Stuff You Should Know - The Warrens: Paranormal Power Couple

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Today we dive into the interesting story of paranormal power couple the Warrens, inspiration behind The Conjuring movie franchise. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc. And send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you.

Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. check out the second season of my podcast shell game on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeart radio

hey and welcome to the podcast i'm josh and there's chuck and this is stuff you should know we're into 2026 now chuck what do you think about that how you feel uh i have high hopes for this year Yeah Oh man Do I really? I don't know I think you should Okay

You should have high hopes For every year And we can be let down Sure But you know You can still have high hopes I guess I have my cynical hat on So that was a bad time

To ask me that question Because we're talking about Ed And Lorraine Warren As Julia said Who titled this one I'm using this title even It's great A paranormal power couple

That you might know If you've ever seen movies like the Amadaville horror, so we talked about them in that episode for sure, or The Conjuring, or was it The Haunting in Connecticut? Yep. Was another one?

They made a lot of money scamming people. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's really no, well, I want to say there's no other way to put it. Plenty of people on the internet put it differently. They were the real deal, legit, Ghostbusters, demon hunters, If you add up all the evidence

And you're incredulous and skeptical You probably not only suspect the warrants were frauds But you might actually have a little disdain for them I say we kind of present both sides Even though I feel like it's pretty clear Where we land, maybe Okay Have you seen K-pop demon hunters?

No, is it good? Yeah, I figured you guys would have seen that I figured you and me would be into that What is it? Is it on Netflix? Because we don't have that anymore. Yeah, it's Netflix original, so. Okay.

No, I haven't seen it. Although they did show it in theaters. I had sing-alongs in the theaters and stuff. Oh, cute. I got to see that. Yeah, I just didn't know. It's a legit sensation. It's funny that we, I don't know what we were talking about,

but the Conjuring came up not too long ago, and you said you hadn't seen it. Have you still not seen it? Since last week, I have not seen the Conjuring. Do you remember how it came up? I mean, I think we were talking about, about Raggedy Ann doll. That's right.

And the doll's up. Great memory. So, okay, I still say the conjuring, the first one, is a legendary, classic, great ghost horror movie. It's just fantastic. So nothing changed since last week? No, but it could have because learning more and more about the actual backstory behind it and just how exploitive it was and how historically bent it is. Yeah.

It could have really affected how I view it, but I decided not to. Well, you can separate art from the ragdoll. For sure. I can. And I'm going to, by God. Let's do that right now. All right. So Ed and Lorraine Warren, they founded in 1952 the New England Society for Psychic Research

in Connecticut. Ed said, you know, self-described demonologist, Lorraine, self-described clairvoyant and trance medium. And they formed that in Connecticut because they were both from. Connecticut, and looking at their list of greatest hits, did a lot of ghost busting in Connecticut. Yeah, one of the things you can credit them for is they made the idea of, like, ghost hunting mainstream. All of the terrible, terrible TV shows that are around today all owe their existence to the

Warrens, essentially. There were ghost hunters and psychical research societies and everything around before them, But they were so huge into publicity and getting their stories out there that they kind of put it on the map as far as, as far as at least America's concerned. Yeah, for sure. So credit or scorn, they were the OGs. Ed was, I guess Warren was his middle name because he was born Ed Warren Miny in 1926 in Bridgeport. He says that he grew up in a haunted house. So that's where he got his first Jones for this kind of work.

And his wife was born Lorraine Moran. Moran? I think Moran. Moran, later Warren, obviously. In 1927, just a few months later, also in Bridgeport, grew up very, very Catholic and met. And that'll play a part in their careers because it all had a Catholic vent. Yeah. And they met as teenagers, got married in 1945 when Ed was on leave from the Navy, serving.

the World War II, and then they had a little girl, Judy, and Ed went to art school, and ironically, that's where they got their start ghostbusting because they were traveling around selling, hocking his wares as an artist. And they said, well, while we're here, we might as well do some paranormal investigation, because that's what you do. Right. And if you are familiar at all with The Conjuring Series, you're like, I already know all this. And that was because the largest horror franchise in history, the Conjuring series, is based on the Warren's files, the books they wrote, the interviews they gave, the TV shows that they consulted on. If you put it all together, all of the Conjuring movies that started in 2013 have grossed at least $2.3 billion, all based on the malarkey that the Warrens came up with from the 50s to the, I guess, I think it really kind of tapered off in like the 90s.

