October 7, 2025 • 19 mins
George Noory and paranormal researcher Tony Spera, son in law of the famous demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, discuss some of their most terrifying cases, controversies around skeptics who don't believe in the supernatural, and the popular "Conjuring" movies based on the Warrens' investigations.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George nor with
your Tony Spiraback with us paranormal researcher and the son
in law of the famed paranormal researchers delayed Ed and
Lorraine Warren. Tony and his team continue the work of
Ed and Lorraine through their work in the paranormal phenomena.
And here's Tony on Coast to Coast Tony, welcome back.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
How have you been? Hey, George? Very well, thanks thanks
for asking me. I'm a little tired because it's three
in the morning here, but hey, why not. Hey, thank
you George.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I'm going to keep you awake for two hours, buddy.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Okay, okay, that's great, that's great.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Were you interested in the paranormal before you became the
son in law a Bed and Lorraine?
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Well, not really, no more or less. I was into
astrology and astrology, astronomy and astrology books. I used to
read those books, and I was interested in that horoscopes
and the zodiac and things like that. But I was
also open to like past life experiences and things like that.
(01:08):
I used to read like You've lived before, that kind
of those kind of books. But so when I met
ed Lorraine's daughter back in nineteen seventy nine, I didn't
even know anything about them because her name was different,
her last name was different because she was previously married.
But one day, after about dating her for about three
(01:30):
weeks or maybe four weeks, she said to me one night,
she said, hey, you want to go see my parents
lecture University of Connecticut. So my immediate reaction was they
must be college professors or something. So I said that's
what I said. I said, I think college professors, and
she laughed and she goes, no, no, no, they're She
didn't say ghosts on her she said, there's psychic researchers.
(01:54):
And she said they're lecturing at Jorgensen Auditorium at the
University of Connecticut. If you want to go see him
with me, I'm like, sure, Yeah, that'd be cool. She
told me what they did, and you know that they'd
give lectures all the time around the country. So that's
when I met them in October of nineteen seventy nine,
and in the green room of Jorgensen and they were
(02:14):
very very nice to me. Ed looked up at me
when I walked in the room in the green room,
and he said. The first thing he said to me
was a hey, kid, Actually, hey, he goes you believe
in ghosts. So, me, being the kind of wise guy
that I was way back then, I said, well, maybe Casper.
Casper the friendly ghost ed kind of laughed and he went, well,
(02:37):
after tonight's lecture, I think you're gonna believe in ghost kid,
just like that. And Lorraine was another chair. She had
like a Scottish kilt and a ruffled blouse and Ed's
tye matched her kilt. It was like a Royal Stewart
Tartan kilt that she was wearing, and Ed had a
matching tie. And she was very nice. She was sipping
(02:59):
tea and she says, Hi, honey, how are you? She
called everybody honey. You know. So it was my first
encom And then we went to it in the front
row of the audience to watch this show that I've
never seen before, and it was, you know, mind boggling
to me at the time because I was in nineteen
seventy nine. I was twenty nine, but I was a
police officer at the time when I met Judy, and
(03:22):
so I was pretty like stoic when it came to
like reality from non reality. And you know, cops have
got to be shown things and proven things. They don't
believe anything until I see it and feel it and
hear it. But when I listened to ed that night
in Lorraine talking about ghosts with such genuine concern, which
(03:42):
was such knowledge of the paranormal, and the way Ed
spoke was so serious about these things, but I knew
they weren't making up stories. And then after that, I
was kind of like a shock when I watched this
two hour presentation because I never saw anything like it, George.
And then you know, talking about ghosts, talking about devils
and demons, showing the picture of Annabelle in the case,
(04:04):
and talking about the backstory on Annabelle. And so after that,
my head was spinning. And we went back to the
green room, and of course the first thing out of
Edg's mouth was after he said, how'd you like to show?
And I said it was great, Let's go find the
pizza somewhere. Now. I don't know, George, if you've ever
been to the University of Connecticut and stores, there's nothing
around there, especially back in nineteen seventy nine. There's nothing's open.
(04:28):
It's like it's like a ghost town at night, even
though it's a college town. At night that closes right up.
