The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren (14 page)

At the front door, Ed made a final comment: “By the way, the spirit in this home is dormant,” he warned, “but it hasn’t vanished.”

With that, Lorraine’s eyeglasses suddenly rose from her hand in full view of everyone, looped once in the air, and then smashed to the floor, breaking the left lens. The Fosters watched in amazement, though they barely understood what happened in their home. They were simply victims who had seen the supernatural as a plaything, when in reality, they had been its toy.

VI
Of Unworldly Origin

Of all the common and familiar objects of conversation that are entered upon in company, of things remote from nature and cut off from the senses, there is none so ready to hand, none so unusual, as that of spirits; and whether what is said of them is true. It is a topic people most readily discuss and on which they linger the longest because of the abundance of examples, the subject being fine and pleasing, and the discussion being the least tedious that can be found,

Pierre Le Loyer, 1586

Some of the first books ever printed in the English language were on the subject of spirits and demonology. Spirits were no less a fact of life in the sixteenth century than they are today: the same ruin and terror went on, the same violent scenario applied.

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
Anti
christ
.

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:

“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?
and 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.