September 30, 2025 • 28 mins
Before Hollywood gave it a name, there was the real story.
Between 1974 and 1989, Jack and Janet Smurl claimed their quiet Pennsylvania duplex had become a battleground of good and evil — a haunting so violent it drew the attention of famed investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren.
In this episode of State of the Unknown, Robert Barber revisits one of America’s most disturbing real-life hauntings - the true events that inspired The Conjuring: Last Rites. From unexplainable noises and levitations to an alleged demonic presence that terrorized an ordinary family, this case remains one of the most chilling chapters in modern paranormal history.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Imagine you're sitting at home and the pipes
start banging.
You brush it off.
Old houses make noise.
Then it keeps happening.
Scratches in the walls.
This sour, rotten smell thatfills the rooms out of nowhere.
And before long, it's not justsounds and smells.
(00:22):
Beds are shaking.
Dark shapes are moving acrossthe hallway.
One night, even the family doggets thrown against the wall.
And that's what the Smurl familysaid they lived through.
And it only got worse fromthere.
This was West Pittston,Pennsylvania, 1974.
(00:44):
Jack and Janet Smurl had justmoved into a duplex with their
daughters.
Jack's parents lived right nextdoor.
They weren't chasing ghoststories.
They were just a working-classCatholic family trying to live a
normal life.
But over the next 15 years, theyclaimed something dark moved in
(01:04):
with them.
Something that wouldn't leave.
And when they couldn't take itanymore, they called two names
you've heard before, Ed andLorraine Warren.
(01:39):
The haunting that followed theSmurl family for more than a
decade and inspired the newfilm, The Conjuring Last Rights.
This is the story of the SmurlHaunting, a case that blurred
the line between ordinary andthe unimaginable.
And this is State of theUnknown.
(02:06):
Let's start at the beginning.
Picture West Pittston,Pennsylvania, mid-1970s.
It's a small town in the WyomingValley, not far from Scranton.
Working class, blue collar.
People knew their neighbors.
Families went to church onSunday, and life moved at a
steady, ordinary rhythm.
(02:28):
That's where Jack and JanetSmurl were raising their family.
They'd already had a roughcouple of years.
In 1972, Hurricane Agnes haddevastated the valley.
Floods forced the Smurls, likethousands of others, out of
their home.
They spent months scraping theirlives back together, looking for
(02:48):
stability.
And when they found a duplex onChase Street in 1973, it seemed
like the answer.
This house was practical.
It wasn't fancy, but it worked.
Jack and Janet moved into onehalf with their four young
daughters.
On the other side, right throughthe shared wall, lived Jack's
(03:09):
parents, John and Mary, twogenerations under one roof line.
For a Catholic family trying tostart fresh, it meant security.
It meant support.
It meant normalcy.
But normal is not what they got.
At first, it was just the kindof stuff you'd expect in an
(03:30):
older house.
Pipes rattling when the heatkicked on, knocks in the walls,
lights flickering now and then,appliances turning themselves on
and off.
Things that, honestly, you couldexplain away if you really
wanted to.
And sometimes they did.
Old wiring, they thought.
Drafty house.
The kind of answers that makeyou feel better so you can sleep
(03:52):
at night.
But then the little annoyancesstarted getting a little harder
to dismiss.
There were sudden waves of anawful smell.
Sulfur, rot, something sour thatwould roll through a room and
then disappear as quickly as itcame.
No broken pipes, no dead animalsin the walls, just stench that
(04:14):
appeared out of nowhere.
And then there came the sounds.
Not just bangs or creaksanymore, but heavy footsteps,
thuds across the floor when noone was home, beds that trembled
in the middle of the night.
Before long, the family saidthey began seeing things too.
(04:35):
Figures.
At first, just vague shapesmoving in the corners of their
eyes.
Then darker, more distinct formscrossing rooms and hallways.
And these weren't just Jack andJanet's imagination.
Their daughters saw them too.
Jack's parents, right next door,saw them as well.
(04:55):
Same house, same walls, sameexperiences.
Then there was the dog.
Their German shepherd, Simon,was the family protector.
But even he wasn't safe.
The Smurls said that one night,without warning, the dog was
lifted into the air and slammedagainst the wall.
(05:16):
Imagine seeing that.
It's not just creepy noisesanymore.
It's physical, violence, andit's happening to the one
creature in the house who had noreason to invent stories.
And the activities didn't stopthere.
Jack and Janet both reportedscratches on their arms and
chests.
(05:37):
Janet described being pulled byunseen hands.
Later, both of them would eventalk about assaults.
The kind of disturbing, intimateattacks that are hard to say out
loud, let alone admit toreporters and priests.
The key thing here is that itwasn't just one person, or even
(05:58):
one branch of the family makingthese claims.
Jack and Janet in one half ofthe duplex, Jack's parents in
the other, both householdssaying, something's wrong in
this house.
That kind of shared experienceis what makes this case stand
out.
By the early 1980s, word wasbeginning to spread.
(06:19):
Neighbors whispered.
Local papers picked up thestory.
Reporters started to show up.
But before the cameras and theheadlines, it was just the
Smurls.