There's hardly any businesses or anything open. Somehow Ed found
a pizza place that was open not too far from
the college at about eleven o'clock at night, and that's
when we went for pizza. And that's where I met
the author of The Demonologist, Gerald Briddle. And I didn't
(04:51):
know it at the time, George, but you know, you know,
I'm a new date for Judy. I only been with
her for four weeks. We walked into the pizza place.
Ed's already there because he can't wait to eat, you know,
That's how it was, and Judy was there. I'm sorry, Lorrain,
and so Judy and I sat down, and there was
a gentleman about a couple of years older than me
(05:11):
at the time, maybe he was thirty one or two.
I was sitting there with a sports jacket on right
next to Ed, and he had like a yellow pad,
a yellow notepad, like a legal pad, and he was
writing notes. I didn't take much attention to it at all,
but the first thing out of my mouth is Ed,
so can you tell me some more about you know,
these demons and devils you're talking about. So he started
(05:32):
to go into the story about he went he went
into the story about it. I might it might have
been Amityville, I'm not sure. So as he was talking
about it, this young man looks over. You're at Ed,
and he like he kind of interrupted it when he's talking.
He said, Ed about this Amityville thing, let me ask
you a question. Ed looks over at him and says, Gerald,
(05:52):
you're a real pain in the neck, you know that,
because we're trying to eat pizza here. Just like I
felt kind of bad for for for Gerald, because he
just became very quiet after that. You know, he didn't talk.
But I didn't know at the time. He was the
author who was in the process of writing The Demonologist book,
which is almost like a textbook on their lives. You know.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Well Ed passed away nineteen years ago at the age
of seventy nine. Lorraine passed away six years ago at
the age of ninety two. But when they were together
doing their thing, they created the New England Society for
Psychic Research. Nest works are and you're continuing.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
That, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, well, I kind of made
a pact with Lorraine. When Ed fell. He fell sick,
and one two thousand and one, he had a massive stroke.
He couldn't talk, he couldn't walk, he couldn't eat on
his own. So Lorrain took care of him all these
for five years, from two thousand and one until six
(06:53):
she kept him at home on a hospital bed, and
she used to have the she used to have the
urologists come in and change his catheter and things like that.
She was like a nurse at her age. She was
like the best nurse she could ever have. And I
remember one time I said, Lorrain, this is draining. This
is really hard on you, you know, she said to me.
(07:14):
She looked up at me and she said, it's an
honor to take care of it, just like to ask.
She was, It's my honor, That's how she said. And
all the time that she had to stay home and
watch over him and feed him with a feeding tube
and have his cath to change. She watched him so closely,
you know. That's why he made it for five more years,
(07:34):
even though he was incapacitated. But I kind of made
a promise to Lorraine that we would continue to work,
and actually we went on investigations together and lectures together,
just Lorraine and I. Well. Ed was sick when they
would have a twenty four our caregiver there too, when
we were on a lecture tour, you know. But Ed
(07:55):
was a great guy. The Rain is a great person,
both of them. Lorraine never met a person she didn't like.
She was like, she was like Will Rogers. She she
just exuded like warmths to people, you know. And I
think you might have even had her on the show.
I don't know if you did or not, but did you, guys,
Art Bell might have? I did not. I know Art
(08:16):
Bell did. I mean because I remember Ed speaking about
we were on the Art Bell Show the other night,
and I mean he said, you ever hear that show
Coast to Coast And I'm like, yeah, so I know
he was on that show. But there were such knowledgeable
people in the paranormal George. Yet, you know, it was
almost like when I was talking to him and learning
(08:37):
over the years, you know, I knew that my heart
of hearts that no matter how much Ed Warren taught me,
I wouldn't know as much as he did. You know.
It was almost like you think about it. It's almost
like a like a karate master, you know, and he's
teaching the kids. He's teaching everybody how to how to
do it. But he's always better than than the kids,
you know, because he has that vast knowledge of things.
