Lorraine Warren, the famous paranormal investigator whose real-life work with her husband Ed inspired The Amityville Horror book series and James Wan’s The Conjuring horror film franchise, has died at the age of 92.
According to her grandson Chris McKinell, Lorraine died “quietly and peacefully” on Thursday night.
“Last night my grandmother, Lorraine Warren, quietly and peacefully left us to join her beloved Ed,” McKinell said in a statement. “She was happy and laughing until the very end.”
The New England Society for Psychic Research also released a statement on Friday morning announcing Lorraine’s death. The statement says she passed away peacefully in her sleep on Thursday night.
Lorraine and her husband Ed created the New England Society for Psychic Research in the 1950s. Ed died in 2006 at the age of 79.
Lorraine and Ed were real-life demon chasers and ghost hunters. Together they conducted investigations into many reported cases of paranormal activity, including the West Point ghost and the Lindley Street poltergeist.
One of their best-known cases took place in Amityville, New York, and inspired the 1977 book The Amityville Horror by author Jay Anson.
Their work first came to public attention after the book was published.
In the book, the Lutz family moves into a house in Amityville in Long Island, New York, in 1975. But after living in the house for only about a month, George, Kathy Lutz, and their three children fled the house, claiming they had experienced a terrifying paranormal phenomenon.
The house had previously been the site of a gruesome murder case involving Ronald DeFeo Jr. who shot and killed six members of his family in November 1974.
Hollywood has built a highly successful horror movie franchise around the work of Ed and Lorraine.
The Conjuring (2013), also based on the work of Ed and Lorraine, was released in 2013. The film, directed by James Wan and written by Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes, follows Ed (played by Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (played by Vera Farmiga) as they investigate an alleged case of paranormal activity at the Perron family’s Rhode Island farmhouse in 1971.
The movie grossed more than $300 million worldwide on a budget of only $20 million.
The Conjuring 2 was released in 2016, and The Conjuring 3 is currently in the works.
Lorraine was born on January 31, 1927, in Bridgeport, Connecticut.