how this all pans out very much. Osterized for their abilities. Were their rare abilities? Like, Gerald, the Witcher. Exactly the same thing.

It's, it's Geryl and Siri. The White Wolf himself? The White Wolf himself. New DLC coming after 10 years. Are you guys excited? What? What? Where have I been?

They've been teasing it for a while now. and they say it's going to lead into witcher four. Does it have to do with FF 06? Which is coming back. Let's go. I'm doing it. Let's go. Which are Wednesdays.

I'm going to have to snort from the beginning and do it all over again. They are, these guys present themselves in the movies and in their professional careers as like the ultimate demon experts. The demonologist and his psychic wife, a clairvoyant who can see into the ethereal beyond the veil. The only two people in that New England area who could stand between your average family and the abyss of hell. that's at least the movie pitch right like that's the brand that has now generated billions and billions of dollars at the box office those those movies have like annabelle is the spinoff in that universe and all that stuff uh this is what they tell us in these versions that demons are real how can reality have a spin off my man how can that how can

there be a spin off of what happened it's the conjuring it's the conjuring main titles And then the spinoff of the nun, the spinoff of Annabelle, like these are all spin-off movies in the Warren MCU. So I haven't seen them. Okay. So forgive me for asking this question. Okay. But is there like anything like the source? Is there like the infinity stones?

Like is there like some central entity that binds? Is there like a demon king? Yeah, the Warren. A Thanos at the center of all the evil. in the world. And Warren, Stano. So yeah, he's no, no. They're the only things keeping this altogether.

That they're the, they're the, everything is unexplained. Supposed cases. And then some of the movies prequels us to how those cases came to be when they're all just giant is Jesse, are you researching how many movies are like? Yes, I am actively right now looking up because again, I'm not to realize how big these are. Because when you brought it up, I was thinking of there's the very specifically the movies they're featured in as like when you see the trailer you see them and it's like okay we're doing a

haunting thing whatever but i was unaware that all these other films were connected and that i just didn't know i didn't this why we do this show boys this is why we have to do this show you have to educate you on all the important things of the paranormal world thank you so much to zoc doc for sponsoring today's episode listen you ever heard of the 3 a m spiral it's something i do you know raise your hand if you ever been deep in a 3 a.m. internet rabbit hole, maybe researching the latest UAP sightings, maybe researching adult themed content,

and suddenly you notice a weird, I don't know, ache in your body, a symptom, sniffles, a cough that you've just kind of been ignoring. And if you're like me, that's when, I don't know, the storytelling machine in your brain starts spinning a brand new horror movie

you didn't ask to see. Usually I just doomscroll my symptoms on Google, spiral quietly to myself, or you know, just take some vitamins and hope for the best, Sometimes it works. But honestly, self-diagnosing via the internet at 3am is a high strangeness, shall we call it, event that no one needs?

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Zach Baggins has definitely taken the torch of the now, now deceased warrants. But does he have a movie? I don't think he does yet other than his own first ever movie The Ghost Adventures movie? Yeah. Where he has a vendetta with a ghost.

Right. But he also has a museum like that he gives people tours of very much like the Warrens. Like he's very much of their ilk. I watched him jump over a snake one time at like Alcatraz or something. I watched him.

He braved his own fears of poisonous snakes. Ghosts are real. You know it is. Yeah. But Ed Lorraine Warren. Well, Ed was a World War II veteran, veteran, a former police officer, and a landscape painter who realized that painting haunted houses actually ended up paying a little better.

He was way more metal, way sicker of a thing to do. And he was also a bus driver as well. But no, it also made a little bit more money if the paintings were of spooky houses, basically. What? And then, really? Lorraine was a psychic sensitive, the sort of a yin to his yang, who claimed she could see the oras of the dead and had clairvoyant visions of the future. And together, according to Ed, in the book itself, they investigated over 10,000 cases.

Okay. How many days are there in a year again? You're doing the right math right now. You have to wrap your head around 10,000 cases. That is a mathematical impossibility for them because they started in 1952 is when they very first started this stuff. 10,000 cases in 20 years, that's five ghosts a day.

Yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't know how many that is, but it seems too many. Think about it's 365 days in a year. In, uh, in,

in 10 years, that's not even halfway to 10,000. You know, it is funny though. Like, when I think about it, like, this used to have been a lot more when I was like younger and I would like

play video games with people more often in my like social life, right? But, people just because I had the job that I have, people would be like, damn, you must be like so good at every game. You must know like everything about every video game. And I'm like, how? Like, I probably know less about, I probably know less about any one video game than anyone.

And I feel like it just doesn't make sense. Like just based on volume alone, you know I'm going to go way more shallow than anybody who, if the Warren spent their life investigating like one demon and like got all the way down the hole and like found a way to defeat a true demon and like brought like goodness to the world. That would be amazing. But I doubt that's what's going to be the story of them.

You're right. You're right to be doubtful. You're right to be doubtful. There's nothing true to what they're pursuing. They found one demon. This one's real. We got them. We're learning more and more about them every day. The fight is going on. We are waking up, eating breakfast and going to war with evil. Now, we

Actually, as I was getting ready to do this series, the warrants were mentioned for us in our very first episode, less than four minutes into our episode about Amityville, where I bring up the warrants. We talk about how they're kind of hoaxish like people. So these guys have kind of been on our plate forever. But more specifically, they're also a little special for me too, because I grew up in Rhode Island. That was my life was Rhode Island. And if you're even anywhere like in the New England area, you know that the New England has a very unique and special relationship. with like this kind of gothic macab magic shit. HP Lovecraft in Providence, Stephen King up in Maine, and Lorraine Warren were kind of like the Connecticut spooky people. That's just like who they were. I knew of their house. I knew of them well before I had ever even like really done any major research on them. Because they were like TV, local TV stars.

They were also local folklore in a weird way, kind of like your paranormal investigative like mom and pop in a weird way. you'd hear stories about them from a friend who's like cousins plumber fucking fixed up i actually had a friend who had a family member who said they knew the warrants and the warrants came and investigated their house for a ghost that was supposedly haunting them uh shoutouts to keith thank you for that story when i was oh keith what's good baby thank you keith you're in the chulminati you've been inducted he does i don't even know if he knows i do this show anymore but shoutouts to you keith if you're alive baby you're in this thing you're you're the fourth host man we're

cutting you in, baby. And like they were literally like kind of the demonologist next door. They operated out of like a split level house in Monroe, Connecticut, like not anything like as huge or elaborate as any mansion, no gothic castle. It was just over on 30 Noel Wood Street. And in that house, what people would argue is the single most concentrated collection of cursed objects in North America at the time. They called it the Warren Occult Museum.

And in the movies, if you ever see these things. This is like a big dusty room with like preserved areas of glass and like walled off like artifacts behind glass cases, you know, really, really spooky. In reality, the museum was just their basement. It was just the basement of their split level home. But does it look similar? No, way, way more messy and tiny and narrow down there than it was in the movies. The movies was way too big. They were way too much space.

To get down there, you just had to go down a narrow tiny flight of stairs. and that was that you were then in there. And then when you entered in there, some business says, to be honest. Some visitors said that, you know, when you went down there, they could feel the air, grow colder. They say they smell like sulfur,

dust and ozone, all mixing together. Sounds like just the basement, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, when you go in a basement, typically does get a little colder down there. But Ed really played into that. He was making sure that these things were under a lock

and key. Ed called this place the archive of the supernatural. He was, he also referred to it as a battery place of sorts. He believed that even though these objects were sitting in a basement and dormant, they still retained their demonic psychic charge. And he viewed the room as like a supernatural nuclear reactor. Like the more shit he put in there, the more charged with demons and spirits that that place

became. And he treated that. And he treated that. with a similar like showmanship level of caution of caution as well. Obviously, and eventually gave tours. What is the showmanship level of caution? Like he was just like performatively. We're going to get. I'm about to get into like what that was.

Alex, come. Yeah. So you could go on these tours where he would show you these things. And tickets were somewhere between 10 and 12 bucks back in the day to go there. And it was popping place for people who are interested stuff. And when you went there, I'm telling you he put on a performance.

He wouldn't like just. point to be like, and that's the spooky doll, and that's a book with demons in it. No, he would sometimes like put on special gloves, then pull out a key that was hidden away and only allowed and only for this one box where like this particular object was being held. And if you touched it, you know, he would basically tell you couldn't touch anything because if you touched it, it would potentially possess you or that kind of thing. And before he would touch it, he would bless himself. You can't look at the evidence. Sometimes even bless the people that were too dangerous. So you're saying the level of caution was the showmanship. Correct. Yes,

what I mean, like a showmanship level like making you sign a waiver before eating some spicy ass jiggins. You did sign a waiver before going down there as well. You signed a waiver before going down to that basement. He'd tell you to touch nothing. If you touch something, your aura mingles with the aura of the object and you invite it in. Like that's what he would tell people. You have to, if you touch it, you buy it. Very touch it. You buy it in the demon in the demon rule book, apparently. And his collection was kind of a weird, mix. There was the shadow doll, which was a nightmare made of bird feathers and human bones that was supposedly used in cursing rituals. Then he had the vampire's coffin, a modern casket that

Ed claimed was used by a living vampire that they had tracked down. And then there was an advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeons Masters guide. What? Because that's a sad game. We think, you know, Satanic stuff? Do you empathize with him in this moment? Do you think? you feel like you've been you feel like you live through something like this where you were ostracized for your your beliefs of you sure for sure I was ostracized for it but I wasn't making 12 to 10 to 10 to 12 bucks a pop to make fun of me yeah but we like also saw what happened to Tom Hanks and that's true that's concern you might try and stay there true yeah I'm just trying to save the youth and then you had the organ that according to lore would play by itself in the dead of night

filling their home with discordant music I love that goes Ghosts play into the spooky. I love that ghosts too love being spooky. There's also a haunted record of Black Sabbath. Yo, okay. That's kind of, playing. I know which album.

I bet you I know what year that was. I don't know which album, actually. I don't know off the top of my head, which album it was. But there were also plastic Halloween masks that Ed claimed were used in satanic rights, shrunken heads that looked suspiciously like they came from a novelty

shop if you got too close. And then there was the cursed mirror that was used for scrying. I guess. Suspiciously. Yeah. Do you mean they were from novelty shops? Is that what you're saying? There's no way to prove that they were from a novelty shop, okay?

