Here is the chilling account of the Smurl Haunting. It started small. In 1984, Jack and Janet Smurl began hearing strange noises. At first, it was easy to rationalize: settling wood, creaking pipes, or a stray animal under the porch. But soon, the sounds evolved into scratching. Long, deliberate fingernails dragging across the inside of their bedroom walls.
According to the Warrens, the entity was eventually driven out of the home and "pushed" into the nearby Susquehanna River. The activity subsided, though Jack reported low-level harassment continued for years afterward. Naturally, not everyone believes the Smurl story. Skeptics point out that the family sold the rights to their story to a TV movie ( The Haunted , 1991) and that the Warrens had a financial incentive to sensationalize claims.
Jack tried to brush it off. He was a practical man—a former Marine and a truck driver. But the practical explanations ran out the night the television turned on by itself, blasting static at 3:00 AM, and the crucifix hanging on the wall flipped upside down. The Smurls did what any logical family in the 80s would do: they called the cops. They called the media. They called plumbers to check the gas lines for the smell. Nothing helped.
Finally, they called the Catholic Church. The Church, hesitant to validate a demonic presence, suggested they reach out to the Warrens.
For two years in the mid-1980s, a quiet street in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, became a war zone. It wasn't a war of nations, but of faith versus flesh. At the center of it all was Jack Smurl, his wife Janet, their children, and his elderly parents who lived in the adjoining half of their duplex.