Ed and Lorraine Warren

According to the Warrens, in the year 1968, two roommates claimed their Raggedy Ann doll was possessed by the spirit of a young girl named Annabelle Higgins. The Warrens took the doll, telling the roommates it was "being manipulated by an inhuman presence", and put it on display at the family's "Occult Museum". The legend of the doll inspired several films in the Conjuring Universe and is a motif in many others.[14]

In 1971, the Warrens claimed that the Harrisville, Rhode Island home of the Perron family was haunted by a witch who had lived there in the early 19th century. According to the Warrens, Bathsheba Sherman cursed the land so that whoever lived there somehow died a terrible death. The story is the subject of the 2013 film The Conjuring. Lorraine Warren was a consultant to the production and appeared in a cameo role in the film. A reporter for USA Today covered the film's supposed factual grounding.[15][16]

The Warrens are best known for their involvement in the 1975 Amityville Horror in which New York couple George and Kathy Lutz claimed that their house was haunted by a violent, demonic presence so intense that it eventually drove them out of their home.The Amityville Horror Conspiracy authors Stephen and Roxanne Kaplan characterized the case as a "hoax".[17] Lorraine Warren told a reporter for The Express-Times newspaper that the Amityville Horror was not a hoax. The reported haunting was the basis for the 1977 book The Amityville Horror and adapted into the 1979 and 2005 films of the same name, while also serving as inspiration for the film series that followed. The Warrens' version of events is partially adapted and portrayed in the opening sequence of The Conjuring 2 (2016). According to Benjamin Radford, the story was "refuted by eyewitnesses, investigations and forensic evidence".[12] In 1979, lawyer William Weber stated that he, Jay Anson, and the occupants "invented" the horror story "over many bottles of wine".[18][13]

In 1977, the Warrens investigated claims that a family in the North London suburb of Enfield was haunted by poltergeist activity. While a number of independent observers dismissed the incident as a hoax carried out by "attention-hungry" children, the Warrens were convinced that it was a case of "demonic possession". The story was the inspiration for The Conjuring 2, although critics say the Warrens were involved "to a far lesser degree than portrayed in the movie" and in fact had shown up to the scene uninvited and been refused admittance to the home.[19][20][21]

Guy Lyon Playfair, a parapsychologist who investigated the Enfield case alongside Maurice Grosse,[22] also says the film greatly exaggerated the Warrens' role in the investigation. He stated in 2016 that they "turned up once" and that Ed Warren told Playfair "[the Warrens] could make a lot of money [...] out of [the case]." He corroborated the claim that the Warrens were "not invited" to the Enfield house and that "Nobody [...] in the family had ever heard of him until [Ed Warren] turned up".[23][24]

The Devil in Connecticut by Gerald Brittle was republished as a movie tie-in for the release of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It based on the Warrens' real-life Connecticut case.

In 1981, Arne Cheyenne Johnson was accused of killing his landlord, Alan Bono. Ed and Lorraine Warren had been called prior to the killing to deal with the alleged demonic possession of the younger brother of Johnson's fiancée. The Warrens subsequently claimed that Johnson was also possessed. At trial, Johnson attempted to plead Not Guilty by Reason of Demonic Possession, but was unsuccessful with his plea. This story serves as the inspiration for The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021).[25] The case was described in the 1983 book The Devil in Connecticut by Gerald Brittle.

In 1986, Ed and Lorraine Warren arrived and proclaimed the Snedeker house, a former funeral home, to be infested with demons. The case was featured in the 1993 book In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting. A TV film that later became part of the Discovery Channel series A Haunting was produced in 2002. The Haunting in Connecticut, a film based on the Warrens' version of events and directed by Peter Cornwell, was released in 2009. Horror author Ray Garton, who wrote an account of the alleged haunting of the Snedeker family in Southington, Connecticut, later called into question the veracity of the accounts contained in his book, saying, "The family involved, which was going through some serious problems like alcoholism and drug addiction, could not keep their story straight, and I became very frustrated; it's hard writing a non-fiction book when all the people involved are telling you different stories".[11] To paranormal investigator Benjamin Radford, Garton said of Lorraine, "'If she told me the sun would come up tomorrow morning, I'd get a second opinion'".[26]

Pennsylvania residents Jack and Janet Smurl reported their home was disturbed by numerous supernatural phenomena, including sounds, smells and apparitions. The Warrens became involved and claimed that the Smurl home was occupied by four spirits and also a demon that allegedly sexually assaulted Jack and Janet. The Smurls' version of their story was the subject of a 1986 paperback titled The Haunted and television film of the same name directed by Robert Mandel.

Ed Warren's book Graveyard: True Hauntings from an Old New England Cemetery (St Martins Press, 1992) features a "White Lady" ghost which haunts Union Cemetery. He claimed to have "captured her essence" on film.

• Deliver Us From Evil: From the files of Ed and Lorraine Warren, by J. F. Sawyer (Phillips Publishing Company, 1973) ISBN 9781935856856
• The Amityville Horror, a True Story by Jay Anson (Prentice Hall, 1977) ISBN 9781982138264
• The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren by Gerald Brittle (Berkley Books, 1980) ISBN 9781935169222
• The Devil in Connecticut by Gerald Brittle (Bantam Books, 1983) ISBN 0-553-23714-4
• In A Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting by Ray Garton (Villard, 1992) ISBN 0-394-58902-5
• True Haunting of Borley Rectory (Conversations with Ed & Lorraine Warren: The original ghost hunters) by Taffy Sealyham (BookBaby, 2013) ISBN 9781935856085
• The Warren Case Files

The Warrens' case files serve as the basis for The Conjuring Universe series of horror films.

The 2013 film The Conjuring, directed by James Wan, spotlights a Warren case and stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren.[44] Its 2014 follow-up, Annabelle, a supernatural psychological horror film directed by John R. Leonetti, is both a prequel to and spin-off of The Conjuring and was inspired by a story of the Annabelle doll. It stars Annabelle Wallis, Ward Horton, and Alfre Woodard. The Conjuring Universe's next film was 2016's The Conjuring 2, a sequel to The Conjuring, directed by Wan, and with Farmiga and Wilson reprising their roles as Lorraine and Ed, respectively. It is based on the Enfield Poltergeist case. 2017 saw the release of another prequel, Annabelle: Creation, telling the origin story of the Annabelle doll. Farmiga and Wilson briefly appeared as Ed and Lorraine in the 2018 spin-off film The Nun, focusing on the character of Valak in its "Demon Nun" form, who was the villain from The Conjuring 2. The two reprised their roles again in Annabelle Comes Home, the sequel to Annabelle, and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.[45]