(09:01):
And that's how ed was. He had such vast knowledge
you couldn't you couldn't trip them up, like on a
paranormal question. And one time he did say to me,
after a Q and A section at a lecture at
a college, when you're just throwing left and right questions
at him, and there are hard questions too, you know,
and he was like, He's answered the questions just out
(09:21):
of the blue. And I'm like, so so I can
throw all that this guy knows all these things. And
after the lecture he said, he goes, I don't know
where I get these things from. What are you talking
about it? He goes. He goes, ask me a question,
he goes, and I won't know the answer. Then all
of a sudden, it's like it's like somebody spoke to me,
like the answer would just come to me, like maybe
it's from God. He said to me. He might have
(09:43):
been right, because there wasn't anything he couldn't respond to
in a way that was very satisfying as an answer,
you know. So that's that's how great he was when
he came to or I used to go over his
house like it's in the daytime. If I went over
his house just a visit, Lorraine would be in the kitchen.
I'd say, where is that. He's down in a study
downstairs off the museum, and I'd walk in there and
(10:06):
he'd be reading a book on the paranormal. It's just
like forty years after he started investigating. Every day he
would every day he would be looking at different books,
talking to different people. That was his whole life. His
whole life was paranormal research and finding out about haunting
phenomena and demonic activity.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Well, their work was based on a lot of movies
because of what they did, Annabelle, the conjuringe amide Ville
were so many things that they touched right right.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
The thing is, I remember when Ed was not even
alive at the time, when a producer called Lorrain. We
knew the guy. He was a guy who did one
movie I think years before, but he called the Rain
up and he knew Ed and Lorrain from the Haunting
(10:57):
in the West Pittston Pence to some wirl case. That's
I believe that's how he met Ed because he was
living in Pennsylvania at the time. His man and Ed
must have invited him over to the house his you know,
his house in Monroe and said, con over, I'll show
you some films and whatever, some slides, and I guess
(11:18):
he played for this man. He played the he Witched
Farmhouse case, which Ed used to speak to me all
the time about. After lectures. He'd say, you want to
make a good movie. Tone, I'm like what Ed? And
he repeated almost like six or seven different times, like
during the course of our lectures. At different periods. He
(11:40):
would say, yeah, at which farmhouse and Rhode Island. So
I said, but which farmhouse the first time he said
it because you know the parent farmhouse, the house of
Rhode Island at Harrisville. It was the movie the Conjuring
was based on. So here's what happened. This guy called
up in like nine Ed had already passed and he
talked to He says, hey, Lorraine, I have a treatment
(12:01):
for a movie. It was that Rhode Island case that
you talked about a long time ago, he said. He said,
we have a treatment before, I'm gonna call it the Conjuring,
just like that. So we were like, yeah, that'd be
that'd be great to the man, you know, And so
we thought nothing of it, like this is never gonna happen,
because all over the years people have brought projects to
(12:22):
end Lorrain and they never became anything big. You know,
maybe TV show or something. But this is real, This
is real.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
That became a huge movie, wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah, it was gigantic. We didn't think it was gonna
be a gigantic because it was a movie that costs
like twenty million dollars, had a twenty million dollar budget, George,
but it made like three hundred and fifty million dollars.
And so they're all there Conjuring movies. That's the last one,
forget the last one for now. But up to Conjuring one, two, three,
(12:53):
and all the Noun movies and the Conjuring and the
NFL movies, they made almost two billion dollars off of
undred and eighty nine dollars total one hundred and eighty
nine million dollar total investment. So when you think about it,
and that's one of the highest grossing work he conjuring
four last rites. He was already up to four hundred
and sixty million, and it costs that was a fifty
(13:15):
million dollar budget. So it's like they just are so
successful that they keep making movies, you know, because the
people can't get enough of like Patrick and Vera. Patrick
Wilson and Vera Farmiga play Ahead in the Rain. Their
on screen chemistry is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Tell you a funny story about Patrick Wilson. Okay, when
he was a little boy, six seven years old, he'd
be running around the newsroom in Saint Louis. His father
was his father was my anchorman here in Saint Louis
when I was the news director.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Oh really, brought.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
This little kid in named little Patrick Wilson.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Yeah. Yeah, small world.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Small world. Well I didn't, Lorraine Warren Tony worked without
controversy from skeptics.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
What do you think of that? Well, what I think
of that is it's it's healthy to have discussions because
if somebody comes to you and says, hey, I don't
believe any of this stuff, ED used to always say
to them, well, I'm not here to convince you of anything, sir,
I'm just here to show you My evidence is what
he used to say, because there used to be Heckler's
(14:21):
in the audience. There used to be naysayers, and people
would think that they know more than ed, or because
they've never seen it, it doesn't exist. So I used
to always tell me later, he goes these people, he's
they have a rude awakening if they really don't believe,
I said, why he goes. There's too much. He goes.