There's no way to prove it. And then they had fertility idols that looked like standard tourist souvenirs, basically that they bought at some point that are down there and cursed. But that kind of was the genius of his showmanship, right? They didn't need the objects necessarily to look scary because they themselves would provide context through their, through their theatrics and so on and make these things spooky by telling you how dangerous it was to touch them, usually with a story that was attached to the object as to who it killed or why it haunted them. And if you touch it, you risk bringing this home with you.

You may just think to yourself now, it's a plastic mask, but if Ed Warren is sitting there telling you it was worn by a high priest during a human sacrifice in the woods of Connecticut, and you are already inclined to believe these things, that plastic mask becomes an artifact of unadulterated pure evil. It's just so funny because, again, it's Dave Thomas. But he's like, instead of burgers and he's like, stop on by Wendy's. Instead, it's like, Dave Thomas being like, the foul pits of hell were furious that day as I battled the demons.

The demons were going to cause a car crash. Like, this is the devil coffin that I just like. They almost made me crash my car on the road. Absolutely a story. They tell a story that a priest or no, somebody went home without getting the blessing, forget his name, and the car breaks went out,

crashed and it killed him. There are no records of that ever happening. But that is a story Ed is told in his museum a few times. And Ed would insist that this museum was, sort of a public service, right? That it was supposed to be a place where you could learn about things without really having to come face to face with them. But for them also, it was kind of their ultimate resume.

This was a collection of their trophies. Every cursed toy or whatever was like a representation of a religious battle won. Because whatever you want to say about the Warrens, especially in the later stages of their career, I believe that they were true believers. Big Roman Catholics that really did believe that they were doing the stuff. because for a long time, they didn't do it for money at all. And we're going to talk about all that as we go deeper. But when I say that this room is a collection of trophies,

I feel like for Ed, it was also away from to convince himself that all these things were real, that what he was doing was real. Giant Penny. It's like when Batman. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly that. It's like for Batman walking through. The clobar.

Yeah, like the giant pennies. Yeah. And the dinosaur. Yeah. And obviously, the thing. that made the museum the most famous, the thing that sat in the center of it all later on in the late 60s and throughout the 70s was, you know, the queen of the museum herself, Annabelle the doll. In the museum, she sits in this special case. You've probably seen a picture

of her of this case many times. The funniest thing about it is that it's just, okay, like in real life, like in the movie, Annabelle is Annabelle this like scary looking doll. Yep. But in real life. It's a raggedy and all. It's a branded raggedy and all that looks exactly like any other raggedy and all except it's old. Yep, exactly correct. Yeah. We're going to talk about that story later on. But if you don't know, if you've never seen, feel free people who are listening, go look up the photo, but to describe to you, you'll be disappointed. It's literally a wooden box with the glass windows and the raggedy and all inside that box. It's labeled. It says with a thing this is doll. It doesn't say Annabelle says

doll. And then underneath that it says warning, positively do not open in all caps. I don't think you got the name Annabel then. Well, it comes from the haunting, which you'll learn. Okay. Yeah, but like Alex said,

it's a raggedy and all soft floppy red yarn hair. It's like if you look up any raggedy and doll, is there any, like if it's old, like could you tell the difference? No, there's it doesn't have like a scary stitched smile or like blood on it. It doesn't have any.

It just looks like Raggedy and dead ass, right? Right. Literally. That's literally what literally what it looks like. And this thing is surrounded by all this crazy stuff and raggedy and the Raggedy end all sticks out like a sore thumb amongst all of it. It is since the warrants though, it has been taken out and like, uh, poured around.

And one of the guys I was touring with it died of like a heart attack in his hotel room after he lost the doll for a little bit supposedly. Like, it's crazy what's happened with that doll since then, since they've passed away. But, you know, before the Warrens themselves are these big stars that we know of that we've been talking about before they were the keepers of this museum of cursed objects. They, you have to understand who these people were before. And the kind of religious crusaders that at least Ed really envisioned himself to be. And this brings us to the engine, I think, that powered the Warren machine, at least in the very

beginning, not money or fame or any of that stuff. Honestly, like I said, I think it was just a genuine burning, almost fanatical religious belief. You have to understand that they viewed themselves as religious soldiers, quite literally religious warriors being in their terminology. They didn't see themselves as we see them, like paranormal researchers or investigators. They really saw themselves as religious crusaders. Devout Roman Catholics, they were rooted in very traditional pre-Vatican 2 worldview. And for those who didn't grow up Catholic like I did, Vatican 2 refers to the modernization of the church in the 1960s.

It changed the mass from being in Latin to English. Before that, if you went to a Roman Catholic Mass and stuff, it was done in Latin. It wasn't switched to English until the 60s. Genuinely, like, pretty much like modern marketing applied to the oldest church in Western history. Yeah. Yeah.

And Lorraine Warren, they preferred that like Latin, sharper-edged kind of feeling ceremony of a religion. To them, they saw the spiritual world as a war zone.

There wasn't like, you know, this kind of more new age spiritual outlook for them. It was basically everything served Satan. Satan was the ultimate evil. He is the big bad guy.

All these demons, all these negative spirits serve him. And everything goes back to Satan. Satan Satan. It's basically just like American moderates. I'm really curious. I'm really curious about this because in my mind,

just thinking about what I know about them and what I understand about like the, I would, I guess, pre-Vatican 2, hyper-religious folk. I wonder if the big takeaway at the end of this thing is going to be that they're willing to do anything if it makes people believe for a moment that there was a religious spiritual war going on

and if it makes them relook at their soul, they're fine, like just making shit up. I think you are 100% onto something. And I think that thought will come back. And it's especially a hypocritical coming from Ed and Lorraine Warren, which in the final episode we'll talk more about. But I also want to state that I don't think to them

any of it's hypocritical. I think it's one of those fundamental like, and the honor of God, we will do whatever it takes. to get people thinking about their soul. I mean, I meant hypocritical in the fact that they maybe had an underage girl living with them and were potentially sexually.

Why do I keep talking? Every time I'm like, I want to get a little bit of the doubt in this thing. And I feel like you're like, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah. More information is coming out. Every time. I try to play nice.

I try to be like, you know, I'll be open and it's whatever. And you always just destroy me. Yeah. We're not going to talk about that in this episode, but know that that is coming when we do a deep dive in a these people really, really were later in their lives especially. But to Ed Lorraine Warren, like, again, no such thing is like a friendly Casper kind of ghost. There were human spirits who were tragic and confused and that they, and then there were inhuman spirits. Demons and exclusively them who were soldiers of Satan.

And if you weren't fighting for God, then you were vulnerable to the enemy with a capital E. And hear me out. If you work for the Warren estate today and you want a great idea, maybe there's like some ghost relics that each of the baddies has one. And if they combine, the ghosts will take, you know what I mean? Like a megazord.

Something where we swap the balance like heaven becomes hell or some shit like that. You know what I mean? Like something crazy. It's like, imagine if we could write a whole universe. You imagine there was anti-Jesus. It was like, yeah. The warrants are on the ground and this demon creature is coming to get them.

and then they hear like on your left and then like other like oh my god they go to show up like everyone shows up to hell Falcon comes through actually and the Wakandans just show up and then I step through and I'm like actually the warrants are maybe pedophilic people

and everybody's not welcome we're clearly on the side of the demon you know what Thanos has like three goons where Thanos is three goons Juan goes back. Thanos comes out. Hugs them. Snaps.

Everybody turns into ghosts somehow. Spider-Man turns into a ghost. It's all fucked up. It's a fucked metaphor. I don't feel so alive, Mr. Stark. We got that. I don't feel alive. It's so stupid.

I don't feel so alive, Mr. Stark. That's the stupid as the stupid. Instead of Instead of Gimora throwing off the cliff, she gets busted. She goes into a proton pack. She just gets hurled off the cliff. We just did the light.

Ghostbusters. Yo, this sounds awesome. I really like this. Ghosts lore, dude. Unified ghost lore, dude. We got so much ghost lore to get through today, boys. I'm not even kidding. We need to keep moving.

So, like, you know, you're vulnerable to the enemy. The theology, this theology that they had really just kind of colored every single investigation they ever conducted from the very beginning. This was their filter they saw everything through. When they walked into a house, they saw demons. They wanted to see demons and that's what they saw. Because even if I would say, I believe they maybe even had some encounters with some truly maybe paranormal stuff, even if it was mundane, like a cup moved or something fell,

they would just label it as a demon for the most part, right? Like that's just how they saw stuff. This holy war mentality, this is what allowed them to justify their more aggressive tactics as well. And this is what Ed is really, really well known for. It's 1950 what? They start in 1952 and they go through the 70s. We're not in any year yet.

I'm still giving you a little bit more. When they start and they're going in and like pointing it, it shouldn't be like, that's a demon. That's a fucking demon. Yeah. They have a test of things they have to go through before they believe it to be a demon. But yes, that's more or less what they're doing. So they're like 20 years older.

They are. I'm trying to get a sense of like what the vibe was. They're in mid to late 20s in 1952 because in 1946, they are 18. If I'm remembering correctly, I'm trying to, I just,

yeah, right around 18 is 1946 because he was born in 1926. So, he was 20. So there was a young person's energy at the beginning of this. Yeah, 100%.

And Ed, and this is like this holy war mentality is why he was so fucking aggressive. Ed wouldn't stand in a room and be like, who would like to speak with me? Anybody know? be like, in the name of Jesus Christ, show yourself, demon. Show yourself demon as he's whipping holy water in the corner.

He's like, I am not afraid of you, demon. Honestly, Zach Begans. I will fight you in the name of Jesus. Yeah, same vibe. Brodo Begans. He is. That's what I'm saying. Yo, I heard you were a bitch ghost.

Come get me. I'm really angry. I feel so hot. That's how he was. He wasn't afraid of them because he also believed he had the ultimate authority on his side. That's right. Ed believed he had God and anime on his side in these ghosts, dude. And he truly believed he couldn't be touched. Now, there's a passage from the demonologist

where Ed explains exactly why he isn't afraid. Who wants to be Ed between the two of you? Oh, I'll be Ed. Is going to be Ed is going to do the most reading this episode. I will let you know right now. So it's too late. I already said I'll do it. All right. There's, this is what Ed said. That kind of encapsulates his shield of faith mentality. I believe in God. And the only thing that these forces respect is the power of God. Because he is. You can't fight them with a gun or a knife.

You have to fight them with faith. If you have fear, you open the door. If you have faith, you close it. I'm Tom Bowden. They'll give the letter for you. But this is kind of like where the line also gets blurry, because we constantly

refer to Ed Warren as a demonologist. It's the title of the fucking book. It's on his book covers. And it sounds really official, but in reality, demonologist is a title Ed Warren just gave himself. Now, the Catholic Church has a very strict hierarchy. Priests, bishops, cardinals, and yes, they even have official exorcists as well. And an exorcist, you ever seen a Catholic exorcism like ever even on camera in any way? Oh, I've seen the Pope's exorcists, so I've basically seen all of them.

