HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't wait. I'm already thinking about the silence.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm so fucking jealous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I get to sit, I'm gonna sit. I'm gonna masturbate.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna smoke a lot of weed and sit in silence.
MARCUS PARKS
It sounds incredible.
ED LARSON
I think tonight I'm gonna alphabetize my DVDs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus, wow.
MARCUS PARKS
That sounds so great. That sounds like so much fun. I love alphabetizing my DVDs.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's one of my secret favorite thrills.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is like oh no, I have to just smoke weed and clean my office?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just do that for two hours, it's great.
ED LARSON
Here's a question, do I keep the Blu-rays with the Blu-rays and the DVDs with the DVDs?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Mix them.
ED LARSON
Mix them?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No! No!
ED LARSON
But see the different sizes in the boxes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, Blu-rays are separate from the DVDs. They're a different class.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're a different life.
MARCUS PARKS
But they might be a different class but when I'm going to go look for a movie, I wanna know... I don't wanna go like ah fuck, I got that one on DVD. Fuck, now I gotta go to the Blu-rays.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just have to pay more attention to your library.
ED LARSON
See the problem is I have every Halloween movie on DVD but they're scattered. Like some of them are on Blu-ray, some of them on DVD. I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would say put collections together.
ED LARSON
The cases are different sizes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just think it's a mess altogether. So first of all i want to say this whole episode, completely real.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want you to remember as we begin today every single thing we're talking about, real.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In terms of there are human beings that have been a part of these stories and have spoken about these stories. And I do think that it's important to remember that if it's real to somebody, isn't it then real somewhere?
ED LARSON
Sure. Do you have the courage right here on this show to call Annabelle a bitch?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What? After all of the doll-based issues we've already had? Mic cut out on me last week.
ED LARSON
I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It cut out on me when we were talking about Robert the doll.
ED LARSON
I think she's great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love Annabelle. Annabelle, the Jessica Chastain of haunted objects.
ED LARSON
God, I'd wanna just rub her and rub her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's definitely the most ladylike of them. But she is based on a child.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Annabelle?
MARCUS PARKS
Raggedy Ann.
ED LARSON
Oh yeah. Well Raggedy Ann, I mean so Annabelle doesn't look like Annabelle but we'll get into that.
MARCUS PARKS
We'll get into that. Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left by the way. Raggedy Ann is technically a child. My name is Marcus Parks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Raggedy Ann's not only a child, Raggedy Ann is an orphan. So if you want to make love to that underaged orphan, I put you towards one of the worst people that's ever lived, Ed Larson.
ED LARSON
I will stick to Jessica Chastain.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, if she'll have us.
ED LARSON
Oh man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She has not returned one of my letters.
ED LARSON
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's not returned one of my telegrams. She won't answer the door.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She won't answer my DMs. And I don't understand. I keep telling her my wife looks just like you.
ED LARSON
I remember... I know. But she's short.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, Jessica Chastain's tall.
ED LARSON
No, she's not. I've seen her in real life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When did you see her?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No she's not, I've seen her in real life. Fuck you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When did you get to see her?
ED LARSON
I was waiting for an elevator at the movie theater with my buddy who was handicapped and they wouldn't let us on the elevator. And we're like why won't you let us on the elevator? And he's like because someone's coming. And I was like well just let us use it. And then we sat there for like seven minutes and then Jessica Chastain showed up and used the elevator and went up and then we had to wait for it to come back down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So she wouldn't let the guy... You mean to tell me Jessica Chastain-
ED LARSON
She didn't know! She didn't know!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She would not let the guy in a wheelchair into the elevator?
ED LARSON
It wasn't her!
MARCUS PARKS
Okay, she didn't know. Let's make sure we say she didn't know.
ED LARSON
She didn't know. It was the guy in Union Square!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no.
ED LARSON
It was the manager at the Regal! The manager at the Regal treating her like gold.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I'm not gonna let you do one of your bullshit slander things right now.
ED LARSON
I love you, Jessica!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, listen. You wanna reverse some of this slander, you get back to one of my cut out magazine letters I sent you asking for some pictures of you dressed as a frog. Come on, give it to me!
MARCUS PARKS
Well let's get on to the Warrens part two. We're getting further into the Ed and Lorraine Warren story. This is gonna be the episode where we're covering the greatest hits.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that we talked about right before the show, last episode was an introduction to just sort of a reminder of who the Warrens are, what they do, what their style is. Again, they're sexy and fun. They're bringing a new vivacious edge to the paranormal world. I mean if you actually look at the ascot sales-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can tell the heat is off the charts. But today's episode is like last week was an intro, today's the continued adventures of the Warrens.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah. And next episode will be of course when they jump the shark. Now one thing I'll say about Ed and Lorraine Warren is that even though they've been grossly misrepresented by the movies of The Conjuring universe-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What are you talking about? We look just like those guys. Me and Patty, when we hang out, sometimes people come up to me and they're like are you the guy dancing on Broadway all the time? And I'm here like oh you know Joe's Subs too on Broadway and Millington? They're like no, no, no. The other guy who can sing. And I'm like oh you mean my friend here?
MARCUS PARKS
And even though they lied about or embellished upon their experiences on a consistent basis, you can't say they were not true believers in the paranormal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They almost believed in it too much.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. For a great example, we received an email from a listener who grew up in Easton, Connecticut, which is right next to the town where Ed and Lorraine lived and where their occult museum still stands today. Now this is definitely a second-hand story but this listener had a supervisor whose dad owned the pharmacy where Ed and Lorraine Warren filled their prescriptions.
ED LARSON
Man, this is the shit that the other shows don't get.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't get this kind of outreach.
ED LARSON
This is the fucking shit, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you guys, first of all, you're saying like oh a pharmacist, what do they know? Have you ever met somebody over 60 and seen their relationship between them and a pharmacist? They just say wild stuff. They'll be like yeah, I'm here because my wife says I don't take of myself! Yeah. And you have to stand behind them being like yeah, bro, I can see you have like a green foot.
ED LARSON
Fucking pharmacists are saving the world. They're keeping dudes fucking their wives.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
ED LARSON
They're keeping the guns out of the hands of psychopaths.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I will say pharmacists are some of the strangest human beings you will meet, only surpassed by dentists.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pharmacists are strange. I got a lot of mail on that too. You'd be surprised what goes on in the minds of pharmacists.
ED LARSON
It's like if coke dealers were nerds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But sometimes they got the same attitude.
MARCUS PARKS
But prescription drugs were not the only purpose for the Warrens to go to this establishment. This pharmacy was where Ed and Lorraine Warren had many of their so-called spirit photographs developed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they had to take it to the fucking Eckerds, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Which is a far cry from the conception we may have in our minds of a paranormal investigator painstakingly developing photos in a creepy darkroom while for both ambient music plays in the background. Like Henry said, they're going to Eckerds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're just going down the street.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I Miss Eckerds.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well from what the guy who developed their photos told our listener, Ed Warren would come in with the role of film, giddy at the possibility that this was the time they'd finally captured proof of demon kind on Earth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(giggling) oh this one's juicy, I can smell it. I can smell the ghosts just inside the film. Oh god, I gotta see it. This is real.
MARCUS PARKS
This is real. Well this is what they said. And sometimes the person who developed the photos would actually let Ed behind the counter to help.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Let me see the machine. Ooh, I'm gonna get some. But he called them his goodies.
MARCUS PARKS
His goodies, yeah. Because Ed, sometimes he just couldn't wait to see the results. He needed to be there when the machine finally spit the photos out under the harsh fluorescent lights of the pharmacy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
ED LARSON
Too much time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Looking like what's his name from Spawn.
MARCUS PARKS
The Violator?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Oh boy, oh boy! I hope we see Lincoln in this one.
MARCUS PARKS
When Ed left the technician to do his job however, Ed would come back and immediately ask if they saw anything while developing the photo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let me take a look myself.
MARCUS PARKS
And the technician would usually humor Ed with like maybe, there were a couple in there that looked pretty creepy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I knew I could trust you, Pedro. I knew as soon as I could because you know how precious these secrets are. And it's just nice that you, getting paid $5.75 an hour, are allowed to hold the secrets of the universe.
ED LARSON
No do you take EBT?
MARCUS PARKS
But while the technician gave his polite answer, Ed would rip open the package at the counter like it was Christmas Day, pull out the magnifying glass that he brought himself-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let me get some of this, let me get some of the dressing off this, I'm sorry.
ED LARSON
Oh you know it had a case.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah. (creaking)
MARCUS PARKS
And he would try to convince the desk clerk that this little white dot or that little weird blob was in fact a demon. And this is the type of gusto Ed would display while just running an errand. Imagine what he was like at the scene of a paranormal event. But that's all to say that Ed and Lorraine saw demons everywhere, partly because they very much wanted the world to be a playground for the infernal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's almost like it was their entire livelihood.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Almost.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that they needed demons to be real for them to make the millions of dollars that they ended up making. Of all of the people that have monetized the paranormal, that have made money on the paranormal, besides Zak Bagans, I think Zak Bagans is now the new current lord of the pop culture.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's my polite way of putting it, pop culture paranormal lord.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where he knows how to put it, he knows how to tell a story. He knows how to ship it around. Because I'll tell you what, I watched hours of Ed and Lorraine talking and their stories are great, they're rehearsed, and they never change.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he has it down pat. But these guys, they figured out like the way you make quote unquote "good dollars" in this or where he says good money, he always tells people you can make good money with this. Stay consistent. Stay in the pocket. Never break character. That's where Alex Jones is a pussy!
MARCUS PARKS
Yup.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He fucking wanted his kids back. (whining) He wants his fucking kids back. Because he broke character. Ed and Lorraine never broke character.
MARCUS PARKS
No. Every once in a while the mask would drop but it was only in private.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And about money.
MARCUS PARKS
And it was about money. But a lot of that stuff we'll get to in part three. But for an example of how Ed and Lorraine saw demons everywhere, on a trip to New York City to star as guests on a TV show, Ed and Lorraine claimed that they were walking through an alley and found themselves appalled at the amount of garbage, flies, and vermin. Of course-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they've been saying about this New York for a long time, just so you know.
MARCUS PARKS
What's that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They've been saying this about New York for a long time.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the thing is that all three of us, we've lived in New York. We know this story is a fucking fib because Manhattan don't got alleys.
ED LARSON
There's no alleys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, there's no alleys.
ED LARSON
Chicago's got alleys.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
That's why it seems a little cleaner because we toss our trash in the street.
MARCUS PARKS
Exactly!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, exactly. Alleys the way that people think of him in movies, that only exists in movies.
ED LARSON
Yeah, it's Last Action Hero shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well you know what I think is interesting is you know what has alleys is downtown Los Angeles. And I do think that there's a lot of ways that you don't understand that you've been manipulated by the media, that you have an idea maybe of what New York looks like because of how it's been pictured in movies. But then you realize like oh no but they don't shoot in New York.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So anytime you've seen New York it's shot in Atlanta or it's shot in Toronto or it's shot in some other place.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So it's like yeah, so it's got a bunch of stuff that you wouldn't recognize.
MARCUS PARKS
There is one, I looked it up, there's one alley in like downtown where they shoot like fucking everything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Chinatown's got it. There is alleys in Chinatown.
MARCUS PARKS
There's a couple of alleys here and there but they're very rare.
ED LARSON
Yeah, there's alleys in New York but they're all just dead sex workers named Ally.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very good, Eddie.
MARCUS PARKS
Very good, very good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Eddietunes.com.
MARCUS PARKS
But regardless, when Ed and Lorraine found themselves in this supposed alley, Ed saw a homeless man who was by Ed's estimation somewhere between the ages of 30-65. The strange-
ED LARSON
You can't tell decades?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly people have been saying the same thing about me since I was 7.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the stranger laying under a pile of garbage was covered in sores and scabs and rats were chewing at his toes. But while Ed and Lorraine stood staring at this poor man like he was a tourist attraction-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's like hey buddy, quit staring. I'm in bed right now.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Hey, a rat's eating my toes here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These are my buddies.
ED LARSON
That rat is my wife!
MARCUS PARKS
Well Ed claimed that as he stood there, he watched as the man's face changed into a perverse sneer and an ugly inhuman look of delirium settled into the man's eyes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then slowly but surely he heard (farting). I see, it was a pre-fart face. I now understand. At first I thought it was a demon but now I know. That's a pre-fart face. Honestly I should know that.
