The Warrens: Paranormal Power Couple

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:33Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:43Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and this is Stuff You Should Know. We're into 2026 now, Chuck. What do you think about that? How you feeling?

• 1:52Speaker 03

  Uh, I have high hopes for this year.

• 1:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 1:58Speaker 03

  Oh, man. Do I really? No, no, no.

• 2:01Josh Clark?

  I think you should.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:03Josh Clark?

  We should have high hopes for every year. And we can be let down, sure, but, you know, you can still have high hopes.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  I guess I have my cynical hat on, so that was a bad time to ask me that question, because we're talking about Ed and Lorraine Warren. As Julia said, who titled this one, I'm using this title even.

• 2:20Josh Clark?

  It's great.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  Paranormal power couple that you might know if you've ever seen movies like The Amityville Horror. So we talked about them in that episode for sure. Or The Conjuring.

• 2:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Or was it The Haunting in Connecticut?

• 2:34Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 2:34Speaker 03

  Was another one? They made a lot of money scamming people.

• 2:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's really no, well, I want to say there's no other way to put it. Plenty of people on the internet put it differently. They were the real deal, legit, Ghostbusters, Demon Hunters.

• 2:55Josh Clark?

  It just, if you add up all the evidence and you're incredulous and skeptical, you probably not only suspect the Warrens were frauds, but you might actually have a little disdain for them. I say we kind of present both sides, even though I feel like it's pretty clear where we land, maybe?

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  Have you seen K-pop Demon Hunters?

• 3:16Josh Clark?

  No, is it good?

• 3:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I figured you guys would have seen that. I figured you and me would be into that.

• 3:22Josh Clark?

  What is, is it on Netflix? Because we don't have that anymore.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's Netflix, original, so.

• 3:27Josh Clark?

  Okay. No, I haven't seen it.

• 3:28Speaker 03

  Although they did show it in theaters, had sing-alongs in the theaters and stuff.

• 3:32Josh Clark?

  Oh, cute. I gotta see that.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just didn't know. It's a legit sensation.

• 3:37Josh Clark?

  It's funny that we, I don't know what we were talking about, but The Conjuring came up not too long ago, and you said you hadn't seen it. Have you still not seen it?

• 3:45Speaker 03

  Since last week, I have not seen The Conjuring.

• 3:48Josh Clark?

  Do you remember what, how it came up?

• 3:51Speaker 03

  I mean, I think we were talking about Raggedy Ann Doll.

• 3:55Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  And the doll's up.

• 3:57Josh Clark?

  Great memory. So, okay. I still say The Conjuring, the first one, is a legendary, classic, great ghost horror movie. It's just fantastic.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  So, nothing changed since last week?

• 4:11Josh Clark?

  No, but it could have because learning more and more about the actual backstory behind it and just how exploitive it was and how historically bent it is.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:22Josh Clark?

  It could have. It could have really affected how I view it, but I decided not to.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Well, you can separate art from the rag doll.

• 4:29Josh Clark?

  For sure. I can, and I'm going to by God. Let's do that right now.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  All right. So Ed and Lorraine Warren, they founded in 1952 the New England Society for Psychic Research in Connecticut. Ed said, you know, self-described demonologist, Lorraine, self-described clairvoyant and trance medium. And they formed that in Connecticut because they were both from Connecticut and looking at their list of greatest hits, did a lot of ghost busting in Connecticut.

• 4:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah. One of the things you can credit them for is they made the idea of like ghost hunting mainstream. All of the terrible, terrible TV shows that are around today all owe their existence to the Warrens, essentially. There were ghost hunters and psychical research societies and everything around before them. But they were so huge into publicity and getting their stories out there that they kind of put it on the map as far as, as far as at least America's concerned.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. So credit or scorn, they were the OGs. Ed was, I guess Warren was his middle name because he was born Ed Warren Miney in 1926 in Bridgeport. He says that he grew up in a haunted house, so that's where he got his first Jones for this kind of work. And his wife was born Lorraine Moron.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Moran?

• 5:55Josh Clark?

  I think Moran.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Moran, later Warren, obviously. In 1927, just a few months later, also in Bridgeport. Grew up very, very Catholic and that'll play a part in their careers because it all had a Catholic bent.

• 6:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  And they met as teenagers, got married in 1945 when Ed was on leave from the Navy, serving in World War II. And then they had a little girl, Judy. And Ed went to art school and ironically, that's where they got their start, ghost busting because they were traveling around selling, hocking his wares as an artist. And they said, well, while we're here, we might as well do some paranormal investigation because that's what you do.