A Catholic family on ChaseStreet trying to survive in a
house that, according to them,was slowly tearing them apart.
(06:40):
So at first, it was noises,smells, and flickering lights,
the kind of stuff you could justshrug off if you tried hard
enough.
But over time, the Smurls saidit all escalated into something
much darker.
The shadow figures, for example.
Early on, they were just shapes,like moving shadows where there
(07:02):
shouldn't be any.
But as the years went on, thefamily described them becoming
more defined.
They weren't just tricks of theeye anymore.
They looked solid, human-like.
They walked across doorways,down halls, stood in corners,
and didn't move.
And these weren't just quickglances.
(07:23):
The family said they could watchthem.
Jack, Janet, their daughters,even Jack's parents next door,
all of them reported seeingthese same forms.
And then there was the physicalside of it.
The beds didn't just trembleanymore, they shook violently.
Jack said the frame of his bedrattled so loudly at night you
(07:46):
could hear it echo through thewalls.
Janet described being yanked outof bed by something she couldn't
see.
Both of them showed scratchesacross their arms, their backs,
and their chests.
And the part of their story thatstill makes people stop cold?
They both claimed they weresexually assaulted by whatever
(08:06):
this thing was.
Not whispered in private.
They told priests.
They told reporters.
And eventually those claimsended up in print in the 1986
book, The Haunted.
For a Catholic family in smalltown Pennsylvania to make that
kind of accusation publicly, youknow it wasn't something they
did lightly.
(08:27):
The dog story kept coming uptoo.
Neighbors and reporters heardabout it.
Simon being picked up and thrownagainst a wall.
That one detail got repeated sooften it became almost a
shorthand for the case.
Because if an animal wasattacked, that's harder to chalk
up to imagination or suggestion.
(08:48):
And then there were the smells.
The rotten sulfurous stenchbecame one of the case's
signatures.
Sometimes it was described asburning.
Other times, Jack said it waslike rotting flesh.
So thick you could almost tasteit.
The odor would appear out ofnowhere, linger for a few
(09:08):
minutes, and then vanish just assuddenly.
No explanation.
Neighbors started noticingthings too.
One family down the streetclaimed they heard blood-curling
screams coming from the SmurlHouse when no one was home.
Another reported flickeringlights in empty rooms.
It wasn't just an isolated storyanymore.
(09:31):
People outside the duplex weresaying something was going on at
Chase Street.
By the mid-1980s, the toll onthe family was obvious.
They were exhausted, shaken, andby their account, being worn
down night after night.
Jack and Janet talked about howthey couldn't sleep.
(09:51):
They constantly felt watched asif the house itself was alive
and hostile.
Desperate, they turned to thechurch.
Priests from the parish cameinto the home, blessed rooms,
sprinkled holy water, recitedprayers.
One of them, Father JosephAdenizio, later confirmed
(10:11):
publicly that he'd been there,that he'd heard their stories
and tried to help.
But according to the Smurls, theblessings didn't solve the
problem.
In fact, they said thingssometimes got worse afterwards.
The activity would return moreviolent, more aggressive.
Meanwhile, the story wasspreading beyond West Pitston.
(10:34):
Local newspapers ran articles.
TV crews started parking on thestreet.
Strangers showed up, curious orskeptical, wanting to get a
glimpse of the haunted house.
By 1985, the Smurl Hauntingwasn't just a private family
tragedy anymore.
It was becoming a full-blownmedia story.
(10:56):
And that's when two veryfamiliar names stepped onto
Chase Street, Ed and LorraineWarren.
By 1986, the haunting at 330Chase Street had already gone
beyond whispered rumors andneighborhood gossip.
The Smurls were drained.
(11:16):
Their parish priests had been inand out, and reporters were
circling.
That's when the Warrens showedup.
Now, you probably know thosenames, Ed and Lorraine Warren.
To some people, they wererespected investigators and
demonologists.
To others, they were headlinechasers who knew how to turn a
(11:39):
haunting into a spectacle.
But for the Smurl family, theyweren't celebrities.
They were the last hope.
From the moment they entered thehouse, the Warrens said they
felt it.
A heavy, suffocating oppression.
Lorraine called it a demonicpresence.
Not a ghost, not the spirit ofsome restless human, but
(12:02):
something inhuman.
Someticious, something feedingon the family's fear.
And if you listen to the reportsfrom this period, the activity
had reached its peak.
Janet claimed she was liftedright off her bed and thrown
down again.
Jack said he was dragged acrossthe floor by something
(12:23):
invisible, deep scratchestearing down his chest.
And those deeply disturbingallegations of sexual assault?
The warrants confirmed thefamily told them that directly.
They didn't whisper about it,they put it on record.
And later, it was printed forthe world to read in Robert
Kieran's book, The Haunted.
(12:46):
It wasn't just Jack and Janeteither.
Jack's mother Mary, living onthe other side of the duplex,
said she wasn't spared.
She claimed that she was shoveddown the basement stairs with no
one behind her.
Another time, she said an unseenhand slapped her hard across the
face.
(13:06):
And then came the apparitions.
The family described grotesque,impossible things.
A half-human, half-pig creaturestanding in doorways.
An old woman appearing silentlyat the foot of Janet's bed,
staring and refusing to move.