Yeah. I mean, it's kind of crazy to think, right? This just sort of average couple from Connecticut who were doing their thing. Like, I don't think anyone, I mean, they certainly saw dollar signs, but nothing like that. No, and we have to say they never charged a dime from anybody in need that they were helping. They didn't make their money that way. They made their money through lectures, through selling their stories, other people's stories, frankly. They had a museum that they charged money to come in and see. you know, entry, but they never charged the people that they were helping, which I think is definitely worth pointing out. Yeah, they didn't show up and say, what do you got? You got a demon and you got a ghost that's, let me see, carry the one, we can get rid of that thing for five grand. Yeah, exactly. So let's get into this. Oh, I thought you had. I said it was, you know, sort of very Catholic. Their encounters were very much steeped in Catholic dogma. We're talking, I mean, I say it's right out of a horror movie because it literally was. People would speak in different languages, supposedly. There were alleged like hoof prints

appearing in the snow, levitating beds, levitating kids, foul smells, exorcisms, furniture. You know, that furniture is moving all over the place by itself. Doors are shutting without any wind blowing. Right. Just shutting. For sure. Yeah. I mean, this is a 50-something year career. They founded the New England Society for Psychic Research in 1952. So they've been doing this for quite a while. But their all-time huge cases didn't really start to pick up until the 70s. I think the first one that people point to is like the first big deal case was actually became the basis for that first Conjuring movie.

It was the Perrin family haunting with Carolyn and Roger Perrin. And they had five daughters and they moved into a house in Rhode Island. an old farmhouse that was built in the 1750s, I think, maybe, 1667 Roundtop Road. It was also known as the old Arnold estate. And they moved in and they stayed there for 10 years. But during that 10-year time, they had some really hard occurrences according to them. That's right. That's a great way to say allegedly because I've been thinking about how to mix that up.

According to them? Yeah, yeah. That's good. Yeah. I'm going to use that. Yeah, the children were the first ones to sort of get the haunt, and the parents didn't really believe that was going on. They told their daughters, like, no, you know, you're just being little girls, of course, and seeing ghosts that aren't there. But the parents soon got on board and said, yeah, something's happening here.

The beds are levitating. There's that awful smell. They did a little self-research before they called the Warrens and found that there had been apparently a lot of really gruesome deaths over the history of that home, which is not unusual. super old farmhouse. So that's when they picked up the phone. They called the Warrens. I can't imagine what year was this? 1971. Like how, I mean, this is in Rhode Island. I guess Word just gets around or maybe they see a newspaper article or something because, you know, before the internet, it was amazing to me that all these people just knew who to call. I was wondering that as well. And I think in some cases they didn't call. It's just people have

written that because there's so many cases and they're so convoluted and they're so just you know there's so much BS around them that people just take total liberties with it so it's not entirely clear who called whom but let's just say they called the Warrens right the Warrens showed up they held a seance and in the seance Carolyn is thrown across the room but first she starts speaking in tongues I think her daughter Andrea later wrote that this was she was speaking in a language that never existed on earth, I think assuming that this is a demon, that kind of thing. And they trace the whole thing back to the spirit of a witch,

a dead witch. And we established in the bell witch short stuff that a witch ghost is the worst kind of both. And she had lived in the house in the early 1800s. And not only was she a witch, she was a child murderer. She had murdered an infant with a knitting needle. And so they had the seance. Carolyn gets thrown against the wall, nothing changes, nothing solved, and the Warrens are like, see ya, thanks for the story.

You know, when the Warrens left, the haunting hadn't ended, but the Peron stuck it out, or Peron stuck it out for 10 years total. And then when they moved out, the haunting stopped. That's right. And, you know, what we're going to do here, we're going to go over some of their greatest hits, as told by the Warrens and others. And then maybe we'll come back later and sort of pick them apart of it. Maybe if we feel like it. The next one, of course, is Annabelle. We talked a little bit about the doll and the dolls episode.

