The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren (20 page)

“When the process of internal oppression first begins the problem is almost impossible to recognize because the shift occurs slowly, one step at a time. Essentially, the person is being groomed or ‘prepped’ for the day when possession can take place. On December 31, 1977, Patricia made a major decision: to resign her job and buy the house. Both she and Melinda were independent sorts and said they wanted to ‘get back to nature and raise animals.’ In reality of course, this was the Law of Attraction at work.

“By the time she resigned,” continues Lorraine, “Patricia had been through all the paperwork needed to buy the farmhouse. But no bank on either coast was willing to give a large mortgage to two unmarried women. Buying the house would require them to put up a substantial down payment, and they didn’t have the cash. No problem, though! While visiting Los Angeles, Melinda got herself on a television game show, and on her birthday, won
ten times
the amount needed for the down payment. In fact, her winnings virtually paid for the house. Yet when they went back to the bank, the lending officers for some reason wanted
three
signatures on the mortgage. Because of this, Patricia’s sister Susan was brought in and co-signed the mortgage with the other two women. Traditionally, when a pact is signed, the demonic often arranges for three people—three human wills—to participate in the commitment, again as an insult to the Trinity. To Susan’s misfortune, her fate was now formally tied in with that of the other two women.

“The night the mortgage was signed, heavy-booted footsteps entered Patricia and Melinda’s apartment in New Mexico. What sounded like an intruder pounded on the doors to the women’s respective bedrooms. Cut off from the living room phone, both women spent a night of dread terror, each huddled alone in fear. What they didn’t know at the time was that this was the classic entrance of the demonic. The bill for the prosperity ritual had now come due.

“With the mortgage secured, Patricia and Melinda moved East to the farm at the end of January 1978. As soon as they took up residence in the house, they had a terrible feeling of being watched. The feeling was so intolerable that they both often slept at a nearby motel, while fixing up the inside of the house during the day. They also had two dogs, Corgis, that’d always gotten along well before. But just as soon as these two dogs were brought onto the property, they began attacking one another. The women had to keep them separated lest they tear each other apart.

“Around the same time, Patricia and Melinda also started to argue and fight with each other over petty, inconsequential things. Rather than work, they’d argue for days on end over who would paint a window and who would paint a door. These women, you see, were unknowingly oppressed into this behavior, as were their dogs. In fact, oppression was all set, waiting for the group to arrive.

“Eventually—under oppression—the women decided it was their house and they were going to sleep in it and not patronize the expensive local motel. At that point, the feeling of being watched turned sour, into an atmosphere of evil in the home. Believing their feelings were only psychological, the women did their best to play down these emotions, but then strange things started to happen. At night, from outside the house, they heard ominous chantings that turned their blood cold. During the day, ammonia and cleaning agents disappeared; in their place would be drops of blood. Inside the house, money and personal items also vanished and were never found again. One afternoon, there were knocks at the back door. When they answered it, no one was there. Instead, what the women found were a series of
left
footprints—a sign of the demonic—in hip-deep snow leading to the barn. The prints were spaced three feet apart, yet they’d penetrated only a half-inch into the soft powder.

“A few months after they purchased the house, Patricia’s sister Susan came to help with the fix-up job. Susan was a sensitive woman in her twenties. When she arrived at the farmhouse this time, the place overwhelmed her with morbid terror, and she immediately flew back to her home.. Yet, she was still affected by the oppressing spirits, because a few weeks later, out of nowhere, Susan brutally stabbed herself with a butcher knife. The doctor who worked on the young woman said her wounds—and there were three stab wounds—should have been mortal, and he didn’t understand why she hadn’t died.

“For leaving the farmhouse, Melinda, too, received a similar penalty. No more than a month after they moved East, Melinda became so totally repelled by the evil in the house, that she also returned to Ohio. But Melinda was there no more than a few days when she was forcibly and violently raped by an unknown intruder. At that point, she succumbed. Believing mental terror preferable to gross physical violence, she returned to the New England farmhouse.