The warrants reported gutturalgrowls, low and animal-like,
(13:29):
filling the rooms.
Ed later said they even caughtsome of it on tape.
Hours of knocking, rapping, andwhat he described as voices.
One, he claimed, told them flatout, get out.
Those tapes have never beenreleased to the public, but the
story of them has circulatedever since.
(13:51):
Even the family dog was unsafe.
Simon was reportedly lifted intothe air by his collar, suspended
as though strangled before beingdropped to the floor.
The Smurls said they stoodthere, helpless, watching it
happen.
And the voices.
Those were maybe the mostunnerving.
(14:12):
The family described moans,screams, curses, even guttural
laughter.
Sometimes the voice mimickedpeople they knew.
Janet said she once heard herdaughter's voice screaming from
the basement, only to find thatsame daughter fast asleep
upstairs.
Imagine that.
(14:33):
Religious symbols didn't offerprotection either.
Crucifixes they hung on thewalls were found bent or
snapped.
Rosaries were broken.
Janet recalled trying to prayand hearing guttural voices
joining in, mocking, cursing,daring her to continue.
Lorraine Warren claimed she sawit herself.
(14:55):
A black mass, thick andshifting, moving across the
walls.
She said it rolled like smoke,but it was solid enough to blot
out the light.
The Warrens believed there wasno question.
This was a demonic infestation,and they wanted the Catholic
Church to step in formally.
(15:15):
But the Church doesn't movequickly on these things.
That's not how it works.
The Diocese of Scranton, oncethey were notified, required
process, investigations,psychological evaluations,
ruling out natural explanations.
To the Smurls, it felt likedragging feet while they endured
(15:36):
night after night of torment.
To the church, it was caution,making sure this wasn't
something else before calling itdemonic.
According to the family, fourseparate attempts at exorcism
were made over the years.
Priests blessed the home,sprinkled holy water, and
recited prayers.
(15:57):
And each time, the Smirls saidthe activity came back,
sometimes worse than before.
Meanwhile, outside, the storywas blowing up.
News vans on Chase Street,cameras flashing at the front
door.
The Smirl haunting had become aspectacle, and Ed and Lorraine
(16:18):
Warren were giving interviews,calling it one of the darkest
cases they had ever seen.
But as always happens, withattention comes doubt.
Skeptics began lining up tochallenge the story, and that
tension between what the familyswore they endured and what the
investigators couldn't provewould define what came next.
(17:25):
By 1986, the haunting of 330Chase Street wasn't just a
private nightmare anymore.
It had exploded into afull-blown media storm.
Reporters camped outside theSmurl's duplex.
TV vans lined Chase Street,their satellite dishes aimed
skyward.
Neighbors complained about thenoise, the lights, and the
(17:48):
constant stream of strangerswalking through their yards
hoping to catch a glimpse of thehaunted house.
For Jack and Janet, who were byall accounts quiet,
working-class people who neverasked for this kind of
spotlight, it was chaos.
Then came the book.
That same year, journalistRobert Curin teamed up with the
(18:09):
Smurls and the Warrens topublish The Haunted.
It laid everything out in print.
The apparitions, the assaults,the Warren's investigation.
For the family, it was a way totell their side of the story.
For critics, it was fuel forsuspicion.
To them, the timing was tooconvenient.
(18:31):
Book deal, movie interest, mediafrenzy.
It all looked like a circus.
The reaction split almostinstantly.
Some people, especially fellowparishioners and friends,
defended the Smurls.
They said they'd seen the tollthis took on the family, and no
one would make up something thathorrifying just for attention.
(18:55):
Others, reporters, skeptics,even some clergy, thought the
whole thing smelled ofsensationalism.
And then Hollywood got involved.
In 1991, just a few years later,20th Century Fox released a
made-for-TV movie, also calledThe Haunted.
(19:15):
If you watch it now, it feelsvery much of its time.
Dramatic acting, thunder andlightning, lots of shadows.
But for the Smurls, seeing theirstory fictionalized on screen
was strange, almost surreal.
Jack later said the movie didn'tcome close to capturing the real
horror they lived through.
(19:37):
The Warrens, meanwhile, leanedinto the publicity.
They gave interviews, went ontalk shows, and told the world
this was one of the darkestcases of their careers.
That didn't help theirreputation with skeptics, who
accused them of milking the casefor attention and money.
And skeptics were loud.
(19:57):
Organizations like Syscop, C S IC O P, the Committee for the
Scientific Investigation ofClaims of the Paranormal, sent
investigators.
They found no hard evidence, nophotos, no public recordings,
nothing physical that could backup what the Smurls described.
Paul Kurtz, one of the Ciscopsleaders, suggested the
(20:22):
experiences might have beenexplained by stress, sleep
paralysis, or even psychologicalsuggestion.
Others speculated that familytension or medical issues could
explain some of the symptoms.
Even the diocese of Scranton wascautious.
A spokesman admitted the familywas being taken seriously, but
(20:43):
insisted exorcisms requiredundeniable evidence.
The Smurls claimed four separateattempts had been made, but the
diocese never confirmed that aformal exorcism had ever taken
place.