Forget our faith, forget religion for now, there's too much
(14:43):
evidence saying that there's an afterlife. He's too, we have
too much evidence. He's people can't be telling me the
same stories over and over again. So because he would,
he would talk to everyone. People would have past life experiences,
people who've thought they were reincarnated, to all those kind
of things, and near death experiences. He would talk to
(15:06):
people about and the evidence of a spirit coming back
and haunting a location, and the family members like, yeah,
that's my grandfather. I could just I know it's him.
I can smell his perfume, or I can smell his cigar,
or I heard him call my name out as my grandfather.
So the thing is, these afterlife exists, and ghosts and
spirits exist, but also demons exist also. So that's the
(15:31):
problem is what people say to me or a dead
or Lorraine when he used to say, well, we have
a ghost in our house, but we're not afraid of it.
That's a tip off to be afraid of it, actually,
because because a lot of times a demonic or something
that's not very nice will come into guys as something nice.
That's the problem. They may come as your grandfather, your aunt,
(15:53):
or your uncle, but they're not because they want to
get you involved. They want you to involve them in
their lives. So if you invite him in, then hey,
you invited him in, so now you suffer the consequences.
We didn't ask you invite me to invite us in,
witch you did. So that's the kind of thing like
by using Wiji boards, by going to psychics and psychic
(16:14):
readers and tarot card readers, you're opening yourself up. And
Ed used to tell that to everyone, but the naysayers
would be like, well that's that's not true, and no
matter what you said to them, they would come up
with something else, like this's this phenomenon that's called I
used to call it phantomnia or psychic paralyzation. Used to
(16:34):
call it. And so I said to Ed one time,
well tell me exactly what you're talking about when you
talk about phantomania. He is, that's when you're laying in
bed at night and you wake up, you can't move,
you can't yell out. He's ever had that happened? I said, no,
but I've heard of that. He said, yeah, a lot
of people have had it. Paralysis, right, thee paralysis right.
(16:56):
So Ed would say, I would even say to the lecture,
you'd say, if it's something medical or psychological, that's one thing.
He was, But if you rule those things out by
going to a medical professional, he rule those things out.
It only leaves one thing, and that's demonic oppression or
or infant station or trying to possess a person. And
(17:19):
I remember Ed talkin d He invited a skeptic one
time to our classes. We used to give classes at
the at the Carousel Gardens and Seymour, Connecticut. It was
a big restaurant like a Victorian house. Very nice people
owned it. We should give classes on Tuesday nights. And
one time I showed up the class to help as
in the rain, and there's this two people I never
(17:40):
saw before. They were from a skeptical group somewhere in Connecticut.
One was a doctor and was this his friend, and
they as soon as they heard the story about the paralyzation.
The doctor says, well, that's hypnogognia. I said, what do
you mean, is that similargagnause. That's a that's a medical
(18:02):
condition in the brain. I said, really, I says, how
do you know that? He goes it is it's a
medical it's this, it's not it's not anything demonic. So
they just bluff it off. They fluff everything right off
because they don't have a base of belief. You know,
if someone doesn't have a base of belief, kind of
hard to convince him of a spirit when they don't
believe in God, for instance, Because you know, I used
(18:24):
to say to people and they say didn't they didn't
believe in ghosts or devils or deemons. I said, well,
do you believe in God? And a lot of times
they'd say no, I don't. So then I would say,
well that answers the question of why you don't believe
in spirits? Because God is a supernatural being, he's a spirit.
He created you in his image, so you're a spirit. Too,
and besides having a body, but they would just fluff
(18:47):
that off too, like, no, it's evolution. How can it
be a evolution? George? You know, how have you ever
watched I have ever watched a young animal like taking
care of their little baby animals? Like one time he
had told me he was driving down the road and
he saw a deer in the woods and then he
saw the deer grabbed a branch. Big deer grabbed a
(19:08):
branch and pull it down, so the little doe that
was with that deer could have some of a branch
so in a food off the branch. He could tell me,
that's not a miracle. That's not something that's an almighty
created that created everything. There's no way this all could
be random and it came together like this, you know.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George nor with
your Tony Spiraback with us paranormal researcher and the son
in law of the famed paranormal researchers delayed Ed and
Lorraine Warren. Tony and his team continue the work of
Ed and Lorraine through their work in the paranormal phenomena.
