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.
“First,” says Ed, “take the background to the case, before the Lutz family moved in. A normal family of seven, the DeFeos moved into that home in the early 1960s.
Around three o’clock in the morning on November 13, 1974—the worst time of day on probably the most troublesome day of the year—the son murdered the six members of his family, including his father, with a high-powered rifle. Not one of the neighbors heard the shots. Thirteen months after the murders occurred, George and Kathleen Lutz moved into the home during the Christmas season—often an active period for the demonic. Our knowledge of what happened next is necessarily secondhand—we weren’t there with the Lutzes. But according to what the Lutzes told Jay Anson, George, who was usually clean, welldressed, and a bit of a workaholic, turned lazy and sloppy. He sat by the fireplace throughout almost the entire episode. He could never get warm, although the thermostat in the house was always in the eighties. In cases we’ve investigated, when a spirit draws thermal energy, it also removes all the heat from the rooms as well. This is what we call the psychic cold. You can wrap yourself up in a dozen blankets, but it won’t do any good, because your body heat is also being robbed.
“Of course,” says Ed, “a spirit draws this energy for a reason: to use it against the people in the home. Given that this is a negative entity, it thinks negatively, so these forces are used for brutal, negative purposes.
“Kathy, meanwhile, told us she was ‘unlike herself,’ and became cranky, argumentative, and impatient with her children. According to The Amityville Horror, she had a number of dreams that seemed to correlate with certain facts in the DeFeo murder case. The children also became quarrelsome, and the family dog acted peculiar as soon as the family moved in.
“What happened next?” Ed asks rhetorically. “Only those who were there can say for sure. But George and Kathy said that hundreds of flies appeared in the upstairs bedroom. The toilet fluids turned black. A ceramic lion teleported itself around the house. Furniture moved on its own accord. One of the children’s hands was squashed flat, yet he suffered no physical damage afterwards. And, of course, in the middle of the night, George heard the sound of a marching band.
“Ironically, while the Lutzes were living in the house, we’d delivered lectures to two college audiences detailing the kind of phenomena victims encounter in demoniacally infested environments—including the sound of marching bands playing Sousa in the middle of the night!
“Activity bearing the stamp of demoniacal powers is meant to frighten. In addition, the Lutz family claimed they also experienced psychic cold, stiflingly hot temperatures, and the repulsive smell of excrement—a conventional sign of a demonic presence. The Lutzes were also subject to obstructions while using the telephone; and Kathy Lutz’s brother discovered $1,500—money he intended to use for wedding expenses—missing from his pocket.”
Did that money really disappear?
“I can’t say,” says Ed. “But money often disappears in homes infested by malevolent spirits. Loss of a paycheck or large sums of money will disturb an individual. It’s just one of many ways negative spirits try to break a person or family down. But, I think it’s unlikely that such ‘lost’ money just disappears into thin air. Instead, between you, me, and the lamp post, I’d say there�
�s roughly a hundred percent chance that the money gets teleported to a sorcerer or someone else involved in the black arts. I say this because I know sorcerers who have never worked a day in their life, yet they’re financially well-off. For them, everything falls into place. Life is easy; good things always come their way. They have no troubles at all. Money finds them. Why? Because they’ve made a metaphysical arrangement and work in league with the demonic.
“Though that may sound harmless, there’s a hitch. These sorcerers or witches are usually in debt to the demonic to the tune of their soul; indebtedness to the devil in a future life; or perhaps the sacrifice of someone close to them, like a child. For these people, it’s your basic Faust trip. Life is short, and they don’t respect it. They sell their soul for a penny when it’s worth a million later on. So, yes, when money disappears in an infested house, I’d be willing to bet it reappears in the wallet of a sorcerer!
