Ed Gorman and Ed & Lorraine Warren

 

Ed Gorman and Ed & Lorraine Warren *          *           *

The novelist Ed Gorman collaborated with demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren on four “non-fiction” books about hauntings and demons between 1987 and 1992. One – The Haunted – was made into a surprisingly good television movie.

The Haunted, by Robert Curran with Jack & Janet Smurl and Ed & Lorraine Warren, was released as a blandly designed hardcover by St. Martin’s Press in 1988. It detailed an allegedly true account of the haunting of Jack and Janet Smurl in their West Pittson, Pennsylvania duplex. Kirkus called it “simplistic and clumsy, but undeniably luridly entertaining” and the dust jacket blurb claimed the Smurls were “victims of abuse—both mental and physical—by inhuman entities [threatening] their sanity, and even their lives.” Surprisingly, when the book was released, the Smurls were still living at the address where all that bad stuff happened. I’m pretty sure I would have moved somewhere less—ghastly. My interest in the book is less about the subject matter (and even less about Ed & Lorraine Warren) than it is about what the guy who did the actual writing, Ed Gorman, had to say about it. But first, Ed was a friend of mine, although I admit we never once set eyes on each other. He was a fine writer that wrote in every popular genre, except maybe romance. His marvelous 1990 story, “The Face”—set during the Civil War—earned him a Spur Award and the Private Eye Writers of America honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award, The Eye, in 2011. And for those doubting whether Ed wrote The Haunted, this acknowledgment appeared on the copyright page of the original edition:    “Special thanks and acknowledgement to Ed Gorman for his work on this book.”  In a February 2016 email exchange between Ed and I, which was only eight months before Gorman’s death, he wrote: “[The Haunted is] a ‘non-fiction’ book about an allegedly true example [of] demonic possession.” The quotation marks around non-fiction are Ed’s, rather than mine. He added, “[the book] was ridiculous, but it made a good TV movie.” The movie Ed referenced was originally broadcast on Fox on May 6, 1991, and it is a good movie. Cheesy but effective with a few scares that kept this teenager (at the time anyway) wondering what made that sound after the lights went out. Its main players, Sally Kirkland and Jeffrey DeMunn, are terrific as the Smurls. The script is darn good, too. But, and this is important since we live in a world of lies, half-truths, and more lies, The Haunted, according to Ed Gorman is a novel masquerading as non-fiction. The late-Ray Garton, known mostly for his horror fiction, related his similar experience working with the Warrens in this excellent 2009 interview with Damned Connecticut here. Ed went on to write three more “non-fiction” books with the husband-and-wife “demonologists” in the few years following the appearance of The Haunted. For these latter three books Ed changed his nom de plume from Robert Curran to Robert David Chase. Why the change in name? I never thought to ask him, but here is a listing of all of Ed Gorman’s collaborations with Ed and Lorraine Warren: The Haunted: One Family’s Nightmare (1988) Ghost Hunters: True Stories from the World’s Most Famous Demonologists (1989) Werewolf: A True Story of Demonic Possession (1991) Graveyard: True Hauntings from an Old New England Cemetery (1992)

Epilogue: All of Ed’s books with the Warrens have been in print most of the years since their first publication, likely due to the Warrens’ success in Hollywood, but none, I’m sure Ed would say, are of any great literary value. But you know if Ed Gorman wrote them, they will (at least) be entertaining. Ed Gorman also used his Robert David Chase pseudonym for two short stories published in the mid-1990s (and neither had anything to do with the Warrens): “Fathers, Inc.” (Murder for Father, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Signet, 1994. The anthology included two additional stories by Gorman: “Playground”, as by Daniel Ransom; and “Long Lonesome Roads”, by Ed Gorman [featuring Jack Dwyer].) “The Monster Parade” (Monster Brigade 3000, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Charles Waugh, Ace, 1996. The anthology includes another of Gorman’s stories: “A Zombie Named Fred,” as by Jake Foster.)

A different version of this article appeared at Dark City Underground on January 31, 2022.