EXPOSED: The Conjuring: Last Rites | The TRUE Story of the Smurl Haunting and the Warrens' paranormal case file | Ep #39 Part 1

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He had many friends and enjoyed sports of all kinds as well as I can't even get through this with a strange face.
Welcome strangers to Madam Strangeways, where I, Madam Strangeways, usually share your true strange stories of the unexplained along with my thoughts on said strange stories.
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However, today you've joined me for a deep dive episode on the Smirrel family haunting which will be the subject of the latest Conjuring film, The Conjuring Last Rites.
This is one of Ed and Lorraine Warren's paranormal case files and if you aren't familiar with the Warrens, well first of all, how exciting for you.
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But also they were the infamous ghost hunting couple you may know from The Conjuring film franchise, with Lorraine being a self-proclaimed light transmedium who can speak to spirits and Ed Warren being a self-proclaimed and self-taught demonologist.
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Allegedly the short story I'll open with today is my own retelling of the events as told in the also allegedly non fiction book recounting their also also allegedly true story, The Haunting One Family's Nightmare, written by Robert Curran Lorraine and Ed Warren and Janet and Jack Smurl.
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I start with this story so that you have an understanding of the paranormal claims as they're presented to us from the Smurls and the Warrens themselves, without the old Hollywood razzle dazzle, though I assure you there's.
Definitely a healthy amount of razzle dazzle already baked in.
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But this way you'll have the context for the analysis and commentary afterwards where all poke holes pick apart and generally dissect the story to suss out the truth from fiction, while as always, dragging you down countless spooky rabbit holes kicking and screaming if needs must.
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This story does involve discussion of demonic sexual assault, so if essay is a difficult topic for you, please listen with care.
Now I sense it's about to rain hellcats and hell hounds outside, so you know what that means.
On to our true ish, possibly allegedly strange story here on Madam Strange Ways.
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OK, after recording the story and listening to it back, I feel like I have to come here and put a caveat at the beginning so that you understand that in some places in this story I use verbatim phrases from the book.
So if you think.
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That wow, she's being really sarcastic or really ridiculous or over the top.
I assure you I am not exaggerating anything, and actually it's probably just a time when I am quoting something directly from the book, so just keep that in mind with this retelling.
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OK, on to the on to the on to the strange story, The Smerl family haunting.
If Hurricane Agnes had never ravaged Northeast Pennsylvania back in 1972, maybe none of this harrowing tale would have ever happened.
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When the Smirrel family was forced to find a new home in West Pittston, PA, due to flooding in their Wilkes Barre home, no one could have guessed what was in store for them.
They bought a duplex at 3:28 and 3:30 Chase St.
Jack and Janet Smirrel lived on one side of the duplex with their daughter Don, and Jack's parents, John and Mary lived on the other side.
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Immediately upon moving into their fixer upper homes, strange occurrences began to plague the families.
A mysterious stain on a brand new rug couldn't be removed no matter how hard Janet scrubbed while sniffing her favorite fabric detergent.
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While doing laundry one day, Janet heard a voice whispering her name.
The pipes that John had installed himself began to leak.
The TV, oven and even Jack's new car wiring caught on fire.
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The new ceramic sink and tub Jack and Janet had installed were marred with slash marks overnight.
Dawn, one of their daughters, told her parents she saw people floating around her room at night, but Jack never saw anything when he went to investigate.
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The toilets would flush on their own, radios would turn on by themselves, and a foul stench filled the home.
Jack was sure that the stench would appear only when he was praying the rosary.
Janet and Mary both witnessed a black shadowy form wearing a Cape pass through the wall separating their homes, but time marched on, even as the noises in the walls and the strange occurrences continued.
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The Smurls had two more children, totalling 4 now, all daughters, and all of them simply lived with the haunting.
The night of their daughter Kim's Catholic confirmation, when Janet was getting her dressed for the event, a light fixture that Jack had installed himself years before came crashing down and clipped Kim on the shoulder.
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Jack began levitating over his bed as he slept.
One night, after making love to Jack, Janet was yanked from their bed by some unseen force and dragged along the floor.
Jack started to be cruel to his family.
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Janet became depressed.
When Janet was doing dishes one day, the family dog, Simon, a German shepherd, was picked up by an invisible force and slammed against the kitchen door.
Mary Smurl, Jack's mother, witnessed a puppy with neither a head nor a tail run across her living room right in front of her and disappear under the love seat.
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The children's pillows were punched by phantom hands.
The sound of fluttering wings could be heard in the chimney.
One of the twins fell down the stairs.
One night after bedtime, two different priests were brought in to bless the home, but the house was up to its haunted antics again in no time.
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Finally, Ed and Lorraine Warren, famous paranormal investigators, were called to the scene.
Ed, a self-taught demonologist, and Lorraine, a light transmedium with clairvoyance and the ESP brought along another psychic woman from their team.
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Between her and Lorraine, they sensed the presence of demons.
Once they headed upstairs, they sensed 4 entities in total. 1 was an old, confused woman, probably senile but not violent.
One was a younger, insane woman who wanted to hurt them.
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One was a male spirit with a moustache, the other was a demon who would use the other three spirits to destroy the small family.
Ed told them that it must have been all their daughters entering puberty that caused a dormant demonic spirit to awaken to lure the demon out in order to banish it with prayer.
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Ed had the group of them stand in the master bedroom in the dark and played Ave.
Maria twice until finally the dresser began to shake and rattle and an unplugged television set turned on to play static without any power.
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Ed said a prayer and the activity stopped, but only temporarily.
Ed told the family to go to the church store and acquire holy water and religious candles, and to contact a priest for an exorcism of the home, as he wasn't sanctioned to perform them.
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Soon after the activity escalated one night in the bedroom, invisible hands began to slap at Janet while other invisible hands began to tickle Jack's feet, the kind of tickling that would no doubt cause madness if prolonged enough.
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Jack began jumping around on the bed in an ugly animal frenzy as Janet cried his name.
The walls shook violently.
The unplugged television turned on again and emitted A pale, eerie light, blinding in its brightness.
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Jack flung himself off the bed and stood bare chested, his hands in big fists.
Why don't you?
Show yourself to us so we can have a fair fight, He shouted at the shifting shadows.
Janet came to his side, clung to him.
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It took her many minutes to calm her husband down, but the knocking in the walls continued.
A few days later, Janet decided to record the bangings that started up in her daughter's bedroom.
She started the tape recorder and told the demon she wanted to communicate with it and that it should knock once for yes and twice for no.
