Flashback: The Warren Omission

We will be playing some episodes from our archives for a few weeks this Summer - let's kick it off with this classic from October 2013! THE WARREN OMISSION.WAS THE STORY OF The Conjuring the true story of how Ed and Lorraine Warren fought demonic forces in Rhode Island? In this special episode of MonsterTalk, we hear a different side to the story of America’s first family of ghost hunting. Features interviews with investigators Joe Nickell and Steven Novella.

Full Notes

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Monster House Presents.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Welcome to Monster Talk Flashback. I'm recording this on June
twenty second, twenty twenty five. I think I've mentioned plenty
of times in the past few weeks that this year's
kind of kicking Team Smith pretty hard. We're dealing with
some complicated issues right now. I got a family member
on hospice care, and we have one that's going to
move in with us, and somehow I'm supposed to be
going on a cruise during all this, and I got

(00:30):
job stress and blah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
You know life. Anyway, in an effort to save some
of my sanity, I'm going to be pulling from our
archives for the next few weeks until things hopefully settle down.
We plan to keep on recording new stuff even while
this is going on, but for the next four or
five weeks, I will be dusting off some oldies from
way back, and I know a lot of you will
not have heard these before. I'm also trying to level

(00:55):
off the audio. It seems like what wasn't really great
at that when we started out, or I wasn't, as
my wife would correct me. And finally, I'm working on
a project to load the back catalog without any ads
into the Patreon fe but that's going to be later
this year and probably done in batches. I've got to
teach my kids the family business so that they can
help with the load and learn some useful skills. So

(01:18):
tikkok off this summer series. Let's return to the thrilling
days of yesteryear, when my friend Joe Nichol was still
alive and I had just celebrated my forty fourth birthday.
This little ditty comes to us from October of twenty
thirteen and features Joe Nichol and Steve Novella from the
Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast. I know a lot
of people have written me in about this episode, so

(01:39):
if it's new to you, I hope you learn a
lot and enjoy it. If it's old to you, I
hope you don't mind hearing it again. It has been
a minute monstrutle.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
On December eighteenth, nineteen seventy five, George and Kathy Lutz
and their three children moved into a house in empty
bill Long Island. Nineteen days later, they were running for
their lives. What Happened to Them.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Became one of the best selling books in years.

Speaker 5 (02:05):
And is now a fascinating motion picture.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
An experience in terror to make you believe in the unbelievable,
the Amityville.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Or something in this house since the evil you are
in Connecticut. This here November one, nineteen seventy one. I'm
sitting here with Carolyn Perrin, who with her family has
been experiencing supernatural currencies. You're picking up anything in here, Hunt.

Speaker 6 (02:30):
Something awful happened here? Ed, what is it?

Speaker 3 (02:40):
What are you guys?

Speaker 7 (02:41):
Well, we've been called ghost Honors paranormal researchers.

Speaker 8 (02:43):
We prefer to be known simply as Ed and Lorraine Warren.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
A giant, hairy creature, part Ape, part Matt in Larkness
at twenty four a mile bottomless Lake and the Highlands
of Scotland get a creature known as the Luckness Monsters

(03:27):
Monster Talk.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
your host, Blake Smith. This episode's a little different from
anything I've put together before. I'm a big fan of
horror films and thrillers, and like a lot of folks,
I used to be terrified to hear those chilling words
based on a true story when a supernatural horror film
was being advertised, and even though the so called true
stories often turned out to be less convincing than the

(03:51):
case behind them, like for example, The Exorcist, or a
complete fabrication like the events in the film The Changeling,
I still like those movies. I recently went to see
the The Conjuring, which is based on a haunting case
investigated by the famous or perhaps infamous couple Adam Lorraine Warren.
I wanted to do an episode about that case, but
it decided instead to look at the Warrens themselves. While

(04:12):
I really enjoyed the first third of The Conjuring, the
depiction of d and Lorraine was as unbelievable to me
as the levitating chairs and the flying bed sheets. Now
Ed died in two thousand and six, but Lorraine's still
alive and actively promoting her work and her brand of investigation.
For years, I've been hearing Lorraine talk about the Amityville case,
which I found perplexing because really, the Warrens seem to

(04:34):
have nothing to do with that case. Also, I knew
that I'd heard some first dance stories from paranormal investigator
Joe Nickel, and also from Steve Novella about their encounters
with the Warrants. I thought it might be fun to
pull together multiple interviews to give a kind of counterbalance
to the way the Warrens are usually depicted, especially to
counterbalance the ridiculous, almost saint like depiction they were given
in the Conjuring. In this episode, you'll hear from Joe Nickel,

(04:56):
a longtime investigator of the paranormal through scientific methodology. He's
written numerous books since the chief investigator at CSI, the
Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. You'll also hear from Steve Novella.
Steve is a neurologist, a proponent of science based medicine,
and the host of the popular Skeptics Guide to the
Universe podcast. And we'll hear from Ray Garton, who did
an entire episode with us on his experience with the

(05:17):
Warrens during the making of In a Dark Place, which
later became the film A Haunting in Connecticut, and I
interviewed WPIX New York's senior reporter, Marvin Scott. Unfortunately, I
was not able to get audio from that interview, but
I did find a clip in which Marvin gives a
neat summary of his experiences with the Warrens at Amityville.
So let's start there. For years, I've heard d and

(05:37):
Lorraine talking about the trauma of their experience at Amityville.
But I knew for my own reading and research that
they weren't part of the original haunting investigation or are in
the book by Jay Ansen. So how did they get involved?
In this clip, you'll hear Ed and Lorraine explain exactly
how they got involved with the Amityville case warms Trutle.

Speaker 9 (05:57):
Now, Ed, can you tell me how you and Lorraine
got involved in the Ambityville.

Speaker 10 (06:02):
Horror Well, it was Marvin Scott from Channel five News team.
He was the anchorman at the time, and he had
been involved with a haunting that we had investigated in Bloomfield,
New Jersey.

Speaker 11 (06:15):
And he was impressed by this.

Speaker 10 (06:17):
So he gave us a ring and he said, we'd
like us to come down and see what's going on
in Amityville, Long Island. Now, this was not the Ambityville horror.

Speaker 11 (06:26):
Case at that time.

Speaker 10 (06:27):
You understand, this was just another haunted house and we
didn't even realize that six people had been murdered in
that house of a failed family Okay, Iraen.

Speaker 9 (06:39):
I know you went in the house and you experienced things,
but can you just go over how you first were
called into the house, Like, who was the gentleman of
people who called you? And was it the lux as
they called you in?

Speaker 8 (06:50):
No, it was not Tony. It was Marvin Scott who
called us in.

Speaker 5 (06:55):
He told us there had been a tragedy in that home.

Speaker 8 (06:58):
He didn't go into detail regarding he told us that
it was a prominent family. He also told us during
that very first conversation that the family that were living
there at the present time had fled and left all
of their possessions behind, and their viewers were very interested
of the history of that house and what exactly might

(07:21):
be wrong with the home. That's how we first became involved.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
A few years ago, I had seen a documentary about
Amneyville with Marvin Scott discussing the Amityville Halloween special that
he had done. I contacted him and he explained, just
as he had in the show, that there was little
to tell. He had taken a film crew and some
paranormal investigators into the Ambyville home to do a seance
near Halloween, and it was a big flop. Nothing happened
of interest, but Lorraine Warren did ask to go to

(07:49):
a separate seance upstairs, and while Marvin and his crew
left disappointed, Lorraine and d left with a legend that
would stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Speaker 6 (07:59):
Whatever it was the Lutz's believe was in that house,
it did not manifest itself the night I spent in
the house twenty three years ago with a group of
parapsychologists who conducted a seance. The demonic force was supposedly
the strongest in the sewing room, where Lorraine Warren conducted
another seance by candlelight. Other than a brief chill at

(08:19):
rule it was February, I felt nothing unusual, but it give.

Speaker 8 (08:23):
To me Marvin, because I said to you, Marvin, I
hope this is as close to hell as I'll ever get.

