The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren

by Brittle, Gerald

  During Biblical times, Jesus spoke knowingly about ghosts, spirits, demons, and possession. “In fact,” Ed notes, “Christ himself appeared at least a dozen times as an apparition to his followers before the Resurrection.”

  Receding even further back into history, it seems the question of spirit has preoccupied man right from the very beginning of civilization. Writers, as far back as the ancient Greeks, saw all this malicious activity as something more ominous than the occasional manifestation of a black specter in the middle of the night. Even then, the ancients saw it as a spirit, one with a negative purpose and assigned it the name “daemon,” meaning evil or unclean spirit.

  Today, documentation on the existence of earthbound spirit phenomena is available in most any large city or university library, thanks to work done over the past century by reputable psychic research organizations. However, proper information about the demonic spirit remains as difficult to come by as always. The subject is shrouded in secrecy. Most books on the occult give passing reference to “demons,” but such information is usually intermingled with the disclaimer that the phenomenon is simply medieval superstition. Scientists rule out the existence of “spirits” entirely; the medical establishment tends to see the subject as either illusion or psychosis; and, academics conceive of demons as fantasy. Only the religious establishment gives credence to the notion of the demonic in high theology, and then the subject suddenly becomes quite real. It is given a name: the Mysterium Iniquitatis—the Mystery of the Iniquity. And the devil is given a symbol: XPISTOS—the Antichrist.

  The best way to get a handle on the subject would be to ask the experts, but one does not simply walk into a church or synagogue and ask to speak with a demonologist. There are not that many of them; their names are confidential, and they are obliged to report their experiences only to their superiors. Even Ed Warren will not tell all about these horrendous black spirits that come in the night bearing messages and proclamations of blasphemy. When pressed on the matter, in fact, Ed’s reply is: “There are things known to priests and myself that are best left unsaid.”

  Upon what, then, does Ed Warren base his opinions? Is there proper evidence or corroboration to substantiate his claims?

  “People who aren’t familiar with the phenomenon sometimes ask me if I’m not involved in a sort of ultrarealistic hallucination, like Don Quixote jousting with windmills. Well, hallucinations are visionary experiences. This, on the other hand, is a phenomenon that hits back. My knowledge of the subject is no different than that of learned clergymen, and they’ll tell you as plainly as I will that this isn’t something to be easily checked off as a bad dream.

  “I can support everything I say with bona fide evidence,” Ed goes on, “and testimony by credible witnesses and blue-ribbon professionals. There is no conjecture involved here. My statements about the nature of the demonic spirit are based on my own firsthand experiences over thirty years in this work, backed up by the experiences of other recognized demonologists, plus the experiences of the exorcist clergy, plus the testimony of hundreds of witnesses who’ve been these spirits’ victims, plus the full weight of hard physical evidence. Theological dogma about the demonic simply proves consistent with my own findings about these spirits in real life. But let me be more specific.

  “The inhuman spirit often identifies itself as the devil and then—through physical or psychological means—proves itself to be just that. Again speaking from my own personal experiences, I have been burned by these invisible forces of pandemonium. I have been slashed and cut; these spirits have gouged marks and symbols on my body. I’ve been thrown around the room like a toy. My arms have been twisted up behind me until they’ve ached for a week. I’ve incurred sudden illnesses to knock me out of an investigation. Physicalized monstrosities have manifested before me, threatening death, ruin of my family, and afterlife torment. But whatever I’ve witnessed has been suffered far worse by the clergy who must challenge the demonic.

  “I’m talking about activity that’s going on right now. Tomorrow, for example, I’ll be submitting proof papers to the Catholic Church to justify the exorcism of a young woman who is under possession now, as I speak.

  “As for evidence,” Ed continues, “I have many thousands of hours of tape-recorded interviews with people and families all around America and Britain, which fully document the reality of demoniacal phenomena. I could fill a good-sized auditorium with witnesses to back up what I say. I have a collection of objects and substances—the apports I spoke about—that have been synthetically created by the demonic. I have documented photographs of demoniacal phenomena in progress, showing levitations, materializations, and spirit forms. I have evidence on audio tape of these spirits speaking. Many times they go so far as to even identify themselves by their diabolical names. Furthermore,” Ed discloses, “these entities have confronted me personally by speaking through the possessed; and by taking manifest physical form, just as solid as you and me. And they tell me—just as clearly as I’m speaking now—who they are, why they’re here, and what they’re going to do!”

