Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and this is stuff you should know. We're into
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six. Now, Chuck, where do you think about that?
Speaker 2: How you feel.
Speaker 1: I have high hopes for this year?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh man, do I really? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think you should. Okay, we should have high hopes
Speaker 2: for every year and we can be let down, sure,
Speaker 2: but no, you could still have high hopes.
Speaker 1: I guess I have my cynical hat on. So that
Speaker 1: was a bad time to ask me that question because
Speaker 1: we're talking about Ed and Lorraine Warren. As Julia said,
Speaker 1: who titled this one? I'm using this title even it's
Speaker 1: great a paranormal power couple that you might know if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen movies like the Ammadeville Horror. So we
Speaker 1: talked about them in that episode for sure, or the
Speaker 1: Conjuring Yeah, or was it the Haunting in Connecticut? Yep
Speaker 1: was another one. M h. They made a lot of
Speaker 1: money scamming people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's really no well, I want
Speaker 2: to say, there's no other way to put it. Plenty
Speaker 2: of people on the internet put it differently, they were
Speaker 2: the real deal, legit Ghostbusters demon Hunters. It just if
Speaker 2: you add up all the evidence in your incredulous and
Speaker 2: skeptical you probably not only suspect the Warrens were frauds,
Speaker 2: but you might actually have a little disdain for him.
Speaker 2: I say, we kind of present both sides, even though
Speaker 2: I feel like it's pretty clear where we land. Maybe.
Speaker 1: Okay, have you seen Kpop Demon Hunters? No? Is it?
Speaker 2: Kid?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I figured you guys would have seen that. I
Speaker 1: figured you and you would be into that.
Speaker 2: What is is it on Netflix? Because we don't have
Speaker 2: that anymore?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It's Netflix original?
Speaker 2: So okay, No, although they did show it.
Speaker 1: In theaters, had sing alongs in the theaters and stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh cute. I gotta see that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just didn't know if it's a legit sensation.
Speaker 2: It's funny that we I don't know what we were
Speaker 2: talking about, but the Conjuring came up not too long ago,
Speaker 2: and you said you hadn't seen it. Have you still
Speaker 2: not seen it?
Speaker 1: Since last week? I have not seen the Conjuring?
Speaker 2: Do you remember how it came up?
Speaker 1: I mean I think we were talking about the Raggedy
Speaker 1: end All.
Speaker 2: That's right, and a Doll's up great memory. So okay,
Speaker 2: I still say the conjuring up the first one is
Speaker 2: a legendary, classic, great ghost horror horror movie. It's just fantastic.
Speaker 1: So nothing changed since last week.
Speaker 2: No, but it could have because learning more and more
Speaker 2: about the actual backstory behind it and just how exploitive
Speaker 2: it was and how historically bent it is. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: could have. It could have really affected how I view it,
Speaker 2: but I decided not to.
Speaker 1: Well, you can separate art from the rag doll for sure.
Speaker 2: I can't, and I'm going to, by god, let's do
Speaker 2: that right now.
Speaker 1: All right? So Ed Lorraine Warren they founded in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty two of the New England Society for Psychic Research
Speaker 1: in Connecticut. Ed said, you know, self described demonologists, Lorraine
Speaker 1: self describe clairvoyant and trance medium. And they formed that
Speaker 1: in Connecticut because they were both from Connecticut and looking
Speaker 1: at their list of greatest hits, did a lot of
Speaker 1: ghostbusting in Connecticut.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things you can credit them for
Speaker 2: is they made the idea of like ghost hunting mainstream
Speaker 2: all of the terrible, yeah, terrible TV shows that are
Speaker 2: around today. All ohe their existence to the Warrens. Essentially,
Speaker 2: there were ghost hunters and psychical research societies and everything
Speaker 2: around before them, but they were so huge into publicity
Speaker 2: and getting their stories out there that they kind of
Speaker 2: put it on the map as far as as far
Speaker 2: as at least America is concerned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So credit or scorn, they were the ogs.
Speaker 1: Ed was I guess Warren was his middle name because
Speaker 1: he was born Ed Warren Mainey in nineteen twenty six
Speaker 1: in Bridgeport. He says that he grew up in a
Speaker 1: haunted house, so that's where he got his first jones
Speaker 1: for this kind of work. And his wife was born
Speaker 1: Lorraine Moran Moran I think Moran Moran later Warren obviously
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty seven, just a few months later, also
Speaker 1: in Bridgeport. Grew up very very Catholic and met and
Speaker 1: that'll play a part in their careers because it all
Speaker 1: had a Catholic vant and they met as teenagers, got
Speaker 1: married nineteen forty five when Ed was on leave from
Speaker 1: the Navy serving the World War Two, and then they
Speaker 1: had a little girl, Judy, and Ed went to art
Speaker 1: school and ironically that's where they got their start ghostbusting
Speaker 1: because they were traveling around selling hawking his wares as
Speaker 1: an artist, and they said, well, while we're here, we
Speaker 1: might as well do some paranormal investigation, because that's what you.
Speaker 2: Do, right, And if you are familiar at all with
Speaker 2: the Conjuring series, you're like already know all this. And
Speaker 2: that was because the largest horror franchise in history, the
Speaker 2: Conjuring Series, is based on the Warrens files, the books
Speaker 2: they wrote, the interviews they gave, the TV shows that
Speaker 2: they consulted on. If you put it all together, all
Speaker 2: of the Conjuring movies that started in twenty thirteen have
Speaker 2: grossed at least two point three billion dollars, all based
Speaker 2: on the malarkey that the Warrants came up with from
Speaker 2: the fifties to the I guess I think it really
Speaker 2: kind of tapered off in like the nineties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's kind of crazy to think, right,
Speaker 1: this just sort of average couple from Connecticut who were
Speaker 1: doing their thing, Like I don't think anyone. I mean,
Speaker 1: they certainly saw dollar signs, but nothing like that.
