EXPOSED: The Conjuring 4 | The TRUE Story of the Smurl Haunting / The Warrens | Ep #39 pt 1 - Madame Strangeways: True Spooky Paranormal Stories

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
He had many friends and enjoyed sports of all kinds as well as I
can't even get through this witha strange face.
Welcome strangers to Madam Strangeways, where I, Madam
Strangeways, usually share your true strange stories of the

(00:23):
unexplained along with my thoughts on said strange
stories. However, today you've joined me
for a deep dive episode on the Smirrel family haunting which
will be the subject of the latest Conjuring film, The
Conjuring Last Rites. This is one of Ed and Lorraine
Warren's paranormal case files and if you aren't familiar with

(00:46):
the Warrens, well first of all, how exciting for you.
But also they were the infamous ghost hunting couple you may
know from The Conjuring film franchise, with Lorraine being a
self-proclaimed light transmedium who can speak to
spirits and Ed Warren being a self-proclaimed and self-taught
demonologist. Allegedly the short story I'll

(01:09):
open with today is my own retelling of the events as told
in the also allegedly non fiction book recounting their
also also allegedly true story, The Haunting One Family's
Nightmare written by Robert Curran, Lorraine and Ed Warren
and Janet and Jack Smurl. I start with this story so that

(01:30):
you have an understanding of theparanormal claims as they're
presented to us from the Smurls and the Warrens themselves,
without the. Old Hollywood razzle dazzle.
Though I assure you there's definitely a healthy amount of
razzle dazzle already baked in. But this way you'll have the
context for the analysis and commentary afterwards where all

(01:53):
poke holes pick apart and generally dissect the story to
suss out the truth from fiction,while as always, dragging you
down countless spooky rabbit holes kicking and screaming if
needs must. This story does involve
discussion of demonic sexual assault, so if essay is a
difficult topic for you, please listen with care.

(02:14):
Now I sense it's about to rain hellcats and hell hounds
outside, so you know what that means.
On to our true ish, possibly allegedly strange story here on
Madam Strange Ways. OK, after recording the story

(02:48):
and listening to it back, I feellike I have to come here and put
a caveat at the beginning so that you understand that in some
places in this story I use verbatim phrases from the book.
So if you. Think that wow, she's being
really sarcastic or really ridiculous or over the top.
I assure you I am not exaggerating anything, and

(03:11):
actually it's probably just a time when I am quoting something
directly from the book, so just keep that in mind with this
retelling. OK, on to the on to the on to
the strange story, The Smurl family haunting.
If Hurricane Agnes had never ravaged Northeast Pennsylvania

(03:34):
back in 1972, maybe none of thisharrowing tale would have ever
happened. When the Smirrel family was
forced to find a new home in West Pittston, PA, due to
flooding in their Wilkes Barre home, no one could have guessed
what was in store for them. They bought a duplex at 3:28 and
3:30 Chase St. Jack and Janet Smirrel lived on

(03:56):
one side of the duplex with their daughter Don, and Jack's
parents, John and Mary lived on the other side.
Immediately upon moving into their fixer upper homes, strange
occurrences began to plague the families.
A mysterious stain on a brand new rug couldn't be removed no
matter how hard Janet scrubbed while sniffing her favorite

(04:20):
fabric detergent. While doing laundry one day,
Janet heard a voice whispering her name.
The pipes that John had installed himself began to leak.
The TV, oven and even Jack's newcar wiring caught on fire.
The new ceramic sink and tub Jack and Janet had installed

(04:41):
were marred with slash marks overnight.
Dawn, one of their daughters, told her parents she saw people
floating around her room at night, but Jack never saw
anything when he went to investigate.
The toilets would flush on theirown, radios would turn on by
themselves, and a foul stench filled the home.

(05:03):
Jack was sure that the stench would appear only when he was
praying the rosary. Janet and Mary both witnessed a
black shadowy form wearing a Cape passed through the wall
separating their homes, but timemarched on, even as the noises
in the walls and the strange occurrences continued.

(05:24):
The Smurls had two more children, totalling 4 now, all
daughters, and all of them simply lived with the haunting.
The night of their daughter Kim's Catholic confirmation,
when Janet was getting her dressed for the event, a light
fixture that Jack had installed himself years before came

(05:44):
crashing down and clipped Kim onthe shoulder.
Jack began levitating over his bed as he slept.
One night, after making love to Jack, Janet was yanked from
their bed by some unseen force and dragged along the floor.
Jack started to be cruel to his family.

(06:07):
Janet became depressed. When Janet was doing dishes one
day, the family dog, Simon, a German shepherd, was picked up
by an invisible force and slammed against the kitchen
door. Mary Smirrel, Jack's mother,
witnessed a puppy with neither ahead nor a tail run across her
living room right in front of her and disappear under the love

(06:30):
seat. The children's pillows were
punched by phantom hands. The sound of fluttering wings
could be heard in the chimney. One of the twins fell down the
stairs. One night after bedtime, two
different priests were brought in to bless the home, but the
house was up to its haunted antics again in no time.

(06:54):
Finally, Ed and Lorraine Warren,famous paranormal investigators,
were called to the scene. Ed, a self-taught demonologist,
and Lorraine, a light transmedium with clairvoyance
and the ESP brought along another psychic woman from their
team. Between her and Lorraine, they
sensed the presence of demons. Once they headed upstairs, they

(07:16):
sensed 4 entities in total. 1 was an old, confused woman,
probably senile but not violent.One was a younger, insane woman
who wanted to hurt them. One was a male spirit with a
moustache, the other was a demonwho would use the other three
spirits to destroy the small family.

(07:38):
Ed told them that it must have been all their daughters
entering puberty that caused a dormant demonic spirit to awaken
to lure the demon out in order to banish it with prayer.
Ed had the group of them stand in the master bedroom in the
dark and played Ave. Maria twice until finally the

(08:00):
dresser began to shake and rattle and an unplugged
television set turned on to playstatic without any power.
Ed said a prayer and the activity stopped, but only
temporarily. Ed told the family to go to the
church store and acquire holy water and religious candles, and
to contact a priest for an exorcism of the home, as he

(08:24):
wasn't sanctioned to perform them.
Soon after the activity escalated one night in the
bedroom, invisible hands began to slap at Janet while other
invisible hands began to tickle Jack's feet, the kind of
tickling that would no doubt cause madness if prolonged
enough. Jack began jumping around on the

(08:46):
bed in an ugly animal frenzy as Janet cried his name.
The walls shook violently. The unplugged television turned
on again and emitted A pale, eerie light, blinding and its
brightness. Jack flung himself off the bed
and stood bare chested, his hands and big fists.

