The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - Inside the Demonic World of Ed & Lorraine Warren | The Shocking True Story

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

Step inside the chilling world of Ed and Lorraine Warren, the real-life paranormal investigators who inspired The Conjuring universe. In this deep dive, we uncover the true stories behind their most famous cases. From Annabelle and the Perron family haunting, to Amityville, The Devil Made Me Do It, and beyond. But behind their rise as America’s most famous demonologists lies a darker, more complicated truth. Who were Ed and Lorraine Warren really? What did they believe about demons and hauntings? And how much of their story was real? Or something far more human? Join us as we trace the Warrens’ journey from their early investigations and lectures to the controversies that followed them in later years. Featuring documented cases, interview clips and narrative style retellings of their stories, this is the true story of the Warrens’ disturbing world. 🔔 Subscribe for more paranormal documentaries 👍 Like | 💬 Comment | 📢 Share with anyone who loves real ghost stories Support the channel with Patreon - www.patreon.com/thetapelibrary Do you have a supernatural story to share? Drop me an email at [e-mail] You can check out The Tape Library in audio form on all of your favourite podcast providers. Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibrary Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrary Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Tape-Library/100094332411836/ Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. The Tape Library brings you the creepiest stories, to keep you horror junkies up all night. True scary stories of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and true crime. Additional footage and audio from Evanto, Artgrid, Epidemic Sounds, Singularity, Midjourney and Pexels. Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio and the youtube audio library. All other footage used under fair use. Major Sources Books Graveyard by Robert David Chase The Demonologist by Gerald Brittle The Devil in Connecticut by Gerald Brittle The Haunted by Robert Curran Ghost Hunters by Robert David Chase Satan’s Harvest By Ed & Lorraine Warren with Michael Lasalandra & Mark Merenda Werewolf by Robert David Chase In a Dark Place by Ray Garton The Worlds Most Haunted House by William J Hall Web and other Ed Exorcist Claims - https://tinyurl.com/y8j29myd Settlement - https://tinyurl.com/56vftp44 Accusations - https://tinyurl.com/3r9b4b66 Initial law suit - https://tinyurl.com/muhambku Haunted Objects Podcast - https://youtu.be/tVz3VzCKKt0?si=xvj1U1v1HVM64zhO NSPR - https://warrens.net/ Maurice Therault - https://youtu.be/kovLoOFAIZM Chapters Chapters 00:00 Ed & Lorraine 01:34 Eds First Ghost04:54 Welcome to The Tape Library08:13 A Fateful Meeting14:44 Talking Ghosts21:05 Annabelle27:23 West Point31:50 The Perron Family37:38 Amityville47:16 The Possession of Denise Summers55:51 Maurice Theriault1:00:30 Psychic Bigfoot1:05:08 The Devil Made Me Do It1:12:39 The Funeral Director1:18:40 The White Lady1:21:26 What Really Happened?1:26:21 Satanic Panic1:28:31 Conflicting Accounts1:39:52 The Accusations1:49:51 Legacy1:56:48 Fact or Fiction?2:03:23 Wrapping Up SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions. spectrevisionradio.com linktr.ee/spectrevisionsocial Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Smock Division Radio. There's this one out here, Ed. Raggedy and, yes. That's probably the worst thing we would have in the museum. I ran up the road, and I was screaming and yelling for help. I get up to the house on the right, and I go to the house, and I'm screaming and yelling, help me, help me, help me. Things that you think, maybe it was my imagination.

It was out of my peripheral vision. Did I really hear my name being called? And then when you realize that you're not all alone, then you begin to become aware that something is happening in this home. One night they got a spirit on the board that said it was an 18-year-old boy that had been killed by the police in a rape attempt. That was a lot. It was what we referred to as an incubus.

An incubus is a spirit that's inhuman, debacle, and never walked the earth. But it attacks the female. physically and sexually. I mean, you sit and have a conversation with him about everyday life. You'd never know the kind of work they do. I've not met a house that I thought was haunted. I think the Warrens have never met a house that they didn't think was haunted. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

There was a lot of confusion when I was small because my father, who was a police officer at that time, would always say to me, Ed, there's a logical reason for everything that happens in this house. These were not logical things. You don't see the spirit of an old woman coming out of a closet. Your bed doesn't shake. He was five years old when it all began. But the only thing he was terrified of at that point was his neighbor. An old woman who would sit by her window at all hours of the day, screaming and shouting at the kids outside the second she spotted any minor infraction.

That was until one day. The shouting and the screaming stopped. The kids no longer had to fear playing near her home. She was dead. His family were actually friends with the now deceased woman's family, and one year later the young boy found himself in her home, playing alone upstairs as his parents spoke with the other adults. The sun slowly began to set, basked in the room in the warm glow of magic hour.

He was rolling a toy car back and forth across the carpet when he heard a creek. He looked up to see that the wardrobe on the far end of the room was opened. The darkness inside glaring back at him. The boy froze, but then he noticed something, deep within the darkness, a small glowing light, no more than a dot, but then it seemed to double in size. The boy couldn't quite make sense of what he was looking at, but the light grew and grew, and grew, until soon it was the size of a person, but not just the size. It had taken on the shape of a person, a woman.

The face began to form in this semi-transparent energy that was just floating in the air in front of the wardrobe. He recognised a scowl anywhere. It was her. The old woman who had passed away, the one who had scared him so much over the ears, she glared at him, a glare that seemed to say, what are you doing in my home? But before she could speak any words, she simply faded out of existence. Terrified, the young boy ran downstairs to find his father.

He was a firm, serious man, a state trooper, and his reaction to his son's story was not a positive, one. He said the boy was talking nonsense and that he shouldn't bring this up to anyone ever again. He was simply imagining things and should forget all about it. But the boy didn't forget about it. In fact, this incident, if it truly happened, completely altered how this boy's life would turn out. Because that boy was named Edward Warren Miny and he would go on to tell the world that there is an existence beyond what we can see. and what lays beyond the veil can destroy us. Good evening. Tonight we're getting into a topic that I've been promising to cover for over two years at this point. The very first proper episode of the tape library was the Annabelle Story,

and since then I've delved into a number of cases that were connected to the Warrens. It's hard to talk about famous cases in the world of the paranormal without talking about Ed and Lorraine Warren. They have been involved directly and indirectly in some of the most discussed paranormal cases. cases on both sides of the Atlantic, and more so than anyone else in their field have become pop culture figures. Tonight we'll be exploring their work and the legacy that has been left behind. While it's important to talk about their well-known cases, I have done full-length episodes on a number of them, so I'm going to try my best to spend more time discussing a bunch of lesser-known Warren

stories in this recounting as well, including their connection to JFK, Lorraine's psychic connection to Bigfoot, as well as some more darker obscure cases as well. As always, our exploration of this topic will be split into two. First will be the legend. The story of the life of Edel and Lorraine has told through their various books and interviews. Then in the second half of the episode, we'll be getting into the more controversial aspects of the pair and the criticisms they have faced over the years. Almost every aspect of the Warren's story is caked in layers of mystery.

The most widely used source of their origins is Gerald Brittle's book, The Demonologist, which poses some questions straight away, but we'll get into that later. Names have frequently changed in their books, small details reported in different ways across different mediums. As such, trying to pin down a definitive version of their lives is tricky. Writing about the Warrens for this reason is extremely difficult, and I'm sure I will make mistakes here. I'm not perfect, but I want to try and keep things as accurate as possible. If you are wanting a full-on criticism of everything the Warrens were involved in, you'll likely be disappointed. If you want me to believe every word they say, you will also likely be disappointed.

I'm trying to put aside my preconceived ideas on them and just focusing on what they said and did. I'm really trying my best to come at this as balanced as I possibly can. Just a quick warning, much like in the Snediker case I covered last episode. This gets into some very dark places. specifically with regards to sexual assault and violence. This is kind of spread throughout a lot of the Warren stories, so if that is something that you are particularly sensitive to, it might be worth skipping this one.

But chapters are available, so you can at least listen to the Bigfoot story before you go. Before you begin, I want to ask you to do something. Pause this episode for a moment, and if you can leave me a comment with what your current thoughts on the Warrens are before we begin this deep dive. You can sum it up in a moment. single word, a sentence or more if you prefer. We will be revisiting this later, so we'd love

it if you could get involved in this. With that out the way, it's time to begin. Get yourself a warm drink, dim the lights and get comfortable. Spooky season is well underway and it's time to welcome back to dark. This is the demonic world of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Welcome to the tape library. September 1926, a boy who would later become more widely known as Ed Warren was born in Connecticut. Just four months later, Lorraine was born, growing up just a few blocks away from her future husband. Ed claims that despite attending a Catholic school, he wasn't a particularly religious child. But the encounter of the ghostly apparition he saw at the age of five stayed with him.

He felt that a world beyond our own had been revealed to him that day, and the fact that all the grown-ups in his life just dismissed it and made him keep quiet, just intrigued him more. Did they really not believe him? Or were they instead scared to face these things? This wasn't a one-off occurrence. Ed says that he effectively grew up in a haunted house, that he saw things all throughout his childhood.

A defining moment in the origin story of Ed Warren, came from a dream. He said he would have a recurring dream about a nun who would speak to him while he slept. One day, Ed decided to talk to his father about this. His father, a straight-laced Connecticut policeman, who had been the one to initially crush Ed's story about seeing ghosts, was shocked by what his son told him. Ed perfectly described his aunt. A woman who had died before Ed had been born, Ed said that one night in his dreams she had said to him, You will tell many priests the right road to go down, but you yourself will never be a priest.

Lorraine meanwhile was growing up with her own oddities. She didn't really know there was anything strange about what she was experiencing. It was only as she got older that she realised that not everyone saw the world in the same way she did. She ended up being punished by the nuns who taught her for her odd remarks about being able to see the future. Lorraine claims that she was a natural clairvoyant. She could see things that others couldn't. She could sense when something had happened in the past in a particular location, as well as on occasion seeing what was to come.

Ed and Lorraine first crossed paths as teenagers in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Ed worked as an usher at the local movie theatre, and Lorraine was a regular patron, who often attended with her family. Friends thought the two should meet. Lorraine later recalled being more focused on school than boys, but she and Ed struck up a friendship that soon turned romantic. On the first night they walked home together, as Ed walked away. Lorraine later said that, When he ran across the street, I didn't see the slender young man of 16.

I physically saw Ed as a grown man, a man that I would marry. In fact, when I returned home that evening, I wrote in my diary, diary. Today I met the man I'm going to marry." But they would quickly be separated. On his 17th birthday Ed enlisted into the navy and headed off to fight in World War II. Just four months later the ship Ed was on sunk when an oil tanker crashed into it, forced to leap into the icy waters of the northern Atlantic Sea, and surrounded on all sides by the huge flames floating on the burning oil on the surface of the water. Ed surely thought his time was coming to an abrupt end.

He found himself trapped and in that moment he turned to prayer. If this was the moment Ed truly began to believe in the Catholic faith or not, I couldn't tell you. But at the exact moment he began to call out to Mother Mary. The flame seemed to part and a lifeboat made it through to Ed, fishing him out of the water just moments before the tanker exploded again. Ed was one of 69 sailors who survived the incident. and to help deal with the trauma and to commend him for helping to save others, he was given 30 days survivor leave,

at which point he returned back to Connecticut and he and Lorraine were married before Ed headed back off to the Navy. Lorraine quickly became pregnant and gave birth to their daughter Judy. As the war came to an end, Ed found himself at home, unsure what direction to take in life. Now his service was over and with a young family to support. Both Ed and Lorraine were artists. They have plans to become painters, although this is one of the first incidents of the Warren's story beginning to become a bit muddy.