This is the early 70s in Hartford, Connecticut, when a nurse got a Raggedy Ann doll as a gift. And the doll came to life, started doing some cute things. Like, hey, I'll leave a little note for the nurse. You're going to put me down in this chair. But I'm going to really go over in this room just so you know that I'm fully animated and alive. Like Elf on the shelf kind of stuff. Yeah, exactly.

And the nurse was like, all right, this is fine because I think this doll was haunted by a little girl who died in the house named Annabel Higgins. So I kind of feel bad because it's just a little girl ghost. But eventually her friend, she had a friend that was physically attacked by unseen forces, I guess, via Annabelle, the doll. And Ed Lorraine says we're called in, but I wouldn't be surprised. if they weren't mining the news and making some calls themselves, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, for sure.

That would be my guess. Because this is an era, the 70s, man, you could call a newspaper and be like, I've got a haunted doll. My house is haunted. There's a ghost, which, and a newspaper reporter would show up and write a story about it, right? Totally, yeah. So, yes, these stories did pop up in the newspaper, and I'm quite sure that the Warrens were reading papers for this. One way or another, they showed up, and they determined, no, this is not the ghost of a little girl

named Annabelle Higgins. This is a demon hanging around a doll, pretending to be Annabelle Higgins, in order to get close enough to Donna, the nurse, whose doll it is, so that she can possess her soul. And that was the story that they told. What do you do when you got a demon, Chuck? You bring in an exorcist, and that's what they did, and this is my favorite part of this whole article, is this sentence. It's unclear if it was successful, since the doll continued to cause problems. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say that didn't work then. And the Warren said, all right, we'll just, we'll take that doll, since the doll's not the problem. And one day we shall make a lot of money from this doll. Yeah, they put it in their museum under glass. And apparently they said a

prayer of containment to keep the doll and its attendant demon behind the class. And I think it's worked, because you know what? Apparently that doll just sits there behind the glass. Yeah, staring. But they said that the last people who mocked it, somebody who was visiting the museum, died in a motorcycle crash right afterwards. So do you want to move on to the Lutzes? Because I love the Lutzes in what they did and said.

Yeah, I mean, we did a whole episode on this. So I don't think we have to get super detailed. But the Lutzes were the Amityville horror family. They're at 112 Ocean Avenue. in Amityville, New York. This is in the mid-1970s. And a real tragedy happened here in 1974 at about 3 o'clock in the morning when the guy who lived there, Ronald DeFaio Jr., killed his whole family.

As parents, his four younger siblings, he killed them all as they slept by gunfire. And then a year later, the Lutz family moves in and they don't make it 10 years. They make it about a month before they realize that mortgage was way too much. much. Yes. Exactly. They said that afterward, they went to the press and said that they had experienced terrible odors. Both George and Kathy, the parents, had been possessed-ish, maybe light, possessed, that their daughter had made a friend named Jody with red eyes, who was actually some sort of pig ghost demon that no one else could see, although I think somebody caught sight of it, fly swarmed out of nowhere and almost made Rod Steiger throw up.

Yeah. This one's the creepiest. I love it the most. Hoof prints came out of nowhere in the snow outside of the house. And you know it has hoof prints and walks up right. A talented goat? A talented goat, a pig ghost demon, or Satan himself. That's right.

So the Warrens are there. I'm going to just stop saying called in. They just appear out of the ether. They do their investigation. And they said, at first confirmed the presence of a child ghost, but then did a little more digging and said, actually, this is not a haunted house, everyone. And the Lutz has went, oh, thank God. And they said, this is haunted land.

The very land under this house is evil. It was built on Native American Cemetery, where they had some dark rituals in the past. and this is what led Ronald Defeo to kill his whole family. So sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but you guys are in bad trouble. Yeah, this is a one-time seance that they held where they found all this stuff out. And they actually, one of the most famous photos of a ghost ever produced, it's called the Ghost Boy Photo from the Amityville House, came out of this investigation, this one-night investigation, the Warren's head.