(09:08):
Why don't you? Show yourself to us so we can
have a fair fight, He shouted atthe shifting shadows.
Janet came to his side, clung tohim.
It took her many minutes to calmher husband down, but the
knocking in the walls continued.A few days later, Janet decided
to record the bangings that started up in her daughter's

(09:28):
bedroom. She started the tape recorder
and told the demon she wanted tocommunicate with it and that it
should knock once for yes and twice for no.
She asked if the demon was thereto harm them and there came one
single knock for yes. She asked if the demon was there
to harm her and it gave another single knock in the affirmative.

(09:53):
She then asked if it believed inJesus Christ, which resulted in
a violent burst of knocks lasting several minutes.
Afterwards she played the tape back and was relieved to find
that it had recorded properly. She had captured the evidence.
Jack saw the apparitions of two women in old fashioned bonnets

(10:14):
and long dresses that glowed like the TV.
He was paralysed and it seemed Janet had been put into a
psychic sleep by the demon, for his cries never woke her.
A priest finally came and blessed the house, praying over
each room in the house, then quickly left.
Ed decided to test out the priest's handiwork by trying to

(10:36):
lure the demon out again as before.
This time, the demon began to choke Ed, and words even began
to appear in the bedroom mirror first.
Why? And then an O and then AU.
Then the message was complete, it read.
You filthy bastard, get out of this house.

(10:59):
Later, Simon, their German Shepherd, was levitated into the
air and in the process became sofrightened that Janet and Jack
wondered if a dog could be driven insane.
Then he was dematerialized rightin front of Janet's eyes and
then Howling had come back into earthly existence.

(11:22):
Then in June, Jack Smirrel experienced sexual assault at
the hands of a succubus, a demon.
The succubus's skin was paperwhite but it was covered in
some places with snake like scales and then in other places
with open sores running with pus.

(11:43):
She appeared 65 or 70 in the face with long white scraggly
hair and her eyes were all red and the inside of her mouth and
her gums were green. Some of her teeth were missing
but those she did have were longand vampire like.
Her body itself was firm, like that of a younger woman, and she

(12:07):
mounted Jack in the dominant position.
He couldn't move and found againthat his wife Janet had been put
into a psychic sleep, unable to hear him or to wake.
The next morning, one of their daughters told Jack that she had
a nightmare, that he was being attacked and assaulted by an

(12:28):
evil old hag with sores all overher body, something she couldn't
possibly have known about a Catholic priest.
Father McKenna finally arrived and performed an exorcism on the
House. It failed.
Activity began again, and one ofthe Smirrel's daughters fell

(12:48):
gravely ill with fever, but she soon recovered.
While taking a shower, Dawn, their 16 year old daughter, felt
an invisible form join her in the shower and squeeze her arms
painfully. Radios in the house turned on
and off, and so did water faucets.
The foul stench returned and wasdriven away only by holy water

(13:14):
to get a break from the chaos. The family packed up and went
packing in the Poconos for a short time to regain their
sanity, but the demon followed them and ran them out of their
campground. When they returned, Shannon, one
of their daughters, was levitated and thrown out of her
bed and into a wall. One afternoon, after Janet had

(13:35):
made a cabbage salad for dinner and put it in the refrigerator
so that it would be cold at dinner time, she then laid down
for a nap. An invisible hand began to touch
her suggestively, then choked her nearly to death.
Father McKenna was called back and performed yet another
exorcism on the House. When that exorcism failed, too,

(13:59):
the Smurls had no other choice. They had to go on a talk show.
Through Ed and Lorraine's connections, they secured a spot
with Janet and Jack on a Philadelphia based talk show
called People Are Talking, wherethey were able to hide the
swirl's identities behind a screen to protect their privacy.
When they returned home, the demon only escalated its torment

(14:22):
in the weeks afterwards. The demon even followed Jack to
his work at the bubble gum factory.
The demon took a new form, an 8 foot tall human like creature
with two legs, wide shoulders and a furry head with blinding
red eyes and a pig like snout. Its lips resembled pieces of

(14:42):
liver, and they noisily slobbered as it made slashing
motions in his general directionfrom the end of his bed.
The Smurls were forced to go public at that point, this time
revealing their names and faces in hopes that someone, anyone,
would know how to help them and would contact them.

(15:03):
But first, they took another week long camping trip.
But just as before, the demon followed.
When they returned home, Janet witnessed a human hand
materialized through her mattress and it grabbed her by
the back of her neck and held her down.
Before they went to the media, Jack was once again assaulted,

(15:23):
this time by a different succubus.
This time it was a voluptuous young woman with pale skin and
neon green eyes who sexually assaulted him.
They finally contacted A reporter and gave their stories,
along with Ed and Lorraine Warren backing them up.
As soon as their story. Was reported in the paper.
They immediately regretted theirdecision from all the negative

(15:45):
attention it was getting them inthe neighborhood.
Cars were lined up and down the street to get a glimpse of the
haunted house. The police barricaded the street
off. Finally, the Smurls had enough.
They read a prepared statement to the media asking for privacy.
The Catholic Church sent multiple priests to stay in the

(16:06):
Smurl home to investigate. No demonic or paranormal
activity whatsoever happened while they were there, so the
Smurls called Father McKenna back, who performed his third
exorcism. The house smelled of roses
instead of rotting flesh, and for a time the exorcism seemed
to have worked, until Jack saw the shadowy figure again one

(16:29):
night while watching TV. So if you feel like that was a
little bit of a cliffhanger at the end, fear not.
The end of the story is that theSmurls got a book and TV movie

(16:51):
deal which included an advance of an undisclosed amount of
money. That was clearly enough money to
buy a house in Wilkes Barre, which is pronounced Wilkes Barre
and not Wilkes Barre. FYI.
That's where they moved back to,and then they sold the house.
As for the demonic activity, thefamily said that it all kind of
went away thanks to Jesus and the Virgin Mary banishing the

(17:13):
demons. The end.
The end. Not the three exorcisms, not Ed
and Lorraine just kind of just kind of stopped.
OK, that's cool. OK, before we get started,
before we get started, we're going to take a little quick
little little pop quiz, pop quizhotshot.
Well, geography lesson quiz for you, where do you think the

(17:37):
Poconos are? OK, I'm so curious to hear.
You know what I want to hear from you
madamstrangeways@gmail.com or leave me a message on Spotify.
I want to know where you think the Poconos are now.
Some of you are thinking of the correct answer.
The rest of us are thinking an incorrect answer 'cause I was

(17:58):
incorrect about where I thought the Poconos was.
If you were picturing the Poconos somewhere tropical,
perhaps, maybe the Caribbean or Polynesia, you were wrong.
We, I was wrong. I was wrong.
I don't know what I thought. I thought the Poconos was

(18:18):
somewhere that like The Beach Boys would take you, like Aruba,
maybe it's near Aruba or Jamaica.
You know who I want to take you to Bermuda, Bahama.
Like that's where I thought the Poconos was, and I'm not the
only one, apparently the Poconos, apparently the Poconos
are actually just a mountain region in Northeast America, in