Speaker 2: No, we have to say they never charged a dime
Speaker 2: from anybody in need that they were helping. They didn't
Speaker 2: make their money that way. They made their money through lectures,
Speaker 2: through selling their stories other people's stories. Frankly, they had
Speaker 2: a museum that they charged money to come in and see,
Speaker 2: you know, entry, but they never charged the people that
Speaker 2: they were helping, which I think is definitely worth pointing out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they didn't show up and say what do you got?
Speaker 1: You got a demon and you got a ghost. That's
Speaker 1: let me see carry the one. We can get rid
Speaker 1: of that thing for five grand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So let's get into this. They I said, it was,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of very Catholic. Their encounters were very
Speaker 1: much steeped in Catholic dogma. We're talking. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: I say, it's right out of a horror movie, because
Speaker 1: it literally was. People would speak in different languages. Supposedly,
Speaker 1: they were alleged like hoof prints appearing in the snow,
Speaker 1: levitating beds, levitating kids, foul smells, exorcisms, furniture. You know
Speaker 1: that burnter is moving all over the place by itself.
Speaker 1: Doors are shutting without any wind blowing, right, just shutting
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this is a fifty something year career.
Speaker 2: They founded the New England Society for Psychic Research in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty two. So they've been doing this for quite
Speaker 2: a while, but they're they're all time. Huge cases didn't
Speaker 2: really start to pick up until this seventies. I think
Speaker 2: the first one that people point to is like the
Speaker 2: first big deal case was actually became the basis for
Speaker 2: that first conjuring movie. It was the paren Family Haunting
Speaker 2: with Carolyn and Roger Parrin and they had five daughters,
Speaker 2: and they moved into a house in Rhode Island, an
Speaker 2: old farmhouse that was built in the seventeen fifties I
Speaker 2: think maybe sixteen sixty seven round Top Road. It was
Speaker 2: also known as the Old Arnold Estate, and they moved
Speaker 2: in and they stayed there for ten years. But during
Speaker 2: that ten year time, they had some really hard occurrences.
Speaker 2: According to them.
Speaker 1: That's right. That's a great way to say allegedly, because
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about how to mix that up.
Speaker 2: According to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's good. Yeah, I'm gonna use that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The children were the first ones to sort of get
Speaker 1: the haunt, and the parents didn't really believe that was
Speaker 1: going on. They told their daughters like, no, you know,
Speaker 1: you're just being little girls, of course, and you're seeing
Speaker 1: ghosts that aren't there. But the parents soon got on
Speaker 1: board and said, yeah, something's happening here. The beds are levitating.
Speaker 1: There's that awful smell. They did a little self research
Speaker 1: before they called the Warrens and found that there had
Speaker 1: been apparently a lot of really gruesome deaths over the
Speaker 1: history of that home, which is not unusual for a
Speaker 1: super old farmhouse. So that's when they picked up the phone.
Speaker 1: They called the Warrens. I can't imagine what year was this,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, Like, how I mean, this is in
Speaker 1: Rhode Island. I guess word just gets around or maybe
Speaker 1: they see a newspaper article or something, because you know,
Speaker 1: before the Internet, it was to me that all these
Speaker 1: people just knew who to call.
Speaker 2: I was wondering that as well. And I think in
Speaker 2: some cases they didn't call. It's just people have written
Speaker 2: that because there's so many cases, and they're so convoluted,
Speaker 2: and they're so just you know, there's so much bs
Speaker 2: around them that people just take total liberties with it.
Speaker 2: So it's not entirely clear who called whom. But let's
Speaker 2: just say they call the Warrens. Right, the Warrens showed up,
Speaker 2: they held a seance, and in the seance Carolyn is
Speaker 2: thrown across the room, but first she starts speaking in tongues.
Speaker 2: I think. Her daughter Andrea later wrote that she was
Speaker 2: speaking in a language that never existed on earth, I think,
Speaker 2: assuming that this was a demon, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And they traced the whole thing back to the spirit
Speaker 2: of a witch, a dead witch. And we established in
Speaker 2: the bell Witch short stuff that a witch ghost is
Speaker 2: the worst kind of both. And she had lived in
Speaker 2: the house in the early eighteen hundreds. Not only was
Speaker 2: she a witch, she was a child murderer. She had
Speaker 2: murdered an infant with a knitting needle, and so they
Speaker 2: had the seance. Carolyn gets thrown against the wall. Nothing changes,
Speaker 2: nothing solid, and the Warrens are like, see you, thanks
Speaker 2: for the story. You know, when the Warrens left, the
Speaker 2: haunting hadn't ended, but the Pirons stuck it out. Her
Speaker 2: parents stuck it out for ten years total, and then
Speaker 2: when they moved out, the haunting stopped.
Speaker 1: That's right, And you know what we're gonna do here.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go over some of their greatest hits as
Speaker 1: told by the Warrens and others, and then maybe we'll
Speaker 1: come back later and sort.
Speaker 2: Of pick them up part a bit, maybe if we
Speaker 2: feel like the.