If you've never seen the Ghost Boy photo from Amityville House, from Amityville, go type that in and check it out. It is a really great, creepy unsettling photo, especially if you compare it to John Defeo. I think he was the youngest brother of the Defeos who were murdered by the oldest brother. It looks an awful lot like him. So a lot of people are like, there you go.

The Warren's had it figured out. There's a ghost. There's Indian burial ground is now a trope, thanks to them. And we can thank them for poltergeist as a result. That's right. I say we take a break, yeah? Yeah. And we'll talk about three more of their more famous investigations right after this. This is fun.

Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc. And send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff.

I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person, a billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan.

Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. I guess it's not too far past Halloween. So in our minds, you know, it's not early January. So we're sort of in that spooky mood. So this is sitting quite well with us.

But we need to talk about the Enfield haunting. Because this is not in Connecticut, my friends. This is in London, England, in 1977. And Enfield is a suburb of London. and at the time one Peggy Hodgson and her daughters were what were they they were terrorized by unseen forces just like the rest they move into this place banging sounds coming from the daughter's room Peggy bursts in and sees this dresser creeping across the floor by itself seemingly going toward the door to block it and Peggy was like I got to get that dresser it's out of control but she by the time she got to it it was like it was glued she couldn't even move this thing. No. This is the basis for The Conjuring 2. Also a truly great ghost movie, especially for a sequel. Was it London? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's based on this. This is a very famous case that was also investigated by the Society for Psychical Research, which was founded

all the way back in 1882, 70 years before the Warrens founded their society. But they showed up because the Hodgson's, or I should say Peggy Hodgson, couldn't get any help from the police. And she had basically reached the end of her rope because one of her daughters, Janet, I think the youngest daughter, started falling into trances and apparently was possessed by a ghost named Bill Wilkins

who said that he had died in that same house, actually in a chair in the corner, and that he wanted everybody out because this was his house. And if you see that movie, it's really well done and super creepy. Have you seen all those movies? I have seen those two. Oh, okay.

That's the extent of it. How many are there? Good God. How many things have they conjured? So with the conjuring, I think they're up to four maybe. Oh, okay. But then there's a whole other, like, sub-franchise with the evil nun. I think I've seen one of those.

Spinoffs and stuff. And then the Annabelle stuff, too. But I've only seen the first two conjurings. And they're good. They're good movies. They're hokey. a lot of ways, but as far, like, a good, decent, even mediocre ghost movie is so few and far between.

There's so many terrible ones that, like, you know, I'll take whatever decent table scraps can be tossed at me. Yeah. I hear you. Okay. I'll check it out. Okay. So, like you said, the Society for Psychical Research, is that right?

Psychical? Yeah. They come in. They're competitors of the Warren, of course, over there. I guess. And they observed, you know, all the stuff they were talking about, like things levitating, furniture moving, of course, fires erupting out of nowhere, apparently cups just spilling up with water when there is no water around.

Supposedly, one of the researchers had a curtain that was slowly creeping around his neck as if to choke him. Yeah, this is a skeptical society that believes in the possibility of ghosts and poultry guys and stuff, but they're not just credulous ding-dongs. Oh, the, that society? What are they? The Psychical Society? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, that's good. Ed and Lorraine maybe investigated, maybe didn't. This is where it gets a little dodgy, and we're going to talk about that in Act 3. But at any rate, in 1978, they said, you got a poltergeist. That's what the deal is.

And, you know, New Line Cinema, you want to buy this story? We'll sell it to you. Yeah. And they did. That's right. There was a really cool documentary I saw where the, so the SPR made tons of audio tapes, real to real audio tapes of this. And somebody made a docu, I guess a docudrama or whatever, where they used the tapes as all of the audio. And then they hired actors to act out the stuff and the dialogue was the tapes.

