At a small, modest house in Litchfield, Connecticut, around the time Al and Carmen Snedeker were leaving their oldest son at Spring Haven Psychiatric Hospital, a forty-two-year-old woman named Florence Mack was floating several inches above the chair in which she'd been firmly positioned just a few moments before. Her body, still in a sitting position, was tense and her face pale with horror as she stared at the others around her.
Those people included her forty-eight-year-old husband, Dale, and their twenty-one-year-old daughter, Sophie. With them were a tall, rather regal-looking woman standing beside a burly, barrel-chested man, both in their early sixties: Lorraine and Ed Warren.
For a moment, all four of them watched in shock and horror, then Ed stepped forward, waved to Dale, and said, "Get her away from there." As Dale stepped toward his wife to pull her away from the chair, Ed raised his right hand and, in a booming voice that echoed off the walls of the house like the strike of a hammer, he barked, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave these people and go back to the place from which you've come!"
A framed picture on the wall dropped to the floor.
Two rows of porcelain bric-a-brac on a small shelf were swept through the air by an invisible hand and thrown against the next wall, the pieces shattering over the floor and a small dining table.
Ross Mack embraced his wife and held her close as he led her across the room.
An oak hutch with a glass front and shelves of china inside shook as if the earth were moving beneath it.
The four chairs around the dining table abruptly slid away from it simultaneously as the pane of a nearby window rattled wildly.
Ed turned, watching each event as it happened. Lorraine held a small cassette recorder in her right hand; it was recording the sounds of everything that happened around them.
As the chaos continued, Ed raised his right hand once again and repeated in the same booming voice, but even louder and more firmly this time, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave these people and go back to the place from which you've come!"
The rattling and shaking continued for a few seconds, then—
The house fell silent.
Everyone remained frozen in place for a moment, then Ed turned, gave the Macks a cautious but comforting smile, and said, "I think it's stopped."
"It's only stopped for now," Mr. Mack said wearily, his arm still firmly encircling his wife's shoulders. "Uh, Mr. and Mrs. Warren, when we talked to you on the phone, this is exactly what we were talking about. It's been happening all the time."
Ed turned to Lorraine and asked, "Did you pick up anything?"
She placed a hand on her chest and sighed heavily. "This is definitely an evil spirit, Ed. It's not a poltergeist, like we first thought when we heard their story. It's an evil spirit and its intentions are malignant and strong."
He nodded toward the recorder. "You getting this?"
She nodded. "It's still on."
Ed moved toward the Macks, smiling at their daughter, who was so horrified by what she'd seen that she still stood—beside her parents now and away from the area of activity—with her back stiff and both hands pressed over her mouth, eyes wide.
"I'd like to ask you a few questions," he said quietly. "Why don't we go into the living room, sit down and try to relax?" Lorraine followed them as they went into the next room and everyone took a seat. She sat beside Ed on the sofa and placed the recorder on the coffee table.
"I think the first thing we need to know is this," Ed said, clasping his big hands together. "Does most of the activity surround you, Mrs. Mack?"
She opened her mouth, but couldn't speak. She simply nodded her head.
Her husband said, "Yes, definitely. Always, in fact. It always involves her, somehow. She's never been hurt." They were sitting together in a loveseat and he placed a hand on her knee gently, looked at her, and asked, "Have you? I mean, not that I've ever known."
She shook her head and finally spoke in a hoarse voice. "No. Never. Just...terrified. It terrifies me."
"Of course it does," Ed said. "It should. But if it hasn't hurt you, we're ahead of the game. I just wanted to know if it pays more attention to you than anyone else. Um...tell me, does anyone in your family dabble in the occult? Any Ouija boards, tarot cards, demonology, that sort of thing?"
Mrs. Mack shook her head firmly. "Never. Not in all our years."
Sophie was shaking her head too and Ed turned to her questioningly. "No. I don't live here anymore but, I mean, I'm an only child, so I should know. I've never played with any of that stuff and, as far as I know, neither have my parents. I mean, why would they? We've always been a Christian family and we just don't believe in getting involved in that sort of thing."
"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 lectured 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.