Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, here in 'The Conjuring: Last Rites,' play Ed and Lorraine Warren in the 'Conjuring' franchise. Warner Bros./YouTube Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment In a 2008 article that appeared in the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, five years before the first installment of the blockbuster The Conjuring franchise hit theaters, demonologist couple Ed and Lorraine Warren were taken to task. The article examined the founders of the New England Society for Psychic Research, who for decades came to the aid of those plagued by supernatural forces across a purported 10,000-plus cases. But after years building a reputation in the paranormal space, the Times Leader questioned the credibility of the couple, framing its unforgiving takedown of the duo against the local Pennsylvania case of the Smurl family. Related Stories Movies One Battle After Another Ends for Warner Bros. Movie Chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy Movies Ben Hardy Finally Gets to Sink His Teeth Into Horror With 'The Conjuring: Last Rites' -- "These Films Are Truly Special" The Smurl's trauma is central to The Conjuring: Last Rites, the final mainline installment in the lucrative series, which has seen four films and offshoot franchises (Annabelle, The Nun) dominate at the box office since 2013. The franchise's total haul across its films and spinoffs is a combined $2.4 billion against a budget of $263 million, making it the top grossing horror franchise in history, with Last Rites, directed by Michael Chaves, setting records for the franchise. Absent from all four of the The Conjuring films, however, is the deep skepticism that runs through the Times Leader's revisiting of the Smurl case. In 1986, the family's ordeal captivated the region's attention and drew dozens of national reporters to the area. The Warrens took notice, too. The self-taught demonologist and purported clairvoyant were well-established when they breezed into the Northeastern Pennsylvania area from Connecticut. Soon, they declared the home on Chase Street in West Pittston, Pa. to be occupied by four spirits and a demon. This was bad news for its human occupants, Jack and Janet Smurl along with their four daughters and his parents. The series of horror films has gone to great lengths to nail the eras of when their central incidents occurred, and to portray real people with care and accuracy in fine performances, particularly from lead actors Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren, respectively. But what audiences see play out on the screen is largely the version the Warrens told, despite that, in the case of Last Rites, their version was dismissed by their peers at the time. The real story likely also involved effects of mental health conditions, misinterpretations of spooky sounds and co-dependency dynamics. "[The Conjuring films] are the ones where we try to be true to the real-life stories that they're based on," longtime franchise producer James Wan said in an interview ahead of the release of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. That 2021 hit looked at the 1983 case of alleged demonic possession, where, for the first time, a lawyer used a possession defense, telling a judge that a demon jumped from a child to a man and led him to kill his landlord. The swift guilty verdict for Arne Cheyenne Johnson, whose girlfriend had recently been mauled by his victim, speaks to the court and the public's reaction to that wild legal strategy. In the case of the Smurl family, the patriarch's deteriorating mental health was speculated as the culprit for what was happening at the house. The family claimed their house was plagued with blood-curdling screams, foul stenches and other terrors: Jack Smurl and one of his daughters had been tossed around the house, as was the family's pet German shepherd. The claims escalated to the more sensational, specifically that Jack Smurl had been attacked and sodomized by the household demon. According to a Times Ledger article written as the Smurl ordeal was becoming a media sensation, the father of four told a reporter that in 1983, three years before the family's move to Chase Street, he'd had surgery to remove water from his brain. Paul Kurtz, a Buffalo State philosophy professor who chaired the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in the mid-1980s, said that before the surgery, Jack had some issues around short-term memory loss. A bout with meningitis the father had in his late 20s could have been responsible, the professor claimed, suggesting the root cause of some of the noises he said he heard. Kurtz said the Smurl family ordeal was "a hoax, a charade, a ghost story" and characterized their claims of a haunting as "mishmash." Of the Warrens, Kurtz did not mince words, denouncing their lack of credent