Speaker 1: Next one, of course, is Annabelle. We talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about the Doll and the Dolls episode. This is
Speaker 1: the early seventies in Hartford, Connecticut, when a nurse got
Speaker 1: a raggedy and doll as a gift, and the doll
Speaker 1: came to life started doing some cute things like Hey,
Speaker 1: I'll leave a little note for the nurse, and or
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be you're gonna put me down in this chair,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to really go over in this room
Speaker 1: just so you know that I'm fully animated and alive.
Speaker 2: Like alf on the shelf kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And the nurse was like, all right, this
Speaker 1: is fine because I think this doll was haunted by
Speaker 1: a little girl who died in the house named Annabel Higgins,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of feel bad because it's just
Speaker 1: a little girl ghosts. But eventually her friend, she had
Speaker 1: a friend that was physically attacked by unseen forces. I guess,
Speaker 1: you know via Annabelle the Doll and ed. Lorraine says,
Speaker 1: we're called in, but I wouldn't be surprised if they
Speaker 1: weren't minding the news and making some calls themselves, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure, that would be my guest. Because
Speaker 2: this is an era, the seventies. Man, you could call
Speaker 2: a newspaper and be like, I've got a haunted doll,
Speaker 2: my house is haunted, there's a ghost switch, and a
Speaker 2: newspaper reporter would show up and write a story about it.
Speaker 1: Right, totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So yes, these stories did pop up the newspaper,
Speaker 2: and I'm quite sure that the Warrens were reading papers
Speaker 2: for this one way or another. They showed up and
Speaker 2: they determined, no, this is not the ghost of a
Speaker 2: little girl named Annabel Higgins. This is a demon hanging
Speaker 2: around a doll pretending to be Annabel Higgins in order
Speaker 2: to get close enough to Donna, the nurse whose doll
Speaker 2: it is, so that she can possess her soul. And
Speaker 2: that was the story that they told. What do you
Speaker 2: do when you got a demon?
Speaker 1: Chuck? You bringing an exorcist. And that's what they did.
Speaker 1: And this is my favorite part of this whole article
Speaker 1: is this sentence. It's unclear if it was successful, since
Speaker 1: the doll continued to cause problems. Yeah, yeah, I'd say
Speaker 1: that didn't work then. And the Warren said, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll just we'll take that doll since the doll's not
Speaker 1: the problem, and one day we shall make a lot
Speaker 1: of money from this doll.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they put it in their museum under glass, and
Speaker 2: apparently they said a prayer of containment to keep the
Speaker 2: the doll and its attendant demon behind the class.
Speaker 1: And I think it's worked because you know what, Apparently
Speaker 1: that doll just sits there behind the.
Speaker 2: Glass, yeah, staring. But they said that the last people
Speaker 2: who mocked at somebody who was visiting the museum died
Speaker 2: in a motorcycle crash right afterwards. So do you want
Speaker 2: to move on to the Lutzes, because I love the
Speaker 2: Lutzes and what they did, and said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this. We did a whole episode on this,
Speaker 1: so I don't think we have to get super detailed.
Speaker 1: But the Lutzes were the Amityville horror family. There at
Speaker 1: one twelve Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. This is
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen seventies, and a real tragedy happened
Speaker 1: here in nineteen seventy four at about three o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning when the guy who lived there, Ronald de Feo,
Speaker 1: Junior killed his whole family as parents is, four younger siblings.
Speaker 1: He killed them all as they slept by gunfire. And
Speaker 1: then a year later the Lutz family moves in, and
Speaker 1: they don't make it ten years. They make it about
Speaker 1: a month before they realized that mortgage was way too much.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, exactly. They said that. Afterward, they went to
Speaker 2: the press and said that they had experienced terrible odors.
Speaker 2: Both George and Kathy, the parents had been possessed dish
Speaker 2: maybe light, possessed that their daughter had made a friend
Speaker 2: named Jody with red eyes, who is actually some sort
Speaker 2: of pig ghost demon that no one else could see,
Speaker 2: although I think somebody caught sight of it. Fly swarmed
Speaker 2: out of nowhere and almost made Rod Steiger throw up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this one's the creepiest. I love it the most. Hoof
Speaker 2: prints came out of nowhere in the snow outside of
Speaker 2: the house, and you know it has hoof prints.
Speaker 1: And walks upright, talented goat.
Speaker 2: A talented goat, a pig ghost demon or Satan himself.
Speaker 1: That's right. So the warrens are are there. I'm going
Speaker 1: to just stop saying called in. They just appear out
Speaker 1: of the ether. They do their investigation, and they said
Speaker 1: that they at first confirmed the presence of a child ghost,
Speaker 1: but then did a little more digging and said, actually,
Speaker 1: this is not a haunted house. Everyone and then Letzes went, oh,
Speaker 1: thank god, and they said, this is haunted land. The
Speaker 1: very land under this house is evil. It was built
Speaker 1: on Native American cemetery where they had some dark rituals
Speaker 1: in the past, and this is what led Ronald de
Speaker 1: Fayo to kill his whole family. So sorry to be
Speaker 1: the bear of bad tidings, but you guys are in
Speaker 1: bad trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is a one time seance that they held
Speaker 2: where they found all this stuff out and they actually
Speaker 2: one of the most famous photos of a ghost ever produced.
Speaker 2: It's called the ghost Boy photo from the Amityville House,
Speaker 2: came out of this investigation, this one night investigation the
Speaker 2: Warrens had. You've never seen the ghost Boy photo from Amityville.
