The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren (23 page)

“Don’t forget,” Ed goes on, “that the external phenomena is used as a diversion. While breaking furniture, the spirit devotes just as much energy to breaking a person down internally. To keep your emotions under control during oppression, you’d have to have the patience of a saint. Whether the disturbance leaves you scared, depressed, angered, or whatever, you can’t help but become upset emotionally. It’s nothing to be ashamed of—it’s called being human. Although it’s quite all right to be emotional as a result of the situation, it’s something else again to fully lose control because, ultimately, that’s what the demonic is
trying
to make you do.”

On April 7, Palm Sunday, Pete’s brother Terry was bringing his family over for dinner. Unlike Pete, Terry was a professional man, yet both brothers were hard-working men who had helped each other all through life. Perhaps now, Sharon thought, they might be able to solve this problem together,

She and Pete explained to Terry the terrible ordeal they’d been through; however, no unusual activity occurred that Sunday as the Beckford clan sat down to dinner. Terry Beckford’s only response was to say there had to be a rational explanation for the whole thing.

After dinner, both families adjourned to the recreation room. Terry had brought slides of his family’s recent vacation, including shots of Holy Land, a roadside tourist attraction.

When a slide depicting crosses and statues and shrines came up, Vicky leaped to her feet and pointed. Incredibly, water was flowing
out of the wall
in the basement!

Suddenly, the lights went off and on by themselves; a moment later, the pounding started upstairs. Together, Terry and Pete ran up to the first floor to find out where the pounding was coming from. But each time they drew close, the noise would simply take up in another part of the house. Then, up on the roof, it sounded like carpenters were on top of the house swinging hammers with all their might. The whole house vibrated, and again pictures fell off the walls. Meanwhile, Terry’s wife and young children, seized with terror, had followed the men upstairs. Pete insisted that Terry get his family out of the house. Terry hated to leave his brother in such an appalling situation, but that night he had no choice.

“There’s nothing natural about this,” Terry finally admitted at the front door. “You’d better go find another priest who’ll listen to you!”

That Sunday night the reign of terror continued. Yet, beyond that, it seemed as though everyone in the house had gone haywire.

“I’m gonna kill you!” Vicky screamed at her brother.

“Yeah? I’ll kill you first!” Eric snarled back.

I’m going to kill both of you!” Sharon shouted at the two of them.

In the midst of the fighting and arguing, the percussive pounding went on unabated. Now Pete Beckford, his mind aswirl, his house a wreck, broke down. With tears glistening in his eyes, he commanded everyone to stop! When Eric saw his father, he broke down in tears, as did Sharon. Vicky, however, was indifferent and unaffected. She locked herself in her bedroom until morning.

The next day, April 8, Pete Beckford was drawn and pale. He’d already used up all his sick days babysitting the pandemonium. Something had to be done, yet who could he turn to? Repairman couldn’t help; neither could the police, the church, or even his own brother. As Pete stood at the kitchen window, he found himself staring at the large cross atop the monastery retreat house that bordered his property. Hope suddenly flooded into Pete’s heart. The monks would know!

Pete waited until after the breakfast hour and then walked up the road to the retreat house, where a kindly, middle-aged monk ushered him into the foyer. Pete quickly did his best to explain the problem and asked desperately, “Would you please come to my house and see what I’m talking about?” The monk agreed. Together they walked back down the road to the Beckfords’ ranch house.

Inside, the monk surveyed the damage done to the furniture and walls. He listened to the random poundings and read the obscenities scribbled about the place. Yet despite it all, he was distinctly unperturbed by what he saw. Instead, he sat Pete down.

“Let me explain what I believe
is
happening here. There are things that go on in this world that are deliberately kept secret—things that one learns about only through experience. In my opinion—and of such things I have only limited knowledge—this terrible problem you are suffering is being caused by spirits. Do you believe in such things, Pete?”

“These days, Father, I’m open to suggestions.”

