May 14, 2016 • 57 mins
For decades Ed and Lorraine Warren claimed to investigate paranormal phenomena, confronting the forces of darkness with the power of faith. They've inspired numerous films and become a part of American folklore -- so how much of their story is true?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:20):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel, and I am then you are you
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know?
So as we begin today's episode, we're going to look
back on some of the stuff we have done in
the past. We've talked about ghosts before a right, guys, Yes,
we've done several episodes on ghost We've talked about we
(00:42):
talked about hunting, we've talked about what haunting is, demon session, possession, exocisms. Yeah.
So in one of our previous episodes, we asked each
other and you listeners for any stories or personal experiences
with ghosts. If you have yet to write to us
with your story, please send it in. You never know
(01:03):
when it might be the next installment of our Creepy Theater.
We had an anonymous person right in after our Gin
episode and she he someone who told us a story
about how they believe they were experiencing some strange stuff
in their bedroom one day with a GIN. You have
some strange phenomenon. Uh. And we had an email one
(01:24):
store that was from an anonymous person that just said
something to the effect of demons are real, don't talk
about them. You shouldn't talk about them because that like
coaxed them out of their shadowy domain. That it seem
very serious. The belief that happens sometimes in Southern US
folklore that one can speak something up h and uh.
(01:45):
Don't don't be mistaken, ladies and gentlemen. There are parts
of the world where people still put blankets over mirrors
if a storm comes at night. Mirrors are creepy if
you think about it. Have you ever seen a kid
have that existent question when they look in a mirror
for the first time and say, oh, it's it's me. Yeah,
(02:05):
but yeah it's not me because everything's reversed, everything's tops
each other would say, have had that experience a few
times as an adult. M H. I'm not a fan
of mirrors. I'm not ever gonna be the biggest mirror fan.
You won't find me a mirror con good with rear
view mirrors, side mirrors. They helped me not crash, But
in general I wouldn't say I avoid them, but they
(02:26):
do kind of give me the creeps a little bit.
We got a little bit sidetracked. Although you may have,
you may have had something that feels like a supernatural
experience with a mirror. Um have have we talked on
air about this? Have any of us talked about ghost hunting?
I feel like we may have. In the past. We
did an episode on ghost hunting. I believe that was
pretty focused on it on when we did the ghosts episode, right, right,
(02:51):
and Uh, today we're looking at not ghosts, but at
the people who look for ghosts or other supernatural phenomenon.
We're going to focus a little bit more on a
specific group of people. And when you say supernatural phenomenon,
we mean not just spirits of the human dead or
the venerated ancestors or astral projections from some project Stargate survivor. Right.
(03:15):
We're also talking about incorporeal non human entities, angels, extra
dimensional sentient beings, and of course demons, none of which
have been proven to exist. Just gonna put that in
there at the beginning, at least from a scientific standpoint.
A lot of people believe in these things, but they
haven't been proven. When you say extra dimensional minds, UM
(03:37):
extra dimensional beings. It makes me also think of, you know, extraterrestrials.
Is that I mean perhaps I don't know who know,
like that cake song? Perhaps perhaps so as you can imagine, guys,
this is a bit of a controversial subject there. There
are a lot of deeply held beliefs out there. I
have them, you have them, um, you know. But the
(03:59):
concept of ghost hunting, that we're looking out here, that
we're looking at here, it's it's been celebrated for years.
Over the centuries, people have been trying to figure out
what these things are, if they do exist, where are they?
And it's been dismissed largely by the modern Ivy Tower,
the academic mainstream, the scientific world. My pet name for
(04:22):
this episode is Strict's Favorite because our coworker Jonathan Strickland,
who collaborates with us frequently. Long time listeners, you probably
recognize him from some of our tech focused episodes. He
hates ghost hunting. He hates even bringing it up. It
irritates him. He doesn't like it when people speak it up.
Although I don't agree entirely with his perspective, he does
(04:46):
raise some valid points in these rants. First, as as
Matt said, there's no universally scientifically accepted or reproducible proof
of ghosts. What we mean by reproducible is that if there,
if there was some kind of proof of ghosts, and
that would mean that Noel could go into our haunted
(05:06):
studio and through uh correct ritual lighting candles, some form
of press diggitation perhaps yes, yes, just so through some
form be able to uh summon a ghost or divine
something or some interact with it with that, and that
would mean that you could go do the same thing,
(05:27):
which does lead one to believe that many of these
experiences are deeply personal and highly subjective. Yeah. Therefore, right,
if these entities exist, So if there's no proof, then
it means that we don't know what we're testing and
we don't have that objectivity, right because as as you said, no,
there's a personal, subjective thing, and if we don't know
(05:49):
what comprises these entities, then we don't know what we're
really testing for. We also have no universal, uniform set
of criteria for what constitutes ghost I mean there are
people that call themselves experts, as we're going to get
into in a little bit, that might say, oh, this, uh,
this range of electromagnetic interference, you know, means that there
(06:11):
was some sort of specter involved. But then somebody else
might say, no, no, no, I think it's more this range.
And since there's no actual proof, it's very hard to
figure out which range is the correct range and using
what tools, et cetera. Right, you'll often hear about temperature drops,
variations in electromagnetic fields and stuff like that, but there's
no question that these variations can have mundane causes. Now
(06:34):
that's not to say that there aren't some pretty convincing
stories out there about some of these paranormal experiences and encounters.
And we're actually going to talk about some of the
most convincing, shall we say, um accounts of these from
two individuals who consider themselves experts in the field. Yeah,
a lot of people consider these two the experts, the
(06:56):
people that are talked about by History Channel and Discovery
or whoever makes a documentary on TV they talk about
these people. Ed and Lorraine Warren dunt dun't done, actually,
nor can you do? This? Sound effect are way better
with these There we go, Noel Brown, Ladies and gentlemen, Yes,
(07:17):
the rumors are true. This is our episode on the
famous slash inflamous uh, demonologist medium duo self claimed ed
and Lorraine Warren. So ghost hunters or paranormal investigators what
are they? They explore specific locations reported to be hotbeds
of supernatural activity, and in the course of their work,
(07:37):
these groups or individuals will research the history of an
area as extensively as possible. Did anyone die here, what happened?
Why was the population of this mental asylum reported to
be one oh eight one month and then one o
three the next month, and with no record of departure?
Stuff like that, And then also conduct interviews with alleged
(08:00):
witnesses and or skeptics, people on either side of the fence,
while also employing electronics, digital thermometers, uh, some pretty high
tech camera gear as well. We've all seen we've all
seen this set up before in film and on television.
So the hard paranoral investigators and ghost hunters are fact finders.
That's what they're trying to do. They're getting as much
(08:21):
as information as they can, then going into a place
and then trying to find further information hopefully they're looking
for I mean, they are essentially tackling this in the
form of like a scientific question where they're trying to
come away with some sort of evidence that can be quantified,
you know, to show the proof of you know, these
events right and hopefully you know, hopefully that this is
(08:45):
a situation where someone is just looking for the truth,
not a pre confirmed belief. There are, of course, we
have to say this as as a president almost any endeavor.
There are, of course Charlatan's goons, confidence men and women
who are building the gullible and the credulous out of
money by saying things like this is tangentially related, but
(09:08):
saying things like I can talk to your dead mother
and I know you miss her, and she's in the
room and she misses you as well. She tells you
something something about your your you're moving, You're you're moving
like in not not just in time or space, but
also emotionally. I'm getting a since Sharon Sharon, yes, Sharon
(09:37):
Stone from the movie Basic Instinct. Oh, I think the
spirit is real, you guys, A passing around and saucy too.
That was a pretty pretty blue movie. Oh that's true,
that's true. You know. Funny piece of trivia. Apparently, Uh,
she only did that famous shot, that interview shot where
(09:59):
with the like only did it because the directors said, like,
we're not gonna don't worry, none of nothing indecent will
be in the shot because of the way we'll frame it. Yeah,
we're in a tight shot, don't worry. So she was
unfortunately swindled. Yep, and maybe and you know that's that's
similar somehow, speaking fantastic segways to ghost hunting as an
(10:20):
act of Charlatan's. But there are other kinds of ghost hunters, right, yeah, sure,
there are the skeptical ones that are going in to
try and dispel some of these beliefs of people, let's say,
who live in a house that they personally believe is haunted,
to come in and say, hey, look, the feeling that
you're getting is because of the electromagnetic radiation coming off
(10:40):
of this one device in your house. It's it's not
a big problem. That sound you're hearing is actually water
dropping in this pipe over here, and that's kind of
their purpose of going in in the first place. It's
only the wind, yeah, right, And of course we know
that not all skeptics are equal. There are some people
who are doing fantastic work and actually making the world
(11:03):
a more transparent easily understood place. And then there are
people who have like a weird emotional thing, like something
happened to them when they're a kid, and they want
an excuse to feel righteously indignant about it, which is
like you can support a good cause and not be
a jerk. So how long have people been hunting ghosts? Though? Well,
the search for ghosts, the search for paranormal activity, paranormal
(11:28):
experiences is totally inextricably bound up with this quest, this
idea that we need proof of the afterlife, which is
a powerful impulse, I mean, you know, and then it
goes across religions and social you know, status is I mean,
it is something that a lot of human beings are
universally fascinated with and you know, engaged in a search
(11:51):
for answers about. And so from this perspective we can
say that ghost hunting is likely as old as religion itself,
as the idea of having faith in something that you
can't see that somehow guides your path. You know, that's
a good point out, And so the roots of what
would ultimately become what we know as modern ghost hunting.
(12:12):
Um you can see these in the works of a
guy named Emmanuel Swedenborg, who's best known for a book
called Heaven and Hell, a treatise on the afterlife, which
was published in seventeen fifty eight. And then there's Friends Mesmer,
a another proponent of ghost hunting parapsychological investigation into psychic phenomenon.
(12:34):
Mesmer You might say that name sounds familiar. He is
the founder of Mesmerism, which is of course the the
the demo reel for what would later be called hypnosis.
And then you've got lots of other professionals who kind
of come out from the word works here. Who will
put on shows, who will you know, uh, conjurer talk
(12:57):
to a ghost for money and you know, get paid
and kind of kind of be like a parlor show
or something like that. And then there's a history of
that that goes forward until we get to the point
where there are these amateur groups of people who get
together and want to do the same thing that these
people are doing because they believe it to be true,
(13:17):
not not because they want to do a stage show. Right, So,
organized amateur ghost hunting dates back to these clubs that
arose during the spiritualist era, the time of the Theosophy school.
