The Smurl Haunting
Jack and Janet Smurl met in 1967. Jack served as a neuropsychiatric technician in the Navy and by 1968 the couple were married. They lived in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, USA but after hurricane Agnes had flooded most of the area in 1972 they were forced to relocate.
Jack’s parents, John and Mary Smurl, bought a semi detached house in west Pittston, Pennsylvania in 1973. The house was built in 1896 and was situated in a quiet, middle class neighbourhood on Chase Street.
Jack and his family moved with his parents and had no problems sharing the house with them. John and Mary Smurl lived in the right half of the duplex and Jack, Janet and their first two daughters, Dawn and Heather, moved into the left half. The Smurls spent a lot of time remodelling and decorating the house and the first 18 months on Chase Street went without incident.
However in January 1974 the first signs of paranormal activity began. The Smurls witnessed water pipes that would continually leak despite being repeatedly resoldered by a plumber. A television set literally ‘burst into flames’ for with no apparent cause and an unusual stain appeared from nowhere on a new carpet. Nobody in the house knew who or what had caused these strange occurrences. Most frightening of all for the family at this point were the marks found in the bathroom. A new sink and bathtub were found to be severely scratched, as was some freshly painted woodwork. It looked to all intents and purposes as if a wild animal had clawed at them.
As the months went by the activity in the house increased and by 1975 apparitions were being seen in the property. Jack and Janet’s oldest daughter, Dawn, started witnessing ‘people floating’ around her bedroom. Footsteps were continuously heard on the stairs, drawers opened and closed of their own accord and empty rocking chairs rocked and creaked as if someone was actually sitting in them. The list of phenomena continued to grow.
By 1985, and with the arrival of twins Shannon and Carin , the family were growing tired and frustrated by the incidents. What had started as annoying disturbances was driving them to despair. The house was often freezing cold, vile smells lingered throughout the house and unplugged radios would suddenly turn themselves on and blare out music. John and Mary Smurl would hear loud and abusive language coming from Jack and Janet’s side of the house even though the couple would not even be arguing at the time.
In February 1985 Janet was doing the laundry in the basement. She heard her name being called and after searching for whoever had shouted her, she realised she had been alone the entire time. Two days later an apparition appeared to Janet in the kitchen. The room went icy cold and a black, faceless human form appeared. The apparition walked through the wall and appeared to Mary Smurl on the opposite side of the house. The haunting activity became even more intense after these incidents. Rapping and scratching noises were constantly heard from within the walls of the house and several neighbours heard screams and strange noises coming from the Smurl property when nobody was even home and the building was empty. Most alarming of all was the physical attacks that now occurred. On the night of her 13 year old sister Heather’s confirmation into the Catholic Church, a large ceiling fan crashed down to the floor landing inches away from Shannon Smurl, nearly killing her. On another occasion Shannon was tossed down the stairs. Jack and Janet began being levitated by an unknown source. Janet herself was violently pulled off her bed after making love to her husband. Jack was paralysed while this happened, gagging from a foul smell that filled the room. Even Simon, the family’s pet dog, was subjected to attacks. He was repeatedly picked up and thrown by ‘unseen hands’.
The Smurls were now at their wits end and desperate for help. Janet had heard about Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warrens were psychical researchers and demonologists from Monroe, Connecticut. Despite Janet’s scepticism, and due to the fact she had no one else to turn to, she called Ed and Lorraine. In January 1986, shortly after Janet had contacted them, the Warrens arrived at Chase Street.
They began their investigation by asking the Smurls about their family life, religious beliefs and other relevant factors. The Warrens, accompanied by Rosemary Frueh, a registered nurse and psychic, then began a tour of the house. They identified a bedroom closet as the crossover point between the two sides of the duplex and detected the presence of four evil entities in the building. One of which they believed was a demon. Without any evidence supporting family dysfunction, tragedy or any of involvement with the occult to invite the entities into their home the Warrens looked to another cause for the haunting. They concluded that the demon had probably been dormant for decades and had risen to draw on the energy of the girls entering into puberty and the family’s strong religious beliefs. Both are common factors in poltergeist cases.
The Warrens then set out to expose the demon by provoking it, playing religious music and confronting it with prayer. Mirrors shook violently as did dresser drawers. On another occasion the demon reacted by spelling out ‘you filthy b*****d, get out of this house’.
The situation escalated even further as Janet alleged to have been sexually assaulted by an incubus. Equally as terrifying were Jack’s claims to have been raped by a succubus. He said the succubus took the form of an old woman with a young body. Her eyes were red and her gums were green. He also described her body as ‘scaly’.
The Smurls had tried several times to obtain help from the church. Janet thought she was going to receive help from a priest called Father O’Leary but she later discovered no such priest existed. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton said they would consult with experts on the Smurls case but thought it unlikely they would become involved.
With ‘pig noises’ now being heard coming from the walls Ed Warren was totally convinced that the Smurls had a case of serious demonic infestation. So with the church unwilling to come to their aid, Ed Warren brought a priest he knew to Chase Street. Father McKenna, later to become Bishop McKenna, was a traditionalist who refused to abide by the changes made by the second Vatican Council. He had performed more then 50 exorcisms for the Warrens in the past and was happy to help the troubled Smurls. Father McKenna performed the ancient rite at the Smurls home but it did nothing but serve to anger the demon even more. The family were now in the second demonic stage, oppression, which according to Ed Warren followed the first stage which was infestation and would be followed by two further stages, those being possession and finally death.