ED LARSON
I once saw a guy asleep on the subway like on his back and like it was a pretty full subway and everyone wanted to sit down but he took up like three seats.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And then we're all just sitting there looking at him and all of a sudden you could tell he's starting to pee his pants.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And then the pee stream got so hard that it like went like through his pants and out. Like I was just like oh my god!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That right there, honestly I know for a fact that's not a demon, that's a man. Because no demon would piss on the subway like that because they understand that they gotta be on the subway themselves. Only man ruins their own environment.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Ed said the guy in the alley, that was a demon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, of course. He turned into a demon. But it's just his idea that... We're gonna get into what will turn to be one of our large themes of this series which is what they really wanted to do was not prove that ghosts exists or demons exists but they wanted to spread the power of Christianity everywhere they went.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ed Warren... Lorraine Warren is an interesting type because she really is another one of those who's true believer. Never dropped character. I kind of believe some of the wiggedy stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like I believe a little of the 'I see your aura'. I mean mostly because of the hair.
MARCUS PARKS
No, yeah. And I said that in the first episode, like these people I guarantee had an outsized amount of paranormal experiences. I guarantee they did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And also the way they reacted. I was reading about how like Ed and Lorraine, during all the mini, before getting into the big ones that we're about to get into, they'd just show up at the police, introduce themselves as demonologists, no irony, no anything. Lorraine was like I'm a psychic and she would immediately like tell something like your mama loved spaghetti, didn't she? I see noodles in my mind. And he's just like my god, my mother did love spaghetti! His name's like Officer Rigatoni. And he said no way, my mom loves spaghetti. We're named after spaghetti. But then Ed Warren was just like this. He had no compunction. Like he really just was like... But the idea across all of this is to tell people that the only thing that can save an entire generation is the power of Christ.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now Ed's willingness to believe that anything and everything could be a vessel for a demon was what helped him and Lorraine believe and sell one of their most famous tales, that of the haunted doll Annabelle. Now from the beginning of NESPR, that's the New England Society for Paranormal Research, that's their organization-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They also sometimes call it NES-P-R.
MARCUS PARKS
Fuck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck.
ED LARSON
That's only when they're fighting the Jets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) When you're a Jet... That was my one line!
MARCUS PARKS
(singing) When you're a Jet. That was your line?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. I played a character called Snowboy and my only line in West Side Story was 'let's get those PRs'.
ED LARSON
Canceled with one line.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What are you gonna do?
MARCUS PARKS
Well the Warrens would receive referrals from local priests when the priest suspected that a demonic infestation or possession had taken place and the priest didn't really feel like dealing with it just yet. Essentially demon hunting was outsourced to Ed and Lorraine. And this is how the Warrens came upon the infamous Annabelle doll in 1970.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they were the Ghostbusters.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They had a PO box and a phone line. And so I was reading and watching material that they sent out to their like fan club and also the VHSs that you could purchase back in the day. They finally released it all to YouTube, they dumped it all out. And it's interesting. They were like if you got a ghost and you're local, give us a call. And they would give the number and you'd just call Ed and Lorraine Warren and this is how they operated for years.
MARCUS PARKS
Now unfortunately the Warrens' own perspective on the Annabelle case is really the only one available. But I think that the story of Annabelle is important to tell if only because it shows you how wacky and blown out a Warren story can be when no one pushes back. So in 1970, a woman bought a Raggedy Ann doll from a hobby store in Hartford, Connecticut as a present for her daughter, Donna, who had just graduated nursing school. Presumably there was some sort of symbolic reason behind this gift as it seems a little underwhelming for a grown woman who just graduated nursing school.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think you'd be surprised how prevalent stuffed animals are still even in the rooms of adults.
MARCUS PARKS
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I think that stuffed animals are around more than we think that they are and they're gripped more and they're anthropomorphized more than you think that it is. I think I've definitely, back in my single days, you'd be surprised.
MARCUS PARKS
You wandered into a room and a woman-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Filled with stuffed animals. Many, many, many stuffed animals. And then you're making drunken love on top of a bunch of stuffed animals in a room, in a weird dark room in Bushwick.
MARCUS PARKS
That never once happened to me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It happened to me multiple times.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe it really talks about who's attracted to me.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I think it's just more about like the types of women that we encountered in our time in New York City.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, mine was a lot of women in sort of like a unicorn onesie, smeared makeup, going you're gonna save me, right?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're gonna save us all, right? My favorite kind.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Henry's ladies had less cigarette burns.
MARCUS PARKS
That's a point I can't refute in any way whatsoever. Whatever the case, this Raggedy Ann doll was massive. It was 3 ft tall with long dangling legs. It was a grippable doll.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it was super grippable. It was kissable.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kissable and huggable. I think that they were all that big for a period of time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think people liked bigger dolls back in the day.
ED LARSON
Those little GI Joes were huge.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well made of cloth and stuffing, this doll wore bloomers and a paisley shirt and had the trademark red yarn hair of every Raggedy Ann doll as well as the printed face featuring the large black eyes and the triangle nose. Now within days, Donna, her roommate Angie, and Angie's fiance Lou, they all noticed that there was something off about this doll. At first there were just small movements like changes in the positions of its limbs. Sometimes the doll would be found with its arms crossed or it would be found standing upright on its own feet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's me. I'm up. Hi.
ED LARSON
Take me outside to pee.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no, I'm shitting.
MARCUS PARKS
The upright position was particularly disturbing considering how Raggedy Ann was a floppy sort of doll, it didn't have any internal wires that could make an upright stance possible. But soon after the changes in position, Donna and Angie would come home to find that the doll had moved to an entirely different room seemingly of its own volition. On one occasion, Donna left the doll on the couch when she went to work. But when she returned, the doll was on her bed and the door to her bedroom had been closed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm changing my wetted bloomers. I'm sorry, I made my bloomers all wet.
ED LARSON
Told you to take me outside.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hate this doll. Why did we get this doll? Where's the nurses?
MARCUS PARKS
Donna and Angie claimed, or should I say the Warrens claimed that a month after the activity began they began finding messages on parchment paper clearly written by a child that read 'help us' or 'help Lou', referencing Angie's fiance. From there, the activity escalated after the doll had once again moved itself to another room. But this-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine trying to go to take a shit and you open up the door and Annabelle's just sitting on the toilet? That's scary. Like first of all, like that's just scary.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then it's also like you don't pay rent.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it has a fucking bathroom.
MARCUS PARKS
You think someone's got to pay rent in order to use a bathroom?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As far as I'm... Yeah, in my home.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Oh yeah, that's right, I forgot you got the pay toilet in your home.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But this time when Donna picked up the doll, she found what appeared to be drops of blood on the back of the doll's hands and chest. Quite concerned by this point, Donna and her roommate engaged in the services of a spirit medium. The medium immediately called for a séance. And during the ritual, the medium said that she had contacted the spirit of a young girl who had once lived on the property where Donna and Angie's apartment building had been constructed. The spirit's name was Annabelle Higgins and her lifeless body had been found on the very land where Donna and Angie lived when Annabelle was just seven years old. But the spirit said she felt safe with Donna and Angie and therefore wanted to stay. So despite warnings from Angie's fiance Lou that the doll was in fact evil and Annabelle was not what she claimed to be, Donna and Angie gave Annabelle permission to inhabit the doll permanently. After that the situation escalated again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Spirits love being squatters.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they love being invited.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now perhaps because he sounded the warning bells, Lou became Annabelle's focus. He began having recurring nightmares and one night awoke to find himself completely paralyzed, sleep paralysis. Standing at the edge of the bed was who else but the floppy Raggedy Ann doll with the big black eyes named Annabelle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hi, you sleeping? Yeah, you trying to sleep?
MARCUS PARKS
From what Lou told the Warrens, or at least what the Warren said Lou told them, Annabelle slowly glided up Lou's body.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a nice leg. Strong shin, thick thigh.
ED LARSON
Oh, your nuts stink.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You may want to wash some of that.
MARCUS PARKS
Seven year old.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. I'm a ghost, I'm legal.
MARCUS PARKS
I noticed you're now speaking like Michael Jackson.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're ignorant. Every child I'd safe with me. I have a dream for every child.
MARCUS PARKS
And before Lou knew it, the floppy doll was choking him with so much force that he blacked out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Came his pants. God, wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow. The next day, Lou and Angie were in the apartment studying maps for an upcoming road trip when the apartment got eerily quiet. Rustling was heard coming from Donna's bedroom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(wet sounds)
MARCUS PARKS
That's not rustling.
ED LARSON
(paper sounds)
MARCUS PARKS
That's rustling.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where's that rustling coming from?
MARCUS PARKS
Thinking it might be a burglar, Lou and Angie apprehensively checked the room. There they found only Annabelle tossed on the floor in a corner. As soon as Lou got close to the doll though-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Spread eagle.
MARCUS PARKS
He felt like someone was behind him. And in a split second, Lou was doubled over in pain. His shirt was quite suddenly stained with blood and when he removed it they found seven distinct claw marks on his back, hot as if they had just been burned. Mysteriously the wounds fully healed and disappeared within two days.
ED LARSON
Oh so it was a lie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it was mysterious.
MARCUS PARKS
It was mysterious, as Henry said.
ED LARSON
Also seven doesn't make sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna get there. Yes, it does because it's a special number. Like how three, see three, and anytime you see threes, it's a mockery of the trilogy.
MARCUS PARKS
Trinity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The trilogy, no. It's the Die Hard trilogy.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every single time you see three dots, it's a mockery of the Die Hard trilogy.
MARCUS PARKS
I thought there were four Die Hard movies.
ED LARSON
There's five.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't count the other two. I don't count anything past Die Hard with a Vengeance. The first three are obviously the best ones. The other two were money grabs because Bruce Willis was having more and more advancing dementia. And so I don't count those. But when it's seven, it's a phone number.
ED LARSON
Well yeah but claws are four or three. So I guess maybe one hand had four an the other had three.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the fourth didn't get you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, okay. All right, I can deal with this.
MARCUS PARKS
Cool. Now after the physical attacks, Donna contacted an episcopalian priest who contacted another priest who contacted Ed and Lorraine Warren.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Can you imagine hitting up an episcopalian priest and asking them to do jack shit?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He'd be like call a Catholic. I don't do anything.
ED LARSON
We don't get paid.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. This shit is chill.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the whole reason why we're here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'm one of the nice ones kinda.
MARCUS PARKS
And the Warrens immediately knew that this was the sort of case they prayed for daily.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, they were like yes!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They love this shit. And this is local. And again, this is when they're still just trying to make their nut. This is their first... The last one we just heard, this is just them... When we were kind of hearing them, they were just revving up their ghost hunting like industry.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is like their first real big get.
MARCUS PARKS
1970. Now during their first meeting, Angie suggested the possibility of moving to escape the entity. But as Ed would say again and again to the folks he claimed to help, moving would be a futile gesture because the spirit had already attached itself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See he knew immediately that it wasn't a spirit because he walked in there... Because the thing about Ed Warren is that it's all about style. So he walks in, total control, total calm. Walks in being like hey, how you going? It's nice to see you. Oh hey, got a little ghost doll situation here. Don't worry, we're gonna handle this. Don't even worry about it, all right. We're gonna take this all down. You got coffee? Do you got any Pepsi? I gotta take the two at the same time because if not, I throw up. All right. So with Annabelle here, what we're looking at, all right, so she's jumping back and forth. And that's what he was saying is that human spirit has no power to move things. So the first thing he says, gotta be a demon.
MARCUS PARKS
Gotta be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's moving things back and forth. No way would he fuck with you if he wasn't, right. Especially you wouldn't get physically hurt.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As soon as you're hurt with scratches, that's a demon.
ED LARSON
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Boom, immediately. But what he said truly was like so what you guys did was you set up a bad situation. But the way we know that you are definitely not... It's also smells, it's like farting, the doll's farting. Weird shit's going on back and forth. And he was like you're haunted by a demon. The thing about demons though, they don't haunt places, they haunt people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Plus if they move, it makes his commute worse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're real close to me right now. No, no, no, no, I don't want to take the highway.
MARCUS PARKS
When they asked if they could just destroy the doll, Ed said that didn't help either.
ED LARSON
What the fuck is wrong with you?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's always how they reacted. Like no! Don't fucking destroy it!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa! Whoa!
