Highway to Hell

Our longest episode EVER. The ultimate deep dive on The Warrens, their history and their conjuring Empire!

Ed and Lorraine were born in a factory town in Conneticut just 19 weeks apart. For both of them, a significant moment at 5 would help shape the course of their future. A chance meeting at a movie theater led to their marriage and the occult awakening and the Satanic Panic in the US would enable them to release books, cases, work a lecture circuit and become some of the most famous figures in the paranormal world. But how much of it was true? Was it God or was it money? How do you reconcile the devoted catholic couple with an alleged 40 year affair and a contract clause that said they cannot be depicted having affairs or sexual contact with minors? Thats oddly specific.
SOURCES:
Books and First-Person Accounts
Anson, Jay. The Amityville Horror: A True Story. Prentice Hall, 1977.
Brittle, Gerald. The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Prentice Hall, 1980. — the authorized biography; the core text of the mythology.
Brittle, Gerald. The Devil in Connecticut. Bantam, 1983. — the Glatzel/Arne Johnson case; pulled from print after the 2007 lawsuit.
Curran, Robert, with Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Haunted. St. Martin's, 1988. — the Smurl case.
Garton, Ray, with Ed and Lorraine Warren. In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting. Villard, 1992. — the Snedeker case. Read alongside Garton's later public statements about how it was written.
Hall, William J. The World's Most Haunted House: The True Story of the Bridgeport Poltergeist on Lindley Street. New Page, 2014.
Lasalandra, Michael, and Mark Merenda. Satan's Harvest. Dell, 1990. — Maurice Theriault, by two Boston Herald reporters.
Perron, Andrea. House of Darkness House of Light: The True Story, Vols. 1–3. AuthorHouse, 2011–2014.
Playfair, Guy Lyon. This House Is Haunted: The True Story of the Enfield Poltergeist. Souvenir Press, 1980.
Sawyer, J.F. Deliver Us From Evil. 1973. — the first book about the Warrens. Notably contains no mention of Annabelle.
Warren, Ed and Lorraine. Ghost Hunters (1989), Werewolf: A True Story of Demonic Possession (1991, with Robert David Chase and William Ramsey), Graveyard (1992), Ghost Tracks (2004).
State of Connecticut v. Arne Cheyenne Johnson, Danbury Superior Court, 1981. Judge Robert Callahan presiding. Trial opened Oct. 28, 1981; manslaughter conviction Nov. 24; sentenced Dec. 18. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Arne_Cheyenne_Johnson
Dengrove courtroom sketch collection, Arne Cheyenne Johnson — University of Virginia Law Library — https://archives.law.virginia.edu/dengrove/writeup/arne-cheyenne-johnson
Glatzel v. Warren, Brittle, iUniverse, and William Morris Agency, 2007 (dismissed) — https://www.religionnewsblog.com/19687/devil-in-connecticut
Adams County (PA) Coroner's ruling on the death of Dan Rivera, July 2025 — cardiac, natural — https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dan-rivera-paranormal-investigator-died-tour-anabelle-doll-suffered-he-rcna229144
WPC Carolyn Heeps's signed statement, Enfield, 1977 — reproduced in Playfair; summary of police involvement at http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/07/police-officers-involved-in-enfield-case.html
Lanning, Kenneth V. Investigator's Guide to Allegations of "Ritual" Child Abuse. FBI Behavioral Science Unit, 1992. — for the Satanic Panic context.
Wilmer, William H. "Effects of Carbon Monoxide upon the Eye." American Journal of Ophthalmology, 1921. — the 1921 haunted-house/CO case.
Vardy, Tom, et al. "The Warrens." World Religions and Spirituality Project, Jan. 19, 2023. — https://wrldrels.org/2023/01/19/the-warrens/ — the single best scholarly overview.
"The Demonologist and the Clairvoyant: Ed and Lorraine Warren, Paranormal Investigation, and Exorcism in the Modern World." DIG: A History Podcast, Oct. 3, 2021. — https://digpodcast.org/2021/10/03/demonologist-and-the-clairvoyant/ — source for the gender analysis.

