West Haven haunting among famed demonologists’ case files
NEW HAVEN — The audience gasped as an Annabelle doll took the stage recently at John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts, but it wasn’t the “real” demonic Annabelle that lives in the Occult Museum of late paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren.
Just as creepy — and a thrill to the audience who had come to hear about “The Warren Files,” the special surprise guest was the Annabelle from the movie, a realistic porcelain doll, as opposed to the real Annabelle — an innocentlooking Raggedy Ann doll.
Tony Spera, soninlaw of the late Warrens, who has taken over their paranormal empire, shared the doll in public for the first time since acquiring it from the movie studio, during the chilling presentation at Lyman for hundreds of people.
Spera teased the audience a bit, saying he had a “surprise. I’m going to unveil an artifact,” — leaving many to think for a few minutes that it would be the real Annabelle, but quickly said it wasn’t.
He then brought to the stage the creepy doll from the movie, sitting on an oversized chair.
The audience gasped.
“It’s the first time the doll has every been displayed by me,” Spera said, inviting people to take pictures with the doll after the show.
By a show of hands prompted by Spera, nearly 100 percent of the Lyman audience believe in ghosts and a majority had experienced hauntings themselves.
“I’m trying to carry on the legacy of Ed
Warren and Lorraine Warren because they were the best” and helped so many people through their investigations — which they never charged for, earning their income from books and appearances, Spera said.
He acknowledged his wife, Judy Spera, the Warrens’ daughter, and told the audience that after all the ghost stories Judy heard growing up, she doesn’t want anything to do with the occult and only once popped her head into The Occult Museum to say “hello” during a MakeAWish Foundation fundraiser.
Tony Spera leads the New England Society for Psychic Research, founded by Ed Warren.
The presentation on the Southern Connecticut State University campus offered an array of Warren topics: movies inspired by their files, including the “Annabelle” and “The Conjuring” movies, neverbeforeseen photos from their famous “Amityville Horror” haunted house case, and a look into their files — the haunting of the White Lady of Union Cemetery in Stepney and a poltergeist possession case in West Haven among them.
The Warrens investigated about 10,000 cases during their decadeslong career, Spera said, traveling the world to investigate.
Of their cases, only 70 were demonic possessions, Spera said, and in one of the rare cases, a dwelling in West Haven had to be exorcised by the Warrens’ team of priests.
In the West Haven case, a family who were not identified and whose faces were purposely blurred in videos, was living with a poltergeist who particularly began to focus on a 10yearold daughter, moving the chair and table as she tried to do homework.