Art & Ambition

Ed Warren went into the Navy on his seventeenth birthday and four months later, after his ship sank in the North Atlantic he was home for 30-day survivor's leave. It was during that leave that the two were married. When Ed returned after World War II he and Lorraine had a daughter, and Ed went to Perry Art school which is a Subsidiary of Yale for about two years. 

“I got fed up with that,” Ed said. “I told Lorraine one day, “You know, I can paint better than these instructors. What they're teaching me is a lot of Geometry and a lot of nonsense that I don't need for painting.”  I said, "We'll have some fun."

“So I bought this car for $15 dollars which I still have in the yard. It's a 1933 Chevy Eagle, Deluxe. The guy gave me two wheels with it. I had to pay him off on time, five dollars a week. I said to Lorraine, “You know, if we go up to the new areas where they're opening up for tourists like Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire—I'll bet I can take a bunch of my paintings and put them out there when people are walking by and we'll sell some.”

The Warrens did have fun, “We were making a fantastic living, selling the paintings for fabulous prices—three dollars, four dollars. But you've got to remember one thing, hot dogs were a dime, hamburgers were a dime, the theatre was a quarter, gas was 18 cents a gallon. So, when you made five dollars on a painting, you were doing pretty good.”  

It was through painting that The Warrens began their ~Ghost Investigations. If Ed heard of any place that claimed to be haunted, whether a haunted house, or a haunted location he would drag Lorraine to check it out. “Oh Ed, there are no such things as ghosts,” Lorraine would say, Ed would then remind  her of his days  at his haunted home in Bridgeport & Lorraine would go.

How The Warrens  would get into these haunted houses is especially interesting, “We were just kids nobody was just going to let us in, we were curiosity seekers—we were not yet the directors of The New England Society for Psychic Research."

“I'd go out in the middle of the road where they could all see me and I'd start to sketch the house and you'd see the curtains going back and forth “What's this kid doing?” they would be thinking. “I would do a really nice sketch of the house with ghosts coming out of it, and I'd give it to Lorraine, she'd go knock on the door and with her Irish personality she'd say, “Oh, my husband loves to sketch and paint haunted houses ,and he made this for you.” I made it special for them.”

It was through the paintings that The Warrens got themselves into these Haunted Houses. And then they would talk with the homeowners one-on-one. Basically, Ed just wanted to see if the same things happened to those families that happened to his family, through his art the lives of these two incredible people were formed.