One rarely reads about the first two stages of demoniacal phenomena—infestation and oppression—in newspapers, except in terms of so-called “poltergeist” activity. However, cases of diabolical possession do get reported, but no one is ever told how the possession occurred. Yet if physical or psychological oppression is not resisted or the appropriate help is not brought in, then the oppressing spirit is capable of possession. And when that happens, things become far more complicated and sinister. For all the violence and terror that is liable to occur during the infestation and oppression stages is dedicated to nothing less than the diabolical possession of a human being. If oppression succeeds, the door to the will is simply torn away. The individual is then invaded by one, or even a multitude, of possessing entities.
“You have to draw a thick black line between oppression and possession,” says Ed, marking a line on the table with his finger. “During oppression, the demonic spirit tries to manipulate the human will through temptation, intimidation, and other nasty influences that the individual can usually stave off or resist. But when possession occurs, the inhuman spirit no longer attacks you, it becomes you, so to speak. Seizing the body of the person and imposing its will over that of the human spirit is the ultimate goal of the demonic spirit. As incredible as it may seem, the body is host to a whole other being. What possesses the body is an alien, inhuman spirit of a distinctly diabolical nature that bears no relation to the possessed individual. An independent spirit, with a will and intelligence of its own, forcibly takes over the human body and, in its own voice, defies anyone to make it leave.”
Expanding the point, Lorraine says, “Theologians have often called the human body the ‘mansion of the soul’; the dwelling where the spirit resides. The demonic spirit crudely calls the body a house to inhabit People who leave the ‘front door’ unlocked, by inviting or attracting spirit forces, court the real possibility of possession. ‘One man’s trash is another’s treasure.’ Those who don’t appreciate the gift of life stand in jeopardy of having it snatched away from them in a very real, very physical way.”
When possession does occur, is there anything noticeably apparent about the afflicted individual?
“Many times, the possessed looks just like you or me,” Ed replies. “Except for one thing: the eyes. They say the eyes are the window of the soul I believe that’s true, because the look in the eyes of the severely oppressed or possessed is like nothing you’ve ever seen. The eyes aren’t drooping or half-asleep; they’re wide open and alert. Yet the look in those eyes is not human, it is wild, bestial, and full of hate. I have seen this crazed, otherworldly look many times in my life, and every time, I seem to lose a small part of myself in the process. I’m convinced it is a look people are not supposed to see, because it is truly the spirit of evil looking out the window of a human being.
“Only a few months ago, Lorraine and I had just been on a television show uptown in New York City, Afterwards, we took a taxi down to Chinatown for lunch. As we were walking along the street we saw there was some trouble at the corner, with police cars all around. So I suggested we cut through a walkway or alley on our left-hand side which led to Mott Street.
“Well, we took the alley, which was full of beat-up trash cans overflowing with garbage. Flies, maggots, and vermin were everywhere. The combination of the heat and the stink of decomposing garbage quickly began to sour our stomachs. Nevertheless, we kept going. Further back, the alley crooked slightly, so that beyond the middle you could no longer see the street.
“We walked quickly, but as we got to the middle of the alleyway, at the end of this long row of trash cans, we saw two feet sticking out. I told Lorraine to stand still while I walked up ahead. When I got closer, I saw it was a man, a derelict. He was a Caucasian, between thirty-five and sixty-five—you couldn't tell. The man was just barely alive, sitting up against the wall with his legs stretched out into the path. He was filthier than anyone I have ever seen: covered with sores and scabs, and obviously riddled with disease.
“But that just begins to tell the story. Because piled on top of him—as though he were sitting in bed with a quilt over him—were heaps of runny, putrefying garbage. This foul mess covered the man all the way up to his chest and down to his knees. His arms were plopped in the middle of this rotting slop, and flies were landing all over his face and body. Rats had apparently been gnawing on his feet and toes. It was evident the man hadn’t moved in days.
“Ironically, his shoes were neatly placed beside him, shined up and ready to go. Now, I have been in war and I have seen spiritual abominations in haunted houses, but I doubt if I’ve ever seen anything so repulsive or disgusting in my life. How could this happen? How could a human being be reduced to such a state?
“I looked at this poor, wretched soul from the feet up, and was overtaken with compassion and grief. When I finally came to look upon his face, I was stunned, and instinctively took a step back. His face was twisted into a perverse sneer—and there was that ugly, inhuman look of delirium in his eyes. Then I knew what had happened to him. And what was possessing that man, in turn, knew me too.
“ ‘You bastard!’ I said to it, so sickened was I by this scene.
“It laughed, mockingly. ‘I am killing him!’ it said to me. ‘In a few days, he will be dead. And do you know, there is nothing you can do about it. Because it is already done!’ ”
“Demoniacal influence can be sickeningly ugly,” Lorraine emphasizes. “When a person succumbs to the impulses thrown out by the demonic—and those impulses are usually the most negative and bestial—the spirit can have the person wallowing around the floor like an animal. Why? Because the demonic is inhuman. When it oppresses people it dehumanizes them, just like it did to that possessed man in the alleyway. Before becoming possessed, he would have been severely oppressed. When his emotions equaled the destructive temperament of the oppressing spirit, then possession occurred. This is why ‘successful’ demoniacal oppression can turn a human being into something lower than a beast.”
