by Ed
"Okay," Ed said, nodding, "that's good. Here's another question, and please don't think it insulting. It's just something we have to ask in our work, only as a precaution, and I hope you'll answer honestly. Do any of you take drugs or drink heavily?"
"Oh, no, definitely not," Dale said.
Sophie added, "Even when I was younger, I never did any of that."
Ed nodded thoughtfully, then looked at Dale and Florence again. "You've been the only ones living in the house for...how long?"
"Almost three years."
Another nod. He turned to Lorraine and asked, "You wanna look around?"
"Well, I can, but it's a very small house. I don't know if I need to. We've already seen quite a lot."
"Yeah, we have, that's for sure. Mr. and Mrs. Mack, we're going to get some researchers in here right away to spend some time with you. If it's not an inconvenience, they'll be spending day and night in the house recording everything that happens. We'll be back within the next couple of days with a video camera to record an extensive interview with you and get all the facts from the very beginning. I mean, we'll get what you've told us already and more. We want everything, and I mean everything, on the record."
"It wouldn't be any inconvenience at all," Dale said.
"Good. The next step would be to bring in a member of the clergy. Are you religious people?"
"Well, we've always been Catholic, but...we haven't been practicing Catholics for many years."
"But you wouldn't object if we brought in a priest?"
"Not at all."
"Because I suspect we're going to need an exorcism."
"Can you tell me something?" Dale asked. "Can you tell me why it's after my wife? She seems to be the center of it. It always surrounds her. This isn't the first time she's floated like that. We don't understand it."
"I honestly don't know. But I suspect that after we've asked you a few more questions, we might have some idea as to why that's happening."
Ed was being diplomatic. He knew from experience that when something like this took place it was usually for a reason. He suspected that, in spite of what they'd said, they'd been involved in some sort of occult activity. Perhaps Mrs. Mack, on her own and without the knowledge of her husband, had been consulting a Ouija board or a psychic, or had been attending séances to contact some dead relative or friend. But he didn't want to say that now because it had been his experience that such accusations tended to anger people, even if they were true— sometimes especially if they were true.
They left the Macks with smiles and handshakes (although Mrs. Mack was still so shaken that she remained on the loveseat in the living room, cold and silent) and went to a nearby coffee shop to discuss what they'd learned.
It was a busy coffee shop with lots of noise around them and they had to speak louder than usual to be heard.
"I think Mike would be best," Lorraine said. "I think we should send him. He's had experience with situations like this before and I think he could handle it."
"Yeah, that's probably a good idea." He sipped his coffee. "So, you think it's an evil spirit, huh?"
"Positive. And I think it's probably there for a reason."
"You mean they brought it on?"
She nodded. "Somehow. Since it's focusing on the wife, I suspect it's probably something she's doing. But that's the way it usually is, right? Even though they don't realize it."
Ed nodded, releasing a heavy, weary sigh. They'd both put in a long day—a long week—and they were tired.
"You want something to eat?" Ed asked.
"Sure, I'm hungry. But remember. No red meat. You're gonna cut back, right?
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're gonna kill me, is what you're gonna do," he murmured.
They picked up the menus and browsed through them in the comfortable silence of a couple who have been married for years.
When Ed was five years old, his family moved into the top floor of a two-family house on Jane Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It was directly across the street from St. John's Church, the church Ed's grandparents attended and that his family began attending from then on.
That house on Jane Street was to start what would be a lifelong interest for Ed Warren, a passionate interest that would lead him into some very strange places and show him some frightening things. At a very young age, that house was to change Ed forever.
That house was haunted.
On numerous occasions, every member of the family—Ed, his twin sister, his brother, and his parents—saw the apparition of an old woman who always looked less than friendly.
Ed's father was a police officer and a stern but sensible man. Not wanting his children to be frightened, he tried to tell them that there had to be a logical explanation for what they had been seeing. But they all knew better.
Every Sunday, Ed's grandparents joined them for breakfast and the sound of Grandpa coming up the stairs became very familiar: his labored steps, the thump of his cane, his heavy, wheezing breaths.
When Grandpa finally died a number of years later, Grandma was understandably devastated and Mom frequently checked up on her to make sure she was okay. One day, Mom was gone later than usual and it wasn't until very late in the evening, when the children were ready for bed, that they heard the door open downstairs. Thinking that Mom had come home, Ed left his bedroom and turned on the light so she wouldn't fall on the stairs. As he started back to his room, he realized it wasn't Mom coming up the stairs at all. He heard shuffling steps, a thumping cane, wheezing breaths....
It was Grandpa coming up those steps, Grandpa who had been gone for some time. Ed heard him go into the kitchen and walk in circles for a while.
At about that same time, Lorraine was attending a Catholic school and trying to hide from the nuns an ability that she had only recently, at the age of nine, discovered she possessed.
Lorraine could see colored lights around people. The colors followed the outlines of their bodies. They were very pretty, but Lorraine didn't know what they meant—if anything.
