The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren (36 page)

Having played the recording, Lorraine suddenly jumps up from the couch and strides purposefully to the bedroom door. She then calls to Ed. Upon checking, the room reeks of alcohol; and on Lorraine’s dresser, an ornamental crucifix set in a grotto is turned upside down!

Prudently, discussion about the Enfield case ceased. Yet in a way, it seemed to be only the tip of the iceberg in terms of demoniacal phenomena these days. Newspapers periodically report gruesome mass murders carried out by people who, after wards, boldly assert they were instructed to kill “by the Devil” or by some malevolent “figure in black.”

At least once or twice every decade, a major case of diabolical possession occurs, wherein the possessed harbors entities that identify themselves as being devils
and
demons, some even proclaiming their names for all to hear.

In 1978, over nine hundred people died in tropical Guyana in an unprecedented case of mass suicide that could possibly have been due,
in
some respect, to demoniacal oppression. Although Billy Graham went a step further, telling a National Press Club audience in Washington that he believed the Reverend Jim Jones was under “possession,” and that “he used the church for his own demonic ends.”

Why is so much negative supernatural activity happening right now?

“Inhuman spirits have roamed the earth since the beginning of time,” Lorraine responds, “so there’s nothing new about that. What is new is the situation we witness in the twentieth century. In line with that, I’d say there are two basic reasons why excessive negative activity is taking place these days. One reason has to do with numbers. There are more people in the world now than ever before in history. A great many of these people are dissatisfied with life, alienated from religion, or seeking after extraordinary knowledge. Concurrently, never in history has so much profane, negative information been available to everyone. In the past, this information was secret knowledge, used by some of the most wicked people who ever lived. Today, much of it is printed in books and sold like candy. This information is the real thing, and a gullible person who decides to use it for personal ends is quite capable of bringing about infestation, oppression, or possession by inhuman spirits. So essentially, we have a very large, literate population with twenty-four-hour-a-day access to really horrendous information. All that’s needed is the desire, the wrong motivation, to use it. From there it’s a very short step to bringing on the demonic.

“The other reason we’re getting so much negative spirit activity,” Lorraine continues, “has to do with people’s
lack
of mystical knowledge. You see, spontaneous assaults initiated by the demonic are extremely rare. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the clear majority of demoniacal activity has been instigated by people. It boils down to the fact that demoniacal phenomena is a ‘people problem.’ It’s people who open doors to the underworld through their own free will.

“As we say many times, the demonic realm isn’t something a person automatically finds out about. One learns by accident, or by voluntarily
doing
something to cause the phenomena to occur. Most of the time, the demonic is brought on deliberately, through someone’s formal choice to do so. This is the heart of the matter because man can
choose
between good and evil. Therefore, every time an individual calls up one of these inhuman spirits, he goes through the whole Adam-and-Eve trip all over again. That is, long ago man was warned about the devil, but he was also given freedom to choose whether or not to accept its influence. How ever, nowadays, people
don’t even know
they have a formal choice until it’s too late—until
after
they’ve tapped into the demonic realm. The basic problem is that this century has seen a major breakdown in religion, which means a major breakdown in the teaching of mystical knowledge; so that, once again, people are having to learn by mistake. ‘Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it,’ as the saying goes. When Ed and I lecture, we remind people that there are mystical aspects to the world, both positive and negative, and demonic spirits should be left to stew where they belong. When it comes to this subject, knowledge is a weapon. Incidents of demoniacal phenomena would drop
drastically
if people knew what a bum trip the negative occult can be. And they’d drop even further still if the wherewithal for conjuring wasn’t so readily available on store shelves.”

While millions of people are playing with fire by dabbling in the occult, other quasi-religious cults operate in America, some of which invoke negative spirits to assist them as “guides” through life. Toward the even blacker extreme, other groups are actively engaged in ritual black witchcraft—not to mention the Satanists, who avowedly “prefer the ass of Satan to the face of Jesus.” But just how prevalent is black witchcraft today?

“There are probably more people practicing black witchcraft now than in any other period in history,” Lorraine explains. “Of course, these people don’t walk around wearing black hats. Instead, the Satanists and black witches we’ve had to deal with in our work come off as very contemporary, with-it types—or else act strange and kooky to encourage the thought they’re simply eccentrics. The black arts are practiced far more than people think or know. In fact, let me cite something I just saw in the paper this morning,” says Lorraine, opening up the
Hartford Courant:

The city dog warden has found the corpses of 15 domestic animals believed to have been mutilated in a ritual-like process and then dumped or hung in trees. The warden has been investigating several recent incidents in which piles of dead goats, sheep, rabbits, and chickens have been found, some apparently within hours after they were slain. Two weeks ago, dogs and cats also were found hanging from branches. Some of the animals were bloodless. Police sources say a possible link between the apparent slayings and an occult religious group is being probed.

“Little do the police know,” Lorraine resumes, “that this ghastly destruction of life—and the drawing of blood for later use in conjuring rituals—is a fairly routine practice by black witchcraft groups. But with macabre things like this going on regularly around the country, the public is slowly coming to learn that the practice of negative witchcraft is far more common than they previously supposed. But let me utter a warning here. The last time there was awareness of black witchcraft was during the Inquisition, a hideous period. At that time, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, some 200,000 people were tortured and murdered in England, Europe, and America under the most fiendish conditions. Back then, the real crime was not done by those accused of witchcraft, but by the religious fanatics who cruelly and systematically slaughtered all those tens of thousands. So although black witchcraft is being practiced today, and it does represent a very serious, very dangerous problem, it should nevertheless be attacked through education or proper religious training—
not
through finger-pointing, torture, and murder. As the psychologist Carl Jung once said, “If our civilization were to perish, it would be due more to stupidity than to evil.”