Speaker 6 (08:31):
But I the only persistent voice I heard that night
was that it like crew wanting to know when we
were going to have the sandwiches we had brought along.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
Now let's get to Joe nicol. He just finished up
a very thorough investigation into the case behind the contrary
and the right up of that will be in an
upcoming Skeptical Inquirer magazine. I talked to you about his
involvement with this case and with the Warrens, and it
goes back a while, but I'll let him tell you
all about it.

Speaker 4 (08:55):
Warms Trut.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
When did you first become aware of the war in
their work?

Speaker 5 (09:02):
Well, I really got him first hand back in the
days of the haunting in Connecticut, the first version of
that with the Sneteckers.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah, the.

Speaker 5 (09:13):
Case that made Sally Jesse Raphael just in time for Halloween.
And I was on with the Snetteckers and with Ed
and Lorraine, and I left a very bad taste in
my mouth. Ed Warren was a bullying type and a

(09:36):
backstage a loud mouth, swearing sailor and not, in my opinion,
a nice guy. He made veiled threats to me on
the Sally shows or under his breath, and I turned
to him at one point and I said, are you
threatening me? And of course they cut all that out

(09:56):
of the tape.

Speaker 8 (09:58):
Joe, you say the investigation, the warrants conducted as Bologney, Why.

Speaker 12 (10:03):
Well, I've investigated haunted houses for some twenty years and
a professional psychologist. Pardon is there such a thing I've
not met a house that I thought was haunted. I
think the Warrens have never met a house that they
didn't think was haunted. I think that you're the turn
I've heard that you were allowed mouth, you shouted people down.

(10:25):
Just give me my chance.

Speaker 7 (10:27):
You did a bunch of lies, Joe.

Speaker 12 (10:29):
I'll give you your chance, your allowed mouth, Warren and
we all we all know it. But if you'll just
let me finish.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
When you're concerned, I'm allowed.

Speaker 10 (10:39):
Try to show, Try to show a little.

Speaker 7 (10:41):
I don't have a lot of time class.

Speaker 12 (10:43):
If somebody is sitting here, ed, let Joe just explain about.

Speaker 7 (10:53):
Guys. Joe put by point.

Speaker 12 (10:56):
Yes, one thing that the houses that sincere people report
that they think or haunted usually follow certain patterns. This
is a hodgepodge of the sort of ghost tale, poltergeist,
part demon part this part that we saw a similar
pattern with the Amityville horror, a case that the Warrens
thought was genuine. It turned out it turned out to

(11:16):
be a blatant hook concocted over several bottles of wine.
The evidence, yes, I can prove it, Yes I can.
It's been proven. The evidence is very clear. In the
case to Amityville, horror. The whole packaging of this story
the book says it's for Halloween release. The book was
written by a professional fiction writer who writes horror stories.

(11:41):
This whole packaging is a frock.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Joe.

Speaker 7 (11:43):
Does the church admit to exorcists?

Speaker 12 (11:46):
According to according to a newspaper article that I have,
the Bridgeport Newspaper, that diocese refuses to confirm that they
had any exorcism there. If there was, If there was
an excism, I don't understand why there is any any
reason why they can't come out and say so on
the show.

Speaker 7 (12:07):
That there wasn't.

Speaker 5 (12:08):
Actually, after the show, I went outside and Ed Warren
was sitting in the limo to go back to the airport,
and he had the car door opened, and I walked
right up to him and I said, you were going
to do what to me? And he looked, you know, frightened,

(12:28):
and and I leaned in and I said, you know, Ed,
you're a tough guy, You're tough around the mouth, and
walked off.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
The whole episode is available on YouTube right now, so
I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Okay,
and so the Haunting a Connecticut case we'd actually talked
about In a previous episode, we got Ray Gartin, the
author who wrote the novel about that on, and I
had actually run into him on a message board where

(13:08):
he had spoken very disparagingly about the whole experience of
writing that book and that he hated the fact that
it had been written in the based on a true
story motif. And so I didn't know if that was
really him or not. And I tracked him down and
got him to come on and talk about it, and
so I'm gonna put a little bit of that in
this episode as well.

Speaker 5 (13:29):
Yeah, I understand he had trouble because he thought the
Sneteckers kept changing their story for one thing.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (13:36):
And I'm not sure if he was saying that the
Warrens were encouraging, but one of the one of the
ghost writers, was saying that they would encourage him to
sort of make up stuff or you know, ed scary
improvised with scary elements.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
I'm gonna clip a little bit of that audio.

Speaker 13 (13:56):
I went to Connecticut and I met with Ed Lorraine
Warren and Alan Carmen Snedeker, the couple who had lived
in the former funeral parlor, the house that used to
be a funeral parlor, and I recorded our conversations. I
had quite a few tapes, and I couldn't get the
Snedekers their stories. The details of their stories weren't meshing,

(14:20):
they weren't adding up. And so I went to Ed
Warren and I explained to him that this was happening,
you know, and I said, I'm not sure how to
go about this. I had never done any nonfiction before,
so this was a new experience for me, and I
was trying to I wanted to have all the information
laid out in chronological order in front of me, and

(14:41):
it just wasn't adding up. So I told Ed and
he said, well, they're crazy. He said, all the people
who come to us are crazy. He said, you just
use what you can and make the rest up. He said,
that's why we hired you. You you're a horror writer.
You write scary books. We want this to be a
good story, and we wanted to be scary.

Speaker 5 (15:04):
Because I think that's really uh. I think that's really
important to understand that about about what the Warrens were
up to. You know. It's one thing to be very
very misguided, which of course they were, but but that
alone does not make someone odious perhaps, but but when
you're misguided and not honest, then you're well, it's hard

(15:29):
to find for me to find redeeming quality.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
Did did you have a chance to see this Conjuring?

Speaker 5 (15:35):
Yes, I've not only seen the Conjuring, but I've I've
read both of the available too books of a trilogy
by Andrea Proon, so I deserve some kind of metal.
There were there were several things. The Warrens did come there,
and and uh and the the father Roger didn't didn't

(16:01):
know that they were coming. They didn't invite them. The
Warrens just showed up one day. So that's really quite
different from the way the movie has them being sought
out as this famous duo and so forth, that they
begged him to come and help them. No, they just
showed up sometime before I think it was again before Halloween,

(16:26):
and it shows a whole lot I think about what
they're up to. Most of their work was done around Halloween,
looks like, and they they tried to ingratiate themselves. And
then then Carol and Perron, the mother did kind of
buy into the Warrens while her husband kept saying, you know,

(16:48):
these people are Charlatan's and this whole approach is just
nothing better than a kind of fraud and a bunch
of silliness. And he wanted no part of it. But she,
she was very intent, and so she invited them for
the famous sort of exorcism, which was originally built as

(17:09):
just a cleansing of the house or a seance. And
they showed up. So Roger was not happy. He was,
you know, pretty much had outs with the whole operation.
So he was not sitting in the circle of the seans.

(17:30):
And so at some point she scoots back in her
chair and falls over. This, of course is in the
movie is made that the chair levitates and turns completely
upside down. Yeah, so just to kind of compare well,
he so her husband rushes over to help her, and

(17:51):
Ed Warren tries to restrain him. We're upon in one
of the great moments of skepticism. He Decked Larren, hit
him right in the nose and blooded his nose.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (18:04):
And I thought back to Sally Jesse Rafiel when I
read that, and I thought that could have been me.
But you know, you just realize these things that you
might might have done, and someone else did it, so
seriously seriously, that's what happened.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
And in the books since I have not had the
opportunity to read that are Is that the right word? Anyway?
I haven't read those books.

Speaker 5 (18:33):
Right right, I mean a thousand, a thousand pages of
about fifty dollars worth of books the things I do
for the cause of skepticism.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
And it's appreciated, I assure you.

Speaker 5 (18:46):
Do you know somebody had to read them.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
Yeah, yeah, And now these are self published and I
think one of the things that really made me not
want to read them, besides the Amazon reviews, was the
fact that.