MARCUS PARKS
Because the problem was not the doll itself. I mean the doll was a doll like any other. Like it was just another Raggedy Ann doll but it had become a vessel for a demon. If it helps, it's more or less Chucky but with a demon instead of a serial killer. There's nothing special about that Good Guy doll, it was just that that was the Good Guy doll that Brad Dourif chose to inhabit. By Ed's estimation, if these people had waited another two or three weeks, one of them would have become possessed. But one way or another what was going on with Annabelle was the fault of the people who might have become possessed because for Ed, demonic possession was always about blame.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the most Catholic thing that you could kind of see. It really is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not only are you fucked but it's your fault.
MARCUS PARKS
He said that the responsibility for this whole scenario was on Donna and Angie because they'd given the entity recognition in the first place after the mysterious movements of the doll. Which I don't really get because what is he saying, that if a doll's fucking flitting around the house you're supposed to ignore it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. That is literally what he says.
MARCUS PARKS
Seriously.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He says it's on you.
MARCUS PARKS
You gotta ignore it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have to literally just act like it's-
MARCUS PARKS
You don't talk about it at all?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do not acknowledge it at all. That is what he says. It's how you deal with ghosts and trolls, where you do not give-
ED LARSON
And rats.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Anything. You give them nothing. You're supposed to be bored. Like what they want is... Because again, it's a demon. Because if it was a human ghost, it would be communicating with you in a more direct way, in a peaceful way. A lot of times it's through something, either through a Ouija board or like a pendulum.
MARCUS PARKS
But he also said the Ouija boards were evil and-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did not, he did not. I have clarification on that.
MARCUS PARKS
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He said there's nothing wrong with a Ouija board. It's just that the Ouija board more often than not, if you don't know how to use it, leads to issues with you.
MARCUS PARKS
With demons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, it's on you. You're the problem. It's always you.
MARCUS PARKS
You're not doing it right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
But the Parker Brothers send instructions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a whole thing. It's an ancient mechanism. It's an ancient mechanism.. So he feels if you see any sort of activity, this is called the infestation period, things are sort of building up. And he believes that you're, yeah, you're literally not even supposed to look at it. You're just supposed to act like it's not... If you engage with it at all, you're giving it a hold into this world. Because all it wants is your attention, Marcus. It's all sitting there, no matter what it's doing. It's flicking back and off because it wants to say hello. It wants you shutting the light off back and forth. It's playing with your dick and balls. It wants you to say hello.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right? But you can't let it!
MARCUS PARKS
You can't let it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because then otherwise it becomes the oppression section.
MARCUS PARKS
Like you can't even mention it to your wife or anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nothing! Jack shit.
ED LARSON
So what happens if it's playing with your dick and the balls and you're ignoring it but you still cum?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Blame it on your thoughts. Say oh, I must have rubbed it on my jeans part earlier today.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he said they'd given the entity recognition in the first place, that was bad. They made it worse by holding the séance. But the worst mistake they made was giving the entity permission to enter the doll. In Ed's words, doing this was like handing a maniac a loaded gun. And so Ed and Lorraine, this is very hyperbolic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And so Ed and Lorraine took Annabelle the doll into their custody. Although I'm a little unclear on how this works because Ed had just told the girls that the demonic energy was attached to them in particular and moving wouldn't help and the demons-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it's because there's a bit of a jump here where he did bring in an exorcist. So when he came in with Annabelle, they had their first meeting.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was all like he talked at Annabelle. He's like what are you doing, Annabelle? You wanna fuck with me? And then nothing happened, right. But then he came back with the priest, they exorcised the doll, they did it all, like they had a whole process inside of it. They exorcised the doll, they exorcised the lady. They went and they squirted holy water around because that's all he does. Because that's the thing with Ed Warren is that he also says he's immune to the phenomena. He can't see it. It does not engage with him, right. More often than not. That's why he has to do what he calls, he's gotta do religious provocation normally.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which we'll get to the next story. But he cleared it.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So technically he fixed them.
MARCUS PARKS
He fixed them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then he took the doll, being like well you guys essentially can't be responsible with this doll anymore. So I'm gonna take it.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay.
ED LARSON
But they can just get any doll and offer it up to Annabelle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think this was... Again, it's all about salesmanship.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ed Warren more than anything. Natalie was looking over my shoulder and there's like a picture of... Through all the YouTube content, Ed Warren is leading a tour of his little museum in his house. And he's got the sunglasses inside, he's got the big scarf on, green and purple light on him. And like I'm sitting there being like would you believe some people think that this guy is a carny? And Natalie was like that's a carny unlike any carny I've ever seen. Like that is the lord of carnies.
ED LARSON
He's in charge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And so he wanted that doll to be a part of his collection.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Now for as far as possessed objects go, does it have to be something that looks like a human or could it be like a bottle of Coke or a lamp?
MARCUS PARKS
It can be anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But we learned when we did our Haunted Dolls Redux recently that it is just more quote unquote "powerful" to use a human-shaped doll.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well from how they told it, the demon immediately tried killing the Warrens on the drive back to their home in Monroe-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ah! Shit!
MARCUS PARKS
By causing the car's power steering and brakes to fail.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Meanwhile like cutting to him eating a crueller, like 44 ounce Dunkin' with him with like four bear claws, being like you don't even got time to sit down for fucking lunch!
ED LARSON
She's got the out of date oil change sticker. Ding-ding-ding!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah, engine light going off. Annabelle is stuck in the wheel.
MARCUS PARKS
But right after Ed threw some holy water in the back seat like a father absentmindedly slapping at his noisy kids during a road trip-
ED LARSON
Knock it off!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You want me to turn this car around, Annabelle?
MARCUS PARKS
Back to Winnipeg! The Warrens were able to get home without further incident. Now Ed and Lorraine claimed that for weeks afterwards Annabelle's abilities expanded to levitation and it continued movement around their house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't you fold, Annabelle. Listen, I'm gonna sit here and I gotta write a letter. All right, I gotta write a letter to Jimmy Carter and ask him honestly what's going on. But what I need you to do is not doing nothing. Annabelle, you sit in that chair. All right? You qit floating, Annabelle, or I'm gonna fucking tie you to the chair. It's creeping me out.
ED LARSON
It's like a guy with a bad bichon frisé.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You get down, Annabelle.
MARCUS PARKS
Well true to form, once the Warrens were the only witnesses, they claimed that Annabelle could make an ethereal black cat appear which would just as quickly disappear. Now after a year of putting up with Annabelle, during which the doll supposedly tried killing a priest and caused a necklace to explode, all while terrorizing the Warren's real cat-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That fucking cat has just got to just be the most traumatized cat. Seeing phantoms everywhere, just all day long just devils and witches and haunted brides. And it's just like listen, I'm already a black cat. Do you think my dreams aren't scary?
ED LARSON
Get me out of here! Call the police!
MARCUS PARKS
Well after a year they finally locked her away in the infamous 'positively do not open' case where she has remained ever since.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that fucking priest did treat Annabelle disrespectfully. He did pick up Annabelle. Because he tried to show that there's no power in the doll.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he picked up Annabelle and he's like you have no power here, Annabelle. And he threw it across the room. And Ed Warren was like you're not gonna like that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're not gonna like what she does now. And so he got into a car accident. Lorraine was like be careful when you're driving on your way home! And then the priest almost got into an accident and then he called later on, he's like why did you tell me to be careful on the road? And Lorraine was like ah! Flapped her tits around.
MARCUS PARKS
But these are also all stories that the Warrens told.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No! Marcus! No way. There's no way this is not entirely accurate.
ED LARSON
Yeah, no one talked to the priest.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. No one talked. That's the thing about these stories.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We don't even know if the priest existed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That's the thing about all of these stories. These all come from Ed and Lorraine Warren. Very rarely, like sometimes you do get like in the last episode like Andrea Perron did speak, wrote a whole book about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, I did get a little bit of, not feedback, people said we did the Perron family dirty in terms of not believing anything about the haunting. Where she did write three entire books about the experiences they had at that house.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which I think it's again remembering that the spiritual world and these types of experiences with the phenomena are very, very subtle. And it's Ed and Lorraine Warren that create sort of a big giant story arc about all of these things after the fact.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's kind of the problem with involving Ed and Lorraine Warren. It's like this is a conversation that we've been having over the phone again and again is that you say that Ed and Lorraine are necessary to the paranormal world, like their sort of salesmanship and all that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cynically. In terms of the survival of the quote unquote "paranormal industry".
MARCUS PARKS
And what I say is that their involvement every time... See for me when I hear Ed and Lorraine Warren, my first thought is bullshit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This story is bullshit because they lie, they're liars.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
They're the ones that give the cynics every single bit of power they have to say no, this entire thing is total and utter horseshit because of these people right here, because of these hucksters.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because what we've learned is-
MARCUS PARKS
So if anything, I take no responsibility.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good, good. But I also think with them it was never about the ghosts at all.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was all about spreading the power and message of their savior.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They did effectively.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Which we'll get into that next episode. But they were wildly successful.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Three books doesn't impress me. There's seven Puppet Master movies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It takes hundreds of people to put together a Puppet Master film.
MARCUS PARKS
Don't you talk shit about Full Moon Productions on this show.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How dare you? They're a friend of the show.
MARCUS PARKS
Now while we don't have a straight debunk of the Annabelle story, we can say that it shares quite a bit with one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes, one starring Kojak himself, Telly Savalas. This episode, released five years before the Annabelle case, is titled The Living Doll.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, I remember this episode.
ED LARSON
It was a good one.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now the plot revolves around a doll called Talky Tina who terrorizes an infertile stepfather played by Telly Savalas who takes out his rage about being infertile on his young stepdaughter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've seen some documentaries that seem to begin with that scenario.
MARCUS PARKS
Seem to begin with that scenario. But then of course the man leaves and then somebody else comes in who's not infertile.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not infertile. Well infertile is different than impotent.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. No, no, I know that. It's just that (whining) I want a baby.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gimme, gimme, can you make the shoot, shoot?
MARCUS PARKS
So anyway, after the doll starts talking shit directly to Telly Savalas because he's being mean to the little girl, he tries destroying it in a number of ways. But Talky Tina always comes back, through blowtorch, vice, and circular saw.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Talky Tina, I love you. That's my Telly Savalas. My god, Talky Tina, goddamn if you weren't a little doll, (sniffing) what'd I do to you.
MARCUS PARKS
Well finally Telly's wife is about to leave him because Telly's obsession with the doll has gone off the rails. Finally he begins to think maybe it's all in his head and he gives the doll back to his stepdaughter if they promise not to leave. But that night Talky Tina causes Telly's death by tripping him at the top of the staircase. The mother finds his body and picks up the doll, who tells her:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My name's Talky Tina. And you'd better be nice to me.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, you got to do it another way. Like (high pitched voice) my name is Talky Tina and you better be nice to me!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I just did for Annabelle. Unfortunately I just did it for Annabelle so I feel like I had to change. It had to be different. My name's Talky Tina and you better be nice to me.
ED LARSON
(singing) Proud Mary keep on turnin'!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I think Ike really disliked when Tina was talking.
MARCUS PARKS
Now yes, a TV show that aired five years before the Annabelle incident is no more proof of plagiarism than the Outer Limits alien episode aired just before the Betty and Barney Hill abduction is. But the connection is that the name of the mother in the evil doll episode of the Twilight Zone was Annabelle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure. But that might have come from the people who had the doll originally.
MARCUS PARKS
No. It might have come from the people originally possibly.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know. That's one of those where haunted dolls and haunted objects have been around forever. So I'm not really that like... I don't think he stole it necessarily from the Twilight Zone in terms of the structure of the story. I just think that they thought someone had a creepy doll that moved around and then he basically took that and ran with it.
MARCUS PARKS
But they didn't name the doll Annabelle, remember Annabelle came up in the séance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that came from the media.
MARCUS PARKS
If that story is true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If that story is true.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the thing, we don't know if any of this story is true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well of course not. But there were witnesses to Annabelle but they again, they all just came from the mind of Ed Warren and Lorraine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I didn't even think about it like that. But yeah, it is just coming from them, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And furthermore... Yeah, that's the thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is just their story, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
There are plenty of witnesses and like well who told you about the witnesses? Ed and Lorraine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Well furthermore concerning the credibility of Annabelle, back in 2022 she made appearance at a paranormal convention hosted by NESPR and organized by the current caretaker of the Warrens' occult museum. That organizer was the Warrens' son-in-law, Tony Spera, who has taken the mantle of paranormal guru since both the Warrens died. Now even though the alleged demon inside Annabelle was said by the Warrens for years to be among the most dangerous in their custody, Tony still brought this artifact into a room full of potential possession victims.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude. Honestly if he possessed five people in that room, that's extremely good for business. Like that's why he did it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If it just turned into a rash of Annabelle duplicates in a room, that's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Incredible, yeah.