Neighbors were just as divided.
Some swore they'd heard screamscoming from the duplex when no
(21:03):
one was home.
Others said they lived nearbyfor years and never saw or heard
a thing.
The Scranton Times and otherlocal papers reflected that
split, reporting the hauntingbut always noting the lack of
proof.
And that's the heart of it.
On one side, you had a familywho repeated the same horrifying
(21:24):
claims year after year, neverwavering.
On the other, you had skepticspointing out that nothing
physical, nothing verifiableever backed it up.
By 1987, the Smurls wereexhausted.
They said the activity was stillhappening.
The smells, the voices, theassaults.
(21:45):
But now they were also dealingwith ridicule from neighbors,
skepticism from the press, andstrangers camping on their lawn.
It wasn't just a hauntinganymore, it was a battle for
credibility.
And finally, after more than adecade, the family made a
decision.
They would leave Chase Streetbehind.
(22:08):
By 1987, the Smurls had beenliving with this for over a
decade.
Imagine that.
Ten plus years of noises,shadows, smells, attacks,
priests coming and going,reporters knocking on the door,
cameras flashing outside.
Janet later said she felt likeher family was being eaten
(22:30):
alive.
Not just by whatever was in thehouse, but by the constant
attention that came with it.
Finally, in 1988, they made thedecision that they had resisted
for so long.
They left 330 Chase Street,packed up their lives, moved to
another part of Pennsylvania inhope that the thing that
(22:51):
tormented them wouldn't follow.
And here's the strange part.
Once they left, the activityseemed to stop.
The new tenants in the duplexreported nothing unusual.
No banging pipes, no sulfursmells, no shadows, no voices.
Just life in an old Pennsylvaniahouse.
(23:13):
For skeptics, that was thesmoking gun.
Proof that the whole thing hadbeen exaggerated, or maybe even
imagined.
For believers, it was morecomplicated.
Maybe the entity had latchedonto the Smirls themselves.
Maybe it wasn't the house thatwas haunted, it was the family.
(23:34):
As the years went on, the Smirlscarried the weight of the story
with them.
Jack's health declined.
He struggled with diabetes andpassed away in 2017.
Janet continued to speakpublicly about their experience.
She never backed down, neversoftened her account, never once
(23:54):
said, maybe we were wrong.
For her, what happened on ChaseStreet was real.
And the house itself, it's stillthere, a quiet duplex in West
Pittston, standing like anyother on the block.
No signs, no plaques, just abuilding that holds one of the
most infamous haunting storiesin American history.
(24:17):
And every time Ed and LorraineWarren came back into the
headlines, after the conjuringfilms, after Annabelle, after
the other cases resurfaced, theSmurl haunting was mentioned
again.
Their story became part of thatcatalog of cases the Warrens
were known for, folded into thelarger legend, forever linked to
(24:38):
the pop culture universe of theparanormal.
So let's step back for a moment.
The Smurl Haunting sits at thisstrange crossroads, part family
tragedy, part religious battle,part media spectacle.
And like so many of the Warren'scases, it lives in that gray
(24:59):
space between belief and doubt.
Because on one side, you've gota family who never wavered.
For over a decade, they told thesame story.
They endured ridicule,skepticism, and media intrusion,
and still stood by every claim.
They weren't laughing about itlater.
(25:21):
They weren't cashing in on ablockbuster payday.
They weren't changing theirstory to fit the times.
And that kind of consistency,well, that matters.
But then, on the other hand,you've got the lack of proof.
No public tapes, no photographs,no evidence that could silence
the skeptics once and for all.
(25:42):
And the fact that when thefamily moved, the house went
quiet, that sticks with people.
So what do we do with a storylike this?
Maybe some of it was stress,maybe sleep paralysis, medical
issues, or suggestion amplifyingwhat they thought they were
experiencing.
(26:03):
Or maybe, just maybe, somethingdarker really was in that house.
I can't tell you exactly whathappened at 330 J Street.
Nobody can.
But what I can say is this theSmurl case lingers because it
feels too detailed, tooconsistent, and too traumatic to
(26:24):
dismiss outright, yet toounproven to fully accept.
And maybe that's why it stillunsettles us.
Because it leaves us standing inthat uneasy middle ground,
staring into the shadows,wondering if what the Smurls
endured was real.
And if it was real, could ithappen again?
(26:44):
And if it could happen again,could it happen to us?
This has been State of theUnknown.
The story of the Smurl familyisn't just another haunted house
tale.
It's a reminder of how fragilethat line is between the
ordinary and the unexplainable.
(27:05):
For some, what happened on ChaseStreet was proof of the devil's
work.
For others, it was a desperatefamily caught in the middle of
stress, attention, andsuggestion.
But either way, it left a mark.
And maybe that's the real powerof stories like this.
They live on long after theheadlines fade, long after the
(27:29):
house goes quiet.
They force us to wrestle withbelief and doubt.
And they make us wonder whatwe'd do if the same sounds, the
same shadows, came creepingthrough our own walls at night.
If you've been enjoying State ofthe Unknown, thank you.
It means the world that you'rehere, week after week, exploring
(27:52):
these stories with me.
The best way you can help theshow grow is simple.
