Episode 102: Who were Ed & Lorraine Warren Anyway?

Familiar with The Conjuring movie series? Or the Amityville Horror? Then you've heard of Ed & Lorraine Warren. But who were they anyway? Where did they come from? What's the deal? 🤔

Links:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/episodes/15117628

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/episodes/15317755

https://nyghosts.com/the-amityville-hoax/#:~:text=The%20Amityville%20Horror%20Cover%2DUp,upon%20the%20suggestions%20of%20Mr.

https://warrens.net/about/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_and_Lorraine_Warren

The True Story Behind 'The Conjuring': Where Is the Perron Family Now?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Arne_Cheyenne_Johnson

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog. 

****

My award-winning biography of Dag is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Unicorn-New-Look-Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-ebook/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

My forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will be available globally next summer. 

Transcript

 Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Sara Causey delves into the lives and work of Ed and Lorraine Warren, exploring their involvement in paranormal investigations and the legitimacy of their claims. She discusses the Amityville Horror case, where William Weber alleged the story was a hoax, and the Annabelle doll, which went missing in 2025. Sara also examines the Enfield poltergeist and the Arnie Cheyenne Johnson case, where Johnson claimed demonic possession as a defense for murder. She criticizes the Warrens for potentially exploiting vulnerable individuals and sensationalizing their findings, urging listeners to critically evaluate their work.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Ed and Lorraine Warren, Amityville Horror, Annabelle doll, demonic possession, Satanic Panic, paranormal research, ghost cases, Hollywood movies, William Weber, Lutz family, Bathsheba Sherman, Enfield poltergeist, Arnie Cheyenne Johnson, New England Society for Psychic Research, clairvoyant.

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I want to probe the question, who were Ed and Lorraine Warren, really? During spooky season, I released an episode about Amityville and origin story, and when I was recording that, I thought out loud the two of them seemed like they merit their own probe, their own line of questioning, because they were all over that Amityville story. And then later, I released another episode called the night the defeos died, about the book of the same name. And while I was recording that episode, a light bulb burst, and about gave me a heart attack. It's like you're sitting there delving into creepy information about a sad circumstance that we still don't have a lot of complete information on. We still really don't know what happened, and then a light bulb burst, and you're like, Oh my God, oh Lord. But I want to come back to this question of who were Ed and Lorraine Warren anyway? Like, what was their deal? Because they were all over Amityville. But that's not the only case that they were ever involved in. That's not even the only prominent case that they were ever involved in. And in America, at least, The Conjuring movie series has become wildly popular. I don't even know how many of them there are now, then, if you count the spin offs of the nun, and I think there was a sequel to that movie as well. I went to go see the nun when it came out in the theater, and I went to a matinee showing. I remember that. And the ticket taker was like, Are you coming in the afternoon? Because you're too scared to see it at night. And I laughed, and I was like, No, I'm here because this is the only time that I have. I want to be scared. I hope that this scares the poop out of me like I actively hope that this jars me and makes me rethink life. And she was like, Oh, wow. Okay. Then, spoiler alert, it didn't to me. It relied a lot on jump scares, and it just got farther and farther away from the actual plot, I thought. And that's an annoyance for me, like, just tell me a good story and stick with your premise. Hollywood wants to add in more and more and more, and it becomes like everything but the kitchen sink. Anyway. That's a digression from me. The point for this episode is, who were the Warrens? What were they really up to? And as I did my research for this episode, I have to say I was horrified, but not by the ghost cases. Choose your frosty beverage of choice, and we'll dissect this little conundrum,

Political intrigue, Cold War drama, cloak and dagger maneuvers. Read 2025 most intriguing book about one of history's forgotten figures. Pick up your copy of Decoding the Unicorn: A New Look at Dag Hammarskjold today!