And here's Tony on Coast to Coast Tony, welcome back.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
How have you been? Hey, George? Very well, thanks thanks
for asking me. I'm a little tired because it's three
in the morning here, but hey, why not. Hey, thank
you George.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I'm going to keep you awake for two hours, buddy.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Okay, okay, that's great, that's great.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Were you interested in the paranormal before you became the
son in law a Bed and Lorraine?
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Well, not really, no more or less. I was into
astrology and astrology, astronomy and astrology books. I used to
read those books, and I was interested in that horoscopes
and the zodiac and things like that. But I was
also open to like past life experiences and things like that.
(01:08):
I used to read like You've lived before, that kind
of those kind of books. But so when I met
ed Lorraine's daughter back in nineteen seventy nine, I didn't
even know anything about them because her name was different,
her last name was different because she was previously married.
But one day, after about dating her for about three
(01:30):
weeks or maybe four weeks, she said to me one night,
she said, hey, you want to go see my parents
lecture University of Connecticut. So my immediate reaction was they
must be college professors or something. So I said that's
what I said. I said, I think college professors, and
she laughed and she goes, no, no, no, they're She
didn't say ghosts on her she said, there's psychic researchers.
(01:54):
And she said they're lecturing at Jorgensen Auditorium at the
University of Connecticut. If you want to go see him
with me, I'm like, sure, Yeah, that'd be cool. She
told me what they did, and you know that they'd
give lectures all the time around the country. So that's
when I met them in October of nineteen seventy nine,
and in the green room of Jorgensen and they were
(02:14):
very very nice to me. Ed looked up at me
when I walked in the room in the green room,
and he said. The first thing he said to me
was a hey, kid, Actually, hey, he goes you believe
in ghosts. So, me, being the kind of wise guy
that I was way back then, I said, well, maybe Casper.
Casper the friendly ghost ed kind of laughed and he went, well,
(02:37):
after tonight's lecture, I think you're gonna believe in ghost kid,
just like that. And Lorraine was another chair. She had
like a Scottish kilt and a ruffled blouse and Ed's
tye matched her kilt. It was like a Royal Stewart
Tartan kilt that she was wearing, and Ed had a
matching tie. And she was very nice. She was sipping
(02:59):
tea and she says, Hi, honey, how are you? She
called everybody honey. You know. So it was my first
encom And then we went to it in the front
row of the audience to watch this show that I've
never seen before, and it was, you know, mind boggling
to me at the time because I was in nineteen
seventy nine. I was twenty nine, but I was a
police officer at the time when I met Judy, and
(03:22):
so I was pretty like stoic when it came to
like reality from non reality. And you know, cops have
got to be shown things and proven things. They don't
believe anything until I see it and feel it and
hear it. But when I listened to ed that night
in Lorraine talking about ghosts with such genuine concern, which
(03:42):
was such knowledge of the paranormal, and the way Ed
spoke was so serious about these things, but I knew
they weren't making up stories. And then after that, I
was kind of like a shock when I watched this
two hour presentation because I never saw anything like it, George.
And then you know, talking about ghosts, talking about devils
and demons, showing the picture of Annabelle in the case,
(04:04):
and talking about the backstory on Annabelle. And so after that,
my head was spinning. And we went back to the
green room, and of course the first thing out of
Edg's mouth was after he said, how'd you like to show?
And I said it was great, Let's go find the
pizza somewhere. Now. I don't know, George, if you've ever
been to the University of Connecticut and stores, there's nothing
around there, especially back in nineteen seventy nine. There's nothing's open.
(04:28):
It's like it's like a ghost town at night, even
though it's a college town. At night that closes right up.
There's hardly any businesses or anything open. Somehow Ed found
a pizza place that was open not too far from
the college at about eleven o'clock at night, and that's
when we went for pizza. And that's where I met
the author of The Demonologist, Gerald Briddle. And I didn't
(04:51):
know it at the time, George, but you know, you know,
I'm a new date for Judy. I only been with
her for four weeks. We walked into the pizza place.
