Day 17 of the 2025 Halloween Horror Movie Marathon

Okay, I'll admit it, I'm a little obssessed with the Ed and Lorraine Warren story. When I was an early teenager, the Warrens came to the Granada Theater in my hometown of Malden, MA. They did a presentation of some of their cases including pictures and audio recordings. I was hooked. They were recruiting for some ghost hunt at the time but I was both too young and too poor to even consider going. Somewhere around that time, I read The Amityville Horror, which scared the hell out of me, and I remained hooked.

So, The Conjuring 2. In this one, the Warrens are urged by the church to go to Enfield to investigate a haunting. There's a lot of bed shaking and furniture sliding and, of course, some levitation. In the end, the Warrens figure it out and banish the demon back to hell.

The interesting thing about this one is the amount of documentation on the real life case. The Warrens weren't the only ones to investigate, and opinions vary on whether or not it was all a hoax instigated by one or both of the daughters. At the credit role, they show pictures of the actual Hodgsons and the house, side-by-side with stills from the movie. They did a pretty good job of sticking with the documented "facts" as far as I can tell.

There was a report that one of the daughters was seen (or possibly videotaped) faking some of the incidents. This was explained in the movie by the daughter saying she had to fake that part of it so the Warrens would leave, otherwise the entity would kill her sister. In an interview years later, Janet admitted to faking some things: "Oh yeah, once or twice (we faked things), just to see if Mr. Grosse and Mr. Playfair (two paranormal investigators) would catch us. They always did."

According to reports, the Warrens' part in the event was greatly dramatized. Another investigator claimed the Warrens showed up uninvited and only stayed for a day.

All the real-life debates aside, The Conjuring 2 is a pretty decent film.