What could possibly cause experienced hikers to cut their way out of a tent, WALK half clothed to the treeline, and die from the elements?
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In January 1959, ten students from the Ural Polytechnical Institute set out on a Category III ski trek through the northern Urals, led by 23-year-old Igor Dyatlov. One member, Yuri Yudin, turned back due to back sciatic pain, leaving nine to camp on February 1 on the slope of Kholat Syakhl, "Dead Mountain." He would be the only person to survive.
When searchers reached the site on February 26, the tent had been cut open from the inside, as if the climbers fled to escape. Boots, coats, and equipment remained within. Footprints led 1.5 kilometers downslope toward a treeline — people walking, not running, some barefoot, some in socks. Two bodies lay under a cedar in their underwear beside a dead fire. Three more were found between the cedar and the tent, apparently trying to climb back.
The last four surfaced in May, buried in a ravine under four meters of snow. Two had crushed ribs; one had a fractured skull. The examiner compared the injuries to a car crash and noted the absence of corresponding external trauma. How is that possible? Dubinina was missing her tongue and eyes, later explained by months of decomposition in running water. Trace radiation on clothing traced to one hiker's job at a nuclear plant.
Soviet investigators closed the file citing a compelling natural force the group could not overcome, then classified it. Six decades of theory followed: military tests, infrasound panic, the KGB, the paranormal.
In 2021, Gaume and Puzrin modeled a delayed slab avalanche — triggered by cutting a tent platform into wind-loaded snow, small enough to leave no debris, and capable of causing internal injuries without surface damage. The rest is exposure, darkness, and exhausted people making survivable-seeming choices in −25°C. But what about the military tests?
Sources (full source list on Patreon)
The 1959 criminal case file — Sverdlovsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office, Feb–May 1959. Roughly 400 pageshttps://dyatlovpass.com/case-files
Autopsy protocols of Boris Vozrozhdenny — forensic medical expert, Sverdlovsk Oblast. First five bodies examined March 1959; the four from the ravine on 9 May 1959.https://dyatlovpass.com/autopsy
Genrietta Churkina, criminalistic examination of the tent — case file, 16 April 1959. The finding that the principal cuts were made from inside.
Vladimir Levashov, radiological report — chief radiologist, Sverdlovsk city sanitary-epidemiological station, 27 May 1959. Beta contamination readings on Dubinina's sweater and Kolevatov's trousers and sweater waistband.
The hikers' diaries https://dyatlovpass.com/diaries
The recovered camera films — five cameras, including the negatives found in Lev Ivanov's private archive in 1997 and donated to the Dyatlov Foundation.https://dyatlovpass.com/photos
"Vecherniy Otorten" (Evening Otorten) No. 1 — the group's satirical camp newsletter, dated 1 February 1959. Surviving only as an investigator's transcription in the case file.
Lev Ivanov, "The Enigma of the Fireballs" — Leninsky Put, Kustanai, Kazakhstan, November 1990. The lead investigator's account of being ordered to omit the sightings, and his apology to the families.https://dyatlovpass.com/enigma-of-the-fireballs
Russian Prosecutor General's Office reinvestigation, 2019–2020 , 11 July 2020.https://dyatlovpass.com/prosecutors-investigation
TASS — "Prosecutors say avalanche killed Dyatlov group in Urals in 1959" (July 2020)https://tass.com/emergencies/1177345
Gaume, J. & Puzrin, A. M. — "Mechanisms of slab avalanche "Communications Earth & Environment 2, 10 (2021). Published 28 January 2021.https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-00081-8DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-020-00081-8