ED LARSON
All right, Annabelle. We got one more shot at this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a big show. It's an industry showcase. I'm gonna need you to give it all you got, Annabelle. All right? Get it all out.
MARCUS PARKS
But perhaps most telling is the side business Tony built around Annabelle. Quite recently Tony sold his own brand of vodka called the Harridan Vodka Paranormal Reserve which is said to have been aged in bottles next to the Annabelle doll.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That doesn't mean anything.
MARCUS PARKS
No, they fucking left a bunch of bottles of vodka near a doll.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That doesn't make any sense. If Annabelle was soaking in the vodka-
ED LARSON
That'd be awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
That'd be great.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I would love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That would be cool.
MARCUS PARKS
That'd be the Annabelle Reserve.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
God, that'd be awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
A giant bottle of vodka with like a little floating Annabelle in the middle of it.
MARCUS PARKS
And cheekily the vodka was limited to a run of 666 bottles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh diabolical.
MARCUS PARKS
And it came in a bespoke case with a Ouija board etched on the lid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's awesome actually. Now that I've made fun of it.
MARCUS PARKS
It was like $300.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, nevermind.
MARCUS PARKS
In other words, the current caretakers of Annabelle don't take her anywhere near as seriously as the Warrens claimed to. And that's if the Warrens ever took her seriously at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, it's still $199. Each bottle-
ED LARSON
Each bottle is $199?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. It's got a box. It comes in a Ouija box. Among the artifacts in the museum are a human skull, this is him talking about how it was in the museum and it was made in the museum, doesn't make any sense. Each bottle includes gloves for handling and protection.
MARCUS PARKS
I forgot it comes with rubber gloves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it comes with magic gloves. That's awesome.
ED LARSON
It's just Popov poured into different bottles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very much so. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, this is fucking bottom shelf.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But when it comes to hoaxes, nothing compares to the most infamous case of the Warren's career.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is their (whispering) dangerous.
MARCUS PARKS
The year was 1976.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ah, computers were nowhere.
ED LARSON
America, 200 years old.
MARCUS PARKS
It was the bicentennial. The paranormal revolution that swept the nation during that decade was in full swing and the entire world was about to hear of the existence of a little town in Long Island called Amityville.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh sweet, sweet Long Island.
MARCUS PARKS
(whispering) Get out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Amityville which means friendly town.
ED LARSON
Does it? Oh just like Amity Island.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as we extensively covered many years ago on our Amityville series in which we mostly focused on the murders, a young man named Ronnie Butch DeFeo murdered his parents and four siblings in a single night, moving from room to room with the .35 caliber rifle, supposedly because demonic voices had told him to do so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Remember his sister helped.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the theory but never been proven.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But the theory is that his sister helped.
ED LARSON
But the gunshots that it wake up other people in the other rooms?
MARCUS PARKS
That's the theory.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the demons. That's why they didn't wake up because it'd be demons making them go to sleep, make them very restful. Memory foam demons.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Or they have silencers.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did not have a silencer.
MARCUS PARKS
He did not have a silencer.
ED LARSON
The demon was the silencer.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
A year later, a year after the murders, just a year, a couple named George and Kathy Lutz moved into the DeFeo home with their children, claiming that the disturbingly recent murders didn't bother them at all because it gave them a chance to get a great deal on a nice house in a good neighborhood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh very much so. They bought that house for $50,000.
MARCUS PARKS
Jeez.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is a beautiful house.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Crazy property in Long Island. Do you know where it is, Rob?
MARCUS PARKS
I know where it is, I've been there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you've been there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I've visited the Amityville house. Or at least I stood on the sidewalk across the street. And this is a nice neighborhood. Amityville itself is quite nice although everyone definitely knew why me and Carolina were in Amityville that day.
ED LARSON
Of course!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they know everybody who's on the block.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they know everybody who lives in the neighborhood and they know all the looky loos who come and I imagine they put up... There's no fence?
MARCUS PARKS
There's no fence, no. They were having a fucking barbecue, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But didn't they also redo the sides and stuff? Like they don't have the cool, the distinctive... The distinctive windows are still there?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ROB OKEY
No, it's gone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The windows are gone.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh they're gone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they pulled it all out.
ED LARSON
Did they clean the blood off the walls?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. No. Again, that was a part of the thing. I did find it interesting that the Lutzes, and I don't know, is this true that they used all of the DeFeos' furnishing?
MARCUS PARKS
I can't remember if that was in the movie. I think they did end up using a lot of their same furniture.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I believe that that is true but I don't know. Sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com.
ED LARSON
Is every story we talk about today gonna be a Simpsons episode?
MARCUS PARKS
Now famously the supposed ordeal that George and Kathy Lutz suffered after moving into the Amityville house was chronicled in a book by author Jay Anson called 'The Amityville Horror' which was subsequently turned into a wildly successful film franchise. And so as with the other stories, let's first cover the official version.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. This is the Amityville is real, the haunting is real, and we're gonna go with it. For now!
MARCUS PARKS
Now the Lutzes claim that even before they'd spent a single night in the house, the strange occurrences began. Because of the murders they'd asked a priest named Father Pecoraro to bless the house on the day they moved in.
ED LARSON
Yeah, no problem, I'll bless it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, all right. That's easy for me to do. You want me to bring my brother, Father Pecorino? He'll bring some cheese.
MARCUS PARKS
But when the priest entered the room where DeFeo's two younger brothers had been killed, he heard a voice telling him too:
ED LARSON
(tiny voice) Get out.
MARCUS PARKS
The priest said that he didn't tell the Lutzes about the voice but did advise them to not use that space as a bedroom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would feel like I'd be like... If you actually heard a voice saying 'get out', it's not about the one room, buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's about the house.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
It's definitely about the house.
MARCUS PARKS
And they did indeed listen and instead turned it into Kathy's sewing room.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They openly were full atheists, the Lutzes.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They did not believe in anything, according to the book.
ED LARSON
Let's fill it with needles.
MARCUS PARKS
Now if you go off Ronnie DeFeo's early claims in which he said that demons made him kill off his entire family, the infestation of the DeFeo home had begun long before the Lutzes arrived.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There was a belief that the DeFeo family was experiencing things in the home which is why they went and bought this like idol, this religious idol that they thought quote unquote... This is again according to the Warrens that they bought this religious idol to protect the home. And then they would go on to surround the home with these garish statues. And that's not just because the DeFeos had a shitty Italian taste of decoration. It's because it was to protect the house.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's not, yeah, it's not just gaudy, weird marble things that I guess are just given to families in Long Island and in Queens.
ED LARSON
What were the idols?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just like a Virgin Mary and not St. Peter.
ED LARSON
Oh okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The very, very Italian outdoors-
ED LARSON
St. Francis of Assisi.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Sitting there with a bunch of squirrels and birds and shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, just going like any of you guys got any money?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And supposedly the whole thing resulted, like the whole thing culminated with the demon possessing Ronnie DeFeo and Ronnie DeFeo murdering the entire family because of the demon. Nevertheless the Lutzes' experience started small, conveniently following Ed Warren's demon possession timeline. Strange smells ranging from bile to perfume began emanating from different parts of the house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(burps)
MARCUS PARKS
Hundreds of flies infested the sewing room despite it being the middle of winter, black stains appeared on the toilets, and green slime ran down the walls.
ED LARSON
You got slime, Henry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do have slime. It is a thing that comes up quite often which is called an apportation according to Ed Warren.
MARCUS PARKS
Apportation?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Apportation.
MARCUS PARKS
An apportation, yeah. Well things then allegedly turned physical. Kathy Lutz was touched on multiple occasions and George was awoken every night at 3:15 am which was the alleged time of the DeFeo murders.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's also 3:00 am. See 9-6 are the busy hours for ghosts. This is true.
MARCUS PARKS
9:00 pm to 6:00 am.
ED LARSON
Oh okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's when ghosts are on shift. And that's when they're most powerful. 3:00 pm is ghost lunch, which is why the 3:00 am, that's a ghost's lunch period which is why they're most busy in our homes.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And when his sleep apnea kicked in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
George then began having visions, seeing his wife as an old hag. And Kathy even allegedly levitated above their bed. And deciding they needed spiritual guidance, the Lutzes once again contacted Father Pecoraro who refused to step foot back in the house after his first experience. With no one else to turn to, the Lutzes packed up after 28 days and moved in with Kathy's mother on another part of long Island.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Another win for a Long Island mother.
MARCUS PARKS
This is where Ed and Lorraine Warren enter the picture. And by this point they'd become quite the media savvy pair. They arrived with a psychic named Alex Tanous and a reporter from a local news station. And together they were gonna perform a séance to attempt contact with the spirits infesting the Amityville house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now according to Ed Warren the second that he got a call about the Amityville house, things were going wrong in his own home. Things like the telephone was going off and he'd pick it up and go hello? No one there. He said one of the worst things that he knew something was wrong. So when he arrived at the Amityville house and he was walking up the stairs, he tripped. He never trips. That's what he says. He said he was like I don't because you see my feet are too small to trip. Oftentimes it's like my toes actually get out of the way of my feet before they're even in the way. So it's actually many times, it's actually extremely, it's actually impossible for me to fall down.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know. He seems a little weak. He's got the little legs in the gigantic belly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Feel these feet. Touch my legs, touch my legs. You gonna tell me this is the legs of a big thick Italian boy.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually he does have pretty strong legs.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't think I don't have... If you want to know something about Ed Warren's body-
ED LARSON
It's you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's here.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like if you want to know, same size. I bet you if he had like outside of the Chinese Theater, if he had his handprints and his footprints and that-
ED LARSON
It would fit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know it'd be exactly the same. Exact same size.
ED LARSON
All right. Well strip.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Excuse me, Eddie. Let me take off my Spanx, it's gonna take 45 minutes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now if you'll remember, Lorraine Warren was the psychic of the pair who was sensitive to both spirits and auras everywhere she went. When she entered the Amityville house, she said that she felt an immediate and overwhelming sense of dread, saying that it was the deepest and closest to hell she ever wanted to get.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And when they went in, Lorraine, so she's obsessed with this guy. So anything that's from Italy Lorraine trusts implicitly. So she was just like I was under the spiritual tutelage of a saint by the name of Padre Pio. And I saw him, look at these pictures. And they show all these pictures of Padre Pio. He's an old man with a hood on. She's like can you see the holiness coming from him? He was from the Vatican and I held his symbol close to me knowing, oh Padre Pio, you will save me, you will protect me. And all you hear is like see. See, Lorraine. I will protect you with my body. She's like ooh, aye aye aye, Padre Pio. Aye aye aye indeed. But then Ed Warren walked in because first of all she's clutching this and you can see in these pictures she's clutching, she's looking around, very scary. Ed Warren's like I'm going right to the center of the whole thing, I'm going right to the center of the hurricane! So he was like-
ED LARSON
I didn't understand any of that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(shouting incoherently) Honestly if you spend hours-
MARCUS PARKS
He's going to the center of the hurricane.
ED LARSON
Oh okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you listen to Ed Warren talk, honestly he does not say full words.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm now discovering that's what the Connecticut accent is. It's mushmouth.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so he went down there and he was like this is what I was saying before, it's like he's hunting quail. He's like the way you gotta get the attention of a demon, religious provocation. So you go in there and go oh I love Jesus Christ! Oh Jesus, he's a good man of mine. I love that buddy. He's my best friend. He went downstairs and so what he does is... Because he barely sees ghosts but he knows a way to get a demon to jump at you is that you throw a cross everywhere and you basically just throw holy water into the air and go come on, demon! He's the first ghost bro.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He really is a ghost bro.
MARCUS PARKS
He goes in screaming.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's an aggressive thing. And so he says here he went down to the basement and he was like and I felt the single most impressive piece of spiritual activity I've ever experienced, like 100 needles pushed me down on the ground. And then Ed Warren did his patented, which he calls his religious resistance, and this is completely legitimate where he goes religious resistance! And he goes the power of Christ means that you will not! The power of Christ means you will let me go! The power of Christ means you won't touch me anymore! And he's like demons are so scared of the holiness of Ed Warren, demons run away.
MARCUS PARKS
Literally saying religious resistance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Religious resistance! Which is amazing.
