Is the conjuring 3 based on a true story

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From the very first scene in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, director Michael Chaves wants audiences to know that this is based on a true story.

The eighth installment in the popular horror franchise begins with a title card that reads, “On July 18, 1981, Ed and Lorraine Warren were called to document the exorcism of David Glatzel.” The presence of a videographer in the exorcism that follows—the film’s opening scene—implies the whole thing was caught on tape. A few minutes later, a scrolling title card adds more context and firmly asserts that the horror movie you’re about to watch is “based on a true story.”

No doubt the emphasis on the true story aspect of the film is a creative choice intended to make for a spookier viewing experience. And most fans of The Conjuring are likely just there for some good, fun scares. Hopefully, most viewers don’t take these assertions of truth too seriously. After all, they just watched an 8-year-old kid in demon makeup do a backflip on a kitchen table.

But the fact remains that very little of what happens on screen in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It can be described as historically accurate. Let’s dig into how accurate The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It true story really is, and the real-life case of Arne Johnson.

Are The Conjuring movies based on real life?

Sort of. But also no, not really. The characters of Ed and Lorraine Warren—played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga in the Conjuring movies—are based on the real-life Ed and Lorraine Warren, who were paranormal investigators and authors. Ed Warren was a self-taught “demonologist,” while Lorraine Warren claimed to be clairvoyant and a medium. The married couple would go to investigate claims of ghosts, demons, and other supernatural happenings, and then they wrote and sold books about those experiences. (Perhaps their most famous case was the 1975 Amityville Horror murders, which has been popularized by several books and movies.)

That said, just because the Warrens were real people—Ed Warren died in 2006, while Lorraine Warren died in 2019—that doesn’t mean the things they claimed to have seen or done are true. The Conjuring movies are horror, so of course, the ghosts are going to be real within the context of the movie. However, though the Warrens are always portrayed as the heroes of the story on film, in real life, the Warrens were criticized for exaggerating their experiences and have been accused of fraud.

Beyond the whole ghosts thing, Warner Bros. came under fire in a 2013 legal filing of misrepresenting the Warrens’ relationship. According to a 2017 feature in The Hollywood Reporter, a woman named Judith Penney alleged in legal documents that she had a four-decade-long affair—including when she was a legal minor—with Ed Warren, and also accused Ed Warren of abusing Lorraine. Lorraine’s attorney denied the allegations.

Is The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It based on a true story?

Again, sort of. The story was inspired by the real-life court case of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, which is known for being the first legal case in the U.S. in which the defendant used “demonic possession” as a legal defense for stabbing a man to death.

As we see in the film, Ed and Lorraine Warren were involved in that case, and indeed were the ones to help bring national attention to it. But most of The Conjuring 3 is spent not on the actual court case—of which there is verified documentation—but on a completely fictionalized story involving the Warrens tracking down the satanist who cursed Arne, as well as a side plot about a missing girl. Beyond that, many of the details of the murder were changed—there was no witch’s totem found at the crime scene, the victim was actually Arne’s landlord, the location was outside a dog kennel not inside a house, there were more witnesses to the murder… the list goes on.

And despite the film’s emphasis that this a true story—including text at the beginning and end of the film setting up and concluding Arne’s story, as well audio of the supposed “actual exorcism” of the young boy David Glatzel over the credits—there’s a lot The Conjuring 3 leaves out about the case of Arne Johnson.

What is the true story of Arne Cheyenne Johnson?

On February 16, 1981, 40-year-old landlord Alan Bono was stabbed to death with a 5-inch pocket knife by 19-year-old Arne Cheyenne Johnson, after the two argued outside of a dog kennel in the small town of Brookfield, Connecticut. Reportedly, the only witnesses to the crime were Johnson’s two younger sisters, and his girlfriend.

Johnson was arrested for first-degree murder but pleaded “not guilty” in court. Though Johnson himself never actually said that he was possessed—only that he didn’t remember the stabbing—his attorney posed the legal defense that he had been possessed by a demon at the time of the killing. He made headlines as the first defendant to blame the devil for his crimes, at a time when the 1973 film The Exorcist was still fresh in the cultural memory, and belief in demons was on the rise.

According to a 1981 report from the New York Times, Johnson’s girlfriend, Deborah Glatzel (played by Sarah Catherine Hook in the movie) claimed that Johnson had participated in the exorcism of her younger brother, David (played by Julian Hilliard in the film). This claim was backed up by Ed and Lorraine Warren, who were contacted by the Glatzel to assist in an exorcism for David—who they said was speaking in tongues, convulsing, and more—alongside the St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Brookfield. (The Church denied performing a “formal exorcism.”)

Lorraine Warren told the Times that she witnessed Arne Johnson tell the devil to leave David alone and take him instead. ‘He would actually say, ‘Come into me – leave the little lad alone,'” she said.

An excerpt from the Times article regarding Deborah Glatzel’s testimony that her boyfriend was possessed reads:

Miss Glatzel, who had watched ”The Exorcist” on television with the rest of her family, and who had attended at least one of the Warrens’ lectures before her brother began to claim his daily and nightly visions of the devil – a presence they all refer to as ”the master” or ”the beast” – says that her brother told her the day after Mr. Bono’s death that he had had a vision.

A superior court judge dismissed Johson’s “demonic possession” legal defense on the grounds that it could not be proven. Johnson was convicted of first-degree manslaughter by a jury and given a 10-to-20-year sentence, of which he served nearly five years. He was released early due to good behavior. While in prison, Johnson had his story was made into a television movie, got married to Deborah Glatzel, and received a high-school degree.

All of the above is dramatized in the movie, but what’s not mentioned in any of that pre- or post-movie text is the fact that David Glatzel’s older brother, Carl Glatzel, later sued Lorraine Warren in 2006 saying that the demonic possession of his brother was a hoax created by Warren and her husband.

Glatzel, who is 55, spoke to a local Connecticut newspaper, The Hartford Courant, and said that the hoax of his brother’s demonic possession eventually drove him out of the state.

“It was like a living hell. That’s why I moved out of Connecticut,” he said. “I never did believe in the bullshit.” He told the Associated Press in 2007 that his younger brother suffered from mental illness as a child, and, according to the lawsuit, said that the Warrens “concocted a phony story about demons in an attempt to get rich and famous at our expense.”

In 2006, Glatzel sued Warren, along with the publishing agency William Morris, and the author of a “based on a true story” book about the events, Gerald Brittle. The case was ultimately dismissed, but Brittle said the book—The Devil in Connecticut—was taken out of print after the lawsuit.

Suffice to say, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It may technically be “based on a true story,” but’s far from an accurate depiction of historical events. And if Carl Glatzel’s accusations are true—that his younger brother suffered from mental illness, not demonic possession—that puts the audio of that exorcism you hear over the Conjuring 3 credits in a whole new light.

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