“All these factors set the Lutzes’ emotions on edge and put them in a position where they began to doubt their own sanity,” Ed resumes. “Nevertheless, these disturbances, plus a lot more I’ve left out, like a crucifix being symbolically turned upside down, resemble what we have seen in external oppression phenomena. Going further, though, the Lutzes said a demon form burned itself into the back of the fireplace. Typically, these spirits manifest themselves in fire or in fireplaces. There was also a hooded monstrosity that showed itself on the stairs. These spirits are often seen in monks’ robes. And, of course, the youngest child, Missy, talked about a pig that called itself Jodie, and told the child that it was an angel!”
There seems to be some question about Jodie the pig. Could it have been a real, physical entity?
“I never saw the entity myself,” Ed replies. “However, it isn’t necessary for a spirit to be physical. Spirits can also project themselves through a process we call telepathic hypnosis. That mouthful of syllables simply means the spirit can project its image in any form it chooses, through a process one might call three-dimensional ESP. The spirit merely thinks of how it wants to display itself, and that’s how it will look. Using this method—and both human and inhuman spirits can do this—the entity bypasses the physical eye and projects the desired image directly to the ‘mind’s eye,’ or third eye as it’s called in Eastern religions. The result of this telepathic transfer of vibrations from one intelligence to another may have all the trappings of a physical being. In reality, however, the spirit may never have physically manifested at all One way or the other, though, something has to be there to be perceived.”
The Amityville case took place during the Christmas season. A no less horrendous case of true demoniacal phenomena occurred during the Easter season of 1974 and went on for eight-and-a-half weeks before it was finally brought to a stop by a church-sanctioned exorcism. Except for the Warrens, the exorcist, and the principals involved, few people until now know that a supernatural battle took place in the home of this otherwise normal American family.
Behold the Beckfords.
IX
A Family Under Attack
On March 3, 1974, Mr. Peter Beckford, age fifty, made a note on the kitchen calendar: his daughter Vicky’s car had just gotten a flat tire on a trip to the drugstore. Pouring himself another Sunday morning cup of coffee, Pete Beckford could hardly have imagined that this seemingly ordinary event was the beginning of an all-out siege by violent, inhuman spirits that would begin with acts of vandalism, and end in the near-total destruction of his small ranch house.
Hell would break loose in the Beckford household because the night before, nineteen-year-old Vicky Beckford had crossed the line: she invited a demonic spirit to manifest. Though the deceived girl gave this permission unwittingly, she nevertheless committed a supernatural transgression of the highest order. What resulted was perhaps the worst case of diabolical attack the Warrens have ever experienced.
“The actual beginning of the case would have to be dated a year earlier, though,” Ed states. “That’s when Vicky began using the Ouija board.” In this day and age, her motive for seeking spirit communication was somewhat understandable. Bored and lonely, she was seeking excitement. Her family was strict and religious and kept a tight rein both on her and her fifteen-year-old brother, Eric. A brooding adolescent, Vicky had few friends and withdrew into herself. One night, in futility, she decided to try to find a friend on the Ouija board. After everyone had gone to bed, she placed the “magic talking board” on the floor, put her fingers on the planchette, and began asking questions.
“Is anyone there? My name is Vicky Louise Beckford. Is there a spirit who can hear me?” Suddenly the planchette whizzed up to YES. To Vicky’s eventual misfortune, she now had a disembodied acquaintance.
From then on, Vicky contacted the same spirit every night. She looked forward to the nightly communication with her patronizing ethereal “friend” and would spend hours conversing on the board with it. And no wonder, the spirit played on her vanities, always making a point of complimenting the girl: YOU LOOKED BEAUTIFUL IN THE BROWN DRESS TODAY, VICKY. YOU’RE SO PRETTY COMPARED TO THOSE OTHER GIRLS. TOMORROW WEAR YOUR HAIR UP. IT LOOKS GOOD THAT WAY. Night after night, the spirit on the board accented melodramatic issues that would lead to emotional excesses later on. YOU MAKE ME SO HAPPY, HONEY, the board would perversely tell the lonely teenager. I’D LOVE TO MARRY YOU, IF I COULD.