  When asked to provide an example of the last point, Ed goes into his office and returns with a reel-to-reel tape. “This came from a session in 1972,” he says, threading the tape through the recorder. “At the time, we were trying to determine who, or what, had been oppressing and sometimes possessing a woman named Mary since she was eight years old. When the recording was made, Mary was in her mid-fifties. Also present on that day were Lorraine, myself, a Catholic priest, and a deep trance medium. Just before this segment, the spirit had been speaking through the medium—lying, switching into foreign languages to keep us from understanding it, and talking in a falsetto voice, claiming to be an ‘angel.’ To get to the truth, we placed a crucifix on a table behind the medium—who was in a trance, her eyes tightly closed. We then commanded the spirit to speak, at which point something very different came through.” Ed switched on the tape recorder:

  Voice: I do not choose to be here!

  Ed Warren: Why did you come then?

  V: I am under the Power!

  EW: Whose power?

  V: A white light!

  EW: Describe yourself to me.

  V: No. (The crucifix is then set in place, followed by agonized screaming by the possessing spirit.)

  EW: Describe yourself to me!

  V: I must in truth tell you what I look like. I am wicked—and ugly looking. I am inhuman. I am vindictive. I have a horrible face, I have much gross hair on my body. My eyes are deep-sunk. I am black all over. I am burnt. I grow hair. My nails are long, my toes are clawed. I have a tail. I use a spear. What else do you want to know?

  EW: What do you call yourself?

  V: (Proclaiming) I am Resisilobus! I am Resisilobus!!

  “Though Ed and I don’t pretend to be academic theologians,” says Lorraine, “we have found nothing in our work to indicate the demonic spirit is anything but a fallen angel. The spirit’s routine behavior, its metaphysical powers, and its violent reaction to holy objects certainly supports this conclusion. In fact, I’d go so far as to say transcripts of exorcisms would prove that the demonic spirit is the proverbial fallen angel.” One finds no justification for this spirit’s existence other than what’s suggested in the Scriptures. In both testaments of the Bible, angels and demons are mentioned some three thousand times.* No other reliable precedent exists for the demonic spirit, except in arcane religious texts that offer the same basic point of view.

  The exact quarrel between the demonic spirit and God is not known to man. As Pope Paul VI said in 1972, “we know very little about this whole unhappy drama before the world began.” (Yet the same papal pronouncement also made it clear the Devil is a real entity-not a symbol or psychological metaphor. Even in his short reign of one month, Pope John Paul I reaffirmed his predecessors’ convictions that the Devil exists as a real being.) Some of the best explanations about this truly haunting subject are contained in Nicolas Corte’s Who Is the Devil? a
nd in Billy Graham’s Angels, but the definitive explanation remains to be found in St. Augustine’s City of God. The classical story of the Fall of the Angels can be summarized as follows:

  The first beings God created were angels. Of all the angels created, none was higher than Lucifer. God created Lucifer in such perfection that he was all but God. Not content with his own being, however, Lucifer sought through envy what was not his. Indeed, Lucifer sought to be God, to negate the existence of God and rule the heavens himself. Thus, the demonic spirit proves to be a negative spirit of possession.

  Other angels in league with Lucifer participated in the same ruinous desire, “covetousness”: that is, they were willing to forsake the gifts of their being in order to take what was not their own. God’s supposed response to this cosmic treachery was to banish Lucifer and his legion from Heaven, whereupon these fallen angels swore perpetual disobedience to God.

  Lucifer was renamed Satan—the slanderer, the accuser, the Father of Lies. Though fallen from grace, these angels were not depotentiated, but retained all the preternatural—beyond earth—powers given them at creation. These powers essentially consist of immortal existence; mystical knowledge of the universe; and the power to bypass the physical laws of nature, giving them the ability to bring about psychic phenomena and produce synthetic creations. Yet despite their awesome powers, the demonic was restricted from overwhelming man. Instead, the covenant was that God would protect man, if man in turn respected the powers of God.

