Although the inhuman voices usually supplied straight, rational replies, much of what they said was also nonsensical and capricious. There is a predominating voice in the crowd, and on this occasion, the spirit took on the identity of “Fred.” It was to Fred that Ed Warren addressed most of his questions. What follows is an extract of that interrogation.
Ed Warren: Hello?
Voice: Hello.
EW: Do you know who I am?
V: Yeah.
EW: Who am I?
V: Ed.
EW: That's right, Ed. Who are you?
V: Fred-die.
EW: You're Freddie, huh? What's your real name?
V: Yeccccch... (noise)
EW: When are you going to leave here, Fred?
V: Five hundred years.
EW: That's a long time. Can you move something to show us you're here?
V: No.
EW: Why not?
V: Tommy pulled my arm out.
EW: Oh, there's two of you? Put Tommy on.
V: (A new voice, though still gruff and gutteral) Yah. I'm Tommy.
EW: Tommy, how do you think we could get rid of all the problems that are happening in this house?
V: Kill the ghosties!
EW: Kill the ghosties? Aren't you a ghostie?
V: No!
EW: Tell me, how did you get into this house?
V: Came up from under the floorboards.
EW: How many of you are there all together?
V: (Counting slowly and deliberately) Ah... uh... one... two... three… four... five... six. Six are here—no, five.
EW: What are their names?
V: Fred-die, Tom-mie, Billy, uh... Charlie, and Dick. John's not here.
EW: Where's John?
V: Don't know.
EW: Who's the leader? Are you the leader?
V: Nobody. Nobody's the leader. I'm a liar.
EW: Who else is here? Is there anyone else here?
V: Yeah.
EW: Who?
V: Gutter-Man's here.
EW: Put Gutter-Man on. Let him speak. Are you there, Gutter-Man?
V: Yeah (a different gutteral voice, this one a bit clearer).
EW: Gutter-Man, what do you have to say?
V: (Yelping noises) This house is haunted. Kill the ghosties!
EW: Gutter-Man, were you ever alive?
V: Yeah.
EW: Where?
V: In soldiers. I'm a soldier.
EW: In whose army are you a soldier?
V: All armies. I’m a soldier.
EW: Who else is here, Gutter-Man?
V: Ah... uh... Zachary’s here.
EW: Put him on, Gutter-Man. Let Zachary speak.
V: (Suddenly there is incredible moaning and groaning. The voice is utterly bizarre. The wailing ends up in a long cry of “Help” that takes ten seconds to come out.)
EW: Holy cow. What was that? Put Zachary back on.
V: (Woeful moaning recurs.)
EW: Who else is here, Fred?
V: I ain’t Fred, I’m Tommy!
EW: Put Fred on....Fred, are you there?
V: Yeah, Fred’s here. (Voice change indicates “Fred” is speaking)
EW: Fred, put Zachary back on.
V: Won’t come. (Pause) I’ll tell you someone else who’s here. Teddy’s here. Teddy-Man’s here.
EW: Put Teddy-Man on, Fred.
V: Yeccccch… (Noise. Then silence, broken every few seconds by a parrot-like voice saying, “Hello.” A second voice then picks up and says “hello,” to which the parrot-voice responds with two hello’s. A third voice joins in the hello’s, then a fourth voice chimes in with its “hello”; then a fifth and a sixth voice join informing a chorus of parrot-like voices all saying “hello,” which build finally into loud, wild shrieks. The additional voices then fall away, leaving the original parrot-voice repeating its singular hello.”
(Ed addresses the spirits again after the outburst, but there is no feedback.)
“All the while I was talking to these spirits,” Ed notes during the lull in the tape, “things were flying around the room. That’s what those crashing and bumping sounds are in the back ground. Chairs and tables were lifting and dropping. Small, little objects would whiz across the room and bounce off the wall. In the dining room, the wallpaper was peeling away from the walls as we watched. A butcher knife materialized in the lap of my assistant, Paul. A nail was also produced out of thin air. And, as has come to be expected in the house, the spirits left a pile of excrement on the mother’s bedroom carpet upstairs at three in the afternoon.”