YOU’RE SO LUCKY TO BE ALIVE, was another ploy. TELL ME WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE ALIVE TODAY, it implored. In response, Vicky Beckford would sympathetically recite the events of her day. Following that, she’d then ask the thing questions. The spirit responded with stories about its death, and how lonely it had been before “meeting” her. Vicky believed every word. Cunningly, the spirit strung the girl out emotionally every night. Then it would abruptly stop communicating and say teasingly, SEE YOU TOMORROW.
Over the course of many months, the entity led Vicky to believe it was the spirit of a teenage boy, a sort of “teen angel,” who’d died when she herself was just a little girl. Gullible and unsuspecting, Vicky replied by telling “him” all about herself and her feelings. In turn, the spirit on the board fed her similar “intimacies.” Yet, on the one occasion she asked the spirit to tell her its name, the oppressing entity backed off, giving the lame excuse that it “must never reveal its name to a living person, or else be forced to return to the mists.”
As time went by, Vicky nevertheless became infatuated with the spirit on the Ouija board, which she came to view as a boyfriend. To acknowledge her affection, the spirit gave Vicky information about insignificant future events. Later, she would witness incidents around town that the spirit told her would occur. Overall, the spirit on the Ouija board became extremely credible to Vicky Beckford.
After a year of trading intimacies on the board, Vicky became emotionally dependent on the spirit. During the last week of February 1974 Vicky went a step further. “Can you reveal my future?” she asked.
The spirit was only too happy to comply. In a long, involved session, it laid out a scenario of Vicky’s life for the next six years, providing specific details, right down to the date of birth of her first child, and the fact that she would have a total of three children by 1978 (all information that would eventually prove correct!).
Vicky’s overwhelming involvement with an unknown spirit soon made her even more curious and impatient. She craved to see her invisible boyfriend. Late Saturday night, March 2, she pleaded for him to manifest. Just once, she told the spirit, she wanted to see what he looked like.
The next day, Sunday morning, Pete Beckford went out and tried to start his car. It wouldn’t turn over. Lifting up the hood, he found the sparkplug wires pulled out, the rubber hoses unfastened, and the fan belt cut. Not much later, Vicky tried to start her car too. It wouldn’t start either, and finally had to be towed away to a local garage. The next day, mechanics surmised that internal engine parts had been disassembled.
That week, other incidents of apparent vandalism occurred around the
Beckford house. The back doorbell was torn out of its housing. Foundation shrubs were yanked out of the ground—roots and all. On the roof, a six-foot cast-iron pipe, housing electrical wires, was unaccountably bent at a ninety-degree angle.
On Friday, March 8, Pete Beckford marked “1 flat” on the kitchen calendar. No sooner did Vicky get her car back from the shop than one of her other tires lost air. The next day, Saturday, her father made the same entry on the calendar; although this time, it seemed the tire had been cut with a knife.
In the meantime, inexplicably, Vicky could no longer raise her invisible boyfriend on the Ouija board. Night after night, she tried to communicate, but the planchette would simply slide over to GOODBYE. She had no idea that her ethereal beau actually manifested: in the form of a supernatural vandal.
By the second week of March, material damage to the house and cars had become so troublesome that Pete Beckford complained to the police. When the law arrived, Pete pointed out the destruction done to garden plants and shrubs, the exterior of the house, and the apparent intrusion into a locked garage to puncture tires and tear engines apart. Once he’d even heard someone pound on the house from outside! Before leaving, the policeman assured Pete—a respectable member of the community—that they’d keep an eye on the property during night patrols.
Later that second week, however, came the first indication that the damage had nothing to do with prankish neighborhood kids. After work, Pete and his wife, Sharon, were sitting in the kitchen questioning Eric about his friends. Were these incidents of vandalism the outgrowth of some sort of high-school feud? Suddenly, all three heard something smash against a wall somewhere inside the house. Cautiously moving to investigate, they found a gaping eighteen-inch hole in the plasterboard wall in Eric’s room.
Just as upsetting was the fact that the jagged edges of the plasterboard were pointing inward. The blow had been delivered from inside the house! For the Beckfords, the strange vandalism suddenly took on a sobering new dimension.
The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren Page 16