Recent flooding has put West Pittston, Pa. in the media spotlight, but 25 years ago something entirely different brought swarms of reporters to town. Reports of demons in the Chase Street home of the Smurl family captured the attention of local and national media outlets and captivated the public. Hordes of onlookers descended on the quiet neighborhood and reporters besieged the family with requests for interviews. The family brought in a high profile demonologist couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren, for help, and their link to the popular Amityville Horror House increased the attention.
At the peak of the frenzy, people camped out in the neighborhood and traffic clogged the street as hundreds of cars drove by nightly. Robert Curran, then a reporter for the “Scranton Times," wrote a book, “The Haunted: One Family’s Nightmare,” about the story that was also turned into a television movie. Both versions allege the haunting was a case of demonic infestation, and along with media reports from the time claim that the faithful, devout Catholic Smurl family was dismissed by the Church.
Not so, says Monsignor John Esseff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton, who was directly involved with the Smurl family in 1986. “The Church was criticized for that case, and accused of not getting involved, or helping spiritually, but they did,” Esseff said. “The book was even sent to Rome. At that time, there was no official exorcist for the Diocese, but with that case, I officially got involved.”
Esseff said that it was not demonic possession, as everyone reported, but something different in the house. “It was two people who had previously lived in the home. They were kicked out when the house went for sheriff’s sale. They died and never moved on. We call that disembodied spirits. They were souls in purgatory. You know the soul doesn’t die. Well, they have free will and that is what keeps them here.”
He explained the conflicting media reports “So often, when the media gets involved, that’s when everything is blown out of context and proportion, but with that case there was no, the phenomena was not found to be, demonic possession," Esseff said.
“We went there to pray for them. I was there, and had some sister’s there, and the family of course, the Smurl’s, they were real fine people. When they left (the spirits), everyone who was there felt them leave. Even the dog, the hair went up on the dog’s back,” Esseff said. “They were gone, and everyone felt it. I believed they went to God. I also had a Mass to pray for them. Everything seemed to get quiet after this. They never had a problem again.”
For half a century this story of demonic possession was perpetuated, and stories of ghosts and haunted houses remain extremely popular for many reasons. A 2009 Harris Poll found that 42 percent of the 2,303 adults surveyed believe in ghost, 23 percent believe in witches, 60 percent believe in the devil and 71 percent believe in the survival of the soul after death.
A person’s religious affiliation also plays a significant part in their beliefs, with Catholics, Protestants and born-again Christians much more likely to believe than people of the Jewish faith. Only 37 percent of Jewish people who were surveyed believed in survival of the soul after death and only 10 percent believed in ghosts.
This does not surprise Dr. David Kyle Johnson, King’s College assistant philosophy professor, because he said historically the Jews did not have the same view of spirit or soul, and, in fact, at one point did not even believe in an afterlife.
“They felt that persons were entangled, all one, and you had to have a body and mind together to make you a person,” Johnson said. “When the body dies, the mind dies. That’s it, you’re done, and the mind dies too. They’re not separate, and so originally, way, way back the Hebrews didn’t believe in an afterlife.”
Their belief in afterlife only came after their crushing defeat by the Romans which, Johnson said, changed the way they thought about how God would fulfill his promise to them.
At that time it didn’t look like the Kingdom of Israel would be restored, so the Jews “started to think that maybe God would make his promise to them in another way, and so they started believing in an afterlife—not their soul floats away to Heaven afterlife, that’s Plato, they hadn’t even heard of that really. It was an embodied afterlife. They thought that God would come and raise people from the dead, and so the Jews believed in the resurrection of the body as a way to facilitate the afterlife,” Johnson said.
Religion might explain why people believe that houses are haunted, but it doesn’t prove that they are haunted. Johnson said only testable, verifiable evidence could do that. Stories are retold and often embellished or exaggerated and personal experience are two other reasons for belief, but just because “a lot of people believe in something, doesn’t make it true,” Johnson said.
While Johnson was not familiar with all the specifics of the Smurl case, he said he was not surprised that the media story differs from the real story and that in most cases, including The Amityville Horror case, when you actually do the research it turns out that whatever supposedly happened never happened. Johnson said that there are alternate, more rational, explanations for claims of haunting that often get ignored in favor of the stories or personal beliefs because stories are more readily available and psychologically compelling than real evidence.
If a ghost, demon or spirit isn’t the culprit, what could it be? Typically it’s a simple natural explanation, inaccurate human perception, a hoax or fallacious reasoning. People fill in their own explanation, like ghosts or other supernatural things, when they don’t understand or can’t explain something. “They invoke a classical logical fallacy by saying ‘I don’t understand X, so if I don’t understand it, or can’t explain it, then what must explain X is…stick in your favorite explanation,” Johnson said. “It must be aliens. It must be ghosts. It must me demons or a government conspiracy. All of those fit just as well. I can’t explain it so it must be the ghost of my dog, or whatever.”
In most haunted house cases other explanations or competing hypotheses, including possible natural consequences, aren’t even considered. “Just because you can’t find an explanation for it, that does not justify the conclusion that the only explanation for it is demons or whatever,” Johnson said.
Johnson added that people rarely assume that “maybe you are just hearing things, or maybe you are seeing things that aren’t there. We put way, way too much confidence in our own personal experience. We automatically jump to ‘I saw it! I know what I saw. If I saw it, it must be true.'”
Many things can contribute to faulty perception, fear and stress top the list, and our memories can play tricks on us. Johnson pointed out that our memories are very constructive and sometimes we remember things that didn’t really happen. “We are all very susceptible to illusions, and some are more prone than others,” he said. “It’s not that they are crazy. It’s not insanity. It’s actually a very common thing. We’re human and sometimes our perception is just not that good.”