So these people had to lip sync with the tapes. And it was all done in period costumes and all that stuff from the 70s. It's really good. I can't remember the name of it. But I'm pretty sure that's the only, the only. documented to attempt that. So if you can find that, watch it. Did you ever watch that Zoom Call horror movie that I recommended?

Yeah, it was pretty decent. Yeah, not bad, huh? Yeah, I was really uncomfortable when they started making light of it in front of the psychic medium. That was the thing that got me the most. It was awkward, you know? Yeah, plus you know that they're going to get it, you know, even worse because of that. What was it called?

I think it was called Host. I thought it was very well done, you know, a pretty clever COVID movie. when, you know, they were shooting stuff as creatively as they could because of the restrictions. Yes. It was a good movie. All right.

Let's move on. We got a couple of more here. The case of Arnie Johnson, also in Connecticut, very conveniently located in Brookfield. This was in 1981. And this one is interesting because there was a 19-year-old name

Arnie Johnson, who stabbed his landlord, Alan Bono, or Bono, 20 times. And in his trial, he says, I'm not guilty, and they said, temporary insanity? And they said, no, no, no, demonic possession.

And the court went, oh, boy, here we go. I think this is the first time anyone ever tried that. Yeah. The reason he said that is because he said, I really am possessed by a demon. My fiancé, Debbie, her little brother, David, has been possessed by a demon for a while. And we had an exorcism. And during the exorcism, to help David out, I dared the demon to inhabit me instead. Well, he did.

And when I got into that argument with the landlord, that demon is the one who really stabbed him, not me. That was his defense. But I think the Warrens showed up before all of this, before the stabbing even, and they took a look at David. And Ed looks, little David up and down, is like, yeah, you still got demons attached to you. You still got 43 demons. That's right. He counted them. That's why they had that exorcism as the Warrens came in.

and said, because initially they thought it was a ghost, you know? Yeah. And they, you know, the Glatzels, who was, that was Debbie's last name, the girlfriend, they brought in Claire G from the Catholic Church to bless young David. That didn't work. So that's when the Warren show up and they're like, no, it's demonic. It's not a ghost. And you need that exorcism.

And during that exorcism is when Arnie Johnson's like, oh, yeah, come into me. I dare you. Right. And then the murder happens and the guy ends up in trial, Arnie Johnson. I think he went by Cheyenne, his middle name. And so the judge is like, I'm not even going to accept that as a defense. What else you got? And they're like, self-defense.

And they tried him on self-defense, and he got five years in prison for manslaughter. So I guess they believed that to an extent. Yeah. That's not the end of that case. But that's a huge legendary case, too. And then there was also, there was a movie called The Haunting in Connecticut. It's awful. And it was made kind of outside of the,

the Warren's purview, but this was a case that's largely associated with them that involved the Snedeker family. That's right. That was also very conveniently located in Salvington, Connecticut, right there on Meriden Avenue. And this is a case where two people, a Carmen Reed and Alan Snedeker, they got their kids, they had four of them, and a niece. They brought them there to live because their son, Philip, needed nearby medical care. kind of long-term medical care, and it made it more convenient.

So they moved in there, they moved in, and of course, things start going down. Philip, who is the young sick son, he starts seeing a threatening young man with long, dark hair who would just repeat his name over and over. And then Carmen, I believe it was the mom, was in the basement, and she was like, wait a minute, there are tow tags and there's embalming equipment here in photos of dead people. I wonder what this house used to be, and everyone said, duh, it was a funeral home. Yeah, the Hallahan funeral home for decades, I think pretty much right before it became a home for rent. And it turned out that Phillips' room was once the display room for caskets, when they sold you the caskets, you know, they have like half caskets on the wall, that kind of thing.

This is where Philip was sleeping. The embalming room was just down the hall. The thing is, Philip needing this constant care of treatments for Hodgkin's lymphoma type of cancer, they couldn't move. They couldn't leave the house. So they had to kind of stick it out, and things just kept getting worse and worse. Finally, Phillips started to change and became very violent and was, I think, forced, forcibly taken to a mental hospital for observation and stayed there for a couple of months, I think. and was finally diagnosed with schizophrenia, he moved out, he avoided the house again, and I don't remember if the haunting continued or not.

