Catherine Groux
After being summoned to cure a home in Hartford of what she described as “horribly destructive” spirits, Lorraine Warren entered the home to find the bed levitating with the family and her husband on top of it.
For Warren, however, it is all in a day’s work.
Warren is a professional trance medium. In other words, she speaks to the dead.
“I am able to communicate (with spirits),” she said in a phone interview. “I work with the police on murders. I have worked on hauntings. I am able to communicate on a trance level. It is very natural. I’ve never had any training.”
While Warren said spirits are naturally attracted to certain people, her experience began while she was a student at a Catholic school in Milford. As a young girl she began to see light around the school’s nuns.
As her parents struggled to understand her ability, Warren said she ignored it, not wanting to appear different from the other children, until she went to UCLA for college.
In college she was tested for natural psychic abilities. Testing very high above average, Warren began to embrace her talent.
Today Warren’s career has taken her all over the world, working with groups from Buddhist monks to the Church of Scotland. Now, she said, it is impossible to say how many homes she has visited to rid them of their spirits and bring their families closure.
One of the most difficult cases she has worked on was in Middlesex, England. There, she said two sisters brought spirits to their home with the Ouija board.
The sisters would levitate and crisscross in the air, Warren said. One sister would “dematerialize,” or completely disappear for periods of time.
“That case we worked on for a very long time,” Warren said. “I can’t even begin to tell you the horrors of that home.”
Because there are so many open cases involving the supernatural, Warren said she does not feel she can ever stop doing the job she loves.
“I don’t think my job will end,” she said. “I don’t see retirement.”
Warren also visits various colleges to share her experiences as a ghost hunter. As she has seen people travel across states to see her speak, she says there are various reasons why people are so interested in her work.
“Every audience is different,” she said. “Somebody is in the audience that is looking for answers. Others are looking for a thrill.”
During her presentations, Warren said she typically uses PowerPoint and photographs. The photographs, she said, can help the audience understand exactly what she works with every day.
“In doing so, they see the real clarity,” she said.
For example, Warren has shown photographs taken by a man in Union Cemetery in Easton. The man, who has no training in the supernatural, took photographs of a spirit woman wandering the cemetery. The quality of these pictures, Warren said, is remarkable.
“If you knew her, you would recognize her,” Warren said. “Her features are recognizable.”
While Warren has an extremely busy Halloween schedule, traveling to schools around the country, she said she is looking forward to coming to Southern this Friday.
“For us to be at Southern is almost like being home,” she said. “That’s how I really feel about it. I’m very, very fond of the school and very, very fond of the kids.”
Tickets to see Warren are available at the Lyman Center and are $8 for SCSU students.