As the attacks continued Janet and Mary Smurl had slash and bite marks on their arms and Carin Smurl fell seriously ill from a strange fever and nearly died. During an attack on Dawn Smurl by an entity she was almost raped. Father McKenna performed a second exorcism in the late spring but it seemed to have had as little effect as the first ritual he had performed.
The demon had now begun harassing Jack Smurl at work and even following the family on camping trips. After repeatedly being refused help from the church and knowing that it would be pointless moving home as the demon would just follow them, the Smurls decided to try another way to end their ordeal. Janet and Jack decided to appear on television, albeit anonymously. They were interviewed on the ‘People Are Talking’, show remaining behind a screen to protect their identity.
It would seem that the demon did not appreciate their appearance on the local Philadelphia television show as the attacks continued. Janet was levitated and thrown against the wall and in a separate instance a human hand came through the mattress of her bed and grabbed her by the neck. Jack was again raped by the succubus and the demon also appeared to him as a ‘pig on legs’ on another occasion.
In August 1986 the Smurls went public with their story. They gave an interview to the Wilkes-Barre Sunday Independent newspaper in the hope that somebody reading the article might be able to help them end their ordeal. The Smurl house became a tourist attraction to press, sceptics and curious members of the public. The press attention from such publications as the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Buffalo News and Scranton Tribune finally pushed the Roman Catholic Diocese to take some action and they offered to take over the investigation. The Warrens had also planned a mass exorcism with several priests and prayer groups also visited the house.
Medium Mary Alice Rinkman examined the Smurls home and confirmed the Warren’s findings. According to her there were indeed four spirits present. She identified a man named Peter who had murdered his wife and her lover and later been hung by a mob and also an old woman named Abigail .Rinkman Identified another spirit as a powerful demon but was unable to give any details about the final spirit. Bishop McKenna performed a third exorcism on the house and this time it had seemed to have been successful. There were no more disturbances. Three months later however it would appear that the ritual had not been such a success.
Just before Christmas 1986 Jack Smurl saw a black figure he believed was beckoning him into the third demonic stage…possession. He grabbed his rosary and prayed and the figure disappeared. Jack’s hopes of it being an isolated incident were soon dashed. The banging, putrid smells and violent attacks started once again.
Tired, frustrated and beaten the Smurls moved to another town. The chance that the entities would not follow them was their last hope of ending their nightmare. In 1988, shortly after the move, the church performed a fourth exorcism which finally seemed to have freed the Smurls from their ordeal. In the same year, 1988, Jack Smurl’s book telling the family’s story titled ‘The Haunted’ went to press. Three years later, in 1991, the television movie of the same name was released in the USA.
Many sceptics, amongst them some of the Smurl’s neighbours, believe this only confirms their suspicions. That the family concocted the whole story in order to profit from book and film contracts. The possibility of a financial motive being behind the reported haunting was one of many reasons for scepticism according to Paul Kurtz.
Paul Kurtz was the Chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) at the time of the Smurl haunting. Kurtz and CSICOP became involved in the case once the story had broken to the media. With newspapers carrying daily reports on the Smurl’s story at the time, members of the public and the media contacted CSICOP asking if they knew what was going on at the house. Kurtz dispatched two teams of investigators to West Pittston and also conducted an extensive ‘over-the-phone’ investigation. He contacted several members of the press who were working on the story and also members of the Smurl family themselves. In a report published in the Winter 1986/87 issue of The Skeptical Inquirer Kurtz concluded a number of explanations as to what really happened at Chase Street. None of the events, Kurtz says, were paranormal:
‘Our investigation of the Smurl case thus far points to several possible alternative explanations for what has allegedly been happening without the need to invoke an occult or paranormal one.’
Kurtz’s suspicions were also aroused by the fact that when one of his CSICOP teams arrived at the Smurl house they were denied entry by Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warrens were now acting as spokesmen for the Smurls and said they alone had been given privileged access to the house. So the CSICOP team were not allowed to enter the building despite the fact that the Smurls had earlier given them permission to examine the house.
Kurtz also claims that when he asked the Warrens for permission to examine the video and audio tape evidence they claimed to have gathered he was given a number of conflicting answers as to why this would not be possible. Amongst these were that the tapes would only be released to the Roman Catholic Church and that Warren had lent the tapes to a television production company and could not remember their name. Kurtz says:
‘For any demonological claims to be accepted they must be corroborated by independent observers. Thus far we only have the testimony of the Smurls and/or the Warrens, unsubstantiated by any kind of objective physical evidence…we are committed to the impartial examination of any such claims…But we were denied the opportunity to examine the site or freely question the claimants…’
Kurtz discovered, in conversation with neighbours of the Smurls, that they had been complaining to village officials for years about the foul odours coming from an inadequate sewer pipe near the Smurl home. This could explain the strange smells described in the haunting. He also discovered that many of the rapping noises had emanated from the walls adjacent to 17 year old Dawn Smurl’s room. He wondered whether she could have been responsible for the noises herself. Kurtz noted that Dawn’s statements fit the pattern of a teenager playing tricks to get attention. Kurtz requested that the Smurl family submit to a thorough psychological and physiological examination but they declined. Kurtz concluded his findings by outlying the possibility of the financial motives behind the alleged haunting:
‘The fact that the Smurls have signed a book contract raises serious questions about their motives. No doubt however, a large segment of the public and of the media is far more fascinated by demons and ghosts than the possibility of a prank or hoax’.
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