Same thing, same thing. It is, though, an extremely magical experience. Like to become an exorcist in my research that I've, I did to like learn. I'm sorry. Jesse's laughing at something probably deeper than I got. I just, the Pope's exorcist,

I got flooded with the image of the fact that in the movie the Pope's exorcist, the symbol they use is the symbol from Dragon Age Inquisition. Like dead ass completely the symbol. And it just flooded to me with the whole, I got overhauled by how silly that is. Sorry. Like we've said on this show before. And I,

it's not. This is not like in any negative way, but the Catholics are very much the magical Christians. You know, as when you grew up Catholic, it's all rituals. It's true belief that we're turning red to class. Yeah, it definitely feels less like modernized. Definitely feels less, because I grew up Catholic too. It feels very like you don't like change to Catholicism if you want to like downplay religion in your life. No.

Yeah. No. If you like the magical stuff about it, you go to Catholicism. So I say that because exorcisms. are real. They have exorcists. You have to go through training, through all the stuff. And it's, you basically get a, like, you genuinely get a special book of prayers in like Latin stuff

that you chant and say over it. It's like, it's basically being a wizard in D&D. Like, that's kind of how it is. You have your spellbook, the things you chant, ritual magic. It's, that's how it is. And Ed Warren was none of that. There is, he was never in any of that. An exorcist is a specific priest appointed

by a bishop who is then trained in sanctioned to perform the right of exorcism. And Ed Warren was just a layperson. He never went to seminary. He wasn't ordained. The church does not offer a Bachelor of Science and Demonology. Like there is nothing he did. He was entirely self-taught. He claimed to have read every ancient text on the subject, studied the hierarchies of hell

and the methods of binding spirits. He essentially created his own position. and he was what he called the consultant. He was the guy that eventually priests did call when they didn't want to get their hands dirty or more often he was the guy who badgered the priest until they agreed to get involved. Because you have to understand this, there's major exorcisms that take a long time, smaller exorcisms that are faster and for lesser powerful demons. And occasionally if they were called, the priest would be like this isn't really

exorcism worthy, but here's these people we know that are devout Christians that are, you know, say they are like experts in these things and they would be like, point them at the Warrens later on in there, in the Warren's lives and careers. When you say that priests would call, right, right? Like, are we talking like four priests in their town? Are we talking like the priests in Palermo will call them and they fly across the world? There's two priests that I can think of specifically, one that played along with them a lot more. one that begrudgingly would like answer their calls occasionally

and then ended up cutting ties with them later, which we'll talk about in a later episode. But not like the Pope, like, I need you to put it in spirit. I don't know why he sounds like Luigi, but in my mind, he's generic Pope kind of sounds like Luigi from Luigi's mansion. Can we please just putting this out there now?

Can we do an episode on exorcisms in general in the future? There's specific exorcisms I want. I'm going to do it. and series. I mean like just in general, the idea of exorcisms. And because you're mentioning like, there's layers, dude. There's so many different styles. Like, I would love to deep dive that. We'll put, let's put that on the, I'll get the on the list of the episodes I want to do.

We can easily do a full one episode talking about exorcisms and like specifically. Yeah, before we like jump into all the different exorcisms. I feel like a general one, we're fascinating because, uh, other than what's in the movies, I couldn't tell you what a real exorcism is supposed to look like. Right. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, we will. And there's like I said, there's a couple of criticisms I want to cover. So it gets a good idea. We will do that. Yeah. Ed also often claimed that he was, quote, the only non-ordained demonologist recognized by the Catholic Church. But that is a very carefully worded phrase by Ed, because recognized can mean a whole lot of things. It can mean the Vatican has you on payroll. Or it can mean a local bishop knows who you are, tolerates your. existence and because you bring people back to their pews in the church and bring people to the faith. And it's much more the latter that is the reality for Ed Warren. They, because they did bring people back to the faith. And that was their ultimate defense through all of this.

Whenever skeptics or even the church hierarchy criticized them for being too sensational, Ed would point to the scoreboard essentially and say, look, we are saving souls. People are coming back to the church. We are fighting a real evil that modern science ignores. And that was another. of an argument, at least for the church. Are we saying people that lost faith in God got possessed? Mm-hmm. And then... Well, he never had faith in God got possessed.

Okay. So, and then he was making so much of a difference for, like, incoming new converts to the religion because he was converted. I guess if he's doing 10,000 cases in his career, five most a day, that's a significant number, but... You get a 15-minute meeting with him as... the demon and that's it you have to go on the way yeah because he he has so many demons to see in a day you only get 15 minutes so you're just you're either cured or you're dead you're done yeah yeah but you have to

think too like right like especially in the 70s and the 60s they were very famous uh especially locally they were on tv a lot of people like saw them in a very good light which also was good PR for the catholic church like that alone was valuable to these people uh and yes they did bring people into the church The fervent, unshakable dogma is what built what would be the foundation for the New England Psychical Research Society, Nesper. And it set the stage for their career where they would diagnose demonic activity in cases where most others would end up seeing mental illness, domestic abuse, and other things that were more true than these demons. And so that is the legend. That's the brand of these people, their crusade. But before they were the Warrens as we.

just described them. They were just Ed and Lorraine. And to understand how a landscape painter and a quiet Catholic girl became the most famous ghost hunters in fucking history, we have to strip away all of that and go back to Bridgeport, Connecticut in the 1920s, starting with Ed. And Ed Warren Mimey was born on September 7, 1926. And if you believe his account in the demonologist, he didn't go looking. for the paranormal.

He was born into it. He didn't have a choice. He grew up in a house in Bridgeport that he claimed was actively haunted. Now, this is the first major conflict in Ed's life. His father was a police officer, specifically a super numerary, a supernumerary, numerary officer, a supernumerary officer, which is a reserve cop, just to put it out there. guy who like checks your math problem yeah exactly super numbering you get arrested if you're back yeah yeah you pulled over you get quickly quizzed and then go to jay yeah his father though was a man

of logic a man very much of the law and a man who did not believe in ghosts whatsoever and he said his father's motto was if you couldn't if you can't shoot it or arrest it it's not real but ed pretty good i mean pretty solid i'm that's pretty solid i agree predator yeah that's a dead that's a I feel like Jesse would be as a parent. But Ed said he was seeing things. I don't know what I'd say to my kid. If you can't shoot it, it ain't real. I've been in Texas too long, man.

That's what they said to the kids out here. I saw somebody teaching like an 11-year-old how to put together and clean a rifle. Like out, it's crazy. Anyway, from the age of five, Ed claimed he was tormented by phenomena in his own a bedroom. He describes a childhood filled with footsteps, cold spots, faces appearing in the woodwork, knocks on the walls. But the most vivid memory and what I would consider his origin story moment was what happened one night when he was trying to get to sleep.

Alex, I'm going to have you read this account, or rather, sorry, Jesse, I'm going to have you read this account because it's Ed of the, quote, ghost in the closet, again, from the demonologist. I was five when I first realized that something unusual was going on in this world. The closet door opened all by itself. Inside the dark closet, I saw a dot of light about the size of a firefly. In a few seconds, the light grew to human length. And then, incredibly, the apparition of the landlady stood before me. She was frowning as usual, just like she looked in life.

Then she vanished. my father said there's a logical reason for everything that happens in this house but he never could explain how the heavy closet door opened without a latch or how those lights appeared however upon shooting the lights i determined what they were in fact real uh ed's father basically told him the tough enough stop being scared he told him that there was clearly a reason for the stuff so ed said he basically just learned to shut his mouth and not talk about it, kind of becoming a supernatural loner in his own home. So he retreated into books and eventually into art, but he never stopped believing that there was something else in the house

alongside him. And while Ed was being traumatized by frowning landlady apparitions in his closet, Lorraine Rita Moran was having a very different experience literally just a few miles away. Lorraine was born on January 31st, 1927. She was also raised in a strict Irish Catholic environment. She attended a private girl school called Laurelton Hall. And while Ed's experiences were terrifying and dark, Lorraine's were ethereal, shall we say. She claimed that from age seven, she had what she called second side. She would use lights around, she would see lights around people. She didn't know that they were oras, but would come to learn that that's what they were. And she just assumed that everyone must have seen them. She was written by Stephen King. Is that what you're saying?

Yes, yep, exactly. There's a story where she tells about the moment she realized she was different. And it happened at school on Arbor Day known as the Arbor Day incident. Alex, you're going to read this. And this is very, you know, she's often described as wayfish, kind of like ethereal-esque. By the way, do you think these two, that's how they like hooked up originally? Like saw a little foresight in her and was like, oh, yeah. 100.

100. Yeah, I think you're my, you're not wrong. It was Arbor Day, and we were all on the front lawn standing in a circle around a shovel hole as the ground. Well, just as soon as they put the sapling in the ground, I saw it as a fully grown tree. The nun standing beside me prodded my arm and said, Miss Moran, why are you looking up at the sky? Are you seeing into the future? She asked me just as sternly.

Yes, I admitted. I guess I am. What's matter? Alex, she's discovering her powers. She's slowly turning into Matthew McConaughey in my mind, and I'm not in control of that. That's just what's happening. That's just what is occurring?

For basically saying, yes, I'm seeing things. She got punished. She wasn't allowed to go to recess after that. And that is the perfect, that alone is like the perfect encapsulation of Laurean's childhood. She said she had a gift that the authority figures in her life viewed as a problem. So you have Ed, a kid terrified of the dark and Lorraine, a very pious girl seeing oras around people and visions of the future, I guess. And they were very on a collision course toward each other.

Then we go to 1944 and World War II is raging. Ed is a teenager. He's 18 at this point and he's working at or rather, yeah, he's 18 to this point. And he's working as an usher at the colonial theater in Bridgeport. One night, the doors open and in walks Lorraine. She's also 17 or 16 right around this point. And according to Ed, he saw her from across the lobby and told his co-worker right then, I'm going to marry that girl.

Like never met her before, never seen her before. But does he think it was true love at first sight? Or do you think it was more like that's a raven? Like he knew he was going to marry that girl. He saw the future and just knew. Yes, that's the one. I'm going to marry that girl. I think she had that sight.

He just had an intuition that this is going to be it. or she projected it on him. Yeah. Maybe she shot him a vision, bro. You know what I'm saying? You never know, dude. If he guys, depends on how many ghost relics he's got.