ED LARSON
It's like citizen's arrest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is so good.
MARCUS PARKS
It's like fucking a D&D like I cast magic missile.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Religious resistance! Get away from me! Oh god. But he said then he came out of the basement of the Amityville Horror house and she just was like we gotta go and get everybody out.
MARCUS PARKS
Now of course nothing happened when they finally did film the séances. And three representatives from the American Psychical Foundation and the Psychical Research Foundation determined there was nothing paranormal in the house. There were a lot of psychical foundations in the 70s. Psychical was a word that they used to give paranormal activity a scientific kind of sound.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were trying.
MARCUS PARKS
They were trying real hard. I'm not saying that facetiously. I'm just saying psychical, they tried to get that to catch on. You know in Ghostbusters where they're studying at a university until they lose their funding?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You've never been in the private sector, they expect results.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now these are the guys of the American Psychical Foundation, those are the guys of the Ghostbusters before they get fired.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But the Warrens did take a series of photos and they claim that in one photo they captured the ghost of one of the DeFeo children. Now the photo is extremely creepy-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Appearing to show a little boy with glowing eyes peeking out from behind a banister. It's in black and white, it's everything you want from a ghost photo.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But it is generally believed that the photo is actually of one of the Warren's assistants, a guy named Paul Bartz.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He just had a tiny head.
MARCUS PARKS
He's a little man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he was a little guy.
MARCUS PARKS
And happened to look when the flash, because they always put the flash on at like the highest possible level.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh they do. He says that you have to to see ghosts, that's what Ed Warren says.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, of course. But that's the thing is that by doing that, he's creating the conditions to make a little white blob. He's doing photography badly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how you get ghosts. That's how you see ghosts. He also, do you know there's a second photo from Amityville house?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So when I was going through all the footage, there's a second photo and you see Lorraine Warren in a room and you see there is a moose head on the wall and she swears, she's like now if you look close in this capture, you see within the horns, she called them horns, the face of Padre Pio. And you just see this thing where she swears it's the face of Padre Pio watching over her from the horns of the moose. And then you see the very end of this horn, this little thing, it's like if you notice, Ed is like if you notice right here, right at the very top part, right at the end of the antler, little head. And if you see right there, is that not Ronnie DeFeo? And if you look at the end of this moose's horn, you will see there is a little head. I'll send it, I'll show it to you.
ED LARSON
Please.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It doesn't make any sense.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because Ronnie DeFeo is in prison at this point. He's not dead. Is it like in that fucking episode of Twin Peaks where Josie turns-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's captured inside.
MARCUS PARKS
Josie turns into the fucking... Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's captured inside. I still think it's bad photography. But he's like it's just funny where he's just like it's the look on his face.
ED LARSON
He's so excited.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's so happy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's so happy. So he's talking to Tony Spera in all of these various videos. And he's like if you just look, he's like right there, little head. That's what seals it. Like he's just so excited.
MARCUS PARKS
He's very matter of fact.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can't even argue against that.
MARCUS PARKS
No, he doesn't let you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. Oh, you can't.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
You can't argue.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He'll punch you in the face, he'll attack you. Because he'll attack you.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the photo was not shown publicly until 1979 when Kathy and George Lutz were on the Merv Griffin show promoting the big budget movie adaptation of The Amityville Horror, which we've all seen. It's fucking Margot Kidder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's great.
MARCUS PARKS
James Garner?
ED LARSON
Brolin.
MARCUS PARKS
Brolin.
ED LARSON
Josh Brolin's dad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, James Brolin. Yeah, they're all great in it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's great. He plays such a good like classy maniac.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that's like back in the day when beards meant you were crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
And here is where we get to the real story. Now it is very possible that there was some sort of paranormal activity going on in this house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If there was gonna be a place where there was gonna be paranormal activity, if you believe in the idea that trauma creates ghosts, that's where it would be.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But when you start listening to the people involved in publicizing the story, it's safe to say that it was not the portal to hell that Lorraine Warren claimed it to be. Allegedly the entire scheme to push the DeFeo home as a haunted house of unimaginable horrors was created by Ronnie DeFeo's defense attorney William Weber. See if you'll remember, the Lutzes moved into the house just a year after the murders. And Ronnie DeFeo hadn't yet gone to trial. In fact he was planning on pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. They were gonna use the demon angle. Now this story is a little convoluted because it is an idiotic plan.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It helps when the plan is also fucking stupid and you're trying to kind of describe it.
MARCUS PARKS
But William Weber approached the Lutz family with a book contract, saying that a ghost story based around the DeFeo case could somehow help DeFeo's defense and the Lutzes could make a pretty penny in the process.
ED LARSON
But there's gonna be a murderer on the loose that loves killing people in your home.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yes. But think about the book deal. That just leads to more book deals, buddy. If he comes back and kills everybody again.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no, he'll go to the hospital. You'll never have to deal with him. He'll never come back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You'll never see him, he's not coming back here.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the original deal was that a writer named Paul Hoffman was gonna take 40% of the profits while Weber, who was the defense attorney, George and Kathy Lutz, and two other people involved in the deal, they would all take 12% each. And as this was before the Son of Sam laws which prevented criminals from profiting off their crimes, each one of those people would shave off a little bit off of their own percentage to make sure that Ronnie DeFeo ended up with 5%.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean they wouldn't have a book without him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you might as well.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pay him out.
MARCUS PARKS
But in a case of the grifter getting grifted, the Lutzes were savvy enough to deny the deal but steal the idea and they took the story to writer Jay Anson for a far more lucrative 50/50 split.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the one family... Because normally this is always the criticism that comes up is all the money that's made after these types of stories and how people like financially profit from stories of their homes being haunted. And this is the one where the Lutzes, yes, they did make out pretty handsomely. But is it worth it to make that much money for what it then does to destroy your entire life after the fact? So it just depends on what's your price. What's your price of never having a normal life ever again?
MARCUS PARKS
But it's the same question that people ask like a criminal. It's like isn't it easier to just get a job than it is to steal cars?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh con jobs are so much harder.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As a comedian, which is essentially a lifelong con job, it is so much more difficult than being an accountant.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Except I physically couldn't be one.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like an accountant.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the question people ask but people still do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, sure, of course.
ED LARSON
Man, when I worked at The Pourhouse, everyone, there was like 10 owners and they all would come in the office and kick me out and then I'd come back and there'd be less money. I always had a joke that if none of the owners stole from each other, they'd all make the same amount of money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you'd all just have money.
MARCUS PARKS
And so after the publication of 'The Amityville Horror', a legal battle ensued with the original dealmakers. And DeFeo's lawyer came out and said that the entire story was a hoax created between himself and the Lutzes over many bottles of wine. And it could be the help, the Lutzes might have been like yeah, some really weird shit's happening in this house. And then it just sort of goes from there. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger until it becomes the story of the Amityville Horror. But the real story is probably just some real weird shit happening here.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well then you have the two most, The Colonel Parkers of the paranormal world, Ed and Lorraine Warren, who can show up and can be like hey-
MARCUS PARKS
Well they anoint you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They anoint you.
MARCUS PARKS
And they anoint this house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're like here's the brand.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Warrens brand. Now we could do a bunch of shit with this. They remind me a lot of Otho from Beetlejuice. It's just this idea that they could come in and they're like there's money here. Like I realize as an adult, because Beetlejuice when I was a kid, I'm watching it and it's all like fun and games because I'm just thinking about Beetlejuice. But then you realize like no, it's actually kind of like this funny concept about monetizing the paranormal.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These like stupid New York yuppies wanting to turn everything into a hustle and they're doing the same thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were exploitive managers of ghosts.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they figured out how to basically turn them all out like the Jacksons.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup.
ED LARSON
And ghosts are great talent because you don't gotta pay them.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't gotta pay them, they don't gotta get a cut.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I mean? And there needs to be some form of goth cop that can get in there and can get inbetween these con men and ghosts.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the goth ACLU.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There has to be the goth ACLU that can arrive, act as ghosts, maybe just be kind of, I don't know, undercover as ghosts.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And she'll be like oh my god, I'm chilled to the grave, Damian. Yes. Totally a ghost. Like just fucking get their asses, dude. Because they're fucking trying to drink ghost milkshake.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right. Well even Ronnie DeFeo himself, the mass murderer, he said that the story was created by his lawyer in a bid to both bolster the insanity plea and make a large amount of money in the process, later saying that he never heard any demons at all. And DeFeo has never really like settled on why he did it. He's like yeah, I killed my whole fucking family. And sometimes he'll say like yeah, I did it with my sister. And sometimes he'll say like yeah, I did it because they were gonna cut me out of the will. He changes. Yeah, I did it because I was doing a whole shitload of acid at the time.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was.
MARCUS PARKS
He was. He was doing a lot of acid. Well the lawsuit was settled out of court but in the end the person who made the most money off Amityville was Jay Anson. As of today, the book has sold upwards of 10 million copies and the movie is still one of the highest grossing horror movies of all time. And that's just the first Amityville. There are how many, what, five?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think a bunch.
ED LARSON
There's a remake too.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah and multiple remakes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The Lutzes however did not make quite as much money as you'd expect them to. In all they ended up with about $200,000. It's about a million bucks in today's currency. It's pretty good but nowhere near the 50/50 split they were promised. They did however make many paid appearances over the years. So there was that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they got theirs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They got their little chunk of their story for themselves. But that was weirdly how the Warrens were both evil and not evil where like they made sure you get a cut.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like if we're gonna do this con, you get some.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But the third party to benefit off the Amityville story was of course Ed and Lorraine Warren. Even though they were only involved briefly, they were the voices that lent credibility to the story and talking about Amityville became a reliable moneymaker for the Warrens, not to mention what it did for their reputation. Additionally the Warrens also made a good chunk of change working as consultants for The Amityville Horror Part II.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Did you ever see part two?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm certain I've seen all of them. It's one of those. This is an entirely-
ED LARSON
They blend together.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. This is an entirely like... Amityville Horror one, original, great haunted house film. The rest are kind of, I put them in the same category as the Psycho sequels.
ED LARSON
Yeah and House II.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I liked House II though.
ED LARSON
The People Under the Stairs II.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The People Under the Stairs II is bad.
MARCUS PARKS
But when it came to the Warrens and movie adaptations, none oversold their involvement more than the sequel to The Conjuring.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all packaging and marketing.
MARCUS PARKS
God. So The Conjuring 2 took Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, the actors who played Ed and Lorraine Warren, across the Atlantic to the UK where they were portrayed as central characters in what I consider to be the most credible haunting in modern history. That's just my opinion but it's what I consider. That is the case of the Enfield poltergeist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I put it up there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As one of my favorites.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now we just recently revisited the Enfield case on our new show, Last Update on the Left.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But if you don't subscribe or you just don't fucking feel like it, don't worry about it, we did do an extensive full two part series.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes we did.
MARCUS PARKS
So you can just go listen to that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a lot of stuff on Enfield, yeah. Our statements on Enfield and Amityville have already been expressed.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And not to get people to not listen to our show but the Apple show was awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
The Apple TV documentary about Enfield is incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, that was the best. It was wonderful.
ED LARSON
That's incredible.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the whole reason why we... Pretty much the update is just us talking about that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's great. Fucking I love that documentary series.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the broad strokes of the Enfield story is that a divorcee named Margaret Hodgson and her four children living in council housing in the London suburbs were haunted by a poltergeist starting in August of 1977. Soon after the story hit the papers, two legitimate and credible investigators named Guy Playfair and Maurice Gross got involved.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And Maurice Gross was another true stylistically important member of the paranormal society.
ED LARSON
They all kind of look like you.
MARCUS PARKS
Just a bit. It's like if you put all of them together, it's you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With a convertible.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because I think it was Maurice Gross or was it Guy Playfair that drove the convertible?
MARCUS PARKS
Guy Playfair. No, Maurice Gross drove the convertible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The ugly one drove the convertible, that's what you gotta go. Fucking have fun with it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was the fun guy. They all liked him best though. He's the kind of guy you don't see coming, right. Maurice Gross, you don't think you're gonna fuck that guy. But the thing is yeah, he's got that handlebar mustache and he's got sort of Mr. Monopoly hair but the thing is he goes down like a fucking demon. You don't think he don't eat pussy like it's a fucking ghost he wants to kiss?
