Warrens
Lorraine and the late Ed Warren, who inspired "The Conjuring" films.

(Editor's note: "Conjuring 2" topped the weekend box office. The movie was inspired by the exploits of the late Ed Warren and his wife, Lorraine. Eleven years before Ed Warren's death, I sat down with the couple and discussed their work as demonologists. What follows is an article that appeared in the Union-News on Oct. 31, 1995).


Ed Warren says he has been thrown across a room, seen tables fly and heard the kind of language few others have.

No, Warren isn't a bouncer. He's a demonologist.

Warren and his wife of 50 years, Lorraine, have spent more than four decades investigating reports of hauntings, demonic possession, and things that go bump in the night.

Outside the realm of skeptics, the Connecticut couple is considered the country's premiere "ghostbusters." They have worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Roman Catholic dioceses of Worcester and Hartford.

"Our job is to go in, evaluate what's going on, document it, and then turn it over to church authorities," Lorraine Warren said.

"We've been scared many times," she said. "You have to have faith in your work, and you have to have a great deal of faith in God because that's your only protection against the forces you're coming up against."

The couple do not charge for their work. Instead, they earn a living through lectures, including recent appearances in Chicopee.

A 1975 case they investigated was made into a movie, "The Amityville Horror." But Lorraine Warren said they have seen sights scarier than what Hollywood has portrayed.

The two examined the reported possession of a farmer in Warren, which ended with the intervention of former Worcester Bishop Timothy J. Harrington in 1985.

The Warrens maintain that the possession of farmer Maurice Theriault was frighteningly real.

"Maurice Theriault would bleed from his eyes. During the exorcism his head split open and we have that on film," Ed Warren said. "Boil eruptions appeared on his skin, and crosses appeared all over his body."

Seven years later, Theriault shot his wife and then killed himself.

His sister denounced the possession as a sham, saying Theriault faked bloody tears and speaking Latin backwards.

"It was no fake," Lorraine Warren said.

Her husband added, "If it was mental illness or a fake, why did tables rise off the floor? We put him in a hospital for six weeks and the doctors couldn't explain it."

The couple is now investigating a reportedly haunted house near Worcester. They asked that the family and town not be identified.

Ed Warren boasted that the couple's expert testimony convinced a Rockville, Conn., jury weighing a real estate deal that a house was haunted. "The courts have accepted this," he said.

With countless investigations under his belt, Ed Warren is no stranger to haunted houses or skeptics.

His father was a by-the-book police officer who maintained there was a sane, logical reason for the eerie noises at their Bridgeport, Conn., home.

But when Ed Warren said that when he heard footsteps and saw the ghostly visage of a woman in his bedroom in the dead of night, he knew his dad was wrong.

Recently, the Warrens have been documenting ghostly sights at an Easton, Conn., cemetery.

They produced photographs and slides showing swirling mists and glowing lights above the graves.

Some might argue that the pictures show nothing more than fog and photographic blemishes, but the Warrens insist they reveal ghosts.

The Monroe, Conn. couple challenged non-believers to take their own photographs and judge for themselves.

The Warrens produced other unusual photographs, including a wedding picture with what appeared to be a woman's face on a church door.

The bride claimed it was the face of her mother, who died months before the wedding.

"There are beautiful things out there too," Ed Warren said. "We're not called in for those. People call the Warrens when they're scared to death."