But these these clubs that sprang up very Victorian in nature,
places like the London Ghost Club or the Society for
Psychic Research. Critics have lobbed numerous allegations against these folks
(13:44):
and said their modern descendants not really scientific in nature,
that they're calling them instead like pseudo mystics. And they
called these the modern versions of this techno mystics, which
is pretty cool. I like that a lot. That's a
band name if I've ever heard one. And in con trast,
academic parapsychological institutions or groups are trying to maintain a
(14:07):
solid methodology and application of the scientific method, and they've
made some progress in this kind of field, and that's
where we found out about stuff like infrasounds. So we
also know that, um, we also know that there's been
this strange love hate relationship between allegations of psychic phenomenon
(14:29):
and application of science. Right even in eighteen fifty three,
a guy named Robert Hare, who was a chemist by trade,
said he was experimenting with mediums and reported positive results.
But we've also seen people who say, you know, I've
investigated this and I found a mondane cause, and you
(14:51):
know it's sad that we didn't find a ghost this time,
but it's good that we know what happens. So which
camp do? Ed and Lorraine Warren fall to let's let's
meet these folks. Who are they actually? So? Before Ed
passed away in August of two thousand and six, he
and his wife Lorraine were a husband and wife duo
team of paranormal investigators. Ed Warren was born in ninety six.
(15:15):
He was a retired police officer and a Navy veteran
and a self taught Demonologist's how he described himself. Lorraine
was born in n seven, one year apart, and she
claimed to have clairvoyant powers and could function as a medium.
And she said, demonology is just what it sounds like,
a systematic study of demons or beliefs. So it doesn't
(15:39):
it's a branch of three theology. But it doesn't necessarily mean, Um,
you can be a demonologist in a purely academic way.
You don't have to believe in demons to be one. Now,
this couple, you have probably heard of several of the
cases that they've looked at that they've garnered national attention.
There's been things written about some of these cases in
(16:00):
mainstream media. And on ABC News. I mean, main major
places have talked about the cases that this couple is covered,
especially through the seventies and eighties into the nineties. They
founded New England's oldest paranormal research center in nineteen fifty two.
It is the New England Society for Psychic Research. And hey,
do you like museums. They've got an awesome museum. Noll,
(16:24):
I do like museums. Actually, I'm quite fond of them.
You should check it out for listeners who might want
to take a look. You can actually visit the Warren's
Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut, and you can find out
more about that at Warren's dot net. That's w A
R R E N S dot net four A D two,
Monroe Turnpike, zip code zero six four six eight. For
(16:45):
those of you interested in a road trip, we assume
if you live in the area, you probably already heard
about this. I think, look, I'm gonna say it. I
think we have to go there. Guys. It's it's our
duty to go to shoot some stuff. They're filled at us, right.
But before we go there, it's time for a word
from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy. We've teased
(17:17):
a bit about these cases that garner national attention, but
we haven't talked too much about them. Some of these
captured the public's attention as as you said, Matt, and
they've become films and pieces of modern American folklore. We
could just name some films that have been based on
these cases right now if you want. Sure. The Amityville
(17:39):
Horror was the biggest one that I remember, at least
the Amityville Horror two was probably is it Aville Horror?
Three G Right, So this entire Amityville film series also
spawned a series of novels. Right, Oh, excuse me, it's
(18:01):
Amityville to the Possession, and yes, there definitely is Amityville
three D. Yeah, you guys gotta check out the cover.
It's an alien claw reaching out of a like a
window in this house. And it's like this faux three
D poster warning in this movie you are the victim
Amityville three D. That's the claw. It's coming. It's kind
(18:23):
of face off. It's good. Check it out. What a
great time to be alive. I wish I could have
gone to a theater with a three D film like that,
uh man, I wish I wasn't born in eighty three.
What a time to be alive. So the most recent
one is Amityville The Awakening, which is due to come
(18:43):
out in January of next year. And then there's also
the Conjuring, right, the Conjuring two. I think that's coming. Yes, yeah,
the Conjuring two is on the way. The Conjuring two
is based on the Enfield Poltergeist. All right, so let's
talk about what Amityville actually was. What do what do
(19:04):
we what do we mean when we say Amityville. What
we're referencing directly is a town in the Long Island,
New York in a house. So in this house one
twelve Ocean Avenue in Long Island, in Amityville, fellow named
Ronald Dafao Jr. Shot and killed six members of his family.
(19:30):
He was convicted of second degree murder in nineteen and
in December of that same year, another family moved in,
George and Cathy Lutts and their three children. They lived
there for about a month and then they left and
they said that they were terrorized by paranormal phenomenon. So,
(19:55):
according to this is where the Wartons come in. According
to the Warrens, some events happened according to the Lutz family.
Some other events happened according to to Fail, who is
alive and in jail. As we record this, another separate
events happen. So the stories begin to diverge, and that's
(20:16):
something we find often in these paranormal cases. If you
want to read the Warran's account, you can visit their
website Warren's dot Net. They have a special section for Amityville.
So the Lutz family described the following things right. According
to the Warrens, Uh, things start to go wrong from
(20:38):
the jump. A Catholic priest comes while the family's unpacking
to bless the home. He gets to the second floor
and he hears a voice screaming get out when he
is sprinkling holy water around the place. He didn't tell
them about the voice though, that's the thing. Apparently he
didn't say anything. It's just an everyday life, uh life experience.
(21:01):
You don't have weird bimming voices coming to you at
irregular time. They're usually you. I'm usually responding to the
one that I'm hearing. Yeah, I'm sorry, oh oh okay.
When the we're all good, I think we should we
could all work on the better listeners. I certainly could. Huh.
So this priest that didn't say anything, but he did
(21:21):
apparently warn them, do not use the upstairs room as
a bedroom. Don't let anyone sleep in there. And as
we know in horror movies and ever someone's running away
from a demon or monster, they always run upstairs, right right,
don't try to make it to the camera, just hide
in the closet. So so, just really quickly put it
into context. This is when this family moved in. It
(21:42):
was only thirteen thirteen months, or it was just a
little bit of time after six people had been shot
and killed in this same house. And whether or not,
whether or not it actually you know, causes some kind
of haunting to occur, an awful act like that that
does some things psychologically, I think to a human being
(22:03):
with having that knowledge, just walking around a place where
six people died extremely recently, I don't know. I'm I'm
as I'm looking, as I'm hearing all of this stuff,
and we're going over the story. I'm keeping that as
a lens like, no matter what I believe is happening there,
there is certainly psychological there. There are certainly psychological effects
(22:24):
playing on this family's mind. Right, Yeah, I see what
you're saying. And then there's the argument to that perhaps
certain traumatic events can leave some sort of immaterial but
real residue. Right. So George was plagued by a constant
(22:45):
chill and he just hung around the fireplace. Uh. He
also got a little bit uh messier over time is
hygiene really started to fail him and Kathy's elf, along
with his, was in decline. Their daughters started spending all
their time in her room playing with an imaginary friend
(23:07):
who was a red eyed pig called Jody and could
transform and and could only be seen by people that
she wanted to see her. That's according to Jody. Mysterious odors,
black stains on toilets and ceramic fixtures. A k A.
I'm just gonna make the call on that one. A
k A. Mold. Yeah, I was about to say, right,
(23:28):
that's not necessarily just a little scrubbing who yeah, scrubbing bubbles.
So uh. Flies. The one thing you might remember from
some of the films is that a bunch of flies
appeared out of out of the middle of nowhere. Sounds
like they just needed a housekeeper, like they needed you know. Yeah,
flies are their roaches where they're terrifying roaches. Apparently there
(23:50):
was a George maintains that his wife turned into a
ninety year old hag and began levitating off the bed
one night. But again, these stories, this, this is coming
from the warrants, and these stories are mutable and have
changed over time. Anyway, there was the account of the
spooky crumbs, you know in the kitchenett. You know, No,
(24:15):
I get the feeling that you're not buying this, no,
And I'm just trying to, you know, narrow down the
source here. I mean, it sounds like a lot of
this was definitely you know, housekeeping based. I'm just right right. Uh.
So they couldn't get the priests to come back because
every time they tried to call them, the phones we
cut out, according to them. So they walked around themselves
(24:37):
trying to I guess, purify it by reciting prayers, and
then they said a course of voices erupted telling them
to stop. At the last night, there's all this banging,
uh in the house as the marching bands are going there,
furniture is moving on its own, so they leave, which,
(24:59):
you know, I understand if you are in a situation
and feel that way. I think we've all seen enough
horror movies where we're not going to do that thing
when we say, oh no, let's stay or where's that
strange noise coming from running to odd the noise? Well, yeah,
you gotta investigate you you split up too, you gotta
(25:21):
split up. You guys, stay here or have with this.
You go to the basement and I'll go upstairs, and
then we'll we'll meet in the middle and we'll discuss
what we've learned. I'm you know what, I'm gonna take
this flashlight. The batteries are dying, but I'll be right back.
I'll just give it a shake and it will make
for some kind of like Stroby flashes, give it a
(25:41):
ghost a chance to appear. So this is I mean,
this is this is perfect because we know these horror
movie rules which show up in the Amityville horror series
but not in the real life Amityville. You know, on
their one twelve ocean. So twenty days after the Lutz
is eive the place, Ed and Lorraine Warren are called
(26:03):
by a news reporter with Channel five in New York,
a guy named Marvin Scott. He had covered the story
before he worked with the Warrens on a on a
previous investigation. So the Warrens reporters, some parapsychologists get together
at the house. The Lutz family refuses to go back
(26:26):
in the home. And here's their accounts. So remember we
said Ed is a self taught demonologist. Lorraine claims to
be clairvoyant and work as a medium in their team.
So Ed was, according to the Warrens, physically pushed to
the floor while using a religious provocation in the basement.
(26:48):
Lorraine was overwhelmed by the sense of a demonic presence
and was plagued by our psychic impressions of the Dafao
families being laid on the floor covered in white sheets,
with a sense of being physically pushed back. So to
our earlier point, these are personal impressions being described right,
These are not, at least on the warrants parts. These
(27:11):
are not objective measurements. Now if they had sit parapsychologists
measuring stuff, uh, did they see temperature drops? Things like that?
The most important thing to note about the warrants here
is that they are true believers, their devout Catholics. They
are not going in skeptically. They're you know, religion would
(27:33):
be one of the tools that they used to try
to subdue or remove or erase some sort of presence.
So they also say the land was in the past
used by a fellow named John Ketchum in the course
of their historical research, uh, black magician who had a
cottage on the land prior to the construction of the
(27:56):
house in twenty four and that he requests it to
be buried on the property and his remains are there
to this day. That's not uncommon. I mean, you know,
a lot of times people who had a state would
have arranged for them to be buried in the backyard
and with like a private cemetery, maybe next to some
mother family members that died right exactly, especially you know,
(28:19):
as you said, in a place that has a lot
of land. Right. So the problems that we run into
here are that the stories again are mutable, are changeable. Uh.
