The True Stories of the Warren Hauntings_ The Conjuring_ Annabelle_ Amityville_ and Other Encounters

September 22, 2026

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5 min read

In 1970, a woman gave her 28-year-old daughter Donna a Raggedy Ann doll. Donna brought it back to the apartment she shared with her roommate Angie, and the two placed it in the middle of the living room. Soon the doll began falling off the couch, then showing up in different chairs. Then it started appearing behind locked doors. The boyfriend had nightmares of the doll trying to choke him. One morning after telling Donna about the dream, they heard a rumbling, found the doll face-down on the floor, and when the boyfriend walked toward it, deep scratch marks opened on his chest—then vanished. This was the beginning of the Annabelle case, and it launched Ed and Lorraine Warren into a fame that would eventually produce The Conjuring franchise, Annabelle, The Amityville Horror, and a dozen other Hollywood adaptations. The host of this episode walks through the true accounts—or at least the original tellings—of seven of the Warrens' most famous cases, then steps back to examine what holds up and what doesn't.

Who Ed and Lorraine Warren Were

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What you'll learn

1 (01:01) **Introduction & Background on Ed and Lorraine Warren** - Wendigoon introduces the most famous paranormal couple and sets up the episode as a look at the true stories behind the movies, not the Hollywood versions.
2 (07:52) **Case 1: Annabelle (1970)** - The true story of the Raggedy Ann doll that inspired the Annabelle movies, beginning with a gift from a mother to her daughter.
3 (17:56) **Case 2: The Perron Family / The Conjuring (1970)** - The haunting that inspired the first Conjuring movie, involving a 1736 farmhouse and the witch Bathsheba.
4 (23:02) **Case 3: The Amityville Horror (1974-1975)** - The infamous case of the Lutz family's 28-day stay in a house where a mass murder occurred, with the Warrens arriving only after the family fled.
5 (30:57) **Case 4: The Enfield Poltergeist (1977)** - The North London case that inspired The Conjuring 2, where a girl's apparent possession may have been partly faked for attention.
6 (33:52) **Case 5: The Snedeker House / The Haunting in Connecticut (1986)** - The case of a family who moved into a former mortuary, with Wendigoon later casting strong doubt on the story's authenticity.
7 (38:47) **Case 6: The Smurl Family (1974)** - The West Pittston, Pennsylvania haunting that was adapted into the movie The Haunted, involving four entities and a baseball game.

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