Because if he's got all five of them, he can do almost anything. He's got none of them right now. Time has no reason story. He has none of the ghost relics yet. We're working on that. And by all accounts after this, like he introduced himself to her,

that they became almost instantly inseparable. Ed was like, they just kind of like fit each other like puzzle pieces. A viewer one of wanted to go when, track down lost relics that's not yes i do see uh fucking um they got to date a little

for a short little while but history ended up getting in the way because ed like many young men at the time enlisted he joined the navy and he was very quickly shipped out to the pacific theater uh and out we don't know much about what happened to ed out there but we do know like he did see some combat it just very much was like It did change him when he came back. And it did, according to Ed, he almost died in war. I couldn't find anything that said otherwise, but I'm not entirely sure.

Again, we're just using his source here for this one. But then he came back and they got back together in 1946. And for the next 15 years, roughly from 1952 to the late 1960s, the Warrens were essentially became roadies of the paranormal. They very much kind of came together and were like, oh, you like this stuff too? Oh, yeah, I like the stuff too. Oh, you experienced stuff?

Yeah, experienced stuff. Let's go explore it together. And like, that is kind of how it went. And so, starting in 1952, they spent their weekends driving a beat up Chevy Eagle and around New England. And if you lived in Connecticut in the 50s, you might have heard like if you were in Connecticut in the 50s and you had a haunting going on, it wouldn't be that long before you learned that the warrants were the one that you were going to call.

Okay, I was joking about them being supernatural earlier, but this is starting to sound like basically exactly like supernatural. Yeah, yeah, it's maybe taking inspiration from these guys. Yeah, like if you're local, like these were the people, they were driving around and trying to get people to let them ghost hunt. And we'll talk about how they did that in a minute. During this era of their, of their kind of hunting, they mostly cut their teeth. on what Ed called human spirits. And this is, again, an important distinction to make before we get into the heavy stuff

because the Warrens became famous for fighting demons. But they had to go through the training program, right? So they spent decades hunting ghosts first. And one of their most early famous haunts, literally in their backyard, was the White Lady of Union Cemetery in Easton, Connecticut. And if you're local, you know this story, even I knew the story.

Union Cemetery is supposedly one of the most haunted graveyards in America. the legend is that a woman in a white nightgown wanders the road at night looking for her lost child or her murdered husband depending on what version of the story you get. And then Ed Warren claimed he didn't just see her. He actually got her on film. This is where we pivot to talking about Ed's evidence. Ed was obsessed with photography. He believed that cameras could see spectrums that the human eye could not. But this was the 1950s.

This is not the era of the cameras we have today. We're talking about grainy, high-speed film. Ed would set up cameras in graveyards and just let them run. He captured what he called, quote-unquote, globuls. But to Ed, these globules were manifestations of spirit energy. And this particular graveyard hunt, the white lady was his prize. And he claimed that one night he was sitting in the cemetery and he saw a mist starting to form and he immediately started snapping pictures.

Jesse, I'm going to have you read Ed's description of this encounter here. It's pretty short. But this is out of the book, A Demonologist. I saw a woman in Huat. She was not floating. She was walking. I could see her moving among the stones. I raised my camera and took the shot.

As the flash went off, she turned towards me, and then she dissipated into the ground. That's how you know she's a ghost. Dude, that's how you know she's a ghost. And this is where he released one of his most famous photos of that white lady. And it shows, well, if you look up the photo, you're going to be wildly disappointed because shows like a white, misty shape that maybe looks vaguely, possibly if you squint hard enough and tilt your head to the left, like it's a shape of a person, possibly.

Have I told you about my friend in high school who was driving as sprinkler was shooting towards the car at the same speed that the sprinkler was driving like that. like turning like on the road she was passing by it and the spray of the sprinkler was shooting straight at the camera the whole time she was passing by and it just looked like an ethereal person that's what like yeah yeah no i've never heard that i would love to see that footage but yeah i want to see this image yeah i want to see this uh it's real bad you're going to be really disappointing it is uh very rough yeah it's not great um but for the local fucking media dude this was fucking great.

This was awesome. It cemented them as local experts. This is the photo that got them their local like gig status where they could kind of go. People kind of knew who they were. And they needed a system to organize all this stuff. They needed a rule book. And that is what we are going to look at next. The specific laws of the paranormal that Ed Warren wrote,

which would eventually become the script for every haunting that ever investigated. Before Ed and Lorraine would like go. hunting wasn't really like as structured as it was until these guys came around. Ed is the one who kind of changed that in a lot of ways. And he took ancient Catholic theology and repackaged it into a system that was easy to understand, very easy to be afraid of as Vera Farminga let you know right away at the start of this episode. And most importantly of all, impossible to disprove. He divided the supernatural world into two distinct camps, human and inhuman. Human spirits were the ghosts. Confused, like I said, sad,

angry people who hadn't crossed over. Ed had sympathy for them. He would maybe even sit and talk to them a bit and he would tell the homeowners to pray for them, but he wasn't ever really there for the human spirits. He was there for the inhuman spirits. Me too. Exactly. As I would be too.

Fuck human spirits. Inhuman spirits were different, though. These were entities that had never walked the earth in a physical body. Fallen angels, demons. According to Ed, they followed a strict legalistic framework that they had to operate by. They couldn't just jump into your body because they felt like it. They had to follow a process.

They need a warrant. And this is where Ed also makes kind of teaches you that demon possession is never the demons fall. It's always your fault. The reason you are possessed by a demon is because you have a weakness. There's something about your belief that is allowing them to possess you. That's healthy. Right.

So Ed called this the three stages of demonic activity. If you've seen the conjuring, you've seen. you've seen this written, it was written on a blackboard in the movie, but in the 1960s, this was like revolutionary shit. Stage one is infestation. I'm going to have you, Jesse, read this next. This is the definition for infestation, stage one of any demonic possession, according to Ed. Infestation is the telekinetic movement of material objects, weird noises, unexplained footsteps,

the smell of rotting garbage, the temperature dropping in the room. This is the entity announcing its presence. It is knocking on the door. This is stage one to any demon infest, any demon possession. This is like, it's designed that according to him, this stuff that the demon is doing is designed to get your attention, to stop you from ignoring it. It wants your attention for you to recognize that it's there. they say that it's like

you know for what for it the once you ask is anyone there or you buy a Ouija board which is even worse it gets worse and it makes it so much worse for you this is a mistake because that is the invitation and once you've been in once they've been invited we move into the second

stage of demon haunting which is the oppression stage here you go Jesse oppression is where the entity targets the victim psychologically it is no longer about moving objects. It's about breaking the human will. The victim falls into deep depression. They stop sleeping. They hear voices telling them they are worthless.

The entity is battering down the defenses of the mind to make it liable. And this is all very dangerous because this is, or I should say, this is the most dangerous part, I would say of this, because he's describing what is mental illness for a lot of of people. And to then label that as demon possession is dangerous for the individual. Because it looks like just a mental breakdown the way he describes it. That's kind of what happened with the zombies too a little bit. Yeah, I guess. Wait, what? The Haitian zombies where it was like, oh, we just like got like mentally ill people wandering the countryside and pretended they were our dead relatives.

Exactly. To make it worse, Ed would often claim that psychiatrists were treating oppressed patients with pills when they really needed a priest, and that would fix it. The goal of oppression is to force the victim by the demon to give up, to break their will so completely that they just surrender to whatever is happening, which leads to the third and final stage, possession. All you, Jesse. Possession is the consummation. The entity displaces the human spirit and takes control of the body.

Once possession occurs, the human spirit is suppressed. The demonic entity uses the body to cause harm to others or to destroy the body itself. And that three-step infestation oppression possession would become his lens and how he saw the world and the framework in which how he operated on all of these hauntings. He stopped looking for ghosts altogether in the 60s and just started looking for the stages of demonic activity. If a family told him they were depressed in hearing noises, he obviously didn't recommend a therapist, man. He diagnosed them with stage two oppression. Like, I'm sorry, ma'am.

You should sit down. You have stage two oppression. Oh, I knew it. That's such a relief. I knew it was something crazy. I knew it was something that wasn't on me at all. Those pills you have on your counter, you should throw them away for your safety,

and I'll call a priest. Thank you. But there is one last rule that makes this whole thing. terrifying and the reason i said he turns it on to it he calls it the law of permission ed believed that a demon could not enter your life unless you invited it but the invitation didn't have to be formal you didn't have to sign a fucking contract in blood like the movies would show you the invitation was something as simple as playing with a tarot card just one joint a single joint one masturbatory session and then the demon shows up uh the invitation laterly could be a tarot deck playing with tarot

card so Santel's fucked he's filled with demons that man um or even owning trax pagan statue is an invitation which is any statue that is of not of a catholic saint or god or jesus you mean like ava unit one you mean like abu booboos kind of like labubus i bet you labubes i bet you there's go deep down that rabbit hole group of people out there that think out you i don't even think about that but oh i bet you there is a huge group of people that believe it's demonic in nature. There's still people think D&D is demonic in nature. Anyway, like I said earlier, all through this,

Ed Warren was a hoarder of proof. If you went to their house, like you would see his basement filled with shit. But the big thing is Ed also claimed to have mountains of photographic evidence. Like thousands and thousands of pictures. And while he wouldn't let the public see almost all of them, he did eventually let a bunch of them out so people could see them. and there are a lot of photos out there you can see of his.

And I think Ed thought this might really convince people that the ghosts were real. However, the most common form of this photographic evidence was what else the orb? Or is Ed preferred to call them? Bugs. Spiritual globules. Yeah. Orbs. Now, if you've ever watched the-

Globules sounds like something that you named. Yeah, you're right. It kind of does. If you ever watched a ghost hunting, show on YouTube. You know what an orb is at this point. Fuck, Zach Baggins, ghost hunters, tap, any of them. It's that little ball of light that floats across your screen or is captured in a photo. And to 99% of us, most of us, it's just fucking dust. But to Ed Warren, every one of them was a soul. He had a very specific, almost biological explanation for what these things were.

Because he didn't just say ghost. He broke this shit down. Here is his globule breakdown. for you to read. These globules are often the first sign of a manifestation. They are spirit, energy, and motion. They are not the spirit itself, but the energy the spirit is gathering to form a manifestation. When you see a globule, it means a spirit is drawing energy from the environment,

from the heat in the room, from the people present to build a form. is drawn energy and creating a body. Just like the lady in this closet. Exactly. Like the lady in the water. Yeah. I think,

I think that Ed Warren is turning into Jimmy Carter pretty slowly. Maybe. The older he gets the morning sounds like. Yeah. Even out of color coding system for this shit. White globules were human spirits, usually benign. Red globules,

demonic. And if you saw a red streak on your film, Ed would tell you to pack your bags and get a fucking crazy. Ooh, like lightsabers. Yeah. If you look at the, famous Warren photos from this era.