Whenever I was doing the research for the Amityville origin story episode, and then also the night the defeos died. One piece of information that I came across that definitely raised my eyebrows, is this story alleged from William Webber, who was Butch defeos lawyer, and back in 1979 he gave a media interview, I think it was to People Magazine, where he alleges that the whole thing, the whole so called Amityville Horror, was a hoax. And he's quoted as saying that he knows that the book is a hoax because he allegedly was there when the lutzes and he William Weber concocted the story. According to Weber, he said that they were sitting around, they had quite a bit of wine to drink, and they fabricated the story. The idea was like, Cui bono, who benefits? Weber would benefit, and by extension, Butch DeFeo would benefit, because if they could make up a story that the house was haunted, there were demons and evil spirits in there that might have compelled Butch to do something against his own will. Then they had a devil made me do it defense. And then the lutzes would benefit, because they could make money off the story. They could write a novel which presumably would become a best seller, if you make it sensational enough, and then that's going to get Hollywood's attention. So it gets optioned and turned into a screenplay and then a major motion picture, all of which happened. So according to Weber, allegedly the whole darn thing was a hoax. Now, depending upon whose account. Don't you listen to this is one of those hazy, nebulous areas where we have to use a lot of words, like supposedly, allegedly, and I don't really know, because I wasn't there. Depending on whose account that you listen to, some people say that it was strictly William Weber and the lutzes. They came up with it as a trio. But there are other people who allege that the Warrens were involved with it too, that rather than being a three legged stool, it was more like an awkward five legged chair where the five of them concocted this. I don't know if that's true or not. I'm just telling you that that is part of the rumor mill around the Amityville story. However, you can absolutely go back and look at the quoted the media quoted information where William Webber alleges that he and the lutzes had quite a bit of wine and concocted the whole story. Now, who was really there? We don't know. It can become like in JFK lore, the story about the supposed party at Clint murchison's house. It's like a fish tail, like whoever's telling the story embellishes it, until finally, everybody and their dog was at the supposed house party, talking openly about Kennedy's murder, the murder that had not happened yet, the soon to be pop pop of President Kennedy. I'm like, right? Because all these people just be openly talking about it in front of God and everybody. I mean, maybe, but I'm super skeptical. Finally, it's going to get to the point where everybody from George Washington to Abe Lincoln to Babe Ruth was in that party, and you just know that it's bizarre and couldn't possibly be true. So I'm putting that out there at the get go. I don't know if the Warrens were part of that meeting to concoct the story. I'm just saying that, depending upon whose rumor mill that you listen to, the allegation has been thrown out there. So I'm kind of going around the swimming pool in a different way here. I feel like I threw you in the deep end a little bit, and I didn't mean to do that. I should also go back and say that if for some reason you're not familiar with Ed and Lorraine Warren, they were all over the media, and I remember them from my own childhood as part of the Satanic Panic. They made a lot of the same talk show circuit rounds, as some of the others did, like I remember seeing Anton levay's daughter and Michael Aquino. He would typically go on there with his crazy eyebrows and his black priest costume like Sally Jesse and Geraldo and all of those that were thick in the Satanic Panic of the 80s. You would see Ed and Lorraine Warren as well. Apparently, Ed was born as Ed Warren Miney on September 7, 1926 and then Lorraine was Lorraine Rita Moran. The two of them met. And the interesting thing about this is they both claimed to have their own, I guess you'd say psychic abilities. So it's like this was either a match made in heaven or this was going to turn out to be a highly opportunistic affair. Judge for yourself, which is which on Lorraine's side of the fence, she described herself as being a clairvoyant and a light trance medium. She said that even from a young age, she could see light, I guess, how some people would call an aura. She could see light around people, and she later realized, I guess she she claims, that she didn't really know what that was as a kid, but then as she got older, she realized that she was communicating with something from the other side. On Ed's side of the fence, he says that he was able to see ghosts from an early age, and that he grew up in a haunted house. He also told a story that one time when he was a kid, he saw like an orb that transformed into the ghost of the family's landlady, and he was able to see her and communicate with her. He also said that he would have dreams about ancestors and relatives who died before he was born, and they were able to communicate that way when Ed and Lorraine are both still teenagers, and I think Ed was working at a movie theater, and it was a movie theater that Lorraine frequented. The two of them meet, and they strike up a conversation, and then they start dating, and it's kind of like, okay, well, nature takes its course. They're they're talking and having chit chat, and they like each other, and they hit it off. And so they start dating, and they like each other, and they hit it off even more. And so they get married. Something else I want to say at this point is that there are some commentators who question Ed's story about enlisting in the Navy and what were the day. And what was he actually doing there? Because he says that he enlisted in the Navy on his 17th birthday, which would have been in 1943 if you want to be super technical about it, that would have been September 7, 1943 so if that was the case, then how was he working at a movie theater in 1944 like World War Two was still going on at that point in time. So there have been a number of commentators that have said, Something seems amiss in his story. If you go to the website for the nespr, the New England society for psychic research, which Ed and Lorraine Warren founded. So it's a safe assumption that this website is going to be friendly towards them and is going to present information as they would want it to be presented very clearly on their website. It says that Ed and Lorraine Warren meet. Ed was 16, and he worked as an usher at the Colonial theater in Bridgeport, and Lorraine and her mother were regulars there, so the two of them hit it off and start dating. It also tells us that Ed Warren gets deployed. It says that he enlisted in the Navy on his 17th birthday, and he was only deployed for four months before his ship was sunk in the North Atlantic. Okay, so after Ed's ship was sunk, then he comes back to the US on a survivor's leave. He, like somehow makes it through. And I don't know all the details of his survival, but somehow he survives. And then while he's at home, on that 30 day survivors leave, he and Lorraine get married, and this, I guess, according to the timeline, is in 1945 so I'm just Okay, wait a minute. I'm trying to work all this out. Just a second. All right, so they start dating when Ed is 16, and then on his 17th birthday, he enlists in the Navy, and then after only four months of deployment, that's when his ship is sunk somewhere in the North Atlantic, he gets sent home on survivors leave, and then while he's there, the two of them decide to get married.