No doubt the single greatest storehouse of information on the demonic is the Vatican in Rome. But those records, which go back some two thousand years, are completely inaccessible; indeed, the Catholic Church will not allow even its own priests to examine the data, except on a strict need-to-know basis. Evidently the negative aspect to the world is a story that
is
not meant to be told. But why? If the religious establishment knows all this “iniquitous” activity is going on, why don’t they give more information about what Ed and Lorraine call the “black facts of life”?

Ed Warren’s straightforward answer: “The basic reason why the religious establishment, Christian or otherwise, will not reveal information about the subject is that the demonic spirit is considered to be the physical manifestation of the Devil.

“More information
should
be made known,” he goes on, “but if the church came forward and made an across-the-board admission that possession and exorcism are everyday realities, then suddenly everybody and their brother would be calling up churchmen, priests, ministers, rabbis, complaining of oppression or possession by ‘evil spirits.’ Every lonely person who hears a door slam shut by the wind in the middle of the night will want an exorcism. So going fully public with this information would turn into an absolute debacle. As it works now, legitimate cases do come to the attention of proper religious authorities, and things
do
get done about them—although they get done far too slowly.

“Not that something shouldn’t be said about the subject, though,” continues Ed “Religious authorities
should
release more details about cases of possession and exorcism. They
should
let people know these negative spirits are real, not some throwaway superstition from the past Otherwise,
how
are people going to find out that using the Ouija board and holding séances have the potential to draw spirits that can ruin one’s life? You know, when Lorraine and I lecture at a college or municipal auditorium, word gets around town days before. When we do speak, every seat in the house is usually filled, leaving the overflow either standing or sitting in the aisles, while a couple of hundred have to be turned away at the door. Why? Because in the midst of this data-fact society, people are craving for
subjective
information about life, and where man fits in the universe. We’re all in this together, you know! And if people are so vitally interested in the subject, then the religious establishment ought to pick up on it and calmly explain these metaphysical things to their congregation on Saturdays or Sundays when they meet Again, if the needed information is withheld, how else are people going to make an accurate evaluation of life and death and the world around them? So the answer is yes, an argument can be made for the release of
some
information about spirit phenomena. But it’s also got to be done in an intelligent, credible way.”

In addition to their work as investigators, counselors, and lecturers, the Warrens also teach an undergraduate course once a year on Demonology and Paranormal Phenomena at Southern Connecticut State College.

“This is where we really get into the material,” explains Ed, one sunny day after class. “Here there’s time to examine the whole panorama of the problem in an academic setting. The first step is to acquaint the student with paranormal phenomena-events that are strange or unusual, but which have a natural explanation. Then we move on to spirit activity. We cover what spirits can and can’t do. We go into the philosophy, psychology, physics, and metaphysics of the subject as much as possible. But more than just talk, we lay the evidence out on the table. We show the students
real
physical objects that were materialized or teleported from the other side. We show them the actual conjuring instruments that were used to summon particular spirit entities. We discuss cases in detail, and examine the tactics, strategy, and meaning of the phenomena that resulted. We show the students pictures and slides of spirit activity in progress, although
in
the future, I’d also like to use films and videotapes taken while disturbances are going on. The visuals allow the student to see spirits
in
manifest form. They can also see levitations while they’re occurring, as well as see what people look like under demoniacal oppression and possession.

“We also get into what’s called
psychic photographs—
where images show up on film that weren’t visible at the time the photograph was taken. Many times, photographs taken
in
a haunted house or psychically active area show a living person looking just like an apparition-—that is, he’s half invisible. You can see right
through
him! It kind of shows man for being the spirit he really is! Other times, psychic photos will show bioluminescent forms, ghosts, apparitions, demon faces, objects that weren’t present when the picture was snapped, and so forth.

“Finally, we wrap up the course with tape recordings of spirit voices, both human and inhuman. This allows the students to hear for themselves the messages and statements these entities put out They hear earthbound spirits giving accurate facts about themselves and their long-dead relatives.

“We also have them listen to voice recordings of some inhuman spirits, spitting out their blasphemies and threats and maledictions and predictions and boastings about the Other Kingdom, along with references by name to the ancient diabolical entities they serve. It’s strong stuff, I grant you. But do you know that Satanists form one of the fastest growing groups on college campuses these days? And many unsuspecting students are being drawn into that web because no one has ever given them any information to the contrary. The material we teach is factual and objective, and I guarantee you that none of our kids will ever become future victims of the negative. In fact, when it’s all said and done, they come up and say ‘Thank you for telling us. We would never have known otherwise.’”

XV
One More Question,
Please

It is no exaggeration to say that Ed and Lorraine Warren live very full lives. For one thing, they are rarely at home. Their lecturing and field work keep them “out in the world,” as Lorraine puts it
,
ten out of twelve months a year. One weekend a month, though, Ed and Lorraine manage to return to Connecticut and check in with home base.

On those weekends when the Warrens are at home, their house is a beehive of activity. Friends, relatives, and professional colleagues come and go like members of one big extended family.

When there are no visitors, it seems the phone is perpetually ringing, with calls coming in from all over America. And every call is urgent—or so it seems to those who do the calling.

“Pardon me,” says Lorraine, reaching over to answer the porch phone for the tenth time that hour. By chance, the telephone has been set on “broadcast” so the Warrens can both hear the call.