But one of the big things that came out of this was an appearance on Sally Jesse Raphael. The title of the episode is, I was raped by a ghost, because Carmen said that she was repeatedly raped by a ghost, and the niece was fondled by a ghost, and the Warrens also show up on that episode. And you can find it online. It's a Sally Jesse Raphael episode for sure. Yeah, you sent that to me, and I did my best to scrub through and hit the highs. Right. Shall we take a break?

Yeah, let's take a break. All right. Well, take a break and kind of wrap up with what's going on with the Warrens and all these cases right after this. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the Baxter? basic business plan, just one page as a Google Doc, and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to

be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us.

I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck, so one of the things that gives the Warren's casework, I guess, credence in any quarter, is that this is all based on some kernel of truth. like Ronald DeFaio did kill his family in the Amityville house. That definitely happened before the Lutz has moved in. The house that the Snedekers rented was the Hallahan funeral home before they showed up there. And there were like embalming tools still there left over. It turns out that a man named Bill Wilkins did die in that house in Enfield in London.

just exactly at the time that young Janet, who was apparently possessed by him, said that he had died in the same place that she said he had died too. So there's like all of these different things that are just factual enough to kind of provide a basis that can then be kind of filled in with some fat, maybe a little muscle and sinew to make a full-blown, like, you know, haunting story. Yeah. And, you know, the warrants, if you asked them back then, they would say, hey, we kept a lot of this evidence. They called it, quote, hard evidence in different, you know, artifacts and things. A lot of this stuff was kept in the museum, you know, that they had at their house that you could, you know, pay to go into and look over this stuff. Some of it was made public. Some of it they held back. You know, they said some of the juiciest stuff they couldn't even show, of course. And in 1997, finally, the New England Skeptical Society said, all right. Let's get together. Let's talk this out. Let's look at this evidence that you've got. They brought out that Ghostboy photo, of course. They had audio recordings that had these, you know, strange sort of non-languages or otherworldly voices.

That was the one, I think, in Enfield with Bill Wilkins, like, they trotted that out and played it. They had that Annabelle doll. She shook that doll and said, look, what do you call this? She didn't shake it, of course, because it was stored under glass. Right. And then they had, you know, witnesses and personal, like, counts from people that, you know, testified, not in court, obviously, but that all this stuff was, you know, very real to them.

Yeah. And so these scientists evaluated all of their evidence and their means and methods and motives, and they decided that it's all blarney. They said that they're... Yeah, it was a quote, by the way. Yeah. I don't really say blarney very often. I say malarkey, I guess, because I did at the beginning, but this was, I guess it was based

on that quote. They said they're not doing good scientific and investigation, which I think is generous to even assume that they're doing any scientific investigation and that there's like, they come along, they say it's a demon, and then everything that they kind of, all the evidence they gather supports that hypothesis rather than gathering evidence and then coming up with a hypothesis from it. And they basically were like none of this stuff is falsifiable, testable, like, yes, there's a doll right there that they say is haunted. That's not evidence.

Right? Yeah. So they just basically said that it's all, they're just total frauds. And if you look at the history of the Warrens, this is not the first time that happened to them. It was not the last time that happened to them. They just rolled with it. It just, it never slowed them down. They never seemed to freak out whenever they were called frauds or hucksters or grifters.

Like, they just either shook it off or they had some sort of response like Lorraine Warren had in response to that New England Skeptical Society, 1997 study. Yeah, she said they don't base anything on a God. Right. So if you don't bring God into it and the idea that they're Roman Catholic God warriors fighting evil incarnate on earth, helping families for free, then of course it's not going to make any sense to you, egghead, pencil net college boy scientists.