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The Spiritualist movement swept America, enticing people to entertain the question, "can we truly talk to the dead?". The Fox Sisters in 1848 entranced interest with their rapping phenomena in Hydesville, NY. Beleivers in contact were already using talking boards, alphabet cards, taple tipping and planchette writing by putting a heart shape platform on casters that held a pencil and wrote form the spirit guides. The Civil Wars mass casualties increased the demand for any way for people to talk to their lost loved ones. "Can they hear me?". Soon the planchette would be combined with an alphabet board to make translating the writing more efficient and meet the increased demand.
In 1890, a group of Baltimore investors: businessman Elijah Bond, attorney Charles Kennard, and others, with employee William Fuld would soon file a patent for a "talking board." Legend holds the Patent Office demanded a demonstration, and the board correctly spelled out the skeptical examiner's name; the patent was granted in February 1891. The name's origin is disputed. The company claimed it was Egyptian for "good luck"; the likelier story is that Bond's sister-in-law Helen Peters, a medium, asked the board what it wished to be called, and it answered "Ouija." A name similar to the author's name and likeness she wore in a locket.
Fuld would eventually take control of production, and through aggressive manufacturing and litigation against rivals became synonymous with the board. He died in 1927 after falling from the roof of his Baltimore factory — a building he said the board had told him to construct. His family ran the business until selling to Parker Brothers in 1966; Hasbro acquired it in 1991.
For decades the board was harmless parlor entertainment, spiking in popularity during wartime and the 1960s occult revival. In 1973, The Exorcist recast it as a portal for demonic possession, and evangelical anxiety hardened that reputation permanently.
Science attributes its operation to the ideomotor effect, described by physiologist William Carpenter in 1852: unconscious micro-movements by participants who genuinely believe they aren't pushing. Blindfold experiments reliably reduce the board to gibberish.
But then there are stories of unexplainable things, terrifying things, things the board shouldnt... couldnt know. Is it real?
Sources: Condensed for Character space
Deep history & belief — E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (1871, animism); archaeology of Sungir, Paviland, Göbekli Tepe; the Epic of Gilgamesh; Egyptian Book of the Dead & "Letters to the Dead"; 1 Samuel 28 & Deuteronomy 18; Homer's Odyssey Bk. 11. The bridge & Spiritualism — Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell (1758); Mesmer; Andrew Jackson Davis; the Fox sisters & Maggie's 1888 confession; Blavatsky & Theosophy; Conan Doyle vs. Houdini; Society for Psychical Research. Tarot — Court de Gébelin's Le Monde primitif (1781); Etteilla; Éliphas Lévi; the Golden Dawn; the 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith deck & Pamela Colman Smith. Ouija — Smithsonian Magazine (Linda Rodriguez McRobbie) · historian Robert Murch · The Strong National Museum of Play · Baltimore Magazine · Time · The Conversation · Atlas Obscura (Pearl Curran) · UBC ideomotor study (Rensink, Gauchou & Fels, 2012) · The Lineup & True Ghost Tales (Zozo) · Wikipedia & Skeptical Inquirer (Roland Doe / Ronald Hunkeler). Dates and figures are drawn from secondary sources — double-check anything you quote on air.

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Robert Hansen was born in Estherville Iowa to Danish immigrant parents. His father, was a baker and very domineering. Hansen had a pronounced stutter, acne scars and experiences social rejection and humiliation. As retaliation for this humiliation, and for the rejection of young women who would bully him, in 1960 he burned down a school district bus garage in Pope County. He was arrested but only served 20 months during which is first wife left him. Good call. Ladies if he's burning buildings down, you can't save him. Once released, he would be responsible for a string of petty thefts.
He would relocate to Anchorage Alaska in 1967 with his second wife and two children and opened a downtown bakery. It was a new place and new start. He was able to build a public identity as a respectable career man, family man, and most impressively in Alaska- a trophy bowhunter. Even with assault convictions in 1971 and 1972 didn't ruin his livelihood or reputation. Because how dare men be held accountable and ostracized from society for sex crimes????
Then between 1971 and 1983, Hansen would abduct, rape and kill women, mostly dancers and sex workers, knowing full well that the transient nature of Anchorage would protect him and provide alibis and lack of suspicion. He method was horrific. As a pilot, he would fly his victims to the Knik River valley and other bush country, release them... and hunt them.
On June 13, 1983, 17-year-old Cindy Paulson escaped in handcuffs at Merrill Field as Hansen loaded her onto his plane. She ran to police and reported it- they didn't believe her. WHY DON'T WOMEN REPORT??? Bodies had been surfacing since 1980 including: unidentified "Eklutna Annie", Joanna Messina, Sherry Morrow, and Paula Goudling. An FBI behavioral profile FINALLY persuaded a judge to issue a warrant. The October 1983 search recovered victims' jewelry hidden in the attic, firearms concealed behind his headboard, and an aviation chart marked with roughly twenty small Xs, a map of his own graves. Ballistics matched shell casings from two scenes.
In February 1984 Robert would plead guilty to four murders and was sentenced to 461 years plus life without parole. He confessed to 17 killings and more than 30 rapes, guiding investigators to burial sites. He died in custody on August 21, 2014.

Sources:
• Walter Gilmour & Leland E. Hale, Butcher, Baker: The True Account of an Alaskan Serial Killer (1991; reissued Open Road Media, 2016). Gilmour was an Alaska State Trooper involved in the case
• Leland E. Hale, "Butcher Baker" case blog, lelandhale.com/butcherbaker (co-author's ongoing primary-source chronology, including confession-transcript excerpts, the Cindy Paulson statement, the alibi collapse, and the grave-site map). 
• UPI Archives, Feb. 28, 1984 — sentencing wire reports ("Sentenced to life plus 461 years"). 
• Anchorage Daily News — contemporaneous reporting and Aug. 21–22, 2014 obituaries/coverage. 
• Alaska Department of Public Safety / Alaska State Troopers — press releases, incl. the 44
Oct. 22, 2021 identification of "Horseshoe Harriet" as Robin Pelkey (genetic genealogy, Alaska Bureau of Investigation Cold Case Unit with Parabon NanoLabs). 
• FBI Behavioral Science Unit profile (John E. Douglas, with James Horn), October 1983. 
• Wikipedia, "Robert Hansen" and "Murder of Eklutna Annie" (used to locate primary citations); Charley Project / Doe Network (Emerick, Thill); Find A Grave (Futrell). 
• The Frozen Ground (2013, dir. Scott Walker) is a dramatization, not a source of fact — named/altered characters. Used for cultural context only.