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She asked if the demon was there to harm them and there came one single knock for yes.
She asked if the demon was there to harm her and it gave another single knock in the affirmative.
She then asked if it believed in Jesus Christ, which resulted in a violent burst of knocks lasting several minutes.
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Afterwards she played the tape back and was relieved to find that it had recorded properly.
She had captured the evidence.
Jack saw the apparitions of two women in old fashioned bonnets and long dresses that glowed like the TV.
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He was paralysed and it seemed Janet had been put into a psychic sleep by the demon, for his cries never woke her.
A priest finally came and blessed the house, praying over each room in the house, then quickly left.
Ed decided to test out the priest's handiwork by trying to lure the demon out again as before.
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This time the demon began to choke Ed and words even began to appear in the bedroom mirror first.
Why?
And then an O and then AU.
Then the message was complete, it read.
You filthy bastard, get out of this house.
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Later, Simon, their German Shepherd, was levitated into the air and in the process became so frightened that Janet and Jack wondered if a dog could be driven insane.
Then he was dematerialized right in front of Janet's eyes and then Howling had come back into earthly existence.
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Then in June, Jack Smirrel experienced sexual assault at the hands of a succubus, a demon.
The succubus's skin was paperwhite but it was covered in some places with snake like scales and then in other places with open sores running with pus.
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She appeared 65 or 70 in the face with long white scraggly hair and her eyes were all red and the inside of her mouth and her gums were green.
Some of her teeth were missing but those she did have were long and vampire like.
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Her body itself was firm, like that of a younger woman, and she mounted Jack in the dominant position.
He couldn't move and found again that his wife Janet had been put into a psychic sleep, unable to hear him or to wake.
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The next morning, one of their daughters told Jack that she had a nightmare, that he was being attacked and assaulted by an evil old hag with sores all over her body, something she couldn't possibly have known about a Catholic priest.
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Father McKenna finally arrived and performed an exorcism on the House.
It failed.
Activity began again and one of the Smirll's daughters fell gravely ill with fever, but she soon recovered.
While taking a shower, Dawn, their 16 year old daughter, felt an invisible form join her in the shower and squeeze her arms painfully.
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Radios in the house turned on and off, and so did water faucets.
The foul stench returned and was driven away only by holy water to get a break from the chaos.
The family packed up and went packing in the Poconos for a short time to regain their sanity, but the demon followed them and ran them out of their campground.
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When they returned, Shannon, one of their daughters, was levitated and thrown out of her bed and into a wall.
One afternoon, after Janet had made a cabbage salad for dinner and put it in the refrigerator so that it would be cold at dinner time, she then laid down for a nap.
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An invisible hand began to touch her suggestively, then choked her nearly to death.
Father McKenna was called back and performed yet another exorcism on the House.
When that exorcism failed, too, the Smurls had no other choice.
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They had to go on a talk show.
Through Ed and Lorraine's connections.
They secured a spot with Janet and Jack on a Philadelphia based talk show called People Are Talking, where they were able to hide the Smirrel's identities behind a screen to protect their privacy.
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When they returned home, the demon only escalated its torment in the weeks afterwards.
The demon even followed Jack to his work at the bubble gum factory.
The demon took a new form, an 8 foot tall human like creature with two legs, wide shoulders and a furry head with blinding red eyes and a pig like snout.
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Its lips resembled pieces of liver, and they noisily slobbered as it made slashing motions in his general direction from the end of his bed.
The Smurls were forced to go public at that point, this time revealing their names and faces in hopes that someone, anyone, would know how to help them and would contact them.
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But first, they took another week long camping trip.
But just as before, the demon followed.
When they returned home, Janet witnessed a human hand materialized through her mattress and it grabbed her by the back of her neck and held her down.
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Before they went to the media, Jack was once again assaulted, this time by a different succubus.
This time it was a voluptuous young woman with pale skin and neon green eyes who sexually assaulted him.
They finally contacted A reporter and gave their stories, along with Ed and Lorraine Warren backing them up.
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As soon as their story was reported in the paper, they immediately regretted their decision from all the negative attention it was getting them in the neighborhood.
Cars were lined up and down the street to get a glimpse of the haunted house.
The police barricaded the street off.
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Finally, the Smurls had enough.
They read a prepared statement to the media asking for privacy.
The Catholic Church sent multiple priests to stay in the Smurl home to investigate.
No demonic or paranormal activity whatsoever happened while they were there, so the Smurls called Father McKenna back, who performed his third exorcism.
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The house smelled of roses instead of rotting flesh, and for a time the exorcism seemed to have worked, until Jack saw the shadowy figure again one night while watching TV.
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So if you feel like that was a little bit of a cliffhanger at the end, fear not.
The end of the story is that these Smurls got a book and TV movie deal which included an advance of an undisclosed amount of money.
That was clearly enough money to buy a house in Wilkes Barre, which is pronounced Wilkes Barre and not Wilkes Barre.
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FYI.
That's where they moved back to, and then they sold the house.
As for the demonic activity, the family said that it all kind of went away thanks to Jesus and the Virgin Mary banishing the demons.
The end.
The end.
Not the three exorcisms, not Ed and Lorraine just kind of just kind of stopped.
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OK, that's cool.
OK, before we get started, before we get started, we're going to take a little quick little little pop quiz, pop quiz hotshot.
Well, geography lesson quiz for you.
Where do you think the Poconos are?
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OK, I'm so curious to hear.
You know what I want to hear from you?
madamstrangeways@gmail.com We're leaving you a message on Spotify.
I want to know where you think the Poconos are now.
Some of you are thinking of the correct answer.
The rest of us are thinking an incorrect answer 'cause I was incorrect about where I thought the Poconos was.
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If you were picturing the Poconos somewhere tropical, perhaps, maybe the Caribbean or Polynesia, you were wrong.
We, I was wrong.
I was wrong.
I don't know what I thought.
I thought the Poconos was somewhere that like The Beach Boys would take you, like Aruba, maybe it's near Aruba or Jamaica.
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You know who I want to take you to Bermuda, Bahama.
Like that's where I thought the Poconos was, and I'm not the only one, apparently the Poconos, apparently the Poconos are actually just a mountain region in Northeast America, in the northeast of United States of America, like in Pennsylvania.
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And you go there and you camp.
So when the Smurls were going to the Poconos to camp, I was like, maybe I don't understand what the Poconos, maybe you don't know where the Poconos is are, and I sure didn't.
Now I know.
And now you know that the Poconos not not an island.