Speaker 5 (18:56):
Well, the trouble. The trouble is, though in not wanting
to is is that they nevertheless are the most the
most authoritative, is not the right one the closest to
a primary source, closest to a primary source, that's right.
And even at that, it's pretty pathetic because she's writing

(19:18):
thirty some years after the fact, right it is not
recorded or you know. Now there were allegedly some notes
her mother made and some sketches and so forth, but
she gave those to Lorraine Warren with the understanding that
you know, there were a couple of understandings. One was

(19:39):
that they were sort of talking to them confidentially, and
secondly that they you know, she was lending these notes,
at least that's the way it's presented in the books.
And of course she didn't understand the Warrens. So of
course he's never to this day has anyone gotten them back,

(20:00):
if the Warren's even you know, if if Lorraine Hids did,
but if if Loraine even knows where where they are.
And as to the confidentiality, of course, the first thing
they know is that people are coming to their house
sort of sort of like happened at Amityville. People were

(20:22):
coming to their house sort of wanting to see the ghosts,
you know, and Carolyn Perrin was wondering, where are these
people coming from, you know, and how do they know
about our rural, isolated farmhouse. Well, the Warrens were giving
public lectures and telling people right where they were, and

(20:45):
so they were they were.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
And I shouldn't interject here that that if anyone listening
to the show is interested in looking at the house,
please don't, because the current owners are already suffering from
a tremendous amount of harassment because of the public from
this film.

Speaker 5 (21:02):
I am I'm not surprised you know, the to mention
another house that the Warrens were connected with, and there
were several, uh, the Smurl's House in West Pittston, and
uh and Amityville and and and others. They the Amityville house.

(21:24):
I knew Barbara Cromarty who lived in the house with
her husband after after the famous uh brew haha created
by the Letzes and the and the book and and
movie and uh, you know, eventually the Cromarties sued on
the grounds that they there, you know, they bought the

(21:46):
house in good faith. And it turned out that it
was all these false stories, as it turned out, matter
really of judicial record in the in the trials that
were held, the lawsuits that were heard, and the there

(22:09):
was no truth to the Amityville story. It was all
made up. As the attorney for the attorney William Weber,
who was the attorney for Ronald of Fayo, who's known
as Butch. Butch had had Weber as his defense attorney,

(22:31):
and Weber was trying to think of some angle to
get him a new trial, you know, because he had
he had murdered his entire family, siblings and parents in
that house. And so Weber thought that if people believed
he was driven to this by demon possession or something
he might get some you know, a new look at

(22:52):
the case. And Weber has you know, publicly confessed that
that story was made up with him and George and
Kathy Lutz in his law office over as he put
in several bottles of wine that George was drinking. So
that's that's another case. And the the point there is

(23:21):
that you know, people would would be knocking on the
Cromarty's door wanting to come in and look around and
see the ghost people milling about in the yard. And
as I say, I got to know her and we
had had some interesting conversations, and a TV show wanted

(23:42):
to get in there and film, and she explained to me,
you know, very very nice to me. She said, look, Joe,
I can't. I can't let anybody in because if I do, then,
you know, will undermine our lawsuit. You can't. You can't
complain that people are bothering you coming to the door

(24:05):
and wanting to come in, and at the same time
let let a TV crew in, right, That's sort of contradictory.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
And and I understood that after the book, there were
a lot of uh, the Amityville book. I mean, there
were a lot of really important inconsistencies that were just
i mean physically obvious things that we could not have
been true.

Speaker 5 (24:27):
Well, that's exactly right, And and I went over some
of those with with Barbara Cromerty. For example, they mentioned
in the book that there were devil's tracks in the
snow at a certain point, and pretty simple research showed

(24:48):
that there was no snow on the ground.

Speaker 6 (24:50):
At that time.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
It was a demon snow.

Speaker 5 (24:53):
Well you know, uh there, you know, you could do
a book, there's a chapter right there and and explain
these these otherwise perpexed, perplexing paranormal mysteries. But that was
one example. And but where Barbara was concerned the the

(25:17):
the book claimed that, you know, a door was ripped
off its hinges, and windows were ripped open and so forth.
And in fact, as she assured me, and then later
a TV after after the dust had settled and everything,
she was willing to let a TV crew in. And

(25:38):
I didn't get to go, but they picked my brains
and I put him in touch with her, and and
she took them around the house and showed them a
number of the inconsistencies. How things were exaggerated, and one
of them was that the the doors, the doors and
windows all had the original old hardware and the old

(25:59):
Varney shawl evidence and they got you know, close up
shots of that and everything that nothing had been replaced,
no locksmith had ever been called to the house. In fact,
the police hadn't been called to the house. So really
it was just a you know, a travesty the Amityville case,

(26:20):
which which is really the Amityville hoax.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
And it seems to be a pattern with the Warrens
that that their most popular or well known cases are
sort of plagued with these what would you call them,
reality based inconsistencies.

Speaker 5 (26:37):
Yes, yes, the Warrens didn't have as much really to
do with Amiteville as they might have liked to, because
you know, they didn't do one of their famous books
that went to somebody else and they were kind of
kind of not not famous enough at the time or something.
But they did they had been involved in Amityville, and

(26:58):
they went on, as I mentioned, some these other houses.
And there's a pattern I've written about this, the the
Warrens modus operandis i'd call it, is this they and
you have to understand that the Warrens are this sort
of were this couple of me I think of as

(27:18):
medieval minded Catholics, unlike modern and often very enlightened Catholics.
They believe literally in demons. And Ed Vancied himself had
a business card and said Ed Warren demonologist. And Lorraine
was you know, acclaimed clairvoyant, but wasn't It wasn't claiirvoyant

(27:43):
at all, as as far as I can tell. And
they they had this medieval notion of demons, and they
had gotten into ghost hunting. Ed was was an artist,
amateur artist, and he would make paintings of haunted houses
and then used those to kind of get in, get
in in with the people in the house and and

(28:06):
begin his sort of career. And what they what they
did was to eventually the cases that ended up his books.
They would show up and try to convince the people
that they were They were experts. They knew all about everything,
and they had some you know, ghost tunding equipment, like
cameras and an ultraviolet light and and some holy water

(28:29):
and a crucifix just what you need, you know, if
you're going to investigate ghosts. And they they would go
in and take take a case that, for all intents
and purposes, had thus far been in the news as
pretty much a ghost case or maybe a poultergeist case,

(28:49):
something like that, not not too much about demonic forces.
And the next thing you know, the warrants have convinced
everybody that there are demons involved. Lorraine would go into
one of her light trances, which just would mean she
would just close her eyes and haul off and say something,

(29:12):
and she would sense some demonic presence, and the two
of them would talk a good talk about this, and
and you see these poor unsuspecting people who, first of
all though don't know anything about the paranormal and not
aware that you know, there are no haunted places, only

(29:33):
haunted people, as Robert Baker used to say. And so
when you have someone who's an expert explaining to them,
you know that they're, well, there are these different kinds
of spirits and this and that and the other. They
don't know any better. They think maybe these people know
what they're talking about, and so they It's interesting that
in every case of this, these were Catholic families, and

(29:59):
Ed and Lorraine would show up and convince them that
it was really demonic and that they really needed to
use their you know, Catholic powers of exorcism and holy
water and so forth, and they would convert it into
a demonic book, and then they would get a ghost

(30:19):
writer and all of all of the shenanigans would be
sort of restyled and and exaggerated and spooky elements thrown in.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
They would punch it up, as we say, would.

Speaker 5 (30:33):
Punch it up. That's right, they would punch it up.
And this is this is for the books. And then
of course by the time Hollywood got it. I mean
we're talking really punched up.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (30:44):
When a chair scooted backwards ends up, you know, turning
upside down and hanging in the air upside down, it's
pretty pretty punched up.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
As a skeptical paranormal investigator, how excited would you be
to see a levitation or something like that happens in
the thing?