But okay, just sorry. I'm just thinking about all of this, but when you look at the timeline that's on the actual website. It says Ed Warren gets deployed, and it shows it being 1945 but his 17th birthday would have been in 1943 so four months after his 17th birthday would have been 1944 not 1945 so it does appear that there's kind of a weird, lost year here. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole too much, because I don't really know what what was going on with the figures here. But my point in bringing that up is just things that make you say hmm, from the very beginning, things that make you say hmm. So when we go back to their timeline that's on their website, we fast forward from 45 to 51 that Ed and Lorraine have a daughter, and then also still in 1951 it says Ed goes to art school. Apparently, Ed had some artistic ability for painting, and he goes into a place called Perry art school. We also learn, according to their official information, that most of the time when he painted, he painted haunted houses and other things related to ghosts. So there's that in 1952 and then Lorraine go around setting up like pop up stands, what we what we, in modern vernacular, would call pop up stands, a pop up experience, or a pop up stand, they go around New England to try to sell Ed's paintings. And then also, we're told, in 1952 that they start this NES PR, so that Ed has a vehicle for his interest in the paranormal besides just his paintings. Now they also claim, interestingly enough, they claim, that Lorraine is a skeptic at the time, okay, I'm gonna long pause again, because, wait a minute. Okay, we're told that Lorraine from it from a young. Age is a clairvoyant and a light trance medium that she can see auras and lights around people. Why would you be a skeptic? If you're a clairvoyant, if you're a sensitive of some kind, why would you be a skeptic? That's like, you know, full disclosure. I always say that if, if a podcast or an author, a creator of any kind, has a bias, and they're aware of that bias, then they should own it for their audience. If you have an unconscious bias, it is what it is, but if you are aware of a certain bias or a certain disposition that you have, you should own that. I myself am not a skeptic about the paranormal. Broadly speaking, I think there are certainly a lot of people that claim to be psychics that aren't. I think there are a lot of people who claim that, oh, I've seen a ghost, or I've had a scary experience, and they're not being honest. They're just trying to get attention. But I do think it's one of those things where it's like, it might be one out of 100 or one out of 1000 people is actually telling the truth, and they really did have something that rattled them to their core. I mean, for me, I would personally describe myself as a sensitive there. There are times that I know things or that I'm able to have communication that you know on a logical basis, we would not be able to say A, B, C, D. Here's the reason why it's happening. So that's why I'm even more skeptical of this idea that Lorraine was a skeptic at the time, is it says that he and Lorraine founded this Paranormal Research Society, and they would go and travel to sites they would investigate. Ed would stand outside, like on the curb, sketch the house, and then ask the homeowner, like, can we come inside and do an investigation. I mean, what? Just yet again, I feel there's gonna be a lot of me honking and laughing in this because I'm like, what I've never really looked at the full back story here, and it is quite something. All right, so if somebody showed up to my house unbidden. I mean, first of all, as an introvert and a homebody, I'd be like, Get out of here. I would be like, Clint Eastwood in whatever that movie was, Gran Torino was like, Get off my lawn. Be like, No, I don't care that you sketched my house. I freaking find that creepy. And you've got about five seconds to get out of here before I call the sheriff. Okay, beat it. So that's odd that, to me, feels very businessy. You know, the early 50s is a different time from what it is now, certainly, as a hammer Shoal biographer, I know that, but weird. It just it feels like a marketing technique to me. That's my opinion, and it could be wrong, but it's super duper. Feels like a marketing technique I sketched your house, I feel like it's loaded up with the ghosties. Is there any way that I can come in and we'll do an investigation? Um, no. And then Lorraine says that she was a skeptic at the time. You know, you're seeing lights and auras and you're clairvoyant. Um, why the hell would you be a skeptic about going in to do a ghost hunt yet again, right? Just something that makes you go, Hmm, with a lot of side eye. Also around this time, Ed asserts that he's like a born demonologist, a born Demon Hunter, which I guess, is to say that he wasn't like a priest or a clergyman. He wasn't somebody that had been like trained as an exorcist at the Vatican. Um, I'm not often speechless, but, you know, I'm just I don't want to step on anybody's toes. That's the thing. My goal here is not to make