(18:41):
the northeast of United States of America, like in
Pennsylvania. And you go there and you camp.
So when the Smurls were going tothe Poconos to camp, I was like,
maybe I don't understand what the Poconos, maybe you don't
know where the Poconos is are, and I sure didn't.
Now I know. And now you know that the

(19:02):
Poconos not not an island. Also, while I've got you here,
Kokomo, not a real place made-upfor the song.
All right, now we're getting into the episode about the
Smurls and the Warrens. Can you believe that this is the
fifth deep dive episode of the Warrens Case Files?
That's crazy. I can't believe we're at #5 So

(19:25):
if you're interested in hearing about Amityville Annabelle, The
Conjuring One AKA the Parent Family Haunting, or The
Conjuring 2 AKA The Enfield Poltergeist, please, I beg of
you, go back and listen to thoseepisodes.
But you don't have to listen to those episodes in order to enjoy
this episode. Although I do kind of leave you

(19:46):
a trail of weird little bread crumbs about Ed and Lorraine
throughout the episodes. So please, please do go listen.
If you like this one, go back and listen to the other ones.
And in previous episodes I have spoken about my personal
vendetta that I have against theWarrens and their demonic fear
mongering. So I won't go too far into it

(20:08):
now, but just know that I do. I that I personally have been
the victim of demonic fear mongering as a child and it
really messed me up. For a?
Really. Long time, some might say to
this day. So here I am.
I don't know, rock me like a hurricane.
Here we are. This is where we're at.

(20:29):
I do want to call out that normally the the normal
episodes, I share a true paranormal story and then I
dissect it at the end. I give my analysis, you know,
spooky folklore, spooky history,like mundane scientific
explanations, You know, I run the gamut.
But I want to be clear that I treat those stories with a lot

(20:50):
more care and respect than I treat anything by the Warrens.
Because the Warrens were doing harm.
And the Warrens, in my opinion, were con artists and flim
flammers. And if you disagree with me,
please don't leave. Please listen.
I would love for you to listen. Even if I don't change your
mind, I would just love for you to listen.
And I would love to hear your thoughts or if you do agree with
me that they're flim flammers. Hi, let's be friends.

(21:13):
Make sure to follow me on socialmedia and follow the podcast.
I am not going to be going beat by beat through every single
claim of paranormal activity that haunted the Smurls.
First of all, because the burdenof proof lies with the people
making the claims, OK? Which is not me, it is them.
But secondly, and I feel most importantly, we won't be

(21:34):
discussing every single paranormal claim because that's
exactly what Ed wants us to do. Sorry, Ed, sorry, I'm not
following for your firehose of falsehood tactic, which is, by
the way, where someone just spews so much bullshit so fast
that it is completely overwhelming.
And you cannot possibly argue with every single point because

(21:55):
there's too many being made. And you sound pedantic because
you're trying to, you are tryingto hit every single piece of
bullshit that is being fed to you.
But if you do that, then it's like, gosh, why are you being so
pedantic? Like what's your problem?
What do you mean? What do you mean?
So we're not doing that. I'm not going beat by beat.
We're not going line by line. OK.

(22:15):
The thing is, if you tried to dothat, it would it would kind of
be, how do I say this? It would be kind of like Chinese
vampires, you know, Chinese hopping vampires.
If you don't know, FYI, Chinese vampires can be stopped by
throwing rice on the ground because they have to stop and
count each individual grain of rice.

(22:36):
And that is kind of what this is.
Ed is throwing his weird flim flam rice and he thinks that we
are Chinese hopping vampires, but we are not.
We are not. We are going to take a step back
and we're going to look at the story from a few different
angles to see if we can separatefact from fiction.
And let me tell you, there is a whole lot of the latter.

(22:58):
And I don't think that there's very much of the farmer, but
we'll see. Lena, let me know.
Let me know after you listen to this episode.
What do you think? OK, here we go.
The story that you just heard metell is, like I said, my
retelling of the events as laid out in the book The Haunting One
Family's Nightmare, written by, yes, Janet and Jax Murrell,

(23:19):
Lorraine and Ed Warren. And of course, the actual author
who actually wrote the book, Robert Curran, who I would
literally have never guessed wasa journalist, judging from his
purple prose. Shocking.
There is 00 percent journalisticintegrity happening in this

(23:40):
book. Let me tell you, the book is the
major source for the story in today's episode.
As always, I do try to avoid including sources that recall
paranormal occurrences decades after the event because of the
deeply fallible nature of human memory, which I talk about in
many other episodes. But in a nutshell, let me just

(24:00):
tell you, human memory, deeply fallible, Every time we access a
memory, our brains are rewritingthat memory.
And so you really just don't know what memory you have that's
actually 100% true, even though you fully believe that it's 100%
true. So I don't like to use sources
that happen too long after the occurrences.

(24:21):
That's just me. And As for this book, The
Haunting, I truly cannot recommend enough that you never
read this book. I just, you don't, it's just
don't. You know what?
You're welcome because I read itso you don't have to.
In fact, I, I will show you somequotes later on from the book so

(24:42):
you can get an idea of how bad it is.
I could genuinely do an entire episode just quoting the book
and reacting to parts of it, which I may end up doing as a
bonus episode on Patreon. So you may want to, you may want
to check it out patreon.com/madam Strangeways,
because there's a lot to laugh at because of how over the top

(25:03):
this book is. By the way, I, I think I, I did
go back and say at the beginning, but I do just want to
reiterate, I, I did include somedirect quotes from the book when
it was particularly weird or unintentionally funny because I
just couldn't help it. Like I, there's I, I had to.
So if a part really did seem overly ridiculous to you, again,

(25:25):
I assure you, I took no creativeliberties.
I, I don't need to take creativeliberties.
They took enough of creative, they took enough creative
liberties for both of us. So first we are going to briefly
discuss the Smurrll family and then we're going to briefly
discuss the book itself. And then we will get into the

(25:45):
real analysis, the theories, theresearch, the real nitty gritty.
And again, a fair warning, therereally is a goodly amount of
discussion about paranormal sexual assault in this episode
because it is talked about in softcore detail in the book.
I I find that most people who discuss this story shy away from

(26:09):
the sexual assault part of the story.
But not me. No, no, no, shying away from
weird demon sex isn't the strange ways way.
That's not how we do things here.
I also think that by glossing over the demonic rape that it
lets the Warrens get away with using sexual assault as a tool
to sell books and to get more lucrative movie deals.

(26:30):
That's what we do. By glossing over that, it kind
of feels like some people avoid this topic because they sense
that it's a little. Too crazy, and it kind of paints
the Warrens in a crazier light than they would like them to be
painted in. But I think even if you're
avoiding the topic because it feels icky or because you don't
want to be censored by social media, I think by censoring

(26:55):
yourself you are doing the same thing, which is avoiding shining
a light on these details of the story, which I feel like are
gross and important. They're not gross.
Speak, listen, they're gross because Ed and Lorraine Warren
and the Smurls and Robert Curranused sexual assault of the
demonic variety specifically just to sell their story.

