SMURL HAUNTING

1. Public Record

Chase Street, West Pittston, Pennsylvania. Jack and Janet Smurl move into a double block in August 1973. From 1974 they report noise, stench, a dog thrown, a mattress that shakes, a daughter pushed on stairs, assaults they will later put in print. In 1986 they call Ed and Lorraine Warren. Warren says a powerful presence, temperature drop, a dark mass, get out on a mirror, tapes of knocks. Paul Kurtz of CSICOP calls it a hoax and a charade and says the Warrens are not impartial. The family stay in the paper for years. They do not vacate on Kurtz's timetable.

Later film uses the name and a mirror. That is adaptation. This page is the household, the Warrens' 1986 visit, and the academic dismissal. No court tries a demon. No court tries the family for a fraud that ended the file.

A double house. A mirror message. A professor who would not walk it as evidence.

2. Date of Incident

Household claims from 1974. Warren visit 1986. Public argument through the late eighties.

3. Location

West Pittston, Pennsylvania. Approximate 41°20 N 075°48 W.

4. Official Narrative

Police are a nuisance file, not a possession charge. Official narrative is domestic complaint plus media. Kurtz's sentence is the sceptical officialdom this cabinet holds.

5. Witness Layer

Jack and Janet. The children. The Warrens. Kurtz. Neighbours who did and did not hear.

Get out.

A hoax, a charade, a ghost story.

Very powerful.

6. Recovery Logistics

Warren tapes as claimed. No object a lab signed. The house remains a house.

7. Assessment

A double-block file. Keep 1973 move-in and 1986 as the two dates that matter. Keep Kurtz in the same section as the mirror so the file is not only a séance. Do not write the later film as 1986. Do not write the family as finished because an academic used three hard nouns. A household that stays is not proof. It is a fact of address.

8. Materials & Remains

Press. Warren claims. Kurtz. The Chase Street block.

9. Key Personnel

Jack and Janet Smurl : The household.

Ed and Lorraine Warren : 1986.

Paul Kurtz : The dismissal.

10. Aftermath

The name outlives the block in cinema. The academic sentence outlives it in sceptical indexes. Neither produced a third kind of proof.

11. Current Archive Status

Status: Claims from 1974. Warrens 1986. Kurtz dismissal. House not a lab.

Confidence: High that the family made those claims and that the Warrens attended in 1986. Low that a demon is demonstrated. Low that Kurtz's three words close every night they reported.

Filing note

A double house on Chase Street, years of noise a neighbour might have heard, a 1986 visit, a mirror that said get out, tapes nobody else has to take as scripture, a professor with three nouns and no night in the hallway.

They did not vacate on Kurtz's timetable. That is not theology. It is a family still sleeping in the rooms he had already explained.