And we have Ronald de Fao Jr. Who killed his father,
(28:39):
his mother, to his two brothers and his two sisters.
He claimed that they were planning to kill him, that
his parents were and in the course of his in
the course of the investigation his conviction as appeals, things
(28:59):
like that his lawyer launched. Uh. The insanity defense right
got a psychiatrist to back it up. They said that
the FAO was abusing heroin LSD, he had antisocial personality disorder. Uh.
But with all that, the psychiatrists for the prosecution Dr
Harold Zolan said, well, he knew what he was doing.
(29:23):
Here's the weird part. Though. All six of the victims
were found laying on their stomachs, no signs of a struggle,
and the rifle had not been fitted with a sound suppressor,
so they heard each person whoever was last heard five shots. Uh.
There were no sedatives, it seemed, so someone should have
(29:43):
been awakened by the scale of it. And the medical
investigators were like, how did this happen so fast? You know?
And he also claimed, let's he claimed that his parents
are going to kill him. Then he claimed that he
killed his father for life insurance. He also tried to
(30:04):
say that he had personal things like marriages that later
turned out not to be true, and over the years
he has changed his story frequents frequently, so frequently, in fact,
that it's hard to know what actually happened other than
that he killed the people. As for the allegations of
(30:27):
supernatural phenomenon. What we are seen and said is that
there's a history of drug abuse, and drugs as we know,
can either some will say, bring you to a greater
new reality or just blur the line between the exterior
and the interior of your mind. At this point, Amityville
(30:48):
is not considered proof positive but of anything other than
an excellent ghost story and the mutability of memory. There
are a couple of interesting physical takeaways I know. One
of them was a photo that the Warrens allegedly got
of a little boy I think, or at least a
(31:08):
spirit that they say was manifested as a little boy,
and it's on their website. You can see it. It
looks like a photo of a little boy. I mean,
I don't know how much of a spirit it is,
but allegedly there wasn't any There weren't any kids in
the house at the time when they shot it. I
don't know if this is the originating point of the
idea of an Native American use of land that then
(31:33):
affects the modern construction, but they did believe that and
a tribe of Indians used that land for I think
for sick or not insane. They wouldn't have used the
word insane with Native Americans, but they used it. They
used that land to house people who are sick, and
the Warrens believed that this may have led to negative
(31:56):
energy being in that house. I don't know. I just
think it's it's it's important to see it from their perspective,
as they are probably true believers. I want to say,
at least in these kinds of things right, And you know,
well there's there are other things too. So de Feo
told Prime Time that he initially said I heard voices,
(32:20):
those void, those booming voices commanded me to kill And
later he went on Prime Time and said that he
was making that up to get a better insanity please
je Uh. The one of the lawyers who was involved
said he was the favous attorney, William webber Uh. He
was looking for book proposals from his client's story and
(32:45):
he met with George and Cathy Lutts, and he says
that he thinks they were essentially just making up stuff
and that they were making a commercial venture out of it.
The whole thing well, he said that when he talked
to them, they end he said, they end up hanging
out and drinking and brainstorming about what could go into
(33:07):
a horror book. Well, I mean, at least I guess
they're making lemonade right style. Perhaps you're right, Perhaps you're right. Uh.
And then they split, and that's why they're two varying accounts.
The big one is Amityville Horror, a true story. Uh,
and it went through thirteen printings and seventy six. But
(33:29):
here's here's the thing. And when they talk, the medium
talks about was hands hands. Holtzer goes with a medium
who claims to talk to the dead and seventy seven
the medium says, uh, there's an Indian chief, Native American
chief on the war path in the house because it
has been built on the site of that sacred burial
(33:49):
ground you mentioned, matt Um. And then members of the
mont talk At tribe of Long Island are skeptical because
they say there are no records of a burial ground
and Emityville h And even if there were, said the
tribes chief straight Arrow Cooper, that doesn't mean we will
go into somebody's body and capture their soul and control
(34:10):
in a very negative way. That's not us. One last
detail on Emityville. No one who has lived in the
house on Ocean Avenue since the lutz Is has reported
any unusual activity, which is, you know, which is a
a fairly powerful thing, oddly enough for both sides of
(34:36):
the argument. Right where there never any ghost, did the
Warrens and company exorcize or cleans clean the house? What's
the thing where you burn sage? What's they call it? Smudging? Smudging? Yeah, okay,
can you tell us a little bit about smudging. I mean,
it's just, you know, basically, it's meant to be a
cleansing ritual um where you burn this sage and just
(34:58):
walk around your house and supposed to it cleanses your
environment of any bad odors. Rights. Now, it actually smells
pretty bad, opinion, It does push out some of the negativity.
And if you let's go to another case. If you
travel to their museum, you will see a very special
(35:19):
raggedy and doll named Annabelle. This doll is, according to
the Warrens, haunted, and you can see it in various
documentaries about the Warrens. Yes, not the the Annabelle doll
that's featured in the major motion picture looks nothing like
what this Annabelle doll actually looks like. Um, the one
(35:41):
of the major pusher motion picture has more of the
human characteristics. It almost looks porcelain, more of an uncanny
valley thing. Yeah, the the actual Annabelle doll. It's got
red hair, it's knitted, it looks like um triangle nose
val very much not human, a caricature of what a
(36:02):
doll looks like. And but it is huge, at least
comparatively to a lot of other dolls that I've seen.
So a student nurse was given this raggedy and all
in nineteen seventy, but it behaved strangely, and so psychic
told the told the nurse that the doll was inhabited
by the spirit of a dead girl named Annabelle Higgins,
thus the name Annabelle. They tried to accept and nurture
(36:24):
the spirit possessed all, according to the warrants, but it's
all behaved maliciously, So they contacted the warrants, who removed
the doll to their museum after determining through their investigation
that it was demonically possessed. So it started off really
slow and and not really much happening. The doll would
appear on the bed when I guess they believed they
(36:45):
had left it on the couch, or they had left
it on the couch, it would be standing up at
the kitchen table, which you know could be odd if
you come home from work or school or whatever and
you find this doll standing there. Um. At one point,
I think the doll had blood or at least what
looks like blood on its hands and on its chest. Um,
(37:06):
it got a little funky, right, this is uh, this
is again according to him. What critics. I guess we'll
get to the critics later. We'll just give their their
version of the events. Yeah, so apparently moved on its own.
It was creepy. There was blood involved. They would do
the things you see with the with the trope of
a haunted or possessed doll in horror films. Right, you
(37:29):
leave it there, you walk back in, and all of
a sudden it's in. It's sitting in the chair, right,
or you throw it away, You throw it. Noel Brown
throws it out the cars he's driving across Connecticut, and
then when he gets back home to Atlanta, he opens
the door and who's sitting there? Yeah, No, I think
it's on the stoop. Just uh, there's this guy lou
(37:50):
at least according to their stories. Who's a friend like
an acquaintance, I guess. And he apparently disliked this doll
from the start. He he thought the was evil. Maybe
he just didn't like dolls, who's to say, but he
he believed that he had a well I'm gonna I'm
gonna tell you that the side of the story, and
(38:11):
just see if you listeners out there, see if this
triggers anything from one of our past episodes. As he
was falling asleep, he said he felt paralyzed and he
couldn't move at all, and then he saw the doll
down at the base of the bed, and it started
to move up his body and it tried to choke him,
and he was he felt like he was strangling and
(38:33):
then he woke up or he you know, he says
he lost consciousness and then he woke up and the
doll wasn't there. That sounds exactly like the accounts of
people give of their sleep paralysis and shadow people coming
to them in the night. Yeah, and if he already
has this dislike of this doll, maybe it is his
nightmare that's manifesting. Absolutely even in the shadow people's stories,
(38:56):
I mean, the form of the creature or entity or
did change from one or the other. I mean, it's dark,
so it's gonna feel shadowy. But I mean, yeah, there
were definitely accounts of different shaped things and you know,
creatures or whatever. That's fast, And I don't mean to
discount his story. It just sounds so similar that I
think you had to mention it. Right. And then we
(39:17):
notice again that in these accounts there are Here's the thing.
In these accounts, a lot of the evidence or experience
is described as a personal sensation. I felt physically pushed back.
I felt like something was climbing on me. I felt
a presence. Uh did you know? I felt the temperature drop.
(39:38):
But there was not a thermometer around. So the vast
majority of the Warren's physical evidence is found in photographs. Right,
they have all these ghost shots taken by them. People
work for them. Uh. They there's a restaurant called the
Carousel Restaurant that has a collection of some of the
photographs because the Warrens were regulars there. According to skeptics,
(40:01):
most of these are just blobs of light on film,
and that there dozen ways this could happen accidentally or purposefully.
The and then they also have video evidence, right. The
biggest one is a video of someone called the White
Lady of Union Cemetery in eastern Connecticut. Uh. It's only
(40:23):
viewable at the Warren's home, at least it was. And
apparently they said they couldn't give various objects to skeptics
for analysis, and skeptics would say that that means that
it's not legit. But then also again, depending on what
kind of people these skeptics are, maybe they would just
(40:45):
destroy it, right, you know. Uh. They they did, however,
give one team of skeptics a piece of video evidence
that showed someone de materializing, taken by a mount of
camera in a dining room in the middle of nine. Uh.
On the tape, a young man walks in room, scratches
his head, and poof disappears and then it's followed by
(41:07):
a ghost light. They took this and analyzed it and
took it to a place called the HB Group. And
here's a quote from them. We're witnessing a wipe in
this segment of videotape. Although there are several different ways
in video editing to achieve a wiping effect, the most
simple ways has been employed here. Deliberately or accidentally, the
camcorder stopped recording on the final frame of the person
(41:29):
in the room and resumed recording just a few seconds
after the person moved outside of the view of the camera.
On a related observation, the properties of light alone could
dictate a hundred different explanations for the mysterious thought of
light that appears seconds after the man vanishes. However, I
believe this was caused by a reflection through the dining
room window of the headlights of a passing car. The
(41:50):
headlights can be seen if you watch the right hand
side of the screen, just before the dot of light
fades out. That's the kind of stuff I love. Analyzing
a piece of video or photograph like that. I mean,
it's kind of stinks because in a way, you're just
throwing water on somebody's fire. But I don't know. Sometimes
that water is necessary. Sometimes that water is the cleansing
(42:13):
waters of life of Lake minnetonkave it right. And there's
another thing here. Uh, We've got countless cases we talk
We can talk about the uh the trial of our
n H I. N. Johnson a k A. The Devil
Made Me Do It case, first known court case in
the US in which the defense sought to prove innocent
(42:34):
innocence based on the demonic possession. Yes they're crazy uh
and denying a denying personal responsibility for the crime. Uh.
