Ed and Lorraine Warren: Demonologists and Paranormal Investigators

Unexplained footsteps sounded through the house. Doors would open on their own. A huge ball of light would drift from the vicinity of his wardrobe and the woman's face would be inside it. He would hear her breathing.

His police officer father constantly reassured his children that, though the phenomenon was occurring, there would be a rational explanation. Unfortunately, he could never quite articulate one.

Those experiences caused Babette Warren to fear the supernatural for the rest of her life. They prompted her twin brother Ed to become a paranormal investigator.

When Lorraine was just fifteen, her friends introduced her to an athletic, well-groomed teenage usher at the theater. Ed Warren was just sixteen and worked as a life-guard at the local swimming pool by day. She was suitably impressed.

Halfway through the movie, there was an air raid alert. The group of girls, along with Ed, spent some time in the shelter just chatting. Once the all clear came, he walked home alongside them. His house was first, so he said his goodbyes and leaped over the garden fence to reach his front door.

As he did so, Lorraine had a vision of him as a much older man - looking as he would shortly before he died in 2006. She interpreted the premonition as evidence that the two would marry, and spend the rest of their lives together.

When she later divulged this fact to the teenage Ed, he joked that it was 'entrapment'.  But she was right.

When she was seventeen, Lorraine suffered from a ruptured appendix. After her parents were advised that surgery could be dangerous, they refused to allow her to go under the knife.

It was only after the intervention of Lorraine's aunt - a nurse - that they realized no surgery was the real death sentence. Permission was granted at the 11th hour saving Lorraine's life. Nevertheless, she remained in hospital for a long time, with tubes draining poison from her abdomen.

Finally home, she was writing a letter to her boyfriend Ed, when terrible news came over the radio. Now it was his life in jeopardy.

Ed had tried to join the navy when he was sixteen. He'd forged his father's signature in order to enlist, but his father found out and called a halt to proceedings. It wasn't until Ed's seventeenth birthday that he was successfully able to follow his older brother into the forces.

The radio announcement that Lorraine heard that day was breaking news on a disaster. Two American naval vessels had collided in the North Atlantic. The loss of life was immense, and Ed was on one of those ships. Moreover, it was February and those waters were icy.

Fortunately, he had been a lifeguard before entering the navy. He was a very strong swimmer. His friend was not. Ed entered the freezing water close to his friend and immediately grabbed him. The pair stayed alive by Ed swimming in a circle, with his friend clinging to his back.

Eventually rescued, they were flown to Staten Island, New York, where Lorraine - midriff strapped up tightly against her appendix wounds - traveled to visit him.

The couple were married within days.  Their recent experiences had taught them to just grab life and live it to the full!

After leaving the US Navy, following the end of World War II, Ed Warren attended art college in New Haven.

His interest in the supernatural hadn't left him though. He would often take Lorraine (and their new baby daughter Judy) on road trips to see spooky locations throughout New England.

Of particular fascination were haunted houses. Ed wanted to know if the families living in them were experiencing phenomena similar to that in his childhood home. However, it quickly became apparent that the average American family didn't take kindly to strangers knocking the door, and demanding to hear their strange stories. 

Some ingenuity was clearly required.

The Warrens would park up close to haunted homes. Ed would set up an easel in full view of the house, and begin painting. Soon enough, the occupants would notice and come to investigate. Lorraine would meet them and explain that her husband was an artist. She would explain his interest, stemming from his own childhood experiences.

Ed would present the family with a picture (on canvas, or painted plate, or sketch) free of charge. They would invariably then be invited in for refreshments, which allowed them to achieve their objective of touring the haunted house!

As time went on, it would also involve them advising the families involved, based on their own experiences and having heard similar stories. This was the beginning of the couple's career as paranormal investigators.

In 1965, the couple were invited into just another home with a reputation for strange phenomena. Only this one was to change everything.

So much exposure to haunted locations had pushed Lorraine Warren's natural psychic ability into overdrive. Though she was never to be able to control her visions - nor summon them at will - she was seeing much more than ever before. Plus she had developed the ability to act as a medium.