Leave a quick rating or review.
On Spotify, it's just a coupleof taps.
On Apple Podcasts, you can evenwrite a few words.
I read every one, and I can'ttell you how much it means.
Until next time, keep watchingthe shadows because you never
(28:14):
know.
They might just be watching you.
Imagine you're sitting at home and the pipes
start banging.
You brush it off.
Old houses make noise.
Then it keeps happening.
Scratches in the walls.
This sour, rotten smell thatfills the rooms out of nowhere.
And before long, it's not justsounds and smells.
(00:22):
Beds are shaking.
Dark shapes are moving acrossthe hallway.
One night, even the family doggets thrown against the wall.
And that's what the Smurl familysaid they lived through.
And it only got worse fromthere.
This was West Pittston,Pennsylvania, 1974.
(00:44):
Jack and Janet Smurl had justmoved into a duplex with their
daughters.
Jack's parents lived right nextdoor.
They weren't chasing ghoststories.
They were just a working-classCatholic family trying to live a
normal life.
But over the next 15 years, theyclaimed something dark moved in
(01:04):
with them.
Something that wouldn't leave.
And when they couldn't take itanymore, they called two names
you've heard before, Ed andLorraine Warren.
(01:39):
The haunting that followed theSmurl family for more than a
decade and inspired the newfilm, The Conjuring Last Rights.
This is the story of the SmurlHaunting, a case that blurred
the line between ordinary andthe unimaginable.
And this is State of theUnknown.
(02:06):
Let's start at the beginning.
Picture West Pittston,Pennsylvania, mid-1970s.
It's a small town in the WyomingValley, not far from Scranton.
Working class, blue collar.
People knew their neighbors.
Families went to church onSunday, and life moved at a
steady, ordinary rhythm.
(02:28):
That's where Jack and JanetSmurl were raising their family.
They'd already had a roughcouple of years.
In 1972, Hurricane Agnes haddevastated the valley.
Floods forced the Smurls, likethousands of others, out of
their home.
They spent months scraping theirlives back together, looking for
(02:48):
stability.
And when they found a duplex onChase Street in 1973, it seemed
like the answer.
This house was practical.
It wasn't fancy, but it worked.
Jack and Janet moved into onehalf with their four young
daughters.
On the other side, right throughthe shared wall, lived Jack's
(03:09):
parents, John and Mary, twogenerations under one roof line.
For a Catholic family trying tostart fresh, it meant security.
It meant support.
It meant normalcy.
But normal is not what they got.
At first, it was just the kindof stuff you'd expect in an
(03:30):
older house.
Pipes rattling when the heatkicked on, knocks in the walls,
lights flickering now and then,appliances turning themselves on
and off.
Things that, honestly, you couldexplain away if you really
wanted to.
And sometimes they did.
Old wiring, they thought.
Drafty house.
The kind of answers that makeyou feel better so you can sleep
(03:52):
at night.
But then the little annoyancesstarted getting a little harder
to dismiss.
There were sudden waves of anawful smell.
Sulfur, rot, something sour thatwould roll through a room and
then disappear as quickly as itcame.
No broken pipes, no dead animalsin the walls, just stench that
(04:14):
appeared out of nowhere.
And then there came the sounds.
Not just bangs or creaksanymore, but heavy footsteps,
thuds across the floor when noone was home, beds that trembled
in the middle of the night.
Before long, the family saidthey began seeing things too.
(04:35):
Figures.
At first, just vague shapesmoving in the corners of their
eyes.
Then darker, more distinct formscrossing rooms and hallways.
And these weren't just Jack andJanet's imagination.
Their daughters saw them too.
Jack's parents, right next door,saw them as well.
(04:55):
Same house, same walls, sameexperiences.
Then there was the dog.
Their German shepherd, Simon,was the family protector.
But even he wasn't safe.
The Smurls said that one night,without warning, the dog was
lifted into the air and slammedagainst the wall.
(05:16):
Imagine seeing that.
It's not just creepy noisesanymore.
It's physical, violence, andit's happening to the one
creature in the house who had noreason to invent stories.
And the activities didn't stopthere.
Jack and Janet both reportedscratches on their arms and
chests.
(05:37):
Janet described being pulled byunseen hands.
Later, both of them would eventalk about assaults.
The kind of disturbing, intimateattacks that are hard to say out
loud, let alone admit toreporters and priests.
The key thing here is that itwasn't just one person, or even
(05:58):
one branch of the family makingthese claims.
Jack and Janet in one half ofthe duplex, Jack's parents in
the other, both householdssaying, something's wrong in
this house.
That kind of shared experienceis what makes this case stand
out.
By the early 1980s, word wasbeginning to spread.
(06:19):
Neighbors whispered.
Local papers picked up thestory.
Reporters started to show up.
But before the cameras and theheadlines, it was just the
Smurls.
A Catholic family on ChaseStreet trying to survive in a
house that, according to them,was slowly tearing them apart.
(06:40):
So at first, it was noises,smells, and flickering lights,
the kind of stuff you could justshrug off if you tried hard
enough.
But over time, the Smurls saidit all escalated into something
much darker.
The shadow figures, for example.