In the demonologist, Lorraine claims that Ed attended art school prior to the war, but the New England Society for Psychic Research, the institution the Warren's was set up, claims he began at art school after the war. It's a small detail, but it points to the large-scale difficulties of trying to tell the Warren's story. Either way the outcome was the same. Ed became known as a local artist, selling paintings of remote homes that he saw with the backdrops of beautiful landscapes. He was having some success selling these paintings at pop-up stands to tourists, proving to be a nice little side income away from his day job of driving a school bus, but that interest in the paranormal hadn't gone away, and Ed quickly began to use it in his work.

Ed and Lorraine would find out about accounts of haunted houses across the house. Connecticut, either from reports in newspapers, or through Ed talking to students on the bus, then they would head to these homes, set up outside and begin sketching. In some cases, the owners of the home would come out to ask what this strange couple were doing, or the warrants would knock once the sketch was completed. It was the perfect icebreaker and got the residents to open up about their experiences. Often, once he had more information, Ed would paint full versions of the homes that had the most interesting stories. Ed and Lorraine would keep records of these cases as they collected them, leading to the formation of the aforementioned Nespa, and the

formation of their now famous occult museum, a place that over the years they would store all of their supposed haunted artefacts that they collected. The warrants began this in the early 50s, and kept it up for quite a number of years. On occasions they would hold informal talks about their encounters, but it wasn't until 1968 that they would hold their first public lecture. How did you become a demonologist? Did you go to school for that? Did you, did you ask a diploma or certificate? No, I was born a demonologist. The head of a local scholarship committee thought it would make a fun event if the Warrens would come along, show off some of their paintings and talk about the stories behind them. On that day in September, the Warrens

stood before an audience in a town hall at an art show and did just that. People were fascinated and quickly the Warrens realized there was an audience out there for their accounts. This wasn't something they cooked up overnight. They had been visiting haunted houses and learning the stories for 17 years at this point and had been devouring book after book about the paranormal. They were well equipped to be talking about this. Initially most of these lectures took place in high schools with the Warren's talking about the for multiple hours for the cost of just a few dollars. What is more interesting about this time period compared to what came later is that the Warrens were very much talking about ghosts

and not demons, a stark contrast to their approach later in their careers. And again, this is where we get into one of the more confusing aspects of the Warren story. Some have said that at this point the Warrens hadn't really developed their theories on the demonic playing a part in paranormal cases. This really seemed to become more of a factor in the Warren's stories going into the 70s and 1980s. Curiously, their account to the demonic became more and more prevalent, as the moral panic that is now referred to as the satanic panic, spread across the US. Does this suggest that the Warren's opinion on the paranormal changed? Well, that's up for debate. In the 1980s biography on the Warren's, the demonologist, it is said that Ed was quickly becoming disgruntled by these ladies.

As the 70s began, they were talking at more and more colleges and public spaces, not just high schools. But Ed says that he found when he talked about ghosts and seances, the audience was happy. But if he started delving into the world of demons or religion as a whole, then the audience would turn on them. Initially, he claimed this is why they kept their focus on ghosts. But as the cultural zeitglass changed in the 70s, it gave them more room to delve into that world. that world. The way Ed describes it though is that he was already by this point a self-taught demonologist in his eyes, the only one in America who didn't work directly for the church, and the attitudes from the audience in regard to his area of study were making him so disillusioned

that he was ready to give it all up and go back to being a painter. He has a rather strange story to explain why he changed his mind. One afternoon Ed was driving along the Hudson River talking to Lorraine about all of this. When they saw the big dome of a mission headquarters, this was somewhere they had always wanted to visit, so they pulled up and went inside. There Ed met an elderly priest, who he struck up a conversation with.

Ed explained their work, and the priest told him he had spent many years performing exorcisms in China, but that even within the church he faced disbelief from others. In fact, the priest said that he kept most of his stories what he had witnessed to himself, because many of his colleagues would not believe him. He then looked Ed in the eyes and said he should go upstairs. Ed asked why. The priest said there was a nun, a Japanese nun, who had something to tell him, something that he needed to know.

Intrigued, Ed walked up the stairs to the library and introduced himself to the blacked woman who smiled and greeted him. It was almost like she had been waiting for him. She said, you have been discouraged by things that have been happening to you lately, Mr. Warren. But then she added that he shouldn't be, that the work they were doing was important, and that things would change for them soon. Their work had a purpose, a purpose that was greater than themselves. She then gave Ed an old book on demonology and exorcisms. This event Ed claims is what made them turn their focus around.

It's probably worth talking about the Warren's beliefs from the paranormal here before we get into any cases. They believed that when people generally reported a haunted house, more often than not, there was some kind of logical explanation for the events that were taking place. But not in all. In cases of what they believed to be genuine hauntings, there were two possibilities. There were ghosts. These were human spirits, souls of people who had for one reason or another, be able to be. trapped here on earth rather than passing over. The warrants often suggested this could happen in the case of sudden death, particularly if this was violent in nature. It was as if these people were unaware they were dead and were trapped still trying to live their lives, unaware of their circumstances, or why the world was changing

around them while they remained still. In some cases they were aware of their deaths, but were so enraged by their passing that they simply refused to move on. The Warrens didn't see these as dangerous entities. They could be angry, they could be terrifying, but they normally could not harm the living. The other kind, however, was the inhuman spirit, a spirit that had never walked the earth. These were demonic.

They would often pose as a ghost, or even could control ghosts that were. present in a home, but their intention was much darker. They sought to inflict harm, so fear, and possess individuals, ultimately driving them towards despair or destruction. In some extreme cases, the warrants claimed that these entities could make people ultimately burst into flames, or just simply vanish. No longer existing in our world, being dragged off, being dragged off, off somewhere else. But while the event with the nun is the reason Ed gives for his change in tax with the lectures, there was also a specific case you could point to from around this time,

a case that has in recent years become one of the Warren's most well-known, the case of Annabel. She said, I know a woman who is a medium, I'll bring her over it, and we'll hold the seance. It was a joke, just a game, but it didn't turn out to be a game. It turned out to be a game. to be one of the most horrifying experiences they never have in their life. There is a line that is often repeated that Annabel was the case that made the Warrens famous, but as far as I can tell, this really wasn't true. I couldn't find any records of any newspapers or other printed versions of the story from that time period. The Warrens may have included Annabel in their lectures around this time, but the first time the story seems to

become truly public is in 1980 with the publishing of the demonologist. What's more than the the exact date it took place seems to be disputed, ranging anywhere from 1968 to 1971. While that might not seem like a big deal, it kind of is in terms of trying to understand what exactly caused the Warren's serious push into focusing on demons. I've done a full episode on Annabelle, but we'll do a recap here because this is one of the more important cases in the Warren's early lives. This is also one of those cases where different names are used by the warrants at times for the people involved, but I've gone with the ones that are more widely used. The story began when Donna, her nursing student, received a raggedy and dolls as a birthday present

from her mother. At first, the doll seemed like nothing more than a cute piece of decoration for the apartment that she shared with her roommate, Angie. But before long, the two women began noticing strange occurrences. The doll seemed to change position on its own. At first, First it was subtle, a shift of the arms or legs, a tilt of the head. But soon the movements became more pronounced. Sometimes they would return home to find the doll in an entirely different room from where they had left it. As the weeks went on, the activity grew stranger.

The women began finding small slips of parchment paper scattered throughout their apartment, written in pencil with unsettling messages such as Help us, or help Lou. Lou was the partner of one of the young nursing students. Neither Donna nor Angie kept parchment or pencils in the apartment, and the handwriting did not match their own. The most disturbing incident came when Donnas discovered the doll with what looked like blood, smeared on its chest and hands. At this point, the roommates decided to seek outside help. Donna and Angie contacted a local medium to hold a seance.

During the session, the medium claimed to have made contact with the spirit of a young girl named Annabel Higgins, who had apparently died tragically on the property years earlier. According to the medium, Annabelle's spirit was lonely and had attached itself to the doll. The women, moved by sympathy, decided to let the spirit stay. They began treating the doll almost like a living presence in their home. This was a mistake. was a mistake. While initially they saw Annabel as a positive influence in their home, one who apparently on occasion would even bring them gifts like chocolate,

things took a turn. One person who was never comfortable with the dog was Lou, Donna's fiancé. From the start he insisted that something was wrong with it. Lou reported two terrifying encounters. In one he awoke to find himself paralysed, as the doll slowly crawled up his legs towards his chest. Another time, after investigating noises in the apartment, he claimed he was physically attacked by an unseen force. When it was over, he found bloody claw-like scratches across his torso. These violent events finally convinced the women that something was terribly wrong.

Unsure of what to do, Donna and Angie contacted a local priest, who eventually referred the case to Ellen Lerner. Warren, who he describes as a husband and wife team of paranormal investigators. The Warrens quickly dismissed the medium's explanation of a child ghost. In their view, the doll was being manipulated, not by the spirit of a little girl, but by an inhuman demonic entity. According to Ed Warren, demons often impersonate the innocent, especially children, a way to earn trust and eventually attempt possession.

The doll itself wasn't possessed as such. It was simply being moved around by this entity, creating this illusion that the doll contained the spirit of a little girl. To resolve the situation, the warrants arranged for a priest to perform a blessing of the apartment. After the blessing, the warrants took the doll with them. They later claimed that during the drive home, the doll seemed to resist. The car's steering and brakes repeatedly failed, until Ed sprinkled holy water over it.

That seemed to calm the activity enough for them to get home. The doll was eventually secured inside the Warren's Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut. To prevent further incidents, it was placed in a specially built wooden and glass case that was regularly blessed by priests and marked with a warning sign that read, warning, warning, positively do not open. The Warren's often told story of Annabel's continuing danger. According to them, a young man once mocked the doll during a museum visit. He banged on its case and was killed in a motorcycle accident shortly afterwards. Stories like these cemented Annabelle's reputation as one of the most dangerous items in the Warren's collection, a reputation that

still lasts to this day, so we'll be coming back to Annabelle later. In 1972, the Warrens were working with a manager who helped arrange their lectures. But one day he got in touch with a slightly unusual request. The Warren's reputation had been growing around New England and into New York. They had been booked to give a talk at the US Military Academy, West Point, which initially seemed like an odd fit, but it appeared the higher-ups at the prestigious academy, had an ulterior motive for inviting the Warrens. A dark military limousine came to pick up the warrants.

This was a slightly different experience than what they were used to when it came to lecturing at schools. After being taken on a tour of the facilities, the warrants were taken to an old residence on the site, a large federal white brick building. As they drove closer, the major who was chaperoning the warrants, told them they were having some issues with this particular building. Lorraine felt the excitement of the day began to fade away, and she began. to shake. The Major explained that eyewitnesses had seen bed sheets being pulled off the bed

by an invisible force. There was a strange wet spot in the kitchen that kept appearing with no apparent source. Possessions moved into different places, knocks on the walls late at night, doors randomly slamming shut. People had even seen apparitions walking around the property. But not just the young troops. This had been reported by a general and his wife. It was becoming a place that the brave men and women of West Point didn't want to step into. Later that day, Lorraine was walking from room to room, trying to figure out anything that could be causing the activity. She was drawn to one room in particular and sat down in an old rocking chair. Instantly, she felt a sensation on her arm, as though someone were touching her.

Lorraine opened her eyes, asking the aide who was with her. if John F. Kennedy had ever visited this place. The aide said yes he had. In fact, he had stayed in the room they were currently in. Lorraine later claimed that the reason she knew this is when she opened her eyes. She saw, just for a moment, J.F.K. standing there, resting his arm on hers.