MARCUS PARKS
Well over a period of 14 months, Playfair and Gross conducted the most in depth and convincing investigation into a case of paranormal activity ever documented.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I believe that they did what the Warrens wish they could. They did more than the Warrens ever wish they could have done.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the Warrens didn't wanna do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they didn't believe in the scientific process.
MARCUS PARKS
No, they didn't believe in the... The Warrens had their way doing things which they believed was the only way of doing things and their way of doing things was based entirely on faith. While Playfair and Gross, their way of doing things was based entirely on what can we prove.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yeah. They were sitting there with a recorder every fucking day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no. They were putting in the work. They didn't just... Because the Warrens just show up, they yell a bunch, and then they leave. That's not investigation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't see anything wrong with that. I don't see somebody who's very little prepared, who arrives and improvises a great deal and he might be a bit different bodied than other men. But that doesn't make him a con man or someone who doesn't deserve a beautiful wife and a home and a life.
MARCUS PARKS
But since the Enfield poltergeist case became such big news in the UK, word of the story eventually got back to Ed and Lorraine Warren.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We gotta get there!
MARCUS PARKS
Who arrived on the Hodgson's doorstep unannounced and uninvited right in the middle of the investigation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, you British fucks, everybody out! America has arrived.
MARCUS PARKS
Now The Conjuring 2 portrayed the situation as a holy war between the Warrens and the evil spirit, which also involved the painting of a nun which spun off into two highly profitable Nun movies as a part of the ever expanding Conjuring universe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There is no actual story tied to Ed Warren's painting of a nun, none of that is real.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
None of it is connected to anything.
MARCUS PARKS
No final battle between the Warrens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No painting of a nun in the fucking Hodgson's house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That did not happen.
ED LARSON
Marcus, ask me how many of those movies I saw.
MARCUS PARKS
How many of those movies did you see?
ED LARSON
None.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Eddietunes.com, it doesn't stop there. He will have sex with your father.
ED LARSON
Let me see your balls, old man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come on, let him see your father's balls.
MARCUS PARKS
I didn't even make it through the first one. I was so bored.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Natalie left the theater as I was watching it. I fell asleep, she went outside and went on her phone for 20 minutes outside of the theater.
ED LARSON
After I came, I fell asleep.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in fact the Warrens spent exactly one day at the Hodgson house before being chased off after proving themselves to be, in Guy Playfair's opinion, cynical opportunists. From what Playfair recalled about his conversation with the Warrens, Ed boasted that he could help Playfair make a lot of money in this case if he played his cards right. And Playfair remembered thinking that that was all he needed to know about Ed and Lorraine Warren.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sounds like a fucking nerd to me.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Well he's cutting his money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course.
ED LARSON
This guy is like oh I'm gonna have to give this fucker a cut?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, this fat idiot shows up and now you get 10%.
MARCUS PARKS
Guy Playfair did write the book on the Enfield Poltergeist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did.
MARCUS PARKS
But so undersold the story in the first-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's British.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He undersold the story quite a bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's British.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He didn't know, he didn't know the power of storytelling. Ed Warren, again, Colonel Parker of ghosts. He just shows up and gets his 10%.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Playfair told Ed that money wasn't their goal. And after the Warrens had a spirited and friendly discussion with Maurice Gross, they actually play it in the documentary and it's just the three of them just bullshitting in the kitchen-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The Warrens left, never to return. One day. The story told in the pro-Warren biography 'The Demonologist' however is altogether different.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've been reading 'The Demonologist' and I will say, and also was reading 'The Devil in Connecticut', poorly written books. But you know what's nice with how poorly written they are? Much more easy to follow than most of the esoteric books I read.
MARCUS PARKS
I wouldn't call these books esoteric though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just saying in terms... But Ed Warren does teach you his process throughout these books.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure. Because it's extraordinarily oversimplified and it's all based on faith.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
ED LARSON
I can't help but think like so they went all the way to Europe to do this, all the way to London or whatever to see the Enfield poltergeist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
You think they did anything else while they were over there?
MARCUS PARKS
They had a vacation.
ED LARSON
They had a vacation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a work vacation, buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Boom, done. Work vacation.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Literally out of there one day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yup.
ED LARSON
And the rest of it's all expenses paid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Go to the stupid ferris wheel, go out being like would you even believe that, I can't even believe it, the beer's warm.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Ed blamed the phenomenon on the mother being divorced and being on welfare and additionally blamed the girls for using a Ouija board. Ed also claimed that he investigated the haunting for a week instead of what it really was which was one conversation in the kitchen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're going to see his involvement in these stories and all these things, this is going to be a trope.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's going to exaggerate more and more as we go.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And you will also see that the more he is actually involved in the story, the worse things are. Well in his version of the Enfield poltergeist, he claimed that the girls described seeing black cloudy figures manifest out of thin air. This claim is especially galling because from what I can remember from the hundreds of hours of tapes recorded in the Hodgson house, I don't remember them ever talking about spirit manifestations, much less demonic cloud monsters.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no. They did not say any of that shit.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This actually was a fairly compelling haunting story that involved... All the fishy stuff was her jumping and there was like the story of them cornering the girls and one of them sort of admitting that they were making it up but that even was done behind closed doors and was super weird. It was with that puppeteer guy, the ventriloquist.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The ventriloquist cornered a couple of little girls, got a couple of little girls alone in a room-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And convinced them to say that everything was a hoax.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because guess what? All you have to do is throw your voice across the room and all of a sudden going like (muffled) yeah, I made it up. And then the other girl is like that's amazing! And he's like see, I didn't move my mouth.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I didn't open my zipper either.
MARCUS PARKS
That's what I liked about Playfair and Gross too, he's like yeah, they did try hoaxing a lot of it. They were very bad at it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they were dumb. They were bad at it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, there were a couple of little girls.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
There was a ton of shit that they did not hoax. But really Ed's claims about their involvement at Enfield, they're relatively harmless lies. But that was not the case two years later in 1980 when the Warrens became involved with the case of young David Glatzel. This was the infamous 'devil made me do it' case which was a straight up murder portrayed in The Conjuring 3. Now to give credit where credit is due, much of the information about this case comes from the highly recommended Netflix documentary The Devil on Trial which very much shows how intensely traumatized a person can become after going through a so-called exorcism.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is one of my favorite parts about this series is that there's so many angles of information, you can really see where everybody's bias lives.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because Ed Warren and Lorraine Warren, they have all of their versions of the stories are heavily documented and they put it down beat by beat by beat by beat. What's nice about this one is that you've got the courts involved. So you have to have, there is some outside eyeballs on this story.
MARCUS PARKS
And Amityville as well also got the courts involved as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. So there's some outside eyeballs looking at this. So it's really interesting. I don't know what happened in this. We talk about exorcisms all the time, most time it seems to be a really a good way to just torture a child for a bunch of weeks.
MARCUS PARKS
Now David Glatzel was 11 years old in 1980 and he claimed to have his first run in with the devil at the home of his sister Debbie and her boyfriend Arne. After seeing visions of an evil old man, Glatzel claimed that one night he was violently pushed back on his bed, then saw what looked like the sort of devil one might see in a 70s Halloween costume. You know the red bodysuit, the horns, the cape, the pitchfork.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
John Candy.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah. (maniacal laughter)
MARCUS PARKS
But the eyes, Glatzel said, were black as a chunk of coal. And David, again, 11 years old... Or Adam Sandler in Dirty Work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Come with me! Sorry, that immediately got in there. But the eyes, Glatzel said, were black as a chunk of coal. And David, again, 11 years old, felt as if the devil himself was coming for his soul. Now since David was from a Catholic family, his mother called their local priest to bless the house. This however seemed to only make the entity angrier. David's behavior became worse and before the Glatzels knew it, Ed and Lorraine Warren, still riding high off Amityville, they were knocking on the door. Now the Glatzels found the Warrens to be quite affable, the sort of people you could trust, which that's how most people saw the Warrens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They said Ed was down to earth.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Lorraine, just wispy enough to talk to.
MARCUS PARKS
But Ed, possibly overconfident after tasting a bit of fame, he went all in on attacking the supposed demon from the word go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Ed started questioning young David Glatzel, provoking what was there as Ed put it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Think you're better than me? Think you're fucking better than me?
MARCUS PARKS
Well after religious talk, holy water, and the invocation of Christ's name, Ed got the entity good and angry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Then asked it to knock three times if it had the power. And according to some members of the Glatzel family, this supposedly happened. Three knocks powerful enough to shake the whole house came soon after Ed's request. Meanwhile Lorraine had been quote unquote "discerning the vibrations of the family", trying to figure out who all the demon had attached to. This is when Lorraine pointed to David and said that there was a large dark mass standing next to the little boy. It was as they suspected a demon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A demon!
ED LARSON
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
And this absolute declaration terrified everyone present.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See this was a pattern, this was a show that they had built. That they walk in, he does confront the demon. But Lorraine is a really interesting sidekick because Ed's all in your face. It's very kind of like an actual magic show. He's being super gregarious and funny and engaging and directly really intense and yelling at you. Lorraine's walking around clutching her chest like this mysterious person. They do this each time where they kind of split up. She goes and walks around the house, he talks directly to the demon. She comes back in the room and apparently it's all this where she goes up to Ed, as they're questioning, she goes like whispers in his ear. Like remember when 9/11?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When he went up to him being like hey-
ED LARSON
You gotta stop reading this book.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta stop. (whispering) Hey, stop. I know this book is great but something's going on. But she goes up, she was like (whispering) there's the demon right there. Like she comes up right next to him as he's talking to... And it's this whole like, everyone's like no! Shit! They fucking did it!
ED LARSON
It's a good show.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And continuing his spiel, Ed told the family that David was already in the oppression stage of possession, the second stage in which the demon speaks to him and urges him to do things that are out of character. The next stage was possession. And Ed explained in David's presence what they could expect if and when that happened. But before anyone could do anything about this demon, David's mother had to document everything that happened so they could formally request an exorcism from the Catholic church. So in other words, the Warren showed up, scared the hell out of the Glatzel family, and left them with a boatload of Vatican paperwork to fill out.
ED LARSON
I fucking hate paperwork.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh man. And Vatican paperwork which is literally printed on the skin of children.
ED LARSON
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's so hard to write on.
ED LARSON
Catholic paperwork is so fucking annoying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I bet. I thought doesn't god know everything?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can't god fucking handle this fucking paperwork? Why does god make me have to do his signature? Doesn't god know I'm fucking here?
ED LARSON
Yeah, man. I had to become a godfather recently-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I had to do that garbage too.
ED LARSON
And they sent me a thing in the mail and it's like if this is bent, then it doesn't, like if you crease this piece of paper, then it's all null and void. And it's like I don't believe in god!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude. If I crease this paper, god should straighten it out!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well predictably, soon after Ed and Lorraine's visit, David Glatzel did indeed appear to become possessed. He raged and screamed almost constantly, made demonic noises, growled, cursed out his family. Eventually he would physically attack anyone who came near him. He started choking himself to the point of passing out. If you watch the documentary, he was... I mean because that's the thing, he was like 11-12 but he was a big 11-12.
ED LARSON
I know that story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he had a lot of meat. He really had quite a lot of meat.
MARCUS PARKS
He's a big boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did kind of like, I feel like this is probably very similar to what Tom Hanks had to deal with with Chet. He was uncontrollably... I just kept thinking last night when I was watching from the stream, I was thinking about bad things happen to heavy children. But he was a meaty boy. But according to Ed Warren, you wouldn't even believe if you look at the size of his father, of course he's gonna be that big. His father was Grizzly Epps. But even he couldn't keep the little boy down on the bed when he was jumping up and down. He was like talking about this concept that like... Because he was his, the dad was big.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he was huge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The dad was big. and he said that it took grown six grown men to keep the little boy on the bed.
ED LARSON
It's puberty.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. As a result, family members took shifts so they could keep an eye on David lest he hurt himself or someone else. And David's sister's boyfriend, Arne Johnson, he would also take shifts. Arne Johnson, the boyfriend, he completely bought into every single bit of this.
ED LARSON
What a good guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well...
MARCUS PARKS
Well...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love that.
MARCUS PARKS
The father however was working two jobs and he wasn't home much. So he more or less stayed out of it. But around the time the family started sitting with David in shifts, his mother once again contacted the Warrens. Now Ed naturally said that David was now absolutely possessed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
And if this continued the devil himself was gonna destroy their family and someone could quite possibly wind up dead by the end of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now this is saying he's let her to her own devices, she's doing her own exorcisms on David as they go.