• 6:35Josh Clark?

  Right. And if you are familiar at all with The Conjuring series, you're like, I already know all this. And that is because the largest horror franchise in history, The Conjuring series, is based on the Warrens' files, the books they wrote, the interviews they gave, the TV shows that they consulted on. If you put it all together, all of The Conjuring movies that started in 2013 have grossed at least $2.3 billion.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 7:06Josh Clark?

  All based on the malarkey that the Warrens came up with from the 50s to the, I guess, I think it really kind of tapered off in like the 90s.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it's kind of crazy to think, right? This just sort of average couple from Connecticut who were doing their thing. Like, I don't think anyone, I mean, they certainly saw dollar signs, but nothing like that.

• 7:26Josh Clark?

  No, and we have to say, they never charged a dime from anybody in need that they were helping. They didn't make their money that way. They made their money through lectures, through selling their stories, other people's stories, frankly. They had a museum that they charged money to come in and see, you know, entry. But they never charged the people that they were helping, which I think is definitely worth pointing out.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, they didn't show up and say, what do you got? You got a demon and you got a ghost that's, let me see, Carrie the one, we can get rid of that thing for five grand.

• 8:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  So let's get into this.

• 8:06Josh Clark?

  Oh, I thought you had.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  They, I said it was, you know, sort of very Catholic. Their encounters were very much steeped in Catholic dogma. We're talking, I mean, it's, I say it's right out of a horror movie because it literally was. People would speak in different languages supposedly. There were alleged like hoof prints appearing in the snow, levitating beds, levitating kids, foul smells, exorcisms, furniture, you know, that furniture's moving all over the place by itself. Doors are shutting without any wind blowing.

• 8:38Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Just shutting.

• 8:40Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 8:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, this is a 50 something year career. They founded the New England Society for Psychic Research in 1952. So they've been doing this for quite a while, but their, their all time huge cases didn't really start to pick up until the seventies. I think the first one that people point to is like the, the first big deal case was actually became the basis for that first Conjuring movie. It was the Perrin family haunting with Carolyn and Roger Perrin. And they had five daughters and they moved into a, a house in Rhode Island, an old farmhouse that was built in the 1750s, I think, maybe. 1667 Round Top Road. It was also known as the Old Arnold Estate.

• 9:25Josh Clark?

  And they moved in and they stayed there for 10 years, but during that 10 year time, they had some really hard occurrences, according to them.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  That's right. That's a great way to say allegedly because I've been thinking about how to mix that up.

• 9:41Josh Clark?

  According to them?

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that's good.

• 9:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  I'm gonna use that. Yeah, the children were the first ones to sort of get the haunt. And the parents didn't really believe that was going on. They told their daughters like, no, you know, you're just being little girls, of course, and seeing ghosts that aren't there. But the parents soon got on board and said, yeah, something's happening here. The beds are levitating, there's that awful smell. They did a little self research before they called the Warrens and found that there had been apparently a lot of really gruesome deaths over the history of that home, which is not unusual for a super old farmhouse. So that's when they picked up the phone, they called the Warrens. I can't imagine. What year was this? 1971? Like, how? I mean, this is in Rhode Island. I guess word just gets around, or maybe they see a newspaper article

• 10:27Speaker 03

  or something, because, you know, before the internet, it was amazing to me that all these people just knew who to call.

• 10:35Josh Clark?

  I was wondering that as well. And I think in some cases, they didn't call. It's just people have written that, because there's so many cases, and they're so convoluted, and they're so

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:46Josh Clark?

  just, you know, there's so much BS around them, that people just take total liberties with it. So it's not entirely clear who called whom. But let's just say they called the Warrens, right?

• 10:58Josh Clark?

  The Warrens showed up. They held a séance. And in the séance, Carolyn is thrown across the room, but first she starts speaking in tongues. I think her daughter Andrea later wrote that this was, she was speaking in a language that no, that never existed on earth. I think assuming that this was a demon, that kind of thing. And they traced the whole thing back to the spirit of a witch, a dead witch. And we established in the Bell Witch short stuff, that a witch ghost is the worst kind of both.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 11:28Josh Clark?