The sisters constantly discouraged her from even bringing the colors up in conversation. She was told she had a vivid imagination, that was all. She learned quickly to keep the colors to herself. But that did not keep her from seeing them.
There was no one in Lorraine's world to answer her questions about them. It wasn't until much later that Lorraine realized she was seeing the human aura, and that, being clairvoyant, she was able to see and feel many other things that most people couldn't.
They met when they were sixteen. They were drawn together. Lorraine proudly told friends, "Ed is the only man I've ever dated."
After they were married, Ed graduated from art school and, in a 1933 Chevy he had bought for fifteen dollars, they took to the road selling his paintings here and there. But whenever they heard of a haunted house in the paper or by word of mouth, they would travel there and Ed would paint the house. Then Lorraine would go to the door with the painting and say, "My husband has sort of made a habit of painting haunted houses, and he's painted yours. We'd like you to have the picture." That almost always got them in the door so they could question the people who lived there, ask about the haunting and get the story directly from them.
Over the years, based on their research—which became more and more extensive as the years passed—Ed and Lorraine began to develop theories about how hauntings worked, about why they took place, about what brought them on. They read countless books on the subject but, as Lorraine said in the midst of their research, "It sounds like all these guys are reading the same books we're reading!" So they did not depend on the regurgitated and incestuous work they read to develop what was to become the New England Society for Psychic Research; they depended only on their own experiences, on the things they had witnessed.
As the years passed, books were written about them. Later, movies were made about them. They began to teach classes on what they had learned, turning students into researchers. They traveled the country and l
ectured at colleges about their experiences and what they had learned from them.
Ed had turned an experience in a haunted house as a child into a life's work, and Lorraine had joined him to use a talent that, as a child, had been taken seriously by no one.
And now they were in a loud and busy coffee shop in Litchfield, Connecticut, waiting for their orders.
Somewhere in the coffee shop, a telephone sent out its electronic chirp.
Lorraine scooted away from the table and stood.
Ed laughed and said, "Hey, hey, what're you doing?"
Lorraine stopped, her mouth dropped open and she pressed a hand to her chest. "Oh my goodness. I was getting up to answer the phone." She put a hand over her mouth and returned to the table.
Ed laughed a deep, resonant laugh, his whole body shaking as he shook his head. "Oh boy, Lorraine, that's rich, that's good."
She laughed, too, and said, "Well, the phone at home is ringing constantly, and it seems every time I turn around, I'm getting up to answer it."
"Yeah, yeah," he laughed, "but a coffee shop. You know what that tells me, Lorraine, you know what that says to me? We need a vacation. We need a vacation really bad, 'cause we've been workin' too hard."
"Well, we've just taken on another case."
"I have a feeling it won't last too long. I mean, it probably won't take much to get the church to sanction an exorcism for this one. What's going on there is pretty obvious. But as soon as this one's over, we take a little vacation. We need a break."
Months would pass before that case came to its close and a grueling, church-sanctioned exorcism was held, thus relieving the Macks of the demons that plagued them in their home.
But, of course Ed and Lorraine were unaware of the Snedekers and the things that had been taking place in their home.
The vacation Ed had said they needed so much would not come for some time.
19
The Darkness Closes In
Al and Carmen Snedeker were saddened by what Stephen had done to his cousin and by his hospitalization, but they assumed that, because he was gone, the atmosphere in the house would improve. It had been so tense and charged with hostility for so long that they were hoping for a relief, a return to some sort of normalcy. They assumed the younger children would be more relaxed without Stephen's stories of ghosts and apparitions, and Laura and Mary would sense that and, as a result, feel more relaxed also.
They were wrong.
During the following weeks, the small, strange things that had been occurring now and then in the house—the noises, the fleeting glimpses of something darting here and there around a room, the sudden changes in temperature and the inexplicable feelings of being watched, or of simple, heart-clutching dread— would begin to escalate, would grow in severity and frequency, until those strange things were no longer small at all.
In fact, before Stephen left the house, their troubles had hardly even begun.
Whatever presence lurked in the Snedekers' house wasted no time now in making itself known to the rest of the family.
The evening after Stephen left, Al was watching television and having a beer while Peter and Stephanie sat on the floor taking turns on Etch-A-Sketch. Michael was in his room doing homework and the girls, Laura and Mary, were in the kitchen cleaning up with Carmen.
Since the incident with Stephen, Carmen had been making an effort to pay special attention to Mary; she'd made sure Mary wasn't physically hurt, had apologized to the girl profusely and told her to speak up if she wanted to talk to someone about what had happened. Mary had told her, however, that she didn't want to stay there anymore. Carmen understood perfectly and called her other sister right there in Connecticut and asked if she'd mind keeping Mary for a while; she said it would be fine and she'd pick Mary up in the morning.
Everyone went on, doing whatever they were doing, the children giggling quietly on the living-room floor so they wouldn't disturb Dad as he watched an old black-and-white war movie, and Carmen and the girls laughed and talked in the kitchen as water ran in the sink and the dishes clacked together while being washed.