What is Ed’s response to criticism, or allegations that the demonic is nothing more than an extremely vivid figment of the imagination, or simply a psychological matter of dual personality?
“The phenomenon is imaginary only to those who have never witnessed it,” Ed retorts. “So the answer I give to that question is no, these are not psychological demons. These are entities,.
But how can you tell? When possession occurs, does anything specifically physical happen to distinguish it from a purely mental change?
“My God, yes,” Ed replies. “Specifically, when possession occurs, an inhuman possessing entity moves into the body of the person, sometimes through the solar plexus, but more often from the individual’s left-hand side, entering at the base of the neck where the brain meets the spine.* Meanwhile, the astral body—the spirit of the person—is usually displaced and moves out of the physical body from the right. The human spirit looks cloudlike and white; the inhuman spirit looks cloudlike and black. Beyond that, in my experience, nine out of ten times when possession occurs, the person’s facial characteristics change into a bony, distorted appearance totally unlike the appearance of the possessed person. The voice that comes through is often gross and manlike, although you can’t generalize: many spirits usually partake in the possession of a body, each with its own bizarre way of vocalizing. As for changes to the body, the strength of the possessed is completely overwhelming. I have seen a possessed child throw grown adults around the room like a sumo wrestler. And a possessed adult is completely unmanageable. I know—I have been attacked by the possessed on more than one occasion, and big as I am, at two-hundred-and-twenty pounds, I can report to you that no human being could ever single-handedly fight off a possessed individual. You’re dealing with something that has the strength of six men.
“That’s the physical side,” says Ed. “Once possession takes place, the spirit will then either seek to mutilate the body it inhabits—as was portrayed in The Exorcist
—or take off on a spree of wild physical mayhem. The demonic spirit isn’t content simply to possess the body: its mind is fixed on death. The basic motive behind possession is that ‘One can kill many.’ It doesn’t matter whether the diabolically-possessed is a tyrannical world leader or a street killer, the objective is the same: one can kill many. When you understand this, then the demonic spirit’s whole strategy starts to make sense. Until exorcism takes place, the body will be a ‘house’ for one or more entities. The bottom line is, there’s nothing psychological about true cases of possession. In one major case of possession, the exorcist called as many as ninety eight different entities out of the body of the possessed—each and every one of which answered to a name! Although psychologists often mistake the phenomenon for multiple personality, the only multiplicity involved is the multitude of spirits possessing the victim's body.”
Anyone who asks Ed and Lorraine Warren for proof of “true cases of possession,” had better stoke up enough courage to sit through their reply. After a lifetime in the study of the supernatural the Warrens have collected a unique, unduplicated treasury of data covering all aspects of spirit phenomena—evidence that functions to substantiate everything they say a dozen times over. Much of this evidence is located in what the Warrens call the Occult Museum.
The museum—its contents to be bequeathed to a British university—adjoins Ed Warren’s office. It contains an extraordinary tape library of interviews with uncounted thousands of people who have called on the Warrens over the years because they—or their families—were experiencing spirit-related problems. The factual, detailed interviews are true stories of horror, tragedy, and death wreaked on ordinary people by hostile spirit forces. There is also a sub-library of tapes upon which are recorded the voices of spirits that spoke openly in a room, through the body of the possessed, or through the agency of a trance medium—very sobering material indeed. The Warrens’ evidence continues with some one thousand slides and photographs showing the whole range of supernatural activity they’ve witnessed in their work, including a remarkable array of spirits in various stages of manifestation. The museum also contains files of affidavits, testimonials, corroborating evidence, and newspaper accounts of the Warrens’ work over the years. Yet what strikes the visitor most of all are the strange, sinister-looking objects that surround one in the Occult Museum.
Every object in the museum was removed from a home or situation where demoniacal phenomena once ocurred. Some of the objects and amulets stored there are so negatively “charged” that just by holding one of the items it is possible to provoke the original spirit to manifest or cause possession to occur instantly. The Warrens do not keep these dangerous objects as fond mementos of past exploits—they keep them because they have to. For if a diabolically-charged object is destroyed, say the Warrens, reciprocal harm could be visited upon the person or family who once owned it “It’s the demonic version of the Biblical eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” says Lorraine. If destruction of a negative object doesn’t result in physical harm, then the spirit may instead return to the premises from which it was exorcised. Rather than put anyone in physical jeopardy, the Warrens respect the power in these negative objects and allow them to stand as hard physical evidence that evil exists in the world as a real, moving force.