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Also, while I've got you here, Kokomo, not a real place made-up for the song.
All right, now we're getting into the episode about the Smurls and the Warrens.
Can you believe that this is the fifth deep dive episode of the Warrens Case Files?
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That's crazy.
I can't believe we're at #5 So if you're interested in hearing about Amityville Annabelle, The Conjuring One AKA the Parent Family Haunting, or The Conjuring 2 AKA The Enfield Poltergeist, please, I beg of you, go back and listen to those episodes.
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But you don't have to listen to those episodes in order to enjoy this episode.
Although I do kind of leave you a trail of weird little bread crumbs about Ed and Lorraine throughout the episodes.
So please, please do go listen.
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If you like this one, go back and listen to the other ones.
And in previous episodes I have spoken about my personal vendetta that I have against the Warrens and their demonic fear mongering.
So I won't go too far into it now, but just know that I do.
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I that I personally have been the victim of demonic fear mongering as a child and it really messed me up for a really long time, some might say to this day.
So here I am, I don't know, rock me like a hurricane.
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Here we are.
This is where we're at.
I do want to call out that normally the the normal episodes, I share a true paranormal story and then I dissect it at the end, I give my analysis, you know, spooky folklore, spooky history, like mundane scientific explanations.
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You know, I run the gamut, but I want to be clear that I treat those stories with a lot more care and respect than I treat anything by the Warrens.
Because the Warrens were doing harm and the Warrens, in my opinion, were con artists and flim flammers.
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And if you disagree with me, please don't leave.
Please listen.
I would love for you to listen.
Even if I don't change your mind, I would just love for you to listen and I would love to hear your thoughts or if you do agree with me that they're flim flammers.
Hi, let's be friends.
Make sure to follow me on social media and follow the podcast.
21:16
I am not going to be going beat by beat through every single claim of paranormal activity that haunted the Smurls.
First of all, because the burden of proof lies with the people making the claims, OK?
Which is not me, it is them.
But secondly, and I feel most importantly, we won't be discussing every single paranormal claim because that's exactly what Ed wants us to do.
21:40
Sorry, Ed, sorry, I'm not following for your firehose of falsehood tactic, which is, by the way, where someone just spews so much bullshit so fast that it is completely overwhelming.
And you cannot possibly argue with every single point because there's too many being made.
21:56
And you sound pedantic because you're trying to, You are trying to hit every single piece of bullshit that is being fed to you.
But if you do that, then it's like, gosh, why are you being so pedantic?
Like, what's your problem?
What do you mean?
What do you mean?
So we're not doing that.
I'm not going beat by beat.
22:12
We're not going line by line, OK?
The thing is, if you tried to do that, it would it would kind of be, how do I say this?
It would be kind of like Chinese vampires, you know, Chinese hopping vampires.
If you don't know, FYI, Chinese vampires can be stopped by throwing rice on the ground because they have to stop and count each individual grain of rice.
22:36
And that is kind of what this is.
Ed is throwing his weird flim flam rice and he thinks that we are Chinese hopping vampires, but we are not.
We are not.
We are going to take a step back and we're going to look at the story from a few different angles to see if we can separate fact from fiction.
22:54
And let me tell you, there is a whole lot of the latter.
And I don't think that there's very much of the farmer, but we'll see, you know, let me know.
Let me know after you listen to this episode.
What do you think?
OK, here we go.
The story that you just heard me tell is, like I said, my retelling of the events as laid out in the book The Haunting One Family's Nightmare, written by, yes, Janet and Jax Murrell, Lorraine and Ed Warren.
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And of course, the actual author who actually wrote the book, Robert Curran, who I would literally have never guessed was a journalist, judging from his purple prose.
Shocking.
There is 00 percent journalistic integrity happening in this book.
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Let me tell you, the book is the major source for the story in today's episode.
As always, I do try to avoid including sources that recall paranormal occurrences decades after the event because of the deeply fallible nature of human memory, which I talk about in many other episodes.
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But in a nutshell, let me just tell you, human memory, deeply fallible, Every time we access a memory, our brains are rewriting that memory.
And so you really just don't know what memory you have.
That's actually 100% true, even though you fully believe that it's 100% true.
24:15
So I don't like to use sources that happened too long after the occurrences.
That's just me.
And As for this book, The Haunting, I truly cannot recommend enough that you never read this book.
I just, you don't, it's just don't.
24:35
You know what?
You're welcome because I read it so you don't have to.
In fact, I, I will show you some quotes later on from the book so you can get an idea of how bad it is.
I could genuinely do an entire episode just quoting the book and reacting to parts of it, which I may end up doing as a bonus episode on Patreon.
24:53
So you may want to, you may want to check it out patreon.com/madam Strange ways, because there's a lot to laugh at because of how over the top this book is.
By the way, I, I think I, I did go back and say at the beginning, but I do just want to reiterate, I, I did include some direct quotes from the book when it was particularly weird or unintentionally funny because I just couldn't help it.
25:19
Like I, there's I, I had to.
So if a part really did seem overly ridiculous to you, again, I assure you, I took no creative liberties.
I, I don't need to take creative liberties.
They took enough of creative, they took enough creative liberties for both of us.
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So first we are going to briefly discuss the Smurrll family and then we're going to briefly discuss the book itself.
And then we will get into the real analysis, the theories, the research, the real nitty gritty.
And again, a fair warning, there really is a goodly amount of discussion about paranormal sexual assault in this episode because it is talked about in softcore detail in the book.
26:02
I I find that most people who discuss this story shy away from the sexual assault part of the story.
But not me.
No, no, no, shying away from weird demon sex isn't the strange ways way.
That's not how we do things here.
26:19
I also think that by glossing over the demonic rape that it lets the Warrens get away with using sexual assault as a tool to sell books and to get more lucrative movie deals.
That's what we do.
By glossing over that, it kind of feels like some people avoid this topic because they sense that it's a little too crazy, and it kind of paints the Warrens in a crazier light than they would like them to be painted in.
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But I think even if you're avoiding the topic because it feels icky or because you don't want to be censored by social media, I think by censoring yourself you are doing the same thing, which is avoiding shining a light on these details of the story, which I feel like are gross and important.
27:04
They're not gross.
Speak.
Listen, they're gross because Ed and Lorraine Warren and the Smurls and Robert Curran used sexual assault of the demonic variety specifically just to sell their story.
That's why it's gross.
OK, just to be clear.
27:21
So starting with the Smurls.
What a name.
That's number one.
Smurl.
