The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025), billed as Ed and Lorraine Warren's final mainline outing, dramatizes the real-life “Smurl haunting” that a Pennsylvania family said terrorized them for over a decade. The case is genuinely documented — but it's also one of the most contested hauntings the Warrens ever attached their name to, with a prominent skeptic calling it “a hoax, a charade, a ghost story.”
The Real Story: The Smurl Family of West Pittston
Jack and Janet Smurl moved into a duplex at 328–330 Chase Street in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, in August 1973. According to the family, minor disturbances — odd noises, bad smells — began almost immediately and escalated over the following decade into claims of physical and sexual assault by an entity, a dog thrown against a wall, a daughter pushed down the stairs, and apparitions of a menacing “pig-man” figure.
The Smurls didn't go public until the mid-1980s. Ed and Lorraine Warren were brought onto the case in 1986. Ed Warren later described the presence in the home as “very powerful,” recounting temperature drops, a “dark mass,” and a message allegedly scrawled on a mirror telling him to get out. The Warrens brought national media attention to the case, and it eventually became the subject of a bestselling book, The Haunted (1988), co-written by Robert Curran with the Warrens' involvement, and a 1991 TV movie of the same name.
The Skeptical Investigation
Not everyone accepted the Smurl case at face value. Paul Kurtz, chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), tried to investigate independently. He offered to pay for the family to stay in a hotel with private security while a team of researchers examined the house, and offered free psychiatric and psychological evaluations. According to reporting on the case, both the family and the Warrens declined the offer.
Kurtz went on to write in Skeptical Inquirer that he believed the haunting was not paranormal at all. He pointed to mundane explanations for some of the reported phenomena, including settling from abandoned coal-mine voids beneath the region, a broken sewer pipe that could account for foul odors, ordinary household delusion or suggestion, and the possibility of pranks by teenagers in the house. Kurtz was also sharply critical of the Warrens themselves, noting they held no recognized credentials in psychology or parapsychology.
The Smurl case has never been independently verified by a neutral investigating body. What exists publicly is largely the family's own account, the Warrens' testimony, and the skeptical rebuttal from Kurtz — no consensus explanation has been agreed upon.
How the Film Compares to the Real Case
The Conjuring: Last Rites takes real names, real locations, and the real broad-strokes timeline of the Smurl haunting and filters them through the franchise's now-familiar horror-movie grammar. Several critics noted that the movie actually underdevelops the Smurl case itself, treating it more as a framing device for the Warrens' send-off than as a deep dive into the family's specific claims.
The real case was messier and far less cinematic: it played out over roughly 16 years, involved competing accounts from family members, and was never resolved to any independent investigator's satisfaction. The film compresses this timeline, invents visualized supernatural encounters that have no real-world documentation, and presents the Warrens' interpretation of events as objective fact rather than one contested account among several.
The “Final Film” Question
Last Rites is widely described as the last chapter centered on Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga's portrayal of the Warrens, and it became the highest-grossing film in the franchise. However, the Conjuring universe isn't ending — a prequel, The Conjuring: First Communion, is already set for a 2027 release.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Smurl haunting a proven paranormal case?
No. It's a well-documented claim, not a proven one. Skeptic Paul Kurtz publicly labeled it a hoax and proposed natural explanations for phenomena the family reported. No independent, neutral investigation ever confirmed supernatural activity.
Did the real Warrens actually investigate the Smurl house?
Yes. Ed and Lorraine Warren were called in around 1986 and became the public face of the case through media appearances and the 1988 book The Haunted.
Is this really the last Conjuring movie?
It's being marketed as the last film centered on this incarnation of the Warrens' story, but the franchise continues with a prequel, The Conjuring: First Communion, scheduled for 2027.
Watch or buy The Conjuring: Last Rites on Amazon
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