Ed and Lorraine Warren- Professional Ghost Hunters or Convincing Swindlers?

Any horror fan knows who Ed and Lorraine Warren are. Even if you don’t, you’ve probably watched at least one horror movie, series or story based on them. 

They’re most well-known for investigating haunted houses, poltergeists and supposed demonic entities. During their lifelong careers, they claimed to have investigated over 10,000 cases including some of the most infamous hauntings across the world. Including Amityville, Annabelle, The Perron family and many others. 

Ed was a self-professed, self-taught, demonologist, author and lecturer and artist. Lorraine was a supposed clairvoyant and psychic medium who worked closely with her husband.

The Occult Museum

In addition to investigating hauntings, the Warrens also collected and contained many supposedly haunted items. They kept them in the back of their house in Monroe, Connecticut where they also founded NESPR, the new England society for psychic research. The museum displays many haunted or cursed items, most famously the Annabelle Doll, a Raggedy Anne doll that is inhabited by a demon. And up until 2019, it was open to the public.

But Ed and Lorraine Warren have faced a ton of backlash throughout the years. From dodgy business practices to allegations of abuse and forgery. As with anything that is related to religion and spirituality, the Warrens have definitely faced controversy.

Early days

Most information about Ed and Lorraine’s early days come from their son in law, Tony Spera. As the Warren's themselves generally kept their private lives to their selves.

Ed was born in 1926 in Bridgeport Connecticut. Ed claimed to have always experienced the supernatural throughout his life. From the age of 5, he claimed to have dreams where he would receive messages from dead relatives and he also claimed the house they lived in was haunted.

Lorraine was born in 1927, also in Bridgeport Connecticut. Lorraine also had experience with the supernatural from a young age. She attended a catholic school and claimed to be able to see and predict the future. She could also supposedly see aura’s around people

Ed and Lorraine would meet in 1944, after being introduced by friends. Ed was an usher at a local theatre and while Lorraine wasn’t originally interested in him, she thought he was nice enough and they started dating. 

By 1945, Ed enlisted in the US Marines, but because he was only 17 at the time and lied about his age, they quickly kicked him out. Later on, he was allowed to join the Navy and was eventually deployed to aid the war during World War II. Only 4 months into his deployment though, an oil tanker crashed into the ship he was on. He had a terrifying near death experience as the ship sunk into the North Atlantic and he was granted a 30 days survivor leave. He took this time to marry Lorraine, before going back to the navy to complete his service. 

After the war ended, Ed and Lorraine went on to have a daughter in 1951, they called Judy. Always having an interest in art, Ed went to study at the Perry Art School, a subsidiary of Yale. Where he found he had a very unusual and very specific talent. He was very good at painting haunted houses. Ed would often find very old houses throughout Connecticut. He would then paint them but would make them look haunted. Sometimes people would buy these paintings, but the Warrens were having a very hard time making ends meet. That was until the Warrens made a plan together.

They would skim through local newspapers to look out for accounts of hauntings. Afterwards they would visit the house, Ed would make a drawing of it and offer it to the owners. Afterwards they would then offer to investigate the house further, to figure out the source of the paranormal activity. Once they were let in, Lorraine would often perform a sort of séance to provide further details of what was actually happening in the house. Often this would involve telling the homeowners about the spirits present in the house and what they wanted or needed. 

Now, whether the house was really haunted, no one can confirm or deny that, yet it did bring some owners peace of mind. So much so, that the Warrens quickly built up a good reputation around town as people who could help. Eventually earning themselves a title as official paranormal investigators. It also helped that they didn’t really charge for these investigations. But as their fame grew, so did the controversy around them and evidence against these supposed hauntings.

Unverifiable Evidence 

While the Warrens have investigated some of the most famous hauntings in the world, such as Amityville and the Conjuring, they weren’t safe from allegations of forgery, trickery and outright lying. 

Many claim most of the evidence presented in the cases were anecdotal at best. Often relying on eyewitness testimony and blurry and often misleading photographs. Claims of supposed spirit orbs on photo’s have been argued against by skeptics. Many have pointed out that it could be a simple trick of light, caused by photo flashes and poor lighting. 

Evidence presented is often non verifiable and highly subjective. It mostly consisted of witness testimony, personal feelings and psychic visions. Many of these supernatural events would take place within the family, without any outside witnesses to corroborate. 

Contradictions

There have also been many factual contradictions in the cases the Warrens have investigated. Particularly in the Amityville and Conjuring cases. 

