# The House Followed Them
**Horror Index:** ★★★☆☆ (6.2/10) | **Category:** Residential Haunting, Demonic Manifestation | **Status:** Unresolved
---
## Incident Overview
**Date of First Reported Activity:** 1974, with escalation documented through 1988
**Primary Location:** 30 Lindley Street, Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA
**Subjects Involved:** The Smurl family — Jack Smurl, Janet Smurl, and their daughters Dawn and Heather, along with Jack's parents, John and Mary Smurl, who occupied the attached upper unit of the duplex
**Investigating Parties:** Ed and Lorraine Warren (paranormal researchers), multiple local clergy, Bridgeport Police Department (incident reports on file), and independent journalists from the *Bridgeport Post*
What follows is a compiled account drawn from witness testimony, investigative records, and contemporaneous news coverage. The events described span fourteen years. The family never fully explained what happened inside that house. What is notable is that the activity did not stop when they left.
---
## Detailed Records
The Smurl family purchased the duplex at 30 Lindley Street in 1973, a modest two-family home in a quiet residential neighborhood of Bridgeport. By all accounts, the family was unremarkable in the best sense — working-class, Catholic, close-knit. Jack worked steady hours. Janet managed the household. The grandparents lived upstairs. There was no history of mental illness documented in any family member at the time of initial reports.
The disturbances began subtly, in the manner that such things apparently always do.
In 1974, a stain appeared on the new carpet. It was not water damage. It could not be cleaned. Shortly after, a television set burst into flames without electrical fault — the fire marshal's report noted no identifiable cause. Pipes in the walls began to emit sounds that plumbers, called on three separate occasions, could not attribute to standard settling or pressure variance. These early incidents were logged, dismissed, and quietly absorbed into the rhythms of daily life.
By 1986, absorption was no longer possible.
Janet Smurl reported the smell first — a sulfurous, decaying odor that moved through the house like weather, appearing in one room and vanishing before she could locate a source. Then came the rappings. Rhythmic. Deliberate. Originating, by her account, from inside the walls rather than beyond them. Jack reported waking to the sensation of weight on his chest, unable to move, the room carrying a cold that the thermostat did not register.
Dawn, the elder daughter, reported seeing a figure in her room. She described it as an old woman. Pale. Dressed in black. Standing at the foot of the bed, watching.
She did not scream. She told investigators later that she had been too frightened to make any sound at all.
---
## Key Horror Scene
The incident that shifted the Smurl case from neighborhood gossip to documented record occurred in the late summer of 1986.
Janet was alone in the kitchen on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. The children were at school. Jack was at work. By her account, she had been washing dishes when the temperature in the room dropped sharply — not gradually, but in a single perceptible moment, as though a door to somewhere cold had been opened directly beside her.
She turned.
Standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway was a shape. She could not describe it as a person. She told the Warrens, and later a reporter from the *Bridgeport Post*, that it had mass but no consistent form — that it seemed to absorb the light in the doorway rather than occupy space within it. She stood motionless. The shape did not move. She could hear, she said, a sound like breathing that was not breathing — more like the rhythmic displacement of air from something very large.
Then it was gone.
Janet called her priest that evening. She did not call the police. She understood, she later said, that what she had seen was not something a police report could address.
The Warrens arrived in February 1986 following a formal request from the family. Ed Warren conducted an initial walkthrough and noted, in his written assessment, that he had encountered "four distinct entities" within the residence, including what he classified as a demonic presence of significant strength. Lorraine Warren, operating as a clairvoyant during the investigation, stated that she became physically ill upon entering the master bedroom and had to be assisted outside.
Two subsequent attempts at religious exorcism — one conducted by a local Catholic priest and one by a demonologist working alongside the Warrens — failed to produce lasting results. Activity continued. In some accounts, it intensified following the interventions.
Local media coverage began in earnest in 1986, drawing enough public attention that the family was reportedly forced to relocate temporarily due to crowds gathering outside the property. The spotlight, far from resolving anything, appeared to do nothing but confirm that something at 30 Lindley Street resisted resolution.
---
## Unresolved Questions
The Smurl family eventually left 30 Lindley Street. The exact date of their permanent departure varies depending on the source, but most accounts place it around 1988. They moved to an undisclosed address in Pennsylvania.
The activity reportedly followed them.
This detail — that the disturbances continued in a new residence with no structural connection to the original property — is the element that investigators and skeptics alike have found most difficult to categorize. Hauntings, by most conventional frameworks, are understood to be location-based phenomena. The Smurl case, if the post-relocation reports are accurate, does not fit that framework.