(27:17):
That's why it's gross. OK, just to be clear.
So starting with the Smurls. What a name.
That's number one. Smurl.
Smurl. This is what's been in my head
since this has been what's in myhead since the beginning.
Jack and Janet Smurl went up thehurl to fetch a pail of water.

(27:39):
I couldn't come up with the rest.
Jack, it's just what are we doing here?
Also, by the way, Janet's back. This is a different Janet.
But I just the last episode I did was the Enfield Poltergeist
and the little girl that's like the main character in the
story's name is Janet. So many Janets, lots of Janets
running around. This is a different Janet.

(28:00):
But anyway, OK, so reminder as we get into this, the year is
1986, so in Wilkes Barre, PA, just 25 minutes from Scranton,
yes, that's Scranton. The Smurl family lived in a
duplex with the nuclear family on one side comprised of Janet
and Jack Smurl and their four daughters, which comprised of

(28:22):
one set of twins and then Jack'sparents, John and Mary, living
on the other side. So sharing, sharing a wall with
my in laws honestly sounds like the scariest part of this story.
Hey, yo, that's just sounds all right.
So Jack worked not at a paper factory or at an office selling

(28:44):
paper. No, no, no.
Jack worked at a bubble gum factory, tops.
Bubble gum, to be specific, likethe bubble gum in the baseball
cards. You know what I just realized?
I did not go down a rabbit hole about tops or bubble gum or
baseball cards. And you're welcome.
We're going to move on before I get distracted.
Janet, his wife, used to work atthe same bubble gum factory.

(29:07):
So strange that's how they met. But as the book The Haunted by
Robert Curran reminded us practically on every page, Janet
was a dutiful wife and stay at home mom and the most devoted of
Catholics, just the paragon of American womandom that all women
should aspire to but could neverhope to reach the dizzying
heights of. So probably.

(29:28):
You shouldn't even try. I'm not picking on the real
Janet Smirrell here by the way. I'm highlighting how Curran and
probably Ed Warren, who you haveto imagine was extremely
heavy-handed with his managementof the book writing.
I'm highlighting how Curran and probably Ed chose to portray
Janet Smirrell and her entire family really.

(29:50):
And he they really just beat youover the head with the leave it
to Beaverness of it all. So the book the Haunted, which
the Warrens orchestrated and controlled like they always did
and they never wrote anything. They just kind of gave their
notes or their interviews over to not so much a ghost writer
but just an author to just to write the book for them because
they didn't write the books. So this book also goes to

(30:13):
greatly annoying lengths to constantly remind us that the
family are upstanding citizens who you would never expect to be
tormented by a demon because of how Catholic.
They are and how civic minded they are, Curran described Jack
as being. Blessed with a high IQ, here is
how Jack was described in his 20s by the author.

(30:36):
His job at the confectionery company promised promotions and
higher salary. His health was good, his body
strong and lean, not unlike thatof the movie star.
Some said he resembled Charles Bronson.
He had many friends and enjoyed sports of all kinds.
As well as I can't Even get through this with a strange

(30:56):
face, as well as an occasional night drinking 3.2 beers with
his fellow workers. I am not making this up.
This is how this entire book is written.
So you know what? If you want to read it because
you want to laugh, go ahead. Or if you're like me and you
kind of have fun getting mad, then hopefully you would have a

(31:17):
good time too 'cause it was a good time, but it was also a
slog. OK, here's how.
This is in Janet's words, allegedly, according to Curran,
when she was talking about dating Jack before they got
married, she says We shared a lot of the same beliefs.
This is also how the narrator ofthe audiobook would like put on

(31:39):
voices for the different characters.
It's not good. We shared a lot of the same
beliefs. We were both Catholics.
We believed in work ethic. We didn't go along with so many.
People our age who were into drugs and protest.
We both wanted a family and we both wanted to make sure that
the family would be raised properly.

(32:00):
And by properly, they mean Catholic.
Just to be clear, but this is how all of the main characters
in the book are written, including Ed and Lorraine.
Of course, we know that the movies always paint this like
perfect idyllic image of Ed and Lorraine, you know, being just
this perfect family. They're so in love and they have

(32:23):
no flaws. And Ed plays the guitar and
sings Elvis. And that is definitely in this
book. Like it's, it's, it's so bad.
It is so bad. And here, OK, this is hold on,
this isn't the part that I read you earlier, but I really this
is one of the parts that was verbatim from the book.

(32:45):
This is when the spirit is simultaneously slapping Janet
while tickling Jack's feet to death.
I don't know. This is while this is happening.
Jack flung himself off the bed and stood bare chested, his
hands big fists. Why don't you show yourself to
us so we could have a fair fight?

(33:06):
He shouted at the shifting shadows.
Janet came to his side, clung tohim.
It took her many minutes to calmher husband down.
Why is this the cover of a Harlequin Romance double?
Like, is Jack Fabio, is this themovie poster?
Is this a movie poster from 1982, like the Star Wars or

(33:27):
like, I don't know. That's what I'm picturing.
That like, painterly, really dramatic painted movie poster.
That's what I'm picturing. Janet is clung to his side, you
know, Jack in his bare chest, inhis big fists.
It's just insane. The author, Robert Curran, must
have been really into romance novels because let's put a pin

(33:49):
in that for later romance novels, Harlequin specifically.
And I'm not going down a rabbit hole.
That just occurred to me right now to be like, let me
understand, where did that phrase come from?
What is that? OK, Nope.
Romance novels. We're moving on.
So the entire point of portraying the Smurls as the
perfect nuclear American family,of course, is so that you, the

(34:11):
reader, finds that you are nowhere near as perfect and
pious as the Smurls. So if the Smurls can be attacked
by demons, you're ripe for the demonic.
Dang, you're ripe for the demonic picking.
Come on. Because you remember.
And this is my big beef with theWarrens.
I could forgive the Warrens their huckster natures if they

(34:34):
weren't fear mongering and actively causing harm.
So maybe not immediate bodily harm, but they wanted everyone
to be afraid because if you're afraid, you might use their
services. They stoked the fires of the
Satanic panic that was beginningto really set the country aflame
in the early 80s with the moral panic.