In 1975, the Lutz family claimed to have experienced extreme paranormal activity in their newly bought home in Amityville New York, including:  

• Doors and windows flying off their hinges. 
• Demonic hoofprints in the snow. 
• Slime oozing from the walls.
• Ghostly entities caught on camera. 
• A mysterious room called the ‘red room’ where evil emanated from and was hidden and not shown on any house plans
• Claims that house sat on land where a local native American tribe abandoned their mentally ill to die. 

Many of these claims have been disproven through factual evidence though:

• When new owners eventually moved in, they found no damage to the doors, hinges or windows like the family claimed. 
• When skeptic looked back at weather records for the time the family had lived in the house, there was no evidence of snowfall for those dates.  
• The Lutz family claimed to have made frequent reports to the police, but investigation showed that no reports were ever filed that matched those claims. 
• The local Shinnecock tribe rejected the claims made in the book about them ever abandoning their mentally ill. 
• The 'red room' was just a broom closet, that even friends and neighbors knew about
• But the biggest piece of evidence would come when William Weber, the Lutz family’s former lawyer, would claim that he and the family made up the haunting ‘over many bottles of wine’ partly to recoup financial losses made from buying the house. 

The Perron family haunting

The case The Conjuring movies heavily borrowed from, follow a similar vein. After moving into a new house in 1971, the family claimed they were being haunted by a demonic entity. Which they later identified as a woman by the name of Bathsheba Sherman. A supposed witch who hung herself in the attic of the house. Their activity included some of the same as Amityville, but not as extreme:

• Brooms and other small items would go missing, or would seemingly move on their own and appear later in a different location.
• Small piles of dirt would appear on freshly cleaned floors
• The girls reported seeing and encountering apparitions and hearing mysterious voices. Some were friendly but most came across as angry and restless.
• The family would often hear mysterious knocks and scratches from doors. 
• The smell of rotting flesh or eggs would appear around the house with no known source. 
• The house was also become incredibly cold at times. 

Most of the supernatural activity in the house was supposedly caused by a spirit called Bathsheba Sherman. Carolyn Perron, the matriarch of the Perron family, claimed that the spirit still perceived itself as the mistress of the house and saw her as competition. Carolyn claimed that Bathsheba was a witch, had murdered her own baby and drowned a young boy in a well on the property. 

Yet, some of these claims don't hold up to historical scrutiny. While Bathsheba was a real person who lived in the area, she had no real ties to the property. 

She was born in 1812 and lived on the Sherman Farm, quite a distance away from the Perron Family. She was married to Judson Sherman, and had four children. While the film claimed that all her children died before the age of four, census records also show that at least one of her children had outlived her. She also didn't hang herself, she died of what they called a sudden paralysis, a common way to describe a stroke in the 1800's. If she had killed any of her children, the death records don't show it and neither do local records from the time. The way Carolyn acquired her information about the property was shoddy at best as she mostly relied on local legends and random collections of tales from locals. people who lived there afterwards have also claimed no paranormal experience at all. 

Grave of Bathsheba Sherman-courtesy of find a grave  

The Warren's biggest controversy

In the movies and other media, Ed and Lorraine are portrayed as a soft spoken, loving couple, yet according to some allegations, that was far from the truth in real life. In 2014, a woman by the name of Judith Penney came forward to reveal that she had, had a decades long extra marital relationship with Ed Warren.

Starting when she was only 15 and Ed was in his 30's, she met him while Ed was working as a bus driver. They soon began a relationship which lasted for nearly 40 years. she claimed Lorraine was aware of it all and she eventually even moved in with the Warren's. When questions were asked, they would refer to Judith as their niece or a local girl they had taken in. Judith was supposedly arrested in 1963, as at the time it was illegal for an unmarried woman to live with a married man. She refused to admit to the affair and was sent to a youth detention center for a month.

during her life with the Warren's, Judith also claimed that Ed was physically abusive towards Lorraine. Hitting her so hard one time, she passed out. In her 30's she became pregnant with Ed's child but was forced to have an abortion after Lorraine persuaded her to get rid of the baby. She feared that it would tarnish their reputation and ruin everything they had built so far. During the drafting of contracts for the Conjuring films, Lorraine would stipulate that they could not be portrayed engaging in extra marital affairs or crimes, like sexual contact with a minor. 

Following this controversy, Lorraine's attorneys have repeatedly claimed that Lorraine and her daughter knew nothing about the relationship with her husband. Judy, the Warren's daughter claims that whiles she was aware of Judith and Ed's romantic relationship. Judith only moved in with the family when she was an adult. However this contradicts with Judith's arrest records and stint in the juvenile detention center.