MARCUS PARKS
This of course led to even more panic. But the Warrens managed to fast track the paperwork and a minor exorcism was approved. Actually three minor exorcisms were approved.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know that, right?
ED LARSON
He had three?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's minor and major exorcisms, there's baby exorcisms and there's fucking big time exorcisms.
ED LARSON
Is it for adults and children?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's like one's considered like a half step measure. That's sort of like an appetizer to an exorcism.
ED LARSON
Hey, how about you stop this?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey listen, we've all been kind of talking about this and we feel like you're bumming people out. But then they do a big one. But apparently it takes less paperwork to get a small one.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now David Glatzel, who still believes wholeheartedly that he was possessed, he says that the last thing he remembered concerning the exorcism was the beginning of the ritual which starts with the recitation of the lord's prayer. It was said that the room then got cold which was followed by David entering full on possession mode, growling, jerking and such and such. Supposedly when a priest named Father Virgulak, and if I'm getting a fucking exorcism I want Father Virgulak to do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no, I definitely want a Klingon to be there.
MARCUS PARKS
He placed a crucifix on David's forehead and it supposedly sizzled and David turned blue as his tongue swelled up in his mouth. Henry, you were telling me something about how these things work, like these things that people see, these incredible things that people see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This also happened in the Amityville horror house. Now when you see... What you guys don't understand is none of you understand.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I'm an idiot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're an idiot. Anybody who's listening to me is a fucking idiot. So a lot of times, like in the Amityville horror house, one of the things the Lutzes described was that there was a series of events that happened. Like the banister to the main stairs exploded. But then you notice when you went in to go look after the fact, there was a banister, it was attached, don't know why. Couldn't find any of the flies they heard. Because what that was, as a matter of fact, was a thing called telepathic hypnosis that Ed Warren swears by which is the idea that the demons make you see stuff that's not there so that you become a liar against yourself. So that what they do is it projects these things into your mind of these are what you see and then you go and tell people. They terrorize you just on your own but then when you go tell people that this thing happened to me and then they show up to go look and there's no quote unquote "evidence" of it-
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's because the picture of it was put in your mind by the demon just to make you upset. And then you're then doubly upset because then you had to lie to your friend.
ED LARSON
Oh. It's like in The Gate when the kids wake up and get out of hell and the house is fine and the parents come home and it's like oh don't worry about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. Or at the end of Troll 2 where it turned out it was not fine and the ball comes rolling out and it turns out the whole family has been taken by the trolls.
MARCUS PARKS
Nice. Well so you're saying-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So that he saw this in his head.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right?
MARCUS PARKS
So you're saying that he puts the crucifix on his forehead and it says that didn't happen but-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. It's the demon making him think it happened.
MARCUS PARKS
So did it really happen?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do things that you think happen happen because you think that they happen or did they happen because they happen?
ED LARSON
Maybe covered in a bunch of hot sauce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what you did to me.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In Murderfist.
ED LARSON
Yeah well no, I wasn't a part of that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no.
ED LARSON
You came over to my house covered in hot sauce and I sold you weed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, thank you. I still wanna say thank you for that. But no, it's very interesting. It's the way he talks about the concept of-
MARCUS PARKS
So it's how he explains away these crazy things that supposedly happened during exorcisms that never get caught on camera.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And then hauntings in general.
MARCUS PARKS
And then it's just that it happens in your mind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And what's interesting is if you look up telepathic hypnosis, that was one of the main things that the CIA was worried about with the Russians is that they thought that they could telepathically change our minds from Moscow and that's why we stepped up the psychic spy program.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh, 'The Men Who Stare At Goats' type shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well this-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Does that help anything? Have I helped?
ED LARSON
Nah. No, we're lost for sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this was during just one of the three exorcisms done on David Glatzel which as we know can often be drawn out, torturous affairs for the people supposedly being exorcized.
ED LARSON
And everyone else.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Near the end though, afraid that David was gonna die, Arne Johnson, the boyfriend, he called out for the devil to take him instead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Take me instead! He's like quit messing with my little buddy!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Quit messing with my little buddy and be on me!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that's when the exorcism just sort of ended. Although Ed Warren did admonish Arne for opening himself up to demon possession.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They all were angry.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Lorraine still talks about it. She was just like you never challenge a demon!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because Ed and Lorraine were there during all the exorcisms, like Ed's there throwing the fucking holy water-
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it was recorded. It's all recorded.
ED LARSON
But their entire job is challenging demons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but not Arne's job.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Arne doesn't know how to do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Arne don't do it right.
MARCUS PARKS
Because remember Ed Warren is a fucking, he's a Christian superhero. Ed and Lorraine are superheroes in their own mind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ed Warren got bitten by a radioactive Christ. He is literally spirituality personified. Yeah sure, he might not seem like that when you're collecting his tolls on the highway, he's a bit irate because he doesn't understand taxes go back to help everybody. But also he just fucking knows that his religiosity is at its maximum.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And Arne's the gung ho rookie that gets shot on this first shootout.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tell Theresa I love her!
MARCUS PARKS
Now Lorraine Warren claimed that after that, after Arne said come at me-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come inside me, ghost.
MARCUS PARKS
She was getting visions of Arne Johnson committing violence with a knife. She even called up the police and said hey, I think Arne Johnson's going to commit a crime with a knife. Which the police can't really do anything about that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. You can't say yeah, my buddy Arne is gonna do something. And you're like yeah, probably, his name's Arne.
MARCUS PARKS
Well from what she said the devil does not strike right away but will wait until you're vulnerable. And it was said that after the exorcism Arne was starting the show some the same symptoms of demon possession as David. His girlfriend said that he would start to hallucinate-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Do the growling thing, pass out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like I fuck your mother, I'm fucking your mother in hell, I'm gonna fuck her. Stuff like that.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah. Fat blue tongue.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Fat blue tongue, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Weird stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Meanwhile Arne moved in with Debbie Glatzel. This didn't prevent her from moving in with the guy.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Loved him. Still loved him. Honestly it just shows how hard it is to be a single lady.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And by the way, she stayed with him through everything that's about to come, she stayed with them and they're still married to this day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a good woman.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Debbie soon got a job as a dog groomer working for their landlord, a guy named Alan Bono. This of course is when Lorraine's supposed visions came to pass in a murder most violent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, did you see this movie? It's so fucking bad. Conjuring 3 sucks so fucking bad.
MARCUS PARKS
Conjuring 3 sucks so fucking much.
ED LARSON
Is that the one where they have all the different religions like around him at the end, doing the exorcism?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes! Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They bring in the rabbi and they bring in-
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, it might be. And this is the movie that also talks about-
ED LARSON
Or is that The Exorcist? It might be the new Exorcist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh maybe you're right.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe, I don't know.
ED LARSON
I've derailed us. I started this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's one of those.
MARCUS PARKS
All I know is I saw The Conjuring 3 and it fucking sucked.
ED LARSON
It sucked. I remember getting mad, yeah. It's so bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It sucks.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So on February 16, 1981, months after Arne did the whole 'take me' thing during the exorcism, he, Debbie Glatzel, Arne's younger sisters, and their landlord, Alan Bono, they were all hanging out. Now Alan Bono was day drinking and he was day drinking heavy.
ED LARSON
Good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In the movie they do this thing where he's like playing the radio too loud but it's at the dog groomers and it's just like...
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like you're torturing all these dogs. And he's like doing all this cocaine and smoking weed in it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because Alan Bono, he owned a dog kennel and he did dog grooming. And that's where Debbie was working at the time and also he was their landlord but they were also hanging out and getting drunk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Back in the day people used to hang out with their landlords.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, its 1981. It's weird.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I find it's best to be drunk when you yell at dogs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Leave them alone.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know. I was friends with one of my landlords back in-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I was too.
MARCUS PARKS
In Lubbock. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. In Tallahassee we were always friends with our landlords because it turned out they were like, now I realize I thought they were ancient but they were like 25.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well after Alan started day drinking, Debbie told everyone to leave because Alan was getting weird and aggressive. This, Arne claimed, was the last thing he remembered. From later testimony, Bono grabbed Arne's sister's arm and refused to let go. Arne confronted him and while his sister ran for the car, Debbie tried standing between Arne and Bono. Arne then began growling like an animal and pulled out a pocket knife which he used to repeatedly stab Alan Bono, ripping open his chest and stomach, killing him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's not easy to kill somebody with a small knife but if you do it fast, you do that fact that like stick, stick, stick, stick and you ugh, fuck! Fuck! That's how you get somebody fast.
ED LARSON
You're literally practicing for prison.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Stick-stick-stick-stick-stick-stick.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the next time Arne was seen he was being picked up two miles from the scene of the crime. And according to his story, he woke up in the police station having no idea why he was there or what had happened.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they showed in the movie and apparently that's how it was. He was covered in blood, the cops came up to him and he was like what'd I do?
MARCUS PARKS
Now immediately most of the Glatzel family and the Warrens were convinced that Arne had been possessed by one of the demons that had possessed David. And it was this demon that made Arne murder Alan Bono.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As a matter of fact they were so sure they went straight to the police.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Arne's defense attorney however, a man named Martin Minnella, didn't believe the possessed by demons angle but still went to speak with Ed and Lorraine Warren to learn more. Supposedly Minnella's mind was changed after the Warrens played him audio recordings of alleged demonic possessions. The ones that just sounds like a bunch of cats.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he played the video, if you listen to the footage, if you listen to the possession footage, it does still just sound like a kid screaming.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like when we covered Anneliese Michel and you hear those screams, I still feel like those screams were way more haunting for me.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the screams of a dying girl.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yes. But there's something here where this guy, I just feel like let's just put it out there, Martin Minnella was desperate for an angle. And when he went in there and they're like you gotta look at this, this is the only way it could possibly be, there's no way! Because Ed was like in this tape right here, what you hearing is a little boy. Because David Glatzel's going you're a douchebag, mom! You're a douchebag! And he's like no child knows the word douchebag. You know what I mean? Like how dare you think that anybody would call-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that a 12 year old boy would know the word douchebag.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also think about how fun that would be to fake being possessed so you can call your mom a fat bitch because that's all he does is call her a fat bitch.
MARCUS PARKS
Over and over again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like how fun that would be. You go like I hate you! And you can get away with all that shit, dog. You can say anything you want, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
And that was one of the theories.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Radiohead sucks! Whoa! Holy shit, whoa!
MARCUS PARKS
Hey!
ED LARSON
He must be possessed.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the problem with the 'devil made me do it' defense is that one cannot legally prove nor disprove the existence of demons in a court of law.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Minnella however thought that he could make a convincing argument if he was allowed to play the Warren tapes in court.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they do talk about they consider god real in the court.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what they're trying to say. It's like well we swear on the bible.
ED LARSON
Exactly!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. So why can't the devil be in there? And it's because you're trying to get a guy off for murder.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This other thing is literally a quaint old way we've always done things.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's an archaic symbol.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Of quote unquote "honesty". But it seems like more people that hold the bible in their hand are lying more often than not. But it's actually not an excuse for him killing somebody.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah. I mean we can come to the conclusion that Arne definitely was not pro bono.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Eddietunes.com. That's number three.
MARCUS PARKS
Number three.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We need to get a standard going,
MARCUS PARKS
Eddietunes.com. Well concerning the Glatzel family, one member had a far different perspective on the affair than what was presented in 'The Demonologist' and The Conjuring 3. That member is David Glatzel's older brother, Carl Glatzel. Carl believes that his brother was simply having severe mental health issues and said that while his mother put on the appearance of a holy roller in public, she never believed in demons until she met Ed and Lorraine Warren. Furthermore Carl Glatzel said that while David was certainly acting up before the Warrens arrived, it was only after Ed Warren walked David through the symptoms of possession did David start acting possessed. It started with the priest. The priest comes in, we're gonna bless the house. He starts acting a little crazy. And then when fucking Ed Warren comes in and says like okay, this is what happens-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he tells him what to do.
MARCUS PARKS
He tells him exactly what to do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He says like you're gonna make noises, you're gonna curse out your mother, you're going to thrash around on the bed. Like he asks you these things in the way-
MARCUS PARKS
Very leading questions.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And basically from Carl's perspective, the Warrens had given David a walkthrough on how to put on a show. Then they came by every day for a week to record that show which gave everyone in the room exactly what they wanted. David got attention, he got praise while the Warrens got their evidence. But as far as how Carl Glatzel knew that all this was just an act, he pointed to one telling if abusive incident.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is one of those that feels like a Katt Williams bit. Where this is very like it's just very funny.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I can see this playing out.