Early on, they were just shapes,like moving shadows where there
(07:02):
shouldn't be any.
But as the years went on, thefamily described them becoming
more defined.
They weren't just tricks of theeye anymore.
They looked solid, human-like.
They walked across doorways,down halls, stood in corners,
and didn't move.
And these weren't just quickglances.
(07:23):
The family said they could watchthem.
Jack, Janet, their daughters,even Jack's parents next door,
all of them reported seeingthese same forms.
And then there was the physicalside of it.
The beds didn't just trembleanymore, they shook violently.
Jack said the frame of his bedrattled so loudly at night you
(07:46):
could hear it echo through thewalls.
Janet described being yanked outof bed by something she couldn't
see.
Both of them showed scratchesacross their arms, their backs,
and their chests.
And the part of their story thatstill makes people stop cold?
They both claimed they weresexually assaulted by whatever
(08:06):
this thing was.
Not whispered in private.
They told priests.
They told reporters.
And eventually those claimsended up in print in the 1986
book, The Haunted.
For a Catholic family in smalltown Pennsylvania to make that
kind of accusation publicly, youknow it wasn't something they
did lightly.
(08:27):
The dog story kept coming uptoo.
Neighbors and reporters heardabout it.
Simon being picked up and thrownagainst a wall.
That one detail got repeated sooften it became almost a
shorthand for the case.
Because if an animal wasattacked, that's harder to chalk
up to imagination or suggestion.
(08:48):
And then there were the smells.
The rotten sulfurous stenchbecame one of the case's
signatures.
Sometimes it was described asburning.
Other times, Jack said it waslike rotting flesh.
So thick you could almost tasteit.
The odor would appear out ofnowhere, linger for a few
(09:08):
minutes, and then vanish just assuddenly.
No explanation.
Neighbors started noticingthings too.
One family down the streetclaimed they heard blood-curling
screams coming from the SmurlHouse when no one was home.
Another reported flickeringlights in empty rooms.
It wasn't just an isolated storyanymore.
(09:31):
People outside the duplex weresaying something was going on at
Chase Street.
By the mid-1980s, the toll onthe family was obvious.
They were exhausted, shaken, andby their account, being worn
down night after night.
Jack and Janet talked about howthey couldn't sleep.
(09:51):
They constantly felt watched asif the house itself was alive
and hostile.
Desperate, they turned to thechurch.
Priests from the parish cameinto the home, blessed rooms,
sprinkled holy water, recitedprayers.
One of them, Father JosephAdenizio, later confirmed
(10:11):
publicly that he'd been there,that he'd heard their stories
and tried to help.
But according to the Smurls, theblessings didn't solve the
problem.
In fact, they said thingssometimes got worse afterwards.
The activity would return moreviolent, more aggressive.
Meanwhile, the story wasspreading beyond West Pitston.
(10:34):
Local newspapers ran articles.
TV crews started parking on thestreet.
Strangers showed up, curious orskeptical, wanting to get a
glimpse of the haunted house.
By 1985, the Smurl Hauntingwasn't just a private family
tragedy anymore.
It was becoming a full-blownmedia story.
(10:56):
And that's when two veryfamiliar names stepped onto
Chase Street, Ed and LorraineWarren.
By 1986, the haunting at 330Chase Street had already gone
beyond whispered rumors andneighborhood gossip.
The Smurls were drained.
(11:16):
Their parish priests had been inand out, and reporters were
circling.
That's when the Warrens showedup.
Now, you probably know thosenames, Ed and Lorraine Warren.
To some people, they wererespected investigators and
demonologists.
To others, they were headlinechasers who knew how to turn a
(11:39):
haunting into a spectacle.
But for the Smurl family, theyweren't celebrities.
They were the last hope.
From the moment they entered thehouse, the Warrens said they
felt it.
A heavy, suffocating oppression.
Lorraine called it a demonicpresence.
Not a ghost, not the spirit ofsome restless human, but
(12:02):
something inhuman.
Someticious, something feedingon the family's fear.
And if you listen to the reportsfrom this period, the activity
had reached its peak.
Janet claimed she was liftedright off her bed and thrown
down again.
Jack said he was dragged acrossthe floor by something
(12:23):
invisible, deep scratchestearing down his chest.
And those deeply disturbingallegations of sexual assault?
The warrants confirmed thefamily told them that directly.
They didn't whisper about it,they put it on record.
And later, it was printed forthe world to read in Robert
Kieran's book, The Haunted.
(12:46):
It wasn't just Jack and Janeteither.
Jack's mother Mary, living onthe other side of the duplex,
said she wasn't spared.
She claimed that she was shoveddown the basement stairs with no
one behind her.
Another time, she said an unseenhand slapped her hard across the
face.
(13:06):
And then came the apparitions.
The family described grotesque,impossible things.
A half-human, half-pig creaturestanding in doorways.
An old woman appearing silentlyat the foot of Janet's bed,
staring and refusing to move.
The warrants reported gutturalgrowls, low and animal-like,
(13:29):
filling the rooms.
Ed later said they even caughtsome of it on tape.
Hours of knocking, rapping, andwhat he described as voices.
One, he claimed, told them flatout, get out.