Speaker 5 (31:00):
I mean, well, I just would love to know. I
mean it just there's nothing that that would thrill me more.
I remember once talking to a young lady many many
years ago who had been you know, taken in by
the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi group, you know, the transcendental the TMS,

(31:24):
the transcendental meditation people. And sadly, my good friend Doug Henning,
the magician, the very talented young magician who who's who
died young, and he was taken into this and and
you know, Doug would Doug was well known as a
TM or and he would go on TV and levitate people,
and uh, James Randy chastised him because obviously Doug was

(31:46):
doing using the magic trick version of this on stage,
and he wasn't deliberately trying to be deceptive, but it just,
you know, a lot of people didn't understand here's a
guy believes in TM and they teach levitation, and well
here he is on TV levitating someone. You know, if
you don't really make clear that yes, but this is
a trick and so on. But I remember telling this

(32:09):
young lady that I doubted that anyone could levitate, that
there was this thing called the you know, the law
of gravity. And she began to berate me about how
close minded I was and and how pitiful science was,
and science didn't know everything, and you know, the usual,

(32:30):
the usual clap trap, all very emotionally presented, and I said, well, no,
wait a minute, stop, I said let me tell you
how really open minded I am. I am willing because
she was telling me she knew this, this guy, this
guru that could levitate, and I said, have you seen him? No,

(32:57):
but he wouldn't lie to me.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
She said wow.

Speaker 5 (33:00):
And I said, well, but okay, so let me tell
you how really open minded I am. I will go
any place and need any reasonable conditions for him to
show me this. And of course, immediately the you know,
the barriers went up. Well, nobody has to prove anything
to you and I and you know, and I said, well,

(33:24):
but but wait, I'm not. I'm not at this point
just anybody. I'm I'm somebody who's written on this and
made a lot of TV shows, and I'm someone that
I can tell you a lot of people would pay
attention to if I said, okay, I've really seen this.
Andre appearon thinks that her mother's share lifted up or something.

(33:46):
But as best I can tell, if you subtract thirty
some years of exaggeration and and brew haha and power suggestions,
so for it. Basically, her chair slid back and snagged
on something or whatever certain physical laws come to mind here,

(34:06):
and tipped backward. Basically, you know how when you go
to a Pentecostal service or one of the televangelists services
where they demonstrate going under power, and the evangelist is
there and the people are, you know, getting ready to
go into the power, and you can watch some of them,

(34:27):
you know, sort of getting into the into the role,
and then they're they're pointed at or touched or something
and they fall back. There's usually a catcher.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
Yeah. I would actually encourage listeners to seek out the
documentary Marjoe m A R.

Speaker 5 (34:40):
Joe And yes, Marjoe, you know which one is standing
Ovation at Cannes way back in the seventies. He has
an excellent, excellent movie and he shows that and he
shows how to give him a push if you need to.
And which happened to me. I was in at one service,

(35:02):
curiously enough, at a Catholic church, which doesn't usually do that,
but they had a visiting charismatic Catholic who did who
did that? And and I had talked to the guy
and he invited me to the service. I had no
idea who I was, of course, and I decided to
just stand there, you know, pretty rigid, and it was
kind of funny. He was so determined I was going

(35:24):
to go he was. He gave me a real push
on the forehead and at some point, you know, it's
hard not to go down or step back, and the
catcher caught me. Wow. Yeah, my wife caught it on
it's a blurred it's a blurred picture, but it's priceless.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (35:39):
But I think that's same, the same psychology of that,
which is very much like station. And those people you
find will be compliant and if you ask him to
do something and tell them they then they can't do
this or whatever, they will probably go along with you,
and that you may lead them into a kind of
dissociative state. Eight. But they're basically, you know, doing what's

(36:06):
expected of them. And certainly these people who fall into
the power, they know they're supposed to fall down. No
two do it the same way, because there's no set
way you have to do it. Some will stiffen and
fall straight back, some will slump, some will fall down
and twitch and so on. Kind of like when you
were a kid and someone said bang, bang, you're dead. Yeah,

(36:26):
there were several ways to act.

Speaker 12 (36:28):
Right.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
Certainly you just become quite dramatic based on your own information.

Speaker 5 (36:33):
Yeah, we had each had our own style. You know,
we could pitch forward or fall backward, or you know, twitch,
or our eyes would fall with their eyes open or whatnot.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
And I don't want to sound like a cynic, but
I suspect the same thing is going on with Bob
Larson's demonology courses. Its well exactly.

Speaker 5 (36:50):
I think that's what That's where I'm getting to is
that's the root of that's the root of all of
this stuff. And I think that's what happened with missus
paren and in the books that her daughter has written,
and anyway one can read my analysis, but I go

(37:12):
into you know, pretty much all of the phenomena. Yeah,
and it's a little my assessment is a little less
supernatural thing.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
Right, And I would suspect that most listeners would probably
think that that kind of let's call it stage possession
is relatively harmless. But I think what I've seen is

(37:41):
maybe not. Because a lot of people, and I say
a lot enough that is troubling h throughout the world,
are conducting exorcisms against unwilling victims. And that's where it
really seems to be quite dangerous, and people get hurt
or die from the experience of the exorcism.

Speaker 5 (38:00):
Exactly, and and and even even the most you know,
when you when you tell people that they're possessed or
you put them through some some supernatural business, you're really
you know, you're changing their lives in all kinds of ways. You're,
for example, you're you're telling them that there's this invisible,

(38:23):
supernatural realm that is controlling things, and and science can't
find this realm. And you know, those of us who
I mean, I've done this work, paranormal investigative work now
for over forty years, and I increasingly am convinced that
we live in a real natural world. I found no

(38:47):
evidence at all for anything supernatural, and so but if
but if I did, I would obviously be life changing,
life transforming. And that's what happens to people. They get
caught up in in cults and and fringe groups and

(39:07):
so forth, in which they become increasingly seduced by you know,
invisible forces, demons and so forth. And it's it's not healthy,
it's not harmless. It's not harmless. The people who think, oh, well,
but if the person's the person's you know, chronic drinker,

(39:32):
and you convince him that it's devils that are making
him do it, and you exercise the devils and maybe
you could trick him into quitting drinking. Well, I just
don't think that's okay. I mean, I think that's that
takes paternalism to a kind of fascistic degree. And and
I don't I don't like that idea that it's okay

(39:54):
to fool the little people. I don't know. I personally
don't know any little people. U being in a qualitarian
I think people are people and they don't need to
be treated like well, we'll humor them and convince some
that some demon did this and their guardian angel is
going to do that and so forth. No, I don't

(40:16):
think that's helpful or health or healthy to do.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah, And I would say that if you're in a
position where you feel like you're experiencing a supernatural event,
it would be really helpful to go to someone who's
not in I guess to someone who's in an out group,
you know, someone who's not experiencing these things, because I
think you can get into a reinforcement loop where if
you're like if ghost hunters, I think you have this

(40:42):
problem if you go ghost hunting and you only talk
to ghost hunters. You never talk to anybody who might
be have a different opinion, then you're only going to
get reinforcing feedback.

Speaker 5 (40:55):
Right, And there are ghost owners who would not even
talk to a guy like me.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
I've had that problem too. I find it really disappointing
because I'm very interested. I mean, what could be more
exciting than evidence of life after death or continued existence
after death. I think it would be wonderful.

Speaker 5 (41:12):
Oh absolutely, if we're you know, this is the thing.
We've talked about this before, but the paranormal offers all
these great promises that you know, if ghosts are real,
then we don't really die, and if if flying saucers
are real and we are not alone in the universe,

(41:35):
and so on, if psychics are real, we might get
a glimpse of something in our future that we could avoid. So,
of course, if we were voting, we probably all vote
for these things. But we know in science we are
not voting, and that's not how we decide. But I

(41:59):
understand people. A lot of people think that that skeptics
somehow just don't want to believe in all kinds of things,
and know that they're most skeptics as well, would vote
it's just that they've wised up and they've learned a
thing or two. For example, that professional wrestling is faced. Well,

(42:22):
I hate to bring that up, you know, in front
of your audience, who I'm sure is you know, a
bunch of nidies.

