Ed and Lorraine Warren
Who were Ed and Lorraine Warren?
What were Ed and Lorraine Warrenâs most famous cases?
What is the Warren Occult Museum, and what happened to it?
What happened during the Amityville haunting?
Why were Ed and Lorraine Warren controversial?
Ed and Lorraine Warren were American paranormal investigators who became widely known for their involvement in a series of highly publicized alleged hauntings, most prominently the 1975â76 Amityville haunting.
- In full: Edward Warren Miney
- Born: September 7, 1926, Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S.
- Died: August 23, 2006, Monroe, Connecticut (age 79)
- In full: Lorraine Rita Warren (née Moran)
- Born: January 31, 1927, Bridgeport, Connecticut
- Died: April 18, 2019, Monroe, Connecticut (age 92)
Ed, a U.S. Navy veteran of World War II, described himself as a demonologist, while Lorraine said she was clairvoyant. They married in 1945 and had a daughter in 1951. The coupleâs case files later became the basis for the Conjuring horror film series, one of the highest-grossing franchises in the genre. By February 2024 the series had recorded earnings of more than $2.25 billion worldwide. Throughout their career the Warrens attracted persistent criticism from skeptics, and several people connected to their cases disputed the accuracy of their accounts.
Prominent cases
Both Warrens said they had encountered the supernatural in childhood: Lorraine reported that she perceived auras emanating from people, and Ed said the house he grew up in was haunted.
Ed, who had attended art school, painted scenes of reputedly haunted houses across New England. When the couple learned of a supposedly haunted property, he would sometimes sketch the house and offer the drawing to its occupants. The introduction could lead to a conversation about the reported activity and an invitation to investigate the home.
In 1952 the Warrens founded the New England Society for Psychic Research, which came to be run by their son-in-law Tony Spera. Over the following decades they built a career on reporting their findings in lectures and books and selling movie licensing rights.
Annabelle and the Warren Occult Museum
The Warrens accumulated objects from cases they regarded as supernatural and displayed them in the Warren Occult Museum at their home in Monroe, Connecticut. Among the objects housed there was Annabelle, a Raggedy Ann doll at the center of one of their earliest well-known cases. The dollâs owner claimed that it changed positions on its own and appeared in different rooms, while unexplained handwritten notes showed up around the house. A friend of the owner later claimed that the doll climbed onto him and choked him while he lay immobilized and that, during another encounter, unexplained scratches appeared across his chest. After their investigation the Warrens concluded that the doll was being controlled by a demon.
The doll was later displayed in the Warrensâ museum, with a warning on the case instructing visitors not to open it. The case inspired three films in the Conjuring universe: Annabelle (2014), Annabelle: Creation (2017), and Annabelle Comes Home (2019). The films use the real doll and the Warrensâ claims only as a starting point; their characters, events, and sinister porcelain version of Annabelle are largely fictional creations.
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The Warren Occult Museum was closed to the public after Lorraineâs death, but in 2025 comedian Matt Rife and ghost hunter Elton Castee purchased the house and announced their intention to reopen the museum. The following year Annabelle and other objects from the collection went on public display for a limited time at a museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
The Perron family haunting
In 1971 the couple investigated the home of the Perron family in Rhode Island, believed to be haunted by the ghost of a 19th-century woman, Bathsheba Sherman. Family members reported objects disappearing, beds lifting, unexplained odors, and other disturbing occurrences in the house. According to the familyâs later account, the Warrens conducted a sĂ©ance in the house, during which the mother became severely distressed. That case loosely inspired The Conjuring (2013), in which Ed and Lorraine were portrayed by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, respectively. Lorraine consulted on the film, and New Line Cinema acquired rights connected with the Warrensâ cases and life stories for development of the series.
The Amityville haunting
The Warrens are perhaps best known for the Amityville haunting incidents. On November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo, Jr., shot and killed six members of his family at their home at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York; he was convicted of murder the following year and died in prison in 2021. In December 1975 George and Kathy Lutz bought the house and moved in with their children, but they abandoned it after 28 days, reporting terrifying supernatural phenomena. Among their claims were unexplained odors and slime, swarms of flies appearing in winter, and George repeatedly waking at about 3:15 am, near the reported time of the DeFeo murders. The Warrens visited the house in March 1976 with a group that included parapsychological researchers and media personnel and concluded it was haunted.
The storyâs veracity was widely challenged: William Weber, who had defended DeFeo, later said that he and the Lutzes had invented the haunting narrative. George Lutz rejected the suggestion that the entire experience was fabricated and continued to maintain that his family had encountered unexplained phenomena in the house, although some details of the story were embellished over time.
The Lutzesâ account became the basis of Jay Ansonâs best-selling book The Amityville Horror (1977). The Amityville houseâs story inspired a long-running series of film adaptations, beginning with Stuart Rosenbergâs The Amityville Horror (1979) and followed by such titles as Amityville II: The Possession (1982) and Amityville 3-D (1983).
The Arne Johnson case
In 1980 the Warrens became involved with the family of David Glatzel of Connecticut, whose relatives believed that he was possessed by a demon. During an exorcism Arne Cheyenne Johnson, the boyfriend of Davidâs sister, reportedly challenged the alleged entity to possess him instead. The Warrens later maintained that it had done so. On February 16, 1981, Johnson fatally stabbed his landlord, Alan Bono. His defense attorney attempted to invoke demonic possession, but the judge rejected the argument and barred evidence concerning possession. Johnson was ultimately convicted of first-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 10 to 20 years, of which he served about five. The trial, popularly known as the âDevil Made Me Do Itâ case, became the subject of the book The Devil in Connecticut (1983) and inspired the film The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) and the Netflix documentary The Devil on Trial (2023).
Controversy
In a sworn declaration made public years after Ed Warrenâs death, Judith Penney alleged that Ed had initiated what she called an âamorous relationshipâ with her when she was 15 and he was in his 30s. Penney said that she later lived in the Warrensâ home and that the relationship continued for decades with Lorraineâs knowledge. An attorney representing Lorraine denied that Penney had been involved with Ed, maintaining that the Warrens had taken her into their home when she was 18 and needed a place to live. The allegations received wider attention in 2017 after surfacing in litigation concerning rights and compensation associated with the Conjuring franchise.