INTERVIEW: Go deeper with ‘Shock Docs: The Devil Made Me Do It’ on discovery+
Image courtesy of discovery+ / Provided with permission.
The Conjuring movies have been a huge success for Hollywood, spawning spinoff flicks and an interconnected universe of characters, ghosts and monsters. Whether it’s demented dolls or haunted nuns, the creatures of The Conjuring Universe are mega movie stars that bring in boffo box office dollars. The latest Conjuring movie is subtitled The Devil Made Me Do It, and it depicts yet another supernatural case investigated by the real-life Ed and Lorraine Warren.
In the movie, the Warrens have a tremendous challenge in front of them.
The story, which is fictionalized but based on real events, finds the paranormal investigators heading to Brookfield, Connecticut, to look into the exorcism of a young child and how it may connect to a murder. The suspect in the criminal case claims that he was possessed, essentially that “the devil made me do it.”
Can possession be an adequate defense in a court of law?
Timed with the wide release of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is a new documentary from discovery+, the streaming service from the Discovery networks. Their Shock Docs series takes a deep dive into the real case — sidestepping the fictionalized account in the movie and focusing on what happened in Brookfield, what happened in the courtroom and what are the implications today. Interviews with a few of the real-life subjects are included in the documentary.
One of the documentary’s experts is Jeff Belanger, writer of more than a dozen books on the paranormal. He hosts the New England Legends podcast and is the person behind Ghost Adventures. He’s actually a native of Connecticut himself and personally knew the Warrens, who are both now deceased.
“This one for me is personal for a number of reasons,” Belanger said in a recent phone interview. “I knew Ed and Lorraine Warren since I was 12 years old, so this was a case that I remember hearing about as a teenager because Ed and Lorraine Warren used to talk about it. They would do these fall programs around October, and there would be 20-30 people at a library listening to them talk about their investigations and see their evidence, things like that. Growing up there, you just knew, wow, there was an exorcism in the next town over — Brookfield, Connecticut. This one I thought was really compelling, and to just put a cherry on top of this for you, I was raised Roman Catholic. This is the kind of thing we were taught about in CCD and things like that, that demons do exist, and people do get possessed. And stories like this become cautionary tales.”
Belanger said he finds the entire case quite compelling because the roots run deep. As an investigator himself, he wanted to learn more about the exorcism claims, and he continues to be fascinated by the Warrens’ role in the drama. “If [the exorcism] was truly the end of it, we wouldn’t even be talking about this,” he said. “It would have been handled very quietly and privately, but then five months later, once there’s a murder, now suddenly everything’s different. And Ed and Lorraine Warren try to get their life’s work on the stand in the court of law. Suddenly this thing blows up into something that nobody wanted.”
For the record, Belanger said he doesn’t believe possession is an adequate defense in a criminal trial. He does believe something profound happened in that house to the young boy, and this is further claimed by the boy’s sister, who is interviewed for Shock Docs.
“So having never killed anybody, I can imagine that if you do murder someone in a moment of passion or rage that you are not yourself; however, being a member of society, I still think you’re responsible for your actions,” Belanger said. “And for my own views on religion, we have free will. This was what Ed was trying to put on trial. If he was possessed by a demon and committed this murder not under his own power, do we not have free will? These are huge questions, I know. I think the judge made the right call in not allowing this type of evidence and this line of defense because had he allowed it, every murder case going forward forever in the United States would have tried the same thing. That’s just not how our legal system works.”
Ultimately Belanger believes that people should be responsible for their actions … but the uneasy questions still linger and have spawned books, films and this new documentary from discovery+.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Shock Docs: The Devil Made Me Do It, featuring Jeff Belanger, is now available to stream on discovery+. Click here for more information.