But Kennedy wasn't the source of the haunting. There were many spirits in this place, and it seemed there was one in particular that was causing the issues. She identified a number of other spirits, but she could feel something in the air that she couldn't attribute to any of them. Violence. That night, the warrants, along with several others, attempted to contact the spirits. They were successful, and Lorraine was able to convince the spirit

that she identified as a Mrs. MacArthur to move on. As the warrants were getting ready to leave, Lorraine was still standing there, unable to shake this feeling. When she glanced out of the window, she saw a man wearing a turn of the century uniform, but with all the badges removed, as though they had been pulled off. He glanced up at her, standing in the darkness outside. This man wasn't there. Not really. Lorraine quickly realized he was the spirit that was causing the haunting. Later, when Lorraine described a man, it matched up to a case of a soldier named Greer, who murdered a man at Westport.

She believed this spirit was angry, and that anger was being felt throughout the residents. Seemingly in this case, the Warrens weren't able to help the spirit of Greer to move on, but they apparently did leave many prominent members of West Point. newfound believers in the paranormal, a fact that was mocks in the press when the media learnt about all of this. During the early 1970s, a paranormal case was taking place in Rhode Island that the Warrens would find themselves getting involved in. While at the time it didn't really increase their level of fame, it would later become an integral part of the Warren's legend, but the actual story doesn't quite leave the Warrens, as the heroes they were later depicted as. This

This is one of the only remaining Warren's cases that I am tempted to one day still tackle, as its own standalone episode. But to do that, I want to read all the books that one of the daughters has written, which equates to about 1,500 pages, so we might need to save that one for a rainy day. Nevertheless, let's go over the case briefly here. In the winter of 1971, Roger and Carol In Perron moved their family into a sprawling 200-acre farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island. The home, no locally as the old Arnold estate, dated back to 1736, for Roger, Carolyn and their five daughters, Andrea, Nancy, Christine, Cindy and April. It seemed like the perfect place to start fresh. It didn't take long for the Perens to realise that life in the farmhouse would be anything but ordinary.

According to the Perons, the strangeness began almost immediately. At first it was subtle, Brooms went missing and reappeared in odd places. Small household items shifted. And faint knocks and wraps echoed in the night. Then they would hear what sounded like people walking around their house at night. Muddy footprints would appear in the kitchen from nowhere. Before long, the children began to report encounters with full apparitions. Some spirits appeared harmless, even playful. Like a little boy they claimed to see in the hallways. They were They would see spirits sitting at the dinner table, standing in the kitchen. Some seemed to be aware of the family, but others weren't.

These initial spirits were terrifying, obviously, but they weren't threatening. Others, however, were darker. The girls described feeling watched, touched or pulled at by unseen hands. Whispering voices spoke of dead people in the walls. Andrea, the eldest, later recalled. that she counted more than a dozen different spirits in the house, ranging from benevolent presences to openly hostile entities. Carolyn, the mother of the family, was beginning to see them too, and began to research to try and figure out who or what they were seeing. She became convinced

that these were the ghosts of the Arnold family, the family who had owned the property for many years before they took the place as their home. Sometime in the mid-1970s, the Warren got wind of the family's experiences and headed over to see what was going on. When they arrived at the farmhouse, Lorraine claimed to sense a dark, oppressive presence that seemed to target Carolyn specifically. Ed believed that the spirit of Bathsheba Sherman was at the centre of the activity and that it sought to harm or even possessed Carolyn. Different versions of the story seemed to conflict on if the family were familiar with the Bathsheba rumours, Before or after the warrants visited.

But it appears the warrants then explained to them the story of Bathsheba, a 19th century woman who had lived in the area. Rumors claimed that Bathsheba had practiced witchcraft and even sacrificed an infant to the devil. Bathsheba was a real person, born Bathsheba Fayyer in 1812, married to farmer Judson Sherman and buried in the nearby cemetery. Just as a strange connection here, the residents that the warrens investigated, in West Point at this time, was the former home of a Colonel Fayer, who was the West Point Superintendent from 1817. While Bathsheba's name appears in census and grave records,

there is no evidence that she ever committed such crimes, or had any connection to the property. The Warrens eventually organised a seance inside the farmhouse. According to Andrea, the session turned violent. Carolyn appeared to slip into a trance, speaking in a strange voice before collapsing, to the floor. The children believed they had witnessed an attempted possession. Roger, horrified by what he saw, insisted the seance stop immediately, distrusting the outcome and worried for his wife's safety. He asked the warrants to leave. Contrary to later depictions, no Catholic exorcism was ever performed in the house, and despite how the conjuring would depict the events years later,

that was the end of the warrants' involvement in the case. Some versions of the story claim that Roger gave Ed a quick punch in the face before throwing them out. Despite the terrifying seance, the family continued living in the farmhouse. Financial constraints and attachment to the property kept them there for nearly a decade. The family learned to coexist with the activity, avoiding the most troubled areas of the house, and enduring what they described as unpredictable waves of paranormal disturbance. Finally, in 1980, after almost 10 years, the Perron's moved out of Harrisville for good. What remains is a story based largely on the Peron's testimony and the Warren's interpretation.

There are no police reports, medical records, or contemporary newspaper coverage to corroborate the hauntings. Skeptics argue that local folklore about Bathsheba Sherman and the Warren's demonology shaped the family's interpretation of the events. The attention the movie has brought to the case, has led to the gravestone of Beshiba being vandalized repeatedly, despite her only crime seemingly being unfortunate enough to have been dragged into this apparent haunting. There had no connection to her.

Subsequently, her ancestors have spoken out about this, explaining that there is no grounds for the accusations of witchcraft or child sacrifice. By all accounts, the real Bathsheba Sherman was a kind woman who lived in a farmhouse with her family, a woman whose name has been dragged into a story, over a hundred years after her death. But of course, the Perrin case wasn't what brought the warrant into the wider public consciousness. That would come in early 1976.

When we went into the house that day, we didn't realize that it was diabolically infested. Now, a scale of about to 10, I would have to say that Ambeville was a 10. I want to make it clear at the beginning of this program that Lorraine and I, Do not back up the movie or the book. Mm-hmm. It was much more horrific than either. Around 15 months earlier, Ronald DeFaio Jr. had walked around his family home in Long Island, New York, in the middle of the night. One by one, he shot his parents and four siblings, as they all slept in their beds, apparently not waking up,

as though something were keeping them there helplessly for Ronald to do what he needed to do. One year later, George and Kathleen Lutz purchased the Defeo home. They moved in with their three children. And so began the most famous and widely talked about haunting in history. It seems almost redundant to talk about Amityville at this point. What more can be said that hasn't been already. Again, I have done a full episode on this one. It's one of my oldest ones and I've always been tempted to go back and tackle that case properly again,

but for some reason, more than any other case, Amateurville seems to spark really quite angry, opinionated takes on what truly happened in that house. It's apparently been completely debunked, although I think since posting that video, I have been told around 20 different accounts of what truly happened. If somehow you don't know the Lutz's story, the basic events played out like this. At first, the Lutz's were apparently unaware of the full history of the property. Almost immediately, however, they began to experience strange and unsettling occurrences. that would haunt their brief stay.

From the very beginning, the family noticed sudden drops in temperature that could not be explained. Kathleen Lutz recalled entire rooms becoming icy cold, while simultaneously strange odours like the scent of rotting flesh would sometimes fill the air without any apparent source. The children frequently heard footsteps pacing the hallways at night, accompanied by loud thumps and banging that seemed to shake the walls, doors opened and slammed shut on their own, and windows that had been closed or locked were sometimes found ajar. In one instance, one of these windows slammed shut on one of the children's

fingers. The family also reported objects moving without explanation, as if some invisible force was rearranged in the furniture or toys. The Lutz children claimed to see shadowy figures standing in doorways and hallways. George Lutz himself reported glimpsing strange shapes in mirrors and noticing dark forms in the corners of his vision. Kathleen described the sensation of her presence in her bedroom at night, a malevolent force that seemed to linger on the foot of her bed. The most widely sighted and terrifying phenomenon was the appearance of a demonic figure, with glowing red eyes, reportedly witnessed by their children on multiple occasions. George Lutz later said he felt as if invisible hands were grabbing him during the night.

sometimes leaving bruises or scratches on his body. As the days progressed, the disturbances intensified. The oppressive energy in the home grew stronger and stranger. Green slime would be found. The house would be freezing cold no matter what they did. Hoof prints were found in the snow leading to the house. Later, Danny Lutz, a young child at the time, claimed he believed that both he and his stepfather George were becoming possessed.

It all came to a head when George saw him. his wife Kathleen turned into an old woman before his eyes, before the children began to levitate in their beds. Within 28 days, the Lutzes decided they could no longer remain in the house and fled, leaving behind their belongings and their haste. They described the experience as terrifying, unlike anything they had ever encountered. After the Lutz's left, their story got picked up by a reporter, who suggested they should speak to some parapsychologist and paranormal investigators to try and get to the bottom of what was really happening in their house. This led to them being introduced to Ed and Lorraine, who by this point were becoming pretty

well known in paranormal circles, even if they were still very much unknown entities to the wider public. The pair visited the home on two occasions, on the first visit conducting a seance with a a number of other psychics, and they also interviewed the family at length. On their first visit, Lorraine immediately sensed the malevolent demonic presence in the house. Ed investigated the home's history, believing the property itself may have amplified negative energy due to prior violent events and local law, that he seemed to suggest went beyond just the murders in 1974. Lorraine reported that the spirit appeared to feed on the family's fear and anger, escalating the intensity of the haunting. They, in a pattern that seemed to continue from this point out, claimed that what

the luts is experienced wasn't haunting as such, but the result of a demonic infestation. Lorraine had the strongest reaction upon walking as a bedroom that had once been Ronnie Jr's. A detail that Lorraine didn't reveal until much later on was that she was carrying around a card with an image of Padre Pio and a lock of his hair, something she didn't reveal at the time to the other investigators. Padre Pio was a priest who we could make an individual episode on his own right, but he was a constant source of inspiration to Lorraine throughout all of her work. Lorraine claims that while in the Amateurville house, she saw the apparition of Padre Pio, a man who had died the decade prior. She believes he protected them while they were there. As part of the investigation

that the Warrens were involved in, the now infamous photograph of a ghostly boy was captured by a camera. However, this is now widely speculated to have actually just been one of the investigators, wearing a pair of glasses and being crouched down on the ground, not meaning to get caught in the photograph. When the photo began to get attention, they just seemed to go with it. The book and subsequent movie based on the case were massive hits, making the book's author Jay Anson in particular, extremely rich in the process. But while this case brought the Warrens a certain level of fame. It was also their first brush with controversy. The book was wild, to put it mildly. The events that the Lutz's were claiming happened felt

more comparable to a Hollywood horror movie compared to the traditional more grounded accounts of haunted houses the public were used to reading about. As such, countless attempts have been made to debunk the entire event, and in many examples, a lot of holes have been poked in the Lutz's story. The most damning of which came from Ronald Defeo Jr. and his attorney William Weber, who claimed he was working with the Lutz's. The plan was to publicise the haunted house story and write a book about how the house was infested with demons to help get Ronald released from prison and to make some money while doing it, claiming that Ronald wasn't to blame for the murder, that demons had made him do it. But then apparently the Lutses took this idea and went off to get their own book written,

leaving Ronnie and Weber out, who then went public with this story. Now, this detail is one that is used a lot to claim that the Amityfield story is debunked, but I've always had a bit of an issue with this. Ronnie changed his story countless times with regards to the murders. William Weber doesn't come across as a particularly reliable guy either. The Amityfield story as a whole is full of a lot of very unreliable people, claiming that everyone else involved in the story is lying, leaving a real confusing mess of a case. Despite however many books, however many documentaries,

no one has ever really been able to definitively explain what took place here. The Lutz family stuck to their story. Although in recent years some of the Lutz children have spoken out about how while there was paranormal activity taken place in the home, it was nothing like what was depicted in the book and movie. The Warrants themselves have made numerous suggestions. that the book is greatly exaggerated, but are very clear that this was not a hoax, that something truly unexplainable did happen in that home, but that facts and fiction have melded together to create something new, a common theme throughout their lives. While the Warrens were not the primary suspects in the Amityville case, their brief involvement

skyrocketed their fame. They would also later profit from the story by being involved in in the supremely underrated Amateurville 2. With the Amityville case and the release of a certain horror movie that I'm sure we'll discuss later, America was much more receptive to the Warren's ideas about demons. These were not biblical allegories. They were very real-world entities that could infest your home and destroy your family. A spiritual war was underway, and the Warrens were apparently the ones who were best placed to warn the world. All of a sudden she hears screams coming from the bedroom. She runs into the bedroom, the brashing about, yelling her head off.