Herbert Baumeister was born in Indiana in 1947 and grew up in a middle-class family near Indianapolis. Even as a young man he showed troubling signs, and he spent time in a mental institution as an adult. Still, he built what looked like an ordinary life. He married Julie Saiter in 1971, raised three children, and ran a chain of successful thrift stores called Sav-A-Lot. To neighbors and customers, he seemed like a respectable businessman and family man.
Behind that image was a double life. In the early 1990s, Baumeister began visiting gay bars in Indianapolis under the name "Brian Smart." He lured men back to Fox Hollow Farm, his large estate in Westfield, Indiana, while his wife and children were away. There he strangled them, and he buried and scattered their remains across his wooded property.
The first hint of trouble came in 1994, when one of his sons found a human bone in the yard. Baumeister brushed it off as a medical skeleton. The truth surfaced through a survivor. A man who had escaped went to police and helped them connect the disappearances to "Brian Smart," who was eventually identified as Baumeister. In 1996, while he was away, his wife allowed investigators to search the farm. They uncovered thousands of charred bone fragments, the remains of at least eleven men.
Baumeister did not stay to face the case. He fled to Canada and, on July 3, 1996, shot himself at a provincial park in Ontario. He left a suicide note that mentioned his failing marriage and business but never confessed to the killings.
Investigators later suspected he may also have been responsible for a series of unsolved murders in which bodies were dumped along highways in Indiana and Ohio. Because he died before any trial, much about his crimes remains uncertain. Efforts to identify his victims from the recovered remains have continued for decades, giving names back to some of the men lost at Fox Hollow Farm.
Sources Full list on patreon
Jenny Labalme, "Suicide note mentions marriage, business but not bones," The Indianapolis Star, July 6, 1996 (pp. 1–2). — The three-page suicide note's contents. (Anchor contemporary source for the death.)
The New York Times, July 1996 — Quoting Hamilton County Sheriff's Sgt. Kenneth C. Whisman that the note "did not mention the deaths or remains." (Exact headline/date/URL not independently verified — fetch blocked; attribution confirmed second-hand.)
Associated Press wire, early July 1996 — Breaking discovery / body-count coverage ("bodies found on Westfield estate").
People, "While Julie Was Away," Dec. 23, 1996 (Richard Jerome & Fannie Weinstein)
Indianapolis Monthly, Dec. 1996 — Julie Baumeister's own first-person essay.
Reuters / Indianapolis Star-News wire (c. 1996–1999) — Dr. Stephen Nawrocki, "Our minimum number at the site is 11. There could be more."; Det. Bill Clifford on the DNA signatures.
Detective Mary Wilson's 12-page handwritten memo, dated June 27, 1996 — Obtained via public records and published by WRTV (Vic Ryckaert), "Forgotten at Fox Hollow," 2023.
WRTV / WCPO, "Forgotten at Fox Hollow" (Vic Ryckaert), 2023 — the memo and case documents from the Hamilton County Sheriff
Fannie Weinstein & Melinda Wilson, Where the Bodies Are Buried (St. Martin's, 1998) 
Rob Graves & Richard Estep, The Horrors of Fox Hollow Farm (2019) 
Stephen Nawrocki et al., "A Taphonomic Analysis of Human Cremains from the Fox Hollow Farm Serial Homicide Site" 
University of Indianapolis Human Identification Center (Dr. Krista Latham) — remains curation/analysis; Latham's "marginalized in life… in death" quotes.
Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, "Herbert R. Baumeister" (indyencyclopedia.org) — timeline, the Sept. 12, 1996 first-four IDs, "concluded he was responsible."
Indianapolis Monthly, "Unburying the Truth," Eve Batey (Dec. 2024; updated Nov. 4, 2025) — Jellison's "eight gay men from Indianapolis, what do we care?" and "blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls from Carmel or Fishers" quotes; the Livingston landline detail.