They all share a very specific aesthetic. They're almost always taken at night, almost always taken with a harsh, direct flash, and the ghosts almost always look like fucking flash mistakes. You see a bright, blown out white spot hovering over a tombstone,

or you see a blurry streak of light near a door, a mist that looks suspiciously like cigarette smoke, which makes sense, considering Ed was chain smoking cigars during most of these investigations. Like, dude, you're not thinking. Like, gold is globule.

Red is dead. Like, it checks out. Oh, you're right, dude. So simple. What Ed was capturing in his mind is something photographers I've learned called backscatter. When you use a flash on a camera, the light bursts out and hits everything in front of the lens.

This is how this works. If there is a speck of dust, a pollen of grain, hell, even a tiny, like, nah, three inches from the lens, the flash hits it, illuminates it, and because it's out of focus, it appears as a large, translucent orb in case you don't know how orbs are made and why they always look so much bigger on film when they're literally a speck of dust. But Ed never accepted that. And to him, he kind of considered the camera as, quote, an x-ray for the soul. He argued that the camera could see things the human eye couldn't because it captured a moment

in time faster than a brain could process. He would hold up a photo of a blurry white spot in a graveyard and say, this is a woman who died in 1850. And because he said it was such absolute unwavering conviction, people just believed him. And that, as you get older, as I get older, and I'm sure you find, you feel similar to boys.

That is unfortunately how the world kind of works. Gentlemen, are you aware of conformity gate? Yes. Yes. I love watching people break down in the goalpost. sitting mushed, chaos magic, like happening in real time? The certainty of the people speaking that they have solved the riddle and that it's going to be like, oh, no, there's another Stranger Things episode coming on the seventh.

Oh, no, it's on the 12th. Nope. And the thing is, is like, they sell you on it to a degree where I'm like, oh, my God. Like, wow. They, if they're right, this is brilliant, but they aren't. This is the generation's first. We're watching Gen Z's like, or in Gen Alpha's, like first experience with poor writing.

This is their, this is their Game of Thrones. Well, no, it's worse than that. Because Game of Thrones had like, you could see the declining quality. This is Sherlock, dude.

This is like the last season of Sherlock where it was great. And then suddenly it was bad. And you're like, well, that doesn't make sense. It must have all been fake. The behind the scenes documentary from Netflix feels like they were like distancing themselves

from the Duffer brothers. Because in the documentary, you learn the script for the final episode wasn't done being written while they were filming the final episode. There's a shot where they show the Duffer Brothers laptop and there's three tabs of chat GPT open in the right there in the writer's room. Stop.

It's crazy. They had no plan. You also learned they're one of their best writers. They were ignoring all of his input. And they divorced one of them got divorced from their wife who was one of their lead writers. She's the lead writer of Fear Street, which is like apparently a really good show or like like super. And she was writing all the seasons with them alongside of it.

It doesn't help that it took 10 years to do five seasons. And they're like eight episodes. Like after a while, their heart just wasn't an it problem. I don't know, man. It's crazy. I will say the first four episodes I enjoyed.

And then suddenly the declining quality is like dramatic to the point where I get these kids. I can't watch this. I don't understand them. And I wish them the best, but been down that road before. Like I'm obsessed with like research and like the back and stuff. I, I,

I stopped midway through three, but I watched the documentary. I saw what they did to my, my boy John Locke and lost. And I will never trust writers on TV to nail it ever. If it happens, I'm like shocked every time. Crazy. That felt like they were punching us in Lost.

That was crazy. Oh, I hated that. It felt like they were like, oh yeah, you want us to do something about it? Fine. Here you go. I was like,

shit. So the point being, if you say things confidently, people will believe you. And that is kind of how Ed Lorraine coasted for a long while. Because this massive collection of proof became the foundation of what would be their lectures in the late 60s. And they would project these photos, these slides on the screen in college auditoriums, pointing to dust motes lit by light and calling them demons into a room of 19 year olds in the dark.

It's hilarious. Now, now, so now that we understand they're rigorous standards. There's a little bit more we want to talk about some of the, Let's talk about some of the earliest cases after they created Nesper, which again is a New England Society for Psychical Research. It's also important to note that Ed Lorraine Warren quickly became their local celebrities at this point. We're rewinding time a bit to those early things because we've kind of, we just went to the late 60s.

We're going back into the 50s. Another tidbit about the Warrens for this time, too, that I want to know is one of the reasons I think they are even true believers at this time, at least, was the Warrens. This is the point in their time. where the Warrens didn't ever charge a dime for help at this point for over a decade and a half. All that big worldwide fame and the almighty dollar didn't start possessing their lives until the 70s, really. I want to really quickly, as you continue, I want the audience to frame this, take out ghosts and demons and all sorts of stuff and frame it as a streamer. When they first started out, they were doing it for the fun of it.

but eventually like just frame it that way and it all starts to make it makes to make perfect sense something we were doing that was special yeah it was something that we did that was interesting that helped us reflect our interests in the outside world that we did for fun because there was still prospects then and our college education was eventually surely going to lead us to something productive oh man that's why this show is such a blessing dude it's still so fun to do this show we're about to hit eight years next month no we're not no we're not we're not we're not I don't want to think about it. Yes, we are.

We're in eight years next month. That's why I'm like, boys, we've been doing this for eight years almost. It's crazy. Corner Fest, Cornerfest alone was 61,000 words. Just think about how much stuff we've done. It's, it's disgusting. It's insane. So my long, yeah, dude, our longest scripts are so scary.

Like, I don't, I don't, I don't look at them. It's so scary. It's, yeah, anyway, so, you know, at this point in time, God, I got lost track, is that they were doing it kind of for the love of the game, really, at this point. this point. There's no money involved. And while the money came in the 70s, they've been going since the early 50s. But like all things do, once that money and fame did hit, it sort of took over. And that's why I do think there is an aspect of true believer in these guys. At least there was at the beginning of all of this. And for the first twoish decades, this was their schick. This is how it went.

Going out to where they were needed, telling people based on their list of evidence if they were haunted by a demon or something, do their whole little self-made exorcism bit of Ed going in there wanting to fight the ghost, splashing holy water everywhere where Lorraine kind of walks around as psychically feeling energies and looking at oras and stuff. And then they would leave. And as the mid to late 60s came into play, we see the Warrens using the lecture circuit to really hone in on their branding. Hunting Ghost is fine, helping a confused spirit super nice. but Ed Warren was a religious soldier in his mind. He wanted a fucking war.

He didn't want to counsel sad ghosts. This dude wanted to fight evil spirits. And this was really evident in how he kind of sculpted himself in these lecture circuits. That TV interview was from the 70s, but still when you hear him talk, he'll cut off Lorraine a couple times at an interview and rephrase something to make it sound more aggressive than Lorraine. That's what only cool guys do. That's only thing cool guys do. anger. Yeah.

Right. Throughout the 60s, Ed and Lorraine realized that the real money wasn't in investigations either. This is where the money started coming in, specifically right around

1968, because that's when Annabelle really came around. Ed Warren talks, you know, in that scene, they're going to colleges and they're basically just,

Edward, I just try to imagine late 1960s college, hippie-ish era still, right, right around that time, still very hipster. Late 60s?

That's the apex of the hippies. You're the hippie college kids and then out walks fucking Ed and is like belted up jeans, tucked in shirt, sitting in front of all of you and then telling these hippie college kids about how demon ghosts are going to haunt them if they don't come to God. Then they'd be like, okay, you're cool. You want to hit this? Yeah. And he would tell them no and they're inviting demons into their lives. These are the lectures where he would tell them Ouija boards aren't toys. Don't fucking best with that shit.

They're telephones to hell. He tried. He would try to scare the shit. out of them. And I think, unfortunately for Ed, they kind of loved it. Like, Ed coming and talking to these people was fun for these people because it's like ghost stories. And they weren't taking them super eat like seriously. But in this lecture circuit, this is also where Ed refines his persona as well. This is where he gets that aggressive kind of talk. And he often talks about a story that he calls the brick story that he kind of talks about how you have to prove. I'll just have you read

this. This is when he's faced with the idea of like proving what he says is true, this is his counter to that called the brick. Jesse, go ahead and read that. I don't have to prove anything to you. If I tell you there is a brick in the air, you can choose to believe me or not. But if that brick falls on your head, you will know the truth. I'm not here to prove the brick exists. I'm here to warn you to get out of the way. So that's what he would tell these people, like, even when he's presented with, like, skeptics and whatnot, he's like, I'm not, choose me, you don't have to believe me.

This is, like, when they were trying to ask that guy, what his back story was with his family, the guy in Mexico, the, like, fake spiritual guru guy, and he's like, my real family. Like, my truth is what I believe. Like, magic, you don't, you don't ask a wizard about facts because facts are malleable when you're a wizard. Yeah, exactly, dude.

You're like, what, dude? And the other, as the lectures got bigger too, the stories started changing. Ed began talking less about the white lady and more about black dogs and more common demonic kind of visuals and stuff, you know, giant black dogs. We even saw that in Skinwalker Ranch with like the giant wolf and stuff. But one of the things we learned that Ed had a very personal obsession with was spectral, like spectral hounds in general. And Jesse, here is another story of where he said he came across one.

And then, here you go. I was working in the studio. I heard a low growl. I looked up and saw a black shaggy animal like a wolf standing in the doorway. Its eyes were red. It wasn't a dog. It was pure malevolence. I grabbed a flask of holy water and threw it.