  In the end, of course, no one knows the whole story. The demonic spirit’s opposition to God does not, in itself, represent a proof for the existence of God. Only by inference do we see God as existing, through the hateful words and actions of these blasphemous, unworldly beings.

  “However,” as Ed notes, “apart from any one Scriptural interpretation, vile, inhuman spirits do roam the earth today. And when commanded to speak, the spirits’ reply is a grave one: My name is Legion: We Are One. It is also true that these spirits possess overwhelming powers, and work with a ferocious rage, malice, and spite against mankind. Oddly, the only protection man can summon against these negative forces is mention of the name of God—though more particularly Jesus—and the presentation of blessed objects. Otherwise, nothing will stay these bizarre spirit entities.”

  Yet, if the activity is so overt, why haven’t scientists come to similar conclusions about inhuman spirit phenomena?

  “Scientists are people,” Ed replies, “and some scientists and psychic investigators have seen what’s happening, and now they understand. The most vocal sceptics, however, have never been witness to the phenomena themselves. Nevertheless, the movements and activity caused by these spirits is scientifically documented in a great many cases. Unfortunately, parapsychologists usually dismiss the activity as PK, or at the most, attribute the disturbance to earthbound human spirits. But even that isn’t correct: by its own admission, the inhuman spirit has never been slave to God’ in the form of man. It prides itself on that point In fact, testimony and evidence given by principals and credible witnesses, tape-recorded sessions with the possessed, transcripts of exorcisms, two thousand years of church records all show them to be nothing more than what they’ve been known to be all along: inhuman diabolical spirits, possessed of hate and the evil wisdom to use it; spirits that have existed for all ages, harboring a violent hatred for God and vowing the ruin of man. Most of its hate is directed against God, however, and only rarely does man witness the full rage of its fury.

  “As for the phenomenon itself,” Ed goes on, “a dozen investigators can go through a demoniacally infested dwelling and come up with zero. Because, for the most part, the scientific investigator is fishing without a hook. The scientist, coming at the problem with his stopwatch and litmus paper, poses no threat to the infesting entity. Certainly the entity is not going to voluntarily tip its hand to its presence. But go in with a religious object, and an inhuman spirit will respond to the challenge.

  “Let me be quick to say I absolutely do not recommend any investigator or psychic researcher to follow this procedure, however. Provocation is a distinctly religious procedure, not a scientific one. It requires special preparation before it is even attempted, or the results can be disastrous. I say this as fair warning to those who may try. No matter how dedicated the investigator, there is a point where he must stop, accept an impasse, and go home. There is no such thing as ‘conquest’ in this work. The end point is exorcism, the elimination of the negative force. No other attitude will succeed. The demonic is a very grave, serious problem and neither good intentions nor ‘manly intolerance’ will drive it away. It backs off only in the name of God. That’s it.”

  Probably the most disturbing aspect to demoniacal phenomena is that behind all the terror and chaos, there stands a shrewd, calculating intelligence.

  “Bear in mind, too, this is not something that is dead,” Ed points out “This is an active, negative intelligence that predates man in cosmic evolution. It is more knowledgeable than us because it’s older than us. See it as a powerful negative intelligence completely lost in its hate for God. Once you do that, you’ll start getting the picture of what the demonic spirit really is.”

  Perhaps no item more vividly illustrates the “wicked wisdom” of the demonic spirit than the five-foot antique conjuring mirror that hangs on the wall near Ed’s office. One can’t help but notice its ornate carved frame, but it is anything but a treasured objet d’art. Instead it’s under the watchful eyes of Ed Warren because it is a profane object.

  “These days,” Ed explains, “people’s only real familiarity with mirror magic comes from the rhyme in Snow White: ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall; who’s the fairest one of all?’ Witches and sorcerers once used mirrors to foresee or manipulate future events through magic—not illusion, but true magic, the real manipulation of nature and events. That ornate mirror by my door came from the home of a vindictive fifty-five-year-old Pennsylvania man named Steven Zellner who used it to practice a little-known medieval ritual we call speculum, or mirror magic.