Ed's already there because he can't wait to eat, you know,
That's how it was, and Judy was there. I'm sorry, Lorrain,
and so Judy and I sat down, and there was
a gentleman about a couple of years older than me
(05:11):
at the time, maybe he was thirty one or two.
I was sitting there with a sports jacket on right
next to Ed, and he had like a yellow pad,
a yellow notepad, like a legal pad, and he was
writing notes. I didn't take much attention to it at all,
but the first thing out of my mouth is Ed,
so can you tell me some more about you know,
these demons and devils you're talking about. So he started
(05:32):
to go into the story about he went he went
into the story about it. I might it might have
been Amityville, I'm not sure. So as he was talking
about it, this young man looks over. You're at Ed,
and he like he kind of interrupted it when he's talking.
He said, Ed about this Amityville thing, let me ask
you a question. Ed looks over at him and says, Gerald,
(05:52):
you're a real pain in the neck, you know that,
because we're trying to eat pizza here. Just like I
felt kind of bad for for for Gerald, because he
just became very quiet after that. You know, he didn't talk.
But I didn't know at the time. He was the
author who was in the process of writing The Demonologist book,
which is almost like a textbook on their lives. You know.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Well Ed passed away nineteen years ago at the age
of seventy nine. Lorraine passed away six years ago at
the age of ninety two. But when they were together
doing their thing, they created the New England Society for
Psychic Research. Nest works are and you're continuing.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
That, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, well, I kind of made
a pact with Lorraine. When Ed fell. He fell sick,
and one two thousand and one, he had a massive stroke.
He couldn't talk, he couldn't walk, he couldn't eat on
his own. So Lorrain took care of him all these
for five years, from two thousand and one until six
(06:53):
she kept him at home on a hospital bed, and
she used to have the she used to have the
urologists come in and change his catheter and things like that.
She was like a nurse at her age. She was
like the best nurse she could ever have. And I
remember one time I said, Lorrain, this is draining. This
is really hard on you, you know, she said to me.
(07:14):
She looked up at me and she said, it's an
honor to take care of it, just like to ask.
She was, It's my honor, That's how she said. And
all the time that she had to stay home and
watch over him and feed him with a feeding tube
and have his cath to change. She watched him so closely,
you know. That's why he made it for five more years,
(07:34):
even though he was incapacitated. But I kind of made
a promise to Lorraine that we would continue to work,
and actually we went on investigations together and lectures together,
just Lorraine and I. Well. Ed was sick when they
would have a twenty four our caregiver there too, when
we were on a lecture tour, you know. But Ed
(07:55):
was a great guy. The Rain is a great person,
both of them. Lorraine never met a person she didn't like.
She was like, she was like Will Rogers. She she
just exuded like warmths to people, you know. And I
think you might have even had her on the show.
I don't know if you did or not, but did you, guys,
Art Bell might have? I did not. I know Art
(08:16):
Bell did. I mean because I remember Ed speaking about
we were on the Art Bell Show the other night,
and I mean he said, you ever hear that show
Coast to Coast And I'm like, yeah, so I know
he was on that show. But there were such knowledgeable
people in the paranormal George. Yet, you know, it was
almost like when I was talking to him and learning
(08:37):
over the years, you know, I knew that my heart
of hearts that no matter how much Ed Warren taught me,
I wouldn't know as much as he did. You know.
It was almost like you think about it. It's almost
like a like a karate master, you know, and he's
teaching the kids. He's teaching everybody how to how to
do it. But he's always better than than the kids,
you know, because he has that vast knowledge of things.
(09:01):
And that's how ed was. He had such vast knowledge
you couldn't you couldn't trip them up, like on a
paranormal question. And one time he did say to me,
after a Q and A section at a lecture at
a college, when you're just throwing left and right questions
at him, and there are hard questions too, you know,
and he was like, He's answered the questions just out
(09:21):
of the blue. And I'm like, so so I can
throw all that this guy knows all these things. And
after the lecture he said, he goes, I don't know
where I get these things from. What are you talking
about it? He goes. He goes, ask me a question,
he goes, and I won't know the answer. Then all
of a sudden, it's like it's like somebody spoke to me,
like the answer would just come to me, like maybe
it's from God. He said to me. He might have
(09:43):
been right, because there wasn't anything he couldn't respond to
in a way that was very satisfying as an answer,
you know. So that's that's how great he was when
he came to or I used to go over his
house like it's in the daytime. If I went over
his house just a visit, Lorraine would be in the kitchen.