  And she had lived in the house in the early 1800s. And not only was she a witch, she was a child murderer. She had murdered an infant with a knitting needle. And so they had the séance. Carolyn gets thrown against the wall. Nothing changes, nothing's solved. And the Warrens are like, see ya. Thanks for the story. The, you know, when the Warrens left, the haunting hadn't ended, but the Perrons stuck it out, or Perrons stuck it out for 10 years total. And then when they moved out, the haunting stopped.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  That's right. And, you know, what we're gonna do here, we're gonna go over some of their greatest hits, as told by the Warrens and others. And then maybe we'll come back later and sort of pick them apart a bit.

• 12:15Josh Clark?

  Maybe, if we feel like it.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  The next one, of course, is Annabelle. We talked a little bit about the doll and the dolls episode. This is the early 70s in Hartford, Connecticut, when a nurse got a Raggedy Ann doll as a gift, and the doll came to life, started doing some cute things like, hey, I'll leave a little note for the nurse, or I'm gonna be, you're gonna put me down in this chair, but I'm gonna really go over in this room just so you know that I'm fully animated and alive.

• 12:42Josh Clark?

  Like Elf on the Shelf kind of stuff.

• 12:45Speaker 03

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

• 13:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. That would be my guess. Because this is an era, the 70s, man, you could call a newspaper and be like, I've got a haunted doll. My house is haunted. There's a ghost witch, and a newspaper reporter would show up and write a story about it, right?

• 13:28Speaker 03

  Totally, yeah.

• 13:30Josh Clark?

  So, yes, these stories did pop up in the newspaper. And I'm quite sure that the Warrens were reading papers for this. One way or another, they showed up, and they determined, no, this is not the ghost of a little girl named Annabelle Higgins. This is a demon hanging around a doll, pretending to be Annabelle Higgins in order to get close enough to Donna, the nurse, whose doll it is, so that she can possess her soul. And that was the story that they told. What do you do when you got a demon, Chuck?

• 14:00Speaker 03

  You bring in an exorcist. And that's what they did. And this is my favorite part of this whole article, is this sentence. "It's unclear if it was successful, since the doll continued to cause problems."

• 14:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'd say that didn't work then. And the Warrens said, all right, we'll just, we'll take that doll since the doll's not the problem. And one day we shall make a lot of money from this doll.

• 14:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they put it in their museum under glass. And apparently they, they said a prayer of containment to keep the doll and its attendant demon behind the glass.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  And I think it's worked because you know what? Apparently that doll just sits there behind the glass.

• 14:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, staring. But they said that the last people who mocked it, somebody who was visiting the museum, died in a motorcycle crash right afterwards. So.

• 14:51Josh Clark?

  Do you want to move on to the Lutz's? Because I love the Lutz's and what they did and said.

• 14:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, this, we did a whole episode on this. So I don't think we have to get super detailed, but the Lutz's were the Amityville Horror Family.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  They're at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. This is in the mid 1970s. And a real tragedy happened here in 1974 at about three o'clock in the morning when the guy who lived there, Ronald DeFeo Jr., killed his whole family, his parents, his four younger siblings. He, he killed them all as they slept with, by gunfire. And then a year later, the Lutz's family moves in and they don't make it 10 years. They make it about a month before they realized that mortgage was way too much.

• 15:40Josh Clark?

  Yes, exactly.

• 15:44Josh Clark?

  They said that afterward, they went to the press and said that they had experienced terrible odors. Both George and Kathy, the parents, had been possessed-ish, maybe light possessed, that their daughter had made a friend named Jody with red eyes, who was actually some sort of pig ghost demon that no one else could see, although I think somebody caught sight of it. Fly swarmed out of nowhere and almost made Rod Steiger throw up.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:12Josh Clark?

  This one's the creepiest. I love it the most. Hoof prints came out of nowhere in the snow outside of the house. And you know what has hoof prints and walks upright?

• 16:22Speaker 03

  Talented goat?

• 16:25Josh Clark?

  A talented goat, a pig, ghost, demon, or Satan himself.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  That's right. So the Warrens are there. I'm gonna just stop saying called in. They just appear out of the ether. They do their investigation. And they said, at first confirmed the presence of a child ghost, but then did a little more digging and said, actually, this is not a haunted house, everyone. And the Lutz's went, oh, thank God. And they said, this is haunted land. The very land under this house is evil. It was built on Native American cemetery where they had some dark rituals in the past. And this is what led Ronald DeFeo to kill his whole family. So, sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but you guys are in bad trouble.

