Toil and Trouble: a Women's History of the Occult by Lisa Kröger & Melanie R. Anderson

Author:Lisa Kröger & Melanie R. Anderson [Kröger, Lisa & Anderson, Melanie R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quirk Books
Published: 2022-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

Lorraine Warren

THE DEVIL MADE THEM DO IT

The occult hasn’t entered into a court of law since the Salem witch trials—with a few notable exceptions. In 1974, Michael Taylor of Ossett in Yorkshire, England, made headlines when he was found not guilty of murdering his wife, Catherine. The details of the crime are gruesome. Taylor was seen after the murder running naked down the street of his neighborhood, covered in his wife’s blood. He had torn out her eyes and tongue. There was little doubt that he killed his wife, so why was he found not guilty? A jury in Leeds found Taylor to be insane. But it wasn’t the violent nature of the crime that made the headlines—it was what came before the murder. Taylor had been deemed possessed and had undergone an exorcism, one that lasted a long seven hours. Newspapers reported that Taylor had forty demons living within his body at one time. Ultimately, it was insanity that made his defense, not exorcism, but in the court of public opinion, the Devil made him do it.

The Devil did become a legitimate defense strategy in 1981, when the trial of Arne Johnson became the first court case to use a “Devil made me do it” defense. At the heart of this case are Ed and Lorraine Warren, a married couple famous for being demonologists (and in Lorraine’s case, a medium). They claimed to be investigators, but critics have contended that they were biased at best, especially since they seemed to sensationalize their investigations. For a long time, they ran a museum out of their Connecticut home, the Warrens’ Occult Museum, which displayed haunted and possessed objects they had collected over the years, including the infamous Annabelle, a Raggedy Ann doll, which the Warrens displayed behind thick glass (they reasoned that the demon-possessed doll was too dangerous to be touched by humans). As a clairvoyant, Lorraine also appeared on several television shows, including Paranormal State and The Scariest Places on Earth. She served as a consultant on the film The Conjuring, which was based on their investigations, and she was given a cameo in the movie. The Conjuring movies spawned so many titles that the Warrens practically have a shared movie universe. Whether oversensationalized or not, the couple did look into many reportedly haunted places and numerous possession cases. Together, they investigated notable cases of the paranormal, like the Amityville Horror house, the haunting of the Annabelle doll (which, like Amityville, spawned numerous movies), and the Enfield poltergeist.

But it was the Arne Johnson case that brought the Warrens into the court of law.

Johnson was accused of stabbing his landlord, Alan Bono. In court, Johnson’s lawyers said they had “proof” that Johnson had contracted demons in an earlier exorcism. According to reports, Johnson’s girlfriend’s young brother, David Glatzel, was possessed by a demon. The Catholic Church performed a church-sanctioned exorcism, with Johnson present, which was when the demon left the child’s body and entered Johnson. The demon then turned Johnson violent, resulting in Bono’s death.

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