Speaker 7 (42:28):
You're supposed to.

Speaker 3 (42:28):
Say spoiler alert, Joe, you say spoiler.

Speaker 5 (42:30):
Alert, Yeah, But pretty soon you realize that geea would
wouldn't it be nice? As Carl Sagan? I remember once,
I remember Carl Sagan saying this. I was there when
he said it, that he wished he wished he could
talk to his dead parents, even as he put it,

(42:50):
just once a year to tell him how the grandkids
are that kind of you know, that kind of feeling
and and those feelings are powerfull. I've felt them in myself,
you know, wishing. I remember when my grandmother died now
much I did not want that to be the case.
And I think most of us have some feelings and
experiences like that, where no, we wouldn't be against communicating

(43:14):
with our dead loved ones, not an idea we're innately
hostile to. In fact, we've had to protect ourselves from
the tendency to be seduced by Charlatan's on these fronts.

Speaker 3 (43:30):
Yes, I think going back to the conjuring case the
parent family, when you read the book or the books,
did you see anything in the books that led you
to believe there might be something that could be investigated
at this point or is the whole case primarily just

(43:51):
anecdotal at this point.

Speaker 5 (43:54):
Well, I treated it the account as here's an account
that one can respond to, and I have done that.
I don't want to say too much about my approach,
but can one can look at it. It's pretty much
what you can do with a cold case. People are
at this stage, you know, dead some of them. The

(44:16):
principles are if you could have gotten to them thirty
years ago, you might have been able to do something.
But now the positions they take are entrenched, and they've
got maybe exaggerated views of things that happened so on.
But I think it's still possible to suggest based on

(44:37):
things they say. Some things that can you can't explain
pretty much on their own terms.

Speaker 3 (44:43):
But well, I would say that in the film they
did a lot of the kind of things that I
really i'll say disdain about a lot of ghost investigations,
which is they felt like paranormal things were going on,
so they apparently went and looked to see who had
died there.

Speaker 5 (45:04):
Well, yeah, just straight out of the formula of the
idea that I mean, you're almost expecting him to try
to prove that there was the house was built on
an Indian burials. You know, there are certain sort of
stock motifs and and and you know what they are,

(45:25):
and so you go looking for them. It's a kind
of you're engaging in confirmation bias big time.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
That was exactly.

Speaker 5 (45:36):
You You get some paranormal things going and then you
you jump to try to confirm it. Well, you know
people died here, right, They die everywhere?

Speaker 3 (45:46):
Do I've noticed up.

Speaker 5 (45:48):
And down every street, and then you know suburban homes
and so forth.

Speaker 3 (45:53):
Most Steve Novella and his group, the New England Skeptic
Society also met and investated the Warrens. Their interaction wasn't
as hostile as Joe Nichols, but it's just as interesting.
How did you hear about the Warrants for the first time?
Do you remember when you first heard about them and
their their their work.

Speaker 7 (46:12):
No, I don't remember when I first heard about them,
because they're just there. They were already locally famous before
we started the Then the Connecticut Skeptical Society was soon
very quickly transformed into the New England Skeptical Society. Uh,
they were, They were locally famous people.

Speaker 5 (46:29):
You know.

Speaker 7 (46:29):
I just so I always knew about the Warrens, you
know what I mean, it was I don't remember the
moment when I became aware of them.

Speaker 3 (46:35):
Wow. So they had already been operating for.

Speaker 7 (46:38):
A while forty years before we got involved in Wow.
And right Connecticut, right, and like, you know, literally down
the road from us, you know, a couple of towns over.
So yeah, we absolutely knew who they were.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
So was it let's well, let's talk about the nest. So,
like you had a group of friends who formed the
Connecticut Skeptic Society, said.

Speaker 7 (47:00):
Yeah, that at first, and then we realized there were
no other ones in New England, so we might as
well just be the New England Skeptical Society.

Speaker 3 (47:05):
Could you talk about that, because I think you mentioned
that a long time ago in your podcast where you
talked about looking in the back of the magazines.

Speaker 7 (47:11):
Yeah, it was actually Perry. You know, Perry, you always
liked to take credit for that. We we became friends
and then both realized that we were both skeptics, and
we both read The Skeptical Inquirer. And you know, Perry
was over my house one day. He shows me the
back of the Skeptical Inquirer where all the local groups are.
He's like, you noticed anything, it's no group in Connecticut

(47:33):
said we should do that. You and I should form
the Connecticut Skeptical Society. And as soon as they said that,
I knew it was a perfect idea. You know, of course,
of course we should do that. So we did it.
You know, we got my brother Bob involved, our friend,
mutual friend Evan, you know now of course around the
podcast with us. Jay wasn't involved in those early days.
He got involved little bit later, and we, you know,

(47:55):
we just started doing the things that local skeptical groups do,
doing local investigation, writing a newsletter, holding local lectures, trying
to get plugged into the big national group, which at
that time basically was psychop that was really the only
game in town. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
We really cut our teeth in a lot of a
lot of really interesting local investigations.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
So I'm trying to picture this, how old were you
in this? Like is this college.

Speaker 7 (48:20):
No, No, was this So this was nineteen ninety six,
So I was like just finishing my residency.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
Oh wow, that's actually wow. Okay, I didn't realize that
was this recent. Okay, So how did you decide that?
How did you pick your investigations there? Locally?

Speaker 7 (48:41):
Whatever came our way. You know, we weren't that discriminating,
and once we got a little bit of credibility and
got our name out, then some started coming to us,
which is always nice, but you know, the Warrens, you know,
it was interesting because for us, they were the big fish, right,
they were the most famous paranormal promote proponents in our region,

(49:04):
and they were a little intimidating to us. You know,
we really thought, oh, we really got to make sure
we're prepared and really, you know, haven't get some experience
and know what we're talking about before we take them on,
because they're going to be you know, they know what
they're doing. They're going to be you know, uh, difficult
to really do a good job, and we were. We
totally overestimated them.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
Well before before you tell them forget what were they
famous for? What did they do? I mean what what? Yeah?

Speaker 7 (49:33):
They you know, they spawned many many ghost investigating groups. Uh,
they're probably their Their biggest claim to fame was the
Amityville horror case. They had already by that time been
the subject of movies, so you know, uh, any local

(49:54):
ghost story had their name attached to it. Wow.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (49:57):
They investigated thousands of cases, so they pretty much had
their hands in any local ghost hunting ghost story situation.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
So you decide to investigate the warrants. How did you
reach out to them and make arrangements to do that.

Speaker 7 (50:17):
I don't remember the details. I think we just called
them up. You know, Perry used to do stuff like
that a lot. So I just called them up, said hey,
you know, this is who we are. We want to
see what you got, you know. So I remember the
first meeting very well. I don't know if you want
to just dive r into that.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
Yeah, let's talk.

Speaker 7 (50:32):
Yeah, so first meeting. What We went over to their house,
which apparently they often had people over. They had a
museum in their basement, and so they would frequently invite
people into their house, bring them down into their basements,
show them all the artifacts that they had collected over
the years.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
I just saw a documentary about that called the conjuring.
It was very scary down there.

Speaker 7 (50:53):
Yeah, right, we had We had a blast doing this
because there we are so get this. You know, just
imagine this old couple, you know, Ed and Lorraine Warrant.
By this time, they were already in their seventies, and
you know, they were or maybe they were at that time,
they were in their sixties, and they were clueless. I mean,
we had built them up in our heads because we

(51:15):
you know, you watched a movie about the Warrants, and
they're presented as like serious researchers who actually know what
they're doing, and then you meet them, you're like, oh
my god, Ed is just a govone. I mean, the
guy he had no idea what he was doing, didn't
know the first thing about really anything relevant to paranormal
investigation or ghost phenomenon, or had just totally unprepared for

(51:36):
any question that we had to ask him. And he
desperately desperately wanted the validation of scientific investigation. He wanted
us to validate his claims and his evidence, which was interesting.
We quickly picked up on that. It's like, Wow, this
guy's actually desperate for our validation. Lorraine, you know, who's

(52:00):
still around is a self proclaimed clairvoyant, and so she
was much more you know, what's what's the word. I mean,
she was just way out there. Both of them extremely
extremely religious, and of course all of us are are atheists.
And like right away, it's do you guys believe in God?