fun of anybody. My goal is just to say, like, Okay, here's what it reminds me of. The barriers to entry are super low for coaching and for business advisement. Anybody really can set a shingle out and say, I'm a business advisor, or I'm a business coach, and it's like, okay, great. Well, what are your credentials? And then it's crickets and tumbleweeds. What would be the standard, what would be any kind of proof if somebody said, Well, I was born, I came out of the womb a demonologist. I came out of the womb as a demon hunter. Where do you even go to try to verify that I'm just, I'm going to leave that as an open ended question to you. Now, I've not found any evidence that they were charging money for their service. It seems to me like they were going for free for the experience, perhaps because it appears to me that they were taking on a number of cases, like, if somebody called or wrote a letter to say, hey, I have a haunted house, they were pretty Johnny on the spot to show up, which seems to me, and this is just my interpretation, it's just my opinion, and it could be wrong. It seems to me to be a form of information collection, like we're going to meet these various people, figure out what they all have in common, and we're going to figure out what these so called haunted houses and haunted locations have in common. We're going to start looking for common threads so that we can use that in our business model. Anton Levay is very clear about saying the same sorts of things. If you want to manipulate people as a carnival barker or a fortune teller, here's how you do it. I mean, he was, he put his information out on front street like if you're a fortune teller, you tell you always want to tell somebody you're in danger, you're in trouble, but you're here in the nick of time. I can help you. I can help to save you from the trouble. I mean, is that not kind of the same vibe that we're getting here, like, Oh, here's a sketch of your house. It's all loaded up with demons and ghosties. But don't worry, we're here to help. Like, we are coming to you in the nick of time. God is sending us to help you. Like, is it God? Is the house really loaded up with spirits, or is there something else going on? Just saying, So, when we look again on the official timeline, we have a big gap from 52 to 68 by the time we get to 1968 we learn about Annabelle, and I'm sure you're familiar with the Annabelle doll, the movies have been all over the place, and the Annabelle doll in the movie world definitely looks super creepy, super sinister. But when you look at the Annabelle doll, that was supposedly part of the real story, and that was in their museum, I don't know what the latest on that is? Hold on. A second, and I'll look it up, because there was something that broke just recently. Hold on. Okay, great. Thank God for the pause button. You don't have to wait for me to look for this stuff. All right. So I've remembered this from the summer of 2025 there was the story that broke that the supposedly demonic Annabel doll had gone missing, that there was a paranormal investigator who had it in a hotel room, and then the paranormal investigator died in Pennsylvania, and the haunted doll had gone missing. So there was definitely some publicity around, oh my god, the doll is missing, and this man died. Annabelle strikes again. It's a devil doll. This is confirmation that it's a devil doll and there's still a devil inside it. But then later, it was revealed that the man's death did not have anything to do with the doll, and that also the doll was not missing. So again, just put that in the file of Um, okay, with a lot of side eye. So the story behind Annabelle in the late 60s was that a student nurse had been gifted with a raggedy and all, not the super creepy, overtly demonic looking beast that we see in the movie, but just a plain old raggedy and all, she brought it home. She had a roommate, and she brought it home, and they claimed that with in basically no time at all, they start to notice weird stuff, like sometimes the doll will sit up by itself, and sometimes it will move on its own. And they claimed that the doll was inhabited by the spirit of a dead girl who had been named Annabelle. So here we go, here's a classic horror movie Ghost Story trope. I swear this is like every episode of a haunting that show that used to be on TLC, they decide that they're going to make friends with the little ghost girl named Annabelle, and they want to try to give her gifts and integrate her into their life and make sure that she feels welcomed. So of course, what happens? Annabelle turns out to not be a little ghost girl, but turns out to be a demon, an evil demon that starts doing mean things to the student, nurse and her roommate. Of course, thank God that Ed and Lorraine show up, and they can say it is not the ghost of a friendly little girl named Annabelle who's just looking for some playmates. Oh no, it's a demon. It's a devil. So they remove the doll, and then they put it in a glass box in their museum to make sure that Annabelle cannot haunt or hurt or murder any further people.

