Ed and Lorrain Warren were both born in Bridgeport, CT. Ed lived in a haunted house from the time he was 5 till he was 12 years old. While the experiences that Ed had in his childhood home frightened him, they also propelled him to learn more about the paranormal.

"My family would go to bed and just around two o'clock, three o'clock in the morning, many times I would hear the closet door opening up. I'd look into that closet and see darkness, then I'd start to see a light starting to form and it went into like a ball shape sort of like a basketball and then I'd see a face in that ball — they call that a ghost globule — I didn't know what it was then. It was the face of an old lady, and she was not looking pleasant — the ball came out into my bedroom and I could hear footsteps and heavy breathing, the room became icy cold, that's a psychic cold — and I'm saying to myself, 'There's a logical reason for all of this,' but by that time I was out of the bed and right between my mother and father in their bed."

Ed joined the Navy and served during World War II while Lorrain Moran, his future wife, worked at several jobs supporting the war effort. Ed and Lorrain wed in 1945, after which he became more involved in painting. Although Ed enjoyed painting landscapes and ocean scenes, the couple started traveling New England so that he could paint haunted houses. During one of these trips to the "Ocean Born Mary House, " Lorrain and Ed first became aware of Lorrain's psychic abilities. Her abilities strengthened after that time. Lorrain refers to herself as a clairvoyant — meaning she can hear, feel and sense things beyond the five senses.