Monstrous

Ghosts, Poltergeists & Apparitions => Ghost hunters => Topic started by: Devious Viper on August 30, 2006, 02:48:54 AM

Title: Ed Warren Dead
Post by: Devious Viper on August 30, 2006, 02:48:54 AM
August 24, 2006
By Carolyn Moreau

Ed Warren, who along with his wife pursued the unusual career of ghost hunter and whose cases included what would become the basis for "The Amityville Horror," died Wednesday at his home in Monroe, Connecticut. He was 79.

Warren firmly believed in ghosts, demons and other unworldly creatures - and in helping people deal with these unwanted visitations. He would answer the phone at all hours to counsel panicked homeowners from across the country, who couldn't find anyone else to advise them when their furniture started flying.

"Most people snicker," said Tony Spera of New Milford, who is the Warrens' son-in-law. "But if it happens to you and you know it is real, it is frightening to have your bed shaking in the middle of the night, or have the covers suddenly pulled off you."

Warren is also survived by his wife, Lorraine; a daughter, Judy Spera; two grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

During their 61-year marriage and partnership, the Warrens investigated more than 10,000 suspected hauntings in the U.S. and abroad in Japan, Australia and Europe. They believed they were expelling ghosts who stubbornly remained earthbound and evil spirits from another world who had never been alive. In return, all the Warrens asked was for their expenses to be covered, Spera said.

While the Warrens didn't ask for compensation for their ghost busting, they made a living on the college lecture circuit talking about the supernatural. Their most famous investigation - and most requested lecture - was the reported psychic disturbances at a house in Amityville, N.Y., where a family was brutally murdered in 1974. The Warrens were consultants for the movie "The Amityville Horror."

The Warrens wrote 10 books on the supernatural. Two of the books were made into TV movies, "The Demon Murder Case" and "The Haunted."

Ed Warren grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut in a house he believed was haunted.

While he regularly confronted dark forces, he considered it a duty to warn the public about the dangers of playing with the occult, Spera said.

"Seven out of eight of their cases would start with people playing with a Ouija board," Spera said. "The spirit does not have to come right away. It can come after dark to get you."

Warren was also a religious demonologist and an expert on satanic cults, Spera said.

When he wasn't investigating the paranormal, Warren liked visiting forests and other natural places and collecting rocks and gems. He was a great lover of animals and at one time kept a fox as a pet. The fox proved to be a difficult character. Warren once had to call his wife for help when he took the fox on a ride and the animal wouldn't let him back into the car after Warren stopped at some shops, Spera said.

In the past five years, poor health kept Warren housebound. In March 2001, he had gotten up at 2 a.m. to let the cat in and collapsed on the floor. Paramedics restarted his heart. He was in a coma for 11 weeks and never regained speech.

"They said at the hospital he wouldn't make it through 24 hours," Spera said. "He had such a strong will. He wanted to stay."

source Hartford Courant http://www.courant.com/
Title: Re: Ed Warren Dead
Post by: jordyn on August 30, 2006, 11:47:07 AM
wow...to think of all the influence they had on the state of battling otherworldly entities, it's sad to think it would end with them, they knew so much.
Title: Re: Ed Warren Dead
Post by: Devious Viper on August 31, 2006, 01:10:26 PM
Here's a good article about the warrens by Jeff Belanger

Spirits, hauntings, vampires, werewolves, demons and devils are all part of the Halloween tradition - but for Ed and Lorraine Warren of Monroe, CT it's been their living for almost 50 years. I caught up to the Warrens at their Occult Museum in Monroe recently and talked with Ed Warren about where the Warrens met, their religious and spiritual beliefs and how they became the world-renowned ghostbusters that they are today.

Since 1952 the Warrens have been the directors of the New England Society for Psychic Research and to date they have investigated over 4,000 hauntings. The goal of the N.S.P.R. has been to share information with other groups who are investigating the same type of phenomenon and to help people are plagued by the supernatural.

The Warrens were the psychic investigators for the Amityville house and they also wrote a book called The Haunted based on a Pennsylvania family who came under diabolical possession - the book was made into a TV movie on Fox and according to Ed Warren the movie takes no dramatic license, it was portrayed very accurately.

A few years ago Cardinal O'Conner of New York had publicly stated that three cases of diabolical possession were going on at the time and that exorcism was going to be performed. The news media jumped on it and it was the Warrens who investigated all three cases.

Ed Warren is one of 7 religious demonologists, the other six are all priests and Ed is the only lay demonologist in the country. Ed acquired the title by his work with the church.

How the Warrens Got Started
Ed Warren grew up in a haunted house from the time he was five until he was 12. "My father, who was a police officer at the time would say, "Ed, there's a logical reason for everything that happens in this house," but he never came up with that logical reason. I'll give you an example: My family would go to bed and just around two o'clock, three o'clock in the morning, many times I would hear the closet door opening up. I'd look into that closet and see darkness, then I'd start to see a light starting to form and it went into like a ball shape sort of like a basketball and then I'd see a face in that ball - they call that a ghost globule - I didn't know what it was then. It was the face of an old lady, and she was not looking pleasant - the ball came out into my bedroom and I could hear footsteps and heavy breathing, the room became icy cold, that's a psychic cold - and I'm saying to myself, "There's a logical reason for all of this," but by that time I was out of the bed and right between my mother and father in their bed."