• 17:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, this is a one-time seance that they held where they found all this stuff out. And they actually, one of the most famous photos of a ghost ever produced, it's called the Ghost Boy photo from the Amityville house, came out of this investigation, this one night investigation the Warrens had. If you've never seen the Ghost Boy photo from Amityville, go type that in and check it out. It is a really great creepy unsettling photo, especially if you compare it to John DeFeo. I think he was the youngest brother of the DeFeos who were murdered by their, the oldest brother. It looks an awful lot like him. So a lot of people are like, there you go. The Warrens had it figured out. There's a ghost.

• 17:56Josh Clark?

  There's, Indian burial ground is now a trope thanks to them. And we can thank them for poltergeist as a result.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  That's right. I say we take a break, yeah?

• 18:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  And we'll talk about three more of their more famous investigations right after this.

• 18:12Josh Clark?

  This is fun.

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• 21:22Speaker 03

  All right, we're back. I guess it's not too far past Halloween. So in our minds, you know, it's not early January. So we're sort of in that spooky mood. So this is, this is sitting quite well with us. But we need to talk about the Enfield haunting, because this is not in Connecticut, my friends. This is in London, England, in 1977. And Enfield is a suburb of London. And at the time, one Peggy Hodgson and her daughters were, what were they? They were terrorized by unseen forces, just like the rest. They move into this place, banging sounds coming from the daughter's room.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Peggy bursts in and sees this dresser creeping across the floor by itself, seemingly going toward the door to block it. And Peggy was like, I gotta get that dresser. It's out of control. But she, by the time she got to it, it was like it was glued. She couldn't even move this thing.

• 22:16Josh Clark?

  No. This is the basis for The Conjuring 2, also a truly great ghost movie, especially for a sequel.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  Was it London?

• 22:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's based on this. This is a very famous case that was also investigated by the Society for Psychical Research, which was founded all the way back in 1882, 70 years before the Warrens founded their society. But they showed up because the Hodgsons, or I should say Peggy Hodgson, couldn't get any help from the police. And she had, she had basically reached the end of her rope because one of her daughters, Janet, I think the youngest daughter, started falling into trances and apparently was possessed by a ghost named Bill Wilkins, who said that he had died in that same house, actually in a chair in the corner, and that he wanted everybody out because this was his house.

• 23:11Josh Clark?

  And if you see that movie, it's really well done and super creepy.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  Have you seen all those movies?

• 23:16Josh Clark?

  I have seen those two.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 23:17Josh Clark?

  That's the extent of it.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  How many are there?

• 23:20Josh Clark?

  Good God.

• 23:21Speaker 03

  How many things have they conjured?

• 23:23Josh Clark?

  So with the Conjuring, I think they're up to four, maybe?

• 23:26Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 23:27Josh Clark?

  But then there's a whole other, like, sub-franchise with the Evil Nun. I think I've seen one of those.

• 23:33Speaker 03

  Spinoffs and stuff?

• 23:34Josh Clark?

  And then the Annabelle stuff, too. But I've only seen the first two Conjures, and they're good. They're, they're good movies. They're hokey in a lot of ways, but as far, like, a good, decent, even mediocre ghost movie is so few and far between. There's so many terrible ones that, like, you know, I'll take whatever decent table scraps can be tossed at me.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. I, I hear you.

• 23:58Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  I'll check it out.

• 23:59Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 24:00Speaker 03

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

• 24:23Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  Supposedly, one of the researchers had a curtain that was slowly creeping around his neck as if to choke him?

• 24:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, this is a skeptical society that believes in the possibility of ghosts and poltergeist and stuff, but they're not just credulous ding-dongs.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Oh, the, that society, what are they, the psychic society?

• 24:43Josh Clark?

  The SPR, yeah.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 24:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  All right, well, that's good. Ed and Lorraine, maybe investigated, maybe didn't. This is where it gets a little dodgy, and we're going to talk about that in act three. But, at any rate, in 1978, they said, "You got to poltergeist, that's what the deal is." And, you know, new line cinema, "You want to buy this story? We'll sell it to you."

• 25:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And they did.

• 25:08Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 25:08Josh Clark?

  There was a really cool documentary I saw where the, so the SPR made tons of audio tapes, reel-to-reel audio tapes of this. And somebody made a docu, I guess a docudrama or whatever, where they used the tapes as all of the audio, and then they hired actors to act out the stuff, and the dialogue was the tape. So these people had to lip sync with the tapes. And it was all done in period costumes and all that stuff from the 70s. It's really good, I can't remember the name of it, but I'm pretty sure that's the only documentary to attempt that. So if you can find that, watch it.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  Did you ever watch that Zoom Call horror movie that I recommended?