(52:20):
That's like they they want to know that right off
the bat, and we was so many inside jokes came
from that that.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
Yeah, I was gonna say, Lorraine, I mean even now,
if I've listened to interviews, she always starts off, if
you don't believe in God, you know, you really are
in a hopeless situation in the paranoi.

Speaker 7 (52:37):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. So at one point
she asked us, so what was it? Why are you atheists?

Speaker 3 (52:46):
Well?

Speaker 7 (52:46):
What went wrong? Was it the science thing? But yeah, Lorraine,
it was the science thing. That's that's what drove us
from God. But you know, they were just otherwise. They
were just like you're like your grandparents. You know, they
were just a regular old couple. This is what this
is their living. This is what they did for a living.
They went around giving lectures at colleges and you know,

(53:07):
they had classes where they told ghost stories.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
You know, that was it it doesn't seem like a
very steady income. No, they did.

Speaker 7 (53:16):
They did it good for themselves. You know, they were
on the college circuit. You know, they got thousands of dollars.
Oh yeah, they talked probably at every college or university
in New England and the Indian area, and they yeah,
they at being absolutely made a steady income doing that,
no problem. So our, of course, our approach was, you know,

(53:38):
we did not confront them on their belief system. That
wasn't our purpose there. Our purpose was to investigate their evidence,
and that's what we told ed. We just want to
know what. You know, you've been doing this for forty years.
You must have accumulated some evidence after at that time
he claimed eight had to have investigated eight thousand cases.

(54:00):
So we're like, hit us, give us your best evidence,
show us, convince us. We're open minded. We will believe it.
You just show us some whatever. The most compelling evidence
you have is he was very, you know, very squirrely
about the whole thing, and I think he was he
was afraid that we weren't going to validate his evidence.
So he showed us a lot of ghost photos, which

(54:24):
if you've ever just gone on the web, and look
up ghost photos. You've seen them. You know, it's all
the same things. It's basically the three four most common
photographic artifacts. And you get some flashbacks, some camera cord effect,
occasional double exposure, all very unimpressive, just blobs of light
on film. And you know, you know, when we wrote

(54:46):
about our experience with them, we had a section on
the photographic artifacts, because that's that is their ninety nine
percent of their evidence. It's just ghost photos. And they
made absolutely no attempt to rule out artifacts to understand
the nature of the evidence. Here and here's an example
of the level of sophistication that we were dealing with.
On their website, they had a section where they described

(55:10):
how to take a ghost photograph. Now, they claim that
the ghostly images get on the film psychically, the ghosts
like psychically project the images onto the film. But they
were surprised to find that that happened more often when
you used a flash, and the brighter the flash, the better.

(55:31):
And yet it didn't occur to them that the flash
was producing the effect that was producing the light on
the film. They still thought it was a psychic effect
from the ghosts, or at least that's what they professed
to believe. So that's what we were dealing with. We pointed
that out to them, and they just sort of quietly
took that off their website without ever acknowledging our correction.

(55:53):
But that's basically what we were dealing with.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Wow. So other than that, they seemed like nice people.

Speaker 7 (56:01):
They did. It was fun hanging out with them. They
were nice people, you know, at least at that stage.
You know, once we wrote our article and like Ed
no longer had any you know, delusion of convincing us
about anything. Uh, he did get a little nasty in
a couple occasions. So we Perry and I were on

(56:21):
a local TV show with Ed Warren and somebody who's
working with them at the time, and yeah, he was
kind of a jerk on that show. He did a
typical thing where he sort of dropped new evidence on
us that we had never seen before. Explain that skeptics.
It's like, uh, you know, Ed, we've been asking you

(56:42):
for evidence now, it had been a couple of years.
We've been asking you for evidence for a couple of years.
We've never seen that before. We'd be happy to take
a look at it if you're willing to give us
the evidence now to evaluate, because he would never put
evidence in our hands to investigate. He would only show
it to us. And we wrote about the two big
pieces of evidence. So Ed Ed claimed that his best

(57:05):
single piece of evidence was a video of the white
lady at Union Cemetery, And as we described it, it
was at that perfect distance and resolution that it was
suggestive of a ghostly figure, but you couldn't really see
it well enough to know that it wasn't Lorraine in
a bedsheet, you know what I mean?

Speaker 6 (57:23):
Right?

Speaker 7 (57:24):
So right, it wasn't close up, it wasn't focus enough,
just the quality was not there. So it was like
if you were trying to fake a ghost video, that's
exactly what it would have looked like. The other piece
of evidence, which actually was Ed did not own. It
was actually owned by somebody who was investigating with him,

(57:45):
and that's how we got our hands on it. So again,
Ed never gave us a single piece of evidence to
actually investigate, but somebody who went on an investigation with
him did and this was now the infamous video of
the kid that did disappeared. You mean yeah, well teleport
he de materialized was the term that right? Okay, yeah,

(58:09):
so yeah, but they're they're investigating a haunted house. There's
a lot of students with them, and you know, when
they were they didn't notice anything unusual during the investigation,
but the next day when they're looking at them, now,
it's like a VHS tape, right that we're talking about.
At one point, one of the students was standing in
a doorway, like puts his hand on his head and

(58:30):
looks up. Something had dripped on top of his head,
and then he disappears and and he's gone from the tape. Now,
a three year old looking at this would say the
tape stopped and then was restarted later when the kid
wasn't there. That's the obvious sort of hypothesis.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
Yeah, I would pause it that it might take a
six year old. But yeah, I'm with you. O, No,
I think my three year old, well your three ye
olds exceptional. My six year olds are still kind of
amazed by that.

Speaker 7 (58:57):
So so that in persistence thing, Uh when do kids
figure that out?

Speaker 3 (59:04):
But I'm just kidding, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (59:05):
I know.

Speaker 7 (59:06):
But so, okay, so is a fine?

Speaker 5 (59:08):
All right?

Speaker 7 (59:08):
You know, I said, I know, are you sure that
the camera wasn't stopped? I mean, because that's the first
thing that occurs to me when you look at that
and you know, we are absolutely sure nobody was anywhere
near that camera. It didn't stop, that kid disappeared. That
was Ed's famous line, Okay, can we look at the tape? Yes,
you give us a tape we had. We didn't touch it.
We handed it directly over to a technician, somebody from

(59:30):
HB Group, which you know they do. They have video
equipment and do this sort of thing. They had an
editing deck. Now with the old VHS tapes, once you
know the technology, then you can make sense of the investigation.
So first of all, the editing deck that you can
view information around the edge of the picture that you

(59:51):
wouldn't see on your TV. And when you look at
the tape on an editing deck, you could see that
there was someone standing right next to the camera, despite
the fact that they insisted there was nobody anywhere near it.
So that was just flat out proven factually wrong. Next,
you can, you know, pretty much prove that the tape
was stopped and restarted. And that's because the way these

(01:00:14):
tapes worked is the images were scanned line by line
across each frame from top to bottom right. So because
you have the spinning head and it's just scanning the
line very very quickly. However, many you know, lines that
were per second. So if someone disappeared, actually disappeared, what

(01:00:37):
would they would that would have happened in the middle
of that scanning process. It wouldn't have happened at the
end of the last swipe on one frame and prior
to the first swipe on the next frame. Does that
make sense?

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
I think so.

