The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren (21 page)

“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.

That night when they went to bed, the Beckfords could hear scratchings inside the walls. It sounded like a squirrel had gotten into the house. Listening in the dark, Pete also heard the sound of a board being pried loose. Leaping out of bed, he switched on the lights and spent the next half hour checking the house from cellar to attic. He found no loose boards, in fact, he found nothing out of place. Yet the same weird, troublesome noises continued all week long.