That's something you've gotten into bed with her and it's hurting her with its hands. Denise Summers was an 11th grade schoolgirl. Those that knew her said she was beautiful, popular, but then something changed. Denise couldn't really understand it herself. People seemed to be avoiding her like the plague. Her boyfriend broke up with her. Her boss at McDonald moved her from the tills in the kitchen. No one would explain to her why they were avoiding her.

They couldn't. It was hard to put into words. But later her former friends would say it was like there was a dark aura surrounding her and that her face would suddenly change. She would look old and haggard. But it would only last for the brief. of moments, leaving those that witnessed it, feeling like they were going insane. They couldn't talk about it.

How could you go around telling people you saw this teenage girl changing her appearance? But even if they doubted what they were seeing, it scared them enough to keep away from her. She didn't make the connection to her part-time babysitting gig. There was one home in particular she often worked at, the Webbers. family with an interesting book collection that she would often find herself flicking through late into the evening. The Webbers seemed to have a particular interest in the occult. Denise only really began to understand something was seriously wrong when a young boy that often walked home with

her suddenly dropped back several feet. She turned to look at him, the boy's mouth fell open, then he ran away, screaming in terror. Denise, didn't know why. But the nine-year-old boy hadn't seen the older girl that he had a crush on. When he looked at her that day, he had seen a demon. That night she looked into her bathroom mirror and she saw for the first time what others had seen. The hideous face that appeared back at her wasn't her own. Her parents rushed in when they heard the screams. She was rolling around on the bathroom floor, naked, screaming in terror. Her mother said it looked like she had no control over her own body. They went through the usual routes of taking her to see doctors,

but no one could find anything wrong with the girl. Over time, her parents had started to notice the changes in the books that she would bring home, and it began to play on their minds, but they didn't put too much thought into it. Denise didn't really take this stuff seriously. It was just a teenager messing around. They were just books. One night, Denise's mother, Ellie, heard another scream. She rushed upstairs to her daughter's room and burst in. Before she could ask what was wrong, though, she felt it.

It was as if she had run into a freezer. The room was ice cold. Denise looked at her mother and explained that she had felt hands, touching her, groping her. But no one else was in the room. This was when they turned to their priest, who in turn suggested they should talk to Ed and Lorraine Warren. Ellie laid out the whole story to Lorraine on the phone, but before the call ended, she

explained to Lorraine that she now knew that something was seriously wrong, that this wasn't all in her daughter's head. When Lorraine asked how she knew, Ellie tearfully explained, she had begun to fill the hands When the Warrens arrived, they learnt that Denise had been communicating with what she thought was the ghost of an 18-year-old boy. Over time, she had begun to actually hear his voice whispering in her room. But what started out as innocent interactions, quickly turned sinister, the apparent boy began to get extremely sexual in the things he would say.

Soon this turned aggressive in nature. Then when Denise attempted to read a Bible, the entity ripped it from her hands. This was its first display of physical power. But it wasn't the last. It was soon after this incident that Denise began to feel it touching her at night. Sometimes these attacks were so vicious it would leave the young girl covered in cuts and bruises. Then she began to see them. at night. Creatures in her room, whispering obscene things to her, telling her they wanted

her to join them, in the other world. After a brief chat with the knees, the warrants quickly called in a priest and the trio spent a good chunk of the day talking to her before attempting to call up the spirit that was there. Sure enough, it did appear to be the spirit of an 18-year-old boy. He was violent in life, and he was even more vicious in death. He attempted to possess Denise, he wanted to enslave her, to make her his. The warrants and the priest decided they had no choice. They would perform an unsanctioned exorcism. For hours they chanted and prayed, while Denise clinging onto a rosary. She cursed, shouted at them. Her hair would be pulled by an unseen force, but then, as a moment's notice,

she would suddenly transform back into the sweet, innocent girl, before the demon would take hold again. But after several hours, it seemed to subside, and the priest declared that the demon had been banished. But this story doesn't appear to have a clean ending. Lorraine says that despite their best efforts, it was not always instantly apparent if an exorcism was successful. For years it seemed to lay dormant, but once Denise was older and started to be able to. the family of her own, she began writing to the Warrens, telling them that it was happening again. The hideous creatures would appear in her room. Her home would turn icy cold.

The sexual attacks returned. This seemed to happen at random intervals, before the entity would go back into hiding again. But over time it got worse and worse. Eventually it was a husband who got in touch and requested that the warrants returned. Again, they attempted a nexus, and again, it seemed to be successful. Denise appears to be back to normal now, but she is constantly living in fear that it isn't truly over, and that this 18-year-old boy may return. This is a case that the Warrens say they like to cite because it's a good example of

why you shouldn't mess with the occult if you don't know what you are doing. Denise's story became a prominent part of their lectures, but was later public. in the book Ghost Hunters by Robert David Chase. I'm a little confused by it because it appears to contradict the Warren's belief about the difference between earthbound ghosts and demonic entities. In this retelling, it feels as if the 18-year-old boy is somehow both, but they don't really explain it. I'm not sure if this is a failing on the Warren's philosophy though, or if it's simply something that was lost in translation while working with the author.

The Denise Summer's story is just one example of the case. countless stories of possession the Warrens were involved in. In one such case, Lorraine Warren was actually attacked by a woman at one of their lectures. It appears the woman had come to meet the Warrens because her and her husband were worried that she could be possessed. But the Warren speculated that the demon had actually driven her there, attempting to confront this couple who were becoming quite a pain in the ass for the demonic realm. Jumping ahead a little in their timeline here, but it seems to make sense to briefly discuss one of the Warren's most famous possession cases while we're on the topic. Just to be fully transparent, this is a very complicated

case with very few original sources available. I haven't been able to really dive in deep into this one, so if there is anything inaccurate, please do let me know. In 1988, Ed and Lorraine Warren published Satan's Harvest, a book devoted entirely to one of the most disturbing cases, that of Maurice Terriot, a farmer from Massachusetts, whose life spiraled into tragedy, after years of what the Warren's and local clergy believed to be, demonic possession. Maurice was born in the 1930s and raised in a rural New England community. According to Satan's harvest, his childhood was marked by severe abuse at the hands of his father, a man described as violent and controlling. What's more, the Warren's book makes the claim that he was. was prone to indulging in bestiality.

Some sources seem to state that Maurice's father killed his mother and himself, while others only mentioned the father taking his own life, so I'm unsure which is accurate. The Warrens would later argue that this trauma left Maurice spiritually vulnerable, opening a door to dark forces. By the 1980s, Maurice's behaviour had begun to alarm those around him. He experienced violent blackouts and periods of missing time, and his perfect Personality would shift without warning. Friends, neighbors and later priests claimed to witness bizarre physical manifestations,

bleeding from the eyes and paws with no medical explanation, distortions of his face that seemed almost inhuman, supernatural strength during his blackouts, knowledge of hidden things and the ability to speak languages he had never studied. In one of the more unsettling accounts, Maurice was said to appear in two places at once. a phenomenon known as biolocation. His wife at the time Nancy reported fearing for her safety as his condition worsened.

Local clergy uncertain how to proceed eventually contacted Ed Lorraine. The Warrens investigated Maurice's case and concluded he was under the control of a demonic entity. They described him as a textbook victim of possession, showing all the stages they had catalogued in their work. Ed would describe three stages. of demonic activity. The first was infestation, the second oppression, the third was possession. In some extreme cases, he would add a fourth that was simply death for the poor soul, who had been targeted. Together with the Catholic Church they arranged for the exorcism to be performed. The ritual as detailed in Satan's harvest was violent and chaotic. Maurice convulsed and spoke in

guttural voices and seemed to react to holy objects with pain and rage. Lorraine Warren claimed to sense the overwhelming presence of evil in their room, while Ed recorded parts of the event as evidence. Though the exorcism brought temporary relief, the Warrens and the priest involved admitted that Maurice's case was never fully resolved. In Satan's harvest, they warned that possession is rarely a simple matter of one ritual. It often requires on-garde, intervention and the demon may return as we saw in the prior case. For a time, Maurice tried to rebuild his life, but his behavior remained unstable. And she said, Ed, I have to speak with you.

And she said, Maurice is going back into his old ways again. Take fake. Let us come out of his eyes. He's doing things that he shouldn't be doing. He's threatening people. On November 3rd, 1992, tragedy struck. Maurice shot his wife Nancy, before turning the gun on himself at the age of 56. The warrants maintained that Maurice's violent end was the final acts of his long struggle

with possession. To them it was evidence of what can happen when evil is allowed to take root in a person's life. Skeptics, meanwhile, saw his story as a tragic intersection of abuse, mental illness, religious interpretation. If I ever do decide to delve into the Warren's cases again, this might be another one that's worth giving the full treatment to, because I don't think this brief overview really hammers home just quite how messed up this story is. Famously, a heavily altered version of this tale has been included as a recurring part of the Conjuring Universe's plot. I feel like we could all do with a little break from the darkness associated with many of the

Warren's cases, because it wasn't all haunted houses and possession. cases with the Warrens. Once in a while they would get into some truly strange adventures. One spring, the Warrens were lecturing in Tennessee when they were approached by a local reporter who said they had a rather odd story. There was a community of people that were living out in the hills who said that something had been attacking their children. That was how Ed and Lorraine Warren met Bigfoot. Together with a handful of students and a couple of locals. The Warren soon found themselves hiking for hours through miles and miles of wild bush growth. Lorraine wasn't in the best of moods, and she wasn't taking the claims about a half-man,

half-ape that was attempting to steal children very seriously. But the local community seemed genuinely scared. Although in most of their stories, it seemed this creature was more curious about the children, rather than trying to actually attack them. Lorraine's mood on this misty day was wearing especially thin because one of the students they had brought with them seemed insistent on randomly setting off a battery-operated megaphone as they walked. It was getting late into the afternoon, and the group were preparing to head back and call it a day. When they stumbled across something strange, a patch of tall grass that had been flattened by something large, something very large. Lorraine rested against a tree when suddenly her mum,

mind was filled with a vivid image, a curious creature, skulking around the area. It was just as the locals described, somewhere between a man and an ape. It looked Lorraine in the eyes. Interestingly, Lorraine didn't seem to believe she was witnessing events that had happened here. She felt that this creature was effectively transmitting these images into her mind. Then, the image changed. It was the same creature, but, but standing by a raging river.

It was standing in a cave. Behind it stood others just like it. Then again, the image changed. This time the location looked exactly like the area they were in. The creature was hurt, its foot scabbed but still oozing blood. The creature was scared. It was aware of Lorraine and the people she was with. And it was especially fearful of the others.

