Ed and Lorraine Warren
Ed and Lorraine Warren are arguably the most well know paranormal investigators to have ever lived. It is hard to do any research into the paranormal online without seeing their names appear alongside some of their famous cases which have gone on to inspire the films which follow on from and include 'The Conjuring'. Their work has also gone on to inspire both books and TV programmes.
This post will not be me weighing up wether or not I think the Warren's are frauds. I will do a post about that, but I will not do so in this post. This post will also not discuss their cases in depth, but it will touch on them by name. I will do future posts about the cases, weigh up each case's validity in it's post, and then do a final post discussing how credible I believe the Warren's are. It wouldn't be fair to judge them without first looking extensively into their work. This post is to discuss them as people, their history, along with what a couple of websites say about them. Yes, that does mean if the website says there are flaws in a case I will mention this, but I will not go into detail. Think of it as a reminder for what to mention in posts down the line.
Sources I will be using:
2. The Lineup
4. The N.E.S.S.
Ed Warren was born in 1926. His dad was a very religious Catholic and Ed himself has said his first paranormal experience was when he was five years old and saw the apparition of a landlady who had recently died. Lorraine was born in 1927 and has been described as a couple of things, these being a sensitive, clairvoyant, and a trance medium. The two met in 1944 when Ed worked part time as a lifeguard and part time as a theatre usher. Lorraine visited the theatre frequently and was introduced to Ed by some friends. Once the film finished, Ed went with Lorraine and her friends to get some drinks and when Ed left Lorraine to go home, she says she psychically had a vision of him as an adult and married to her. She also has said, upon returning home, she wrote in her diary that she met her future husband.
Ed went on to become a self taught, and self professed demonologist, but not before first enlisting in the navy for four months in 1945 until his ship sunk. After this event, Ed and Lorraine became married and in 1951 had a daughter called Julie. Also in 1951, Ed enrolled in Yale's art subsidiary, Perry Art School. He liked to paint the houses he had heard were haunted throughout Connecticut. In 1952, Ed withdrew from the art school and set up pop up stands to sell his paintings. By the end of the year, Ed and Lorraine had founded N.E.S.P.R - the New England Society for Psychic Research. Ed and Lorraine use Ed's artistic ability to find out more about the supposedly haunted houses in Connecticut. Ed would sketch a house they had heard to be haunted, then knock on the door of the house offering the drawing to the owners. This would gain him access to the house where he and Lorraine could then probe about any hauntings the owners had experienced which would then lead to them investigating the property. At the time Lorraine was a skeptic, but her mind was clearly changed. From 1952, Ed and Lorraine also created and added to their haunted objects museum in Monroe, Connecticut.
In 1968 the Warren's investigated the famous Raggedy-Ann doll which goes by the name of Annabelle and allegedly has a demon attached to it. In 1971, the Warren's investigated the Perron case which the film 'The Conjuring' is based on. In 1974, the Warren's investigated the Amityville case involving the Lutz family. Between 1977 and 1992 the Warren's had investigated over a hundred known cases. In 1979, Ed and Lorrain's daughter, Julie, met Tony Spera. Tony and Julie are the current co-directors of N.E.S.P.R. and Tony is the current head curator of the Warren's occult museum. Tony himself worked with Ed and Lorraine for 30+ years, and Julie has psychic ability but has not developed it to a high degree and so doesn't get involved from that angle.
The Warren's occult museum is currently closed to the public, but was open in 1997, and admission was $13. Now the only way of viewing the collection in person, including the infamous Annabelle doll is by attending any cons which N.E.S.P.R. attends where general admission can be $35 and tickets for the museum, which must be purchased along with admission, can be $64. This makes it to be $99 to see these unique items in person. Unfortunately, N.E.S.P.R. also keeps some of it's case details behind a paywall on their website. They offer three tiers of membership which cost $3, $5, and $25 in monthly payments. This leads me into gently touching on some of the not so positive comments regarding the Warren's which my used sources have mentioned.
The Lineup points out that the Warren's are self taught, that they are potential frauds, and mentions N.E.S.S.'s investigation of the Warren's which they conducted back in 1997. N.E.S.S. is the New England Skeptical Society and, to be honest, their report sounds fair. I won't go into too much detail here, but they describe the Warren's as 'a very nice couple' and 'genuinely sincere'. N.E.S.S. also believes the Warren's 'believe the things they say'. They also say that while they met the Warren's, the Warren's told them many stories and that Ed warned them against touching anything in the museum and if they accidentally did then they should let him know so that they could be cleansed before leaving. Ed also told them that Annabelle was the most dangerous item in the museum and told them the story of a man who taunted the doll and died a few hours later in a motorbike accident. He also said if they didn't have faith then they wouldn't understand his research, and that the psychic hours are between 9pm and 6am. Also, that 3am provides the worst hauntings due to that time being seen as an insult to the Holy trinity.
N.E.S.S. goes on to say the Warren's have little evidence to support their beliefs and that anything they do have they either withheld or the evidence was either not scientific or was not compelling. I will go into more detail in a future post.
A big bit of conflicting information I've noticed across three of my used sources is how many cases the Warren's have investigated. Their own website gives free details on ten cases, but says between 1977 and 1992 they investigated over a hundred known cases. N.E.S.S. says they 'claim fo have looked at nearly 8000 cases'. Then, Thought Catalog says they 'claim they investigated 10,000 paranormal cases in their lifetime'. Thought Catalog then goes on to criticise the Warren's for this by saying that would take them 27.3 years without any breaks or days off, which they doubt is accurate due to the Warren's having a kid, being involved in media, and with Ed being a bus driver (a detail not mentioned in the other sources). Thought Catalog goes on to list that the Amityville case, the Perron case, the Enfield case, the Annabelle case, the Smurl family case, the devil made me do it case, the funeral home Snedekar family case, the werewolf case, the white lady video, and even the museum all have flaws. They also mention that N.E.S.S. investigated the Warren's and quote Ed Warren as saying 'you can't have scientific evidence for a spiritual phenomenon'. Thought Catalog also goes on to mention that while Ed was a bus driver, he allegedly groomed a 15 year old girl who then moved in with the Warren's because she had 'nowhere else to go'. Apparently there was also a clause in the conjuring films preventing them from portraying the Warren's in any negative light and that it specifically said to not include any 'sex with minors, child pornography, prostitution, or sexual assault'. Thought Catalog goes on to say The Hollywood Reported consulted an entertainment industry employee on this who said mentioning specific sex crimes like that was unseen by them in these kinds of things.
I will look more into the accusations and the critiques of Thought Catalog in future posts, but thought I should touch on the negatives and accusations as that is part of the Warren's history, as unfortunate as that is. It's key to remember that as far as those negatives go, I've only seen them in one of four sources by the time of publishing this post.
I think regardless of what you think of Ed and Lorraine, and regardless of what you do and don't believe, their work has certainly provided much to think about and much for others to set out and replicate. N.E.S.P.R. is one of the oldest ghost hunting organisations in America and it is still going beyond the Warren's deaths. Ed died in 2006 and Lorraine died in 2019. I think the fact their organisation has lasted longer than themselves, and the fact they were investigating for 50+ years is more than enough to consider them at the very least highly significant in the paranormal field.
I really hope you enjoyed this blog post. If you have any comments whether that be about the blog, experiences of your own, or even places you would like for me to investigate, then you can comment and follow on here, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Reddit, and you can email thetrueparanormal1@gmail.com for a quick response to any questions.
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