Now we fast forward to 1971 there's this house in Rhode Island, and it this was really the one that kind of launched everything in terms of the conjuring film series. So if you've seen that movie, then you're already familiar with the basics of the story. Allegedly, this family is being tormented in their house, and Lorraine discovers that there was a witch named Bathsheba Sherman from the 19th century, and she put a curse on the land. Upon which this house was built, so that anybody who lived there would suffer and ultimately die. So there's that, if I remember correctly, from the movie, like Lorraine goes outside and sees this evil witch hanging from a tree, and it's like, Oh, my God, the family's in danger. Yeah, now we'll, we'll go through and start talking about some of the debunking that's been done around these stories. I'm just giving you the basic rundown at the moment. All right, so now we fast forward to 74 that's when the Warrens get involved with Amityville. Or, I guess I should say, in 1974 is when it happens. And then, according to this timeline, May of 1975 is when Ed and Lorraine go to investigate the happenings. And I believe that was the inspiration for The Conjuring too. Now we go forward in time, and we just see a general 1977 to 1992 other cases. They investigate more than 100 other known cases, they collect their evidence, and then these other stories become part of the conjuring universe. Okay, so we've got that that there's our basic rundown. According to their official documentation on their website. Sue I'm going to skip around a little bit here. I have talked about Amityville in previous episodes, so I don't want to belabor the point too much. I'll drop links to the previous episodes I've already recorded. But Lorraine concludes that Amityville, that the house there, was haunted. The land was haunted because of Shinnecock Native Americans who supposedly used that property as a place for the mentally ill. There was so much pain and torture and upset that it became like a portal for demons, and so that's why the house was haunted. Also, supposedly there was that eerie photo of well, not supposedly because the photo exists, but there was a photo, an eerie photo, of this supposed ghost boy, but then there was a crew member who was dressed exactly the same way. So the photo becomes much less creepy when you realize that in all likelihood it was one of the crew members and not an actual ghost boy. So let's go back now to 1971 with the Perrin family, who had their farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island that was supposedly haunted by this evil witch named Bathsheba Sherman. Okay? For, for, for what all that's worth. Let's, let's think about what might be true here. So in the first conjuring movie, Lily Taylor and Ron Livingston play Roger and Carolyn Perrin, two parents who are just trying to protect their kids from evil spirits in this haunted house. And this is also like Amityville, in a sense, you know, we kind of get this every man thing. Like the lutzes had a big family, and they were just trying to find an awesome house in their budget to accommodate their family. Like Roger and Carolyn, parent are just earnest parents that want to raise their kiddos in a good environment. But oops, a daisy, it turns out that this house is not too good to be true. It's full of a witch demon that's coming after them. The Warrens are portrayed as almost like every man figures who just happen to also be demonologists that can see dead people. Now the parents daughter, Andrea, has been quoted in the news as saying that the conjuring was a good film, but it was 95% fiction. So I guess we can say it's based on a true story, but not exactly according to that daughter they moved into the farmhouse in 1971 and so it was the parents, and then five kids, and then the parents actually stayed there until 1980 so the conjuring makes it seem like they got in there. Oh, my God, it's full of a demonic witch and her evil curses. And so we have to get out of here. But in reality, they stayed for like nine years. And Andrea has written a book called House of darkness, House