It just wanted to get back to its people, but it was. was worried they would capture it. Lorraine and the creature seemed to be able to communicate. Not with words, but threw their minds. The creature wasn't trying to attack the local children, it was trying to communicate with them. It believed that the children wouldn't fear it in the same way the adults would. Lorraine moved towards the bush where she thought the creature was hiding, but as she did, the rest of her group saw her walking and began to follow. Lorraine begged them for quiet, she was struggling to hang on to her connections. to the creature. Lorraine was trying to send psychic messages to the creature, that she wanted

to help it, to nurse its injury. The creature in return was sending signals of peace, demonstrating that it meant no harm. Lorraine began to smell something acidic in the air that she was sure was the scent of the creature, but as she drew near the student with the megaphone sounded it again. Suddenly the images she was receiving turned violent and aggressive. The creature was terrified, rushing back to its cave in a great deal of pain as it did. This sound made it sure that Lorraine and the others meant it harm. Its very survival was at stake. The megaphone sounded again and the visions ended.

The look Lorraine gave the student made him realise he had pushed his little joke too far and he put it away. But sure enough, they found it, just a few feet away. trail of blood, bright red in colour. They followed it to the edge of a cliff, the roaring river running down below, but Lorraine could see no caves. It was gone. The Warrens weren't big believers in Bigfoot, but Lorraine's experience made Ed develop a theory on Bigfoot the Loch Ness monster, encrypted as a whole. He believed they were Tolpers, or in his words, and mind projection. He believed that someone, somewhere, practicing black magic, was projecting

images of these creatures out into the world, and those who had the ability were able to see them. The warrants would once again be thrown into the public eye with another of their more controversial cases as the 1980s began. In the summer of 1980, the Glatzel family of Brookfield, Connecticut, began experiencing a disturbing series of events, centered around their youngest son David, who was just 11 years old. According to the family, David began seeing a strange old man, described as having big black eyes, a thin face, animal-like features, jagged teeth, pointed ears, and hooves.

The boy insisted that the man threatened him, and would sometimes appear as a demonic beast. His parents initially suspected nightmares, But when David began showing signs of violent outbursts, strange voices, and scratches appearing on his body, they sought help. It was at this point that the family turned to Edel Lorraine. The Warrens interviewed David and declared that he was under demonic possession. They claimed to have witnessed him levitate, growl and speak in multiple voices. They said he displayed knowledge of things that he could not have known otherwise.

The situation worsened, despite prayers and attempts at the situation worsened, despite prayers and attempts at blessing the home. Over the course of several weeks, priests from the local Catholic Church became involved, performing what were described as minor exorcisms, though the church never confirmed that a formal exorcism took place. According to the Warrens and the Glatsoor family, during one of these sessions, David's sister's boyfriend, Arnie Sion Johnson, confronted the spirit. Witnesses later accounted that, Johnson shouted at the demon, telling it to leave the boy alone and to take him instead. According to the Warrens, this invitation marked a turning point.

They believed the demonic force then shifted its focus from David to Johnson. But nothing happened, at least at first. For several months, Johnson appeared normal, though family members and the Warrens claim they noticed subtle changes in his behaviour. On February 16th, 1981, the situation escalated into violence. Johnson was at the home of his landlord Alan Bono when an argument broke out. Witnesses stated that Johnson suddenly became enraged and attacked Bono with a knife, stabbing him repeatedly. Bono died from his injuries and Johnson was later arrested for the crime. But when Johnson arrived at the police station, he claimed he had no memory of what had happened and had no idea

why he was in custody. The killing shocked the community, but what followed would become unprecedented in American legal history. When Johnson's case went to trial, his attorney announced that he would argue that Johnson was not guilty by reason of demonic possession, something that had been used as a defense previously in the UK, which is made which is maybe a story we'll get into another time. The Warrens publicly supported this claim, along with a number of priests, asserting that the same entity that had tormented David

had taken control of Johnson and driven him to murder. The defense ultimately failed to convince the court. The judge rejected the possession argument outright, stating that such a claim could not be proven in a court of law. Johnson was convicted of first-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison, of which she only served about 5 before being released. The case became widely known as the Devil Made Me Do It case, named after the sensational defence strategy. Famously, this led to accusations of hypocrisy from the US courts.

If they made people swear on a Bible and the name of God was used in a courtroom, why would they deny the existence of the devil and the demonic? This case was the basis for the third conjuring movie, but around the same time, Netflix released a documentary that covered the events, including interviews with members of the family Anne Johnson. Most of them stand by their story, but the oldest brother Carl and his father were much more skeptical about the whole thing, going as far as to attempt to sue the author of the book, claiming that the whole possession story was invented by the Warrens. In the documentary, Carl Jr. states that he believes his book,

brother was putting a lot of his possession act on, specifically that the Warrens egg this on by explaining how a child may behave if they were possessed while right in front of David. Their father was apparently not a believer in all of this, and one time during one of his outbursts, he smacked David and told him off, which in Carl Jr's view interestingly made the demon retreat. Their father though, for the most part, just retreated into himself, as the boys and their mother became more and more convinced that David was possessed. Years later, after their mother passed, Carl claimed to find her journals which made reference to the family being calm after they had their medicine.

After some digging, he became convinced that his mother was putting somnanax, a sleeping aid in their food, which is noted to have possible side effects, like hallucin mood swings or vivid dreams. He believes over time this built up in their systems and may have been responsible for David's hallucinations. He also noted that he has memories that his mother's food was always served separately from the food that she would give her husband and children. But David, his other brother and their sister, still seemed convinced that this really happened. Arnie Johnson stands by the fact that he does not believe that he does not believe, he was responsible for the murder, and still has no memory of it taking place.

One thing they do all seem to agree on though is that they felt they were taken advantage of by the Warrens. The Warrens told the family they would get rich if they allowed them to share their story in a book, something that would be a nice consolation after all the trauma they had suffered. But in the end, the family made a little over $4,000 from the story, while the Warrens made tens of thousands. Before you even take it in the family, they'd have a little over $4,000 take into account the later film won the case. This would be a frequent complaint from families that got involved with the Warren's, but we'll talk more about that later. I mentioned in the prior episode on the Snedekas that as the 1980s progressed, the Warren's stories

seem to grow darker and darker, especially in regards to the sexual aspects of the stories. I think the Snedeker case is the best example of this, as well as the smell haunting. I'm not going to to recap those cases because I have done very detailed episodes on them already that you can check out if you want. But you can see echoes of the Snellica case in both the Denise Summer story we spoke about earlier, but also in our next case. It would be in California, where the Warrens would get involved in what Ed described as one of the most chilling cases of their lives. Joel DeWitts was a quiet, lonely and slightly strange man to those. that knew him. He was 38 years old and still living with his 81 year old mother in Southern

California. Joel was a funeral director but he also had a secret. Every Thursday Joel would slip out of his mother's house, often in disguise, and attend one of the city's pornographic movie theatres. Joel feared judgment if anyone were to find out about his habit, but he just couldn't stop himself. For 24 weeks in a row he went. Each week he would confess that his church is confessional, but beyond that the secret stayed with Joel. Joel was a virgin, but that didn't mean he hadn't seen a naked woman before beyond the movie screen. He had seen plenty. The problem was they were all dead. But as time progressed, this detail didn't stop Joel. His eyes would linger on the bodies just a little more with each passing week. Then the dreams began. It was all

he could think of. When the body of a 24-year-old girl came into the funeral home, Joel's temptations grew too much for him. The Warrens had given a lecture in the area. A big part of the lectures by this point was the question and answer sessions, where the audience would ask any question about the paranormal or talk about their own experiences. That particular day, a young woman stood up and said her brother had been acting strange lately. When the Warrens pushed her to explain exactly, she very matter-of-factly stated that just a few days ago, while she had been sitting with him in their mother's living room, her brother had floated across the room. Understandably, the Warrens decided this was worth them getting involved.

Ed always began the Warren's investigations with an interview. He said this was more often to try and rule out any real-world explanations, such as natural occurrences or mental health issues. But interviewing Joel was difficult. He acted like a young child who was being told off, often refusing to engage. The Warrens ended up visiting him just to talk six separate times before they began to break through. The only thing that kept the warrants coming back were Joel's mother and sister, insisting they had seen him levitate repeatedly, and that they kept hearing strange voices coming from his room at night. On the seventh visit, Ed filmed the interaction and made the other family members leave. This was to be a more confrontational interview. Ed began pushing him on the dead bodies, asking if he found him attractive. Joel initially pushed back on

calling him disgusting and wanting the interview to end. But then Joel asked Ed why he was filming the interview. Ed said that cameras sometimes pick up things that the human eye doesn't. Joel asked what kind of things. Ed simply said. Demons. Ed kept pushing and pushing. Eventually, Joel omitted it.

He had touched the bodies. In fact, he had done worse than just touched. just touched them. Joel broke down in tears, claiming he was having dreams, dreams of these dead women. They were angry at him for what he did to them. They wanted revenge. Again, this one doesn't appear to have a happy ending. Lorraine was quoted as saying, at the centre of all demonic incidents, is a human being in great trouble, but that by engaging in such a terrible sin, Joel had handed his life over to the devil. It seems the Warren's worked with Joel for some time after this,

but he was not one of the people they were able to help. Throughout the 1980s, the Warrens continued to be involved in a number of high-profile cases, in many incidents turning up uninvited after finding out about the case in the news. Sometimes this involvement was more central, like in the smell haunting, But in other cases, their involvement was seen as a nuisance, like the Bridgeport Poultergeist case, that I have covered previously, where they were thrown out after the family believed they were riling up the media, and making all the attention much worse. Their stories became more and more outlandish as time progressed as well,

with the Snedeker case being a particularly scrutinised one, as well as the less-known story of the Southend Werewolf, where the Warren's had a man from the UK who believed he was turning into a wolf, exercised. During this time they also released a number of books which, while not directly written by them, were written under their direction. This, along with numerous television appearances, helped boost the Warren's fame. And with this boost in fame came an increase in those who were a lot more skeptical of the Warren's wild claims. One of the most common details that was used to berate them in this.

time was a lack of evidence. They would be hesitant to provide names of the people involved in many of their cases, making it difficult for people to find the cooperating stories that the Warrens were basing their books on. What's more, Ed would make incredible claims about video and photographic evidence they had that proved their stories were real, but when it came to the video evidence at least, he always seemed to have an excuse for why he couldn't show it currently. There was one video, however, that Ed did proudly show time and time again, that he apparently recorded on video in 1990. This was the case of the White Lady.