Those tapes have never beenreleased to the public, but the
story of them has circulatedever since.
(13:51):
Even the family dog was unsafe.
Simon was reportedly lifted intothe air by his collar, suspended
as though strangled before beingdropped to the floor.
The Smurls said they stoodthere, helpless, watching it
happen.
And the voices.
Those were maybe the mostunnerving.
(14:12):
The family described moans,screams, curses, even guttural
laughter.
Sometimes the voice mimickedpeople they knew.
Janet said she once heard herdaughter's voice screaming from
the basement, only to find thatsame daughter fast asleep
upstairs.
Imagine that.
(14:33):
Religious symbols didn't offerprotection either.
Crucifixes they hung on thewalls were found bent or
snapped.
Rosaries were broken.
Janet recalled trying to prayand hearing guttural voices
joining in, mocking, cursing,daring her to continue.
Lorraine Warren claimed she sawit herself.
(14:55):
A black mass, thick andshifting, moving across the
walls.
She said it rolled like smoke,but it was solid enough to blot
out the light.
The Warrens believed there wasno question.
This was a demonic infestation,and they wanted the Catholic
Church to step in formally.
(15:15):
But the Church doesn't movequickly on these things.
That's not how it works.
The Diocese of Scranton, oncethey were notified, required
process, investigations,psychological evaluations,
ruling out natural explanations.
To the Smurls, it felt likedragging feet while they endured
(15:36):
night after night of torment.
To the church, it was caution,making sure this wasn't
something else before calling itdemonic.
According to the family, fourseparate attempts at exorcism
were made over the years.
Priests blessed the home,sprinkled holy water, and
recited prayers.
(15:57):
And each time, the Smirls saidthe activity came back,
sometimes worse than before.
Meanwhile, outside, the storywas blowing up.
News vans on Chase Street,cameras flashing at the front
door.
The Smirl haunting had become aspectacle, and Ed and Lorraine
(16:18):
Warren were giving interviews,calling it one of the darkest
cases they had ever seen.
But as always happens, withattention comes doubt.
Skeptics began lining up tochallenge the story, and that
tension between what the familyswore they endured and what the
investigators couldn't provewould define what came next.
(17:25):
By 1986, the haunting of 330Chase Street wasn't just a
private nightmare anymore.
It had exploded into afull-blown media storm.
Reporters camped outside theSmurl's duplex.
TV vans lined Chase Street,their satellite dishes aimed
skyward.
Neighbors complained about thenoise, the lights, and the
(17:48):
constant stream of strangerswalking through their yards
hoping to catch a glimpse of thehaunted house.
For Jack and Janet, who were byall accounts quiet,
working-class people who neverasked for this kind of
spotlight, it was chaos.
Then came the book.
That same year, journalistRobert Curin teamed up with the
(18:09):
Smurls and the Warrens topublish The Haunted.
It laid everything out in print.
The apparitions, the assaults,the Warren's investigation.
For the family, it was a way totell their side of the story.
For critics, it was fuel forsuspicion.
To them, the timing was tooconvenient.
(18:31):
Book deal, movie interest, mediafrenzy.
It all looked like a circus.
The reaction split almostinstantly.
Some people, especially fellowparishioners and friends,
defended the Smurls.
They said they'd seen the tollthis took on the family, and no
one would make up something thathorrifying just for attention.
(18:55):
Others, reporters, skeptics,even some clergy, thought the
whole thing smelled ofsensationalism.
And then Hollywood got involved.
In 1991, just a few years later,20th Century Fox released a
made-for-TV movie, also calledThe Haunted.
(19:15):
If you watch it now, it feelsvery much of its time.
Dramatic acting, thunder andlightning, lots of shadows.
But for the Smurls, seeing theirstory fictionalized on screen
was strange, almost surreal.
Jack later said the movie didn'tcome close to capturing the real
horror they lived through.
(19:37):
The Warrens, meanwhile, leanedinto the publicity.
They gave interviews, went ontalk shows, and told the world
this was one of the darkestcases of their careers.
That didn't help theirreputation with skeptics, who
accused them of milking the casefor attention and money.
And skeptics were loud.
(19:57):
Organizations like Syscop, C S IC O P, the Committee for the
Scientific Investigation ofClaims of the Paranormal, sent
investigators.
They found no hard evidence, nophotos, no public recordings,
nothing physical that could backup what the Smurls described.
Paul Kurtz, one of the Ciscopsleaders, suggested the
(20:22):
experiences might have beenexplained by stress, sleep
paralysis, or even psychologicalsuggestion.
Others speculated that familytension or medical issues could
explain some of the symptoms.
Even the diocese of Scranton wascautious.
A spokesman admitted the familywas being taken seriously, but
(20:43):
insisted exorcisms requiredundeniable evidence.
The Smurls claimed four separateattempts had been made, but the
diocese never confirmed that aformal exorcism had ever taken
place.
Neighbors were just as divided.
Some swore they'd heard screamscoming from the duplex when no
(21:03):
one was home.
Others said they lived nearbyfor years and never saw or heard
a thing.
The Scranton Times and otherlocal papers reflected that
split, reporting the hauntingbut always noting the lack of
proof.