When the spirits on the recording weren’t going through a it of random insanity, they seemed to amuse themselves by filling the room with grunts, quacks, barks, shrieks, and a variety of other animal sounds—the most annoying being that of a shrill, screeching cat. One particular spirit put out a tortuous, unworldly howl which brought on another interchange.
EW: You guys sound like something right out of hell. Do you know where hell is, Fred?
V: Yeah.
EW: Where is hell, Fred?
V: Yeccch… (noise)
EW: How old are you, Fred?
V: Sixteen.
EW: Are you a ghost, Fred?
V: No... uh... yes. I’m a ghost.
EW: Who?
V: Batman. I’m Batman.
EW: Batman isn’t a ghost.
V: (Spirits lapse into an array of animal sounds, the most predominant being that of a barking dog.)
EW: You want to be animals? Imitate some animals. Imitate a pig.
V: (The snorting of a pig.)
EW: How about a dog?
V: (Barking.)
EW: How about a cat?
V: (Loud, screeching me-ow.)
EW: How about a turkey?
V: (Gobbling.)
EW: How old are you, Fred?
V: Seventy-eight. I’m a liar. Tommy’s a liar.
EW: I know.
V: Can I sing a song?
EW: Sure, Fred, go ahead and sing.
V: La-de-da-de-da... (gruffly) Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of holy water... ha... ha... ha...
EW: Are you a Christian, Fred?
V: Yick. A soldier. I’m a soldier!
EW: When did you die, Fred, as a soldier?
V: I’m always dead.
EW: Were you ever married, Fred? Did you ever have a wife?
V: Yeah.
EW: What was her name?
V: I don't know.
EW: How old are you now?
V: Thirty. I'm thirty.
EW: Do you know what day it is?
V: Yeah. The uh... seventh.
EW: Right Do you know what month it is?
V: Au-goos. Awwguss. August August seventh!
EW: Where did you get those names: Fred and Tommy and Billy and so on?
V: The graves.
EW: Do you go over to the old graveyard near here?
V: Yeah.
EW: Why?
V: To read the graves.
EW: Do you like the graveyard, Fred? Why do you like the graveyard?
V: Death! (grunts).
EW: What do you think of us Americans?
V: I hate you, I hate you, I hate you....
EW: Do you know where America is, Fred?
V: I don't know. Can I come?
EW: No, Fred. I've got enough to do without you.
V: Ed. Ed... Ed...
EW: What do you want, Fred?
V: Smash the recorder.
EW: You'd like that, wouldn't you?
V: Yeah. (Spirits pull original tape out of recorder during session.)
EW: (Resuming) Do you know what I’m going to do with these tapes, Fred? I’m going to play them to some scientists I know in America. They’re going to be very interested in you, Fred!
V: I’m gonna smash it in the night! (A quarrel then develops between two spirits as to who is going to “smash” the tape recorder. As the voices rise from the level of
argument into one-against-one “yikes” and “howls,” Ed sends Paul out to the car to get a bottle of holy water drawn from Walsingham Shrine, north of London. Paul returns to report the bottle of holy water is missing.)
EW: Where's the holy water, Fred?
V: I slung it!
EW: You slung it? If you don’t bring that holy water back, we’re going to perform exorcism on you!
V: Ha, ha, ha.
EW: Do you want me to bring a priest in here?
V: Yeah, all right Bring ’im in. I’ll kick ’im in the backside.
EW: What would you say if the Blessed Mother told you to leave, Fred?
V: Yecccch. Ugh.
EW: Do you know what this is Fred? What do you see?
V: Uh... a cross.
EW: That’s right, a cross. That cross means your days are numbered here.
V: I’m gonna chop somebody’s head off.
EW: The next time I come back here, Fred, you’d better be gone. Because the next time I come I’m bringing a very powerful exorcist with me, someone you won’t want to mess with.
V: (There is a long lull) Ed. Ed. Ed... Ed... Ed-ward.