No subsequent resident of 30 Lindley Street has come forward publicly with comparable reports, though the property has changed hands several times. Whether this constitutes evidence against the original accounts or simply reflects the privacy of later occupants is not something the available record can settle.
The Warren investigation was criticized by skeptics and parapsychologists alike, some of whom noted that the Warrens had a financial interest in high-profile cases and that no independent scientific instrumentation was used during their assessment. These are legitimate criticisms. They do not, however, explain what Janet Smurl saw in her kitchen doorway, or what Dawn saw at the foot of her bed, or why the fire marshal's report on the television fire remains categorized as cause undetermined.
The Smurls were interviewed extensively. They did not profit significantly from the case during the height of its public attention. A book was published — *The Haunted* by Robert Curran — and a television film followed in 1991. By most accounts, the family found the attention unwanted rather than beneficial.
Jack Smurl died in 2012. Janet has not given public interviews in many years.
Dawn, as of last available record, does not discuss the house.
---
## Archivist's Note
This case does not resolve cleanly. That is not a failure of the record — it is, in a meaningful sense, the record itself.
What the documentation demonstrates is this: a family with no apparent motive for fabrication reported consistent, escalating disturbances over a period of more than a decade. Multiple outside parties — clergy, researchers, journalists — visited the property and came away with accounts that did not contradict one another in their essential details. Physical events occurred that standard explanations did not adequately address at the time of investigation.
Whether one accepts a paranormal interpretation, a psychological one, or simply acknowledges the limits of available evidence, the Lindley Street case warrants its place in the documented history of unexplained residential phenomena in the United States.
The house is still standing.
Somebody is living in it right now.
---
*Filed under: Connecticut Hauntings, Demonic Activity, Warren Investigations, Residential Anomalies, USA Sector Archive*
*Sources: Bridgeport Post contemporaneous coverage (1986–1988), "The Haunted" by Robert Curran (1988), Warren Occult Museum case files, Bridgeport Fire Department incident records*
---
**참고 이미지:**
*출처: Brett Jordan*
*출처: Brett Jordan*
*출처: Brett Jordan*
**Horror Index:** ★★★☆☆ (6.2/10) | **Category:** Residential Haunting, Demonic Manifestation | **Status:** Unresolved
---
## Incident Overview
**Date of First Reported Activity:** 1974, with escalation documented through 1988
**Primary Location:** 30 Lindley Street, Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA
**Subjects Involved:** The Smurl family — Jack Smurl, Janet Smurl, and their daughters Dawn and Heather, along with Jack's parents, John and Mary Smurl, who occupied the attached upper unit of the duplex
**Investigating Parties:** Ed and Lorraine Warren (paranormal researchers), multiple local clergy, Bridgeport Police Department (incident reports on file), and independent journalists from the *Bridgeport Post*
What follows is a compiled account drawn from witness testimony, investigative records, and contemporaneous news coverage. The events described span fourteen years. The family never fully explained what happened inside that house. What is notable is that the activity did not stop when they left.
---
## Detailed Records
The Smurl family purchased the duplex at 30 Lindley Street in 1973, a modest two-family home in a quiet residential neighborhood of Bridgeport. By all accounts, the family was unremarkable in the best sense — working-class, Catholic, close-knit. Jack worked steady hours. Janet managed the household. The grandparents lived upstairs. There was no history of mental illness documented in any family member at the time of initial reports.
The disturbances began subtly, in the manner that such things apparently always do.
In 1974, a stain appeared on the new carpet. It was not water damage. It could not be cleaned. Shortly after, a television set burst into flames without electrical fault — the fire marshal's report noted no identifiable cause. Pipes in the walls began to emit sounds that plumbers, called on three separate occasions, could not attribute to standard settling or pressure variance. These early incidents were logged, dismissed, and quietly absorbed into the rhythms of daily life.
By 1986, absorption was no longer possible.
Janet Smurl reported the smell first — a sulfurous, decaying odor that moved through the house like weather, appearing in one room and vanishing before she could locate a source. Then came the rappings. Rhythmic. Deliberate. Originating, by her account, from inside the walls rather than beyond them. Jack reported waking to the sensation of weight on his chest, unable to move, the room carrying a cold that the thermostat did not register.
Dawn, the elder daughter, reported seeing a figure in her room. She described it as an old woman. Pale. Dressed in black. Standing at the foot of the bed, watching.