And that's the heart of it.
On one side, you had a familywho repeated the same horrifying
(21:24):
claims year after year, neverwavering.
On the other, you had skepticspointing out that nothing
physical, nothing verifiableever backed it up.
By 1987, the Smurls wereexhausted.
They said the activity was stillhappening.
The smells, the voices, theassaults.
(21:45):
But now they were also dealingwith ridicule from neighbors,
skepticism from the press, andstrangers camping on their lawn.
It wasn't just a hauntinganymore, it was a battle for
credibility.
And finally, after more than adecade, the family made a
decision.
They would leave Chase Streetbehind.
(22:08):
By 1987, the Smurls had beenliving with this for over a
decade.
Imagine that.
Ten plus years of noises,shadows, smells, attacks,
priests coming and going,reporters knocking on the door,
cameras flashing outside.
Janet later said she felt likeher family was being eaten
(22:30):
alive.
Not just by whatever was in thehouse, but by the constant
attention that came with it.
Finally, in 1988, they made thedecision that they had resisted
for so long.
They left 330 Chase Street,packed up their lives, moved to
another part of Pennsylvania inhope that the thing that
(22:51):
tormented them wouldn't follow.
And here's the strange part.
Once they left, the activityseemed to stop.
The new tenants in the duplexreported nothing unusual.
No banging pipes, no sulfursmells, no shadows, no voices.
Just life in an old Pennsylvaniahouse.
(23:13):
For skeptics, that was thesmoking gun.
Proof that the whole thing hadbeen exaggerated, or maybe even
imagined.
For believers, it was morecomplicated.
Maybe the entity had latchedonto the Smirls themselves.
Maybe it wasn't the house thatwas haunted, it was the family.
(23:34):
As the years went on, the Smirlscarried the weight of the story
with them.
Jack's health declined.
He struggled with diabetes andpassed away in 2017.
Janet continued to speakpublicly about their experience.
She never backed down, neversoftened her account, never once
(23:54):
said, maybe we were wrong.
For her, what happened on ChaseStreet was real.
And the house itself, it's stillthere, a quiet duplex in West
Pittston, standing like anyother on the block.
No signs, no plaques, just abuilding that holds one of the
most infamous haunting storiesin American history.
(24:17):
And every time Ed and LorraineWarren came back into the
headlines, after the conjuringfilms, after Annabelle, after
the other cases resurfaced, theSmurl haunting was mentioned
again.
Their story became part of thatcatalog of cases the Warrens
were known for, folded into thelarger legend, forever linked to
(24:38):
the pop culture universe of theparanormal.
So let's step back for a moment.
The Smurl Haunting sits at thisstrange crossroads, part family
tragedy, part religious battle,part media spectacle.
And like so many of the Warren'scases, it lives in that gray
(24:59):
space between belief and doubt.
Because on one side, you've gota family who never wavered.
For over a decade, they told thesame story.
They endured ridicule,skepticism, and media intrusion,
and still stood by every claim.
They weren't laughing about itlater.
(25:21):
They weren't cashing in on ablockbuster payday.
They weren't changing theirstory to fit the times.
And that kind of consistency,well, that matters.
But then, on the other hand,you've got the lack of proof.
No public tapes, no photographs,no evidence that could silence
the skeptics once and for all.
(25:42):
And the fact that when thefamily moved, the house went
quiet, that sticks with people.
So what do we do with a storylike this?
Maybe some of it was stress,maybe sleep paralysis, medical
issues, or suggestion amplifyingwhat they thought they were
experiencing.
(26:03):
Or maybe, just maybe, somethingdarker really was in that house.
I can't tell you exactly whathappened at 330 J Street.
Nobody can.
But what I can say is this theSmurl case lingers because it
feels too detailed, tooconsistent, and too traumatic to
(26:24):
dismiss outright, yet toounproven to fully accept.
And maybe that's why it stillunsettles us.
Because it leaves us standing inthat uneasy middle ground,
staring into the shadows,wondering if what the Smurls
endured was real.
And if it was real, could ithappen again?
(26:44):
And if it could happen again,could it happen to us?
This has been State of theUnknown.
The story of the Smurl familyisn't just another haunted house
tale.
It's a reminder of how fragilethat line is between the
ordinary and the unexplainable.
(27:05):
For some, what happened on ChaseStreet was proof of the devil's
work.
For others, it was a desperatefamily caught in the middle of
stress, attention, andsuggestion.
But either way, it left a mark.
And maybe that's the real powerof stories like this.
They live on long after theheadlines fade, long after the
(27:29):
house goes quiet.
They force us to wrestle withbelief and doubt.
And they make us wonder whatwe'd do if the same sounds, the
same shadows, came creepingthrough our own walls at night.
If you've been enjoying State ofthe Unknown, thank you.
It means the world that you'rehere, week after week, exploring
(27:52):
these stories with me.
The best way you can help theshow grow is simple.
Leave a quick rating or review.
On Spotify, it's just a coupleof taps.
On Apple Podcasts, you can evenwrite a few words.
I read every one, and I can'ttell you how much it means.
Until next time, keep watchingthe shadows because you never
(28:14):
know.
They might just be watching you.
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