Speaker 2: Go type that in and check it out. It is
Speaker 2: a creepy, really great, creepy, unsettling photo, especially if you
Speaker 2: compare it to John Defao. I think he was the
Speaker 2: youngest brother of the Dafeo's who were murdered by their
Speaker 2: the oldest brother. It looks an awful lot like him.
Speaker 2: So a lot of people are like, there you go.
Speaker 2: The Warrens had it figured out. There's a ghost, there's
Speaker 2: Indian burial ground is now a trope thanks to them,
Speaker 2: and we can thank them for poultry Geist as a result.
Speaker 1: That's right, I say we take a break, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about three more of their more famous
Speaker 1: investigations right after this. This is fun, all right, we're back.
Speaker 1: I guess it's not too far past Halloween, so in
Speaker 1: our minds, you know, it's not early January, so we're
Speaker 1: sort of in that spooky mood. So this is sitting
Speaker 1: quite well with us. But we need to talk about
Speaker 1: the Infield haunting, because this is not in Connecticut, my friends.
Speaker 1: This is in London, England, in nineteen seventy seven, and
Speaker 1: Infield is a suburb of London and at the time
Speaker 1: one Peggy Hodgson and her daughters were what were they?
Speaker 1: They were terrorized by unseen forces just like the rest.
Speaker 1: They move into this place, banging sounds coming from the
Speaker 1: daughter's room. Peggy bursts in and sees this dresser creeping
Speaker 1: across the floor by itself, seemingly going toward the door.
Speaker 1: To block it, and Peggy was like, I got to
Speaker 1: get that dresser. It's out of control. But by the
Speaker 1: time she got to it, it was like it was glued.
Speaker 1: She couldn't even move this thing.
Speaker 2: No, this is the basis for The Conjuring two. Also
Speaker 2: a truly great ghost movie, especially for a sequel.
Speaker 1: And is this London?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's based on this. This is
Speaker 2: a very famous case that was also investigated by the
Speaker 2: Society for Psychical Research, which was founded all the way
Speaker 2: back in eighteen eighty two, seventy years before the Warrens
Speaker 2: founded their society. But they showed up because the Hodgson's,
Speaker 2: or i should say Peggy Hodgson, couldn't get any help
Speaker 2: from the police and she had basically reached the end
Speaker 2: of her rope because one of her daughter's Janet I
Speaker 2: think the youngest daughter was started falling into trances and
Speaker 2: apparently was possessed by a ghost named Bill Wilkins, who
Speaker 2: said that he had died in that same house, actually
Speaker 2: in a chair in the corner, and that he wanted
Speaker 2: everybody out because this was his house. And if you
Speaker 2: see that movie, it's really well done and super creepy.
Speaker 1: Have you seen all those movies.
Speaker 2: I have seen those two. Oh okay, the extent of it.
Speaker 1: How many are there? Good? God, I mean things are
Speaker 1: they conjured?
Speaker 2: So with the conjured, I think they're up to four
Speaker 2: maybe okay, But then there's a whole other like subfranchise
Speaker 2: with the Evil Nun. I think I've seen one of those.
Speaker 1: It's been off and stuff.
Speaker 2: And then the Annabelle stuff too, But I've only seen
Speaker 2: the first two conjurings, and they're good. They're good movies.
Speaker 2: They're hokey in a lot of ways. But yeah, as
Speaker 2: far like a good, decent, even mediocre ghost movie is
Speaker 2: so few and far between. There's so many terrible ones that, like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'll take whatever decent table scraps can be.
Speaker 2: Trust at me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear you, Okay, I'll check it out. So,
Speaker 1: like you said, the Society for Psychical Research, is that right? Cycical? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they come in. They're competitors of the Warren of course
Speaker 1: over there, I guess, and they observed, you know, all
Speaker 1: the stuff they were talking about, like things levitating, furniture
Speaker 1: moving of course, fires erupting out of nowhere, apparently, cups
Speaker 1: just filling up with water when there is no water around. Supposedly,
Speaker 1: one of the researchers had a curtain that was slowly
Speaker 1: creeping around his neck as if to choke him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a skeptical society that believes in the
Speaker 2: possibility of ghosts and poulsitery guys and stuff. But they're
Speaker 2: not just credulous thing dongs.
Speaker 1: Oh that society, what are they? The psycho society are Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, well that's good. Ed and Lorraine maybe investigated,
Speaker 1: maybe didn't. This is where it gets a little dodgy,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about that in act three.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, in nineteen seventy eight, they said,
Speaker 1: you got a polter, guys, that's what the deal is.
Speaker 1: And you know New Line Cinema. You want to buy
Speaker 1: this story, we'll sell it to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they did. There was a really cool documentary
Speaker 2: I saw where the so the spr made tons of
Speaker 2: audio tapes, real the real audio tapes of this, and
Speaker 2: somebody made a docu I guess a docudrama or whatever
Speaker 2: where they used the tapes as all of the audio
Speaker 2: and then they hired actors to act out the stuff
Speaker 2: and the dialogue was the tape. So these people had
Speaker 2: to lip sync with the tapes, and it was all
Speaker 2: done in period costumes and all that stuff from the seventies.
Speaker 2: It's really good. I can't remember the name of it,
Speaker 2: but I'm pretty sure that's the only the only documentary
Speaker 2: to attempt that. So if you can find that, watch it.
Speaker 1: Did you ever watch that Zoom Call horror movie that
Speaker 1: I recommended?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was pretty decent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not bad, huh. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was really uncomfortable when they started making light of
Speaker 2: it in front of the psychic medium. That was the
Speaker 2: thing that got me the most.