I'd say, where is that. He's down in a study
downstairs off the museum, and I'd walk in there and
(10:06):
he'd be reading a book on the paranormal. It's just
like forty years after he started investigating. Every day he
would every day he would be looking at different books,
talking to different people. That was his whole life. His
whole life was paranormal research and finding out about haunting
phenomena and demonic activity.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Well, their work was based on a lot of movies
because of what they did, Annabelle, the conjuringe amide Ville
were so many things that they touched right right.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
The thing is, I remember when Ed was not even
alive at the time, when a producer called Lorrain. We
knew the guy. He was a guy who did one
movie I think years before, but he called the Rain
up and he knew Ed and Lorrain from the Haunting
(10:57):
in the West Pittston Pence to some wirl case. That's
I believe that's how he met Ed because he was
living in Pennsylvania at the time. His man and Ed
must have invited him over to the house his you know,
his house in Monroe and said, con over, I'll show
you some films and whatever, some slides, and I guess
(11:18):
he played for this man. He played the he Witched
Farmhouse case, which Ed used to speak to me all
the time about. After lectures. He'd say, you want to
make a good movie. Tone, I'm like what Ed? And
he repeated almost like six or seven different times, like
during the course of our lectures. At different periods. He
(11:40):
would say, yeah, at which farmhouse and Rhode Island. So
I said, but which farmhouse the first time he said
it because you know the parent farmhouse, the house of
Rhode Island at Harrisville. It was the movie the Conjuring
was based on. So here's what happened. This guy called
up in like nine Ed had already passed and he
talked to He says, hey, Lorraine, I have a treatment
(12:01):
for a movie. It was that Rhode Island case that
you talked about a long time ago, he said. He said,
we have a treatment before, I'm gonna call it the Conjuring,
just like that. So we were like, yeah, that'd be
that'd be great to the man, you know, And so
we thought nothing of it, like this is never gonna happen,
because all over the years people have brought projects to
(12:22):
end Lorrain and they never became anything big. You know,
maybe TV show or something. But this is real, This
is real.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
That became a huge movie, wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah, it was gigantic. We didn't think it was gonna
be a gigantic because it was a movie that costs
like twenty million dollars, had a twenty million dollar budget, George,
but it made like three hundred and fifty million dollars.
And so they're all there Conjuring movies. That's the last one,
forget the last one for now. But up to Conjuring one, two, three,
(12:53):
and all the Noun movies and the Conjuring and the
NFL movies, they made almost two billion dollars off of
undred and eighty nine dollars total one hundred and eighty
nine million dollar total investment. So when you think about it,
and that's one of the highest grossing work he conjuring
four last rites. He was already up to four hundred
and sixty million, and it costs that was a fifty
(13:15):
million dollar budget. So it's like they just are so
successful that they keep making movies, you know, because the
people can't get enough of like Patrick and Vera. Patrick
Wilson and Vera Farmiga play Ahead in the Rain. Their
on screen chemistry is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Tell you a funny story about Patrick Wilson. Okay, when
he was a little boy, six seven years old, he'd
be running around the newsroom in Saint Louis. His father
was his father was my anchorman here in Saint Louis
when I was the news director.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Oh really, brought.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
This little kid in named little Patrick Wilson.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Yeah. Yeah, small world.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Small world. Well I didn't, Lorraine Warren Tony worked without
controversy from skeptics.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
What do you think of that? Well, what I think
of that is it's it's healthy to have discussions because
if somebody comes to you and says, hey, I don't
believe any of this stuff, ED used to always say
to them, well, I'm not here to convince you of anything, sir,
I'm just here to show you My evidence is what
he used to say, because there used to be Heckler's
(14:21):
in the audience. There used to be naysayers, and people
would think that they know more than ed, or because
they've never seen it, it doesn't exist. So I used
to always tell me later, he goes these people, he's
they have a rude awakening if they really don't believe,
I said, why he goes. There's too much. He goes.