She did not scream. She told investigators later that she had been too frightened to make any sound at all.
---
## Key Horror Scene
The incident that shifted the Smurl case from neighborhood gossip to documented record occurred in the late summer of 1986.
Janet was alone in the kitchen on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. The children were at school. Jack was at work. By her account, she had been washing dishes when the temperature in the room dropped sharply — not gradually, but in a single perceptible moment, as though a door to somewhere cold had been opened directly beside her.
She turned.
Standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway was a shape. She could not describe it as a person. She told the Warrens, and later a reporter from the *Bridgeport Post*, that it had mass but no consistent form — that it seemed to absorb the light in the doorway rather than occupy space within it. She stood motionless. The shape did not move. She could hear, she said, a sound like breathing that was not breathing — more like the rhythmic displacement of air from something very large.
Then it was gone.
Janet called her priest that evening. She did not call the police. She understood, she later said, that what she had seen was not something a police report could address.
The Warrens arrived in February 1986 following a formal request from the family. Ed Warren conducted an initial walkthrough and noted, in his written assessment, that he had encountered "four distinct entities" within the residence, including what he classified as a demonic presence of significant strength. Lorraine Warren, operating as a clairvoyant during the investigation, stated that she became physically ill upon entering the master bedroom and had to be assisted outside.
Two subsequent attempts at religious exorcism — one conducted by a local Catholic priest and one by a demonologist working alongside the Warrens — failed to produce lasting results. Activity continued. In some accounts, it intensified following the interventions.
Local media coverage began in earnest in 1986, drawing enough public attention that the family was reportedly forced to relocate temporarily due to crowds gathering outside the property. The spotlight, far from resolving anything, appeared to do nothing but confirm that something at 30 Lindley Street resisted resolution.
---
## Unresolved Questions
The Smurl family eventually left 30 Lindley Street. The exact date of their permanent departure varies depending on the source, but most accounts place it around 1988. They moved to an undisclosed address in Pennsylvania.
The activity reportedly followed them.
This detail — that the disturbances continued in a new residence with no structural connection to the original property — is the element that investigators and skeptics alike have found most difficult to categorize. Hauntings, by most conventional frameworks, are understood to be location-based phenomena. The Smurl case, if the post-relocation reports are accurate, does not fit that framework.
No subsequent resident of 30 Lindley Street has come forward publicly with comparable reports, though the property has changed hands several times. Whether this constitutes evidence against the original accounts or simply reflects the privacy of later occupants is not something the available record can settle.
The Warren investigation was criticized by skeptics and parapsychologists alike, some of whom noted that the Warrens had a financial interest in high-profile cases and that no independent scientific instrumentation was used during their assessment. These are legitimate criticisms. They do not, however, explain what Janet Smurl saw in her kitchen doorway, or what Dawn saw at the foot of her bed, or why the fire marshal's report on the television fire remains categorized as cause undetermined.
The Smurls were interviewed extensively. They did not profit significantly from the case during the height of its public attention. A book was published — *The Haunted* by Robert Curran — and a television film followed in 1991. By most accounts, the family found the attention unwanted rather than beneficial.
Jack Smurl died in 2012. Janet has not given public interviews in many years.
Dawn, as of last available record, does not discuss the house.
---
## Archivist's Note
This case does not resolve cleanly. That is not a failure of the record — it is, in a meaningful sense, the record itself.
What the documentation demonstrates is this: a family with no apparent motive for fabrication reported consistent, escalating disturbances over a period of more than a decade. Multiple outside parties — clergy, researchers, journalists — visited the property and came away with accounts that did not contradict one another in their essential details. Physical events occurred that standard explanations did not adequately address at the time of investigation.
Whether one accepts a paranormal interpretation, a psychological one, or simply acknowledges the limits of available evidence, the Lindley Street case warrants its place in the documented history of unexplained residential phenomena in the United States.
The house is still standing.
Somebody is living in it right now.
---
*Filed under: Connecticut Hauntings, Demonic Activity, Warren Investigations, Residential Anomalies, USA Sector Archive*
*Sources: Bridgeport Post contemporaneous coverage (1986–1988), "The Haunted" by Robert Curran (1988), Warren Occult Museum case files, Bridgeport Fire Department incident records*
---
**참고 이미지:**
*출처: Brett Jordan*
*출처: Brett Jordan*
*출처: Brett Jordan*
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