'They like to see our ghosts': Solo for Lorraine Warren gets ready
for Halloween
By Beth Cooney
Staff Writer

It has been just eight weeks since demonologist Lorraine Warren of
Monroe lost Ed, her husband and ghost busting partner of 61 years.
Although she is still grieving for the man she met at 16, Lorraine has
decided to take the multimedia show that documents the couples'
legendary investigations of ghosts, hauntings and other paranormal
phenomenon out and about.
Halloween has always been high season for the Warrens, and this year,
difficult as it may be, Lorraine will keep several Fairfield County
speaking engagements.
"I am doing it for Ed," Lorraine says. "If I didn't, what kind of wife
would I be?"

The presentations, including ones at the Arch Street teen center in
Greenwich and Connecticut's Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport, were booked
months before Ed's Aug. 23 death from complications of a stroke he
suffered four years ago.
"The ghosts really don't care that it's Halloween; they are a negative
bunch ... angry all the time," says Lorraine. "But people, they know
it's Halloween. They like to see our ghosts."
Since Ed's passing, his widow says she has been mulling how to continue
their work -- if at all.

"Even though the ghosts don't care much about Halloween at all, I think
Ed just might. I think he would want me to do this."
So at 80 years old, Lorraine will embark on her first "solo" Halloween
tour. She will be accompanied by her son-in-law, Tony Spero, a longtime
collaborator and assistant to the Warrens.
Their appearances include: Beardsley Zoo (appropriately tomorrow, which
is Friday the 13th), the teen center in Greenwich (Saturday), Fairfield
University (Monday) and at the Warrens' annual Halloween soiree Oct. 22
in Monroe. The last event benefits the couple's foundation, The New
England Society for Psychic Research.

"I wasn't sure if I could do this anymore. You know, Ed was the only boy
I ever dated. I miss him more than you could ever imagine And I did
think of canceling these things."
Shortly after his death, Warren says, she was on the telephone with a
newspaper reporter who asked if she would continue ghost hunting. Warren
began to cry, not sure she could answer. "Then I looked up at the
refrigerator, there was a picture of Ed. It's one of my favorite
pictures of him because it's very casual and natural and he's smiling.
And he's wearing a shirt that says, 'No Fear, No Excuses.' And I knew
right then and there that as hard as it was going to be, I would go on."

Young love
The former Lorraine Moran met her late husband when some girlfriends
took her to a weekend James Cagney matinee in Bridgeport. A shy student
at an all-girls Roman Catholic high school, she had never been on a
date. Her friends introduced her to Ed, a handsome and immediately
smitten usher.
"He was adorable. Just so neat, polite and well-kept." Afterward, Ed
took the girls out for sodas. She splurged and ordered hers with ice
cream. Ed teased and called her a gold digger, then walked the group
home. Lorraine wrote in her journal that she had met her husband. "I
loved him instantly. I really truly, believe he was my destiny."

Their courtship consisted of Sunday picnics supervised by Lorraine's
strict Irish Catholic parents. They married at 18 after Ed enlisted in
the military and came home on Survivor's Leave. "He was a true war
hero," says Lorraine, explaining when his ship was sunk in the Pacific
and he was one of only about 60 survivors, helping to save some of his
shipmates from drowning.
Their only child, daughter Judy Spero, was born while her father was at
war.
When Ed left the military, he went to art school.
The Warrens began their young, married lives as "sort of vagabond
artists." Ed was a talented painter who did landscapes and portraits,
but his favorite subject baffled his wife. "He loved to paint houses he
suspected were haunted. We would drive all over New England looking for
them."
Ed confided to his wife that he had long believed his childhood home in
Bridgeport was haunted.

"Ed was convinced of it. All kinds of strange things happened in that
house, but Ed's father, a very serious policeman, used to insist there
was a logical explanation for everything," says his wife, adding that
Ed's dad, "never really provided those explanations."
Lorraine doubted her husband's stories, too. "I told him, 'Ed we're not
even supposed to talk about these things.' But Ed had this obsession
that came from his childhood curiosity. He was just searching for
answers and that's how all of this began." Their first ghost
investigation took place a few years later in Henniker, N.H.

Spirit world
As the couple has long told the story, Ed, Lorraine and friends were
traveling when they happened upon an abandoned inn and persuaded the
caretaker to let them inside. It was the first time Lorraine, who
describes herself as a "clairvoyant and a light trance medium," had a
direct communication with a spirit. From that moment, their work became
more serious. They began studying suspected haunted houses for free,
documenting their findings and even profiling the personalities of the
ghosts they believed inhabited those places.