EW: What is it, Fred?
V: Let’s play exorcist. Go get the holy water....
Having played the recording, Lorraine suddenly jumps up from the couch and strides purposefully to the bedroom door. She then calls to Ed. Upon checking, the room reeks of alcohol; and on Lorraine’s dresser, an ornamental crucifix set in a grotto is turned upside down!
Prudently, discussion about the Enfield case ceased. Yet in a way, it seemed to be only the tip of the iceberg in terms of demoniacal phenomena these days. Newspapers periodically report gruesome mass murders carried out by people who, after wards, boldly assert they were instructed to kill “by the Devil” or by some malevolent “figure in black.”
At least once or twice every decade, a major case of diabolical possession occurs, wherein the possessed harbors entities that identify themselves as being devils and demons, some even proclaiming their names for all to hear.
In 1978, over nine hundred people died in tropical Guyana in an unprecedented case of mass suicide that could possibly have been due, in some respect, to demoniacal oppression. Although Billy Graham went a step further, telling a National Press Club audience in Washington that he believed the Reverend Jim Jones was under “possession,” and that “he used the church for his own demonic ends.”
Why is so much negative supernatural activity happening right now?
“Inhuman spirits have roamed the earth since the beginning of time,” Lorraine responds, “so there’s nothing new about that. What is new is the situation we witness in the twentieth century. In line with that, I’d say there are two basic reasons why excessive negative activity is taking place these days. One reason has to do with numbers. There are more people in the world now than ever before in history. A great many of these people are dissatisfied with life, alienated from religion, or seeking after extraordinary knowledge. Concurrently, never in history has so much profane, negative information been available to everyone. In the past, this information was secret knowledge, used by some of the most wicked people who ever lived. Today, much of it is printed in books and sold like candy. This information is the real thing, and a gullible person who decides to use it for personal ends is quite capable of bringing about infestation, oppression, or possession by inhuman spirits. So essentially, we have a very large, literate population with twenty-four-hour-a-day access to really horrendous information. All that’s needed is the desire, the wrong motivation, to use it. From there it’s a very short step to bringing on the demonic.
“The other reason we’re getting so much negative spirit activity,” Lorraine continues, “has to do with people’s lack of mystical knowledge. You see, spontaneous assaults initiated by the demonic are extremely rare. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the clear majority of demoniacal activity has been instigated by people. It boils down to the fact that demoniacal phenomena is a ‘people problem.’ It’s people who open doors to the underworld through their own free will.
“As we say many times, the demonic realm isn’t something a person automatically finds out about. One learns by accident, or by voluntarily doing something to cause the phenomena to occur. Most of the time, the demonic is brought on deliberately, through someone’s formal choice to do so. This is the heart of the matter because man can choose between good and evil. Therefore, every time an individual calls up one of these inhuman spirits, he goes through the whole Adam-and-Eve trip all over again. That is, long ago man was warned about the devil, but he was also given freedom to choose whether or not to accept its influence. How ever, nowadays, people don’t even know they have a formal choice until it’s too late—until after they’ve tapped into the demonic realm. The basic problem is that this century has seen a major breakdown in religion, which means a major breakdown in the teaching of mystical knowledge; so that, once again, people are having to learn by mistake. ‘Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it,’ as the saying goes. When Ed and I lecture, we remind people that there are mystical aspects to the world, both positive and negative, and demonic spirits should be left to stew where they belong. When it comes to this subject, knowledge is a weapon. Incidents of demoniacal phenomena would drop drastically if people knew what a bum trip the negative occult can be. And they’d drop even further still if the wherewithal for conjuring wasn’t so readily available on store shelves.”
While millions of people are playing with fire by dabbling in the occult, other quasi-religious cults operate in America, some of which invoke negative spirits to assist them as “guides” through life. Toward the even blacker extreme, other groups are actively engaged in ritual black witchcraft—not to mention the Satanists, who avowedly “prefer the ass of Satan to the face of Jesus.” But just how prevalent is black witchcraft today?