When they weren't dealing with demons, one of the Warren's favourite spots to investigate was Union Cemetery in eastern Connecticut. Unlike their demon possession cases or poltergeist investigations, these hauntings were tied more closely to folklore and ghostly apparitions, then overtly malevolent activity. Still, the Warrens believed it to be a genuine paranormal phenomenon, worthy of study. For decades, stories circulated in eastern and the surrounding Fairfield County area of a ghostly woman dressed in white who appeared along Route 59 near Union Cemetery. Motorists claimed to have seen her suddenly materialize in the road,

sometimes even striking her with their cars, only to discover that she vanished without a trace. The figure was typically described as power. pale, luminous, and clothed in a flowing white gown. Local folklore tied the apparition to tragic deaths of women in the area, though no single origin story was universally accepted. The phenomenon of the White Lady is one that is present in cultures all around the world, and we've touched on it in my episode on Resurrection Mary. For some reason, it is one of the most commonly reported spectral sightings. In the 1970s and 1980s, Eddine's

Lorraine Warren began investigating Union Cemetery after repeated reports of sightings. Ed in particular became fascinated by the case and returned many times, often camping out overnight with recording equipment. According to his accounts he personally saw and even filmed the white lady on multiple occasions. In interviews and lectures, Ed claimed that one piece of video footage he captured showed a luminous figure moving among the gravestones. Footage he described is one of the most compelling pieces of evidence of ghostly phenomena in his career. Ed's video of the White Lady is available to watch on YouTube. I think it's a little hard to judge in this context though. We're seeing a potentially copied VHS version of what he filmed that has subsequently been

uploaded to YouTube, which obviously means it's highly compressed. People who have seen the tape in person though, even those who see themselves as skeptics do seem genuinely intrigued by it. But this sole piece of video evidence may be one of the most damning aspects of the Warren story. But to explain that, we need to try to look beyond the showmanship and try to understand what was really going on in the lives of Ed and Lorraine Warren. So what really happened? I barely know where to begin here. I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Even if you are a fan of the warrants, I think it's safe to say a lot of their stories are in the very least exaggerated. To begin with, they claim to have investigated over 10,000 cases throughout their lifetime. While they certainly were at this for a long time, the maths on that one just makes it feel rather improbable. Even members of their own family suggest this. was the case, so I don't think it's a controversial thing to start off on. I was listening to an interview with Chris McKennell. Chris is the Warren's grandson and along with Lorraine formed the

Warren's Legacy Foundation. Their goal is seemingly to continue to help people who are having encounters with the paranormal. There are two distinct branches of the Warren's legacy that appear to have formed in the wake of their deaths, but we'll get into the other half in a bit. In the interview I was referring to, Chris is pretty open about saying he didn't always agree with his grandparents' approach to things, and that they were prone, especially later in their lives, to exaggerating claims. Something he personally never understood because he believed the stories were captivating enough on their own, without embellishing them. But he does say that he believes in many cases. This was down to them misremembering details as they grew older, combining different cases into one story.

finding it harder to separate what happened where and to who. You can look at this in two ways in my opinion. The first is that the Warrens were taking stories of the paranormal and embellishing them to make them more sellable for books and movies. Or as I posed in the last episode, you could also look at the changing media landscape in the US at the time. It's hard to really get across how big the release of The Exorcist was, and the timing of the book and the movie coming out almost directly coincides with the warrants becoming much more spoken on the topic of the demonic.

The public was suddenly obsessed with demons. People were constantly contacting their local priests, claiming they had demons in their homes that needed to be exercised. 1973 appears to be the first recorded time that Ed also refers to himself as a demonologist in training. the year the Exorcist came out, and some sources state that the Annabel case took place in 1971, the year the book was released. Although while it could have influenced their mentionings of the demonic in the Annabel case, it's more widely speculated that if the warrants did make up the story of Annabel, then they took it from a Twilight Zone episode with a very similar plot. If this was them jumping on the Exorcist bandwagon or simply believing people were more open to the idea now is obviously up for

debate. But you could paint the narrative that the reason the Warren's stories became progressively more outlandish was because they were trying to get the message out that demons were very real. If you put out a more grounded story of a family dealing with a haunting, well, the public isn't really interested in that anymore. In a post-exorcist world, They wanted possession, they wanted life and death, they wanted things that would truly shake them to their core. Maybe the Warrens felt they were forced to lean into that to get their message heard. But while we're on the topic of The Exorcist, it's worth pointing out a lie regarding the film that Ed was caught in during the 1980s, and more specifically the 1949 exorcism of Roland Doe that apparently inspired the novel.

In a newspaper story from 1986, Ed claims that he was there at the case that originally inspired the exorcist. But as a young man in his early 20s and that no one paid him much attention. But he makes a pretty significant mistake here. In the news article, Ed claims that Roland Doe was from Mount Rainier Washington, but he was actually said to be from Mount Rainier Maryland, although this is a case that the details of which are highly disputed, and there is a real lack of verified information about what happened. Still, it feels like a rather telling mistake. What's more, in the demonologist, which was published six years before Ed began claiming

to have been present at the exorcism, Ed instead claims he actually had studied the case files, claiming to be one of only a few people who had, but he makes no reference to having actually been at the exorcism himself. As I mentioned earlier, it's hard not to notice that there was was another cultural shift that seemed to coincide with the Warren's claims about demons, the satanic panic. Today it's my privilege to host this program on a little known area in law enforcement but important to every small community and every large city across our vast

country. It's the area of satanic cults. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the United States was gripped by what became known as the satanic panic. A wave of fear that alleged widespread devil worship, ritual abuse and occult conspiracies were lurking within everyday communities. The panic began in part with the publication of books like Michelle Remembers, published in 1980, which claimed to recount memories of ritual abuse recovered through therapy. Though later discredited, it fueled a belief that underground satanic cults were real and actively targeting children. Around the same time, sensational news stories, talk shows and documentaries reinforced the idea that the occult was infiltrating schools, daycare centres and even suburban homes. One of the most infamous cases was the McMartian preschool trial in California, where teachers were accused of ritualistic abuse of children.

Despite years of courtroom drama, no evidence was found, and the case collapsed. But not before it devastated lives and, and reinforced public paranoia. The satanic panic was further fueled by law enforcement seminars, warning officers about signs of a cult crime, along with the rising popularity of heavy metal music, horror films, and role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, which were accused of corrupting youth. By the mid-1990s, investigations into the subject seemed to conclude that the signs of organized Satanic cults had no factual basis. Psychologists concluded that psychologists concluded that the scientists concluded that

that many claims stem from recovered memory therapy, a controversial practice that often implanted false memories. Law enforcement found no evidence of a national network of satanic abusers, but this didn't stop a lot of pop culture being treated as a real danger to the children of the country. A lot of the Warren's books from the 80s feed into this narrative, especially when you read their takes on how music and books can cause people to welcome in the demonic. One thing I always stress is important to keep in mind when people begin to call out the warrants for being hoaxes though, is that there are a lot of other people involved. In many of the high profile cases the warrants pop up in, they join the story quite late on. In many cases they weren't even invited and just showed up because they heard about it in the news. I always feel bad when a family is called out for faking a haunting,

just because the warren's name appears somewhere in their story. somewhere in their story. Because in many instances, the family didn't really know who they were, or why they were there. Time after time we hear about the Warrens getting involved and convincing the families go public. The Warrens would argue that this was how they had to operate to get the church involved. The Warrens had a real love-hate relationship when it came to working with the church on these paranormal cases. Increasingly, the Catholic Church was becoming more and more hesitant to engage in exorcisms. and for the most part wanted nothing to do with paranormal cases. So when the warrants would show up, they would make a lot of noise,

drawing as much attention to the case as they possibly could. Letting everyone who would listen know that this family was being attacked by demons, which would put the church in an awkward position publicly, if they still resisted getting involved. That is obviously the more charitable take on what they were doing. The more skeptical view, though, would be that the warrants were simply trying to, to increase their levels of fame. The Amityville case could be seen as the turning point for Ellen Lorraine in two ways. One, it made them public figures. But you could also say

that it brought to their attention how much money could be made in the right circumstances. And some people have speculated that everything we see from the Warren's post-Amitaville. It's simply them trying to chase that Amateurville level payday. They saw what Arthur Jay Anson was able to make, and they wanted that for themselves. The Warrens famously never charged for their investigations, but the money generated from lectures, book sales and later movie deals were certainly not scarce. The families who were left behind after the Warren train rolled in seemed to paint two different pictures of them. Some still say that they were there when they needed them the most, that they genuinely helped them and hold them in high regards,

but others have over time seen them in a different light. I discussed last episode about how Carmen Snedeker now believes the Warrens took advantage of her family and effectively stole their stories to sell books and movies. The Glatzel family felt they were treated poorly with one of their sons claiming that Lorraine told him they were going to share his story and make him a very rich little boy. But the family were left with $4,000 while the Warren sold a book and ultimately Warner Brothers profited from their story with the contrary. One of the cases that most famously gets wrapped up in the Warren's legacy is that of the

Enfield Poultergeist case here in England. Ed claims in their books that they were there for days, interviewing the family at length and witnessing a whole host of unbelievable activity, a story that was told in The Conjuring 2. But it seems this too was greatly exaggerated. There appears to be some debate on how long the Warrens were there for exactly, but it's now widely believed that the Conjuring was. they only visited the place for a few hours. The family had no idea who the Warrens were,

and the investigators that had been working on the case for a long time weren't very impressed that these two Americans were trying to muscle in on what they were treating as a very serious paranormal investigation. Most damningly, Ed Warren apparently told one of the investigators they could make a lot of money if they worked together on a book. The warrants were quickly asked to leave. But as I said, this was not everyone's view of working with the warrants. While I think it's safe to discredit Ed's 10,000 case number, they were involved in a lot and only a handful of those cases that the warrants were involved in were actually turned into books.

Seemingly, there were a lot of families and individuals they worked with and left on good terms. As part of researching this, I finally sat down and watched a 2013 documentary, my Amateurville horror, which sees a documentary team visiting one of the Lutz's children, Danny, and talks to him about his experiences of what happened in that house. While he paints a rather dark picture of abuse at the hands of his stepfather, he also speaks about how the haunting was very much real, even if the books and movies don't exactly paint the story as he experienced it. The reason I bring this up is because there is a moment where Danny is reunited with Lorraine Warren.

While Danny is clearly a very troubled man in his own right, his interactions with Lorraine are genuinely quite touching. He seems to hold a lot of fondness in his heart for the Warrens. There's one of the few adults who were genuinely there for him during his traumatic childhood. And this gave me a moment of pause. So much attention is given to the families who, in later years, have spoken about the negative experiences with the Warrens. But very little attention is given to those who believed they were a force for good in their lives. Although one recurring theme I did notice is that a lot of prominent families that were involved with warrants

seem to be suffering with a lot of personal issues. We constantly hear elements of abuse, violence, drug-taking, alcoholism, poor mental health spread throughout many of these stories. All of this could point to these being vulnerable people that the Warrens were taken advantage of. But of course, the Warren's counter-argument for this would be that this kind of environment is what would draw a demonic entity in.

But it's hard not to be sceptical when the authors the Warrens worked with come out and say their books were works of fiction. The Warrens always put to a degree of separation between themselves and the books that were released on their work. Their names appear on the front covers, but they stress they didn't write them. Other people wrote them based on their case notes.

There are two prominent examples where authors have come out and spoke against the Warrens, after working with them. The first we discussed in the last episode, but I think it's important to go over again here. Ray Garten wrote the book in a dark place which covered the Snedica Haunting, and ultimately was turned into a movie called The Haunting in Connecticut. Around 2009 during the release of the movie, Ray Garton became quite outspoken about his experiences of writing the book. Garton said he took the job because he remembered the warrants from reading about their stories as a kid. While he didn't believe in the paranormal himself, he took this assignment with the belief that the people involved genuinely believed it,

and he wanted to share their stories. But quickly, he said there were issues. He said that Snedekers couldn't keep their story straight. He said they were going through some serious problems like drug addiction and alcoholism. He barely got to speak to the boy at the centre of all of this, but once he did have a phone call with him, the boy apparently claimed that his visions of ghosts went away after he was medicated. Ed and Lorraine told Garton they had videotape of the activity, and they could show him, but every time he asked to see it, a different excuse was used for why they couldn't show it to him right now.

When he finally approached Ed Warren with his concerns, he apparently, said to Garten, they're crazy. All the people who come to us are crazy. That's why they come to us. Just use what you can and make the rest up. You write scary books, right? Well, make it up and make it scary. That's why we hired you. Garten claims he has been open about all of this since the beginning, but the most often referred to example of these claims seems to come from a 2009 interview, leading some to speculate that he was just angry that he hadn't received any money from the movie being made, but he denies this is the reason. John Zaffis, one of the investigators on the case and the nephew of the warrants, asks why did Garton not have his name taken off the book, or even refused to write it if he thought it was all a scam?