(34:56):
And then they profited from and poured even more satanic
gasoline onto this moral panic. And obviously they're not the
only thing that led to the satanic panic, but they
definitely fed into it. And regarding the Smurls, Ed was
quoted as saying the Smurls are truly a family coming under a
visual attack. The ghost, devil, demon or

(35:17):
whatever you call it is in that home.
We're dealing with an intelligence here.
It's powerful and tangible and very dangerous.
So as always, the Warrens specifically Ed sought to
convince you that invisible, powerful, intelligent evil
demons were lying in wait to ruin your life as a way to

(35:38):
increase book sales specifically.
And if you happened to start hearing sounds in the walls and
smelling bad smells in your house, they might just come and
help you too. There was air quotes there if
you couldn't hear them, assumingthat you looked outwardly
marketable enough anyway, like the Smurls, Because Ed Warren

(35:58):
clearly had a vision for the Smurls right out the gate.
Picturing the headlines. About this all American family
with their stay at home mom and their factory working dead and
their kids including a set of twins.
I mean, that would look great onthe talk show circuit.
And it did, by the way, especially with the headline
demonic rape, because see, Ed knew a thing or two about

(36:20):
getting and keeping the the public's attention.
I firmly believe the focus on the demonic sexual assault with
the Smurls was Ed learning from the very tabloids his stories
were often published in. So not just using
sensationalism, but specificallyshock advertising or shock
vertizing. And it's a type of advertising

(36:41):
that deliberately, rather than inadvertently, startles and
offends its audience by violating norms for social
values and personal ideas. And also one of the keys to
successful marketing. And that's what these cases were
to Ed in Lorraine, by the way, marketing for their services,
their books, their movies, etcetera.

(37:02):
But one of the keys to successful marketing is
disruption, which claiming that a married couple were both being
sexually assaulted by demons definitely is.
I don't know what could be more disrupting and to put it nicely,
that is a fucked up thing for them to do.
And they didn't just do it once,by the way, they also tried the

(37:26):
sexual assault by Demon Angle with the next family that they
helped air quotes directly afterthe Smurrels, the Snedekers,
which is the family in the Haunting in Connecticut movie.
And you know, I haven't seen themovie, but I just know that they
don't put any of the sexual assault stuff in the movie.

(37:47):
I don't need to watch it to knowthat they didn't.
I did Google it and I do feel pretty confident that it's not
in there. But isn't that interesting
because it wasn't like it was a small part.
You can go on YouTube right now and find a clip of the Snedekers
on Sally Jesse Raphael, which was a huge daytime talk show at

(38:08):
the time, and they're talking about it.
It's it, It's not, It wasn't a secret.
But isn't that interesting that it didn't make it into the
Hollywood movie? Isn't that strange?
Because Ed and Lorraine also agreed that it happened, so why
would they leave that out? Hmm, interesting.
Maybe because it's, like I said,a little too crazy.

(38:29):
A little much, but after Ed and Lorraine Warren claimed that two
pairs of married couples had both been essayed by demons, and
after that didn't work out for them very well, isn't it
interesting that not a single other case that they ever
investigated, actually before orsince ever involved it again?

(38:51):
Interesting. It's almost like they just kind
of threw a bunch of stuff at thewall to see what stuck and then
adjusted and moved on from the book.
The Haunted. The author's note begins with
this line. The book that you're about to
read was compiled from the testimony of the 8 residents of

(39:11):
328 and 330 Chase St., as well as the 28 other people who have
experienced supernatural phenomena in connection with the
Smirrel family. I think the term testimony there
is doing a lot of heavy lifting and I suspect he used that word
in particular because testimony connotes.

(39:34):
Connotes. Is that a word?
Why does it feel weird? We're just going to move on.
Testimony implies a certain legitimacy to it, some gravitas
if you will. And also 28 other people who,
OK, that's just seems like a made-up number.
The book then goes on to share aletter written from the Bishop

(39:57):
Robert McKenna. Father McKenna, who you may
remember just made 3 failed exorcist attempts in the Smurl
home. And also, by the way, he was
involved with other cases with the Warrens.
Now the only reason that Curran would include a letter written
by Father McKenna is to make you, the reader, go oh wow, a

(40:17):
Catholic Bishop really believes in this story.
And as a human, I am scientifically proven to be
swayed by authority bias and even more swayed by authorities
in uniform. And who loves uniform more then
a Catholic priest? The little costumes that they

(40:37):
wear come on. Strangely, though, regarding
Father McKenna, he had this to say about the Warrens books in
an interview with Michael W Cuneo Cuneo, author of American
Exorcism in the year 2001. He says they are sensationalized

(40:59):
and you just can't take it literally.
I don't like to be publicly associated with them.
Interesting. That's interesting because you
you worked with them on on multiple cases and you wrote
like the foreword to this book. Maybe he regretted his, the part

(41:20):
that he played in these cases. He doesn't say as much, but it's
kind of what I'm reading into it.
And Speaking of strange things, in the book The Haunted, Robert
Curran, the author, made a lot of weird claims about the house
that he shockingly had no evidence to back up.
He claimed that the 1900s deed for the house when it was

(41:43):
originally deeded. Deeded is probably a verb.
He says that the deed originallyreads the person who buys this
house buys the house, property, and creatures contained therein.
He goes on to say that apparently no lawyer could
explain what they mean when theysay creatures contained therein,

(42:06):
probably because the deed didn'texist.
And also you didn't ask any lawyers because it didn't exist
in the first place. It's just I actually started
going down this rabbit hole. I actually went to this was
insane of me and I gave it up after about 45 minutes, but I
was literally going through. You can find the deeds online

(42:28):
for like Wilkes Barre and West Pittston.
But the problem is that they're just scanned and they're not
really in an order, and you can't search the text because
it's all handwritten back then. So I did find deeds going back
to the 1900s, but there's a lot more deeds than you might have
expected that there would be, soI couldn't find it.

(42:52):
That doesn't mean that it doesn't totally exist, but I I
find it interesting that he doesn't then present.
Here's a copy of it, guys, isn'tthis interesting?
Here's a copy of it so that you can Fact Check me.
No, you know they don't like that.
All right, and now on to a brieftimeline of where the Smurls
case falls within the other Warren cases.

(43:13):
Just to give you a little bit ofyour bearings back.
This was not the Warren's first paranormal rodeo.
Rather, the Warrens weren't justa traveling pair of ghost
hunters slash self-proclaimed demonologists a la the
Winchester brothers. No, no, no, they would
investigate. Investigate air quotes for free.

(43:34):
Remember when I said earlier puta pin in this?
Here we are. They would investigate for free
and then use the family story intheir lectures that they charged
entry for. Remember the Perrin haunting
that we talked about in the Perrin Family Haunting episode
about the first Conjuring movie?Remember that episode?
Remember when the public descended upon the Perrin's
farmhouse to gawk at the hauntedhouse?