Smurl This is what's been in my head since.
This has been what's in my head since the beginning.
Jack and Janet.
Smurl went up the hurl to fetch a pail of water.
27:39
I couldn't come up with the rest.
Jack, it's just, what are we doing here?
Also, by the way, Janet's back.
This is a different Janet.
But I just the last episode I did was the Enfield Poltergeist and the little girl that's like the main character in the story's name is Janet.
27:55
So many Janets, lots of Janets running around.
This is a different Janet.
But anyway, OK, so reminder as we get into this, the year is 1986, so in Wilkes Barre, PA, just 25 minutes from Scranton, yes, that's Scranton.
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The Smurl family lived in a duplex with the nuclear family on one side comprised of Janet and Jack Smurl and their four daughters, which comprised of one set of twins and then Jack's parents, John and Mary, living on the other side.
28:28
So sharing, sharing a wall with my in laws honestly sounds like the scariest part of this story.
Hey, yo, that's just sounds all right.
So Jack worked not at a paper factory or at an office selling paper.
28:45
No, no, no.
Jack worked at a bubble gum factory, tops.
Bubble gum, to be specific, like the bubble gum in the baseball cards.
You know what I just realized?
I did not go down a rabbit hole about tops or bubble gum or baseball cards.
And you're welcome.
29:00
We're going to move on before I get distracted.
Janet, his wife, used to work at the same bubble gum factory.
So strange that's how they met.
But as the book The Haunted by Robert Curran reminded us practically on every page, Janet was a dutiful wife and stay at home mom and the most devoted of Catholics, just the paragon of American womandom that all women should aspire to but could never hope to reach the dizzying heights of.
29:27
So probably you shouldn't even try.
I'm not picking on the real Janet Smirrell here by the way.
I'm highlighting how Curran and probably Ed Warren, who you have to imagine was extremely heavy-handed with his management of the book writing.
I'm highlighting how Curran and probably Ed chose to portray Janet Smirrell and her entire family.
29:49
Really, He they really just beat you over the head with the leave it to Beaverness of it all.
So the book the Haunted, which the Warrens orchestrated and controlled like they always did, and they never wrote anything.
They just kind of gave their notes or their interviews over to not so much a ghost writer but just an author to just to write the book for them because they didn't write the books.
30:10
So this book also goes to greatly annoying lengths to constantly remind us that the family are upstanding citizens who you would never expect to be tormented by a demon because of how Catholic they are and how.
Civic minded they are.
30:27
Curran described Jack.
As being blessed with a high.
IQ Here is how Jack was described in his 20s by the author.
His job at the confectionery company promised promotions and higher salary.
His health was good, his body strong and lean, not unlike that of the movie star.
30:46
Some said he resembled Charles Bronson.
He had many friends and enjoyed sports of all kinds.
As well as I can't even get through this with a strange face, as well as an occasional night drinking 3.2 beers with his fellow workers.
31:03
I am not making this up.
This is how this entire book is written.
So you know what?
If you want to read it because you want to laugh, go ahead.
Or if you're like me and you kind of have fun getting mad, then hopefully you would have a good time too 'cause it was a good time, but it was also a slog.
31:21
OK, here's how.
This is in Janet's words, allegedly, according to Curran, when she was talking about dating Jack before they got married, she says We shared a lot of the same beliefs.
This is also how the narrator of the audiobook would like put on voices for the different characters.
31:43
It's not good.
We shared a lot of the same beliefs.
We were both Catholics.
We believed in work ethic.
We didn't go along with so many.
People our age who were into drugs and protest.
We both wanted a family and we both wanted to make sure that the family would be raised properly.
32:00
And by properly, they mean Catholic.
Just to be clear, but this is how all of the main characters in the book are written, including Ed and Lorraine.
Of course, we know that the movies always paint this like perfect idyllic image of Ed and Lorraine, you know, being just this perfect family.
32:21
They're so in love and they have no flaws.
And Ed plays the guitar and sings Elvis.
And that is definitely in this book.
Like it's, it's, it's so bad.
It is so bad.
And here, OK, this is hold on, this isn't the part that I read you earlier, but I really this is one of the parts that was verbatim from the book.
32:45
This is when the spirit is simultaneously slapping Janet while tickling Jack's feet to death.
I don't know.
This is while this is happening.
Jack flung himself off the bed and stood bare chested, his hands big fists.
33:03
Why don't you show yourself to us so we could have a fair fight?
He shouted at the shifting shadows.
Janet came to his side, clung to him.
It took her many minutes to calm her husband down.
Why is this the cover of a Harlequin Romance double?
33:19
Like, is Jack Fabio, is this the movie poster?
Is this a movie poster from 1982, like Star Wars or like, I don't know.
That's what I'm picturing.
That like, painterly, really dramatic painted movie poster.
That's what I'm picturing.
33:35
Janet is clung to his side, you know, Jack in his bare chest, in his big fists.
It's just insane.
The author, Robert Curran, must have been really into romance novels because let's put a pin in that for later romance novels, Harlequin specifically.
33:54
And I'm not going down a rabbit hole.
That just occurred to me right now to be like, let me understand, where did that phrase come from?
What is that?
OK, Nope.
Romance novels.
We're moving on.
So the entire point of portraying the Smurls as the perfect nuclear American family, of course, is so that you, the reader, finds that you are nowhere near as perfect and pious as the Smurls.
34:17
So if the Smurls can be attacked by demons, you're ripe for the demonic.
Dang, you're ripe for the demonic picking.
Come on.
Because remember, and this is my big beef with the Warrens, I could forgive the Warrens their huckster natures if they weren't fear mongering and actively causing harm.
34:37
So maybe not immediate bodily harm, but they wanted everyone to be afraid.
Because if you're afraid, you might use their services.
They stoked the fires of the Satanic panic that was beginning to really set the country aflame in the early 80s with the moral panic.
34:56
And then they profited from and poured even more satanic gasoline onto this moral panic.
And obviously they're not the only thing that led to the satanic panic, but they definitely fed into it.
And regarding the Smurls, Ed was quoted as saying the Smurls are truly a family coming under a visual attack.
35:16
The ghost, devil, demon, or whatever you call it is in that home.
We're dealing with an intelligence here.
It's powerful and tangible and very dangerous.
So as always, the Warrens specifically Ed sought to convince you that invisible, powerful, intelligent evil demons were lying in wait to ruin your life as a way to increase book sales specifically.
35:40
And if you happened to start hearing sounds in the walls and smelling bad smells in your house, they might just come and help you too.