Speaker 1: It was, oh yeah, you know, yeah, plus you know
Speaker 1: that they're going to get it, you know, even worse
Speaker 1: because of that. What was it called, I think it
Speaker 1: was called host I thought it was very well done,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty clever COVID movie when you know they
Speaker 1: were shooting stuff in a as creatively as they could
Speaker 1: because of the restrictions.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was a good movie.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move on. We got a couple of
Speaker 1: more here, the case of Arnie Johnson, also in Connecticut,
Speaker 1: very conveniently located in Brookfield. This was in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: and this one is interesting because there was a nineteen
Speaker 1: year old named Arnie Johnson who stabbed his landlord Alan
Speaker 1: Bono or Bono twenty times. And in his trial he says,
Speaker 1: I'm not guilty, and they said temporary insanity and they
Speaker 1: said no, no, no demonic possession. In the court went,
Speaker 1: oh boy, here we go.
Speaker 2: I think this is the first time anyone ever tried that.
Speaker 2: The reason he said that is because he said, I
Speaker 2: really am possessed by a demon. My fiance, Debbie, her
Speaker 2: little brother David, has been possessed by a demon for
Speaker 2: a while, and we had an exorcism. And during the exorcism,
Speaker 2: to help David out, I dared the demon to inhabit
Speaker 2: me instead. Well he did, and when I got into
Speaker 2: that argument with the landlord, that demon is the one
Speaker 2: who really stabbed him, not me. Was defense. But I
Speaker 2: think the Warrens showed up before all of this, before
Speaker 2: the stabbing even and they took a look at David
Speaker 2: and ed looks a little David up and down. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you still got demons attached to you. You still got
Speaker 2: forty three demons, that's.
Speaker 1: Right, he counted them. That's why they had that exorcism.
Speaker 1: Is the Warrens came in and said because Initially they
Speaker 1: thought it was a ghost, you know, yeah, and they
Speaker 1: you know, the the Glatzels who that was Debbie's last name,
Speaker 1: the girlfriend they brought in clergy from the Catholic church
Speaker 1: to bless young David. That didn't work. So that's when
Speaker 1: the Warrens show up and they're like, no, it's demonic,
Speaker 1: it's not a ghost, and you need that exorcism. And
Speaker 1: during that exorcism is when Arnie Johnson's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: come into me, I dare you right?
Speaker 2: And then the murder happens and they guy ends up
Speaker 2: in trial Arnie Johnson. I think he went by Cheyenne
Speaker 2: his middle name, and so the judge is like, I'm
Speaker 2: not even going to accept that as a defense. What
Speaker 2: else you got? And they're like self defense And they
Speaker 2: tried them on self defense and you got five years
Speaker 2: in prison for manslaughter. So I guess they believe that
Speaker 2: to an extent. That's not the end of that case.
Speaker 2: But that's a huge legendary case too. And then there
Speaker 2: was also there was a movie called The Haunting in Connecticut.
Speaker 2: It's awful and it was made kind of outside of
Speaker 2: the Warren's purview, but this was a case that's largely
Speaker 2: associated with them. That involved the Sneteker family.
Speaker 1: That's right. That was also very conveniently located in Southington, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: right there on Meriden Avenue. And this is a case
Speaker 1: where two people at Carmen Reed and Alan Snedeker, they
Speaker 1: got their kids, had four of them, and a niece.
Speaker 1: They brought them there to live because their son Philip
Speaker 1: needed nearby medical care, kind of long term medical care,
Speaker 1: and it made it more convenient, so they moved in there.
Speaker 1: They move in and of course things start going down. Philip,
Speaker 1: who was the young six son, start seeing a threatening
Speaker 1: young man with long dark hair who would just repeat
Speaker 1: his name over and over. And then Carmen, I believe
Speaker 1: was the mom, was in the basement and she was like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. There are toe tags and there's embalming
Speaker 1: equipment here and photos of dead people. I wonder what
Speaker 1: this house used to be, and everyone said, duh, it
Speaker 1: was a funeral home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Hallahan funeral home for decades, I think, pretty
Speaker 2: much right before it became a home for rent. And
Speaker 2: it turned out that Philip's room was once the display
Speaker 2: room for caskets when they sold you the caskets, you know,
Speaker 2: they have like half caskets on the wall, that kind
Speaker 2: of thing. This is where Philip was sleeping. The embalming
Speaker 2: room was just down the hall. The thing is Philip
Speaker 2: needing this constant care of treatments for Hodgkins lymphoma type
Speaker 2: of cancer. They couldn't move, they couldn't leave the house,
Speaker 2: so they had to kind of stick it out, and
Speaker 2: things just kept getting worse worse. Finally, Phillips started to
Speaker 2: change and became very violent and was I think forced
Speaker 2: forcibly taken to a mental hospital for observation and stayed
Speaker 2: there for a couple of months. I think it was
Speaker 2: finally diagnosed with schizophrenia. He moved out, he avoided the
Speaker 2: house again, and I don't remember if the haunting continued
Speaker 2: or not. But one of the big things that came
Speaker 2: out of this was an appearance and Sally Jesse Raphael.
Speaker 2: The title of the episode is I was Raped by
Speaker 2: a Ghost because Carmen said that she was repeatedly raped
Speaker 2: by a ghost and the niece was fondled by a ghost.