(43:56):
The Perrins didn't hold a press conference like the Smurls did.
So how did all of those people that ended up harassing the
family find the Perrin's address?
The Warrens? The Warrens gave it to them.
The Warrens shared the parents story in their little lecture
series that they ran and they shared the parents home address

(44:20):
in their lectures without the family's permission.
And so of course people wanted to go and see and be looky
loosed so they went and harassedthe Perrin family.
Obviously in the case of the Smurls, the Smurls came out
publicly. But even though in the book it
goes to great lengths to explainto you how Ed and Lorraine
Warren warned the Smurls not to go public because gosh, it's

(44:44):
going to be really stressful foryou guys.
I just don't know that you should do it.
There's no way that the Warrens were telling them not to go
public. There's zero chance.
The Warrens were definitely telling them you need to go
public. Because if the Smurls don't go
public, well, how are how are the how are the Warrens going to
get another movie deal? According to People magazine in
1981, regarding the Warrens, though they accept no fees for

(45:07):
conducting demonic investigations, they lecture
indefatigably. There's your vocabulary lesson
for the day at up to $1000 per lecture.
First of all, does People magazine use what I have to
assume is SAT level vocabulary anymore?
Because indefatigably, I just can't see that word appearing in

(45:30):
People magazine these days. Are you?
Do you read People magazine? Have you seen that word recently
in a recent issue? Let me know
madamstrangeways@gmail.com. So for the record, $1000 in
1981, which is what the Warrens were charging per head for their
lectures I guess up to up to thehighest range ish $1000 in 1981.

(45:54):
A $1000 in 1981 is like $3700 in2025.
Thirty $700.00 per person at thehigh level.
So maybe, maybe, maybe the Warrens didn't charge people for
their services, but they definitely made money on those

(46:15):
people's misfortune and their stories.
And they didn't share the wealthunless they had a book deal with
them. And then, of course, you know,
on the back end, they obviously would have made sure that they
ended up with the lion's share of the proceeds 100%.
Like, fight me, $3700. You know, you see how their
business model worked. But then it sounds this is what

(46:35):
I'm saying. Ed was so good.
He was. So I genuinely think he was kind
of a dumb guy, but he got how tomanipulate people and he learned
very well and remembered and applied the lessons that he
learned. So how dumb can you be?
I guess anyway, the Warren cases, here's the timeline that

(46:57):
Tam, I didn't mean that to I didn't mean to take that long to
get into the Warren cases. Here we go in this section about
the timeline. We're finally to the timeline of
the Warren cases. So 1970 Annabelle.
Now mind you, that story was notpublished until 1980 and they
never talked about it prior to 1980.

(47:19):
But in the timeline of of the Warren universe, that's when
Annabelle happened 1970, then winter 1974 is the Perrin family
haunting, which is The Conjuringone in March 1976.
That was The Amityville Horror, which the Warrens were only
peripherally involved in here. And I think Ed kind of stayed

(47:42):
mad mad about it. I think he stayed mad about it
till he died. He wanted to be more involved
with it. But on the other hand, it did
also kind of put them on the mapas paranormal investigators.
And then in May and June of 1978, the Enfield Poltergeist,
which they were even less involved with this case than
they were at Amityville. And it's insane that there was a

(48:02):
movie that claims otherwise because if you listen to the
Enfield Poltergeist episode I did, they were there for like 10
seconds. Then 1980 you have The Book of
the Demonologist is published, which is the first reference of
Annabelle, and it's a compilation of a lot of their
other case files. Then in 1980 you have the demon
murder trial case, which is The Devil Made Me Do It.

(48:25):
You may have heard of that one. Then 1985 is the Exorcism of
Maurice Thurall. Oh no, I should have looked up
how to pronounce that. Satan's Harvest is the name of
the book that's later published.Then January 1986 we are here
the Smerl family haunting and in1988 we go to the Snedeker House

(48:47):
which is the haunting in Connecticut who is also involved
with demonic essay. So now that you have your
bearings, let's really dive facefirst into the mid 1980s and the
Satanic Panic. The year was 1986.
Ronald Reagan was president, there were Reaganomics and also

(49:09):
he slashed daycare spending, which will come up in a future
Satanic panic episode. Had a pin in that 1986.
That's the year that the space shuttle Challenger exploded just
73 seconds after it lifted off from Cape Canaveral, tragically
killing all six NASA crew members and 1 teacher aboard

(49:29):
Chernobyl. Well, Chernobyled, it was and is
the worst nuclear disaster in human history. 1986, not a great
year, but on the radio was Springsteen, Madonna and Dionne
Warwick and Lionel Richie. OK, you understand, Like there
was some bangers on the radio even though things were not

(49:52):
going well in 1986. So all the other cases that
we've covered from the Warrens in the 70s were all happening in
the wake of Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist and Vatican 2,
which even though I'm really interested in this topic, it
does just put me to sleep and itsounds really boring.
But basically the Catholic Vatican 2 means that the

(50:13):
Catholic Church basically in a nutshell said that you can have
mass in languages other than Latin so that people can
actually understand what the Mass is saying, which was
apparently too woke of the church at the time.
And people go really mad. This happens also in the middle
of America's new obsession with demons.

(50:33):
Now the Smirrel haunting happenssmack dab in the very middle of
the Satanic Panic, which startedabout 1980 with the book
Michelle Remembers. And it also happened in the
golden age of horror and slashermovies.
Horror cinema had exploded in the time between the Parent
Family Haunting in 1974 and The Smirrels in 1986.

(50:55):
Much more horror imagery was around to inspire people,
whether consciously or subconsciously.
And Satanic panic, OK, listen, II make that sound because I want
to talk more about Satanic panicright now, but I also don't want
this to be a 10 part episode. So I'm going to have to do a

(51:15):
separate deep dive into the Satanic panic of the 80s and 90s
or we will be here all night. But I will give you a little
Satanic nutshell in just a minute.
So give me just a SEC on the subject of horror movies that
may have influenced any or all of the Smurls, and the Warrens
for that matter. For this case, the following

(51:36):
horror media was released leading up to the Smurls first
sharing their story to the public and working with the
Warrens. This isn't every horror film
that was released in this period, just ones that you'll
soon see have very similar themes to the Smurls story,
which we'll cover in a moment. And the reason that I want to
tell you these is because I justdon't think that most people

(51:58):
understand that these movies allcame out leading up to the
Smurls saying all this stuff happened to them.
Because remember, they said thateverything had been happening in
their home for like something like 13 years or something, but
there's not really any record that that's true.
It kind of sounds like they actually just started saying
that when they started working with the Warrens personally.

(52:19):
That's my read on it. So anyway, here we go.
Here's a list of all of the horror movies that have really
similar themes and imagery to what happened to the Smrol
family. So we're going to start at the
beginning. What was that?
I don't know what that was. OK, we're going to start at the
beginning. Rosemary's Baby in 1968.

(52:41):
The Exorcist, the book in 1971, which is said to be based on a
true story. It's not.
The Exorcist movie, 1973. The Omen, 1976.
The Amityville Horror Book, 1977.
The Shining book, 1977. The Exorcist, 2/19/77.
The Shining movie 1980. Ghost Story, 1981.