Speaker 7 (01:00:56):
Yeah, the chances of that happening would be a minuscule
that it happened at that perfect moment that it was right,
you know, it almost certainly would have occurred while one
frame was being swiped, and it didn't. The kid was
completely there on one image and completely gone on the next. Really,
the only way to make that happen is to stop
the tape and restart it. But then further, I mean,

(01:01:18):
this is like total overkill. There were multiple discontinuities right
at the same moment, audio and video discontinuities like footfalls
with echoes that abruptly stop right at that frame, and
also a flickering candle that shifts right at that frame.
So you could, you know, multiple independent lines of evidence
showed that there was a discontinuity right when the kid

(01:01:41):
vanished from the film, and it was completely in between
two images, not while when image was being rendered. So
there we go. The analysis pretty conclusively proves that the
tape was stopped or restarted.

Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
Did they ever find that child's stave?

Speaker 7 (01:01:57):
The guy knew nothing. The thing that's the interesting thing.
The guy the kid said, nothing unusual happened, He didn't disappear,
and he remembers nothing unusual from that whole evening. Again,
nobody did. It was only noticed when they viewed the tape,
which is a red flag for a photographic artifact. You know,
nothing happened, Nothing happened, It was just something that appeared

(01:02:19):
on the video. So it's something it has to do
something with the video. So anyway, so like total overkill
proved that that's what happened. But the most simple thing
is in fact, what all the evidence points to. They
never accepted it. They never accepted that conclusion. They insisted
that that kid de materialized, just immune to evidence and reason.

(01:02:44):
They knew what they were looking for.

Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
Yeah, I think that's one of the big challenges that
most people don't know the details of the real investigations
they're only familiar with the fictionalized versions. Yeah, and so
I had a lot of issues with this after I
became more well just openly a skeptic when I was younger.

(01:03:12):
Is that story true? Is that story true? I would investigate,
you know, let's see what I can find out, and
a lot of things converge to get me where I'm
at right now. But the Amityville Horror in particular was
one that used to scare me a lot, and now
I don't find it frightening at all, and I wonder

(01:03:33):
I understand that the Conjuring is doing quite well, but
I don't think there's been any really great takedowns of
the backstory, or not that there necessarily need to be
a takedown per se. But it's heavily fictionalized, I mean,
even compared to what the actual people reported at least. Yeah,

(01:03:54):
and so did you see the film?

Speaker 7 (01:03:57):
Not yet. I will go out to see it. We're
gonna probably review it on our show too, but we
haven't had a chance to see.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
Ye.

Speaker 7 (01:04:03):
We just got through filming our web series, so that
that's kept us busy. But yeah, you know, like the
Amityville Horror, you know that you have an absolutely fictionalized
version of events. And although in this case, you know,
with the Amityville Horror, there was an admission that it
was all made up, in this case, the family claims that, yeah,

(01:04:25):
that's pretty much what happened. You know, we were haunted.
Although it was over in the movie, it's over a
very short period of time. In real life, they were
in that house for nine years or something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
That's a long time.

Speaker 7 (01:04:36):
That's a long time. Yeah, you know. And when asked,
for example, why did you stay in the house if
they were apparitions of rotting flesh walking around and the
answer was very unsatisfying, the daughter, who was the youngest
person at the time, said, I guess it's just our
destiny to tell this story to the world. That doesn't
really answer the question, does it, And she ends She

(01:05:00):
ends like I've read some interviews with her which says,
I know what we experience, And of course, nope, you don't.
You really don't know what you experienced. You have a
constructed perception leading to a constructed memory and reconstructed memory
over and over again. Whatever's going on in your head
right now of events that happened thirty plus years ago,
forty years ago is a complete confabulation in fiction without

(01:05:23):
necessarily any relationship to reality. But in her mind that
story really happened, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:31):
I know. But to really enjoy the film, I have
to suspend my materialist dogma and have some popcorn Minnesota.

Speaker 7 (01:05:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, listen. I love a good ghost story.
I'm sure I'll enjoy the movie as a good horror film.
I love being creed out.

Speaker 3 (01:05:43):
Yeah, I'll tell you this. The first third of it
is the most effective horror film I've seen in a
long time. If you know anything about the warres, which
you do having actually met them, you'll find that the
on screen portrayal of them is I want to say,
too goody two shoes, Like they're too good at what

(01:06:04):
they do. Yeah, any question at all, Like yeah, yeah
and so, and you know they're going to succeed in
what they do.

Speaker 7 (01:06:14):
Yeah, So it'll probably be hard not to vomit watching
their trail.

Speaker 3 (01:06:19):
But the first yard is rocking good. It's really good.

Speaker 6 (01:06:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:06:22):
Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. I think. Same thing with
other movies, at least one other movies I saw where
the warrants were depicted and the stark contrast to reality
is jarring. They had like a scene where like that
someone is telling them about their experiences. Oh, you know,
they're not quite sure what's going on yet. The person

(01:06:43):
who's being haunted, like these strange things are happening in
my house, and like Ed and Lorraine give each other
a knowing look like oh yeah, we are familiar with
this phenomenon, you know, oh please, I mean, it really
is nothing like them at all. They really were very unsophisticated,
uh individuals. And you know, we I have lots of

(01:07:05):
secondhand stories about Ed because once you started investigating the warrants,
we that investigation took us to a lot of people
who used to work with the warrants and then broke
off again. The warrants over the previous decades must have
spun off dozens and dozens of independent ghost hunting groups,
because this is the this is the cycle. You know,

(01:07:27):
you see Ed and Lorraine talking to college, you know,
give a college lecture and go up afterwards, and they
would tell you, oh, you should come to our classes,
you know, we give They used to give classes at
the Carousel restaurant, you know, down the road, and you'd
go to the class, you know, so you catch you
they would go through a process of of serial selection

(01:07:49):
until you get the people who are like really into it,
and and then you would they would take people on investigations,
and then they would figure out a couple of things.
One you know, Ed wasn't the most honest person in
the world, and two that what he did took absolutely
no special skill or knowledge. And so they figured, hey,
we could do this, and we'll do it right, and

(01:08:09):
we'll do it better, and we'll do it honestly. And
so they would just break off and do it on
their own. And then so there was this never ending
cycle of new people coming in and then just very
quickly leaving and going off to form their own groups.
And so when we talked to them, so we talked
to many people disillusioned former colleagues, you know, former students

(01:08:29):
of Ed Lorraine, and they had a lot of nasty
stories to tell about them, which I feel a little
uncomfortable talking about because it's all secondhand, you know, so
it's essentially hearsay. But I'll just say, you know, if
we were told, you know, firsthand stories from the people
who were investigating with Ed Lorraine involving you know, pretty

(01:08:54):
nasty Shenanigans.

Speaker 3 (01:08:56):
So many people mentioned like having worked with Ed Lorraine
and like even the Paranormal State show worked with her
for a while. It just it astonishes me she still
has that much cachet at her age with her alleged
levels of competency. I don't know, though. On the other hand,
she seems like she's probably a really a nice lady.

(01:09:17):
I think the thing is, there's there's two parts of that.
I tend to like people in general, yeah, but at
the same time, I think there is they have an
undue influence in the paranormal world based on fiction, right.

Speaker 7 (01:09:40):
Yeah. So we we tried desperately to have Ed Lorraine
take us on one of their actual investigations, but at
the last minute Ed was talked out of it by
his some of the people who was working with him,
and then he made the excuse that well, because we

(01:10:01):
were atheists, he couldn't protect us from the entities. And
we're like, hey, listen, we'll take our chances. We know
what we're getting into. It's not your responsibility. We'll be fine.
Don't don't worry about us. But you know, I remember
if I had that final phone conversation with Ed, like
before we were going to write our article, and he

(01:10:23):
was like really worried that because he was bailing on us,
that we were going to again do a hit job
on that we were going to write a very critical
article about him. And what he said was, you know
what he find us with this, I just we can't
do it. You know, the other guys won't won't let
you guys come on investigation with us because you're atheists.
And I said, yeah, Ed, yeah, it's very disappointing. We're

(01:10:43):
going to have to go with our article without that,
and we have to explain that you didn't do that.
And I could just hear how crustfallen ed was, because
again he still was desperate for our approval at that point,
and he said, you're going to make me look like
a chump, aren't you. Well, well, I'm going to tell
the truth that I'm going to write it as I
see it. But he was, yeah, so he did. That's

(01:11:05):
being a part of that. You know, him was afraid
that we were going to be critical of him and
really wanted to please us. But but still, you know, hey,
he made the decision. You know, but of course, if
we had gone on an investigation with him, we just
would have had more material. It really wouldn't have changed
the tone of our article, or you.

