Escape from the Abyss of Nightmares

Edward “Ed” Warren Miney and Lorraine Rita Warren were American paranormal investigators and authors active in the 1970s, who looked into many famous haunting cases. This story depicts one of them.

“When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” Those are Nietzsche’s words, and nothing fits my work better. I am a spiritualist — a medium — but not one who summons demons. My work is to enter the depths of a patient’s mind and find the root of the illness. You may think this work is not dangerous, but you can never know what lies deep inside the mind of a seemingly ordinary person. Sometimes the human heart is more terrifying than any demon. If you are not strong enough, once you go in, you may never come back.

I remember that day. It was late at night in deep autumn, in October. With no appointment, two people knocked on our door and asked for help. From what they told us, they were a grandmother and her granddaughter, and the girl’s name was Winnie Garcia.

According to the grandmother, Winnie now lives with her father and stepmother, but before that she lived with her mother. Everything changed the day her mother was killed by a burglar — and Winnie saw it all happen. At the hospital Winnie was diagnosed with severe depression, and treatment after treatment failed, so they came to us, the mediums, for help. We may have been Winnie’s last lifeline.