There was air quotes there if you couldn't hear them, assuming that you looked outwardly marketable enough anyway, like the Smurls.
35:57
Because Ed Warren clearly had a.
Vision for the Smurls right out the gate.
Picturing the headlines.
About this all American family with their stay at home mom and their factory working dead and their kids including a set of twins.
I mean, that would look great on the talk show circuit.
And it did, by the way, especially with the headline Demonic Rape because, see, Ed knew a thing or two about.
36:20
Getting and keeping.
The public's attention, I firmly believe the focus on the demonic sexual assault with the Smurls was Ed learning from the very tabloids his stories were often published in.
So not just using sensationalism, but specifically shock advertising or shock veritizing.
36:40
And it's a type of advertising that deliberately rather than inadvertently, startles and offends its audience by violating norms for social values and personal ideas.
And also one of the keys to successful marketing.
And that's what these cases were to Ed and Lorraine, by the way, marketing for their services, their books, their movies, etcetera.
37:02
But one of the keys to successful marketing is disruption, which claiming that a married couple were both being sexually assaulted by demons definitely is.
I don't know what could be more disrupting.
And to put it nicely, that is a fucked up thing for them to do.
37:21
And they didn't just do it once, by the way, they also tried the sexual assault by Demon Angle with the next family that they helped air quotes directly after the Smurls, the Snedekers, which is the family in the Haunting in Connecticut movie.
37:38
And you know, I haven't seen the movie, but I just know that they don't put any of the sexual assault stuff in the movie.
I don't need to watch it to know that they didn't.
I did Google it and I do feel pretty confident that it's not in there.
37:54
But isn't that interesting because it wasn't like it was a small part.
You can go on YouTube right now and find a clip of the Snedekers on Sally Jesse Raphael, which was a huge daytime talk show at the time, and they're talking about it.
38:10
It's it, It's not, It wasn't a secret.
But isn't that interesting that it didn't make it into the Hollywood movie?
Isn't that strange?
Because Ed and Lorraine also agreed that it happened, so why would they leave that out?
Hmm, interesting.
Maybe because it's, like I said, a little too crazy.
38:29
A little much, but after Ed and Lorraine Warren claimed that two pairs of married couples had both been essayed by demons, and after that didn't work out for them very well, isn't it interesting that not a single other case that they ever investigated, actually before or since ever involved it again?
38:51
Interesting.
It's almost like they just kind of threw a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what stuck and then adjusted and moved on from the book The Haunted, The author's note begins with this line.
The book that you were about to read was compiled from the testimony of the 8 residents of 328 and 330 Chase St. as well as the 28 other people who have experienced supernatural phenomena in connection with the Smurl family.
39:23
I think the term testimony there is doing a lot of heavy lifting and I suspect he used that word in particular because testimony connotes.
Connotes.
Is that a word?
Why does it feel weird?
We're just going to move on.
39:39
Testimony implies a certain legitimacy to it, some gravitas, if you will.
And also 28 other people who, OK, that's just seems like a made-up number now.
The book then goes on to share a letter written from the Bishop Robert McKenna.
39:57
Father McKenna, who you may remember just made 3 failed exorcist attempts in the Smurl home.
And also, by the way, he was involved with other cases with the Warrens.
Now the only reason that Curran would include a letter written by Father McKenna is to make you, the reader, go oh wow, a Catholic Bishop really believes in this story.
40:20
And as a human, I am scientifically proven to be swayed by authority bias and even more swayed by authorities in uniform.
And who loves uniform more then a Catholic priest?
40:36
The little costumes that they wear come on.
Strangely though regarding Father McKenna, he had this to say about the Warrens books and an interview with Michael W Cuneo.
Cuneo author of American Exorcism in the year 2001.
40:55
He says they are sensationalized and you just can't take it literally.
I don't like to be publicly associated with them.
Interesting.
That's interesting because you you worked with them on on multiple cases and you wrote like the foreword to this book.
41:17
Maybe he regretted his, the part that he played in these cases.
He doesn't say as much, but it's kind of what I'm reading into it.
And Speaking of strange things, in the book The Haunted, Robert Curran, the author, made a lot of weird claims about the house that he shockingly had no evidence to back up.
41:38
He claimed that the 1900s deed for the house when it was originally deeded.
Deeded is probably a verb.
He says that the deed originally reads the person who buys this house buys the house, property, and creatures contained therein.
41:57
He goes on to say that apparently no lawyer could explain what they mean when they say creatures contained therein, probably because the deed didn't exist.
And also you didn't ask any lawyers because it didn't exist in the first place.
42:15
It's just I actually started going down this rabbit hole.
I actually went to this was insane of me and I gave it up after about 45 minutes, but I was literally going through.
You can find the deeds online for like Wilkes Barre and West Pittston.
42:32
But the problem is that they're just scanned and they're not really in an order and you can't search the text because it's all handwritten back then.
So I did find deeds going back to the 1900s, but there's a lot more deeds than you might have expected that there would be.
42:50
So I couldn't find it.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't totally exist, but I, I find it interesting that he doesn't then present.
Here's a copy of it, guys, isn't this interesting?
Here's a copy of it so that you can Fact Check.
No, you know they don't like that.
43:06
All right, and now onto.
A brief timeline of where the Smirls case falls within the other Warren cases.
Just to give you a little bit of your bearings back, this was not the Warren's first paranormal rodeo.
Rather, the Warrens weren't just a traveling pair of ghost hunters slash self-proclaimed demonologists a la the Winchester brothers.
43:28
No, no, no, they would investigate.
Investigate air quotes for free.
Remember when I said earlier put a pin in this?
Here we are.
They would investigate for free and then use the family story in their lectures that they charged entry for.
43:44
Remember the Perrin Haunting that we talked about in the Perrin Family Haunting episode about the first Conjuring movie?
Remember that episode?
Remember when the public descended upon the Perrin's farmhouse to gawk at the haunted house?
The Perrins didn't hold a press conference like the Smurls did.
44:01
So how did all of those people that ended up harassing the family find the Perrins address the Warrens?
The Warrens gave it to them.
The Warrens shared the parents story in their little lecture series that they ran and they shared the parents home address in their lectures without the family's permission.
44:24
And so of course people wanted to go and see and be looky loosed so they went and harassed the parent family.
Obviously in the case of the Smurls, the Smurls came out publicly.
But even though in the book it goes to great lengths to explain to you how Ed and Lorraine Warren warned the Smurls not to go public because gosh, it's going to be really stressful for you guys.
