The Warrens’ Occult Museum: Where Evil Sleeps Behind Glass

Step inside the locked basement where curses, demons, and dolls don’t stay quiet.

Sep 15, 2025

Welcome back… pull up a chair, dear reader, and let me tell you a story. Not of a crumbling plantation or a rotting hotel, but of a quiet little house in Monroe, Connecticut. A home that looks ordinary enough from the street—white siding, green lawn, neighbors who wave while walking their dogs. But inside that house, in its basement, lies something far from ordinary. It was there that Ed and Lorraine Warren—the most famous ghost hunters this side of the silver screen—built their very own prison for the damned: The Occult Museum.

Origins of a Ghost Hunter

Long before the world knew his name, Ed Warren was a boy in Bridgeport, Connecticut, growing up in a modest house that didn’t feel so modest after dark. He later told anyone who asked that doors opened by themselves, lights flickered, and footsteps were on the stairs when no one was there, indicating the place was haunted. And then there was the figure. He was only five years old when he swore he saw her: a pale woman drifting in his bedroom closet, watching him with eyes that didn’t belong to the living. When he called for his father, she vanished. But Ed never forgot.

That moment planted a seed. By the time he was a teenager, Ed was working as an usher at a local movie theater. Most kids would have been content to watch the reels spin and sneak a smoke in the alley, but Ed was different. He watched every horror film that came through, night after night, trying to untangle the line between Hollywood fright and the true terrors he believed were out there. The movies only sharpened his curiosity.

Then came the war. Ed served in the Navy during World War II, staring death in the face in ways that left him convinced there were darker forces guiding men’s fates. When he returned home, he used the GI Bill to study art. He could have painted landscapes, portraits, and still lifes—but what fascinated him most were old, crumbling houses whispered to be haunted.

Ed developed a peculiar habit. He and Lorraine would travel through New England, stop at a house that locals swore was plagued by spirits, and Ed would set up his easel. He’d paint the home in stark, eerie detail, then knock on the door and present the finished work as a gift. The exchange opened doors—literally. Grateful homeowners let them inside, where Ed and Lorraine listened to their stories, walked their haunted halls, and began keeping notes.

What began as a young man’s curiosity evolved into a mission. Ed didn’t call himself a ghost hunter—he called himself a demonologist, one of the first in the country to publicly claim that title. And Lorraine, with her clairvoyance, became the eye that saw what he could not. Together, they laid the groundwork for what would become decades of investigations, case files, books, and eventually the movies that made them famous. But it all began with a terrified little boy, a ghost in a closet, and a lifetime spent chasing the shadows he could never quite forget.

The Cases That Made the Warrens Famous

For decades, Ed and Lorraine Warren investigated hundreds of hauntings across New England, but it was two cases that launched them into legend: the Amityville Horror and the Enfield Poltergeist.

The Amityville case began in 1975 in Amityville, New York, when George and Kathy Lutz fled their Dutch Colonial home after only 28 days, claiming it was plagued by violent paranormal activity—green slime oozing from walls, spectral voices, cold spots, even levitation. The house had already been the site of the 1974 DeFeo murders, when Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot six members of his family as they slept. The Warrens entered the home with other investigators, declaring it a “demonic infestation.” Ed described sensing an overwhelming evil presence, while Lorraine said she was nearly crushed under the weight of malevolent energy. Their involvement, paired with the lurid details of the Lutz family’s account, helped fuel Jay Anson’s 1977 book The Amityville Horror and the blockbuster films that followed. Whether truth, hoax, or something in between, the Warrens’ names were forever tied to Amityville.

Just a few years later, in 1977, the Warrens crossed the Atlantic to England after hearing of a strange disturbance in the working-class suburb of Enfield, north London. The Hodgson family claimed their council house was being terrorized: furniture skidded across the floor, objects hurtled through the air, loud knocks echoed throughout the walls, and young Janet Hodgson spoke in a voice like gravel. British investigators were already on the scene, but the Warrens made a high-profile appearance, declaring the activity to be the work of demonic forces. Their presence at Enfield, though brief, cemented their reputation as the go-to experts in the supernatural, and decades later, the case was immortalized in The Conjuring 2.

Both cases remain controversial, with skeptics pointing to evidence of exaggeration or outright fabrication. But controversy only made the Warrens’ legend stronger. By the late 1970s, they had transcended their local beginnings to become international icons in the world of the paranormal, with their names associated with some of the most famous modern-day hauntings.

“Diabolical forces are formidable. These forces are eternal, and they exist today. The fairy tale is true. The devil exists. God exists. And for us, as people, our very destiny hinges upon which one we elect to follow.”
— Ed Warren

And so, back in their Monroe home, they collected it. Shelf after shelf of cursed trinkets, haunted heirlooms, and objects dripping with stories too dark to tell at Sunday dinner. This wasn’t a museum for the curious—it was a vault meant to contain what should never be touched again. The Warrens always said these things were dangerous, that they carried traces of evil, echoes of the suffering tied to them. And yet, they were displayed behind glass, silent and waiting, like beasts locked in cages.