• 25:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was pretty decent.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, not bad, huh?

• 25:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I was really uncomfortable when they started making light of it in front of the psychic medium. That was the thing that got me the most. It was awkward.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, plus you know that they're going to get it, you know, even worse because of that.

• 26:03Josh Clark?

  What was it called?

• 26:04Speaker 03

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

• 26:13Josh Clark?

  Yes, it was a good movie.

• 26:15Speaker 03

  All right, let's move on, we got a couple of more here. The case of Arnie Johnson, also in Connecticut, very conveniently located in Brookfield. This was in 1981, and this one is interesting because there was a 19-year-old named Arnie Johnson who stabbed his landlord, Alan Bono, or Bono, 20 times.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  And in his trial, he says, I'm not guilty. And they said, temporary insanity? And they said, no, no, no, demonic possession. And the court went, oh, boy, here we go.

• 26:47Josh Clark?

  I think this is the first time anyone ever tried that.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:50Josh Clark?

  The reason he said that is because he said, I really am possessed by a demon. My fiancee Debbie, her little brother David has been possessed by a demon for a while. And we had an exorcism. And during the exorcism, to help David out, I dared the demon to inhabit me instead. Well, he did. And when I got into that argument with the landlord, that demon is the one who really stabbed him, not me. That was his defense. But I think the Warrens showed up before all of this, before the stabbing even. And they took a look at David. And Ed looks little David up and down. It's like, yeah, you still got demons attached to you. You still got 43 demons.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  That's right. He counted them.

• 27:34Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  That's why they had that exorcism is the Warrens came in and said, because initially they thought it was a ghost, you know?

• 27:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 27:41Speaker 03

  Uh, and they, you know, they, the, the Glatzels, who was, that was Debbie's last name, the girlfriend. They brought in clergy from the Catholic Church to bless young David. That didn't work. So that's when the Warrens show up and they're like, no, it's demonic. It's not a ghost. And you need that exorcism. And during that exorcism is when Arnie Johnson's like, oh, yeah, come into me. I dare you.

• 28:01Josh Clark?

  Right. And then the murder happens and the guy ends up in trial, um, Arnie Johnson. I think he went by Cheyenne, his middle name. And so the judge is like, I'm not even going to accept that as a defense. What else you got? And they're like, uh, self-defense. And they tried him on self-defense and he got five years in prison for manslaughter. So they, I guess they believed that to an extent.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:23Josh Clark?

  That's not the end of that case. Um, but that's a huge legendary case, too. Um, and then there was also, uh, there was a movie called The Haunting in Connecticut. It's awful. Um, and it was made kind of outside of the, um, the Warrens purview. But this was a case that's largely associated with them, um, that involved the Snedeker family.

• 28:46Speaker 03

  That's right. That was also very conveniently located in Salvington, Connecticut, right there on Merritton Avenue. And this is a case where two people, Carmen Reed and Alan Snedeker, they got their kids, they had four of them and a niece. They brought them there to live because their son Phillip needed nearby medical care, kind of long-term medical care. And it made it more convenient. So they moved in there. They move in and of course, things start going down. Phillip, who was the young, sick son, he starts seeing a threatening young man with long, dark hair who would just repeat his name over and over. And then Carmen, I believe was the mom, was in the basement and she was like,

• 29:28Speaker 03

  wait a minute, there are toe tags and there's embalming equipment here and photos of dead people. I wonder what this house used to be. And everyone said, duh, it was a funeral home.

• 29:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the Hallahan Funeral Home for decades. I think pretty much right before it became a home for rent. And it turned out that Phillip's room was once the display room for caskets. When they sold you the caskets, you know, they have like half, half caskets on the wall, that kind of thing. This is where Phillip was sleeping. The embalming room was just down the hall. The thing is Phillip needing this, this constant care of treatments for Hodgkin's lymphoma type of cancer, they couldn't move. They couldn't leave the house. So they had to kind of stick it out and things just kept getting worse and worse. Finally Phillip started to change and became very violent and was, I think,

• 30:25Josh Clark?

  forced forcibly taken to a mental hospital for observation and stayed there for a couple of months, I think. Was finally diagnosed with schizophrenia. He moved out. He avoided the house again. And I don't remember if the haunting continued or not. But one of the big things that came out of this was an appearance on Sally Jesse Raphael. The title of the episode is I Was Raped By A Ghost, because Carmen said that she was repeatedly raped by a ghost and the niece was fondled by a ghost. And the Warrens also show up on that episode. And you can find it online. It's a, it's a Sally Jesse Raphael episode for sure.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, you sent that to me and I, I did my best to scrub through and hit the highs.