of light. And she said, According to her, everybody in the family had encountered ghosts in the house. Some were not nice, and then some actually were nice and we're fairly benevolent. Take that, take take that, as you will, okay, based on your own belief systems, but at the very least, we can certainly say that the movie is playing into Hollywood tropes, right? We see this with Amityville, the earnest family that moves in and. Is chased out by evil ghosts. We also saw that a lot in that series of haunting, Mom and Dad move in, thinking this is going to be a great place to raise the kids, and then it turns out to be full of the devil, and they have to flee for their life. This is definitely a trope that we see in 1977 we have the infield haunting, which refers to this house that was in Enfield, London, and the events allegedly took place between 1977 and 1979 this family, the Hodgson's, said that they were victims of a number of supernatural activities, furniture moving by itself, unexplained knocking sounds, and this young girl named Janet claims to have levitated. And there are also photographs of this girl in suspended in mid air, supposedly levitating through paranormal means. Sometimes. This is also called the infield poltergeist. And of course, who's there in the midst of this, but Ed and Lorraine Warren, if you remember the conjuring two. It starts out dealing with the Amityville house, but then it fast forwards in time to go to the infield haunting. So we're kind of getting some various bangs for the buck in that movie. Now, while I was investigating, has this story been debunked, the information that I came across was that the girls ultimately confessed that they had been doing this themselves, that they had been making the knocking sounds and using things like broom handles to tap on the ceilings, and that when the Warrens came in and they set up cameras to surveil what was going on, they were just jumping. They weren't levitating. They were just jumping. So definitely that story loses a lot of its punch when the kids confess like, hey, we were doing this for attention, or we were doing this to be ornery little shits. But the place is not actually haunted, to my knowledge, which is limited, but to my knowledge, I don't think that Ed and Lorraine Warren ever came out and said, oops, a daisy. These kids admitted that they were just faking. Now, let's fast forward to 1981 because things get a lot more disturbing than just kids banging on walls and tapping ceilings and locking themselves in rooms and saying a ghost did it. If we go to the Wikipedia page for the trial of Arnie Cheyenne Johnson, we learn that it was also the devil made me do it defense, and it's the first known court case in America in which the defense sought to prove that somebody was innocent based on the claim of demonic possession. On November 24 1981 in Brookfield, Connecticut, Arnie Cheyenne Johnson was convicted of first degree manslaughter for the killing of his landlord, Alan Bono, According to testimony by the glatzel family, 11 year old David glatzel allegedly had played host to a demon. After witnessing a number of increasingly ominous occurrences involving David, his family, exhausted and terrified, decided to enlist the aid of Ed and Lorraine Warren in a last ditch effort to cure and they literally do have in quotes here, cure the child. The glatzel family, along with the Warrens, then proceeded to have multiple priests petition the Catholic Church to have a formal exorcism performed on David. The process continued for several days, concluding when, according to those present, a demon fled the child's body and took up residence within Johnson. Several months later, Johnson killed his landlord during a party. His defense lawyer argued in court that he was possessed, but the judge ruled that such a defense could never be proven, and therefore was infeasible in a court of law, Johnson was subsequently convicted, though he served only five years behind bars of a 10 to 20 years sentence. You may remember that the story was later made into a film adaptation called The Conjuring The devil made me do it.