Forget our faith, forget religion for now, there's too much
(14:43):
evidence saying that there's an afterlife. He's too, we have
too much evidence. He's people can't be telling me the
same stories over and over again. So because he would,
he would talk to everyone. People would have past life experiences,
people who've thought they were reincarnated, to all those kind
of things, and near death experiences. He would talk to
(15:06):
people about and the evidence of a spirit coming back
and haunting a location, and the family members like, yeah,
that's my grandfather. I could just I know it's him.
I can smell his perfume, or I can smell his cigar,
or I heard him call my name out as my grandfather.
So the thing is, these afterlife exists, and ghosts and
spirits exist, but also demons exist also. So that's the
(15:31):
problem is what people say to me or a dead
or Lorraine when he used to say, well, we have
a ghost in our house, but we're not afraid of it.
That's a tip off to be afraid of it, actually,
because because a lot of times a demonic or something
that's not very nice will come into guys as something nice.
That's the problem. They may come as your grandfather, your aunt,
(15:53):
or your uncle, but they're not because they want to
get you involved. They want you to involve them in
their lives. So if you invite him in, then hey,
you invited him in, so now you suffer the consequences.
We didn't ask you invite me to invite us in,
witch you did. So that's the kind of thing like
by using Wiji boards, by going to psychics and psychic
(16:14):
readers and tarot card readers, you're opening yourself up. And
Ed used to tell that to everyone, but the naysayers
would be like, well that's that's not true, and no
matter what you said to them, they would come up
with something else, like this's this phenomenon that's called I
used to call it phantomnia or psychic paralyzation. Used to
(16:34):
call it. And so I said to Ed one time,
well tell me exactly what you're talking about when you
talk about phantomania. He is, that's when you're laying in
bed at night and you wake up, you can't move,
you can't yell out. He's ever had that happened? I said, no,
but I've heard of that. He said, yeah, a lot
of people have had it. Paralysis, right, thee paralysis right.
(16:56):
So Ed would say, I would even say to the lecture,
you'd say, if it's something medical or psychological, that's one thing.
He was, But if you rule those things out by
going to a medical professional, he rule those things out.
It only leaves one thing, and that's demonic oppression or
or infant station or trying to possess a person. And
(17:19):
I remember Ed talkin d He invited a skeptic one
time to our classes. We used to give classes at
the at the Carousel Gardens and Seymour, Connecticut. It was
a big restaurant like a Victorian house. Very nice people
owned it. We should give classes on Tuesday nights. And
one time I showed up the class to help as
in the rain, and there's this two people I never
(17:40):
saw before. They were from a skeptical group somewhere in Connecticut.
One was a doctor and was this his friend, and
they as soon as they heard the story about the paralyzation.
The doctor says, well, that's hypnogognia. I said, what do
you mean, is that similargagnause. That's a that's a medical
(18:02):
condition in the brain. I said, really, I says, how
do you know that? He goes it is it's a
medical it's this, it's not it's not anything demonic. So
they just bluff it off. They fluff everything right off
because they don't have a base of belief. You know,
if someone doesn't have a base of belief, kind of
hard to convince him of a spirit when they don't
believe in God, for instance, Because you know, I used
(18:24):
to say to people and they say didn't they didn't
believe in ghosts or devils or deemons. I said, well,
do you believe in God? And a lot of times
they'd say no, I don't. So then I would say,
well that answers the question of why you don't believe
in spirits? Because God is a supernatural being, he's a spirit.
He created you in his image, so you're a spirit. Too,
and besides having a body, but they would just fluff
(18:47):
that off too, like, no, it's evolution. How can it
be a evolution? George? You know, how have you ever
watched I have ever watched a young animal like taking
care of their little baby animals? Like one time he
had told me he was driving down the road and
he saw a deer in the woods and then he
saw the deer grabbed a branch. Big deer grabbed a
(19:08):
branch and pull it down, so the little doe that
was with that deer could have some of a branch
so in a food off the branch. He could tell me,
that's not a miracle. That's not something that's an almighty
created that created everything. There's no way this all could
be random and it came together like this, you know.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
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George Noory
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