Yeah, and, you know, one of the biggest criticisms of their work and other work by other paranormal investigators because, you know, a lot of these people use pretty questionable techniques at times. So it's not like the Warrens were any worse than a lot of them. But the fact that a lot of times you can trace this back to maybe somebody

in that household has some sort of mental illness going on and they're being exploited. Yeah, that's the thing. Like, you can be like, well, it's all in just in good fun. But there are actual problems. with what they were doing, and that's one of them. And even if they weren't mentally ill, some of these families did believe that there was something going on,

and they were in some sort of crisis, and the Warrens would come in, tell them they had some demons, maybe give it a shot, maybe solve things or not, and then go off and sell the family's story as their own case, right? That's, again, how they made a lot of money. It was writing books and giving lectures based on these places where they just show up and then take over the story insert themselves. That's harmful. I also saw that you can describe, at least in part,

the satanic panic that came along in the 80s from them kind of normalizing the idea that people were out there getting possessed by 43 demons, getting raped by ghosts. That was a contribution they made. And then also, especially these conjuring stories now, if you watch them, Chuck, Lorraine and Ed Warren are portrayed as this couple of who have arguably the greatest marriage in the history of humans and that they are just steam powered by God and that's what they're doing.

They're battling evil here on Earth. And so I think it kind of whips up like a little bit of potentially misplaced religious version of patriotism and people who are religious. Yeah, probably so. You know, we can now talk about some sort of the, maybe the claims

against some of these cases. One of the claims was that the Warren actually paid a guy named Ray Gorton to completely make up the Snedeker haunting. They worked with an author, I mean, which is true, his name was Ray Gorton, to write a book about that case called In a Dark Place, Colon, the story of a true haunting, and Gordon in 2009 said, that book was entirely fiction, and they're grifters, because I was interviewing this family, and the stories didn't match up from person to person, and I took it to Ed, and he said, quote, they're crazy.

All the people who come to us are crazy. That's why they come to us. Just use what you can to make up the rest. Yeah. So that's a Snedeker case. That's one little piece of evidence. And this guy actually wrote the book and was paid by. I don't think that he had much of an axe to grind.

Right. The Enfield House, it's not even clear that they investigated at all. The closest anyone's ever put them to this haunting was one of the Society for Psychical Research Investigators. guy, I don't know if it's Leon or Lion, Playfair. He was one of the lead dudes. He said that at the very least Ed showed up, maybe for an hour or something, was hanging out outside, I guess, with him. And it was like, you know, you can make, you can make some money off of this if you want to do some business. And I guess Playfair was like, I don't do that. And so Ed was like,

all right, see you. And took off. And then again, took the story as their own. Like if you watch The Conjuring 2, they are basically the lynchpin to freeing this family from this torment. Yeah. Yeah. Amy DeVille supposedly was a hoax. This all came out later in 1979. There was a lawsuit. And the guy who shot up his family, Ronald DeFaio, his defense lawyer, William Weber, said that he and the Lutz family made it all up one night over, quote, several bottles of wine.

And the Lutz's kind of came out and said, yeah, that's pretty much what happened. Ed and Lorraine Warren were like, no, that's not what happened. Right. I think Lorraine had a quote during the seance. So they met George Lutz once when he handed off the keys for them to go have a seance. They didn't ever meet Kathy. They never walked around the house or worked with them.

They had a one-night seance where that ghost boy photo was produced, which much has been just jackpot luck for them. Because it looks a lot like John Defeo in the face, but John Defeo is also wearing the exact same shirt that an assistant named Paul Bartz, who was there that night was wearing. People are like, well, he's probably taking a measurement or working on equipment kneeling down, and it just happened that his photo was taken. But the idea that they had much, if anything, to do with Amityville is incorrect, except for all the lore they made up, like the Indian burial ground.

As far as I know, they came up with that, even though they got the tribe wrong. So the whole idea of Amityville being as off the chain as it was came largely from them, but also from the Lutz's story. They helped publicize it big time. Yeah, I looked up that house. It's been bought and sold quite a bit over the years, but someone eventually changed those two upper windows that, I don't know, just kind of looked creepy. They kind of look like eyes, I guess, but now they're just regular windows. I saw that the old Arnold estate that was in Conjuring One, the first. Somebody bought it after the first conjuring came out for like half a million dollars and then pumped up the idea that it was still haunted and sold it for a million and a half like two years later.