(53:03):
The Entity 1982 2. Poltergeist 1982, Amityville 2.
The Possession 1982 TV movie, The Demon Murder Case which is
another Warren case 1983, A Nightmare on Elm Street 1984,
Ghostbusters 1984, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, Freddy's
Revenge 1985. And in 1985 a 2020 episode aired

(53:29):
something called The Devil Worshippers which was just an
episode that played clips from Rosemary's Baby and told viewers
that this is basically how Satanworshippers work.
So here just use this and treat it as fact even though it's a
movie that's entirely fictional.So before I go through and share
some of the specific themes or scenes in these movies that have

(53:51):
a suspicious resemblance to whathappened in 1986 to the Smurls
after all of these movies were released, here's a quote from
The Exorcist Effect, Horror, Religion, and Demonic Belief by
Joseph Laycock and Eric Harrelson.
Which if you've listened to the show before, you know I love
this book. I you have read it multiple

(54:12):
times. And here's something that I
think might be relevant to the point that I'm trying to make
here. Ostention, in essence, is the
transmission of a legend by performing it rather than
communicating it through words. As folklorist Bill Ellis puts
it, events provoke stories, but it is far more likely that
stories provoke events. This brings us to our theory of

(54:37):
the relationship between supernatural horror and
religious cultures. If events provoke stories and
vice versa, then supernatural horror films are actually part
of a feedback loop wherein one, actual events become the basis
of films. Two, those films shape the way
audiences interpret the world, giving rise to new beliefs and

(54:59):
experiences. And three, these beliefs and
experiences lead to new events that become the basis of new
horror films, and the cycle begins again.
We call this feedback loop The Exorcist Effect.
Yeah, they said the name of the.They said the name of the book.
Very exciting moment of the bookto read that.
But so that's really what we're,that's what we're looking at

(55:21):
when we go into this descriptionof, of all of these movies
because you may have heard of a lot of these movies if you've
seen all of these movies. Wow. 10 out of 10.
Send me an e-mail, madamstrangeways@gmail.com.
Let me know if you've seen all these movies.
I have not. I've seen a lot of them.
So I read synopsis, synopsis of the rest of them to make sure

(55:43):
that I was speaking about these as intelligently as possible.
So for the sake of the weakest attempt at brevity, which you
know I'm terrible at, here are just what parts of the movies
have suspiciously similar themesor imagery to the Smurl case
from that list above? Rosemary's Baby 1968.
Spoiler alert, Rosemary is rapedby Satan.

(56:06):
It's the entire premise of the movie, who Satan is in essence
an incubus for our purposes. So there's your supernatural
sexual assault for you. I mean like right there sexual
assault demonic, supernatural, Satan demon and also Satan a
demon. Clearly in the scene in which he
impregnates Rosemary has famously yellow eyes.

(56:28):
Who else has yellow eyes? 01 of the smirrels sexual
assault demons. Isn't that interesting?
Then we move on to The Exorcist 1973.
Do I need to say any more? I feel like I can just leave it
there, but I OK I won't leave itthere.
Bodily levitation beds, shaking and levitating items flying
around the room, which we see also in the story from the

(56:49):
Smurls. The Omen 1976.
Now, I watched this movie for the first time recently,
specifically as research for this episode in order to see if
there were any parallels. To the smurl case.
And I couldn't really clock any behind how it probably fed into
the concept of being targeted byevil and of course, reinforces
the martyrdom of Catholics. The Amityville Horror, 1977 for

(57:15):
the book, 1979 for the movie. It features a demonic pig with
red eyes. Like I mentioned, at a minimum,
you know, we got the pig monsterand harassed Jack and then the
pig sounds and the walls. And you know, like I said,
remember that the Warrens were involved with the Amityville
case even though they weren't involved with the book that was
published. And you just know that really
chap eds hide the Shining book 1977 movie 1980.

(57:39):
So in the scene of the movie where Jack Torrance played by
Jack Nicholson, there's a lot ofJacks enters room 237.
So when Jack Torrance enters room 237, he encounters the sexy
naked lady bathing in the bathroom and starts making out
with her, only for her to turn into a grotesque hag whose skin

(58:01):
was rotting and falling off justlike he describes the succubus.
The first succubus. And I think the fact that the
hag in The Shining was young andthen turns old kind of makes
sense as to how he could have kind of conflated the two and
just kind of combined them into into one character who was young

(58:23):
in the body but old in the face.Not only that, but the book The
Haunted specifies that this succubus hag that essayed Jack
even had open sores on her body literally just like the scary
hag in The Shining and the Haunting book.
The Haunted book also described the succubus's mouth as green

(58:45):
and the gums is green. And that really stood out to me
because I could not shake. And I actually rewatched some of
The Shining, Shining specifically to look at the
scene again. And it was just what I thought.
The room, the bathroom in room 237 and this scene in The
Shining is overwhelmingly green.Like almost the entire bathroom

(59:06):
is this kind of sickly green. So I feel like, I feel like he
watched the scene. OK, we're going to move on, but
come on. Oh, this one is the this one was
the one that immediately jumped out at me right away as soon as
I was reading the book where I was like, I think this is just
the scene from The Shining. All right.
The Exorcist 2/19/77 features a succubus in the form of teenage

(59:28):
Reagan from the first Exorcist. And this succubus has yellow
green eyes too, just like some of the demons in the swirl case.
All right, now this isn't a movie, but in 1977 through 1979
The Enfield Poltergeist. Wow.
The Enfield Poltergeist case wasin the news, which is another
Warrens investigation even though they were barely

(59:50):
involved. And that story also involves
levitation and things flying around the room.
The movie Ghost Story 1981, in which a man falls to his death
from his apartment window after seeing a girl he's been sleeping
with suddenly turned into a living, rotting corpse.
The Entity 1982 in which a single mother is sexually
assaulted and tormented by an invisible poltergeist like

(01:00:13):
entity in her home. Yeah, the TV movie The Demon
Murder Case 1983 starring Kevin Bacon and Cloris Leachman was
based on yet another case file of the Warrens.
The Devil Made Me Do It, the David Glatzel case Poltergeist
1982, which is specifically about a red blooded American
family being terrorized by a poltergeist.

(01:00:35):
Again, spoiler alert in case youhaven't seen the movie
Poltergeist, and it requires an unlikely spiritual advisor who
is a psychic medium just like Lorraine, to cleanse the home.
Not only that, but even if you've never seen the movie,
you've likely seen the movie poster which shows a little girl
sitting in front of a brightly glowing TV screen, just like the

(01:00:57):
unplugged TV that kept glowing in the Smiles bedroom.
Then there's Amityville 2/19/82.Did you know that the Warrens
acted as a demonology advisor? Or as plural demonology advisors
for Amityville 2, which made millions at the box office.
I think this was Ed's way of worming his way back into the
Amityville IP. Then we move on to A Nightmare

(01:01:21):
on Elm Street 1984. Now, at first I was thinking,
this one's probably not as relevant because it's a slasher
film. I haven't rewatched it in a
really long time. But I was like, Nope, I have to
be thorough. That's the strange ways way.
So I had to go and I had to readthe full synopsis of the movie.
And as I was reading it, it hit me.