Garton's response to this was that he couldn't afford illegal fees to back out of the contract he had signed, before knowing what he was really getting into. But he wasn't alone. Gerald Brittel, who most famously wrote the Warren's biography The Demonologist and The Devil in Connecticut, took issue when The Conjuring came out, claiming that it was based on his book. In 2017, Brittle filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros., New Line Cinema and the producers of the Conjuring franchise, alleging that the films infringed upon his exclusive rights. He sought an insane $900 million in damages, asserting that the movie's the movie's

were based on the Warren's cases, which he had exclusive rights to depict. When Warner Bros. shot back that this film was based on a true story, and that he didn't have ownership over that, Rital came back and said that, in fact, the demonologist was a work of fiction. A lot of people use this detail as another hit to the Warren's credibility, but few seem to point out that the lawsuit was a little more complicated than that. In December of 2017, the lawsuit was settled out of court for a considerably smaller amount of money, with Brittle claiming he was not the one behind this legal push. It appeared that a producer by the name of Tony De Rosa Grund had been the mastermind behind it. Tony was supposedly disgruntled after being pushed out of the forthcoming conjurance

sequels, and he apparently was owed unpaid royalties from Warner Robbers. He had attempted to sue the studio over this numerous times. These lawsuits were unsuccessful, and he had agreed not to to pursue further legal action against the studio, but instead he reached out to Brittle and used him as a way to get at Warner Bros. According to Brittle's statements, Tony had been controlling the lawsuit from the outset. Brittle reported that Tony had communicated directly with Brittle's attorneys, even threatening to fire them if they sent information without his prior approval. This level of control led Brittle to acknowledge that he had been used as a figurehead in the legal action, with Tony pulling the strings behind the scenes.

The settlement brought an end to the lawsuit and a public statement was put out explaining what had really been going on, although it's worth noting Tony put out a counter statement, claiming that the studio just had it in for him for bringing something else to light, regarding the movies. While this particular lawsuit in retrospect didn't really affect the Warren's legacy, an additional story came out of it during the process that did. Judith Penny, a woman who claimed to have lived with the Warren's for over four decades, accused Ed Warren of initiating a sexual relationship with her when she was just 15 years old. These allegations made public through court documents have cast a

long shadow over the Warren's public image in recent years. According to Penny's sworn declaration, Ed Warren then in his mid-30s, began an extramarital relationship with her in 1963, when she was a high school student. At the time, Ed was still a bus driver, albeit now for the city instead of the school. If she was saying the relationship was sexual from the outset or not, seems a little bit unclear. But even if it wasn't, this would feel like a pretty clear case of grooming, even if he did wait for her to be of legal age. I was trying to read up on age of consent laws in Connecticut. It appears at 16 now, but I'm unsure that's always been the case. Penny's stated. that she lived with the Warren's for approximately 40 years, with Lorraine fully aware

of what was going on, during which time Ed privately referred to her as the love of his life. In public, however, the Warrens introduced Penny as their niece, or a poor local girl they had taken in. Ed would spend parts of his week in a bedroom with Lorraine, and other nights in Judith's room. Penny further alleged that in her 30s, she became pregnant with Ed Warren's child, She claimed that Lorraine Warren persuaded her to have an abortion, suggesting that the birth of a child would damage the Warren's public image and business. Penny expressed fear and confusion during this period, stating that she was pressured into the decision. She said they wanted her to tell everyone that someone had come into her apartment and sexually assaulted her. She went on to say,

I didn't know what to do, but I had an abortion. The night they picked me up from the hospital after having it. They went out and lectured and left me alone. In addition to the claims of sexual misconduct, Penny accused Ed of physically abusing Lorraine. She alleged that Ed had knocked Lorraine unconscious on at least one occasion, describing the atmosphere in the household as one where some nights she thought they were going to kill each other. In response to this being made public, Lorraine Warren's attorneys have denied. the allegations. Their daughter, Judy Warren and her husband Tony Sparer, have also denied the claims,

stating that Penny only moved in with the family as an adult. She would look after the house for the warrants while they were on the road and effectively acted as their assistant. A fact that is backed up by mentions of her and the demonologist. It is also claimed that she had a long-term boyfriend who would regularly visit the Warren's home and they eventually were married. Lorraine's attorney is quoted as saying, the warrants opened their home to Miss Penny when she was 18 and had nowhere else to live following a childhood of neglect. Tony and Judy meanwhile believed that Judith was being manipulated by an outside source to make these claims, but not a demonic one. Certainly, this story was heavily pushed by the aforementioned disgruntled producer Tony de Rosa

who didn't hold back his words when he wrote in an email to the studio. Ed was a pedil, a sexual predator and a physically abusive husband. Lorraine enabled Ed to do this. She knowingly allowed this illegal relationship to continue for 40 years. They lied to the public. It feels like his motivation was personal revenge rather than genuine concern for what happened to Judith. But that's obviously just my perception after reading about his involvement in the later Brittle case. Obviously I don't know his true intentions. This doesn't however discredit Judith claims. Her story can still be genuine even if she was pushed into coming out about it by others with less than pure intentions. Their grandson has

also claimed that he thinks the accusations are nonsense, with many pointing out that it hurts them that the allegations only came out after Ed's death in 2006, leaving him unable to defend himself. But it's worth pointing out that Judith didn't go public with these claims as such. She didn't send out this story to the world to try and damage the warrants. She simply got wrapped up in a rather confusing lawsuit regarding a movie and was asked to make a statement within the grounds of that case. Her statement only came to light after the records were made public. Because of this, the family believed that much like Brittle, she was being manipulated and pressured into saying these things. In Penny's quotes, it says,

seemed she genuinely loved Ed, and obviously was not keen on Lorraine. Their relationship apparently came to an end in 2003, just a few short years before Ed's death, which feels odd if that's accurate, due to Ed's health conditions at the time, but we'll talk more about that in a moment. But of course, if these allegations are true, then Ed moves a child into his home before beginning a sexual relationship with her. The pressuring her into an abortion also does a lot of damage, to the portrait of the warrens. being a loving devoted Catholic couple, God's warriors on earth, battling the demons of the world. I've seen claims that Judith was paid a settlement to keep quiet about these accusations, but I'm not sure where this story has come from and it doesn't appear to be true.

As far as I can tell, she has never made any money from this, nor has she personally attempted to gain financially from this story. While the exact nature of their relationship cannot be proven, There are pieces of evidence that are pretty interesting. I'll quote the Hollywood Reporter article that broke the story in 2017 here. Even in 1963, a teenage girl did not move in with a married man without attracting notice. That year Penny was arrested after someone reported her relationship with Ed to the local police. According to her November 2014 declaration, she spent a night in North End prison in Bridgeport, while police tried to persuade her to sign a statement admitting to the affair.

After Penny refused to cooperate, she was ordered by the court to report to a delinquent youth office for the next month. According to Penny's account, Ed picked her up from school every week and drove her to the mandated meetings. Then there was the apparent contract the Warren signed for The Conjuring. Lorraine's agreement with New Line apparently included unusual limitations. The films could not portray her or Ed engaging in criminal behaviour, including sex with minors, child pornography, prostitution or sexual assault. Additionally, neither she nor her husband could be shown participating in an extramarital sexual relationship. Talent attorney Jill Smith notes that she has never encountered language explicitly barring such portrayals. Though people who sell the rights to their life stories, sometimes impose restrictions, these feel oddly specific.

This detail seems wild to me. The article doesn't mention how they were able to see this contract, so I'm unsure if it came as part of the legal case or not. I wish this was something that was out there for us to be able to see for ourselves if these details are accurate. I've seen a few people say this is publicly available, but all I was able to find were articles repeating the same information. as the Hollywood Reporter article. I'm not saying this contract detail is inaccurate, but it just feels so on the nose if it's real. And if true, it obviously makes Judith's story all the more credible. One final interesting detail I came across in regards to this part of the Warren story comes courtesy of Greg and Dana Newkirk, hosts of the Haunted Objects podcast,

who did their own deep dive into the warrants last year. Judith obviously worked with the the warrants for a long time and as such has a whole host of warren's related objects in her home. A few of these items she has sold to the Newkirks who are collectors of this type of memorabilia. On the podcast they pulled out an old copy of one of the Warren's books they were able to get from Judith that was signed by Ed. The message Ed wrote to her in the book was, I know how much you have sacrificed for me my dear. Thank you for always being thoughtful and understanding. when my work is concerned. This episode on the warrants is one I've been piecing together in my head for years now,

even if I only really sat down to write it a few weeks ago. But one aspect of it I went back in full form for a long time was the Judith accusations. I wanted the episode to focus on their work and the criticisms of that side of their life, rather than the admittedly disgusting personal scandal. But the detail that made me finally decide to cover this part is, actually a fairly innocuous part of the original article to most people who aren't familiar with the Warren's work. I'm going to quote the original article again here. It says, Penny has said she helped Ed maintain his reputation as a ghost hunter. He claimed to have captured

the white lady, a ghost who supposedly haunts Union Cemetery in eastern Connecticut, on tape in the summer of 1990, after camping out in the graveyard for a week. Penny claimed that Ed wanted to make a video that would show what the white lady would look like if she were spotted. So she took a page from every grade schooler's Halloween playbook and donned a white sheet for the filming. If the allegations that Judith Penny has made against Ed Warren are true, then it appears the only ghost that Ed Warren showed to the world was actually a demon of his own making. Despite how the Conjuring movies ended, it appears the Warren's continued their work right into the 2000s. In the end, Ed was forced to put a stop to it,

a while before Lorraine hung up her ghostbusting gloves. In March 2001, Ed experienced a severe health crisis when he collapsed at home, while attempting to let the cat inside. Paramedics revived him, but he fell into a coma lasting 11 weeks. During this period, he lost the ability to speak, and required extensive rehabilitation. Although he regained some mobility, he was left with lasting physical impairments. In the years following this incident, Ed's health continued to deteriorate. He became largely housebound due to ongoing heart issues and other complications. His declining health necessitated increased care and support from his wife Lorraine and their daughter Judy. Ed Warren passed away on August 23rd, 2006 at the age of 79. He died at his home in Monroe,

Connecticut, with Lorraine by his side. His death was a tribute to his death. to heart failure, a condition that had plagued him in the years leading up to his passing. Lorraine passed away on April 18th, 2019, at the age of 92. She died peacefully in her sleep in her home. Her death was attributed to natural causes. After her death, the Warren's Occult Museum was closed to the public, after zoning issues as well as complaints from neighbours due to the overwhelming attention it had gained following the conjuring movies.

As I mentioned earlier, the Warren's legacy after their deaths seems to split in two different directions. Their grandson is still seemingly trying to continue their work with his foundation. Their daughter Judy has for the most part kept out of the public eye, only giving a small number of interviews in recent years. But she and her husband effectively took over running Nespah and the museum once Ed and Lorraine were gone. As a child, Judy seemed mostly unaware of what exactly her parents did. But as she grew up, they told her more and more. Judy actually spent most of her childhood living with her grandmother. Her parents were on the road a lot and she obviously had school.