“By the spring of 1978, after experiencing a catalog of horrors for months, these poor women had now fully come under oppression. Both developed wrinkles on their faces, their brown hair turned to gray, and, physically their features aged twice their years. ‘I couldn’t recognize myself in the mirror,’ Patricia told me. ‘The look in our eyes was one of emptiness and death.’

“Now and then, Melinda would be involuntarily overwhelmed by an evil personality, especially when Patricia wanted to make any radical change to the house. The worst episode came when Patricia rented a chainsaw and was about to cut down the pine trees in front of the house that kept the interior dark.

‘Melinda came running out of the house like she was on fire,’ Patricia said to me. ‘She had the most incredibly wicked face—the face of
someone else!
She threatened to kill me if I put so much as a nick in one pine tree!’ Patricia now understood there was something wrong—
metaphysically
wrong—and saw the need to get help. After having an incredible time getting anyone to believe her, someone finally gave Patricia our name and she called on us.

“I couldn’t tell them at the time,” Lorraine goes on, “but for these women, death was really just around the corner. That farmhouse was a killing place. When Ed and I drove down the access road to the property, I saw—through second sight—people in robes performing some kind of profane ritual in the meadow by the house. There was chanting, and the whole show was going on at night; they were using a human being as an altar—or victim. When we got into the house, it was apparent to me that whoever lived there before had engaged in the slaughter and mutilation of animals. I could feel the sorrow of many hundreds of animals, large and small, that had been killed there. And in the house, the atmosphere, the very air you breathed was thick with evil and perversity. The place repelled me too, and it was evident that only through demoniacal oppression could anyone ever live in such a hellish domain.

“I think what we’ve said makes it quite clear that an invisible, negative intelligence was guiding events here. But I’d like to make the point that in this case, in this house, it wasn’t just invisible. While Ed was interviewing the women, I decided to walk through the dwelling. One of their Corgis came with me. The place was like most of these infested homes—uncomfortable and threatening, with an overlay of sadness. Suddenly, the dog bolted and ran down the hallway, skidding to a stop at the closet door, where it began growling viciously. I opened the door. The closet smelled like a cesspool. The dog lurched at something in the closet and then a few seconds later, to my astonishment, a totally black figure—in the crude form of a man, but having no features—ran right past me out of the closet and scurried up the stairs, with the Corgi in hot pursuit. In all my days, I have never seen the demonic take on such an overtly humanoid form.

“In this case,” Lorraine concludes, “the thrust of oppression strategy by the demonic was subtle—more psychological than physical. Either way, though, the strategy of the demonic remains the same: to break down the will of the human being in order to possess the body, or to oppress the individual to commit some negative act, preferably one involving bloodletting and death. And here, it was nearly successful. Both women required a form of exorcism to be performed on them in order to be freed from the influence and physical distortions brought about by the inhuman entities that inhabited that place. In the end, Patricia and Melinda sold the farm for what they paid for it, and returned to New Mexico where they both live sadder but wiser today. Although Ed and I could go on and on with all the densely knit factors that make up this individual case, I think it’s quite apparent there’s more than coincidence involved in a case such as this. Lurking in the background is a negative intelligence
directing
the activity.”

“By the time the phenomena move from the infestation to the oppression stage,” Ed agrees, “the demonic spirit is really no longer able to veil its presence. Instead, out of pride in its own effectiveness, it begins leaving calling cards—some literal, some symbolical.

“Often the demonic spirit likes to make its presence known in writing. It particularly likes to write on walls and mirrors, even going so far as to prefer lipstick or crayon as a writing implement. The demonic spirit tends to write backwards, from right to left, so the script has to be read in a mirror. The words and phrases appear as though someone has written on the walls with the ‘wrong’ hand. As far as
what
they say, about all these spirits tend to write are vulgarities, smut, and blasphemies, usually in the language spoken by the person or family being oppressed. Other languages may be mixed in, though the mixing of languages more often occurs when the spirit speaks during possession. In later stages of oppression, or in situations where devils are at hand, more sophisticated languages may be used.”