There are about a hundred items in the collection so far, and almost every item has a story attached to it. There’s a string of pearls that when worn around the neck, strangles the wearer. There’s the long black spike a satanic witch used long ago to murder her newborn infant as a sacrifice to the devil. There is the large plaster doll dressed in Victorian clothing that not only took on the features of the old lady who once owned it, but became animated and behaved like a human being for over twenty years. There are the crania of human skulls that have been used as “chalices of ecstasy” for drinking human blood during witchcraft rituals. There’s the coffin in which a possessed man slept each night for his whole adult life. There are stones—some quite sizeable—that fell out of the sky onto homes under diabolical siege. There are crucifixes that have actually been exploded by demonic spirits and still others that Satanists have defiled with urine and excrement. There are written pacts with the devil, crystal balls, ceremonial swords, and sacrificial daggers. There are the black candles and conjuring book from the Foster case, and by the door to Ed’s office is hung the conjuring mirror taken from Steven Zellner’s house in New Jersey. The planchette and burned picture frames from the Beckford case are displayed on a table not far from a wooden cabinet in which Annabelle, the Raggedy Ann doll, now sits holding a plain wood crucifix in her little cloth hands.
And finally, there is the black lace veil.
The veil figured in a case of possession where an inhuman spirit delivered a pointed message to Ed Warren. The possessing entity’s voice was clearly recorded on tape. The Warrens, sitting together on an overstuffed sofa in the Occult Museum, now explain the strange case of the young woman—bizarre in her own right—who had one day been brought to Ed’s office with other spirit-related problems.
“Ed and I had been lecturing to a college audience,” Lorraine begins. “It was an otherwise normal lecture, except that I could sense there was a negative presence in the auditorium, and for the life of me I couldn’t pick it out. When we speak to groups of people, I can usually tell who’s there. Clergymen, for instance, often come wearing turtlenecks or sport shirts, but I can see they’re clergy by the light-beige aura that surrounds the ordained. Satanists and black witchcraft groups often show up at our lectures dressed like everyone else, but their auras stand out too. On this occasion, however, I just couldn’t localize the source of the negative vibrations.
“When the question session was over, people from the audience came forward as usual; a dozen people surrounded Ed, and a dozen people surrounded me. After about fifteen minutes, I looked over and saw that Ed was speaking with a young male student. Next to the boy stood a girl who, for some reason, was seething with rage. I promptly excused myself from the group around me and went over to be with Ed.”
“Jimmy, the boy who’d been talking to me,” says Ed, “brought his girlfriend, Kendra, to our lecture because he suspected that she’d been overtaken by some occult influence. He told me that when his girlfriend became angry, she would fill up with intense hate and rage; her features would change into something resembling a ‘wolf’; and then the voice of a different ‘person’ would speak from inside her.
“When Lorraine came over to me, the girl experienced an episode of instantaneous possession right there on the stage. She lurched out and actually tried to kill Lorraine. The incident not only scared Lorraine, it also scared the wits out of everyone else around us, who quickly moved away. We ended the audience chat session right there. I took Kendra and her boyfriend to an offstage room. In the meantime, Lorraine waited out in the hall while I spoke with these two.
“In the backstage room, the girl was fully under possession. She was breathing heavily, while the entity possessing her was completely overtaken with an intense violent hatred. Her facial features were also somewhat transformed into the wolflike appearance the boy had talked about The off-pitch voice projected by the entity later proved to be dissimilar to that of the girl. I didn’t have a tape recorder with me at the time, but it hardly mattered, because the thing possessing the girl was simply caught up in a snarling, accusatory rage.
“After about ten minutes, the possession passed. Then the girl seemed to be all right—at least if I didn’t crowd her, which seemed to reinstigate possession. So to avoid trouble, I sat on the opposite side of the room. When I felt she could be spoken to, I told her about the incident I had just witnessed. She told me she had some slight awareness of her condition, though what she complained about was a loss of memory that made her think she was losing her mind. She couldn’t account for hours, and even whole days, in her life. Over the course of the previous three months, she explained, this had been getting worse. I told her that los
s of memory went hand in hand with possession, because there was nothing for her to remember. The gaps in time represented episodes of possession—where life was being experienced not by her, but by the possessing entity. Yet before anything could be done for the girl, the real question that had to be answered was why had she been experiencing possession at all?
“Kendra, I found out, was a well-to-do—perhaps even spoiled—young lady who was wealthy enough to buy anything she wanted. About a year earlier, however, there came a point in her life when she encountered something money couldn’t buy. That ‘something’ was the young man sitting next to her. Jimmy was a Nordic type, enrolled at an Ivy League school in a nearby state. Kendra had met him in her home town the summer before, and apparently they went out on a few dates. By the end of the summer, though, the boy had no feelings for Kendra and ignored her subsequent approaches.
“She, on the other hand, had seized on this guy passionately and couldn’t rest until she made him her own. In essence, she saw Jimmy as a desirable commodity, not as a human being. This dehumanization of a person got noticed. I say this because the girl tried every possible method to gain the boy’s affection—from writing him enticing letters, to sending him money for travel tickets so he could visit her at school. But none of the tactics worked. At least, not until she hit upon ritual witchcraft, which is where the black lace veil comes in. To get Jimmy in her clutches, she turned to the occult. Kendra went out to a store and found herself a book on the black arts, the title of which I won’t mention. Kendra took the book home and later that week, privately performed a ritual for acquiring lovers—an old ritual that has gotten people in trouble for ages.”
The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren Page 21