Speaker 2: And the Warrens also show up on that episode, and
Speaker 2: you can find it online. It's a Sally Esse Raphael
Speaker 2: episode for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you sent that to me, and I did my
Speaker 1: best to script through and hit the highs. Right, shall
Speaker 1: we take a break, Yeah, let's take a break, all right,
Speaker 1: We'll take a break and kind of up up with
Speaker 1: what's going on with the Warrens in all these cases
Speaker 1: right after this. M M.
Speaker 2: All right, chuck. So one of the things that gives
Speaker 2: the Warrens casework, I guess, credence in any quarter is
Speaker 2: that this is all based on some kernel of truth.
Speaker 2: Like Ronald Fayo did kill him his family in the
Speaker 2: Amityville house. That definitely happened before the Lutz has moved
Speaker 2: in the house in that the Snetecker's rented was the
Speaker 2: Hallahan funeral home before they showed up there, and there
Speaker 2: were like embalming tools still there left over. It turns
Speaker 2: out that a man name named Bill Wilkins did die
Speaker 2: in that house in Enfield in London, just exactly at
Speaker 2: the time that young Janet, who was apparently possessed by him,
Speaker 2: said that he had died in the same place that
Speaker 2: she said he had died too. So there's like all
Speaker 2: of this these different things that are just factual enough
Speaker 2: to kind of provide a basis that can then be
Speaker 2: kind of filled in with some fat, maybe a little
Speaker 2: muscle and sinew to make a full blown, like you know,
Speaker 2: haunting story.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know the Warrens, if you asked them
Speaker 1: back then, they would say, hey, we kept a lot
Speaker 1: of this evidence. They called it heart quote hard evidence
Speaker 1: in different you know, artifacts and things. A lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff was kept in the museum you know that
Speaker 1: they had at their house that they you could, you know,
Speaker 1: pay to go into and look over the stuff. Some
Speaker 1: of it was made public, some of it they held back,
Speaker 1: you know, they said some of the juiciest stuff they
Speaker 1: couldn't even show. Of course, and in nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 1: and finally the New England Skeptical Society said all right,
Speaker 1: let's uh, let's get together, let's talk this out. Let's
Speaker 1: look at this evidence that you've got. They brought out
Speaker 1: that Ghostboy photo. Of course, they had audio recordings that
Speaker 1: had these you know, strange sort of non languages or
Speaker 1: other worldly voices. That was the one I think in
Speaker 1: Infield with Bill Wilkins like. They trotted that out and
Speaker 1: played it. They had that Annabel doll. She shook that
Speaker 1: doll and said, look what do you call this? H
Speaker 1: She didn't shake it, of course, because it was stored
Speaker 1: under glass, right. And then they had you know, witnesses
Speaker 1: and personal accounts from people that you know, testified not
Speaker 1: in court obviously, but that all this stuff was you know,
Speaker 1: very real to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so these scientists evaluated all of their evidence
Speaker 2: and their means and methods and motives, and they decided
Speaker 2: that it's all blarnie.
Speaker 1: They said, yes, their quote by the way, yeah Barney.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't really say blarney very often. I say malarkey,
Speaker 2: I guess because I did at the beginning, but this
Speaker 2: was I guess it was based on that quote. They
Speaker 2: said they're not doing good scientific investigation, which I think
Speaker 2: is generous to even assume that they're doing any scientific investigation,
Speaker 2: and that there's like they come along, they say it's
Speaker 2: a demon, and then everything that they kind of all
Speaker 2: the evidence they gather supports that hypothesis rather than gathering
Speaker 2: evidence and then coming up with a hypothesis from it.
Speaker 2: And they basically were like, none of this stuff is falsifiable, testable, Like, yes,
Speaker 2: there's a doll right there that they say is haunted,
Speaker 2: that's not evidence, right. Yeah, So they just basically said
Speaker 2: that it's all. They're just total frauds. And if you
Speaker 2: look at the history of the Warrens, this is not
Speaker 2: the first time that happened to him, It was not
Speaker 2: the last time that happened to them. They just rolled
Speaker 2: with it. It never slowed them down. They never seemed
Speaker 2: to freak out whenever they were called frauds or hucksters
Speaker 2: or grifters, like they just either just shook it off
Speaker 2: or they had some sort of response like Lorraine Warren
Speaker 2: had in response to that New England Skeptical Society nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety seven study.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she said, they don't base anything on a God.
Speaker 2: Right, So if you don't bring God into it and
Speaker 2: the idea that they're Roman Catholic god warriors fighting right
Speaker 2: evil incarnate on Earth helping families for free, then of
Speaker 2: course it's not going to make any sense to you egghead,
Speaker 2: pencilneck college boy scientists.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know, one of the biggest criticisms of
Speaker 1: their work and other work by other paranormal investigators because
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of these people use pretty questionable
Speaker 1: techniques at times. So it's not like the Warrens were
Speaker 1: any worse than a lot of them. But the fact
Speaker 1: that a lot of times you can trace this back
Speaker 1: to maybe somebody in that household has some sort of
Speaker 1: mental illness going on and they're being exploited.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing. Like you can be like, well,
Speaker 2: it's all in just in good fun, but there are
Speaker 2: actual problems with what they were doing, and that's one
Speaker 2: of them. And even if they weren't mentally ill, some
Speaker 2: of these families did believe that there was something going
Speaker 2: on and they were in some sort of crisis, and
Speaker 2: the Warrens would come in tell them they had some demons,
Speaker 2: maybe give it a shot, maybe solve things or not,
Speaker 2: and then go off and sell the family's story as
Speaker 2: their own case. Right. That's again how they made a
Speaker 2: lot of money was writing books and giving lectures based
Speaker 2: on these places where they just show up and then
Speaker 2: take over the story and insert themselves. That's harmful. I
Speaker 2: also saw that you can describe, at least in part,
Speaker 2: the satanic panic that came along in the eighties from
Speaker 2: them kind of normalizing the idea that people were out
Speaker 2: there getting possessed by forty three demons, getting raped by ghosts.