• 31:11Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  Shall we take a break? Yeah, let's take a break. All right, we'll take a break and kind of wrap up with what's going on with the Warrens and all these cases right after this.

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• 34:30Josh Clark?

  All right, Chuck. So one of the things that gives the Warrens' casework, I guess, credence in any quarter is that this is all based on some kernel of truth. Like Ronald DeFeo did kill his family in the Amityville House. That definitely happened before the Lutz's moved in. The house that the Sneddickers rented was the Hallahan Funeral Home before they showed up there. And there were like embalming tools still there left over. It turns out that a man named Bill Wilkins did die in that house in Enfield in London,

• 35:11Josh Clark?

  just exactly at the time that young Janet, who was apparently possessed by him, said that he had died in the same place that she said he had died too. So there's like all of these different things that are just. Factual enough to kind of provide a basis that can then be kind of filled in with some fat. Maybe a little muscle and sinew to make a full-blown like, you know, haunting story.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you know, the Warrens, if you asked them back then, they would say, hey, we kept a lot of this evidence. They called it hard, quote, hard evidence in different, you know, artifacts and things. A lot of this stuff was kept in the museum, you know, that they had at their house that they, you could, you know, pay to go into and look over this stuff. Some of it was made public, some of it they held back. You know, they said some of the juiciest stuff they couldn't even show, of course. And in 1997, finally, the New England Skeptical Society said, all right, let's, uh, let's get together. Let's talk this out. Let's look at this evidence that you've got. They brought out that Ghost Boy photo, of course. They had audio recordings that had these, you know, strange sort of non-language's or otherworldly voices.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  That was the one, um, I think in Enfield with Bill Wilkins, they like, they trotted that out and played it. They had that Annabelle doll. She shook that doll and said, look, what do you call this? She didn't shake it, of course, because it was stored under glass.

• 36:33Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  Uh, and then they had, you know, witnesses and personal accounts from people that, you know, testified, not in court, obviously, but that all this stuff was, you know, very real to them.

• 36:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And so these scientists evaluated all of their evidence and their means and methods and motives. And they decided that it's all blarney. They said that the-

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a quote, by the way. You don't say blarney.

• 36:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I don't really say blarney very often. I say malarkey, I guess, because I did at the beginning, but this was, I guess it was based on that quote. They said they're not doing good scientific investigation, which I think is generous to even assume that they're doing any scientific investigation. And that there's like, they come along, they say it's a demon, and then everything that they kind of, all the evidence they gather supports that hypothesis rather than- Gathering evidence and then coming up with a hypothesis from it. And they basically were like, none of this stuff is falsifiable, testable. Like, yes, there's a doll right there that they say is haunted. That's not evidence, right?

• 37:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:38Josh Clark?

  So they just basically said that it's all, they're just total frauds. And if you look at the history of the Warrens, this is not the first time that happened to them. It was not the last time that happened to them. They just rolled with it. It just, it never slowed them down. They never seemed to freak out whenever they were called frauds or hucksters or grifters. Like, they just either shook it off or they had some sort of response like Lorraine Warren had in response to that New England Skeptical Society 1997 study.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, she said, uh, they don't base anything on a god.

• 38:14Josh Clark?

  Right. So if you don't bring God into it and the, the idea that they're Roman Catholic God warriors fighting

• 38:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:21Josh Clark?

  evil incarnate on earth, helping families for free. Uh, then of course it's not going to make any sense to you egghead pencil neck college boy scientists.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you know, one of the biggest criticisms of their work and other work by other paranormal investigators, because you know, a lot of these people use pretty questionable techniques at times. So it's not like the Warrens were, uh, any worse than a lot of them. But the fact that, uh, a lot of times you can trace this back to maybe somebody in that household has some sort of mental illness going on and they're being exploited.

