The Smurl Haunting

The story

The Smurl haunting is a Pennsylvania case known to us through the press of the 1980s. Jack and Janet Smurl said that a demon lived in their duplex in West Pittston, in Luzerne County. The dates are loose. Wikipedia gives August 1973 for the move and 1974 to 1989 for the alleged demon, while a retrospective in the Times Leader of Wilkes-Barre (March 2008) says that in August 1986 the couple described a haunting of nearly 18 months. We could not settle the question.

The oldest press we can date is from August 1986: articles of that month in the Times Leader, cited in its 2008 retrospective, and a Lakeland Ledger item of 22 August. We did not read the 1986 articles themselves. What follows comes from that retrospective, which quotes them, and from Wikipedia, so quotes and dates from 1986 are relayed by the newspaper's own later account. Our search of old American press, which stops in 1963, has nothing on the case.

In January 1986, the retrospective says, the family called in the paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. A book, The Haunted, followed from St. Martin's Press, credited to the Warrens, the Smurls and the Scranton newspaper writer Robert Curran (it was reissued in 2014). Its date is in conflict: Wikipedia says 1986 and the Times Leader has it on sale in a December after the press storm of August 1986, while the earliest edition in Open Library's records is from 1988. That detail matters: a Scranton newspaper writer was also a co-author of the family's book, so at least part of the press coverage was not independent of the family and the Warrens. The retrospective quotes two reviewers who were critical. One, at the Times Leader, accused Curran of giving a one-sided account. The other wrote that no physical or empirical evidence backed the story.

The story then moved into entertainment. In 1991 20th Century Fox put out a made-for-television film, also called The Haunted, with Jeffrey DeMunn and Sally Kirkland. The 2025 film The Conjuring: Last Rites is described as loosely inspired by the case, which is as much as we can say about that.

The legend

The account comes from the Smurls themselves and, through them, from the Warrens. According to Wikipedia's summary of what the family claimed, the house was disturbed by loud noises and bad smells, a dog was thrown against a wall, a mattress was shaken, and family members were assaulted several times by the entity. We repeat these as claims, not as events anyone else witnessed.

Ed Warren called the entity very powerful. He said he felt a drop in temperature, saw a dark mass form and, according to Wikipedia, received a message on a mirror, and he said that after months he held audiotapes of knocking and rapping. We found no independent recording. Jack Smurl said that at least 30 other people had experienced the same things, but no such witness is named in what we read.

Skeptics and churchmen were less sure. Paul Kurtz, who chaired the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal at the time, is quoted in the 2008 Times Leader retrospective, from that paper's article of 28 August 1986, as calling the ordeal "a hoax, a charade, a ghost story", and as saying the Warrens were not objective or independent investigators. We read the words in the retrospective, not in the 1986 issue. Stephen Kaplan, of the Parapsychology Institute of America, also called the case a hoax, the same account says. The Diocese of Scranton said in August 1986 that it had decided the family was telling the truth but did not know what was causing the disturbances, and a Franciscan theologian, Alphonsus Trabold, thought there might be explanations that were less demonic. Several priests who blessed the home reported seeing nothing harmful. A diocesan priest stayed two nights in October 1986 and reported nothing out of the ordinary. An unnamed priest from Connecticut said he had carried out three exorcisms that failed, and Janet Smurl said the demons had dodged them.

The end of the story is just as unclear. In an article of 28 October 1986, the retrospective says, the local pastor reported the family's feeling, after intense prayer, that "things are back to normal". Janet Smurl said in 1987 that knocking and shadows continued. Wikipedia nonetheless gives 1989 as the end of the haunting. After the family left for Wilkes-Barre, a woman who moved into the house in 1988 said she had noticed nothing supernatural there, according to the retrospective.

Our reading of the evidence is straightforward. The public story dates from 1985-86, it rests on the testimony of the family and on the co-authors of their book, it was already disputed in 1986, and we found nothing that supports it from outside that circle.

What remains today

The home is a private house. It was resold after the Smurls left and we have no current information on it, so we say nothing about who lives there or what it looks like. We know of nothing to see there that relates to the case, and the map point for this entry is deliberately vague.

What survives is the paper trail: the family's book, the 1991 film, and local newspaper coverage that remains to be read in the archives of the Times Leader and other papers. Our research listed several items we could not read, including a Lakeland Ledger article of 22 August 1986 headed "Scientists wary about 'haunted' Pa. residence" (we saw only the title in a reference list), a Citizens' Voice item of 2017, and Cuneo's American Exorcism (2002).

Visiting

There is nothing to visit. The house is private, was resold, and has no public access. Please do not look for it, drive past it or approach the occupants; it is a private home, and the Smurls moved away long ago. The way to follow the case is on paper: the book gives the family's version, the comments of skeptics and clergy reported in the press give the other side, and the 1991 film is a dramatization. Read the coverage as you would any claim made to the press in the 1980s.

Sources

1. A look back: Smurl family makes claims in 1985-86 about West Pittston residence ('Demon in home' grabs our attention) — The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre (archived by the Internet Archive), 2008-03-03
2. Open Library search: The Haunted, Robert Curran — Open Library
3. Smurl haunting — Wikipedia
4. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.