(Image of Msgr. Esseff from http://www.msgrjohnesseff.net/ and Image of Dr. Johnson from http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/dr-david-kyle-johnson-phd, Smurl house image from google images)
At the peak of the frenzy, people camped out in the neighborhood and traffic clogged the street as hundreds of cars drove by nightly. Robert Curran, then a reporter for the “Scranton Times," wrote a book, “The Haunted: One Family’s Nightmare,” about the story that was also turned into a television movie. Both versions allege the haunting was a case of demonic infestation, and along with media reports from the time claim that the faithful, devout Catholic Smurl family was dismissed by the Church.
 |
| Msgr. John Esseff |
Not so, says Monsignor John Esseff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton, who was directly involved with the Smurl family in 1986. “The Church was criticized for that case, and accused of not getting involved, or helping spiritually, but they did,” Esseff said. “The book was even sent to Rome. At that time, there was no official exorcist for the Diocese, but with that case, I officially got involved.”
Esseff said that it was not demonic possession, as everyone reported, but something different in the house. “It was two people who had previously lived in the home. They were kicked out when the house went for sheriff’s sale. They died and never moved on. We call that disembodied spirits. They were souls in purgatory. You know the soul doesn’t die. Well, they have free will and that is what keeps them here.”
He explained the conflicting media reports “So often, when the media gets involved, that’s when everything is blown out of context and proportion, but with that case there was no, the phenomena was not found to be, demonic possession," Esseff said.
Esseff did not perform an exorcism at the house, because, in his opinion, one was not necessary. Instead, a prayer session held at the home was all it took to rid the house of spirits.
“We went there to pray for them. I was there, and had some sister’s there, and the family of course, the Smurl’s, they were real fine people. When they left (the spirits), everyone who was there felt them leave. Even the dog, the hair went up on the dog’s back,” Esseff said. “They were gone, and everyone felt it. I believed they went to God. I also had a Mass to pray for them. Everything seemed to get quiet after this. They never had a problem again.”
For half a century this story of demonic possession was perpetuated, and stories of ghosts and haunted houses remain extremely popular for many reasons. A 2009 Harris Poll found that 42 percent of the 2,303 adults surveyed believe in ghost, 23 percent believe in witches, 60 percent believe in the devil and 71 percent believe in the survival of the soul after death. A person’s religious affiliation also plays a significant part in their beliefs, with Catholics, Protestants and born-again Christians much more likely to believe than people of the Jewish faith. Only 37 percent of Jewish people who were surveyed believed in survival of the soul after death and only 10 percent believed in ghosts.
 |
| Dr. Johnson |
“They felt that persons were entangled, all one, and you had to have a body and mind together to make you a person,” Johnson said. “When the body dies, the mind dies. That’s it, you’re done, and the mind dies too. They’re not separate, and so originally, way, way back the Hebrews didn’t believe in an afterlife.”
Their belief in afterlife only came after their crushing defeat by the Romans which, Johnson said, changed the way they thought about how God would fulfill his promise to them.
At that time it didn’t look like the Kingdom of Israel would be restored, so the Jews “started to think that maybe God would make his promise to them in another way, and so they started believing in an afterlife—not their soul floats away to Heaven afterlife, that’s Plato, they hadn’t even heard of that really. It was an embodied afterlife. They thought that God would come and raise people from the dead, and so the Jews believed in the resurrection of the body as a way to facilitate the afterlife,” Johnson said.
Religion might explain why people believe that houses are haunted, but it doesn’t prove that they are haunted. Johnson said only testable, verifiable evidence could do that. Stories are retold and often embellished or exaggerated and personal experience are two other reasons for belief, but just because “a lot of people believe in something, doesn’t make it true,” Johnson said.
While Johnson was not familiar with all the specifics of the Smurl case, he said he was not surprised that the media story differs from the real story and that in most cases, including The Amityville Horror case, when you actually do the research it turns out that whatever supposedly happened never happened. Johnson said that there are alternate, more rational, explanations for claims of haunting that often get ignored in favor of the stories or personal beliefs because stories are more readily available and psychologically compelling than real evidence.
If a ghost, demon or spirit isn’t the culprit, what could it be? Typically it’s a simple natural explanation, inaccurate human perception, a hoax or fallacious reasoning. People fill in their own explanation, like ghosts or other supernatural things, when they don’t understand or can’t explain something. “They invoke a classical logical fallacy by saying ‘I don’t understand X, so if I don’t understand it, or can’t explain it, then what must explain X is…stick in your favorite explanation,” Johnson said. “It must be aliens. It must be ghosts. It must me demons or a government conspiracy. All of those fit just as well. I can’t explain it so it must be the ghost of my dog, or whatever.”
In most haunted house cases other explanations or competing hypotheses, including possible natural consequences, aren’t even considered. “Just because you can’t find an explanation for it, that does not justify the conclusion that the only explanation for it is demons or whatever,” Johnson said.
Johnson added that people rarely assume that “maybe you are just hearing things, or maybe you are seeing things that aren’t there. We put way, way too much confidence in our own personal experience. We automatically jump to ‘I saw it! I know what I saw. If I saw it, it must be true.'”
Many things can contribute to faulty perception, fear and stress top the list, and our memories can play tricks on us. Johnson pointed out that our memories are very constructive and sometimes we remember things that didn’t really happen. “We are all very susceptible to illusions, and some are more prone than others,” he said. “It’s not that they are crazy. It’s not insanity. It’s actually a very common thing. We’re human and sometimes our perception is just not that good.”
(Image of Msgr. Esseff from http://www.msgrjohnesseff.net/ and Image of Dr. Johnson from http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/dr-david-kyle-johnson-phd, Smurl house image from google images)
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