“There are probably more people practicing black witchcraft now than in any other period in history,” Lorraine explains. “Of course, these people don’t walk around wearing black hats. Instead, the Satanists and black witches we’ve had to deal with in our work come off as very contemporary, with-it types—or else act strange and kooky to encourage the thought they’re simply eccentrics. The black arts are practiced far more than people think or know. In fact, let me cite something I just saw in the paper this morning,” says Lorraine, opening up the Hartford Courant:
The city dog warden has found the corpses of 15 domestic animals believed to have been mutilated in a ritual-like process and then dumped or hung in trees. The warden has been investigating several recent incidents in which piles of dead goats, sheep, rabbits, and chickens have been found, some apparently within hours after they were slain. Two weeks ago, dogs and cats also were found hanging from branches. Some of the animals were bloodless. Police sources say a possible link between the apparent slayings and an occult religious group is being probed.
“Little do the police know,” Lorraine resumes, “that this ghastly destruction of life—and the drawing of blood for later use in conjuring rituals—is a fairly routine practice by black witchcraft groups. But with macabre things like this going on regularly around the country, the public is slowly coming to learn that the practice of negative witchcraft is far more common than they previously supposed. But let me utter a warning here. The last time there was awareness of black witchcraft was during the Inquisition, a hideous period. At that time, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, some 200,000 people were tortured and murdered in England, Europe, and America under the most fiendish conditions. Back then, the real crime was not done by those accused of witchcraft, but by the religious fanatics who cruelly and systematically slaughtered all those tens of thousands. So although black witchcraft is being practiced today, and it does represent a very serious, very dangerous problem, it should nevertheless be attacked through education or proper religious training—not through finger-pointing, torture, and murder. As the
psychologist Carl Jung once said, “If our civilization were to perish, it would be due more to stupidity than to evil.”
No doubt the single greatest storehouse of information on the demonic is the Vatican in Rome. But those records, which go back some two thousand years, are completely inaccessible; indeed, the Catholic Church will not allow even its own priests to examine the data, except on a strict need-to-know basis. Evidently the negative aspect to the world is a story that is not meant to be told. But why? If the religious establishment knows all this “iniquitous” activity is going on, why don’t they give more information about what Ed and Lorraine call the “black facts of life”?
Ed Warren’s straightforward answer: “The basic reason why the religious establishment, Christian or otherwise, will not reveal information about the subject is that the demonic spirit is considered to be the physical manifestation of the Devil.
“More information should be made known,” he goes on, “but if the church came forward and made an across-the-board admission that possession and exorcism are everyday realities, then suddenly everybody and their brother would be calling up churchmen, priests, ministers, rabbis, complaining of oppression or possession by ‘evil spirits.’ Every lonely person who hears a door slam shut by the wind in the middle of the night will want an exorcism. So going fully public with this information would turn into an absolute debacle. As it works now, legitimate cases do come to the attention of proper religious authorities, and things do get done about them—although they get done far too slowly.
“Not that something shouldn’t be said about the subject, though,” continues Ed “Religious authorities should release more details about cases of possession and exorcism. They should let people know these negative spirits are real, not some throwaway superstition from the past Otherwise, how are people going to find out that using the Ouija board and holding séances have the potential to draw spirits that can ruin one’s life? You know, when Lorraine and I lecture at a college or municipal auditorium, word gets around town days before. When we do speak, every seat in the house is usually filled, leaving the overflow either standing or sitting in the aisles, while a couple of hundred have to be turned away at the door. Why? Because in the midst of this data-fact society, people are craving for subjective information about life, and where man fits in the universe. We’re all in this together, you know! And if people are so vitally interested in the subject, then the religious establishment ought to pick up on it and calmly explain these metaphysical things to their congregation on Saturdays or Sundays when they meet Again, if the needed information is withheld, how else are people going to make an accurate evaluation of life and death and the world around them? So the answer is yes, an argument can be made for the release of some information about spirit phenomena. But it’s also got to be done in an intelligent, credible way.”
The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren Page 27