So Supposedly, this boy, David glatzel, is being tormented by a demon. He's having visions at night, and then the visions become daytime vision. So they're not just, I guess, night terrors anymore, but they're also happening during the day. He claims that the ghost, or the specter of an old man, appears to him, pushes him, torments him, some kind of demon comes to him and says things in Latin and threatens to steal his soul. He's being physically abused by the demon, he says, So he goes through this multi day exorcism. It's getting rougher and rougher, and that's when this Arnie Johnson says, that he taunts the demon and says, Well, instead of bothering this little boy, then. And come at me. Come at me, bro. And the demons like, Okay, well, I guess I will. And so there's that. Now we also read on the Wikipedia page as David's condition worsened further. Debbie and Johnson, this is that Arnie Cheyenne Johnson, guy, Debbie and Johnson, who had been living in her mother's home, decided it was time to move. Debbie was hired by Alan Bono, a new resident in Brookfield as a dog groomer, Debbie and Johnson began renting an apartment close to her place of employment. After moving in, Johnson started to exhibit odd behavior that was strikingly similar to David's, causing Debbie to fear that he had become possessed as well. According to Debbie, Johnson would fall into a trance like state where he would growl and hallucinate, but later have no memory of it. Okay, so here's this interesting triangle that's forming. You have this man who claims that he's invited a demon to come into him, which, you know, whether you believe in them or don't. That seems like a really fucking stupid idea. Really fucking stupid if true. I'm trying to think of, you know, like that's no orange MAN does big if true, really stupid, if true. And then we have him living with his girlfriend. And then we have this Alan Bono man who's hired Johnson's girlfriend, Debbie, and they're living close by her place of employment. Okay, just kind of keep that in the back of your mind here on February 16 of 1981 Johnson calls in sick to his job, and then he goes to work with Debbie and Bono, who's the couple's landlord, and then also Debbie's employer at this dog grooming kennel place, buys them lunch at a local bar, and then drinks heavily. After lunch, they all go back to the workplace. Debbie then takes, like, a couple of girls, like, I guess a sister and somebody else's cousin to go get pizza. But apparently they go out for pizza, and then they're kind of like, oh, it's probably a bad idea, after everybody's been drinking to go do this, you think so they return, and Bono, who is the landlord and the employer of Debbie, is intoxicated and agitated, and so you're talking about liquor is involved, right? People have been drinking. They're not in a good state of mind. Anyway, you have this man who's claiming that he's demonically possessed. What could possibly go wrong? So Johnson stabs Bono in this weird drunken after lunch situation, Johnson is apparently growling like an animal. He produces a pocket knife, and then he stabs Bono repeatedly, and then Bono ultimately dies from his injuries. And we're told that it's not really technically, Johnson's fault, because the devil made him do it. He was possessed. He didn't know what he was doing. And then on top of that, Bono was drinking so we're really in a bad situation, but it's not his fault, because remember, the devil made him do it. So the day after the the murder, Lorraine Warren tells the Brookfield police that the John that Johnson was possessed when the crime was committed. So now we're in 1981 so we also have to go back and think about the Satanic Panic. You know, I've talked about this also in that early episode I recorded, Satan wants you. And the the book Michelle remembers we're firmly in this space where it's like, oh my god. Oh my god. Could the could the devil make you? Doing are there? Are there these devil worshipers and evil people that are just all over the place, they look totally normal, but they're at your child's daycare or your child's school. Are they our neighbors? Are they people we go to church with who are just pretending to believe in God or pretending to believe in Jesus, but they really worship the devil. So it's like prime time for this shit to go down with Satanic Panic. Now let's go to the tab on Wikipedia about depiction in the media. In 1983 Gerald brittle, with the assistance of Lorraine Warren, published a book about the incident entitled The devil in Connecticut. Lorraine Warren stated that profits from the book were shared with the family. Sources confirmed that $2,000 was paid to the family by the book publisher, by today's standards, or even by 83 standards, that's not a goodly sum of cash upon the book's republication in 2006 by I universe. David glatzel and his brother Carl Glatzer Junior sued the authors and book publishers for violating the right to privacy, libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Carl also claimed that the book alleged he committed criminal and abusive acts against his family and others. He said that the possession story was a hoax concocted by Ed and Lorraine Warren to expose to exploit