Johnson was convicted. He only served five years have attended
twenty years sentence for the first green manslaughter of his landlord,
Alan Bono. According to the testimony from the glass All family,
(43:02):
they're eleven year old David glass All had played host
to the demon that forced Johnson to kill the landlord
who so they after watching their son behaving strangely, the
family got ed and Lorraine Warren involved in an effort
to cure David, and they had him exercised by a
(43:23):
number of Catholic priests continue for days. According to the people,
when they finally drove the presence out, it fled the
child's body and took residence within Johnson and that is
why the landlord was killed. As you might imagine, this
did not hold up in court. Of course, he was convicted.
(43:44):
You can see Discovery Channels a haunting that has an
episode where demonsdwell takes a look at this. Of course
this is you know, this was a huge story when
it hit the media for a moment. Let's just imagine
and that your family, one of you guys, you listening,
your family or your roommates, uh, some you believe the
(44:07):
group of you truly believe that there's a possession going on, right,
and you're seeing weird things, and you're experiencing these weird
things that only you and your close friends are the
people who are being affected are seeing. And then imagine
trying to explain that to somebody else and not at
least feel like you're insane. Right, Yeah, that's I mean,
(44:29):
that's a good point. It is a personal thing. Then
let's there's another case here, the infilled poulter Geist as well,
where in there were there were claims that there was
a poulter geist in a council house in Brinds down
in Field, England from seventy seven to seventy nine, involving
two sisters. Get this guy's ages eleven and thirteen. And
(44:53):
that's important because as we know from our previous look
at Poultergeist, the most frequent reports of altergeist come from
early adolescents, early adolescent kids, girls growing up. So and
I got a lot of coverage in the British newspapers
and like the Amityville thing, it's been um, it's been touted,
(45:16):
or the inspiration for horror stories. Ed Warren claimed that
one of the kids was sound asleep levitating in midair,
and he concluded they were the subject of demonic possession.
To sum up what the critics would say, let's look
at science writer Sharon A. Hill, who said that many
of the myths and legends surrounding the Warrants have, according
(45:39):
to her, been seemingly of their own doing, and that
people have difficulties separating the Warrants from their Hollywood portrayal.
She also says that there's a lot of sensationalist hype
that is not very incredulous, right, uh, And they said,
and Hill also said that we have nothing but uh,
(46:00):
the Warren's word for this, or the his for the
objects in the occult Museum. So they are not without
their critics. And the best way to sum it up
is that, you know, a demonologist finds demonic possession in
a lot of cases. Is that because they recognize the
signs of this? Or is that because when you are
(46:21):
a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, you know
what I mean? I can see that argument easily and
of course, we should also point out that there are
there are people who believe in the wards, believe these
stories at least one of them, if not all of them,
and it's clear that in several of these cases, horrific
and tragic things happen. We are talking about murders, right,
(46:44):
and whatever the motivation for murder is, it remains a murder, nonetheless,
whether or not the devil made you do it. And
also we're getting into the nature of belief. That's what
we're ending on today. It's also coming full circle because
we started with this idea that goes hunting is as
old as perhaps one could argue belief itself. Religion is
(47:05):
sort of organized belief, I suppose. So, I mean it
really is, you know, this idea of the afterlife. People
want to believe these things. They want to um have
evidence presented to them that is proof positive that there
is an afterlife, you know, even if it's there's sinister
forces at work. I mean, I really do think that
it would be um easy for certain people to believe
(47:27):
some of these accounts from the Warrens because it's sort
of you know, holds up their own beliefs and it
allows them to feel, you know, safe in those beliefs,
and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's you know,
it's a it's a tricky thing belief. Can I tell
you something that I believe as a videographer, I went
(47:48):
through and I was watching some of the some of
the footage that the Warrens take or did take back
in the day. Well, there's this one family. They're sitting
at a kitchen table. I believe it's a mother or
or maybe a few other family members and the warrants.
And as a videographer, the way that these shots are framed,
(48:08):
they are just wide enough to get in parts of
the table, parts of the chair, and then let's say
the subject would be the daughter or the mother holding
the chair, and the they are discussing as they're filming this,
the demons that are you know, possessing either the daughter
or the chair or the table or something, and the
(48:30):
chair will move or the table will move, but you
cannot see the full table in frame on any of
the different angles that they're using. So it is I
cannot suspend my my rational thinking enough to say that
there's no way that somebody, some party is moving these things,
(48:50):
these objects, right, some physical human person is moving these things,
and it makes me so frustrated because if he would
only zoom out just a little bit or move the
camera away just a little bit, I would I would
so much more at least be close that if they
did that, then you'd be able to see the person
down on the floor moving the table, if there is
(49:10):
a person, if they're exactly if there is a peasing.
But it's like you see these things, they're always just
enough to pique your interests, and then there's something that's
framed out or it's just blurry enough, like you know,
like a bigfoot video or something like that, where it
so that's that could be a thing. But you know,
I mean, I'm just saying, it's just interesting that these
quote unquote bits of proof usually fall short in some sure.
(49:34):
I'm just saying, if you're out there and you're a
videographer trying to capture some paranormal activity like this, use
the rule of thirds or just give me a wide shot.
Just give me a wide shot. And then there's also
there's also the allegation pup will have that uh if
they are investigating as fairly as they can some unidentified phenomenon, Uh,
they will accuse the more skeptical of changing the goal
(49:57):
post or raz roof increasingly I agree with in some
cases is a valley criticism. I just want, how have
we not gotten some just super baller ghost hunter that's
really good at like shooting video and has just made
a collection of like super proof positive pieces of you know,
(50:19):
visual evidence of this stuff. How I mean, if if
it was going to happen, do you think what do
you think it would have happened by Nowelogy? There will
be you know, will there have been maybe twelve shows across,
but come on, those are such Cheryl is running around
in the dark and say, I feel hand someone touched me.
You know they're tripped. I would, I would. I don't
(50:42):
think those are serious investigations. I think those are purely entertainment.
I think there's one way to do it. And I
think one television show got it right back in the
year two thousand up until two thousand two. This isn't
This is what I pose it to you, guys. Okay,
we're one show on MTV called Fear. What they would
do you? I don't know if you guys remember this.
(51:03):
They would send celebrities, usually alone with a rig that
has a forward facing uh camera camera that's looking at
the face, and they would go alone into a place
that's supposedly haunted and do something that has to do
with the lore of the haunted house. Now, the reason
why I'm saying this is because I think having a
(51:24):
single human being alone in a place like that, not
only is it going to produce in that human the
natural fear that comes from being in a spooky place,
even if there's no actual paranormal stuff involved, but it
also eliminates all the other all the other things that
could be happening with someone else making noise, someone else,
(51:46):
you know, moving an object in a room or something
like that. I think, you, guys, this is how we
find the ghosts. We contact MTV, we get fearback, we start,
we start a new season. Maybe the three of us
are on it. I don't know, on the pilot. What
do you think? This isn't the same one where they
make the meat like elk penis is it? No? Well
(52:08):
that's fear factor. Fear factor, This is called fear. You
guys never saw this show? Can I play the ghost?
I guess that invalidates this show. Okay, all right, well
I am glad to hear that there's at least one
that is doing it correctly. We'll check it out and
if you think we can pull the reboot, ladies and
gentlemen who are all about it. Matt, you have persuaded me, Nol.
(52:29):
What do you think you want to give it a shot?
Why not? Man, I'm up for anything, like seriously, just
going to an old jail and sitting the cell for
an hour. No, I'm not gonna golone. No, why that
sounds spooky? Well, yeah, that's the whole point, you guys.
I'm gonna I'm gonna make an admission here before you
and all of you listeners. I've never been to a
haunted house like one of those like you know, like
(52:51):
the fake Really, Nam, I'm scared of you. I don't
like it. I'll like getting scared. Do you have any idea?
That's why I'm so That's why I'm poop doing all
this stuff, because I'm like, No, I was wondering you
would make perfect television though, that's what I'm saying. I
would freak out because it were I think you know,
I would go just because I'm interested in what it's
like to feel things. I don't know if I've you know,
(53:12):
maybe this will be the time I have an emotion.
So MTV get at us. We're ready, all right, and
uh we hope that you enjoyed our episode. Here on
the controversy surrounding Ed and Lorraine Warren, we want to
hear from you. Do you think this is legit? Do
you think that they have actually found things? If so,
(53:34):
what we do want you to know that you can
visit the Occult Museum at the time of this recording,
which is May. Lorraine Warren is alive at the time
of this recording. However, I do not know if she
is continually granting interviews and whether you believe their stories
(53:57):
or not. It seems that May and many many other
people around the world do believe them. And at the
very least, these people are a hallmark of American psychic folklore,
which I know sounds like a weird genre, but it's
a storied one and it's very good. Who else should
we add to this, Who else should we take a
(54:17):
look at in US British world history, especially as someone
that people in the West haven't heard about. We love
to check it out, so let us know. You can
write to us on Facebook and Twitter. We are conspiracy
stuff at both of those. You can check out our
earlier podcasts and ghost on our website. Stuff then want
you to know dot com. And just to show you
how important it is to hear from listeners, I think
(54:38):
it's time for shut up COONa. Our first shout out
goes to a website. It's the Outpost Forum. You you
may have visited this before, I don't. It seems like
a lot of people are going there. There's a specific
threat on this website that's dedicated to this show and
our buddy Casper Parks, who is a writer who has
(55:00):
written to us several times. Um he updates the thread
every week with our latest video. So if you know
you're looking for another place to talk with people about
our show, there you go check out the Outpost Forum.
There's also all kinds of other stuff you can explore
there too, so check it out. And our next shout
out comes to us from an anonymous source who said,
(55:22):
please give a shout out to Joel Plots p l
O s Z Joel who's shouting Joel? Yeah? Who can
that be? Man? We can't tell you. Our next shout
out is a personal shout out for me. Um, I'd
like to shout out my girlfriend Rock Sane, who just
(55:42):
finished listening to the gin and UM presidential primary episodes
on the road traveling for work, and she listened to
him back to back and it gave some really nice feedback.
And you know, and she's a tough one, so she
said that I sounded really smart. Let's not let's not
split hairs here anyway, Rock Sanda, thank you for thinking
(56:05):
that I'm smart, for allowing me to maintain that illusion
with you, and uh, you know, Bias, thanks for being
my lady friend. And Um, I hope you have a
good good work work times. What what a beautiful romantic
And to today's shout out corner, that was really nice.
Thanks Diana. Oh gosh, that's my wife. By the way,
(56:26):
I'm just putting out there. She'll never hear that, but
it's there. She'll feel it in her heart. That's right.
