The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren

by Brittle, Gerald

  On Thursday, April 18, when the Warrens returned, Father Daniel was ashen and drawn. After four days and nights with the Beckfords, he had to get away from the intense demonic turmoil. That afternoon he returned to his rectory to recompose himself for a few days. He would also report to Father McKeegan that an exorcism might have to be performed in the house.

  Meanwhile, Ed and Lorraine stayed the night with the Beckfords to verify the phenomena for themselves, as well as try and discern the precise nature of the spirit presence. Out of fear, Eric and Vicky settled down on the floor of their parents’ bedroom. Sleeping in their clothes like everyone else, Ed and Lorraine would rest in the twin beds in Eric’s bedroom, across the hall.

  When the Warrens’ lights were turned off that Thursday night, the phenomena rose up in full strength, beginning with gruntings and other bestial noises, followed by the sort of piercing, bloodcurdling screams one associates with a horror movie. Added to that were ripping and tearing sounds, which then changed into the noise of boards being wrenched off the walls. Soon the familiar pounding started up. This upgraded into what seemed like the blows of a gigantic fist pounding on the house. The force of the blows made the whole building shake. Ed worried whether the structural integrity of the home could withstand much more abuse.

  Over the better part of an hour, the phenomena grew in power and intensity, with all the mad sounds going on at once. Suddenly, terrified yells erupted from Pete and Sharon’s bedroom. When Ed reached them, the hysterical family claimed that some sort of ultra-black figure had manifested and begun to move in the room.

  Disgusted with the abuse being heaped on the family, Ed decided to go ahead and challenge whatever was in the house to reveal its identity. Sending Eric into the bedroom to stay with Lorraine, he had Vicky and her parents sit on the bed.

  Then, he traced a large cross in the air with his right hand. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I demand that you reveal your identity. In the name of Jesus Christ, are you a demonic spirit?”

  With that, the double bed with the three Beckfords on it rose eerily into the air and remained suspended, some two feet off the floor. Suddenly the dresser careened across the room as though on rollers. Ed managed to step out of the way just before it smashed into the wall, whereupon the double bed crashed to the floor.

  At the same time, Eric lay quietly sobbing on the other twin bed in his own bedroom. When Lorraine looked over to comfort the young teenager, to her astonishment, Eric was levitating some two feet above the bed! A second later, she watched as the boy was propelled with tremendous force against the far wall, five feet away. The boy then fell to the floor in a crumpled heap,

  Lorraine leaped off the bed and switched on the light as the others entered the bedroom. Dazed and trembling, Eric had suffered no broken bones, but his face and chest were bruised and swollen.

  The sign Ed asked for had been given. The demonic was indeed at work! This was made even clearer the next morning, after the sun came up, when Lorraine looked outside the bedroom window. Upside down, stuck in an unmelted pile of snow, was the foot-long walnut crucifix that had been a fixture in Pete and Sharon’s bedroom from the day they were married.

  On Friday, April 19, as Ed and Lorraine continued their stay with the Beckfords, the phenomena became more and more a display of preternatural power. Obscenities and blasphemies showed up on the ceiling of the parents’ bedroom, written in indelible red ink. More astounding still, as everyone watched, the wallpaper began to peel off the walls, one sheet at a time, revealing foul language and Diasphemies, again written in blood-red ink, on the wall underneath! Pictures not only moved on their own now, they began to smolder and break into flames. Doilies and towels and scarves would suddenly ignite, and then, flaming, hurl themselves at someone in the room.

  The fierce activity continued into the weekend. The Warrens canceled all commitments so they could stay with the Beckfords until Father Daniel ’s return on Sunday. Meanwhile, the rampage continued unabated. In the downstairs rec room, heavy recliners floated up into the air, drifted to the middle of the room, then piled atop one another in ostensibly sexual postures. Eventually, the rest of the furniture floated to the same area, then dropped haphazardly to the floor. Upstairs, the wallpaper continued to peel itself down, exposing the hateful sentiments of the demonic. And throughout it all, fires started spontaneously, requiring everyone to be on guard to prevent a sudden conflagration.