So now they're in demand, haunted houses? Pretty much, yes. That's interesting. One of the biggest things that came out, also just one thing before we go on, I would direct anybody who's into that first conjuring and knows all about that house to go read a blog called Dreaming Casual. a historian Jamie Rubio really looked into Beth Sheba Sherman in her history. And apparently it is all made up to the point where she's essentially a slandered 200-year-old person. So go read that. But I think probably the biggest knock that the Warrens got came in 2017, long after they were international global stars, thanks to the Conjuring series.

And a woman named Judith Penny came forward and said, Ed Warren and I had a sexual relationship. starting when I was 15, and Lorraine knew all about it. Yeah, like she moved into the house and supposedly had a 40-year relationship. And like you said, Lorraine was okay with it. I think they had a, you know, a business going. Penny said that she was impregnated by Ed, and Lorraine pressured her to have an abortion because that would hurt the business, the family business. and this is a big sort of red flag here.

The Hollywood reporter said that when Lorraine, because they got a bunch of money to consult on TV and movies over the years, I think we've kind of made that clear. But Lorraine specifically had a deal to consult on The Conjuring. And she barred New Line from showing Ed and Lorraine being as anything other than what you said, like this sort of perfect couple. Specifically, it said no criminal offenses, no sex with minors, no child pornography. prostitution or sexual assault or depicted as participating in an extramarital sexual

relationship and just so people know this is not sort of a normal kind of thing even in Hollywood when they're doing these big contracts about you know supposedly true stories to include all that very specific stuff is is not normal yeah I was reading that as well so that's a little odd especially when you combine it with Judith Penny's story That sounds totally true. But, yeah, and again, coming forward in 2017, it's not like the moment the first conjuring came out. She's like, give me some money. Like, I, she seemed to have a pretty, I think she actually testified in an affidavit that all of this was true.

Yeah. So that's tarnished their legacy a little bit, especially if you already thought they were grifters or hucksters or something like that. It's not entirely clear whether they believed. any of the claims that they made. If they didn't, then Lorraine Warren was one of the great character actors of all time who never broke character, at least in front of anyone who was willing to come forward. And she died, I think, in 2019, long after The Conjuring had become huge. Ed died, I think, sadly, the last movie he got to see was The Haunting in Connecticut.

He died in 2006. So they're both gone now, but the New England Society. for psychic research, which again they found it in 1952, it's still going on under their son-in-law, Tony Spira, to whom, quote, all of their knowledge and experience has been successfully passed. That's right. And that Annabel doll is still around.

You know, I don't think they have that museum anymore that close in 2019 when Lorraine passed away. But Annabelle will show up here and there on tours and special events. Yes. But they had a really cool. cool museum from what I could tell, but it's shut down inexplicably. It's not open anymore, and there doesn't seem to be any plans to open it again. Yeah. But there's a new

conjuring movie out, I think, Last Right. Really? Yeah. It's based on a case that we didn't talk about, but there was sexual abuse by demons as well. It was also in the 80s. So that was their big thing then. Who wants to see that? A lot of millions and millions and millions of people around the world. Are they still super popular? Oh, yes. And supposedly this one is like their last one, but they hand the reins over to their son-in-law, Tony Sparrow. So he might become the new leader of the franchise along with their daughter Judy. Amazing.

Yeah. It's basically like the new Marvel. Yeah. Well, Chuck said, yeah, everybody, which means in old school fashion, it's time for listener mail. Yeah, this is just a quickie correction. Hey, guys, I'm listening. now, and you might have heard this already,

but Chuck was right in pronouncing Villa. Oh, how you feel, Chuck? The double L sounds that Josh was talking about is Spanish, not Italian. Well, that's what I was saying, you did. That is from Christina in New York. Who is it, huh? Who loves listening.

Oh, thanks a lot, Christina. We appreciate that. I think a few people wrote in to say, yeah, Chuck was right. That's fine. This is the only one I saw. I'm happy for you, Chuck. are you happy for me for being happy for you sure okay if you want to get in touch of this like christina did you can send us an email as well send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio for more podcasts my heart radio

visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc, and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.