As soon as Lorraine entered this house, she could feel the spirit within it trying to communicate.  After the requisite level of polite greeting, she settled down to enter a light trance.  The ghost came through immediately, desperate for so long to be heard.

It was a little girl named Cynthia.  For decades, she had been panicking, looking for her parents. Any child in distress will spur the adults around them into action. But what could they do here? Cynthia's parents no longer lived in this home.

Ed improvised in his conversation with her.  He used his Catholic beliefs to prompt her to look for a way into Heaven.  Perhaps she had died long enough ago that her parents would be waiting for her there.

There was a perceptible change in the atmosphere.  Lorraine snapped out of the trance, feeling emotionally drained. She'd experienced the child's desperation, as if it was happening to herself. But Cynthia had gone.

She was never to return.  It was assumed that she'd indeed passed onto another plane, where it was hoped that her parents were waiting.

Following the Cynthia incident, Ed and Lorraine Warren were shaken into re-evaluating what they were doing here. Fascination and information building were honorable pursuits, but not when people could be hurt.

That was the thing - until now ghosts had been something other. They weren't thinking, feeling individuals. A major point had been missed, which was these were actually human beings. They'd just shifted form.  They had consciously survived their own death.

The Warrens, and the New England Society for Psychic Research, had been acting like tourists in other people's tragedies. They'd been ignoring cries for help, because they hadn't recognized them as such.

Ed began a frenzy of meetings and telephone calls. He started from the viewpoint of 'who could I call for help in these situations?' Then went for it.

Hours of conversations with priests and theologians ensued, alongside discussions with those who may have aided these people, if they were alive.  Psychologists, social workers, police officers, all the emergency back-up for those in distress.

Armed with reams of knowledge and advice, the Warrens now shifted their focus. They were there to help, not as voyeurs, but as a kind of paranormal social service. 

Moreover, Ed had been warned by Catholic priests that not every haunting was the benign remnant of a human in distress. Some of them were much worse. They were demonic in origin, either due to occult activities taking place on the site or a direct approach by some Hellish force.

As the decades passed, and the couple's experience grew, they were to encounter cases like this. Ed Warren trained as a demonologist, in order to deal with them, though the couple always deferred to the Church in perceived worst case scenarios.

One criticism of the Warrens is that they became quicker to reach conclusions involving a demonic entity over a bog-standard haunting. It was thought that their own strict Catholicism meant that they lost objectivity here.

Or it could have been lots of demons in modern day America.

In between the lectures, the books and the actual paranormal investigations, word about the Warrens quickly got around. They were often the first port of call for families or individuals fearing that their homes were haunted.

As a result, the cases became bigger and grew to encompass some of the most legendary hauntings of the late 20th century. Some might say that the fame of those cases was a result of the involvement of Ed and Lorraine Warren.

With publicity and high profile cases came television appearances, and Hollywood knocking on the door. Many recent 'based on a true story' ghost movies were inspired by something from the Warren case-files.

Movie-makers were most keen to look at the demonic possession stories, as they were all keen to replicate the success of The Exorcist (1973). Hence the silver screen versions of Ed and Lorraine Warren generally focused on their role as demonologists, rather than mere paranormal investigators.

You'll spot the theme, as we run through them.

Janet and Jack Smurl brought in the Warrens after experiencing supernatural phenomena in their home in West Pittston, Pennsylvania.

Ed Warren proclaimed the disturbances to be caused by a powerful demon. It attacked the family and moved items around. When he played religious music and involved the family with intense prayer sessions, a 'black mass' formed and the whole house shook.

Afterwards, the entity appeared to have left the premises.

Most of the ghost-hunting mantle has fallen to other family members now.  Their daughter Judy married Tony Spera, who now spear-heads the New England Society for Psychic Research. 

Also on board is the couple's nephew, John Zaffis. He is the son of Babette Warren Zaffis, Ed's twin sister, who was so frightened by their ghostly experiences in childhood. Apparently her son didn't inherit her qualms.

In fact, both Ed and John claimed to have been visited by Babette, after her own demise. She didn't appear so scared approaching communication from the other side.