The Smurl Haunting, West Pittston, Pennsylvania

August 1973. Flood damage from Hurricane Agnes had forced Jack and Janet Smurl out of their Wilkes-Barre home. They moved into a double-block house on Chase Street in West Pittston, Luzerne County. Jack's parents, John and Mary Smurl, took the other half. There were four daughters: Dawn, Heather, and the twins Shannon and Carin.

It started small, the family said. Tools went missing and came back, while stains seeped through fresh paint. Kitchen appliances caught fire while unplugged. Toilets flushed and doors opened and closed on their own. Foul odours came and went.

Then it grew. "Ominous black masses formed and floated through the home," in the words of the Warrens' organisation. The family described black shadow figures with distorted heads. Screams, moans, pig-like snorting, hoofbeats, and voices calling them by name. They spoke of being dragged from their beds, slapped and "viciously scratched" by unseen hands.

Their German shepherd was slammed against walls, while mattresses shook and jumped. Janet said she was lifted six feet and thrown across the room. A ceiling light fell and hurt a daughter. And there was the fog: "Who has fog in their bedrooms? We do."

In January 1986, Ed and Lorraine Warren of the New England Society for Psychic Research arrived. Ed later described objects on a bureau starting to move. Then "gossamer threads" of a "mucous-like, smoky-type substance" materialized on a mirror, spelling out obscenities and telling him to get out. Lorraine said four entities were present, among them a demon using the others against the family. Two earlier exorcisms, performed without diocesan approval, had failed.

On 19 August 1986 the story broke in the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader. UPI followed the next day with Janet's words: "Eight people live in this house. Eight people have experienced this. Eight people are not crazy."

Chase Street filled. Onlookers honked, pointed and laughed. Motorcycle gangs with devil insignia came. Limos and buses brought party goers from Scranton. Jason Miller of The Exorcist paid a visit.

The Diocese of Scranton took the report "very seriously." A diocesan priest spent two nights in the house in October 1986 and saw nothing unusual. Paul Kurtz of CSICOP sent two teams to West Pittston. The Warrens refused them entry. Kurtz called the case "a hoax, a charade, a ghost story" and compared it to Amityville.

In the Skeptical Inquirer he argued the evidence pointed to alternative explanations, with no need for the paranormal. Critics noted Jack's brain surgery in 1983. Psychologist Robert Gordon suggested the family looked to demonology to explain tensions. Kreskin pointed to the power of suggestion. No photograph or film of any phenomenon has ever surfaced.

Rev. Joseph Adonizio said that by late October 1986, "intense prayers" had banished the trouble. The family moved to Wilkes-Barre in 1988, and later residents reported nothing supernatural. Robert Curran's book The Haunted appeared in December 1986, a TV film followed in 1991, and The Conjuring: Last Rites came in 2025. Jack died in 2017, and Janet died in January 2026. Their daughter Carin has never wavered: "We were a normal family with normal lives that went through a tragedy and prevailed by staying strong and faithful."