And if you would like to send a shout out
to us or a suggestion for a future topic, a
story about ghosts, we would love to hear it. Social
media is not your thing, no worries. You can write
to us directly. We are conspiracy and how stuff works
(56:47):
Dot com
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:20):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel, and I am then you are you
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know?
So as we begin today's episode, we're going to look
back on some of the stuff we have done in
the past. We've talked about ghosts before a right, guys, Yes,
we've done several episodes on ghost We've talked about we
(00:42):
talked about hunting, we've talked about what haunting is, demon session, possession, exocisms. Yeah.
So in one of our previous episodes, we asked each
other and you listeners for any stories or personal experiences
with ghosts. If you have yet to write to us
with your story, please send it in. You never know
(01:03):
when it might be the next installment of our Creepy Theater.
We had an anonymous person right in after our Gin
episode and she he someone who told us a story
about how they believe they were experiencing some strange stuff
in their bedroom one day with a GIN. You have
some strange phenomenon. Uh. And we had an email one
(01:24):
store that was from an anonymous person that just said
something to the effect of demons are real, don't talk
about them. You shouldn't talk about them because that like
coaxed them out of their shadowy domain. That it seem
very serious. The belief that happens sometimes in Southern US
folklore that one can speak something up h and uh.
(01:45):
Don't don't be mistaken, ladies and gentlemen. There are parts
of the world where people still put blankets over mirrors
if a storm comes at night. Mirrors are creepy if
you think about it. Have you ever seen a kid
have that existent question when they look in a mirror
for the first time and say, oh, it's it's me. Yeah,
(02:05):
but yeah it's not me because everything's reversed, everything's tops
each other would say, have had that experience a few
times as an adult. M H. I'm not a fan
of mirrors. I'm not ever gonna be the biggest mirror fan.
You won't find me a mirror con good with rear
view mirrors, side mirrors. They helped me not crash, But
in general I wouldn't say I avoid them, but they
(02:26):
do kind of give me the creeps a little bit.
We got a little bit sidetracked. Although you may have,
you may have had something that feels like a supernatural
experience with a mirror. Um have have we talked on
air about this? Have any of us talked about ghost hunting?
I feel like we may have. In the past. We
did an episode on ghost hunting. I believe that was
pretty focused on it on when we did the ghosts episode, right, right,
(02:51):
and Uh, today we're looking at not ghosts, but at
the people who look for ghosts or other supernatural phenomenon.
We're going to focus a little bit more on a
specific group of people. And when you say supernatural phenomenon,
we mean not just spirits of the human dead or
the venerated ancestors or astral projections from some project Stargate survivor. Right.
(03:15):
We're also talking about incorporeal non human entities, angels, extra
dimensional sentient beings, and of course demons, none of which
have been proven to exist. Just gonna put that in
there at the beginning, at least from a scientific standpoint.
A lot of people believe in these things, but they
haven't been proven. When you say extra dimensional minds, UM
(03:37):
extra dimensional beings. It makes me also think of, you know, extraterrestrials.
Is that I mean perhaps I don't know who know,
like that cake song? Perhaps perhaps so as you can imagine, guys,
this is a bit of a controversial subject there. There
are a lot of deeply held beliefs out there. I
have them, you have them, um, you know. But the
(03:59):
concept of ghost hunting, that we're looking out here, that
we're looking at here, it's it's been celebrated for years.
Over the centuries, people have been trying to figure out
what these things are, if they do exist, where are they?
And it's been dismissed largely by the modern Ivy Tower,
the academic mainstream, the scientific world. My pet name for
(04:22):
this episode is Strict's Favorite because our coworker Jonathan Strickland,
who collaborates with us frequently. Long time listeners, you probably
recognize him from some of our tech focused episodes. He
hates ghost hunting. He hates even bringing it up. It
irritates him. He doesn't like it when people speak it up.
Although I don't agree entirely with his perspective, he does
(04:46):
raise some valid points in these rants. First, as as
Matt said, there's no universally scientifically accepted or reproducible proof
of ghosts. What we mean by reproducible is that if there,
if there was some kind of proof of ghosts, and
that would mean that Noel could go into our haunted
(05:06):
studio and through uh correct ritual lighting candles, some form
of press diggitation perhaps yes, yes, just so through some
form be able to uh summon a ghost or divine
something or some interact with it with that, and that
would mean that you could go do the same thing,
(05:27):
which does lead one to believe that many of these
experiences are deeply personal and highly subjective. Yeah. Therefore, right,
if these entities exist, So if there's no proof, then
it means that we don't know what we're testing and
we don't have that objectivity, right because as as you said, no,
there's a personal, subjective thing, and if we don't know
(05:49):
what comprises these entities, then we don't know what we're
really testing for. We also have no universal, uniform set
of criteria for what constitutes ghost I mean there are
people that call themselves experts, as we're going to get
into in a little bit, that might say, oh, this, uh,
this range of electromagnetic interference, you know, means that there
(06:11):
was some sort of specter involved. But then somebody else
might say, no, no, no, I think it's more this range.
And since there's no actual proof, it's very hard to
figure out which range is the correct range and using
what tools, et cetera. Right, you'll often hear about temperature drops,
variations in electromagnetic fields and stuff like that, but there's
no question that these variations can have mundane causes. Now
(06:34):
that's not to say that there aren't some pretty convincing
stories out there about some of these paranormal experiences and encounters.
And we're actually going to talk about some of the
most convincing, shall we say, um accounts of these from
two individuals who consider themselves experts in the field. Yeah,
a lot of people consider these two the experts, the
(06:56):
people that are talked about by History Channel and Discovery
or whoever makes a documentary on TV they talk about
these people. Ed and Lorraine Warren dunt dun't done, actually,
nor can you do? This? Sound effect are way better
with these There we go, Noel Brown, Ladies and gentlemen, Yes,
(07:17):
the rumors are true. This is our episode on the
famous slash inflamous uh, demonologist medium duo self claimed ed
and Lorraine Warren. So ghost hunters or paranormal investigators what
are they? They explore specific locations reported to be hotbeds
of supernatural activity, and in the course of their work,
(07:37):
these groups or individuals will research the history of an
area as extensively as possible. Did anyone die here, what happened?
Why was the population of this mental asylum reported to
be one oh eight one month and then one o
three the next month, and with no record of departure?
Stuff like that, And then also conduct interviews with alleged
(08:00):
witnesses and or skeptics, people on either side of the fence,
while also employing electronics, digital thermometers, uh, some pretty high
tech camera gear as well. We've all seen we've all
seen this set up before in film and on television.
So the hard paranoral investigators and ghost hunters are fact finders.
That's what they're trying to do. They're getting as much
(08:21):
as information as they can, then going into a place
and then trying to find further information hopefully they're looking
for I mean, they are essentially tackling this in the
form of like a scientific question where they're trying to
come away with some sort of evidence that can be quantified,
you know, to show the proof of you know, these
events right and hopefully you know, hopefully that this is
(08:45):
a situation where someone is just looking for the truth,
not a pre confirmed belief. There are, of course, we
have to say this as as a president almost any endeavor.
There are, of course Charlatan's goons, confidence men and women
who are building the gullible and the credulous out of
money by saying things like this is tangentially related, but
(09:08):
saying things like I can talk to your dead mother
and I know you miss her, and she's in the
room and she misses you as well. She tells you
something something about your your you're moving, You're you're moving
like in not not just in time or space, but
also emotionally. I'm getting a since Sharon Sharon, yes, Sharon
(09:37):
Stone from the movie Basic Instinct. Oh, I think the
spirit is real, you guys, A passing around and saucy too.
That was a pretty pretty blue movie. Oh that's true,
that's true. You know. Funny piece of trivia. Apparently, Uh,
she only did that famous shot, that interview shot where
(09:59):
with the like only did it because the directors said, like,
we're not gonna don't worry, none of nothing indecent will
be in the shot because of the way we'll frame it. Yeah,
we're in a tight shot, don't worry. So she was
unfortunately swindled. Yep, and maybe and you know that's that's
similar somehow, speaking fantastic segways to ghost hunting as an
(10:20):
act of Charlatan's. But there are other kinds of ghost hunters, right, yeah, sure,
there are the skeptical ones that are going in to
try and dispel some of these beliefs of people, let's say,
who live in a house that they personally believe is haunted,
to come in and say, hey, look, the feeling that
you're getting is because of the electromagnetic radiation coming off
(10:40):
of this one device in your house. It's it's not
a big problem. That sound you're hearing is actually water
dropping in this pipe over here, and that's kind of
their purpose of going in in the first place. It's
only the wind, yeah, right, And of course we know
that not all skeptics are equal. There are some people
who are doing fantastic work and actually making the world
(11:03):
a more transparent easily understood place. And then there are
people who have like a weird emotional thing, like something
happened to them when they're a kid, and they want
an excuse to feel righteously indignant about it, which is
like you can support a good cause and not be
a jerk. So how long have people been hunting ghosts? Though? Well,
the search for ghosts, the search for paranormal activity, paranormal
(11:28):
experiences is totally inextricably bound up with this quest, this
idea that we need proof of the afterlife, which is
a powerful impulse, I mean, you know, and then it
goes across religions and social you know, status is I mean,
it is something that a lot of human beings are
universally fascinated with and you know, engaged in a search
(11:51):
for answers about. And so from this perspective we can
say that ghost hunting is likely as old as religion itself,
as the idea of having faith in something that you
can't see that somehow guides your path. You know, that's
a good point out, And so the roots of what
would ultimately become what we know as modern ghost hunting.
(12:12):
Um you can see these in the works of a
guy named Emmanuel Swedenborg, who's best known for a book
called Heaven and Hell, a treatise on the afterlife, which
was published in seventeen fifty eight. And then there's Friends Mesmer,
a another proponent of ghost hunting parapsychological investigation into psychic phenomenon.
(12:34):
Mesmer You might say that name sounds familiar. He is
the founder of Mesmerism, which is of course the the
the demo reel for what would later be called hypnosis.
And then you've got lots of other professionals who kind
of come out from the word works here. Who will
put on shows, who will you know, uh, conjurer talk
(12:57):
to a ghost for money and you know, get paid
and kind of kind of be like a parlor show
or something like that. And then there's a history of
that that goes forward until we get to the point
where there are these amateur groups of people who get
together and want to do the same thing that these
people are doing because they believe it to be true,
(13:17):
not not because they want to do a stage show. Right, So,
organized amateur ghost hunting dates back to these clubs that
arose during the spiritualist era, the time of the Theosophy school.
