The Conjuring: Last Rites True Story Explained

“The Conjuring: Last Rites” tells the story of the Smurl family haunting, one of the most controversial paranormal cases ever investigated by Ed and Lorraine Warren.

The film centers on the alleged supernatural activity that the Smurl family experienced in their West Pittston, Pennsylvania home between 1974 and 1989—a 15-year ordeal that they claimed involved disembodied voices, unexplained smells, moving furniture, and multiple malevolent entities.

However, the true story behind the movie is far more complicated than the film suggests, with significant skepticism from both the Catholic Church and the scientific community challenging nearly every claim the family and the Warrens made.

In August 1973, Jack and Janet Smurl moved into a double-block house on Chase Street in West Pittston with their four daughters: Dawn, Heather, Carin, and Shannon. By 1974, according to the family’s account, strange occurrences began happening—starting with disembodied voices and foul smells and escalating to furniture moving on its own.

The case drew the attention of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who arrived in January 1986 to conduct their own investigation. What unfolded was a case that would expose fundamental disagreements about evidence, objectivity, and the line between belief and proof in paranormal investigation.

Table of Contents

• What Actually Happened in the Smurl Family Home?
• The Warren Investigation—Credibility and Concerns
• The Skeptical Response and Scientific Criticism
• From Real Case to Hollywood Adaptation
• Psychological and Environmental Explanations
• The Published Account and Media Presentation
• Legacy and Ongoing Implications for Paranormal Investigation

What Actually Happened in the Smurl Family Home?

The Smurl family’s account of their 15-year experience presents a narrative of escalating supernatural terror.

Beginning in 1974, they reported disembodied voices—which the Warrens later claimed belonged to four distinct entities: a violent young girl, an old woman, a demon, and the spirit of a man who had died in the home.

According to Ed Warren’s investigation, he personally witnessed a mattress jumping on its own during his visit in January 1986. Warren also reported experiencing a dramatic temperature drop of at least 30 degrees and claimed to see objects flying off a bureau.

These incidents, the Warrens concluded, were evidence of genuine demonic possession and haunting. The problem with accepting these claims at face value is that the family’s experiences were never independently verified by neutral parties.

When a priest from the local diocese spent two nights at the Smurl home in 1986, he reported that “nothing unusual happened” during his stay—a direct contradiction to the family’s and Warrens’ claims of constant paranormal activity.

This discrepancy raises a critical question: Why would the supernatural phenomena conveniently cease when a skeptical religious authority was present?

It’s a pattern that skeptics note appears repeatedly in haunting cases, where alleged activity stops during investigation by people who don’t share the belief system.

The Warren Investigation—Credibility and Concerns

Ed and Lorraine Warren arrived in West Pittston with a pre-existing reputation as paranormal investigators who had already built their careers on dozens of haunting investigations.

However, their objectivity in the Smurl case is questionable, particularly given their financial interest in the case and their later involvement in promoting it through books and media.

Warren actively prevented scientific investigators from the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal from entering the house during the investigation—specifically blocking representatives Richard Busch and Milton Rothman. This decision to exclude skeptical observers is a significant red flag in any scientific inquiry.

The Warrens’ methodology also lacked the rigor expected in legitimate investigations. Rather than conducting controlled experiments or maintaining objective distance, they accepted the family’s accounts at face value and interpreted ambiguous phenomena through a paranormal lens.

Their conclusion that four distinct spirits inhabited the home was based largely on the family’s descriptions and their own subjective impressions, not on reproducible evidence. This approach reflects a fundamental bias: they approached the case already believing in the paranormal and interpreted everything they encountered as confirmation of that belief.

The Skeptical Response and Scientific Criticism

The academic and scientific community was highly skeptical of the Smurl case from the beginning.

Professor Paul Kurtz of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal characterized the Smurls’ claims bluntly as “a hoax, a charade, a ghost story.” More significantly, Kurtz directly criticized the Warrens themselves, noting that they “weren’t objective, independent, or impartial investigators.” This assessment came from researchers who had attempted to bring scientific methodology to the case but were prevented from doing so by Ed Warren himself.

The priest’s contradictory findings are particularly important because it comes from a representative of the Catholic Church—an institution that historically has taken paranormal claims seriously and maintains formal exorcism protocols.