the family and his brother's mental illness, and that the book presented him as the villain because he did not believe. Leave in the supernatural claims. He asserted that the Warrens told him the story would make the family millionaires and would help get Johnson out of jail. Brittle author of the devil in Connecticut says he wrote the book because the family wanted the story told that he possesses videos of over 100 hours of his interviews with the family, and that they signed off on the book as accurate before it went to print. According to Carl glatzel, the publicity generated by the incident forced him to drop out of school and lose friends and business opportunities in 2007 he began writing a book titled alone through the valley about his version of the events surrounding his brother. Wow, sir. So here we go again. History just keeps repeating itself, doesn't it, when you're in the orbit of Ed and the rain more and it's like you have Butch defeos Lawyer saying we got drunk and made it up, and then now you have this family filing a lawsuit saying this is a hoax. It was their idea to make up the thing about demonic possession, and they said that it would help us. I feel like we're right back in the realm of things that make you say, Hmm, with a healthy dose of side eye, extreme side eye, as for Annabelle, we've been told that this doll is super haunted and you shouldn't touch it. It has to stay behind a locked case. Yet, there have been times where people involved with that museum took Annabelle on the road. So it's like, if it's so haunted that you can't even touch it, it's gonna stay behind a glass case forever more than Why are you taking it out? Like it's a curio, some, some something from a freak show in a circus in olden times, like it's either so dangerous that nobody should look at it and nobody should touch it, or it's something that that can be used for entertainment purposes, like it's an old school carnival. I am a little confused on that. I think, for me, in looking at the stories behind the story of all this and hearing commentators talk about how there were times that the Warrens got themselves involved in situations where there was drug and alcohol abuse present, there was mental illness present, where people would just outright say, Well, we were kind of trumping this up. It didn't really happen like this, they would leave out any information allegedly that didn't fit their narrative, because they were driving a very particular angle. And I think a reasonable conclusion is that angle was this stuff is haunted. It's full of demons. And thank God we've arrived. We're here to help. We're the good guys. I also remember seeing Lorraine on this show called paranormal state. That was on, I think it was on A and E for several years, I watched a few episodes of it. And there was always the sense that if Ed and Lorraine were after Ed passed, and it was just Lorraine, if, if one of them, or both of them, showed up to your television show or in a movie, it had this glow in the paranormal community. Of it must be legitimate. If the Warrens have showed up, then it must be something legitimate, because they wouldn't waste their time on anything that wasn't high profile and legit. Well, define high profile and legit. If you're leaving out, oh, this person had a mental illness. This person was on drugs and alcohol. We are looking for the most tenuous possible ideas, like the Indian burial ground trope that's been done and done and done in Hollywood horror like, please stop with that. Wait It's we're living in a different era. Leave that crap alone. Don't, don't just stop going there. Stop doing that, please. The devil made me do it. Well, yet again, we're not in 1980s Satanic Panic anymore. Really, you're going to use that as a legal defense.

Just it boggles my mind. It really does, as always, do your own research, come to your own conclusions. But for me, after looking into, as I said, the stories behind the stories, as far as appreciating the conjuring movies, if you want to as Hollywood movies, go for it, but I definitely would not take them seriously. I would not assume that you're watching documentary films, and my audience is smart enough to already know that it's like what I always say about JFK. There are people that think that Gen X all went as a whole to see JFK in the movie theater, and we believe that we were watching cinema verite cinema, cinema Veritas, instead of a movie, a Hollywood movie. And it's like, no, I think we know a little bit better than that. To me, the sad thing is, people who got exploited along the way, maybe they needed a psychiatrist, maybe they maybe they needed some kind of legitimate spiritual counsel, but not in the form of opportunistic people that say, Oh, hey, we can conduct seances and exercise the house. For you. Hmm, that's very troublesome. Judge for yourself. Come to your own conclusions. In the meantime, stay a little bit crazy. And I guess if somebody shows up with a sketch of your house and says, Hey, I've been watching you from the street, and I think your place is full of ghosties and demons, can I come in? Um, I wouldn't I'll see you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast and share it with others.