“Very well, then,” resumed the monk. “This kind of spirit, which delights in tormenting people, is not a ghost, but a spirit of a special order. We know almost nothing about them except that they are
truly mean
spirits; judging from the intent of their actions, it would seem there is something wrong with them. I myself cannot challenge the type of spirit that appears to have entered your home, though there are other priests who can. But be reminded,” the monk stressed, “there are other mysteries in the world. The mysteries of science unfold before our eyes every day. Not every strange question has a strange answer. The mind plays tricks on us, nature plays tricks on us. Before the Church will assign clergy to a case such as yours, the matter must first be proven
genuinely
spiritual in nature. What is your opinion?”

“I think you might possibly have hit upon the matter, Father. I would like to pursue it,” Pete concluded.

“Then let me give you the name of someone who may be able to help you sort this thing out His name is Ed Warren.”

This was the second time someone had referred Pete Beckford to the Warrens. When the two men walked back to the retreat house, the monk made a phone call and got Ed and Lorraine’s telephone number. “You’d better get in touch with these people as soon as possible.”

“That’s precisely what I’m going to do,” Pete assured him.

At work later that morning, Pete telephoned the Warrens and spoke with Judy Penney, a young woman who works as a liaison when Ed and Lorraine are out of town. Judy has heard some hair-raising tales over the phone, but this one particularly scared her. “The Warrens are out West,” she told Pete Beckford, “but I’ll relay the message to them. I suggest you call back Saturday; by then they’ll have returned home.”

Saturday, however, was a long five days away: it was Holy Week, the most notorious time of the year for demoniacal activity. The next morning at daybreak the Beckfords awoke to the sound of objects pelting the roof. Going out to investigate, they once again saw stones falling onto their house out of thin air. All week long, stones began falling on the Beckford house at dawn—and stopped at dusk. Their number and velocity varied. Some fell slowly, as though sinking through water. Others came down in erratic zigzags. Every so often there’d be a violent deluge of rocks and stones, some falling hard enough to imbed themselves in the roof. When they hit the ground, about half the stones would vanish, the others remained for the family to clean up later. Inside the house, the antireligious activity had become as violent as the stones falling outside. Crucifixes were turned upside down. Pictures of saints were torn up—the minute shreds left defiantly in a pile. The statue of Saint Anne, which the Beckfords now kept in the living room, was constantly being hidden, as though something could not bear to see it

Indeed, the antireligious activity reached a ridiculous extreme. One night the Beckfords heard a tremendous commotion in Eric’s bedroom. When it died down, they went in to find one of the twin beds torn apart. The mattress was under the bed frame; the box spring, however, was propped up against the wall, covering a framed picture of Jesus.

On another occasion, while sitting in the living room, the Beckfords heard a hellish, woeful moan resonate out of the kitchen. Ever so cautiously, Pete walked down the hallway. Sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor was their big double-doored refrigerator: it had been moved away from the wall the exact limit of its power cord. The next night they heard the same lingering moan; again the refrigerator was found sitting in the center of the room.

Perhaps even more intimidating was the observation that even physical matter presented no great obstacle to the oppressing entities. Pete had the only key to the deep freezer located in the basement. Incredibly, when he opened the freezer one afternoon to take out provisions, he found inside the big iron blacksmith’s anvil he kept in the garage. Later, Pete also discovered that his huge steel tool box had mysteriously been teleported to the attic.

Worst of all, there now seemed to be a physical presence in the house. When alone, members of the family had the unshakeable feeling that someone was in the room staring at them from behind. The terror was enhanced by footsteps, the rustle of clothes, and heavy breathing. Once when Sharon Beckford quickly turned around, she saw a black form standing in the room behind her.

For the Beckfords that year, Good Friday—April 12—was a day of abject fear. A forbidding atmosphere enveloped the house. Indeed, it seemed as though the whole place might suddenly explode as the berserk rampage continued unabated. Stones mysteriously pummeled the house outside, while unrestricted bedlam went on within, all of which was now compounded by an evil presence so increasingly real and physical that no one dared be alone in the house for even one moment. The Beckfords, frightened and tormented, now had only one hope left—the Warrens, whoever
they
were.