• 38:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's the thing, like you can be like, well, it's all in just in good fun, but there are actual problems with what they were doing and that's one of them. And even if they weren't mentally ill, um, some of these families did believe that there was something going on and they were in some sort of crisis and the Warrens would come in, tell them they had some demons, maybe give it a shot, maybe solve things or not, and then go off and sell the, the family's story as their own case, right? That's, that's again, how they made a lot of money was writing books and giving lectures based on. These places where they just show up and then take over the story and insert themselves. That's harmful. I also saw that you can ascribe, at least in part, the satanic panic that came along in the eighties

• 39:44Josh Clark?

  from them kind of normalizing the idea that people were out there getting possessed by forty-three demons, getting raped by ghosts. That was a contribution they made. And then also, especially these conjuring stories now. If you watch them, Chuck, the Lorraine and Ed Warren are portrayed as this couple who have arguably the greatest marriage in the history of humans, and that they are just steam-powered by God. And that's what they're doing. They're battling evil here on earth. And so I think it kind of whips up like a little bit of potentially misplaced religious version of patriotism in people who are religious.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably so. You know, we can now talk about some sort of the, maybe the claims against some of these cases. One of the claims was that the Warrens actually paid a guy named Ray Gordon to completely make up the Snedeker haunting. They worked with an author, I mean, which is true, his name was Ray Gordon, to write a book about that case called "In a Dark Place: Colon, The Story of a True Haunting." And Gordon, in 2009, said that book was entirely fiction. And they're grifters, because I was interviewing this family and the stories didn't match up from person to person. And I took it to Ed and he said, quote, "They're crazy. All the people who come to us are crazy. That's why they come to us. Just use what you can and make up the rest."

• 41:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  So that's a Snedeker case.

• 41:13Josh Clark?

  That's one little piece of evidence. And this guy actually wrote the book and was paid by it. I don't, I don't, I don't think that he had much of an axe to grind.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  Right.

• 41:21Josh Clark?

  The Enfield House, it's not even clear that they investigated at all. The closest anyone's ever put them to this haunting was one of the Society for Psychical Research investigators, guy, I don't know if it's Leon or Lyon, Playfair, he was one of the lead dudes. He said that, that at the very least, Ed showed up. Maybe for an hour or something was hanging out outside, I guess with them and it's like, you know, you can make, you can make some money off of this if you want to do some business. And I guess Playfair was like, I don't, I don't do that. And so Ed was like, all right, see you and took off. And then again, took the story as their own. Like if you watch

• 42:01Josh Clark?

  The Conjuring 2, they are basically the linchpin to freeing this family from this torment.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Amityville supposedly was a hoax. This all came out later. In 1979, there was a lawsuit and the guy who shot up his family, Ronald DeFeo, his defense lawyer, William Weber, said that he and the Lutz family made it all up one night over, quote, "several bottles of wine." And the Lutz's kind of came out and said, yeah, that's, that's pretty much what happened. And Ed and Lorraine Warren were like, no, that's not what happened.

• 42:34Josh Clark?

  Right. I think Lorraine had a quote during the séance. So they met George Lutz once when he handed off the keys for them to go have a séance. They didn't ever meet Kathy. They never walked around the house or worked with them. They had a one night séance where that Ghost Boy photo was produced, which much has been just jackpot luck for them because it looks a lot like John DeFeo in the face, but John DeFeo is also wearing the exact same shirt that an assistant named Paul Bartz, who was there that night, was wearing. People are like, well, he's probably taking a measurement or working on equipment kneeling down. And it just happened that the, his photo was taken. But the idea that they had much, if anything, to do with Amityville is incorrect, except for all the

• 43:19Josh Clark?

  lore they made up, like the Indian burial ground. As far as I know, they came up with that, even though they got the tribe wrong. So the whole, the whole idea of Amityville being as off the chain as it was, came largely from them, but also from the Lutz's story. They helped publicize it big time.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I looked up that house. It's been bought and sold quite a bit over the years, but someone eventually changed those two upper windows.

• 43:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 03

  That, I don't know, just kind of looked creepy. They kind of looked like eyes, I guess, but now they're just regular windows.

• 43:51Josh Clark?

  I saw that the old Arnold estate that was in Conjuring 1, somebody bought it in like after the first Conjuring came out for like half a million dollars and then pumped up the idea that it was still haunted and sold it for a million and a half, like two years later.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  So now they're in demand on that house?

• 44:10Josh Clark?

  Pretty much, yes.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  That's interesting.

• 44:12Josh Clark?

  One of the biggest things that came out, also just one thing before we go on, I would direct anybody who's into that first Conjuring and knows all about that house to go read a blog called Dreaming Casually. Historian Jamie Rubio really looked into Beth Sheba Sherman and her history, and apparently it is all made up to the point where she's essentially a slandered 200-year-old person.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 44:38Josh Clark?