When Ed was 16 years-old he worked as an usher at the Colonial Theatre in Bridegport and it was there that he met Lorraine. "Lorraine and her mother used to come every Wednesday night," Ed remembered. "So I'd see her coming in and we started talking and became friends. I was 16 at the time and she was 16, one night I walked her home and asked her for a date - and that's how it started."

Ed Warren went into the Navy on his seventeenth birthday and four months later, after his ship sank in the North Atlantic he was home for 30-day survivor's leave. It was during that leave that the two were married.

When Ed returned after the World War II he and Lorraine had a daughter and Ed went to Perry Art school which is a subsidiary of Yale for about two years. "I got fed up with that," Ed said. "I told Lorraine one day, "You know, I can paint better than these instructors. What they're teaching me is a lot of Geometry and a lot of nonsense that I don't need for painting." I said, "We'll have some fun. I bought this car for $15 dollars which I still have in the yard. It's a 1933 Chevy Eagle deluxe. The guy gave me two wheels with it. I had to pay him off on time - five dollars a week. I said to Lorraine, "You know, if we go up to the new areas where they're opening up for tourists like Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, I'll bet I can take a bunch of my paintings and put them out there when people are walking by and we'll sell some."

And the Warrens did have fun, "We were making a fantastic living, selling the paintings for fabulous prices - three dollars, four dollars. But you've got to remember one thing, hot dogs were a dime, hamburgers were a dime, the theater was a quarter, gas was 18 cents a gallon. So, when you made five dollars on a painting, you were doing pretty good."

It was through painting that the Warrens began their ghost investigation. If Ed heard of any place that claimed to be haunted, whether a haunted house, a haunted location he would drag Lorraine to check it out. "Oh Ed, there are no such things as ghosts," Lorraine would tell him. Ed reminded Lorraine of his early days at his haunted house in Bridgeport and Lorraine would go.

But, the way the Warrens got into the haunted houses is especially interesting, "We were just kids nobody was just going to let us in, we were curiosity seekers - we were not the directors of the New England Society for Psychic Research. So, I'd go out in the middle of the road where they could all see me and I'd start to sketch the house and you'd see the curtains going back and forth "What's this kid doing?" they would be thinking. I would do a really nice sketch of the house with ghosts coming out of it and everything and give it to Lorraine and she'd go knock on the door and with her Irish personality she'd say, "Oh, my husband loves to sketch and paint haunted houses and he made this for you." I made it special for them."

So it was through the paintings that the Warrens got themselves into these haunted houses. And then they would talk with the homeowners one-on-one. Basically, Ed just wanted to see if the same things happened to those families that happened to his family.

Spirits and the Investigations
Ed Warren: If you look at a fan and it's standing still, you can see the propellers very easily. But, if that fan starts up you can't see anything - it's invisible. Spirits are on that different vibrational field. They're all around us right now but you can't see them. But if you were like Lorraine, you could see them clairvisually, hear them claiaudioally.

I can't. And it wouldn't pay for me to do that because as an investigator people would think I'm a little odd seeing ghosts flying around when they couldn't see anything. So, I have to see it, I have to feel it, I have to hear it, I have to record it before I accept it.

But, mediums and clairvoyants are very necessary to us because they tell us immediately if something is there. I wouldn't know - I could go into a building for a month and not know if there is something really there. I could interview the people, and maybe through my knowledge I could tell if something is there, but the clairvoyant is the draw. The spirits are drawn to a medium/clairvoyant like a moth is drawn to a flame.

Many times we use three or four clairvoyants in one place. We take them into a house one-at-a-time, they don't know where they're going, what the case is about, etc. And if they all tell me the same thing, that they see a woman spirit in a certain room or a man or a child, then I know that we're on the right track.

I do think scientifically, we do have scientists working with us, and I think theologically and scientifically. There are organizations of atheists, so-called skeptical investigators that say, "There is no proof scientifically that God exists, that spirits exist that miracles occur."

That's ridiculous, there's all kinds of proof. In the Occult Museum we have hundreds of items, we have thousands of cases between here and the other buildings out there that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the supernatural exists and the preternatural exists.

We have filmed the white Lady of Easton. We have filmed poltergeists, attacks on people, ghosts and we have taken many pictures of ghosts.

We work with any clergy that their religion teaches love of God and love of your fellow man. We are not stupid enough to think that because we are Catholics that we are the only religion saved - that's what the problem is with Ireland today - and a lot of other places. We work with all people of all faiths.

We have thousands of pictures of ghosts. And I'm not talking about filmy ectoplasmic type material, I'm talking about spirits that are as clear as you and I. You ask us for evidence, we'll give you that evidence.

We proved in a court of law in 1989 that a woman and her young child driven out of her house by ghosts. She lived in Hebron, Connecticut. We went into Rockville court and we won the case. The Realtor that leased her the house was suing her for $2,000. She begged us to go into the house and to get some evidence that would prove that there really were ghosts.

Now, you don't walk into a court of law and saw, "Well judge, there was ghosts there." You have to have evidence. In any court of law they use photographs, recordings and credible witnesses as evidence - that's what we use. We won the case, we set a precedent here in the United States.

Scientists would say, "you didn't prove a thing, because you didn't take that ghost and put it in a bottle so we can open him up and examine him." That's stupid. They're saying that scientifically that you have to prove that God exists, that ghosts exist, there is no such thing you can't get scientific in a supernatural world.

So, if we can prove in a court of law that ghosts exist and haunted houses exist I think that's good enough for anyone.