But these these clubs that sprang up very Victorian in nature,
places like the London Ghost Club or the Society for
Psychic Research. Critics have lobbed numerous allegations against these folks
(13:44):
and said their modern descendants not really scientific in nature,
that they're calling them instead like pseudo mystics. And they
called these the modern versions of this techno mystics, which
is pretty cool. I like that a lot. That's a
band name if I've ever heard one. And in con trast,
academic parapsychological institutions or groups are trying to maintain a
(14:07):
solid methodology and application of the scientific method, and they've
made some progress in this kind of field, and that's
where we found out about stuff like infrasounds. So we
also know that, um, we also know that there's been
this strange love hate relationship between allegations of psychic phenomenon
(14:29):
and application of science. Right even in eighteen fifty three,
a guy named Robert Hare, who was a chemist by trade,
said he was experimenting with mediums and reported positive results.
But we've also seen people who say, you know, I've
investigated this and I found a mondane cause, and you
(14:51):
know it's sad that we didn't find a ghost this time,
but it's good that we know what happens. So which
camp do? Ed and Lorraine Warren fall to let's let's
meet these folks. Who are they actually? So? Before Ed
passed away in August of two thousand and six, he
and his wife Lorraine were a husband and wife duo
team of paranormal investigators. Ed Warren was born in ninety six.
(15:15):
He was a retired police officer and a Navy veteran
and a self taught Demonologist's how he described himself. Lorraine
was born in n seven, one year apart, and she
claimed to have clairvoyant powers and could function as a medium.
And she said, demonology is just what it sounds like,
a systematic study of demons or beliefs. So it doesn't
(15:39):
it's a branch of three theology. But it doesn't necessarily mean, Um,
you can be a demonologist in a purely academic way.
You don't have to believe in demons to be one. Now,
this couple, you have probably heard of several of the
cases that they've looked at that they've garnered national attention.
There's been things written about some of these cases in
(16:00):
mainstream media. And on ABC News. I mean, main major
places have talked about the cases that this couple is covered,
especially through the seventies and eighties into the nineties. They
founded New England's oldest paranormal research center in nineteen fifty two.
It is the New England Society for Psychic Research. And hey,
do you like museums. They've got an awesome museum. Noll,
(16:24):
I do like museums. Actually, I'm quite fond of them.
You should check it out for listeners who might want
to take a look. You can actually visit the Warren's
Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut, and you can find out
more about that at Warren's dot net. That's w A
R R E N S dot net four A D two,
Monroe Turnpike, zip code zero six four six eight. For
(16:45):
those of you interested in a road trip, we assume
if you live in the area, you probably already heard
about this. I think, look, I'm gonna say it. I
think we have to go there. Guys. It's it's our
duty to go to shoot some stuff. They're filled at us, right.
But before we go there, it's time for a word
from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy. We've teased
(17:17):
a bit about these cases that garner national attention, but
we haven't talked too much about them. Some of these
captured the public's attention as as you said, Matt, and
they've become films and pieces of modern American folklore. We
could just name some films that have been based on
these cases right now if you want. Sure. The Amityville
(17:39):
Horror was the biggest one that I remember, at least
the Amityville Horror two was probably is it Aville Horror?
Three G Right, So this entire Amityville film series also
spawned a series of novels. Right, Oh, excuse me, it's
(18:01):
Amityville to the Possession, and yes, there definitely is Amityville
three D. Yeah, you guys gotta check out the cover.
It's an alien claw reaching out of a like a
window in this house. And it's like this faux three
D poster warning in this movie you are the victim
Amityville three D. That's the claw. It's coming. It's kind
(18:23):
of face off. It's good. Check it out. What a
great time to be alive. I wish I could have
gone to a theater with a three D film like that,
uh man, I wish I wasn't born in eighty three.
What a time to be alive. So the most recent
one is Amityville The Awakening, which is due to come
(18:43):
out in January of next year. And then there's also
the Conjuring, right, the Conjuring two. I think that's coming. Yes, yeah,
the Conjuring two is on the way. The Conjuring two
is based on the Enfield Poltergeist. All right, so let's
talk about what Amityville actually was. What do what do
(19:04):
we what do we mean when we say Amityville. What
we're referencing directly is a town in the Long Island,
New York in a house. So in this house one
twelve Ocean Avenue in Long Island, in Amityville, fellow named
Ronald Dafao Jr. Shot and killed six members of his family.
(19:30):
He was convicted of second degree murder in nineteen and
in December of that same year, another family moved in,
George and Cathy Lutts and their three children. They lived
there for about a month and then they left and
they said that they were terrorized by paranormal phenomenon. So,
(19:55):
according to this is where the Wartons come in. According
to the Warrens, some events happened according to the Lutz family.
Some other events happened according to to Fail, who is
alive and in jail. As we record this, another separate
events happen. So the stories begin to diverge, and that's
(20:16):
something we find often in these paranormal cases. If you
want to read the Warran's account, you can visit their
website Warren's dot Net. They have a special section for Amityville.
So the Lutz family described the following things right. According
to the Warrens, Uh, things start to go wrong from
(20:38):
the jump. A Catholic priest comes while the family's unpacking
to bless the home. He gets to the second floor
and he hears a voice screaming get out when he
is sprinkling holy water around the place. He didn't tell
them about the voice though, that's the thing. Apparently he
didn't say anything. It's just an everyday life, uh life experience.
(21:01):
You don't have weird bimming voices coming to you at
irregular time. They're usually you. I'm usually responding to the
one that I'm hearing. Yeah, I'm sorry, oh oh okay.
When the we're all good, I think we should we
could all work on the better listeners. I certainly could. Huh.
So this priest that didn't say anything, but he did
(21:21):
apparently warn them, do not use the upstairs room as
a bedroom. Don't let anyone sleep in there. And as
we know in horror movies and ever someone's running away
from a demon or monster, they always run upstairs, right right,
don't try to make it to the camera, just hide
in the closet. So so, just really quickly put it
into context. This is when this family moved in. It
(21:42):
was only thirteen thirteen months, or it was just a
little bit of time after six people had been shot
and killed in this same house. And whether or not,
whether or not it actually you know, causes some kind
of haunting to occur, an awful act like that that
does some things psychologically, I think to a human being
(22:03):
with having that knowledge, just walking around a place where
six people died extremely recently, I don't know. I'm I'm
as I'm looking, as I'm hearing all of this stuff,
and we're going over the story. I'm keeping that as
a lens like, no matter what I believe is happening there,
there is certainly psychological there. There are certainly psychological effects
(22:24):
playing on this family's mind. Right, Yeah, I see what
you're saying. And then there's the argument to that perhaps
certain traumatic events can leave some sort of immaterial but
real residue. Right. So George was plagued by a constant
(22:45):
chill and he just hung around the fireplace. Uh. He
also got a little bit uh messier over time is
hygiene really started to fail him and Kathy's elf, along
with his, was in decline. Their daughters started spending all
their time in her room playing with an imaginary friend
(23:07):
who was a red eyed pig called Jody and could
transform and and could only be seen by people that
she wanted to see her. That's according to Jody. Mysterious odors,
black stains on toilets and ceramic fixtures. A k A.
I'm just gonna make the call on that one. A
k A. Mold. Yeah, I was about to say, right,
(23:28):
that's not necessarily just a little scrubbing who yeah, scrubbing bubbles.
So uh. Flies. The one thing you might remember from
some of the films is that a bunch of flies
appeared out of out of the middle of nowhere. Sounds
like they just needed a housekeeper, like they needed you know. Yeah,
flies are their roaches where they're terrifying roaches. Apparently there
(23:50):
was a George maintains that his wife turned into a
ninety year old hag and began levitating off the bed
one night. But again, these stories, this, this is coming
from the warrants, and these stories are mutable and have
changed over time. Anyway, there was the account of the
spooky crumbs, you know in the kitchenett. You know, No,
(24:15):
I get the feeling that you're not buying this, no,
And I'm just trying to, you know, narrow down the
source here. I mean, it sounds like a lot of
this was definitely you know, housekeeping based. I'm just right right. Uh.
So they couldn't get the priests to come back because
every time they tried to call them, the phones we
cut out, according to them. So they walked around themselves
(24:37):
trying to I guess, purify it by reciting prayers, and
then they said a course of voices erupted telling them
to stop. At the last night, there's all this banging,
uh in the house as the marching bands are going there,
furniture is moving on its own, so they leave, which,
(24:59):
you know, I understand if you are in a situation
and feel that way. I think we've all seen enough
horror movies where we're not going to do that thing
when we say, oh no, let's stay or where's that
strange noise coming from running to odd the noise? Well, yeah,
you gotta investigate you you split up too, you gotta
(25:21):
split up. You guys, stay here or have with this.
You go to the basement and I'll go upstairs, and
then we'll we'll meet in the middle and we'll discuss
what we've learned. I'm you know what, I'm gonna take
this flashlight. The batteries are dying, but I'll be right back.
I'll just give it a shake and it will make
for some kind of like Stroby flashes, give it a
(25:41):
ghost a chance to appear. So this is I mean,
this is this is perfect because we know these horror
movie rules which show up in the Amityville horror series
but not in the real life Amityville. You know, on
their one twelve ocean. So twenty days after the Lutz
is eive the place, Ed and Lorraine Warren are called
(26:03):
by a news reporter with Channel five in New York,
a guy named Marvin Scott. He had covered the story
before he worked with the Warrens on a on a
previous investigation. So the Warrens reporters, some parapsychologists get together
at the house. The Lutz family refuses to go back
(26:26):
in the home. And here's their accounts. So remember we
said Ed is a self taught demonologist. Lorraine claims to
be clairvoyant and work as a medium in their team.
So Ed was, according to the Warrens, physically pushed to
the floor while using a religious provocation in the basement.
(26:48):
Lorraine was overwhelmed by the sense of a demonic presence
and was plagued by our psychic impressions of the Dafao
families being laid on the floor covered in white sheets,
with a sense of being physically pushed back. So to
our earlier point, these are personal impressions being described right,
These are not, at least on the warrants parts. These
(27:11):
are not objective measurements. Now if they had sit parapsychologists
measuring stuff, uh, did they see temperature drops? Things like that?
The most important thing to note about the warrants here
is that they are true believers, their devout Catholics. They
are not going in skeptically. They're you know, religion would
(27:33):
be one of the tools that they used to try
to subdue or remove or erase some sort of presence.
So they also say the land was in the past
used by a fellow named John Ketchum in the course
of their historical research, uh, black magician who had a
cottage on the land prior to the construction of the
(27:56):
house in twenty four and that he requests it to
be buried on the property and his remains are there
to this day. That's not uncommon. I mean, you know,
a lot of times people who had a state would
have arranged for them to be buried in the backyard
and with like a private cemetery, maybe next to some
mother family members that died right exactly, especially you know,
(28:19):
as you said, in a place that has a lot
of land. Right. So the problems that we run into
here are that the stories again are mutable, are changeable. Uh.
And we have Ronald de Fao Jr. Who killed his father,
(28:39):
his mother, to his two brothers and his two sisters.