Al finished his beer a moment before the movie was interrupted with a set of commercials. He left his chair, went into the kitchen, tossed the empty bottle into the trash and opened the refrigerator to get another.
His hand stopped abruptly on its way to the refrigerator's second shelf as the entire house shook with a powerful, deafening bang!
Everyone fell silent and did not move, their bodies frozen in place.
It happened again. The windowpanes trembled. Bottles rattled and clanked inside the refrigerator.
It happened a third time and then...nothing.
Footsteps thumped rapidly up the stairs and Michael shouted, "Dad! Dad!" In his socks, he skidded to a halt on the kitchen floor.
Stephanie followed him, holding Peter's hand, their eyes wide.
"What was that, Dad?" Michael asked, his voice hoarse.
"I don't know, but I'm sure as hell gonna find out. An earthquake maybe?" he asked, turning to Carmen.
"I don't think so. It sounded like an explosion of some kind."
"Yeah, okay. I'm gonna look around." He started out of the room and turned to Carmen again, pointing at the ceiling with his thumb. "Are the Vanowens home?"
"No, they're out of town, remember? They were gonna be gone for three days. They'll be back tomorrow night."
"So there's nobody up there?"
"It didn't come from up there, Al. It sounded like it came from down here, right here in the house."
"Shit," he hissed as he left the room.
The others didn't move, they just stayed in place and exchanged fearful, nervous looks.
Al went through the entire house, including the basement. He looked out every window, he looked behind every door; he frantically searched each room for damage, even sniffed the air for the smell of smoke or gas or electricity. But he found nothing.
He returned to the kitchen, very puzzled, where everyone was still gathered, a bit more relaxed, but no less confused.
"Did you find anything?" Carmen asked nervously, quietly.
"No. No, I didn't find anything." Al actually felt ashamed to have to say that. The three pounding noises they'd heard were big, not sounds from the neighborhood but sounds from inside the house. The fact that he was unable to find anything meant it was out of his control and he knew that everyone was depending on him for an answer; he had none. Far too many things had been happening in the house lately over which he had no control.
"But it was right here," Michael said, "in the house."
The telephone rang.
"I'll get it," Carmen said. She went to the living room, dropped onto the sofa and answered the telephone. "Hello?"
"Carmen? It's Tanya."
Carmen leaned forward and brightened. "Did you hear it?"
"Hear what?"
"The sounds. Three of them. Big pounding sounds, almost like explosions. Did you hear them? Is that why you're—"
"No, I didn't hear anything. I'm calling because...well, I know this is gonna sound weird, but I just happened to look out the window and, um...did you know that there's a very strange-looking woman walking around in the room above you?"
Carmen's mouth dropped open for a moment. "What?"
"Really, I'm not kidding, I saw her. There's a woman up there and she's green and she's glowing. I saw her walking back and forth in front of the window. She looks, um...upset. Angry, maybe."
Every single strange and frightening thing that had happened over the past year flashed through Carmen's mind and tears came to her eyes. "Please, Tanya, please...tell me you're joking, tell me this is a joke."
"You think I would call to make a joke like this?" she asked, incredulous.
"No. No, you wouldn't. Hang on, please. Don't hang up." She put the receiver down and rushed into the kitchen. "Al, it's Tanya on the phone. She says there's someone walking around upstairs by the window."
He fro
wned. "What!"
"Urn, c'mere a second." She led him through the dining room into the hall and whispered, "She says it's a green glowing woman."
He rolled his eyes. "Carmen, would you please—"
"No, I'm serious. She's not joking. Al, think about it!" she hissed. "What's been happening in this house? We can't explain most of what goes on, can we?"
He thought about that a moment, then shook his head and said, "No. No, we can't, really." He reached out, squeezed her hand briefly, and said, "I'll go outside and look up there, see if I can see her. Because, you know, their door is locked and—"
"Yeah, I know. Go ahead. Get out there."
Al went outside and Carmen went back to the telephone.
"Tanya? Al is going outside now to look."
"No, she's gone. I'm at the window right now and I've been watching. She's gone. I don't see her."
"You're kidding. She's gone? Really?"
"Yeah, I don't see her. She hasn't been by the window for a while now."
Carmen sighed. "Okay. I'm gonna go now, Tanya. I'm gonna go out with Al and tell him."
"Wait a second, Carmen. Remember that magazine I showed you? You took it home. It had those people in it, the Warrens, Ed and Lorraine Warren? I really think you should call them. Really. You've got something really weird going on over there and I think you need them."
"Yeah, well...I might think about it. Thanks for calling."
Carmen hung up and hurried outside to join Al. He was standing away from the side of the house, near Tanya's, looking up.
"Tanya said she was gone," Carmen said as she approached him.
"What?"
"She said the woman was gone. She hadn't seen her in the last few minutes."
"Well then she was probably seeing things," he said angrily.
"Al, you know that's not true. Something really weird is going on in our house."