  By Sunday, when Father Daniel returned, it was apparent to Ed and Lorraine the fury could be stopped only by exorcism. Ordinarily, a priest does not need permission to exorcise a house. However, The Exorcist had just been released as a movie, and the Church was extremely sensitive to criticism at the time. Therefore, the priest’s instructions from Father McKeegan were explicit: be able to support your request for exorcism with documented evidence of supernatural activity!

  The Warrens had anticipated this paperwork complication, and were already collecting the necessary evidence by the time the priest arrived. The bulk of the work would still have to be done by Father Daniel, though. The Warrens, unable to postpone other important commitments to people involved in other cases, had to leave that night for upstate New York. Therefore, the priest would again have to remain in the home—to interview the family and list all incidents of phenomena that had occurred, while keeping a record of the ongoing activity now taking place with even more force and violence.

  On Monday and Tuesday, April 22 and 23, Father Daniel set about documenting the activity. Assembling a personality profile of each member of the family, the priest came to see the human cost of a diabolical siege. Perhaps the worst affected was Pete Beckford. Right from the very beginning, every sound, every movement, had filled him with fear that rose up from the soul itself, He could not, moreover, bear the thought that his home was now apparently the abode of the devil. How inconceivable, how unwanted it all was! Tired, humiliated, and emotionally spent, Pete Beckford was also physically ill with a painful ulcer for which he took expensive medicine. Even though he kept the pills hidden, the medication was found dumped in the toilet every morning, and he could no longer afford the luxury of renewing the prescription. He had not been able to work in over a month, and the ongoing expense of damages and repairmen was now eating into his meager savings.

  “Internal oppression can be seen as a building process,” Ed explains. “When it starts out, it’s basically a stimulus-response situation. The spirit stimulates a particular emotion—say, depression. If the person responds to the impulse, then the spirit stimulates it again and again. If the person keeps on responding, then eventually that emotion will be accented so often and so intensely until one day there’s either a breakdown or a catastrophe. Many times, though, the individual won’t even know he’s being programmed to destroy himself, because oppression can be external as well. So, while the spirit is turning internal depression into deep despair, it’s diverting the person’s attention to his thousand-dollar hi-fi set that’s levitating in the middle of the room and about to crash to the floor.”

  Sharon Beckford had reacted on a more personal level. Why was this violence, destruction, vulgarity, and hate permitted to go on? For their whole life, they’d worked to build a good home and raise a proper family. They and their children attended church every Sunday. With tears of anger, Sharon Beckford asked forceful questions to which there were no ready answers: “If this is the devil at work, then where is God? Is it just for our whole home to be destroyed because our daughter used a Ouija board?”

  Father Daniel sympathized with Sharon Beckford. Her questions required a reply, however, and the priest was forced to answer her through die words in Chapter 18 of Deuteronomy: “Let there not be found among you anyone who immolates his son or daughter in the fire, nor a fortune-teller, soothsayer, charmer, diviner, or caster of spells, nor one who consults ghosts and spirits or seeks oracles from the dead. Anyone who does such things is an abomination to the Lord.”

  “Peo
ple in oppression situations,” says Ed, “often ask ‘Why does God allow this to happen?’ Well, God does not allow it to happen: people allow it to happen. The demonic spirit has to play by rules set down by the Creator. This is why its actions and behavior are so devious; the demonic cannot directly interfere in human affairs. But people have to play by the rules too! Therefore, when an individual violates the rules through his own free will, he is then on his own. Even so, the powers of the demonic are, theologically at least, limited to ‘temptation.’ In other words, the demonic spirit cannot make you do something against your will—but it can influence you to commit actions you mightn’t ordinarily. Nor can the demonic oppress you beyond your ability to resist it. Cosmically, you see, the demonic spirit can come only so close, and no closer. But just as people break the rules, so does the demonic. In the Beckford case, the infesting spirits went too far. They broke God’s law.”