He claimed that they were planning to kill him, that
his parents were and in the course of his in
the course of the investigation his conviction as appeals, things
(28:59):
like that his lawyer launched. Uh. The insanity defense right
got a psychiatrist to back it up. They said that
the FAO was abusing heroin LSD, he had antisocial personality disorder. Uh.
But with all that, the psychiatrists for the prosecution Dr
Harold Zolan said, well, he knew what he was doing.
(29:23):
Here's the weird part. Though. All six of the victims
were found laying on their stomachs, no signs of a struggle,
and the rifle had not been fitted with a sound suppressor,
so they heard each person whoever was last heard five shots. Uh.
There were no sedatives, it seemed, so someone should have
(29:43):
been awakened by the scale of it. And the medical
investigators were like, how did this happen so fast? You know?
And he also claimed, let's he claimed that his parents
are going to kill him. Then he claimed that he
killed his father for life insurance. He also tried to
(30:04):
say that he had personal things like marriages that later
turned out not to be true, and over the years
he has changed his story frequents frequently, so frequently, in fact,
that it's hard to know what actually happened other than
that he killed the people. As for the allegations of
(30:27):
supernatural phenomenon. What we are seen and said is that
there's a history of drug abuse, and drugs as we know,
can either some will say, bring you to a greater
new reality or just blur the line between the exterior
and the interior of your mind. At this point, Amityville
(30:48):
is not considered proof positive but of anything other than
an excellent ghost story and the mutability of memory. There
are a couple of interesting physical takeaways I know. One
of them was a photo that the Warrens allegedly got
of a little boy I think, or at least a
(31:08):
spirit that they say was manifested as a little boy,
and it's on their website. You can see it. It
looks like a photo of a little boy. I mean,
I don't know how much of a spirit it is,
but allegedly there wasn't any There weren't any kids in
the house at the time when they shot it. I
don't know if this is the originating point of the
idea of an Native American use of land that then
(31:33):
affects the modern construction, but they did believe that and
a tribe of Indians used that land for I think
for sick or not insane. They wouldn't have used the
word insane with Native Americans, but they used it. They
used that land to house people who are sick, and
the Warrens believed that this may have led to negative
(31:56):
energy being in that house. I don't know. I just
think it's it's it's important to see it from their perspective,
as they are probably true believers. I want to say,
at least in these kinds of things right, And you know,
well there's there are other things too. So de Feo
told Prime Time that he initially said I heard voices,
(32:20):
those void, those booming voices commanded me to kill And
later he went on Prime Time and said that he
was making that up to get a better insanity please
je Uh. The one of the lawyers who was involved
said he was the favous attorney, William webber Uh. He
was looking for book proposals from his client's story and
(32:45):
he met with George and Cathy Lutts, and he says
that he thinks they were essentially just making up stuff
and that they were making a commercial venture out of it.
The whole thing well, he said that when he talked
to them, they end he said, they end up hanging
out and drinking and brainstorming about what could go into
(33:07):
a horror book. Well, I mean, at least I guess
they're making lemonade right style. Perhaps you're right, Perhaps you're right. Uh.
And then they split, and that's why they're two varying accounts.
The big one is Amityville Horror, a true story. Uh,
and it went through thirteen printings and seventy six. But
(33:29):
here's here's the thing. And when they talk, the medium
talks about was hands hands. Holtzer goes with a medium
who claims to talk to the dead and seventy seven
the medium says, uh, there's an Indian chief, Native American
chief on the war path in the house because it
has been built on the site of that sacred burial
(33:49):
ground you mentioned, matt Um. And then members of the
mont talk At tribe of Long Island are skeptical because
they say there are no records of a burial ground
and Emityville h And even if there were, said the
tribes chief straight Arrow Cooper, that doesn't mean we will
go into somebody's body and capture their soul and control
(34:10):
in a very negative way. That's not us. One last
detail on Emityville. No one who has lived in the
house on Ocean Avenue since the lutz Is has reported
any unusual activity, which is, you know, which is a
a fairly powerful thing, oddly enough for both sides of
(34:36):
the argument. Right where there never any ghost, did the
Warrens and company exorcize or cleans clean the house? What's
the thing where you burn sage? What's they call it? Smudging? Smudging? Yeah, okay,
can you tell us a little bit about smudging. I mean,
it's just, you know, basically, it's meant to be a
cleansing ritual um where you burn this sage and just
(34:58):
walk around your house and supposed to it cleanses your
environment of any bad odors. Rights. Now, it actually smells
pretty bad, opinion, It does push out some of the negativity.
And if you let's go to another case. If you
travel to their museum, you will see a very special
(35:19):
raggedy and doll named Annabelle. This doll is, according to
the Warrens, haunted, and you can see it in various
documentaries about the Warrens. Yes, not the the Annabelle doll
that's featured in the major motion picture looks nothing like
what this Annabelle doll actually looks like. Um, the one
(35:41):
of the major pusher motion picture has more of the
human characteristics. It almost looks porcelain, more of an uncanny
valley thing. Yeah, the the actual Annabelle doll. It's got
red hair, it's knitted, it looks like um triangle nose
val very much not human, a caricature of what a
(36:02):
doll looks like. And but it is huge, at least
comparatively to a lot of other dolls that I've seen.
So a student nurse was given this raggedy and all
in nineteen seventy, but it behaved strangely, and so psychic
told the told the nurse that the doll was inhabited
by the spirit of a dead girl named Annabelle Higgins,
thus the name Annabelle. They tried to accept and nurture
(36:24):
the spirit possessed all, according to the warrants, but it's
all behaved maliciously, So they contacted the warrants, who removed
the doll to their museum after determining through their investigation
that it was demonically possessed. So it started off really
slow and and not really much happening. The doll would
appear on the bed when I guess they believed they
(36:45):
had left it on the couch, or they had left
it on the couch, it would be standing up at
the kitchen table, which you know could be odd if
you come home from work or school or whatever and
you find this doll standing there. Um. At one point,
I think the doll had blood or at least what
looks like blood on its hands and on its chest. Um,
(37:06):
it got a little funky, right, this is uh, this
is again according to him. What critics. I guess we'll
get to the critics later. We'll just give their their
version of the events. Yeah, so apparently moved on its own.
It was creepy. There was blood involved. They would do
the things you see with the with the trope of
a haunted or possessed doll in horror films. Right, you
(37:29):
leave it there, you walk back in, and all of
a sudden it's in. It's sitting in the chair, right,
or you throw it away, You throw it. Noel Brown
throws it out the cars he's driving across Connecticut, and
then when he gets back home to Atlanta, he opens
the door and who's sitting there? Yeah, No, I think
it's on the stoop. Just uh, there's this guy lou
(37:50):
at least according to their stories. Who's a friend like
an acquaintance, I guess. And he apparently disliked this doll
from the start. He he thought the was evil. Maybe
he just didn't like dolls, who's to say, but he
he believed that he had a well I'm gonna I'm
gonna tell you that the side of the story, and
(38:11):
just see if you listeners out there, see if this
triggers anything from one of our past episodes. As he
was falling asleep, he said he felt paralyzed and he
couldn't move at all, and then he saw the doll
down at the base of the bed, and it started
to move up his body and it tried to choke him,
and he was he felt like he was strangling and
(38:33):
then he woke up or he you know, he says
he lost consciousness and then he woke up and the
doll wasn't there. That sounds exactly like the accounts of
people give of their sleep paralysis and shadow people coming
to them in the night. Yeah, and if he already
has this dislike of this doll, maybe it is his
nightmare that's manifesting. Absolutely even in the shadow people's stories,
(38:56):
I mean, the form of the creature or entity or
did change from one or the other. I mean, it's dark,
so it's gonna feel shadowy. But I mean, yeah, there
were definitely accounts of different shaped things and you know,
creatures or whatever. That's fast, And I don't mean to
discount his story. It just sounds so similar that I
think you had to mention it. Right. And then we
(39:17):
notice again that in these accounts there are Here's the thing.
In these accounts, a lot of the evidence or experience
is described as a personal sensation. I felt physically pushed back.
I felt like something was climbing on me. I felt
a presence. Uh did you know? I felt the temperature drop.
(39:38):
But there was not a thermometer around. So the vast
majority of the Warren's physical evidence is found in photographs. Right,
they have all these ghost shots taken by them. People
work for them. Uh. They there's a restaurant called the
Carousel Restaurant that has a collection of some of the
photographs because the Warrens were regulars there. According to skeptics,
(40:01):
most of these are just blobs of light on film,
and that there dozen ways this could happen accidentally or purposefully.
The and then they also have video evidence, right. The
biggest one is a video of someone called the White
Lady of Union Cemetery in eastern Connecticut. Uh. It's only
(40:23):
viewable at the Warren's home, at least it was. And
apparently they said they couldn't give various objects to skeptics
for analysis, and skeptics would say that that means that
it's not legit. But then also again, depending on what
kind of people these skeptics are, maybe they would just
(40:45):
destroy it, right, you know. Uh. They they did, however,
give one team of skeptics a piece of video evidence
that showed someone de materializing, taken by a mount of
camera in a dining room in the middle of nine. Uh.
On the tape, a young man walks in room, scratches
his head, and poof disappears and then it's followed by
(41:07):
a ghost light. They took this and analyzed it and
took it to a place called the HB Group. And
here's a quote from them. We're witnessing a wipe in
this segment of videotape. Although there are several different ways
in video editing to achieve a wiping effect, the most
simple ways has been employed here. Deliberately or accidentally, the
camcorder stopped recording on the final frame of the person
(41:29):
in the room and resumed recording just a few seconds
after the person moved outside of the view of the camera.
On a related observation, the properties of light alone could
dictate a hundred different explanations for the mysterious thought of
light that appears seconds after the man vanishes. However, I
believe this was caused by a reflection through the dining
room window of the headlights of a passing car. The
(41:50):
headlights can be seen if you watch the right hand
side of the screen, just before the dot of light
fades out. That's the kind of stuff I love. Analyzing
a piece of video or photograph like that. I mean,
it's kind of stinks because in a way, you're just
throwing water on somebody's fire. But I don't know. Sometimes
that water is necessary. Sometimes that water is the cleansing
(42:13):
waters of life of Lake minnetonkave it right. And there's
another thing here. Uh, We've got countless cases we talk
We can talk about the uh the trial of our
n H I. N. Johnson a k A. The Devil
Made Me Do It case, first known court case in
the US in which the defense sought to prove innocent
(42:34):
innocence based on the demonic possession. Yes they're crazy uh
and denying a denying personal responsibility for the crime. Uh.