44:46
I just don't know that you should do it.
There's no way that the Warrens were telling them not to go public.
There's zero chance.
The Warrens were definitely telling them you need to go public.
Because if the Smurls don't go public, well, how are how are the how are the Warrens going to get another movie deal?
45:01
According to People magazine in 1981, regarding the Warrens, though they accept no fees for conducting demonic investigations, they lecture indefatigably.
There's your vocabulary lesson for the day at up to $1000 per lecture.
45:19
First of all, does People magazine use what I have to assume is SAT level vocabulary anymore?
Because indefatigably, I just can't see that word appearing in People magazine these days.
Are you?
Do you read People magazine?
45:34
Have you seen that word recently in a recent issue?
Let me know madamstrangeways@gmail.com.
So for the record, $1000 in 1981, which is what the Warrens were charging per head for their lectures I guess up to up to the highest range ish $1000 in 1981.
45:54
A $1000 in 1981 is like $3700 in 2025.
Thirty $700.00 per person at the high level.
So maybe, maybe, maybe the Warrens didn't charge people for their services, but they definitely made money on those people's misfortune and their stories.
46:17
And they didn't share the wealth unless they had a book deal with them.
And then, of course, you know, on the back end, they obviously would have made sure that they ended up with the lion's share of the proceeds 100%.
Like, fight me, $3700.
You know, you see how their business model worked.
46:34
But then it sounds this is what I'm saying.
Ed was so good.
He was, so I genuinely think he was kind of a dumb guy, but he got how to manipulate people and he learned very well and remembered and applied the lessons that he learned.
46:52
So how dumb can you be, I guess.
Anyway, the Warren cases, here's the timeline that, damn, I didn't mean that to me to take that long to get into the Warren cases.
Here we go in the section about the timeline.
We're finally to the timeline of the Warren cases, so 1970 Annabelle.
47:09
Now mind you that story was not published until 1980 and they never talked about it prior to 1980.
But in the timeline of of the Warren universe, that's when Annabelle happened. 1970 then winter 1974 is the Perrin family haunting, which is The Conjuring 1 in March 1976.
47:34
That was The Amityville Horror, which the Warrens were only peripherally involved in here.
And I think Ed kind of stayed mad about it.
I think he stayed mad about it till he died.
He wanted to be more involved with it.
But on the other hand, it did also kind of put them on the map as paranormal investigators.
47:52
And then in May and June of 1978, the Enfield Poltergeist, which they were even less involved with this case than they were at Amityville.
And it's insane that there was a movie that claims otherwise because if you listen to the Enfield Poltergeist episode I did, they were there for like 10 seconds.
48:10
Then 1980 you have The Book of the Demonologist is published, which is the first reference of Annabelle, and it's a compilation of a lot of their other case files.
Then in 1980 you have the demon murder trial case, which is The Devil Made Me Do It.
You may have heard of that one.
48:27
Then 1985 is the Exorcism of Maurice Thurall.
Oh no, I should have looked up how to pronounce that.
Satan's Harvest is the name of the book that's later published.
Then January 1986 we are here the Smerl family haunting and in 1988 we go to the Snedeker House which is the haunting in Connecticut who is also involved with demonic essay.
48:52
So now that you have your bearings, let's really dive face first into the mid 1980s and the Satanic Panic.
The year was 1986.
Ronald Reagan was president, there were Reaganomics and also he slashed daycare spending, which will come up in a future Satanic panic episode.
49:16
Had a pin in that 1986.
That's the year that the space shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after it lifted off from Cape Canaveral, tragically killing all six NASA crew members and 1 teacher aboard Chernobyl.
Well, Chernobyled, it was and is the worst nuclear disaster in human history. 1986, not a great year, but on the radio was Springsteen, Madonna and Dionne Warwick and Lionel Richie.
49:46
OK, you understand, Like there was some bangers on the radio even though things were not going well in 1986.
So all the other cases that we've covered from the Warrens in the 70s were all happening in the wake of Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist and Vatican 2, which even though I'm really interested in this topic, it does just put me to sleep and it sounds really boring.
50:09
But basically the Catholic Vatican 2 means that the Catholic Church basically in a nutshell said that you can have mass in languages other than Latin so that people can actually understand what the Mass is saying, which was apparently too woke of the church at the time.
50:26
And people go really mad.
This happens also in the middle of America's new obsession with demons.
Now the Smirrel haunting happens smack dab in the very middle of the Satanic Panic, which started about 1980 with the book Michelle Remembers.
50:43
And it also happened in the golden age of horror and slasher movies.
Horror cinema had exploded in the time between the parent Family Haunting in 1974 and the Smirrels in 1986.
Much more horror imagery was around to inspire people, whether consciously or subconsciously.
51:02
And Satanic panic, OK, listen, I I make that sound because I want to talk more about Satanic panic right now, but I also don't want this to be a 10 part episode.
So I'm going to have to do a separate deep dive into the satanic panic of the 80s and 90s or we will be here all night.
51:20
But I will give you a little satanic.
Nutshell in just a minute.
So give me just a SEC on the subject of horror movies that may have influenced any or all of the Smurls, and the Warrens for that matter.
For this case, the following horror media was released leading up to the Smurls first sharing their story to the public and working with the Warrens.
51:43
This isn't every horror film that was released in this period, just ones that you'll soon see have very similar themes to the Smurls story, which we'll cover in a moment.
And the reason that I want to tell you these is because I just don't think that most people understand that these movies all came out leading up to the Smurls saying all this stuff happened to them.
52:05
Because remember, they said that everything had been happening in their home for like something like 13 years or something.
But there's not really any record that that's true.
It kind of sounds like they actually just started saying that when they started working with the Warrens personally, that's my read on it.
52:20
So anyway, here we go.
Here's a list of all of the horror movies that have really similar themes and imagery to what happened to the Smorrel family.
So we're going to start at the beginning.
What was that?
I don't know what that was.
52:37
OK, we're going to start at the beginning.
Rosemary's Baby in 1968.
The Exorcist, the book in 1971 which is said to be based on a true story.
It's not The Exorcist movie, 1973.
The Omen 1976.
The Amityville Horror book 1977.
52:54
The Shining book 1977.
The Exorcist 2/19/77 The Shining movie 1980.
Ghost Story 1981.
The Entity 1982.
Poltergeist 1982.
Amityville 2.