  “Now magic, like witchcraft, can be used to produce either good or bad effects. This man used the mirror as an instrument of black magic. First, he performed a lengthy incantation ritual or conjuring formula, inviting the spirit world to assist him in manipulating the future. After the incantation, he then directed his gaze into the mirror, using it in much the same way one uses a crystal ball: as a point of concentration.

  “When he first started out, Steven saw very little in the mirror other than the movement of blurred forms, or quick little incidents that meant nothing to him. But day by day, week by week, the more he concentrated his attention into the mirror—that is, the more he opened up his free will to the experience—the more control Steven gained, and consequently, the more he could see. Eventually, after performing this speculum ritual obsessively for many months, Mr. Zellner got to the point where all he had to do was state what he wanted to see, and the desired image would appear.

  “In time, once he perfected the ritual, he could actually tune into the future whenever he liked. He could see—indeed predict—self-oriented events that would occur a day, a month, even a year later. But as the saying goes, Power makes slaves of us all,’ and he soon decided to use this occult power. Going a step further, then, he projected people into the mirror. Invariably these were folks Mr. Zellner didn’t like—whom he singled out for revenge or punishment. God help the butcher who shortchanged Steven Zellner!” Ed jokes.

  “In order to wreak his own personal form of justice, Steven would select a victim whose image would come up in the mirror. The unwitting individual would be seen in some actual future situation. Then, with the victim literally in his sights, Steven would will some misfortune to befall that person. For example, he would see his victim standing at the top of a flight of stairs. At that point, if he wanted to make his victim fall down the stairs and break an arm, all he had to do was desire to see it happen. Working this kind of magic, t
he man would actually see his spiteful justice occur in the mirror just the way he planned it—kind of like watching an instant replay before the action takes place.

  “Neat trick, right? Except there was a sticking point. These malicious acts wouldn’t happen just on his mortal say-so; they’d be carried out by inhuman spirits that he commanded as part of the ritual process. In order to make a victim fall down the stairs, an inhuman spirit would either momentarily disorient the person, apport some grease on a step, or go so far as to even give the victim a psychokinetic push—and, whammo!

  “However, somewhere along the line, Steven made a mistake, and his magic went awry. No doubt he neglected the part of the ritual where he had to give homage to Satan. As a result, the evil he proposed for others began to occur to him. But this was only a secondary grievance, because the spirits that he’d turned loose on his enemies had infested his own home instead, and were actively engaged in oppressing him. Disembodied footsteps and heavy breathing were heard in the otherwise empty house. Doors opened by themselves. Objects levitated or were flung around the room by unseen hands. Unearthly noises woke him up in the middle of the night In short, an invisible presence roamed the house, and there was nothing he could do about it

  “After about a week, this man was so absolutely terrified he called a prominent Catholic official here in the East, and literally begged him to send a demonologist to his house. Rather than send over a busy priest though, that church official contacted me in Connecticut and asked if I’d investigate and try to straighten things out. At the time, Lorraine and I were working a tight schedule, but with us, people come first. So I canceled the remainder of our appointments that day, along with an appearance on an important interview show that night, and drove off with Lorraine to northern New Jersey.

  “When we arrived at the address, we met a man frightened out of his wits. Of course, he had every right to be. Doors were opening and closing by themselves. Objects were flying here, there, and everywhere. Every minute, something would crash and break, or bounce off a wall and hit the floor and smash—a real ruckus! At one point during the afternoon, my own car even got involved. About an hour after we got there, cars in the street started honking their horns. When I looked out the window, I saw our car parked in the middle of the road crossways blocking both lanes of traffic. When we arrived I had parked the car in Mr. Zellner’s driveway, pulled the emergency brake, and locked the doors. Yet, someone on the street said they saw the car roll backwards out of the driveway all by itself. When I went out to get it, of course, the car’s doors were still locked and the parking brake was still set.