Lorraine says she and her husband came to believe there are several
kinds of ghosts, all with one thing in common: "They have unresolved
issues and they are not happy. Some are still clinging to their material
possessions in this world and don't want to give them up. Some had
violent deaths and they are angry at the people who hurt them. Some died
feeling like they have things in this world they still must protect.
Mothers who died with young children surviving them, I found, can be
very persistent spirits."
The unfriendliest ghosts? "Pubescent teenage girls. They have a lot of
kinetic energy. They tend to be the kind of ghosts who are capable of
great violence. Ed and I always believed that the ghost who caused the
most trouble in that house in Amityville was a female child in puberty."

Amityville, of course, is the waterfront village in New York where the
Warrens investigated one of the most notorious suspected hauntings of
all time. The story of the "Amityville Horror," the alleged torment a
contemporary suburban family faced by the spirits of a murdered family
of six, became the subject of a book and Hollywood movie. It also
catapulted the Warrens to fame.

Facing doubt
As their notoriety grew with appearances on television shows such as
"The Phil Donahue Show," Lorraine says she and Ed had to deal with
scores of skeptics. Debunkers have long dismissed the Amityville
haunting as a fraud.
"Oh, we dealt with plenty of skeptics, honey. At first, it upset me a
great deal. I knew there would be lots of people who never would believe
us, but Ed didn't worry about those people. He said that anyone with an
intelligent mind, with an open and curious mind would believe that many
of these phenomenon couldn't be explained any other way."
Although the couple were present for many religious exorcisms, Warren
notes they are often erroneously credited for conducting them, including
one in North Stamford in 1999. (The details of that haunting are on
their Web site, www.warrens.net.)

"We were present for many, many excorcisms," says Warren, who remains a
devout Roman Catholic. "But it is important that they are performed by a
deeply pious, religious and qualified person. It could be a priest, it
could be a rabbi, it doesn't really matter what their faith. It is
important, no, essential, that they have faith."
Warren claims to have clairvoyant powers. They began as a child, she
says, when she could see the "auras," or energy fields, around people.
"Some are stronger than others, much brighter. And I would notice them.
She tells about getting in trouble at Catholic school for telling her
French teacher, a nun, "that her aura was brighter than Mother
Superior's." She was punished. After that, "I kept the auras to myself."
It was Ed, she says, who first recognized her gift and cultivated it.
Still, she says, she uses her clairvoyance with great care. Warren is
adamantly opposed to channeling, or talking to spirits from "the other
side." "People do it for money. And it really bothers me. I find it
disturbing really, because those doors should remain closed. "I don't
believe in tampering or disturbing spirits. It causes all kind of
trouble." She notes, most ghosts are disturbed spirits. "They don't need
to be tampered with or communicated with unless it's necessary."

Although she and Ed made money selling nine books and on the lecture
circuit, she says they never took payments for their home interventions.
"We did it because we believed those disturbed spirits needed to be
settled. And the people who lived in those homes deserved peace. Our
work was about closing doors. Not opening them."
Which begs the question: Has she heard from Ed since his death?

Warren says she believes Ed has tried to communicate with her. In early
September, on what would have been her husband's birthday, she couldn't
find her sunglasses. "Which would have amused Ed terribly since I am
notorious for losing them." She went to Mass and out to breakfast at the
couple's favorite diner, where she asked the waitress to set a place for
two. She sat alone until a staffer at the diner asked to join her and
told her a strange story. "She told me, 'When my cook came in this
morning, he swore there was a man whistling in the dining room, but he
kept coming out and there was no one there.' And you know, my husband
always whistled when he was happy or amused." Overwhelmed, Lorraine
opened her purse to retrieve a tissue. "And there on top of my things,
were my sunglasses. So, yes, I think he's at least paid me a visit. And
I'm happy to tell you his sense of humor is still intact."

At her upcoming lectures, Warren will share the couple's collection of
ghost photography and recordings of paranormal communication and engage
in a spirited dialogue with the audience.
She is especially looking forward to her appearance tomorrow at the
Beardsley Zoo. It was a booking, she says, that lightened up her mood
this somber season.

"I've been talking to ghosts for years. Now, I've been joking with my
kids, I'm going to the zoo and going to talk to the animals."