The Possession 1982 TV movie The demon murder case, which is another Warren case 1983 a nightmare on Elm Street 1984 Ghostbusters 1984, a nightmare on Elm Street 2 freddy's revenge 1985 and in 1985.
53:26
A 2020 episode aired something called The Devil Worshippers, which was just an episode that played clips from Rosemary's Baby and told viewers that this is basically how Satan worshippers work.
So here, just use this and treat it as fact even though it's a movie that's entirely fictional.
53:47
So before I go through and share some of the specific themes or scenes in these movies that have a suspicious resemblance to what happened in 1986 to the Smurls after all of these movies were released, here's a quote from The Exorcist Effect, Horror, Religion, and Demonic Belief by Joseph Laycock and Eric Harrelson.
54:06
Which if you've listened to the show before, you know I love this book.
I you have read it multiple times.
And here's something that I think might be relevant to the point that I'm trying to make here.
Ostention, in essence, is the transmission of a legend by performing it rather than communicating it through words.
54:26
As folklorist Bill Ellis puts it, events provoke stories, but it is far more likely that stories provoke events.
This brings us to our theory of the relationship between supernatural horror and religious cultures.
If events provoke stories and vice versa, then supernatural horror films are actually part of a feedback loop wherein one, actual events become the basis of films.
54:53
Two, those films shape the way audiences interpret the world, giving rise to new beliefs and experiences.
And three, these beliefs and experiences lead to new events that become the basis of new horror films, and the cycle begins again.
55:09
We call this feedback loop The Exorcist Effect.
Yeah, they said the name of the.
They said the name of the book.
Very exciting moment of the book to read that.
But so that's really what we're, that's what we're looking at when we go into this description of all of these movies because you may have heard of a lot of these movies if you've seen all of these movies.
55:30
Wow. 10 out of 10.
Send me an e-mail, madamstrangeways@gmail.com.
Let me know if you've seen all these movies.
I have not.
I've seen a lot of them.
So I read synopsis, synopsis of the rest of them to make sure that I was speaking about these as intelligently as possible.
55:47
So for the sake of the weakest attempt at brevity, which you know I'm terrible at, here are just what parts of the movies have suspiciously similar themes or imagery to the Smurl case from that list above?
Rosemary's Baby 1968.
Spoiler alert, Rosemary is raped by Satan.
56:06
It's the entire premise of the movie, who Satan is in essence an incubus for our purposes.
So there's your supernatural sexual assault for you.
I mean like right there sexual assault demonic, supernatural, Satan demon and also Satan a demon.
56:22
Clearly in the scene in which he impregnates Rosemary has famously yellow eyes.
Who else has yellow eyes?
01 of the smells Sexual assault demons.
Isn't that interesting?
Then we move on to The Exorcist 1973.
Do I need to say any more?
56:39
I feel like I can just leave it there, but I OK I won't leave it there.
Bodily levitation beds, shaking and levitating items flying around the room, which we see also in the story from the Smurls.
The Omen 1976.
Now, I watched this movie for the first time recently, specifically as research for this episode in order to see if there were any parallels.
57:00
To the smurl case.
And I couldn't really clock any behind how it probably fed into the concept of being targeted by evil and of course, reinforces the martyrdom of Catholics.
The Amityville Horror, 1977 for the book, 1979 for the movie.
57:17
It features a demonic pig with red eyes.
Like I mentioned, at a minimum, you know, we got the pig monster and harassed Jack and then the pig sounds and the walls.
And you know, like I said, remember that the Warrens were involved with the Amityville case even though they weren't involved with the book that was published.
57:32
And you just know that really chap eds hide the Shining book 1977 movie 1980.
So in the scene of the movie where Jack Torrance played by Jack Nicholson, there's a lot of Jacks enters room 237.
So when Jack Torrance enters room 237, he encounters the sexy naked lady bathing in the bathroom and starts making out with her, only for her to turn into a grotesque hag whose skin was rotting and falling off just like he describes the succubus.
58:06
The first succubus.
And I think the fact that the hag in The Shining was young and then turns old kind of makes sense as to how he could have kind of conflated the two and just kind of combined them into into one character who was young in the body but old in the face.
58:25
Not only that, but the book The Haunted specifies that this succubus hag that essayed Jack even had open sores on her body, literally just like the scary hag in the Shining and the Haunting book.
58:40
The Haunted book also described the succubus's mouth as green and the gums is green.
And that really stood out to me because I could not shake.
And I actually rewatched some of The Shining specifically to look at the scene again and it was just what I thought.
58:57
The room, the bathroom in room 237 in this scene in The Shining is overwhelmingly green.
Like almost the entire bathroom is this kind of sickly green.
So I feel like, I feel like you watched the scene.
59:13
OK, we're going to move on, but come on.
Oh, this one is the this one was the one that immediately jumped out at me right away as soon as I was reading the book where I was like, I think this is just the scene from The Shining.
All right.
The Exorcist 2/19/77 features a succubus in the form of teenage Reagan from the first Exorcist.
59:32
And this succubus has yellow green eyes too, just like some of the demons in the swirl case.
All right, now this isn't a movie, but in 1977 through 1979, The Enfield Poltergeist.
Wow.
The Enfield Poltergeist case was in the news, which is another warrants investigation, even though they were barely involved.
59:51
And that story also involves levitation and things flying around the room.
The movie Ghost Story 1981, in which a man falls to his death from his apartment window after seeing a girl he's been sleeping with suddenly turned into a living, rotting corpse.
The Entity 1982 in which a single mother is sexually assaulted and tormented by an invisible poltergeist like entity in her home.
1:00:16
Yeah, the TV movie The Demon Murder Case 1983 starring Kevin Bacon and Cloris Leachman was based on yet another case file of the Warrens.
The Devil Made Me Do It, the David Glatzel case Poltergeist 1982, which is specifically about a red blooded American family being terrorized by a poltergeist.
1:00:35
Again, spoiler alert in case you haven't seen the movie Poltergeist, and it requires an unlikely spiritual advisor who is a psychic medium just like Lorraine, to cleanse the home.
Not only that, but even if you've never seen the movie, you've likely seen the movie poster which shows a little girl sitting in front of a brightly glowing TV screen, just like the unplugged TV that kept glowing in the Smiles bedroom.
1:01:01
Then there's Amityville 2/19/82.
Did you know that the Warrants acted as a demonology advisor or as plural demonology advisors for Amityville 2, which made millions at the box office?
I think this was Ed's way of worming his way back into the Amityville IP.
1:01:19
Then we move on to A Nightmare on Elm Street 1984.