But it seems she doesn't hold this against them and seems to believe that what her parents were doing was important enough for them not to be around. She speaks about fond memories of her father always telling ghost stories and spending long days walking around graveyards as a child, which sounds a little morbid, but these are not. seemed to be happy memories of her parents for her. When children at her school asked what her parents did, she just told them they were landscape artists. But the time she would stay in her parents' home, she would admit to being deeply frightened. She would always especially avoid going

into the occult museum, and she makes note that she was particularly afraid of Annabel. But the more public face of the Warren's legacy is Judy's husband, Tony Sparer. Sparerer stepped into a dual role, preserving the family's vast collection of artifacts, and ensuring the continuity of the New England Society for Psychic Research, the group formed by Ellen Lorraine in 1952. Beyond the museum, Sparerer has carved out his own work as a public speaker, with events like, An Evening with Annabelle, or Ghost Stories with Tony Sparer. He has shared the Warren's case files, photos and personal accounts with audiences across the United States. In one instance, he was reported handing out bottles of Holy Water to journalists visiting the museum, seemingly underscoring his belief in the dangers

of the objects under his care. But his stewardship of the Warren's legacy hasn't been without its own controversies. Mostly these have centred around Annabel, who in recent years has arguably become the most famous aspect of the Warren's story for a younger generation. Stunts involving the doll have included meals with the doll present, a brand of vodka that was sold for $200, because it stored next to Annabel and even a nationwide tour of the Dole. Considering Annabel was considered the most dangerous object in the Warren's Museum, these sort of publicity stunts do seem to question, if anyone involved takes the story seriously at all. There's been a lot of recent news surrounding the museum and the Dole that I don't want to get into too heavily hear. There's a lot of names I don't

recognize and because these are recent developments, a lot of people make him rather sensation content from it. This did lead me to discovering that there are even YouTube drama channels for the paranormal, which is crazy to me. These recent developments, though, include the death of Dan Rivera, who was one of the paranormal investigators involved in a recent tour of Annabel. He was found dead in his hotel room at just 54, from a cardiac-related incident, which obviously people have been desperately trying to connect to the dull. Following this, a comedian appears to have taken over a temporary lease of the Warren's Occult Museum for at least the next five years. It appears the plans are to allow content creators to visit, but according to some online this comes with a hefty fee and strict restrictions on what they're allowed to say and do. If you truly believe that the Warrens were legitimate, then I can't see how any of this can be viewed as a respectful way to treat their work. But of course, if you are more sceptical of them, then well, maybe Ed at least, would enjoy the spectacle and the attention.

I thought we'd leave the final word on this section to Judy and her memories of her parents. She said that the negative articles about them that came out over the years really affected her. In an interview with the website Den of Geek, as part of an answer, she shared a story about what Lorraine did, after Ed fell ill. people were still reaching out to the warrants for help. To quote Judy, when they asked her if there was anything she wanted to dispel about what people say about her parents, she said. That they were in it for fame or money or anything like that. I think that was the one that came up probably a lot, and I had a hard time with that criticism. They were really, really trying, and they always tried.

After my dad collapsed, he was a full care patient for five years, so he was a full care patient for five years. so he wasn't even there. He was in the house, but you know. My mum, she would take these calls in the middle of the night and sit and talk to people. We wanted to change the house number so many times, but she wouldn't let us. She'd sit and talk to people

until they were comfortable enough to go to bed and go to sleep. Or if they felt, okay, this will work, or we'll talk to you in the morning. then she'd get back to them. So where does this leave us with the warrants? At the start of the episode, I asked you to comment your opinion on them going in.

If you're still with me and anything in this episode has changed how you feel about them, then please go back and edit that comment, or leave a new one to let me know where you stand now. I'd be so curious to hear what aspects of their story affected you the most. I thought finally sitting down and writing this episode would finally cement my opinion on them. I feel I've been on a real journey with Ed and Lorraine since the very first episode of the tape library from just thinking they were this odd couple who hunted ghosts to feeling like they were effectively con artists and I've gone back and forth on this but as I sit here bringing this all to a close I genuinely still don't know how I feel about them

nothing about their story is straightforward it's wrapped up in layers and layers of conflicting realities I know so many people out there believe they were full-on-con artists, and I can see why. There's a lot of evidence that points to that. But I think there's a tendency to view people in very binary terms in today's world. It feels like you have to have a firm opinion on if a public figure is good or bad, and I just struggle to do that with the warrants. Obviously when I say that, I'm talking in terms of their work and not the darker accusations.

Maybe a part of me just wants their stories to be true, and that causes me to look for positives and all this? But did they really fake all this for 70 years? Maybe they did. But part of me thinks there was something genuine here, at least once upon a time. I think they genuinely believed in the paranormal. They spent years and years just telling ghost stories and making paintings in a time before huge book deals for paranormal cases.

I think you have to question why they would be doing that if it was all a con from the start. I also think their faith in their religion came from a genuine place, but of course having faith doesn't make you a good person by default. And if Judith Penny's claims are genuine, then it obviously shows a much darker side that the warrants kept hidden from the world. The fact that those allegations did nothing to damage the conjuring franchise is genuinely shocking to me. But maybe it's just not a story that the wider public is really aware.

or maybe people simply brush it off because it's a lot more fun to just go with the fictional version of who the warrens were. It's a shame that everything involved in the warrants, especially later on, seemed to revolve around money. They were accused of taking advantage of others for their own financial gain. But likewise, many of the people who spoke out against them were also doing it because they felt like they missed out on a payday. But this doesn't mean I believe them either. I think they regularly made mountains out of molehills and spent their time focusing on the most wild paranormal cases they could find, rather than actually attempting to explain what people were experiencing. Although in part this could be because their view that this was all demonic was so firmly entrenched in their minds.

Reading their books, it feels like it's all about sensationalism and entertainment rather than serious investigations. Or at least their presentation of the cases were after the fact. It seemed during the investigations they would spend days or even weeks inside some of these homes. I wish we had a book on the Warrans that was full of the mundane day-to-day stuff that went on during the investigations, rather than the dramatic horror novels we were left with. Which is funny because there is a quote from Ed in Ghost Hunters, where he says, Educate yourself as well as possible. Seek out books to offer wisdom on the subject, not books that only offer sensationalism. and hysteria. But then I suppose another suggestion that you could make is that they believed it in the start.

But as they began exploring it more and more, they began to realise the paranormal wasn't a real thing. Instead, it was a bunch of mistaken or unwell people, and these were people they could take advantage of, for fame and fortune. It's my belief that, as I said before, Amityville was the turning point for them. Well, they swayed by money. the fame and attention they received from the public. Did that make them lose sight of why they began to do this to begin with? Or, as I stated before, did they simply begin to exaggerate their claims,

to help their message stand out, to make people afraid to meddle the occult, because they genuinely believed it was dangerous for people to do so? Did they really believe that humanity was at risk of becoming overwhelmed by demonic forces? Or was it all a show? A role they played in a theatrical. performance. They were certainly playing up to those roles. I do see them as characters, a showman, and I certainly take their stories with a massive, massive pinch assault. But I think the only people who really know how much those characters represented the beliefs and experiences of the

people behind the mask are Ed and Lorraine Warren. And as has always been the case with them, we will never really know the truth. Should we believe the Warren's again? Should we believe the warrens counts. I think in my opinion the answer is very likely no. But should that mean we dismiss every single person who found themselves crossing paths with them? The families who claimed they encountered something extraordinary, the people who decades later still claim to be traumatised by what they saw and experienced. I think I'll end it with one more quote from Ed Warren, again taken from Ghost Hunters. He said, Most of us don't want to face the supernatural, and that's always struck me as strange.

Here we are, a nation that seems to believe deeply in some sort of life beyond this one, yet we don't want to believe that that life might have any effect on our current existence. Here's this entire other realm, and we want to do everything to deny it. Most people get embarrassed when you bring the subject up, yet these are the same people who go to church every Sunday and pray to a god most of them have never seen nor spoken with. If we can imagine and believe in a godhead, then what's so difficult about accepting God's opposite? The darker realms. That's all for this entry into the tape library. If you made it through to the end of this one, then thank you so, so much. I'm sure you can tell this combined with the first

Warren's episode from a few weeks back has been a lot of work. While this may have been a few weeks of solid writing and editing, really it's the accumulation of three years and hundreds of hours now of delving into the warrants and their work. So I appreciate you sticking with me for such a long one. As such, I'd really appreciate your support in making this episode a success. So please, if you're on YouTube, click like and use that weird new hype button. If you're on the podcast version, please leave the show a review or rating, and if you have friends who would enjoy this episode, please share it far and wide. I think just due to the length and the topic, this might not get the biggest audience. But I think there are people out there who will enjoy it. Pretty much

every creator in this field has thrown out an episode of the Warrants in the last few weeks due to the Conjuring, and I have planned to get this episode out when the movie released to try and jump on the wave of attention myself. But of course in classic me fashion, I ended up turning this into a mammoth project that has taken a long time to complete and miss the boat on the conjuring hype, but hopefully the extra time taken was worth it. There are so many stories I could have covered here. So I feel like I've still barely scratched the surface on the warrants, but obviously I couldn't include everything or this episode would still be playing by the time I release the next one. I'm sure I'll watch back through this and wish I'd included different things or wish I'd

worded things better. But for now at least I'm happy with this being an underlining of the warrants for me personally. I've long said that this episode would bring an end to them as a topic, because I do find their case is frustrating to write about at times. If that ends up being the case or not, I'm not sure. I feel there's still a few that I'm so tempted to dig my teeth into and give the full tape library treatment, but if that does end up happening, it won't be for a very long time. Again, thank you for sticking around till the end. The next episode is going to be something a little different, but it should be quite fun

in a very dark way, of course. And then for Halloween I'm planning to tackle a haunting that you guys are requested a few times over the last few months. So if you don't want to miss out on that, please make sure you subscribe. If you want to contribute to the channel financially, to keep it going, you can do that in a couple of ways. On Patreon, you can choose to pay one of several tiers

to get early access to content. Or on YouTube memberships, you can get ad-free versions of each new episode for just a couple of dollars a month. Of course, if you're watching on YouTube, and another recurring cost isn't what you want, which I totally understand. Super Thanks are turned on where you can do.

donate a small amount directly but I have zero expectations on this stuff you just watching to the end is a massive way to support me so thank you one of the perks Patreon members get to shout outs so let's credit those people who keep the show ticking along and allow me to waffle on for two hours about a Catholic couple who hunt demons our tape library archivists yoinks and away umiko grim West Virginia vegetable man Tina S Thomas Bokewright the god emperor of mankind the Crimson DM the detective The Bisexual Moon Cult, Stephen Lutman, Sean Miller, Sandy Loss, Sad Gell Cali, Sarah Boyd, Rosary Sudrabin, quirky Joseph, plum blossom, Pixalina, Monty, Monsas, Mirosha, Midia Zabin,

Lisa Marie Sheridan, Lady Bet Noir, Juno, Juno, Judith Hacker, Joseph Condola, Jolly, Jolly, Jolly, Jey, Jey, Regal, Gina, Geyrude, DeG, DeLeg, Dominic, D'Angus, Darns, Dahl, Crystal Edwards, Ashlar's Books, Alfredo Sandoval and Adolin. Our lead archivist, Saviour Angle, Wynne Lewis, Van Yell, Tyler Michael, Tracy Terrello, the original dear, ridiculous, old soul like mine, Plague Doctor Is In, Emmy Bartley, Melissa Harrinson, Lord William, London Grace, Creepy Candy, Brian Baker, Amy Stubblefield, Alex O'Neill, Alex Goldberg and 1000th Ghost, Our very generous Grand Overseers. Morning Rain 2619, Leah Carmela, Katie, Harrison the Ogrelord, Bad Didley, Agent 355, and of course, Queen of Flatchelance. As always, a huge thank you to them. All my junior archive is on Patreon and my members on YouTube. You guys make it so I can not focus so much on the algorithm game sometimes

and make ambitious projects like this one. Once again, thank you for all your support. I need a rest, so I'm going to crawl into a dark and damp corner of the tape library archives and fall asleep for a bit. Until next time, my friends, pleasant dreams.