Johnson was convicted. He only served five years have attended
twenty years sentence for the first green manslaughter of his landlord,
Alan Bono. According to the testimony from the glass All family,
(43:02):
they're eleven year old David glass All had played host
to the demon that forced Johnson to kill the landlord
who so they after watching their son behaving strangely, the
family got ed and Lorraine Warren involved in an effort
to cure David, and they had him exercised by a
(43:23):
number of Catholic priests continue for days. According to the people,
when they finally drove the presence out, it fled the
child's body and took residence within Johnson and that is
why the landlord was killed. As you might imagine, this
did not hold up in court. Of course, he was convicted.
(43:44):
You can see Discovery Channels a haunting that has an
episode where demonsdwell takes a look at this. Of course
this is you know, this was a huge story when
it hit the media for a moment. Let's just imagine
and that your family, one of you guys, you listening,
your family or your roommates, uh, some you believe the
(44:07):
group of you truly believe that there's a possession going on, right,
and you're seeing weird things, and you're experiencing these weird
things that only you and your close friends are the
people who are being affected are seeing. And then imagine
trying to explain that to somebody else and not at
least feel like you're insane. Right, Yeah, that's I mean,
(44:29):
that's a good point. It is a personal thing. Then
let's there's another case here, the infilled poulter Geist as well,
where in there were there were claims that there was
a poulter geist in a council house in Brinds down
in Field, England from seventy seven to seventy nine, involving
two sisters. Get this guy's ages eleven and thirteen. And
(44:53):
that's important because as we know from our previous look
at Poultergeist, the most frequent reports of altergeist come from
early adolescents, early adolescent kids, girls growing up. So and
I got a lot of coverage in the British newspapers
and like the Amityville thing, it's been um, it's been touted,
(45:16):
or the inspiration for horror stories. Ed Warren claimed that
one of the kids was sound asleep levitating in midair,
and he concluded they were the subject of demonic possession.
To sum up what the critics would say, let's look
at science writer Sharon A. Hill, who said that many
of the myths and legends surrounding the Warrants have, according
(45:39):
to her, been seemingly of their own doing, and that
people have difficulties separating the Warrants from their Hollywood portrayal.
She also says that there's a lot of sensationalist hype
that is not very incredulous, right, uh, And they said,
and Hill also said that we have nothing but uh,
(46:00):
the Warren's word for this, or the his for the
objects in the occult Museum. So they are not without
their critics. And the best way to sum it up
is that, you know, a demonologist finds demonic possession in
a lot of cases. Is that because they recognize the
signs of this? Or is that because when you are
(46:21):
a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, you know
what I mean? I can see that argument easily and
of course, we should also point out that there are
there are people who believe in the wards, believe these
stories at least one of them, if not all of them,
and it's clear that in several of these cases, horrific
and tragic things happen. We are talking about murders, right,
(46:44):
and whatever the motivation for murder is, it remains a murder, nonetheless,
whether or not the devil made you do it. And
also we're getting into the nature of belief. That's what
we're ending on today. It's also coming full circle because
we started with this idea that goes hunting is as
old as perhaps one could argue belief itself. Religion is
(47:05):
sort of organized belief, I suppose. So, I mean it
really is, you know, this idea of the afterlife. People
want to believe these things. They want to um have
evidence presented to them that is proof positive that there
is an afterlife, you know, even if it's there's sinister
forces at work. I mean, I really do think that
it would be um easy for certain people to believe
(47:27):
some of these accounts from the Warrens because it's sort
of you know, holds up their own beliefs and it
allows them to feel, you know, safe in those beliefs,
and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's you know,
it's a it's a tricky thing belief. Can I tell
you something that I believe as a videographer, I went
(47:48):
through and I was watching some of the some of
the footage that the Warrens take or did take back
in the day. Well, there's this one family. They're sitting
at a kitchen table. I believe it's a mother or
or maybe a few other family members and the warrants.
And as a videographer, the way that these shots are framed,
(48:08):
they are just wide enough to get in parts of
the table, parts of the chair, and then let's say
the subject would be the daughter or the mother holding
the chair, and the they are discussing as they're filming this,
the demons that are you know, possessing either the daughter
or the chair or the table or something, and the
(48:30):
chair will move or the table will move, but you
cannot see the full table in frame on any of
the different angles that they're using. So it is I
cannot suspend my my rational thinking enough to say that
there's no way that somebody, some party is moving these things,
(48:50):
these objects, right, some physical human person is moving these things,
and it makes me so frustrated because if he would
only zoom out just a little bit or move the
camera away just a little bit, I would I would
so much more at least be close that if they
did that, then you'd be able to see the person
down on the floor moving the table, if there is
(49:10):
a person, if they're exactly if there is a peasing.
But it's like you see these things, they're always just
enough to pique your interests, and then there's something that's
framed out or it's just blurry enough, like you know,
like a bigfoot video or something like that, where it
so that's that could be a thing. But you know,
I mean, I'm just saying, it's just interesting that these
quote unquote bits of proof usually fall short in some sure.
(49:34):
I'm just saying, if you're out there and you're a
videographer trying to capture some paranormal activity like this, use
the rule of thirds or just give me a wide shot.
Just give me a wide shot. And then there's also
there's also the allegation pup will have that uh if
they are investigating as fairly as they can some unidentified phenomenon, Uh,
they will accuse the more skeptical of changing the goal
(49:57):
post or raz roof increasingly I agree with in some
cases is a valley criticism. I just want, how have
we not gotten some just super baller ghost hunter that's
really good at like shooting video and has just made
a collection of like super proof positive pieces of you know,
(50:19):
visual evidence of this stuff. How I mean, if if
it was going to happen, do you think what do
you think it would have happened by Nowelogy? There will
be you know, will there have been maybe twelve shows across,
but come on, those are such Cheryl is running around
in the dark and say, I feel hand someone touched me.
You know they're tripped. I would, I would. I don't
(50:42):
think those are serious investigations. I think those are purely entertainment.
I think there's one way to do it. And I
think one television show got it right back in the
year two thousand up until two thousand two. This isn't
This is what I pose it to you, guys. Okay,
we're one show on MTV called Fear. What they would
do you? I don't know if you guys remember this.
(51:03):
They would send celebrities, usually alone with a rig that
has a forward facing uh camera camera that's looking at
the face, and they would go alone into a place
that's supposedly haunted and do something that has to do
with the lore of the haunted house. Now, the reason
why I'm saying this is because I think having a
(51:24):
single human being alone in a place like that, not
only is it going to produce in that human the
natural fear that comes from being in a spooky place,
even if there's no actual paranormal stuff involved, but it
also eliminates all the other all the other things that
could be happening with someone else making noise, someone else,
(51:46):
you know, moving an object in a room or something
like that. I think, you, guys, this is how we
find the ghosts. We contact MTV, we get fearback, we start,
we start a new season. Maybe the three of us
are on it. I don't know, on the pilot. What
do you think? This isn't the same one where they
make the meat like elk penis is it? No? Well
(52:08):
that's fear factor. Fear factor, This is called fear. You
guys never saw this show? Can I play the ghost?
I guess that invalidates this show. Okay, all right, well
I am glad to hear that there's at least one
that is doing it correctly. We'll check it out and
if you think we can pull the reboot, ladies and
gentlemen who are all about it. Matt, you have persuaded me, Nol.
(52:29):
What do you think you want to give it a shot?
Why not? Man, I'm up for anything, like seriously, just
going to an old jail and sitting the cell for
an hour. No, I'm not gonna golone. No, why that
sounds spooky? Well, yeah, that's the whole point, you guys.
I'm gonna I'm gonna make an admission here before you
and all of you listeners. I've never been to a
haunted house like one of those like you know, like
(52:51):
the fake Really, Nam, I'm scared of you. I don't
like it. I'll like getting scared. Do you have any idea?
That's why I'm so That's why I'm poop doing all
this stuff, because I'm like, No, I was wondering you
would make perfect television though, that's what I'm saying. I
would freak out because it were I think you know,
I would go just because I'm interested in what it's
like to feel things. I don't know if I've you know,
(53:12):
maybe this will be the time I have an emotion.
So MTV get at us. We're ready, all right, and
uh we hope that you enjoyed our episode. Here on
the controversy surrounding Ed and Lorraine Warren, we want to
hear from you. Do you think this is legit? Do
you think that they have actually found things? If so,
(53:34):
what we do want you to know that you can
visit the Occult Museum at the time of this recording,
which is May. Lorraine Warren is alive at the time
of this recording. However, I do not know if she
is continually granting interviews and whether you believe their stories
(53:57):
or not. It seems that May and many many other
people around the world do believe them. And at the
very least, these people are a hallmark of American psychic folklore,
which I know sounds like a weird genre, but it's
a storied one and it's very good. Who else should
we add to this, Who else should we take a
(54:17):
look at in US British world history, especially as someone
that people in the West haven't heard about. We love
to check it out, so let us know. You can
write to us on Facebook and Twitter. We are conspiracy
stuff at both of those. You can check out our
earlier podcasts and ghost on our website. Stuff then want
you to know dot com. And just to show you
how important it is to hear from listeners, I think
(54:38):
it's time for shut up COONa. Our first shout out
goes to a website. It's the Outpost Forum. You you
may have visited this before, I don't. It seems like
a lot of people are going there. There's a specific
threat on this website that's dedicated to this show and
our buddy Casper Parks, who is a writer who has
(55:00):
written to us several times. Um he updates the thread
every week with our latest video. So if you know
you're looking for another place to talk with people about
our show, there you go check out the Outpost Forum.
There's also all kinds of other stuff you can explore
there too, so check it out. And our next shout
out comes to us from an anonymous source who said,
(55:22):
please give a shout out to Joel Plots p l
O s Z Joel who's shouting Joel? Yeah? Who can
that be? Man? We can't tell you. Our next shout
out is a personal shout out for me. Um, I'd
like to shout out my girlfriend Rock Sane, who just
(55:42):
finished listening to the gin and UM presidential primary episodes
on the road traveling for work, and she listened to
him back to back and it gave some really nice feedback.
And you know, and she's a tough one, so she
said that I sounded really smart. Let's not let's not
split hairs here anyway, Rock Sanda, thank you for thinking
(56:05):
that I'm smart, for allowing me to maintain that illusion
with you, and uh, you know, Bias, thanks for being
my lady friend. And Um, I hope you have a
good good work work times. What what a beautiful romantic
And to today's shout out corner, that was really nice.
Thanks Diana. Oh gosh, that's my wife. By the way,
(56:26):
I'm just putting out there. She'll never hear that, but
it's there. She'll feel it in her heart. That's right.
And if you would like to send a shout out
to us or a suggestion for a future topic, a
story about ghosts, we would love to hear it. Social
media is not your thing, no worries. You can write
to us directly. We are conspiracy and how stuff works
(56:47):
Dot com
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