The Encyclopedia Of Demons And Demonology

W
Warren, Ed (1926–2006) and Lorraine (1927– )
American DEMONOLOGISTS and ghost investigators. Ed
and Lorraine Warren, husband and wife, were involved
in thousands of cases of spirit identification, hauntings,
and demonic INFESTATION, OPPRESSION, and POSSESSION of
both people and property. They acted as consultants on
some of America’s most famous paranormal cases, such
as the SMURL HAUNTING in West Pittston, Pennsylvania,
in the 1980s, and the AMITYVILLE HAUNTING of the Lutz
family on Long Island, in the 1970s. During his lifetime,
Ed Warren achieved the rare distinction of being a layperson
recognized as a demonologist by the Catholic
Church.
Background
Both Ed and Lorraine were born in Bridgeport, Connecticut,
but did not meet until they were teenagers. Ed was
born on September 7, 1926; his father was a state trooper
and a devout Catholic and enrolled Ed in parochial school.
The Warren family lived in a big old house rented out by
an unmarried landlady who did not approve of dogs or
children, always throwing things at them in annoyance.
Ed was five when the landlady passed away, and he saw
his first apparition when she materialized in his bedroom
closet a few days later, as sour as she had been in life. His
father always told Ed that there must be a logical explanation
for the paranormal behavior his son experienced, but
the elder Warren never produced one. Young Ed would
choose to stay outside in freezing or rainy weather rather
than be in the house alone. One of Ed’s supernatural visitors
was a nun, his father’s sister. Ed had expressed a
desire to become a priest, but the nun told him that he
would not; rather, he would consult priests and would do
more work than 100 of them.
When Ed was 12, his family moved out of their
haunted home. Although he had come to terms with the
spirits there, his exposure to the paranormal just fueled
his desire for more investigation and confrontation.
Three blocks away, Lorraine Rita Moran was born on
January 31, 1927, to a fairly affluent Irish family. She attended
Laurelton Hall, a Catholic girls’ school in nearby
Milford, and it was while at school that young Lorraine,
age 12, discovered that her gift of clairvoyance was not
shared by everyone. On Arbor Day that year, the nuns
had organized a tree planting, and as soon as the sapling
was set in the ground, Lorraine began staring at the sky,
seeing the tree in its full-grown splendor. Once she told
a nun that her “lights,” or aura, were brighter than the
lights around the mother superior. The nuns considered
her psychic ability to be sinful and packed her off to a
weekend retreat of prayer and silence.
At age 16, Ed met Lorraine while working as an usher
at the Colonial Theater in Bridgeport, on June 23, 1943.
She knew immediately that they would spend the rest of
their lives together. He was the only boy she ever dated.
On his 17th birthday on September 7, 1943, Ed enlisted in
the U.S. Navy, and he served with the armed navy guard
aboard a merchant marine vessel. He and Lorraine married
263