X
Deliverance

April 12.

Inside, the LaGuardia Airport terminal, enough people to fill a small town milled around, waiting for planes. Outside, on the observation deck, the air was thick with diesel fumes and the screaming whine of fan-jet engines. Off to the left, the Manhattan skyline was silhouetted against the setting sun. Above, in the twilight sky, incoming jets approached from the west, turned right over the Whitestone Bridge, then, one by one, drifted slowly back down to earth.

On board the big tri-jet touching down just after six that evening were Ed and Lorraine Warren, coming home after a ten-day speaking tour. They’d delivered six lectures in four states, appeared twice on television, answered three hours of questions on a radio call-in show, visited a not-very-haunted house, and granted four separate interviews to student newspaper reporters. They were glad to return; the Warrens looked forward to spending Easter Sunday with relatives. On Monday they’d be off again, this time to Maine.

Around noon on Saturday, the following day, Lorraine received a call from a man beside himself with fear and anguish. In her pleasant way, Lorraine calmed him down. “Could you explain your problem as specifically as possible?”

For a quarter of an hour, Pete Beckford unfolded a tale almost too incredible to be believed. He told her of the slashed tires and the vandalized engines that had cost him over five hundred dollars to repair. He told her of the ketchup, salad oils, bleaches, and perfumes that floated down the hallway and dumped their contents on the rugs and expensive furnishings. He told her that a statue, an anvil, and a refrigerator had moved on their own accord; that heavy furniture had levitated; that stones had fallen on his house, and that water flowed from the walls. He couldn’t stand it anymore. He pleaded for help and offered to pay anything for it

At first, it struck Lorraine that Pete Beckford’s imagination had run wild. But by the time he finished, it was evident to her that this man’s home was under diabolical siege. “Ed is involved with another case this Saturday,” she had to tell him. “However, we would be able to come to your home tomorrow, Sunday.”

Pete agreed immediately. After the anguish of the past six weeks surely, he reasoned, one more day would be inconsequential

Demonology is not just a matter of chasing down spates of weird activity. Wherever they go, and despite their often busy schedule, the Warrens’ first priority is to assist those who are being oppressed, assaulted, or even possessed by the forces of darkness. That night, Lorraine repacked their traveling bags, and early Easter morning, they were on their way to Vermont via the home of one Pete Beckford. They arrived at the Beckfords’ house on Easter afternoon. “The place looked fairly placid,” says Ed, “except for those stones littering the lawn.” Inside, however, things were just the opposite. Evidently expensive furniture stood chipped and stained. Marks covered the walls, and a foul odor permeated the air. Lorraine said nothing, although at the time she sensed in the home the presence of entities so numerous and threatening that she had to fight with herself to keep from going back outside. It seemed to her that a wild fury was building; that, indeed, the worst was yet to come.

Having introduced his family to Ed and Lorraine, Pete then showed them the rest of the house. In every room, he stopped to recount at least a dozen incidents, to which the Warrens listened attentively—taking mental notes of the activity he described, while keeping an ear cocked for any exaggeration or salesmanship in the man’s rendition of events.

When the tour was over, Ed and Lorraine conducted an investigative interview with the four Beckfords. First, they asked Pete to speak for the family and give a chronology of events that had occurred in the house since the siege began. For over an hour, Pete provided meticulous details of events that were—in the Warrens’ estimation—potentially spirit-induced.

“Do any of you
know
what may have caused this problem
in
your house?” Ed asked.

“No,” they answered.

“When did you notice the first occurrence of unusual activity?”

“We figure it was on March 3, when Vicky’s car tire went flat at the drugstore. Though that may have been a coincidence, it seems to have been the first incident,” Pete replied.

“Has anyone in the neighborhood, or your immediate family, recently passed away—perhaps someone you didn’t get along with very well?”

“No.”

“Is anyone in the family seeing a psychiatrist?”

“No.”

“Did you purchase an antique or secondhand piece of furniture—from a tag-sale, say—before the ruckus began?”