Speaker 2: That was a contribution they made. And then also especially
Speaker 2: these conjuring stories now if you watch them, Chuck, the
Speaker 2: Lorraine and Ed Warren are portrayed as this couple who
Speaker 2: have arguably the greatest marriage in the history of humans,
Speaker 2: and that they are just steam powered by God and
Speaker 2: that's what they're doing. They're battling evil here on earth.
Speaker 2: And so I think it kind of whips up like
Speaker 2: a little bit of potentially misplaced religious version of patriotism
Speaker 2: and people who are religious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably, So you know, we can now talk about
Speaker 1: some sort of maybe the claims against some of these cases.
Speaker 1: One of the claims was that the Warrens actually paid
Speaker 1: a guy named Ray Gorton to completely make up the
Speaker 1: Snedtecker haunting. They worked with an author, I mean, which
Speaker 1: is true. His name was Ray Gorton to write a
Speaker 1: book about that case called In a Dark Place Colon
Speaker 1: the Story of a True Haunting, and Gordon in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine said that book was entirely fiction and
Speaker 1: there are grifters because I was interviewing this family and
Speaker 1: the stories didn't match up from person to person, and
Speaker 1: I took it to Ed and he said, quote, they're crazy.
Speaker 1: All the people who come to us are crazy. That's
Speaker 1: why they come to us. Just use what you can
Speaker 1: and make up the rest. Yeah. So that's one Snetecker case.
Speaker 2: That's one little piece of evidence. And this guy actually
Speaker 2: wrote the book and was paid by it. I don't,
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't think that he had much of
Speaker 2: an ax to grind right the Enfield House. It's not
Speaker 2: even clear that they investigated at all. The closest anyone's
Speaker 2: ever put them to this haunting was one of the
Speaker 2: Society for Psychical Research Investigators. Guy, I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's leon or lyon Playfair, he was one of the
Speaker 2: lead dudes. He said that that at the very least
Speaker 2: Ed showed up maybe for an hour or something, was
Speaker 2: hanging out outside I guess with them, and it was like,
Speaker 2: you know, you can make you can make some money
Speaker 2: off of this if you want to do some business,
Speaker 2: and I guess Playfair was like I don't, I don't
Speaker 2: do that, and so Ed was like all right, see
Speaker 2: you and took off and then again took the story
Speaker 2: as their own, Like if you watch The Conjuring two,
Speaker 2: they are basically the lynchpin to freeing this family from
Speaker 2: this torment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Amy Deville supposedly was a hoax. This all
Speaker 1: came out. Later in nineteen seventy nine, there was a
Speaker 1: lawsuit and the guy who shot up his family, Ronald Feo.
Speaker 1: His defense lawyer William Webber, said that he and the
Speaker 1: Lutz family made it all up one night over a
Speaker 1: quote several bottles of wine, and the Lutzes kind of
Speaker 1: came out and said, yeah, that's pretty much what happened,
Speaker 1: and Ed and Lorraine Wore were like, no, that's not
Speaker 1: what happened, right.
Speaker 2: I think Lorraine had a quote during this seance. So
Speaker 2: they met George Lutz once when he handed off the
Speaker 2: keys for them to go have a seance. They didn't
Speaker 2: never meet Kathy. They never walked around the house or
Speaker 2: worked with them. They had a one night seance where
Speaker 2: that ghostboy photo was produced, which must have been just
Speaker 2: jackpot luck for them because it looks a lot like
Speaker 2: John Defayo in the face. But John to Fayo is
Speaker 2: also wearing the exact same shirt that an assistant named
Speaker 2: Paul Bart who was there that night, was wearing. People
Speaker 2: are like, well, he's probably taking a measurement or working
Speaker 2: on equipment, kneeling down, and it just happened that his
Speaker 2: photo was taken. But the idea that they had much,
Speaker 2: if anything, to do with Amityville is incorrect, except for
Speaker 2: all the lore they made up, like the Indian burial ground.
Speaker 2: As far as I know, they came up with that,
Speaker 2: even though they got the trybrowng So the whole idea
Speaker 2: of Amityville being as off the chain as it was
Speaker 2: came largely from them, but also from the Lutz's story.
Speaker 2: They helped publicize it big time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I looked up that house. It's been bought and
Speaker 1: sold quite a bit over the years. But someone eventually
Speaker 1: changed those two upper windows. Yeah, that I don't know,
Speaker 1: just kind of looked creepy like eyes, I guess, But
Speaker 1: now they're just regular windows.
Speaker 2: I saw that the old Arnold estate that was in
Speaker 2: conjuring one somebody bought it in like after the first
Speaker 2: conjuring came out for like half a million dollars and
Speaker 2: then pumped up the idea that it was still haunted
Speaker 2: and sold it for a million and a half like
Speaker 2: two years later.
Speaker 1: It's another in demand haunted houses pretty much. Yes, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: One of the biggest things that came out. Also, just
Speaker 2: one really one thing before we go on. I would
Speaker 2: direct anybody who's into that first Conjuring and knows all
Speaker 2: about that house. To go read a blog called Dreaming Casually.