The water hit the creature. It hissed like steam on a hot griddle, and the thing vanished. I think that's Resident Evil Village. It really is Resident Evil. So as we move into, like, even during this lecture era, you know, they're famous locally, still not hugely famous. We're about to approach the case that blows them up in a more countrywide manner, the Annabel case. Before we talk about that, the only thing I want to say, the last thing I want to do is tell you about how they used to do this before they got famous. famous. Remember I told you they would drive around in their car locally and like go around to these

places. The way they would do it was Ed would look into the newspapers or any sort of like ad area and look for people who are having issues with hauntings. Then he and Lorraine would get in the car, drive to wherever these people were before you're not even calling them or contacting them, get on the other side of the street, stand on the sidewalk, and Ed, being a landscape painter, would start to paint their house from across the street. Instead of knocking on the door because that would be rude. And while he was sitting there, Lorraine, way fishly, quote, unquote, would be next to him and looking over at the house and then looking back until eventually the neighbor would hopefully come out of the door. That is a scam. That is a straight up like honey

trap type scam. Like that is like that's like when you got the other guy when you do the ball and cup who's like spotting people. Yeah. Like pretending to make a bunch of money. And and when the neighbor would hopefully come out and they would go back multiple days if they didn't. come out right away and ask what they were doing, they would bring up the fact that the house was potentially haunted because of whatever they read in the newspaper, show them that they were painting their house because they loved how their house looked and would offer them an exchange of like,

you tell us about the haunting and we'll help you and you can have this painting in exchange. And that is how they started their careers for years, driving around, painting houses. Paint swaps? Paint for haunted house information swaps, yes. I don't understand. That's how they did it, dude.

That's how they got their shit. What is the value of that painting? Like, what are you going to do with that? That's my question. It was just to get them to talk to him, man. I know, but like, why, like you were saying he originally, you said he was a landscape painter and then he realized he could start making more money by painting haunted houses. And then again, you're like, the way he got these people to talk to him was that he stood in

the street and pretended to paint their haunted house. And I'm like, what, like, what? Like, oh, yes. and I'll put this haunted house picture in my bathroom. Like, I don't get, I don't know what the, I don't understand that part either, but I, to Ed, this is where I say they're true believers. Ed wants to fight demons, man, and he doesn't want to knock. I don't know why he didn't just knock on their door most of the time, but that was the way

they approached it a lot of the time. It's just very, very strange. And as the 60s went on and came to a close, the Warrens would have their massive break in the paranormal world. And with the story, which was the story attached to the. queen of their museum, Annabel the doll. This is the case that Ed Lorraine Warren considered the cornerstone of their career. It's the case that defines their theology perfectly. It starts with a mistake. It moves through the three stages of demonic activity and it ends in that glass

box in Connecticut in their basement. But the story itself begins in a hobby store. A mother is looking for a birthday present for her daughter, Donna. Donna is 28 years old. She's a nursing student living in Hartford with her with her roommate Angie the mother sees a doll it's a raggedy and doll about three feet tall has red yarn hair triangle nose button eyes we've all seen this doll it's soft floppy it's this thing has like shows based on it like this is like yeah there's like a like a branded crete like it's like a you know it's like a type of doll yeah yeah and it's the kind of thing it's a kind of doll you just kind of toss on your bed for decoration after you make your bed you know that kind of thing. And Donna receives the gift, says thank you to mom and tosses it on her bed. And for a few

days, that's just where it was. But then the infestation stage begins. It was subtle at first. Donna would leave for her nursing home, for her nursing shift in the morning, placing the doll in the bed with its legs straight out and its arms at its side. When she came home that night, the doll's legs would be crossed. A few days later, she'd come home and the doll would be leaning against the pillow, arms folded. It wasn't teleporting across. the room, it was a shifting position on the bed where it was placed, not really moving very far. Kind of just

like a person trying to get comfortable is the way I imagine it in my head. And Donna Angie thought it was weird, because that's the way they described it. Sure, yeah, no, the demon was like come on. You can do. You look like you're stressed out, dog. What are you doing? What are you doing? Come on now. Donna and Angie thought it was

weird, maybe a little creepy, but they rationalized it. Maybe the mattress was like off center, tilted or lumpy and it fell over. Who fucking knows? Then the doll started moving for real. They would start finding it in different rooms. Donna would leave it in the bedroom, lock the door, and come home to the doll to find the doll kneeling on a chair in the living room.

And then came notes. This is a detail that movies actually kept out because it's so specific. Donna and Angie began finding pieces of parchment paper around the apartment. And they didn't, they said it wasn't paper that they owned. They were, like I said, they both were nursing students and they had notebook paper, but this was very specifically they dictate parchment, that these were scraps of old thick parchment and written on them in a shaky, childish kind of writing

were messages, help us or sometimes help Lou. Paper. Yeah, Lou was a friend of theirs, a young man who hung out at the apartment frequently, and it's worth noting Lou hated the doll. He told them to burn it or get rid of it. He said he said he would get a bad feeling from it whenever he was around it like he was being watched.

The doll apparently heard him, but before things got violent, the girls made the critical error, the error that Ed Warren spent the rest of his life warning people about. They wanted answers, and they didn't call the priest. They called a medium.

They held a seance in the apartment. And the medium told them exactly what they wanted to hear. She told them that long before the apartment complex was built, The land was a field. And in that field, a seven-year-old girl had been found dead. Her name was Annabelle Higgins. The medium said the spirit of Annabelle was still there. She was lonely.

She liked Donna and Angie because they were nice to her. She didn't want to hurt them. She just wanted to be loved. She asked for permission to move in the doll so she could stay with them. This obviously is the classic Trojan horse. but Donna Angie were compassionate people so they felt sorry for this dead girl's ghost spirit so they just said sure why not let her live in the doll

this gave the entity permission to inhabit the doll and almost immediately the little girl vanished that's such a different use of the permission concept from earlier where it's like well right well he didn't say that permission is like a tarot cards or Ouija boards and stuff too yeah that's fair that's fair any just anything that you open whatever he needs it to fit his per his rules

so that he can get what he wants out of it basically yeah um so they gave a permission and that's the moment it went from infestation to oppression the doll became active and violent the target was lou one night lou was staying over he woke up from a steep sleep unable to move he was paralyzed he looked down toward the foot of the bed and what he saw was the raggedy and doll, not sitting, but slowly sliding up his legs.

It moved up to his chest, and it stopped at his neck. Then, according to Lou, it began to strangle him. The doll. The doll. The plushy doll

with no ability to actually strangle. I don't fucking get you. I'm going to fucking get you, Lou. Fuck you, Lou. Get up to. Like Chucky. the doll.

And then he passed out from lack of oxygen, actually. The doll overpowered him? It's the demon operating through the doll, okay? After it slid up, what are you doing, Jesse? I'm just going. I just want to verify because I'm old enough to have lived during Raggedy Ann and days when they had the cartoon. I had a my buddy, though.

Yeah, I remember my buddy is my buddy is worse. Just take the time to look up Raggedy and dolls. And note, they do not have the fingers. They have mittens for hands. The capability to strangle does not exist. It's like a pillow, yeah. Well, he passed out. Well, when he woke up, he woke up, he woke up the next morning.

But when he woke up, he just convinced himself that it was a nightmare, maybe sleep paralysis, or whatever. But the next day, the dream became physical. Lou and Angie were in the living room looking at maps. planning a road trip. And suddenly they heard a noise from Donna's bedroom. And it sounded like someone was rummaging around. Lou got up. They went to the closet and going through one of the bins was raggedy Ann.

Throwing on hats. He had a beer and he was smoking a stogie. So Lou got up. He thought maybe an intruder had broken in, walked over to the bedroom door and he waited until the noises stopped. And then he threw open the door. and the room was empty. Except for the doll.

It was in the corner, looking lifeless. Lou walked into the room to check the windows, and as he got close to the doll, he suddenly doubled over in pain, grabbing at his chest. He said he felt like he had been slashed. So he stumbled back into the living room,

gasping. With like a blade? Like blade? Like slashed? Yeah, well, as he went back in the living room, gasping, Angie lifted up his shirt to see what happened. And on his chest were seven distinct claw marks.

This is just like Zach Began's like in a weirdly like almost like, you know, like when you hear about like there's like the old blue beetle too. You know, you go back and you find out like somebody else had that name back in the day. And you're like, oh, what was he like? Oh, he was like kind of the same, but like a little different. Different aesthetic. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's a reason I don't like Zach Baggins. equally so from the same reasons because they're liars. They're liars. Yeah, okay, yeah. So, yeah, he had three vertical and four horizontal scratches. They said they were hot like burns

and they were bleeding. And here, within, and apparently within 48 hours, the marks were completely gone. No scabs, no scars, just gone. For them, that was the breaking point. They realized that this wasn't

a little girl named Annabelle. A seven-year-old ghost doesn't claw at your chest. So they called a priest, Father Higin, and Father Higin called the superior, Father Cook. And Father Cook called the experts. Ed Lorraine Warren. Ghostbusters. Yes.

And Lorraine Warren, where they would arrive at the apartment. This is what I mean when they priest had them on call. Like they did, they were like, this sounds like, yeah, just send the warrens at there. The warns filling up their revolvers with like bullets with holy water inside and smoking holy cigarettes with blessed burning bush. leaves and shit. That's the scene where the priest says, you know who we have to call. And we cut to that scene of Ed's doing that.

And he's like, I'm too old for this shit. And behind him, the phone just rings. He snaps over just as he finishes noticing that last bullet and he gets up. We don't even have to see what happens next. Hard cut to the apartment. Ed walked in,

looked at the doll, listened to the story about the medium and the permission that was granted. And it just instantly diagnosed the problem. This is what Ed's conclusion was in the case files. The doll is not possessed. Spirits do not possess things. Spirits possess people.

Instead, the spirit simply moved the doll around and gave it the illusion of being alive. But because you girls believed this was the spirit of a little girl, Annabel, you gave it that permission. It was like handing a maniac a loady gun. Guns filled with spirit bullets and holy water bullets. The spirit is not human. It is demonic. There you go. That's a take on this. He explained that the doll was just a conduit. The entity was attached to it, quote and quote, using it as a focal point to manipulate the girls. The ultimate

goal wasn't to live in the doll. The goal was to possess Donna. Ed told them the doll had to go. He wouldn't let them throw it away because he feared someone else would find it. He said he would take it into his own custody. He grabbed the Raggedy Ann doll and tossed it into the backseat of his car. And he told Lorraine that they were not going to take the highway home. He said, if we take the highway and the car loses control, we're dead. We'll take the back road. The demons will run us right off the road.

Correct. That's like the doll you got me. That's what he did to one of the guys. Harold? He cut the brakes, bro. He cut the brakes off of somebody's car. He knew the entity wasn't going to let them leave quietly. The drive from Hartford to Monroe was about an hour, but it took them much longer.

As they hit the winding country roads, Ed's car, which was at this time, a big heavy 1960s sedan, began to fight him. Ed described it later as a battle for control. The steering wheel was locked up on sharp, on sharp curves. The brakes would go soft as they approached intersections. The engine would stall for no reason. It was at a physical attack on the machine itself by the demon, who's using the focal point of Annabel the doll to cause all of this.