Now, at first I was thinking, this one's probably not as relevant because it's a slasher film.
I haven't rewatched it in a really long time, but I was like, Nope, I have to be thorough.
That's the strange ways way.
1:01:36
So I had to go and I had to read the full synopsis of the movie and as I was reading it.
It hit me.
The Smurls claimed that they had huge slash marks appearing on their tubs, like their ceramic tub, and in their wallpaper and in their walls.
1:01:53
Do do big, huge scary slashes sound familiar?
OK, if you haven't seen A Nightmare on Elm Street and you don't, no, I guess maybe it wouldn't sound familiar, but Freddy Krueger is the villain of this movie.
And he has a glove with these really long slashy blades on the fingers.
1:02:12
And his whole thing is like, slashing stuff with the blades just like they described.
Just, you know, like, OK.
And not only that, but remember when a human hand came through the mattress and grabbed Janet by the back of the neck?
That's practically a scene straight out of this movie.
1:02:30
Isn't that interesting?
Ghostbusters 1984 included a scene where Dan Aykroyd's character is asleep in bed and is awoken by an ethereal ghost lady floating directly over him in bed, who then disappears and visibly undoes his pants.
1:02:45
And then the next shot we see is Dan's eyes going cross eyed as something presumably is done to him, although I would say without his consent.
But this is the 80s and things were different back then.
Also by the way, I do not remember that scene at all.
1:03:01
From my childhood I watched a lot of things I was not supposed to be watching.
Ghostbusters was one of them.
The opening scene with the kitchen and the eggs exploding scared the living shit out of me as a child and I do not remember this scene now.
I genuinely think that I could probably just end the episode there because to me, this is just come on.
1:03:22
To me, this just explains everything.
It explains everything personally to me.
However, you know, I can't stop yapping.
So we're just going to keep going.
Case is not closed.
We shall continue if it pleases the jury.
So in the book The Haunted, one of the Smorl's neighbors, a nurse said that the things Janet told her were unlike anything she'd seen in any horror movie.
1:03:47
Like, what are you talking about?
Literally every single thing that happens to them is taken directly from a horror movie.
Of all the things that this neighbor supposedly could have said, it's so strange that they specifically said it's unlike anything I've ever seen in a horror movie.
1:04:06
Well, then I guess you don't watch movies then.
Lady, I don't know what to tell you.
Go watch any horror movie and you're going to see exactly what's happening to this world.
It's crazy.
Anyway, so we've got things being thrown around the house, we've got people levitating, we've got Freddy Krueger's iconic claw marks, and most damningly, six of those movies include either paranormal sexual assault or just paranormal sex in general.
1:04:29
Coincidence.
And now for the Satanic nutshell of the Satanic Panic from Wikipedia.
This is I'm going to This is a nutshell.
It's a nutshell.
I'm going to have to do a whole other deep dive.
So just please don't come for me.
Don't come for me if I don't cover everything in a nutshell from Wikipedia.
1:04:47
I'm literally just reading verbatim.
The Satanic Panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse.
Ritual abuse SRA sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse, or sadistic ritual abuse, starting in North America in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting even today.
1:05:12
The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book Co written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pastor What is I Can't Read Words Today and his patient and future wife, Michelle Smith, which used the controversial and now discredited practice of recovered memory therapy to make false claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith, Michelle.
1:05:35
The allegations, which arose afterward throughout much of the United States involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people and specifically children in the context of a cult or satanic rituals.
Some allegations of all the conspiracy of a global satanic cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifice, pornography and prostitution.
1:05:58
In a nut the the smallest of nutshells.
That's the Satanic panic.
What is the smallest nutshell?
I was going to say a pistachio, but then I thought of pine nuts.
But do pine nuts come individually in little tiny?
Are they actual nuts or are they seeds?
1:06:14
Is a pine nut a seed?
Anyway, whatever the smallest nut is, that's what this is.
I badly want to talk about more of it, but it's we don't need to just know it was happening directly while the Smurls case was happening directly.
Now, as I'm recording this, I am seeing that I am at the one hour and 16 minute mark and I'm looking at my outline and seeing that I am a little bit less than halfway through my outline for the episode.
1:06:43
So you know what that means.
This is either going to be a 2 1/2 hour episode, which I don't want to do because I did it with the infield poltergeist case.
Oops, I did it again.
I'm not going to make the same mistake twice because I think I should have broken that up into two parts.
1:06:59
So you know what we're going to do?
We're going to do the first two parter.
Listen, you are witnessing strange history right now.
It's happening.
I've never done a two-part episode.
This is going to be a two-part episode.
I'll tell you why because I got a lot more to say and I don't want you to nod off halfway through, so I'm going to break it up, give you a little bit of a breather.
1:07:21
So TuneIn next strange episode, same strange time, same strange channel and join me for Part 2 of the true story behind the Smirrel haunting and the story behind the latest conjuring film The Conjuring Last Rites where we will talk about more fear mongering that the Warrens do and Ed's weird lore that he creates that explains all of his demon hunting.
1:07:51
And we will go into probably a little too much detail about the succubus and the incubus that we see in this story.
And then of course, we'll go over theories and what possibly happened in the actual Smirl case.
1:08:07
So thank you for listening to Part 1.
Please, please, please tune in for Part 2.
Because honestly, kind of like my favorite stuff is in Part 2, which is why it kind of kills me to be doing a 2 parter.
So I need you to listen to the second part.
Please listen to the second part.
If you've gotten this far, you're going to listen to the second part, right?
1:08:24
Right, right.
Right.
Good.
OK, good.
OK, great.
Good.
I'm glad to hear that.
All right, thank you guys so much for joining me for this first part of the Smirrel family haunting.
Thank you for joining me for more true strange stories of the unexplained.
1:08:52
Remember that you can feel afraid and not be in danger.
You're safe here with me, probably.
Please follow the podcast, leave a rating on Spotify or Apple, or tell your friends and foes about the show.
It would mean the world to me.
1:09:09
The underworld, obviously.
I mean, come on.
Was that not?
Was that not clear?
Madam Strangeways is produced and narrated by me.
Madam Strangeways theme music is by marina.ryan@marinamakes.co.
Cover art is by Andrea Chisel Roldan at Cult of Teddy on Instagram.
1:09:30
You can submit your own true strange story at madamstrangeways.com or e-mail it to madamstrangeways@gmail.com.
See you soon, she said ominously.
1:10:04
Nope, can't start now.
Can't start now because there's a plane over here.
I don't wait for the plane.
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