(01:01:43):
The Smurls claimed that they hadhuge slash marks appearing on
their tubs, like their ceramic tub and in their wallpaper.
And then their walls do do big, huge scary slashes.
Sound familiar? OK, if you haven't seen A
Nightmare on Elm Street and you don't, no, I guess maybe it
wouldn't sound familiar, but Freddy Krueger is the villain of

(01:02:06):
this movie. And he has a glove with these
really long slashy blades on thefingers.
And his whole thing is like, slashing stuff with the blades
just like they described. Just, you know, like, OK.
And not only that, but remember when a human hand came through
the mattress and grabbed Janet by the back of the neck?

(01:02:26):
That's practically a scene straight out of this movie.
Isn't that interesting? Ghostbusters 1984 included a
scene where Dan Aykroyd's character is asleep in bed and
is awoken by an ethereal ghost lady floating directly over him
in bed, who then disappears and visibly undoes his pants.
And then the next shot we see isDan's eyes going cross eyed as

(01:02:49):
something presumably is done to him, although I would say
without his consent. But this is the 80s and things
were different back then. Also by the way, I do not
remember that scene at all. From my childhood I watched a
lot of things I was not supposedto be watching.
Ghostbusters was one of them. The opening scene with the
kitchen and the eggs exploding scared the living shit out of me

(01:03:11):
as a child and I do not rememberthis scene now.
I genuinely think that I could probably just end the episode
there because to me, this is just come on.
To me, this just explains everything.
It explains everything personally to me.
However, you know, I can't stop yapping.
So we're just going to keep going.

(01:03:32):
Case is not closed. We shall continue if it pleases
the jury. So in the book The Haunted, one
of the Smirll's neighbors, a nurse said that the things Janet
told her were unlike anything she'd seen in any horror movie.
Like, what are you talking about?
Literally every single thing that happens to them is taken

(01:03:52):
directly from a horror movie. Of all the things that this
neighbor supposedly could have said, it's so strange that they
specifically said it's unlike anything I've ever seen in a
horror movie. Well, then I guess you don't
watch movies then. Lady, I don't know what to tell
you. Go watch any horror movie and
you're going to see exactly what's happening to the Smrols.

(01:04:14):
It's crazy. Anyway, so we've got things
being thrown around the house, we've got people levitating,
we've got Freddy Krueger's iconic claw marks, and most
damningly, six of those movies include either paranormal sexual
assault or just paranormal sex in general.
Coincidence. And now for the Satanic nutshell
of the Satanic Panic from Wikipedia.

(01:04:37):
This is I'm going to This is a nutshell.
It's a nutshell. I'm going to have to do a whole
other deep dive. So just please don't come for
me. Don't come for me if I don't
cover everything in a nutshell from Wikipedia.
I'm literally just reading verbatim.
The Satanic Panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000
unsubstantiated cases of Satanicritual abuse.
Ritual abuse SRA sometimes knownas ritual abuse, ritualistic

(01:05:01):
abuse, or sadistic ritual abuse,starting in North America in the
1980s, spreading throughout manyparts of the world by the late
1990s, and persisting even today.
The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle
Remembers, a book Co written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence
Pastor What is I Can't Read Words Today and his patient and

(01:05:24):
future wife, Michelle Smith, which used the controversial and
now discredited practice of recovered memory therapy to make
false claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith,
Michelle. The allegations, which arose
afterward throughout much of theUnited States involved reports
of physical and sexual abuse of people and specifically children
in the context of a cult or satanic rituals.

(01:05:46):
Some allegations of all the conspiracy of a global satanic
cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are
abducted or bred for human sacrifice, pornography and
prostitution. In a nut the the smallest of
nutshells. That's the Satanic panic.
What is the smallest nutshell? I was going to say a pistachio,

(01:06:06):
but then I thought of pine nuts.But do pine nuts come
individually in little tiny? Are they actual nuts or are they
seeds? Is a pine nut a seed?
Anyway, whatever the smallest nut is, that's what this is.
I badly want to talk about more of it, but it's we don't need to
just know it was happening directly while the Smurls case

(01:06:28):
was happening directly. Now, as I'm recording this, I am
seeing that I am at the one hourand 16 minute mark and I'm
looking at my outline and seeingthat I am a little bit less than
halfway through my outline for the episode.
So you know what that means. This is either going to be a 2
1/2 hour episode, which I don't want to do because I did it with

(01:06:51):
the infield poltergeist case. Oops, I did it again.
I'm not going to make the same mistake twice because I think I
should have broken that up into two parts.
So you know what we're going to do?
We're going to do the first two parter.
Listen, you are witnessing strange history right now.
It's happening. I've never done a two-part
episode. This is going to be a two-part

(01:07:12):
episode. I'll tell you why because I got
a lot more to say and I don't want you to nod off halfway
through, so I'm going to break it up, give you a little bit of
a breather. So TuneIn next strange episode,
same strange time, same strange channel and join me for Part 2
of the true story behind the Smurl haunting and the story

(01:07:35):
behind the latest conjuring filmThe Conjuring Last Rites where
we will talk about more fear mongering that the Warrens do
and Ed's weird lore that he creates that explains all of his
demon hunting. And we will go into probably a
little too much detail about thesuccubus and the incubus that we

(01:07:59):
see in this story. And then of course, we'll go
over theories and what possibly happened in the actual Smirl
case. So thank you for listening to
Part 1. Please, please, please tune in
for Part 2. Because honestly, kind of like
my favorite stuff is in Part 2, which is why it kind of kills me
to be doing a 2 parter. So I need you to listen to the

(01:08:19):
second part. Please listen to the second
part. If you've gotten this far,
you're going to listen to the second part, right?
Right, right, right. Good.
OK, good. OK, great.
Good. I'm glad to hear that.
All right. Thank you guys so much for
joining me for this first part of the Smirrel family haunting.

(01:08:47):
Thank you for joining me for more true strange stories of the
unexplained. Remember that you can feel
afraid and not be in danger. You're safe here with me,
probably. Please follow the podcast, leave
a rating on Spotify or Apple, ortell your friends and foes about
the show. It would mean the world to me.

(01:09:09):
The underworld, obviously. I mean, come on.
Was that not? Was that not clear?
Madam Strangeways is produced and narrated by me.
Madam Strangeways thememusicisbymarina.ryan@marinamakes.co
Cover art is by Andrea Chisel Roldan at Cult of Teddy on
Instagram. You can submit your own true

(01:09:33):
strange story at madamstrangeways.com or e-mail
it to madamstrangeways@gmail.com.
See you soon, she said ominously.

(01:10:03):
Nope, can't start now. Can't start now because there's
a plane over here. Gotta wait for the plane.

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EXPOSED: The Conjuring 4 | The TRUE Story of the Smurl Haunting / The Warrens | Ep #39 pt 1

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}EXPOSED: The Conjuring 4 | The TRUE Story of the Smurl Haunting / The Warrens | Ep #39 pt 1