  The effect of the horrendous disturbance on Eric was hard to determine. Being fifteen, the boy was sensitive and impressionable. Before the episode, he’d been outgoing and gregarious. By the middle of April 1974, he was traumatized, quiet, and reclusive. For his own good, the boy might have to see a psychologist.

  Vicky displayed a range of emotions from guilt to indifference. Often her behavior was defensive; on occasions she would become hostile and lash out at anyone around her. She was a definite candidate for possession, and the circumstances were ripe for that to happen.

  All the while the phenomena kept up as usual. Before leaving, the Warrens had taken Father Daniel aside. “There are a number of entities in the home,” Ed told him, “but judging by the intensity and power of the phenomena, we suspect the disturbance is being caused by more than demoniacal powers. There’s the distinct possibility that a higher, diabolical entity is involved, possibly having been drawn from the retreat house, where it could have sought to victimize the monks. If so, you might observe some sign that would alert you to its presence.” That sign occurred on Tuesday night, as Ed and Father Daniel spoke on the telephone,

  One curious aspect to a diabolical siege is that rosary beads are a taboo item to the demonic spirit. Only the most menacing and blasphemous of entities would dare to move them. As Father Daniel was speaking on the phone, rosary beads floated out of the spare bedroom in which he was staying. He watched as they turned left, drifted down the hallway, turned left again into the kitchen, then finally wrapped themselves around a kitchen chair in a gesture of strangulation.

  That was it! Ed told Father Daniel to get the family out of the house and stay away until he and Lorraine got back from New York on Thursday. With that, everyone packed up and left immediately.

  Father Daniel returned to his rectory while the Beckfords went to stay with Pete’s parents nearby. Once again, the phenomena traveled along with them. Pete Beckford never told his seventy-five-year-old parents what was happening to his family, sure the burden of such knowledge would be enough to petrify them. Yet that night, as everyone went to sleep at “grandma and grandpa’s,” the activity let go. Small objects levitated, pictures left the walls, and “did-you-hear-that?” knockings erupted all around the house. The problem was not enough to be troublesome on Tuesday night, but Wednesday night the whole house was resonating with merciless poundings. The next morning, bathroom faucets and plumbing fixtures were violently wrenched from the wall by some unimaginably strong force. Without trying to explain the situation, Pete called a plumber to repair the damage, packed up his family, and left

  Father Daniel was affected in a rather more sinister and ominous way. For the past two weeks he had witnessed the most incredible phenomena caused by the demonic. This theological devil had taken on real proportions, and he truly felt in danger. Indeed, a spirit from the Beckford house had followed him too. The first time, he saw a dark, black cylindrical form blocking his way in the narrow hall leading to his quarters. On the remaining nights, it posted itself in the hallway, keeping him a prisoner in his modest cell all night long. At the same time Pete’s parents’ house was experiencing damage, Father Daniel was shaving, when before his eyes, the bathroom light fixture went off and then disassembled itself from the ceiling. One by one, the parts floated down and landed in the sink.

  On Thursday, April 25, the Warrens returned from upstate New York, having canceled other appointments and worked their schedule so they could fully concentrate on the Beckford case. They met Father Daniel at a nearby restaurant to discuss the latest developments. The Beckfords were nowhere to be found that morning, but Pete had given the priest a spare key to the house. Ed suggested it might be a good idea to go into the house without the family around to influence matters one way or another.

  From the restaurant, Ed, Lorraine, and Father Daniel drove directly to the Beckfords’ house. Since no one knew what had gone on inside while the family was away, Ed decided it would be best if he first went inside the home alone.

  Upon unlocking the front door, Ed discovered the whole place had been systematically vandalized. Lamps, tables, chairs, books, pictures, clothing, and furniture were strewn around the living room. The smell, too, was utterly repulsive. Anything that was fluid had been dumped and left to decompose. Walking through the house, Ed found beds turned over, drawers pulled out, and linens scattered everywhere. Indeed, anything movable seemed to have been ripped, torn, or turned upside down. In the kitchen, the contents of the pantry and refrigerator had been dumped in a pile on the floor, with dinner plates and silverware heaped on top of that Sheer insanity.