Finally, after a near collision on a particularly sharp turn, Ed had enough. He reached into his black bag, pulled out a vial of Holy Water, and started throwing it in the back seat as he was driving, splashing the doll with Holy Water as he was also attempting to drive at the same time. Strong play. He made the sign of the cross in the air and commended the end. to stop over and over again, shouting on it.

He did what my mom used to do to me and my brother when we were driving to Sizzler and fighting. Swiping how you. Knock it off or pulling the car over. I will turn this car around, demon. Wait, so the demon went with them? A demon who did not possess the doll is also sitting in the back seat, messing with the doll.

It's also, yeah, well, through the doll. Okay. So you point out something very valuable, Jesse. Ed says demons can't possess objects, but they can't possess people. But they can't possess people. However, he has a museum filled with haunted cursed objects. That doesn't always fit. And then his excuses, well, it's not possessing the doll.

It is using the doll as a focal point to haunt the others. But when he takes the doll, the demon comes with him. So his logic does not work out. I have a lot of questions. Yeah. Yeah. But again, if he hates, if the demon hates them enough, He's like, you stole the doll that I was using to get inside this girl's body.

I'm going to get inside yours. So he, like, got in the car. And he's like, I'll go home with you now, bitch. And he's like, in the back seat, he's like, oh, turn this car around, demon? Yeah, he's splashing holy one. Get moistened, demon. Get the behind me moistened. Yeah, don't think about it too hard.

You know what? You know what Ed would say to that, Jesse? I don't care, believe me or not. The brick is going to hit you. It's going to hit you, boy. That bricks are coming, boy. My brick and it's brick accessories. After a bunch of shouting, making the signs of the cross,

the splash and some holy water on it, according to Ed, the car immediately settled down. The engine went back to a nice calm purr. The brakes began working again, and he just got to drive the rest of the way home in silence. But the Annabelle doll wasn't done. When they got it to the house, Ed placed it in his office, sat it in a chair,

and over the next few weeks, the doll would move. Ed would lock it in the desk. It would appear in his chair the next day. Like in slow motion it would move? Like, wouldn't the obvious thing to do if you're just Gryfton be like, I said that the demons don't possess things. They possess people. But clearly this case has proved me wrong.

Yes. Wouldn't that be the obvious thing to say? Like, I now know they can possess things. and it's changed my worldview. It really is worse than I thought. Like, in this, there's no, like there's so many crossed wires in this thing.

You're speaking a lot of logic and I've been in deep in the warren hole for so long that the logic just bounces off of my thick brain. All right. I'm too smart. He's too dumb right now. He got too dumb at this time. He can't hear.

He can't hear sense. The demon is axis pointing through Annabelle. So anyway, he, uh, over the next few, weeks the doll would move. Ed would lock it in the desk. He would then see a peer in his chair. He would leave it in the office and it would appear in the hallway. Lorraine claimed she saw a black

cat materialized near the doll, a cat that would dissolve into the shadows afterward. Does that have to do with it? Is that part of the demons? The demons, just, you know, it's doing the oppression stage of stuff. It's trying to like make you spooked out and stuff. Okay. Ed realized that simple storage was not enough for Annabelle the doll. He needed a cage. So he commissioned the case that, we now see today made of wood and glass he inscribed the lord's prayer on the back of it he had a priest come and perform a binding ritual over the box is literally just like supernatural now now we're just fully in like fan fiction zone he would then put the doll inside close it and lock the thing with

its own special lock blessing the lock and hitting it with holy water and then for over for over 40 years annabel sat in that box now ed died in 2006 Lorraine died in 2019 we'll get to that at some point. But if you believe the Warrens, Annabelle is still causing havoc. And the people, the person who took his estate who also sell Annabelle or did sell Annabelle Vodka, which was Annabelle Vodka. That was aged next to the Annabelle doll. And it used to come with special gloves to handle it with. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This is also Warhammer 40K. this is like if you know the lore of Warhammer that the emperor was like give me anabel black guy i'm not a god i'm just a man and science will lead us forward and

treat everyone well and then he like dies air quotes and everyone makes him their god and he like ruined like the entire universe is ruined same thing here where they're like demons are evil and you don't want to work with demons and some guys like i made vodka with annabelle's juice bro It was made near her fucking case, bro. That's crazy. I sent you a link to Harrodin vodka. Paranormal Reserve, dude. Come on.

The paranormal reserve Annabelle Editions from 2020. 666 bottles. Look at the box. It comes in. A Ouija board. Well, that's an invitation. No shit. $200 a bottle.

Get out of here. And at the bottom, each bottle includes gloves for handling a protection, an authenticity card, as well as a besie. spoke wooden case. Cases with functions as a Ouija board and a Ouija planchette also included. If you do not wish to store the paranormal reserve in your home and are interested in a complimentary storage solution, please contact our paranormal reserve. There's no.

The fact that they were like, oh, we're going to make vodka. And then you can spread it. It's like Ringu, bro. They're just like in order to. Wouldn't you, if you bought into all this, be like, hmm, seems like it's pretty demonic to me. Yeah, this is evil. But that's the whole point. That's why people like it.

It's like, it's the death wish thing. You know, it's like that like, it's bizarre. But you're some special about you, right? Like something special about you that you don't get affected by it.

I, you drink the demon vodka. I guess. Somehow like, you somehow like don't give up on the idea that you can consume a product that you buy. Even though it, it challenges your own narrative about yourself as somebody you can resist a

haunting, which means that you then believe in a haunting. I don't know. It, it takes a little. lot of Olympics to get there. Yes, it does. Quite a lot.

Now, you might, if you've watched the Annabelle movie, you're like, wait a minute, that's all there is to the Annabelle story. The movie was so much more exciting. It's because the animal movie is so much. So much more made up. It's a movie. It's made up. Okay.

That was the first big big big big big big break case. The last case and the last thing we're going to talk about today is the case that immediately followed. And this is the case that launched their own cinematic universe. This is the case that made the Warren's. household names for our generation and onward. The very first conjuring movie is based on this, this one.

And so you know, like I said, Ed died in 06. Lorraine didn't die until 2019. She's not only a cameo in this movie. She's a consultant for all the movies. I was going to say, was at the premiere.

She was a consultant for all the movies while she was in, like while she was alive. We're about to talk about the Perrin family. This took place in Harrisville, Rhode Island. This is the town I literally lived in. I lived in Harrisville. I know the house.

I drove by the house daily, daily going to college, living home. I'm going to actually link you boys. The Arnold historic house that this story took place in. Okay. This is crazy. I love this because, man, Rhode Island, there's not much about Rhode Island's memorable. But there's a few. And it's like, that's the house that this took place in.

Well, I know it's really small. It is. You can drive top to bottom and under an hour. This takes place in Harrisville, Rhode Island. And if you've seen the movie, then you need to do me a favor. Take everything you saw in that movie, the exorcism in the basement, the birds flying into the house, the happy ending where the Warrens fix everything and just throw it all away. Because the real story of the parent family is messier, darker, arguably much scarier than Hollywood.

The Warrens didn't save the fucking day either. According to the family, they almost got people killed, actually. in this. So let's set the scene. It's January 1971. Roger and Carolyn Perrin are a normal middle class couple. They have five daughters, Andrea, Nancy, Christine, Cindy, and April. And they are looking for a place to raise their kids, somewhere with space and somewhere quiet. And they find a 14-room farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island, known as the old, known as the Old Arnold estate. And if you're from Rhode Island, then you know Harrisville. This shit looks like, The Vavich, by the way.

This is like, this is like old. This is like 17th century type shit. Yes, it is. It in Harrisville is quiet, rural, full of like woods and old homes. And this house was ancient. It was built in 1736. It had history in the floorboards.

It sat on 200 acres of land. It seemed like the perfect thing for them. But on the day they moved in, the cellar, a man named Mr. Kenyon gave Roger Perrin a piece of advice that he didn't understand until much later. He didn't say good luck. He didn't say like enjoy the house. He looked at Roger in the eye and said, for the love of God, leave the lights on at night.

Dude, Tom Bodette, it was him. I knew it. The day they were supposed to move in. The family moved in and almost immediately things started to happen. But here is the difference between the movie and reality. In the movie, the haunting starts at like at a tent. Doors are slamming. Ghosts are jumping off of wardrobes all.

already. But in reality, like so many hauntings we've talked about on this show, the haunting started way more subtly. It started with just a broom. Carolyn would sweep the kitchen, leave the broom in the corner, and walk away. And when she came back, five minutes later, the broom would be on the other side of the room, or the broom would just be missing entirely. Then after a few, you know, weeks or days of the broom, sounds would happen. The girls would hear scraping in the walls. They assumed it was rats, but then the scraping turned to something else. Now, Andrea, the oldest daughter, later wrote a memoir called House of Darkness, House of Light. She describes the early days not as terrifying, but confusing. She said the house felt like it was

alive, which again, for me, kind of brings back other halting thing that feeling. You know what I mean? Like in my actual- You have your own kind of weird thing going on. But I just mean, you know, like the idea of a house being alive and having a feeling of like that's something I feel like most people have been in a house where they feel that way. Right. Yeah. Oh, no. I especially something that old that has that history in it, you know. Yeah.

Even if it's not real, right? Right. Well, they said they quickly realized that they weren't alone and it wasn't just one ghost. And this is another part the movie glosses over. The parents claimed the house was a spiritual train station of sorts. They saw apparitions constantly, some harmless. There was a spirit that they called Manny. He was a small man who would just stand in the hallway and watch the children play.

They call him Manny because he was a man. Oh, shit. That's a great. You might have just figured it out. Shut up. I think you figured it out. He would watch the kids play. Just asking them important questions.

And he was, uh, he never spoke. And when you looked at him, he would just smile and fade away. He never did anything scary. He was just there. there was another spirit that they said smelled like flowers there was one that would kiss the girls on the forehead at night before bed and then but the one spirit that seemed to be around the most

seemed to have a thing for Roger Perrin he said every time he'd go into the basement he would feel a gentle caress on his shoulder every time without fail there was just like a on his shoulder but for Carolyn his wife things got more dangerous as time went on. Once while she was in the barn, she claimed to have heard a swishing sound

coming from nearby behind her. And when she turned to look at what was causing the sound, she said she saw a scythe appear in midair and come hurtling at her neck at an incredibly quick speed. She had no time to move, but said she was lucky because she was wearing layers of clothing that day. So when the scyth hit her,

it didn't get through it and she didn't get hurt. Uh-huh. What? Okay. What? Something, you need me to clarify you something? No,

me, you know what, man, bricks. I don't think you're going to have an answer. I don't think you're going to have an answer for me is what I think. I think I think I can ask. I'll tell you the ghost tried to kill her.