  So go read that. But I think probably the biggest knock that the Warrens got came in 2017, long after they were international, global stars, thanks to the Conjuring series. And a woman named Judith Penny came forward and said, "Ed Warren and I had a sexual relationship starting when I was 15, and Lorraine knew all about it."

• 45:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, like she moved into the house and supposedly had a 40-year relationship. And like you said, Lorraine was okay with it. I think they had a, you know, a business going. Penny said that she was impregnated by Ed and Lorraine pressured her to have an abortion because that would hurt the business, the family business. And this is a big sort of red flag here. The Hollywood Reporter said that when Lorraine, because they got a bunch of money to consult on TV and movies over the years. I think, you know, we've kind of made that clear. But Lorraine specifically had a deal to consult on The Conjuring, and she barred New Line from showing Ed and Lorraine.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  Being as anything other than what you said, like this sort of perfect couple.

• 45:45Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:46Speaker 03

  Specifically, it said, no criminal offenses, no sex with minors, no child pornography, prostitution, or sexual assault, or depicted as participating in an extramarital sexual relationship. And just so people know, this is not sort of a normal kind of thing. Even in Hollywood, when they're doing these big contracts about supposedly true stories, to include all that very specific stuff is not normal.

• 46:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I was reading that as well. So that's a little odd, especially when you combine it with Judith Penny's story.

• 46:20Speaker 03

  That sounds totally true.

• 46:21Josh Clark?

  But yeah, and again, coming forward in 2017, it's not like the moment the first Conjuring came out, she's like, give me some money. Like, she seemed to have a pretty, I think she actually testified in an affidavit that all of this was true.

• 46:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:36Josh Clark?

  So that's tarnished their legacy a little bit, especially if you already thought they were grifters, or hucksters, or something like that. It's not entirely clear whether they believed any of the claims that they made. If they didn't, then Lorraine Warren was one of the great character actors of all time who never broke character, at least in front of anyone who was willing to come forward. And she died, I think in 2019, long after The Conjuring had become huge. Ed died, I think sadly, the last movie he got to see was The Haunting in Connecticut. He died in 2006.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 47:16Josh Clark?

  So they're both gone now, but the New England Society for Psychic Research, which again, they founded in 1952, it's still going on under their son-in-law, Tony Spira, to whom, quote, "All of their knowledge and experience has been successfully passed."

• 47:32Speaker 03

  That's right. And that Annabelle doll is still around. You know, I don't think they had that museum anymore that close in 2019 when Lorraine passed away. But Annabelle will show up here and there on tours and special events.

• 47:46Josh Clark?

  Yes, but they had a really cool museum from what I could tell, but it's shut down inexplicably. It's not open anymore and there doesn't seem to be any plans to open it again.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:57Josh Clark?

  But there's a new Conjuring movie out, I think, Glass Rights or something.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Really?

• 48:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It's based on a case that we didn't talk about, but there was sexual abuse by demons as well. It was also in the 80s, so that was their big thing then.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  Who wants to see that?

• 48:13Josh Clark?

  Millions and millions and millions of people around the world.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  Are they still super popular?

• 48:18Josh Clark?

  Oh, yes. And supposedly this one is like their last one, but they hand the reins over to their son-in-law, Tony Sparrow, so he might become the new leader of the franchise along with their daughter Judy.

• 48:31Speaker 03

  Amazing.

• 48:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It's basically like the new Marvel.

• 48:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:36Josh Clark?

  Well, Chuck said yeah, everybody, which means in old school fashion, it's time for listener mail.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is just a quickie correction. Hey, guys, I'm listening now, and you might have heard this already, but Chuck was right in pronouncing villa.

• 48:54Josh Clark?

  How do you feel, Chuck?

• 48:55Speaker 03

  The double L sounds that Josh was talking about is Spanish, not Italian.

• 48:59Josh Clark?

  Well, that's what I was saying, Ed.

• 49:02Speaker 03

  That is from Christina in New York.

• 49:05Josh Clark?

  Who is it, huh?

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Who loves listening.

• 49:07Josh Clark?

  Thanks a lot, Christina. We appreciate that. I think a few people wrote in to say, yeah, Chuck was right. That's fine.

• 49:13Speaker 03

  This is the only one I saw.

• 49:15Josh Clark?

  I'm happy. I'm happy for you, Chuck. Are you happy for me for being happy for you?

• 49:21Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 49:21Josh Clark?

  Okay. If you want to get in touch with us like Christina did, you can send us an email as well. Send it off to [email protected].

• 49:48Josh Clark?

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