Speaker 2: A historian Jamie Rubio really looked into Bethsheba Sherman in
Speaker 2: her history and apparently it is all made up to
Speaker 2: the point where she's essentially a slandered two hundred year
Speaker 2: old person. Go read that. But I think probably the
Speaker 2: biggest knock that the Warrens got came in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: long after they were international global stars thanks to the
Speaker 2: Conjuring series, and a woman named Judith Penny came forward
Speaker 2: and said, Ed Warren and I had a sexual relationship
Speaker 2: starting when I was fifteen, and Lorraine knew all about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like she moved into the house and supposedly
Speaker 1: had a forty year relationship, and like you said, Lorraine
Speaker 1: was okay with it. I think they had a you know,
Speaker 1: a business going. Penny said that she was impregnated by
Speaker 1: Ed and Lorraine pressured her to have an abortion because
Speaker 1: that would hurt the business, the family business. And this
Speaker 1: is a big sort of red flag here. The Hollywood
Speaker 1: reporter said that when Lorraine, because they got a bunch
Speaker 1: of money to consult on TV and movies, over the years,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we've kind of made that clear.
Speaker 1: But Lorraine specifically had a deal to consult on the conjuring,
Speaker 1: and she barred new Line from showing Ed and Lorraine
Speaker 1: being as anything other than what you said, like this
Speaker 1: sort of perfect couple. Specifically, it said no criminal offenses,
Speaker 1: no sex with minors, no child pornography, prostitution or sexual assault,
Speaker 1: or depicted as participating in an extramarital sexual relationship. And
Speaker 1: just just so people know, this is not sort of
Speaker 1: an normal kind of thing, even in Hollywood when they're
Speaker 1: doing these big contracts about you know, supposedly true stories,
Speaker 1: to include all that very specific stuff is not normal.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was reading that as well. So that's a
Speaker 2: little odd, especially when you combine it with Judith Penny's.
Speaker 1: Story that sounds totally true.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and again coming forward in twenty seventeen, it's
Speaker 2: not like the moment the first conjuring came out, she's like,
Speaker 2: give me some money, Like she seemed to have a
Speaker 2: pretty I think she actually testified in an affidavit that
Speaker 2: all of this was true too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's.
Speaker 2: Tarnished their legacy a little bit, especially if peop if
Speaker 2: you already thought they were grifters or hucksters or something
Speaker 2: like that. It's not entirely clear whether they believed any
Speaker 2: of the claims that they made. If they didn't, then
Speaker 2: Lorraine Warren was one of the great character actors of
Speaker 2: all time who never broke character, at least in front
Speaker 2: of anyone who is willing to come forward. And she
Speaker 2: died I think in twenty nineteen, long after the Conjuring
Speaker 2: had become huge. Ed died, I think sadly. The last
Speaker 2: movie he got to see was The Haunting in Connecticut.
Speaker 2: He died in two thousand and six. So they're both
Speaker 2: gone now. But the New England Society for Psychic Research,
Speaker 2: which again they found it in nineteen fifty two, it's
Speaker 2: still going on under their son in law, Tony Spira,
Speaker 2: to whom quote all of their knowledge and experience has
Speaker 2: been successfully passed.
Speaker 1: That's right, And at that annabel Doll is still around.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think they have that museum anymore.
Speaker 1: That closed in twenty nineteen when Lorraine passed away, but
Speaker 1: Annabelle will show up here and there on tours and
Speaker 1: special events.
Speaker 2: Yes, but they had a really cool museum from what
Speaker 2: I can tell. But it's shut down inexplicably, it's not
Speaker 2: open anymore, and there doesn't seem to be any plans
Speaker 2: to open it again. Yeah, but there's a new conjuring
Speaker 2: movie out I think class really. Yeah, it's based on
Speaker 2: a case that we didn't talk about, but there was
Speaker 2: sexual abuse by demons as well. It was also in
Speaker 2: the eighties, so that was their big thing. Then.
Speaker 1: Who wants to see that?
Speaker 2: A lot of millions and millions and millions of people
Speaker 2: around the world.
Speaker 1: Are they still super popular?
Speaker 2: Oh yes, and supposedly this one is like their last one,
Speaker 2: but they hand the reins over to their son in law,
Speaker 2: Tony Sparrow, so he might become the new leader of
Speaker 2: the franchise along with their daughter Judy.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's basically like the new Marvel. Yeah, well, Chuck said,
Speaker 2: yeah everybody, which means, in old school fashion, it's time
Speaker 2: for listener mail.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is just a quickie correction. Hey guys, I'm
Speaker 1: listening now. And you might have heard this already, but
Speaker 1: Chuck was right in pronouncing villa. Oh hi, double Chuck.
Speaker 1: The double L sounds that Josh is talking about is Spanish,
Speaker 1: not Italian.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what I was saying, that.
Speaker 1: Is really Christina in New York?
Speaker 2: Who is it? Huh?
Speaker 1: Who loves listening?
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Christina, we appreciate that. I think a
Speaker 2: few people wrote in to say, yeah, Chuck was right,
Speaker 2: that's fine.
Speaker 1: This is the only one I saw.
Speaker 2: I'm happy. I'm happy for you, Chuck. Are you happy
Speaker 2: for me for being happy for you?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 2: Okay. If you want to get in touch with us,
Speaker 2: like Christina did, you can send us an email as well.
Speaker 2: Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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