Okay. Okay. By cutting off her head, I think. Yeah, dude. All bricks. Maybe.

No, I'm, I got it. Then Carolyn said she'd start to have visions. She started seeing things. And one of the more famous visions from the book was that she claimed that one night, she was walking into the dining room. And suddenly,

the room wasn't her dining room anymore. It shifted in time. She saw a long table filled with people dressed in 18th century clothing and they were eating dinner. It was hyper realistic. She could hear the clinking of silverware. She said she could even smell the food that they were eating. And she stood there frozen just watching them.

And then the man at the head of the table stopped eating, slowly turned his head, looked directly at Carolyn and nudged the woman next to him, pointed at actually. Carolyn and the entire table stopped and stared at her. They looked terrified of her and then they faded away. Looked terrified of her. Now, if we're going to take this as again, we're just covering this as we're taking these stories as they are being told. If we're to like compare this to other hauntings,

this sounds like, you know, that kind of classic time slip idea of what ghosts might be. Maybe time got wibbly wobbly space time weirdly bit and you, you maybe even appeared to be a ghost to them while, you were, they were appearing to be a ghost for you. I'm familiar with this sort of understanding of ghosts, yeah. The other thing she said she would see is Carolyn said, Carolyn described waking up in the middle of the night to see the head of an old

woman hanging off the side of the bed where she was sleeping. What you mean by this? Like the head was snapped and broken off the side of the bed. And she could see it like looking toward her off the side of her bed. No. Okay. We don't like that. She said it was twisted at an impossible angle.

and the face was screaming silently. Silently. For a while, the parents just tried to coexist with these things. They called them the others, which also is a movie, by the way, and has similar. Well, that's a great movie, that's a great movie, by the way. Good, good ghost movie. Yeah. But then the atmosphere shifted.

The focus of activity began to narrow to one person, just the mother, Carolyn. And she'd start with small injuries. Carolyn would wake up with a pinch mark on her leg, then a bruise, then a scratch, activity became aggressive toward her specifically. And amidst all the friendly ghosts, there was one entity that the family came to fear above all others. They didn't call it a demon initially.

They called her Bathsheba. Okay. Bathsheba. That sounds like some Alistair-Crowly type shit right there. This is where we have to talk about who Bathsheba Sherman was. Because in the movie, she is a Satan-worshipping witch

who sacrificed her baby and hung herself from a tree. Great movie villain for The Conjuring. In reality, Beth Sheba Sherman was a real woman who lived on a neighboring farm in the 1800s. There is zero historical evidence that she was a witch. She was a Baptist. She died of natural causes. Specifically, she died of a stroke at an old age.

And she is buried in the local cemetery on consecrated ground. Sweet. So where did this Bathsheba demon witch story even come from? Well, it came from the local gossip. During her life, an infant died in her care. And town rumors said she killed it with a needle, but she was cleared by a court. This happened so much. This exact thing happened so much.

How many times have we covered it on the show, right? Yeah. However, obviously, as we've also learned, folklore and lies are way more powerful often. And the legend of Bathsheba, the witch persisted on in Harrisville. And when the parents started experiencing attacks, specifically attacks on the mother, that's what the name that they latched on to. The entity they called Bathsheba was not like Manny. She was hateful.

Carolyn described feeling a presence that loathed her. She felt like she was being targeted by a jealous woman who wanted to be the mistress of the house. And the activity kept ramping up. Beds levitating, inches off the floor, furniture, sliding across the room, the smell of rotten flesh coming from the corners. The family lived like this for years, not weeks, literal years. They were trapped here because of financial difficulties. They couldn't get out of the house if they wanted to. They couldn't sell this house.

We're getting into it. They couldn't sell this house because the economy wasn't great around this time. They couldn't move. They had no money to move anywhere. They just spent their money on this house. So they were isolated. And eventually in 1974, a friend of the family suggested they call for help. They suggested a couple from Connecticut who knew all about this kind of thing.

Enter the warrants. when Ed and Lorraine Warren rolled up to the old Arnold estate, they didn't come quietly, of course, they brought the circus, they brought investigators, they brought cameras, they brought priests, or at least priests that were friendly with them,

to the parent family who had been living in isolation and terror, this looked like a cavalry of people kind of marching into their sacred space, but at least finally, someone believed them. Finally, someone knew what to do. And Lorraine did their standard walkthrough.

Lorraine went into her trance state, quote, unquote, moving from room to room, sensing the energies. And surprise, surprise, she confirmed everything the family already feared. She told them that the presence wasn't just a ghost, that it was, in fact, Batchieba. Well, no, it was Batchieba, that they were right. And obviously, according to Ed, it's their fault. This is obviously another critical moment in the psychology of a haunting that we've talked about in this show as well. Up until now, Bathsheba was just a local rumor. that the family had latched on to, but now Lorraine Warren,

someone that their friend said was an expert, took that rumor and stamped it with a seal of psychic authenticity. Bam, it is actually Bathsheba. What does that even mean? The psychic seal of authenticity. They're just like, yes. To them now, these people who are being told that these people are in touch with the, with the supernatural, that their hunch that this is Bathsheba is right.

It actually is Bathsheba. It means everything else that they, they've now attached to Bathsheba, they see in a light of this truth. And you kind of instantly pivot that and give them the perspective of maybe not, not, no longer being like maybe we're right, maybe we're wrong. They hear somebody who's a professional say you're right and that's going to be the only thing they look at this through from now on. Right.

She told them that Bathsheba Sherman was a Satanist and the whole story about how she sacrificed her child to the devil and how she was now targeting Carolyn because she wanted to be the mother of the house. Ed did the rest. He diagnosed the house. He didn't see Manny, the friendly ghost. He saw deception. He told them that all these friendly ghosts were just different masks

that this demonic entity was wearing to lull them into a false sense of security so that they could possess the home. He told Roger Perrin that the family was in grave danger and he identified the stage immediately as the oppression stage, stage two demon activity in this house. And because the activity was so focused on Carolyn, Ed decided they needed to intervene.

Now in the movie The Conjuring, this leads to a climactic stormy night where Ed Warren performs an emergency exorcism in the basement while the house tears itself apart. It's like a very triumphant heroic moment in that movie. Obviously, the reality was a bit more messy and uglier. Ed Warren could not perform an exorcism. He wasn't a priest, and he knew that.

But he did decide to conduct a sort of, and I use this term loosely because of the way he would argue with me if he heard me saying it, a sort of holy seance, even though seances are invitations. A seance is the exact opposite of what the Catholic church recommends, but this is Ed Warren's version of it. So for him and his weird mind, it's okay. And it's not exactly an invitation. The rules are really wibbly wobbly when it comes to what Ed is allowed to do.

but as the seance began Carolyn Perrin underwent a violent physical, writhing kind of transformation Andrea Perrin, the eldest daughter, watched it happen and to this day now granted they have books about it and they make money about it.

Andrea, the two eldest daughters will say to this day that the events of the movie and the way it went down in the movie is actually exactly how it was like in real life. But that is not true and we know that for a fact. that's fucking crazy dude why like why here is what did happen though and a but here's what did happen according to ed and according to the book and the demonologist so take it with a grain of salt

obviously but here's what they said happen next when the seance began my mother began what no you're good you're good my mother began to speak in a language not of this world and a voice not her own her chair levitated and she was thrown across the room i thought i was going to see my mother died that night. She was thrown 20 feet into another room. Carolyn's body is so supposedly contorted. She was screaming in a voice that didn't sound human. And obviously it was said it was demonic. And Roger Perrin, the husband and then the father, saw all this, he wasn't involved in the seance. He was at work. When he came back home from work and saw all this going on, he immediately saw through the Warren's bullshit. He did not see demonologist saving his wife. What he saw was

strangers just torturing her. He saw his wife being physically battered. and feeding off of like this weird exorcism seance energy the warrants were bringing. So he stood up. He didn't ask them to stop. He just basically kind of hit the eject button. He ordered the warrants to leave their house immediately. Get the fuck out of their house. Yep.

And he physically kicked them out of his house. They did not get to finish their seance. They did not save anybody. There was no heroic anything at that house. He screamed at Ed to get out and take his stupid circus with him. And here is the ending that Hollywood. refused to film. The warrants left unsuccessful. They packed up their cameras, all their holy water, and they just drove away. And the parents, they just stayed in their home. They didn't move

out the next morning. They couldn't afford to. They lived in that house for another nine years. And the haunting, according to them, didn't stop. In fact, the family claimed that after the seance, it actually got worse, and the entity was angrier. So, according to Andrea and Roger, they walked into a volatile situation, threw a grenade in the middle of the living room, and then left the family to deal with the explosion. That's how Roger and Andrea sees their intervention. And Lorraine would spin the story differently, of course.

In their files, it was a battle against a powerful witch, but to the people who actually lived there, the demonologist next door, were not heroes. They were just making things work. And yet, despite this disaster, the Warren's fame only continued to grow. Because they controlled the narrative. They were the ones going on TV.

They were the ones writing articles and shit. They were the ones going to lecture halls, spinning their stories without anybody there to tell them otherwise. They controlled the files. And they were about to walk into another house just a few years later that would make the previous two cases look like a warm up. The thing that I would argue launched them into superstardom. The subject of the very first episode of this podcast nearly eight years. years ago, the Amityville horror. Yep.

And that is where we'll pick up next week. Not with a brief revisit of Amityville necessarily, but a look at Amityville specifically through the eyes of the Warrens when they arrive. Love it. Love it. Give it a listen. Go back and give it a listen. Notice Mathis's different voice.

Yeah, we all, we, oh yeah, I think, yeah, I guess I do. I smoke. You put on it like a voice where you're like, well, no, my voice was just more pure. Yeah, he sounded like a sweet, beautiful boy. Yeah. I wasn't as to, you know, there's a lot of life. This show ruined you is what you're saying? No, this show saved me.

I think life ruined us all alongside the show. I agree. The show's pretty cool, but yeah. In the script writing has just changed drastically over the years too for all of us. It's crazy to listen to it. That's it for this episode for the Warrens Part 1. Thank you, boys, for being here. We pick up with Amityville next week.

We're off to do a minisode for Patreon.com slashulminati pod. We appreciate you. Anyway, me and my wife were sitting outside indulging on our porch one night enjoying ourselves. I needed to go to the bathroom, so I stepped back inside, and after a few moments, I hear my wife go, holy shit, get out here. So I quickly dashed back outside. She's looking up in the sky in the fall. I look up to you, and there's a perfect line of dozen lights traveling across the sky.

Thank you.