If the Smurls’ home were genuinely haunted and dangerous, one would expect the priest to corroborate the family’s and Warrens’ accounts. Instead, he found no evidence of supernatural activity whatsoever.

This failure to reproduce the alleged phenomena when a trained ecclesiastical observer was present suggests that either the experiences were psychological in nature, deliberately fabricated, or environmental—products of the home’s physical condition rather than spiritual interference.

From Real Case to Hollywood Adaptation

The Smurl family’s story first reached the public through the 1986 paperback book titled “The Haunted,” which documented their account in dramatic detail. Three years later, in 1991, 20th Century Fox adapted the case into a made-for-TV movie, further cementing the narrative of a family under siege by supernatural forces.

This popularization of the Smurl case established it as one of the more famous hauntings associated with Ed and Lorraine Warren, though not necessarily the most credible.

The transformation from real events to entertainment is where significant creative liberties occur. Television adaptations prioritize narrative tension and emotional impact over accuracy or nuance.

The 2024 film “The Conjuring: last Rites” continues this tradition—it dramatizes the case for maximum psychological effect rather than presenting the actual evidence or the substantial skepticism that surrounded the investigation.

The movie treats the Warrens’ interpretations as established fact while ignoring the priest’s negative findings or the scientific community’s dismissal of the claims.

Psychological and Environmental Explanations

While paranormal explanations dominated the narrative around the Smurl case, alternative explanations have merit. Psychologists recognize that groups of people living in close quarters can collectively develop shared perceptions and beliefs through suggestion, particularly when they’re already primed to expect paranormal activity.

This phenomenon, sometimes called “mass psychogenic illness” or collective delusion, can create genuine experiences of supernatural phenomena that have entirely natural causes. Once one family member reports paranormal activity, others become hyperalert to normal household sounds, drafts, and coincidences—interpreting them through a paranormal framework.

Environmental factors in an older home could also explain many of the reported phenomena.

Strange smells can result from plumbing issues, pest infestations, or mold growth. Temperature fluctuations are common in older houses with poor insulation. Noises that sound unexplained often have mundane causes like settling foundations, pipes, or rodents. Furniture movement might be attributed to animals or drafts rather than spirits.

The limitation of the Warrens’ investigation is that they never systematically ruled out these conventional explanations before jumping to paranormal conclusions. A genuinely scientific approach would have started with the simplest explanations and only invoked supernatural causes when natural ones had been definitively eliminated.

The Published Account and Media Presentation

“The Haunted,” published in 1986, presented the Smurl family’s account as told to and interpreted by the Warrens themselves. The book’s framing of the events already filtered the story through the Warrens’ paranormal worldview, making it impossible for readers to form independent judgments about what actually occurred.

The narrative structure of the book—beginning with minor incidents and building toward increasingly dramatic claims—follows a pattern common in paranormal literature designed to maintain reader engagement and belief.

When the story reached television in 1991, further dramatization and compression of the 15-year timeline made the narrative even more compelling and less tethered to the actual evidence.

This media adaptation is crucial to understanding the Smurl case’s modern legacy. Most people today know the story not from the original events or investigation but from these mediated accounts. Each retelling adds dramatic elements and removes qualifying details.

The movie version removes the priest’s contradictory findings entirely, focuses heavily on the Warrens’ interpretations while downplaying their prevented access to scientific investigators, and presents alleged phenomena as established facts rather than contested claims.

Legacy and Ongoing Implications for Paranormal Investigation

The Smurl case remains instructive today, not as proof of paranormal activity but as an example of how bias, financial incentives, and selective evidence presentation can distort investigation and public understanding. The case illustrates why the scientific method requires objective observers, controlled conditions, and the ability to test alternative explanations.

The Warrens’ decision to exclude skeptical investigators wasn’t unusual for paranormal researchers of their era—it reflects a broader pattern in paranormal investigation where believers control access and interpretation.

Modern paranormal investigation has become more sophisticated with better recording equipment and more rigorous methodology, yet the fundamental problem persists: people who already believe in the paranormal often interpret ambiguous evidence as confirmation of that belief.

The Smurl case also demonstrates why institutional skepticism matters—the priest’s report and Paul Kurtz’s criticism provided crucial counterbalance to unchallenged acceptance of the Warrens’ narrative. Without those dissenting voices and attempted scientific engagement, the case would rest entirely on the testimony of believers with financial motivation to promote the story.

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