Annabelle sits at the heart of it all. Not the porcelain nightmare Hollywood dreamed up, but a simple Raggedy Ann doll—stitched smile, button eyes, a face far too innocent for the things she’s accused of. Her case carries a handwritten warning from Ed Warren himself: “Positively do not open.” Those who did not heed that warning claimed to regret it. Some whispered of scratches, of violent accidents, even of death. Nearby rests the Shadow Doll, said to crawl into your dreams and stop your heart while you sleep. There’s a mirror used in conjuring rituals, an idol pulled from the woods and marked with symbols no priest dares bless, and an organ from a haunted mansion that, they say, once played on its own. Every piece in that basement comes with a story, and every story ends badly.

“Although we called it a museum, the truth is—it was a prison.”
— Lorraine Warren (quoted by her foundation/family)

For years, the Warrens opened their museum to the public. People came from all over to gawk, to dare, to feel that shiver of fear you can’t quite get rid of. But neighbors didn’t much care for the idea of demons down the block, and the town eventually shut it down. They closed the basement doors, took down the signs, and left the artifacts in their glass coffins. But evil doesn’t disappear just because you lock the door.

Ownership & Guardianship of the Occult Museum

1952–2006: The museum began with Ed and Lorraine Warren, founders of the New England Society for Psychic Research. They filled the basement of their Monroe, Connecticut, home with cursed objects collected from their investigations, creating what they called the Occult Museum. (CT Insider, 2022)

2006–2019: After Ed’s death in 2006, Lorraine Warren continued running the museum. She often described it not as a display, but as a prison for dangerous objects. During this period, their daughter Judy Warren and her husband Tony Spera also became involved in the care of the collection. (Wikipedia)

2019–2025: Following Lorraine’s passing in 2019, the collection passed entirely under the stewardship of Judy and Tony Spera. Tony served as curator, and while the museum was closed to the public due to zoning issues, the artifacts—especially Annabelle—remained under their control. (Wikipedia)

2025–Present: In August 2025, comedian Matt Rife and YouTuber Elton Castee purchased the Warren property, including the house and museum space. However, Judy and Tony Spera maintain ownership of the artifacts. Rife and Castee are now the legal guardians and caretakers of the collection for at least five years, and they are tasked with preserving the legacy. (New York Post, 2025)

The Warrens’ Occult Museum is more than a curiosity. It’s a reminder that evil doesn’t always live in drafty castles or haunted hotels on distant hills. Sometimes it lives next door. Sometimes it sits quietly behind glass, biding its time, waiting for someone foolish enough to let it out. So if you ever see that little wooden case with its warning carved in bold letters—“Positively do not open”—take my advice: don’t. Because some warnings aren’t just written in ink. They’re written in blood.

The Warrens in Books and on the Big Screen

For decades, Ed and Lorraine Warren wrote and co-authored works based on their case files, but it was the media that turned them into household names.

Books

The Amityville Horror (1978) by Jay Anson — the blockbuster book that transformed the Lutz family’s account (and the Warrens’ involvement) into an international sensation.
This House is Haunted: The True Story of the Enfield Poltergeist (1980) by Guy Lyon Playfair — chronicling the English case that the Warrens briefly investigated.
The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren (1980) by Gerald Brittle — the most famous book about the Warrens themselves, filled with their own accounts of demonic hauntings.
Graveyard: True Hauntings from an Old New England Cemetery (1992) by Ed & Lorraine Warren — their own book about haunted cemeteries.
Ghost Hunters: True Stories from the World’s Most Famous Demonologists (1989) by Ed & Lorraine Warren, and Robert David Chase — a collection of their investigations.

Movies

The Amityville Horror (1979) — inspired by the Lutz family haunting and the Warrens’ involvement.
The Conjuring (2013) — James Wan’s hit film is directly based on the Warrens’ Perron family case.
The Conjuring 2 (2016) — dramatization of the Enfield Poltergeist investigation.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) — inspired by the “Devil Made Me Do It” murder trial the Warrens testified in.
Annabelle (2014), Annabelle: Creation (2017), Annabelle Comes Home (2019) — all spun from the story of the Annabelle doll in the Warrens’ museum.
The Nun (2018) and The Nun II (2023) — spin-offs from the demonic presence “Valak,” tied to the Conjuring universe.
The Curse of La Llorona (2019) (also known as The Curse of the Weeping Woman) — another “Conjuring universe” film, loosely inspired by folklore but marketed under the Warrens’ cinematic brand.

Legacy in Pop Culture
The Conjuring Universe, a financial triumph, has amassed $2.6 billion on a $263 million budget, solidifying its position as the reigning horror franchise. Though Hollywood often exaggerated or re-imagined the details, it was the Warrens’ case files that seeded these stories.

Regardless of whether you view the Warrens as courageous protectors against evil or as masterful creators of tales that mixed belief with myth, their influence continues to be felt. It lingers in the basement vault where Annabelle still sits behind glass, in the pages of books that claimed to reveal unspeakable truths, and in the flickering glow of movie screens where their names crawl across the credits. More than a museum, Ed and Lorraine Warren constructed a mythology, and it still sends shivers down our spines in the depths of our culture. And like any good ghost story, it refuses to stay buried.

Until next time, keep your doors locked, your lights on, and whatever you do—positively do not open the case.

📚 Sources & Further Reading

On the Warrens’ Origins & Early Life

On the Amityville Horror Case

On the Enfield Poltergeist

On the Occult Museum

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