Ed and Lorraine speak almost exclusively about demons. If there are devils—a separate hierarchy of spirits, why not speak about them too?

“Although much has been written about devils by laymen,” Ed claims, “my knowledge comes either from my own experience or from the study of authentic religious documents. Based on my work, what is
properly
known about devils is minimal compared to what’s known about the demonic spirit It’s the demonic we see carrying out all this incredible phenomena. True, during an exorcism a demonic spirit will carry on and brag that it is this or that devil, but the spirit is usually lying. In the end, the distinction between demons and devils is like labor and management: one works, the other supervises. Demonic spirits of a higher order bring about internal oppression, because lesser, bestial spirits lack the wisdom and ability to follow through with possession. The lesser entities are content to bring about external havoc to break down the will through fright, while higher entities break down the will by diminishing internal psychological resistance. Theologically, you see, devils were a higher order of angel before the Fall, and have greater knowledge and power than the spirits below them. The writings of a devil tend to be neat and orderly, for example, written backwards from right to left, in a rather attractive script Moreover, these more knowledgeable entities often rely on classical languages—mostly Latin, though sometimes Greek or ancient Hebrew. As opposed to demonic spirits, devils seem inclined to write only on paper or parchment and only when a pact with Satan is involved. More often than not, in the cases I work with, the scribblings and scrawlings and blasphemies are done by demonic spirits.”

When the demonic does not literally sign its name to its loathsome handiwork, then the Warrens must look for more symbolic, intellectual traces of its presence.

“For one thing,” says Lorraine, “this is a negative spirit, so it’s something that’s literally ‘going the other way.’ The demonic tends to work in direct opposition to principles of the positive world. When the spirit moves, it tends to go right to left, counterclockwise, or in circles. When the spirit approaches you, it typically moves from the left or from behind. Hate, filth, and death invigorate the demonic; goodness, light, and prayer immobilize it. The spirit comes in black, accentuates evil, and seeks to destroy rather than enhance. The residue it leaves behind is foul and offensive. Bloodletting and physical injury are part and parcel of the phenomenon. It befriends the mean and the ignorant; it attacks the innocent, the unwary, and the pious. It is a sneak, it is deceptive, and it comes like a thief in the night. It veils its presence through lies, and preserves its anonymity through duplicity and invisibility. As religious writers have said, ‘the spirit has no positive nature; its being is based on the
lack
of something that is good.’ ”

The spirit’s symbolic workings are no less an indication of its presence. Customarily, the demonic will choose a significant day or time of year to launch its siege. The Warrens have found that favored occasions include Christmas, Easter, Good Friday, the beginning of Lent, the first night of Passover, the month of November (the astrological period of Scorpio), Sundays, Fridays, and individuals’ birthdays.

“The phase of the moon may also figure into the formula,” Ed notes. “A new moon is the preferred phase, because there is a total absence of natural light—plus a new moon has long been a symbol of death. Events may often peak or begin on a full moon, though. This occurs because, by nature’s clock, what is started on a new moon comes to a head on a full moon. But let me stress, when dealing with spirit phenomena, this symbolism can be taken too far. Again, only in retrospect, upon analysis, will a particular number, date, or time of year reveal itself as being part of the overall strategy of an oppressing spirit

“When all the factors are assembled,” Ed continues, “after we interview the principals, and witness the activity ourselves, it will become apparent that there is an order to the pandemonium. If you had to reconstruct a typical case of demonic oppression, you’d have something like a thousand separate factors. Therefore, the case has to be looked at in totality so the interplay of all factors—the history, the phenomena, the signs, symbols, strategy, and synchronicity—can be viewed as working in unison. When viewed in totality, a progression of events will become apparent, with each individual bit playing its own part. You’ll notice the origin of the problem, preliminary setups, infestation strategy, oppression strategy, symbolic events, and so forth. There’ll be signs of deliberateness—events occurring at precise times of the day, or only on certain days of the week. Although we couldn’t possibly repeat all the details in
The Amityville Horror,
for example, let’s look at some of the similarities between what the Lutzes reported and what we’ve experienced in our own investigations.