MARCUS PARKS
I can see this. Yes, I can very much see this playing out. Well one night after the Warrens weren't coming around so much but before the exorcism, David was doing his whole show, he was cursing at his mother, he was growling, he was making a hubbub.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And apparently he was going too far.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like he was saying stuff that was like really out of school about his mom.
ED LARSON
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. This happened to be one of the nights that David's father was at home. And deciding that he'd had enough, David's father stood up and slapped David in the face.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He came in-
ED LARSON
The big motherfucker, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he's a big dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Huge motherfucker. He picks him up, he's like I'm sick of this shit. You're not gonna fuck around with us anymore. He clocked him on the side of the head, threw him back down to the ground.
MARCUS PARKS
Miraculously David was no longer possessed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh yeah.
ED LARSON
Ah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know that dad voice. That is like a type of...
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that that voice, because my father was never around but when he used the dad motion it's like everything would stop in its tracks.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh no, my father could stop time with his voice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah. When they would get kind of quiet too. And then he's like come here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come here.
ED LARSON
Come here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, watching him get up and see that thing-
ED LARSON
Come here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come with me, come with me. You know what I mean? Like that thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The act dropped immediately. And from then on it seemed like the devil only liked coming around when David's father happened to be at work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I bet. Yeah, I bet he was scared to death. Being like I actually do need this body case so I can't let the father kill this thing.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I know I'm the devil and all but that fucking hurt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't even believe that. I invented pain.
MARCUS PARKS
Concerning the murder of Alan Bono, Carl Glatzel recalled that Arne Johnson was extremely possessive over his sister Debbie. And there were rumors that Debbie and Alan Bono were in a relationship.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It seemed like they were like work-wife, work-husband.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That meant that there was definitely a motive to kill Alan Bono in a drunken moment of passion. And if this tells you anything, Arne Johnson says he blacked out during the stabbing of Alan Bono because of demon possession. But the first thing Johnson said when he was put into a police cruiser was:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"I need help because I've got a drinking problem."
ED LARSON
We've all got demons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Sounds like a different kind of blackout to me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, it does. It does sound like a different type of blackout. I do find there's an extreme similarity between David Glatzel later on when you're watching the documentary series to Daniel Lutz in My Amityville Horror.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When you're watching My Amityville Horror which talks with him, like you see something in the two of them that is very, very similar which is a lot of trauma.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a lot of trauma for one reason or another.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Something. God knows.
MARCUS PARKS
Something. Yeah, god knows what the fuck happened to those two dudes. But in the end the judge in Arne's case did not accept his very real plea of not guilty by virtue of possession.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the thing, both Conjuring 3 and the documentary series, which is good, builds up all this stuff about we're gonna put the devil on trial, we're gonna do all this stuff. And they're building up all this evidence and both of them all turn on like we went to the judge and we couldn't go inside. And they're literally like he just said no. He just didn't even let them in.
MARCUS PARKS
No, the judge just goes nah, nah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. Ed Warren showed up with six priests. They were all supposed to go in talking about the proof. He had this whole thing set up and they didn't even let him in the office. They were like no, you're not coming in here.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The judge just said look, this is stupid. Stop wasting my fucking time.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The devil literally never made it even close to being on trial. The devil couldn't even get jury selection. The devil was not in the courtroom.
ED LARSON
That is a judge that's getting re-elected.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Well after everyone who was present at the murder was forced to say that they did indeed see Arne stab Alan Bono, Arne had no choice but to pivot to a self-defense argument.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing. But if you stab somebody like 100 times, it's hard to say that it was... Well it was four times. It was four big stabs.
MARCUS PARKS
Six.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Four big, six small. But enough to rip open his belly. He did one stab and rip.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They said it was too many stabs to be self-defense.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He got manslaughter though at the very least, he didn't get first degree murder.
ED LARSON
That's crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And he was sentenced to 10-20 years, released after only 5.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's out there, man. And he still swears to this day that it was real and that he was possessed by the devil.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Just keep him away from liquor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
But that whole time while he was in prison, David Glatzel's mother was on a media tour with the Warrens. Together they denounced the justice system for rejecting the 'devil made me do it' defense. But at the same time they were also striking some pretty lucrative deals. The Warrens convinced Judy Glatzel that she could become rich if she sold the rights to her family's story. That included the rights of her children. And they all worked together on a book called 'The Devil in Connecticut'. This was written by Gerald Brittle, the same dude who wrote 'The Demonologist'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want to learn more about Gerald Brittle.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I wanna know why he was their mouthpiece. That's for next episode.
MARCUS PARKS
Now according to the skeptic in this story, Carl Glatzel, Ed Warren told Gerald Brittle to quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Make it scary. People come to us, they buy scary."
MARCUS PARKS
But in the end, the Glatzels ended up making far less than even the Lutzes. They got $4500. But the Warrens, who arguably helped torture this young boy, they made off with $80,000.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, it was our idea in the first place. Don't sue me.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's just off the book, that doesn't even count the profits their estate made off The Conjuring 3. And by the way, not a single fucking dime from The Conjuring 3 went to the Glatzels even though all of their real names and all of their stories are used in the movie. That was of course because their mother sold their rights when they were children.
ED LARSON
Wow. So The Conjuring 3 got worse somehow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, it did. Yes, it did.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And it's not just because they used the little boy from, what was it, The Haunting of Hill House, as David Glatzel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, that's right. It was the same kid.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
That's weird, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Isn't it weird how all those little kids were in like six horror movies all at once?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They look like haunted little children.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They look good. They look spooky.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they were very well cast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now David Glatzel, as I said, he still believes that he was possessed by demons but he also believes that the Warrens used him and his family for profit and fame. But what is more interesting is what Carl Glatzel discovered after his mother died. According to Carl, his mother was an obsessive note taker and there were several notes from around the time of the possession saying that she had been giving her family doses of so-called medicine. Carl deduced that his mother, overwhelmed with a large family and a husband who was never around, he deduced that she was drugging her children with a sleeping aid called Sominex. Because as David remembered, his mother always fed the family from a large bowl but she always made... I know. Just a fucking come get your slop, you fucking pigs!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come get your slop, you pigs! Time to go! Here's your nap time stew!
ED LARSON
Strap it to your face!
MARCUS PARKS
But she always made a small separate plate for herself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't worry, I don't need any of that. I don't like stroganoff.
MARCUS PARKS
Now we couldn't find evidence of this claim.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But Carl said that the long term side effects of Sominex, maybe this is like the 70s ingredients in Sominex, the 70s formula.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) I couldn't sleep, I took a Sominex.
ED LARSON
I've never heard of Sominex.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I've never-
ED LARSON
Is it still out there?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's old school, it's very, very old school.
ED LARSON
It's like Tavist-D.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
That shit that just knocks you out and it worked for a while but they're like oh we gotta get rid of this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I think Sominex is much the same way, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Go to Seymour, talk to Seymour!
MARCUS PARKS
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's from Little Shop of Horrors.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh did he take Sominex?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's one of the cuts for the musical, not from the film.
ED LARSON
Oh goddamn you fucking musical theater. We lose all credibility when you do this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you not think that Ed Warren doesn't come from my singular portrayal as a 17 year old as Mr. Mushnik?
MARCUS PARKS
Well at least in the 70s, the side effects for Sominex included emotional instability, hallucinations, and weight gain. And sure enough, David Glatzel was a chubby, chubby little boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bad things happened to heavy children.
MARCUS PARKS
Now these were the most famous cases involving the Warrens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because Amityville is gonna put them on the map!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the one that broadcasts them across the world.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Amityville puts them on the map, the devil made me do it, that's also a massive story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Huge.
MARCUS PARKS
These are the ones that are made into movies that together have grossed billions of dollars worldwide. I think it's $2 billion altogether when you put all the Conjuring movies, the entire universe.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Your Annabelles, your Nuns, all that shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But these are only four cases out of the thousands in which the Warrens were involved.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you believe 4,000-10,000 is what they said.
MARCUS PARKS
And it was some of the smaller ones that were the most bizarre. These were the Smurls, the Snedekers, and many others, all of which will be covered next week in our conclusion along with the allegations that Ed Warren was, under the shield of being a warrior for Christ, a sexual predator.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's amazing how many vestiges have a little child underneath sucking on the knees of an old man.
MARCUS PARKS
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well let's move on.
ED LARSON
The show's over. Nothing to move on to.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, show's over, that was the end.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's time to wrap it up.
ED LARSON
Listen to Brighter Side.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Guys, this is-
ED LARSON
We were talking about buying phones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And honestly it ruined Eddie's life this week, it ruined Natalie's life this week.
ED LARSON
Yeah, Amber as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
We all got destroyed by Verizon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's true, they did. Natalie was in tears yesterday on the phone for four hours with Verizon.
MARCUS PARKS
Jesus.
ED LARSON
It was very emotional. I literally thought I was gonna get arrested.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey.
ED LARSON
I'm like (whispering) I'm wanna hit you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Listen, some people go through civil war, some people go through genocide, some people go through pestilences. But we have to deal with Verizon. Guys, go to patreon. com/lastpodcastontheleft to see our bodies wiggle back and forth. Next week we're concluding the series and it's gonna get more dark than it is.
MARCUS PARKS
It actually is gonna get far darker because it's gonna get very real.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is how all these go.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's gonna get very real. But yeah, on Patreon you can-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See us frown.
MARCUS PARKS
On Patreon you can watch these episodes in full, you can watch video episodes. You can also get interviews that are done. You can also get behind the scenes footage, we've been doing a lot of cool behind the scenes footage here at the LPN studios. And you can also watch Last Stream on the Left every Tuesday, you can watch that live and you can interact with us live before it goes to YouTube. And you can check out, because actually a lot of shit has to get cut before it goes to YouTube.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like this next one is gonna specifically have a lot redacted.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So if you wanna see the episodes in full as they happen, go join our Patreon, patreon. com/lastpodcastontheleft. And follow us on the socials at Instagram and TikTok @LPontheleft.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Go to lastpodcastontheleft.com and see uf live. We are coming to your cities and your titties. It's gonna be a lot of fun. We got shows that we're gonna announce but we can't yet til next week for Side Stories.
ED LARSON
Yeah. June 8th, Seattle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Come out to Seattle. Our new show is gonna be fucking noice.
MARCUS PARKS
It's great. Thank you so much to everybody out in Denver who came and watched us, y'all were fantastic, it was so much fun.
ED LARSON
Sold out show, laughing their fucking asses off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was great. We're gonna have a good time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So yeah, come out and see us in Seattle, come out and see us in Washington DC, come see us here in Los Angeles and Brooklyn. And for all y'all out in Europe, we're gonna be doing a few shows out there. We're gonna be doing two in London and one in Reykjavik.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Si.
MARCUS PARKS
And also Australia.
ED LARSON
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
We're gonna be in Australia, doing six days in Australia in August. Can't wait to come out. We're coming.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Woo!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We are coming.
ED LARSON
It's happening.
MARCUS PARKS
We are coming.
ED LARSON
The tickets are bought.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually I am training everyday.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is.
MARCUS PARKS
Like I'm actually training my body to fucking heal itself so I can make sure to fucking make it to all of these fucking shows this year. It's an uphill battle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're doing it!
MARCUS PARKS
It is very much an uphill battle but I'm fucking doing my best, I'm doing training. I'm going to physical therapy to make sure we fucking make it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's gonna be awesome.
ED LARSON
We got one in the can and you seemed healthy as fuck.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. He did, didn't he? Well maybe it was thanks to the power of Christ.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Well we'll see how he does with the power of aliens at Contact in the Desert.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh, Contact in the Desert. If you are in town and you wanna come see some wild ass shit, this shit's gonna get for real at Contact in the Desert. Come and see. We got a panel on Saturday, we've got a live podcast with Dave Foley of Kids in the Hall.
MARCUS PARKS
It's incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
On Sunday.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're only talking UFOs. Not a single bit of comedy history.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. No.
ED LARSON
I will corner him later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. So come and check it out. And hail Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
And hail Gein.
ED LARSON
Hail Annabelle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know you can leave her alone, she is bad in a way.
ED LARSON
What are you talking about? You're gonna talk shit on Annabelle?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the end of the episode.
ED LARSON
Right now?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the end of the episode.
ED LARSON
Hail Jessica Chastain.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Answer my calls!
ED LARSON
Let me on the elevator!