  Heading back down the hallway, Ed suddenly realized something was awry. A moment later, the house began to violently rumble and shake, as if an earthquake had just struck. Fearing the house might actually collapse on top of him, Ed tried to get to the front door, but he couldn’t move!

  At the same time, outside, Lorraine picked up on the fact that Ed was in jeopardy. When she and Father Daniel reached the front door, they saw Ed walking dazedly through the living room, his shirt covered with blood. Upon removing him outside, they discovered on his left arm two long, deep slashes forming the sign of the cross.

  Refusing to see a doctor, Ed had them wash off the wound and then bandaged it tightly with gauze and tape from the first-aid kit in the car. Ed explained that “psychic slashes started to be thrown around the room, cutting into the walls and drapes.” He was cut on the arm because he threw his arms up to cover his face, feeling that the forces in the home intended to mutilate him. Ed believed the attack was directed specifically at him, for it was he who originally challenged the forces in the home with religious provocation, and who threatened to end their rampage by alerting Church authorities to the case. However, it was also Ed’s rationale that it was the Beckfords who were ultimately in danger.

  “The spirits took over the Beckford house as a first step in a quest to take over the whole family,” says Ed. “In cases of this sort, however, Lorraine and I have found that for the most part, people possess very strong willpower. Therefore, no alien spirit is just going to arrive and take over a person or family all that easily. That’s why oppression phenomena tend to vary in intensity from one case to another. The spirit, or spirits, will methodically work on one emotion, or even a dozen, until you’re vulnerable and irrational from the strain. Everyone has a breaking point, but a weak-willed person—say someone on the verge of suicide—can be taken over pretty easily. The spirit doesn’t need to go off on a binge of activity. But with a strong-willed individual, the spirit will throw everything at him, including the kitchen sink. The oppressed may learn he can’t do anything about the activity, so rather than fight it, he stops resisting and falls passive to the oppressing force. When the person’s will is thrown open for domination, the oppressing spirit’s next step is possession.

  “On the other hand, if the person doesn’t give up, the phenomena will go on or intensify until the stress becomes unbearable. A mental breakdown would be the next logical step, but at the point where a breakdown should happen, usually possession or
some other catastrophe will occur instead Violent inhuman spirits capable of causing fires could easily burn the house down with everyone in it” The worse the phenomena became, the closer the Beckfords came to either experiencing possession or death.

  Thus now, more than ever, the case had transmuted into a confrontation, with the Beckfords pawns in a much bigger game. As a matter of survival Ed and Father Daniel had to stop these determined, maniacal forces. To back down would simply give the demonic a green light to kill, possess, or torment the Beckfords indefinitely, and also to torment Ed and Father Daniel for the rest of their lives. Consequently, they had no alternative but to persevere—and succeed.

  Around noon that Thursday, April 25, the pale, drawn, and bedraggled Beckfords pulled into their driveway in a four-door sedan. When they went inside and saw their house torn asunder, the Beckfords plunged into despair. The Warrens and Father Daniel bolstered their confidence, though, and with everyone working, by nightfall the house was put back into a semblance of order.

  On Friday, April 26, after a night of havoc, Ed and Lorraine assisted Father Daniel with the paperwork he had to submit to Father McKeegan. Under normal circumstances, verification could take a priest weeks to complete, but with the Warrens’ help, Father Daniel left that same night with all the documentation he needed to request an exorcism for the family.

  In the meantime, Ed and Lorraine stayed with the Beckfords. The oppressive siege had worn the family down physically and mentally, such that any one of them could now potentially come under possession. That had to be guarded against most of all, yet it took everyone’s strength to withstand the barrage of activity that occurred the weekend of April 27 and 28.

  Metal picture frames now smoldered and caught fire. Scarves, linens, dresses, and towels burst into flames and were flung directly at the people in the room, often causing painful burns. Night and day, without letup, the phenomena went on. Furniture from the living room was found in the master bedroom, while the bedroom furniture was now in the living room. Five minutes later, both rooms of furniture switched back to their proper place while the Warrens and the Beckfords watched in amazement.