Speaker 3 (01:11:24):
Had disappeared and never been seen again.

Speaker 7 (01:11:26):
Yeah right. We did go on investigations with people who
worked with the Warrens, though just not with with Ed
Lorraine Warren themselves, and again they were, you know, and
same thing. Lots of ghosts. It's all just people with
ghost stories at the end of the day. That's it's
just like watching the ghost hunting shows today. It's just
people scaring each other with ghost stories without a shred

(01:11:49):
of credible evidence, and without the slightest idea how to
do an actual scientific investigation, the difference between a hypothesis
and a theory about it not only hunting hypothesis testing.
They had no clue. They really are, you know, pseudoscientists.
They just simply have no idea about how to do

(01:12:09):
an actual scientific investigation. In fact, I gave a lecture
for a ghost hunting class where I explained to them
what a scientific investigation is and what the kind of
evidence it would take to convince us that ghost surreal,
and they just didn't get it, you know, just they

(01:12:32):
just just didn't They didn't want to get it. It
just was they were just having fun. You know, most people,
it's just this was their fantasy. It really wasn't about
And you know what I often say, it's like, that's
fine if this is what you know, we all need
to do stuff for fun, you know, if this is
your fantasy, if this is for fun, you have a
good time. Just stop saying you're doing science. Okay, just

(01:12:57):
stop that. Stop it, because you're not. You're not doing science.
That's really the only beef that we have with them
that they claim that they were doing that they were
gathering scientific evidence when they were making a mockery of
the scientific method.

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):
So you think it was a form of LARPing.

Speaker 7 (01:13:12):
Yeah, absolutely, And we often would say that, We say,
these people need to play tabletop or need to go LARPing.
They need to have some kind of fantasy based escape
that they know is fantasy. The problem is this was
their escape, but they were confusing over reality. We used
to say that all the time, these people just went LARPing,
you know, they wouldn't have to do this funny.

Speaker 3 (01:13:33):
Well, I don't want to spoil the findings of your investigation.
We will put a link to that in the show notes. Sure,
but I did notice that the list of incredibly dangerous
arcane tomes and Ed's library included well unearthed arcana.

Speaker 7 (01:13:49):
Yeah. Oh, that museum was hilarious. It was you know,
it was I don't know where they got all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:13:56):
Here's a good example of the kind of research Ed
did for his occult museum. In this clip, he's walking
an interviewer through his museum of cursed and demonic artifacts.
As an FYI. This interviewer here is his son in law,
Tony Spira, who continues to help out Lorraine to this day,
and it was also the fellow conducting the interview. At
the start of this episode, Tony points out a copy

(01:14:16):
of a dark covered book with a post it note
on it which says Book of Shadows, and above that
printed on the cover are the dread words the necrydomicon.

Speaker 9 (01:14:26):
We had it read this way, but while we're heading
this way, right here, I see this book here, this book,
he says, a Book of Shadows.

Speaker 3 (01:14:33):
Niramonkaki, tell me what that.

Speaker 11 (01:14:35):
Yes, that's one of the original books of Shadows, which
were written in the Midi of old days, and this
one here was translated into English. Just the reading of
that book has a terrible results for many people. This
is not a book that anyone should ever buy, a
book of shadows that goes into the incantations of devils

(01:14:56):
and demons and rituals.

Speaker 3 (01:14:58):
Just a modicum of research and Ed would have learned
that the Book of Shadows he's holding is first of all,
not a book of shadows, and second of all not
the Necronomicon. This is a copy of the hoax Necronomicon,
released by the writer known as Simon. It's a famous
literary hoax. It's full of incantations and spells that are
supposed to be from a Sumaria, which are in fact

(01:15:19):
not Also, it's not a book of shadows. Book of
shadows are spell books for modern paganism, not ancient medieval
scrolls or spells or rituals. His museum of demonic possessed
items was full of off the shelf halloween junk dolls
and toys books you could buy any bookstore, and in

(01:15:39):
this case, one which wasn't even close to being what
he was representing it to be.

Speaker 7 (01:15:44):
But it's like stuff that they thought was demonic or
scary or whatever, you know. Again, to put a lot
of this into into context, Ed Lorraine were very devout Catholics,
and that was their mythology, and so anything firmly for you.
I'd called himself a demonologist, you know that. That was
his approach to These weren't just ghosts, these were demons.

(01:16:08):
His most haunted artifact, according to Ed, was a raggedy
and doll, which he kept in a glass case. And
before and again, we were still not sure why he
did this. But when he led us down to the basement,
then he disappeared for like ten minutes and then came back.
I have no idea what he was doing. I think
it was just spying on us. But he warned us,

(01:16:32):
don't go anywhere near the raggedy and doll, don't touch it,
try not to brush up against anything, because then you
might get possessed, because these things are all so evil.
So of course we're standing around there touching everything, you know,
having a good time, and you know, mocking the raggedy
and doll. He told us like a story about the
last person who mocked that raggedy and doll got died
an hour later in a motorcycle accident. Okay, yeah, we're

(01:16:54):
all still around, no problems. But he said, if you
if you do touch anything, let me know, because I'll
cleanse your aura by visualizing you in a christ light,
and He'll be able to cleanse us in that way.
So well, we never fest up to having touched.

Speaker 3 (01:17:14):
Anything, and the curse is still with you, you're saying.

Speaker 7 (01:17:18):
I guess we're all still cursed.

Speaker 3 (01:17:21):
So okay. So what cracks me up about this, to know,
I mean, just to no end, is the I had
heard you tell that story about the doll, and you
always called it a raggedy ann doll. And I always
assumed you were saying that like it was a xeroxor
it was you know what I mean, Like that was

(01:17:41):
a generic term. And when I went to see the movie,
they have this doll Annabelle as part of the story
in the beginning. It's part of the intro. Yeah, and
oh it's super creepy. It's awesome. And then I thought, well,
what does the real annabel look like, because I'd heard
Steve talk about seeing it, and I went and looked.
It was like, oh my god, no, seriously, it's a
raggedy an.

Speaker 7 (01:18:01):
It is a literal raggedy hand doll.

Speaker 3 (01:18:03):
And we were talking. I was talking to my friends
about why they changed it. And you know, obviously the
copyright issues or obviously a raggedy and doll is not
as scary as this creepy thing they use. I'm like, no, guys,
don't you see the doll had to be able to
pick up stuff and raggedy ann doesn't have fingers, right?

(01:18:23):
That was that was great. So I'm gonna put a
picture of that in the show notes too. About the
real Annabelle and the winner from the film, warns Trutle, Well,
that's a lot of information about the Warrens. In my research.
I also found some interesting articles and videos, and links
to those are in the show notes. Be on the
lookout for Joe nichols research on the Parent Family haunting

(01:18:43):
is depicted in the Conjuring It'll be an upcoming issue
of Skeptical Enquirer magazine. Also in the show notes is
a write up of the New England Skeptic Society's investigation
of the Warrens by Steve Navella and the late Period DeAngelis.
It's a great read. Be sure to check it out.
Monster Talk is an official podcast the Skeptic Magazine. I'm
Blake Smith and you've just been listening to our special
episode The Warren Omission. You heard interviews with Joe Nichol,

(01:19:08):
Steve Novella, Marvin Scott, and Ray Garden. An additional audio
from Edwin Lorraine Warren and their son in law, Tony Spira.
If you want to help out Muster Talk, please share
this episode with your friends and enemies alike. Our frenemies
are inemens.

Speaker 1 (01:20:00):
Yeah, this has been a Monster House presentation.

Speaker 11 (01:20:15):
No, no,