If you read the marketing for The Conjuring franchise, you’re led to believe you are watching dramatized, highly accurate deep-dives into the secret files of America’s most famous paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren.

But if you peel back the dramatic string music and Hollywood jump scares, the relationship between cinematic horror and actual history gets complicated. While several movies are anchored to real-life controversies that made national headlines, others are total fabrications cooked up in a studio writers’ room.

Here is the breakdown of which Conjuring universe movies line up with the Warrens’ actual case files, and which ones are pure Hollywood fiction.

The “Based on Documented Cases” Tier

These are the movies directly inspired by real families, real headlines, and cases where Ed and Lorraine Warren actually showed up to investigate.

1. The Conjuring (The Harrisville Haunting)

• The Real Core: In 1971, the Perron family moved into an 18th-century Rhode Island farmhouse and claimed to experience an array of bizarre occurrences, from moving objects to phantom voices. Ed and Lorraine Warren genuinely visited the property to investigate in 1973.
• The Hollywood Fabrication: The movie’s climax—where Ed Warren performs a heroic, chair-flying exorcism to save Carolyn Perron—never happened. In reality, the Warrens conducted a séance that went so terribly wrong Carolyn allegedly appeared to be temporarily possessed, causing a panicked Roger Perron to punch Ed in the face and kick the ghost hunters out of his house immediately. Furthermore, the movie’s main villain, Bathsheba Sherman, was a real historical local woman, but there is no legal or historical proof she was a Satan-worshipping witch who sacrificed babies. She died of natural causes as an old woman.

2. The Conjuring 2 (The Enfield Poltergeist)

• The Real Core: The movie accurately replicates the real 1977 media circus in Greater London, where single mother Peggy Hodgson claimed an aggressive poltergeist was throwing furniture and possessing her 11-year-old daughter, Janet. The creepy audio recordings of Janet speaking in a deep, gravelly voice claiming to be a deceased man named “Bill Wilkins” are real historical artifacts.
• The Hollywood Fabrication: The Warrens had almost nothing to do with this case. While the film positions Ed and Lorraine as the main heroes who cross the Atlantic to save the day, the real-life investigation was primarily spearheaded by the Society for Psychical Research (specifically Guy Lyon Playfair and Maurice Grosse). The Warrens dropped by uninvited for just a few days, leading other investigators on the scene to accuse them of showing up simply to exploit the massive press coverage.

3. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (The Trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson)

• The Real Core: This is based entirely on the infamous 1981 Connecticut court case. Arne Cheyenne Johnson did stab his landlord, Alan Bono, to death. Prior to the killing, the Warrens had assisted with the alleged exorcism of Johnson’s future brother-in-law, David Glatzel. During that exorcism, Arne supposedly taunted the demon to possess him instead. His defense attorney subsequently attempted to enter a plea of “not guilty by reason of demonic possession”.
• The Hollywood Fabrication: The judge immediately threw out the “demonic possession” defense, meaning the grand courtroom drama depicted in the movie never actually happened (Arne was convicted of manslaughter). Additionally, the film’s central antagonists—a sinister occultist and a cursed totem curse—were completely invented by Hollywood to give the Warrens a physical villain to fight.

4. The Conjuring: Last Rites (The Smurl Haunting)

• The Real Core: This chapter draws from the real-world Smurl haunting of the 1970s and 1980s in West Pittston, Pennsylvania. Jack and Janet Smurl claimed their duplex was plagued by a demon that threw their dog against a wall, moved light fixtures, and physically assaulted them. The Warrens stepped in, openly declaring the home was occupied by a powerful demonic force.
• The Hollywood Fabrication: While the real-life case ended with the family moving away after years of media scrutiny and skepticism, the movie transforms the story into a grand finale involving an antique mirror from a 1964 prologue, a severe heart condition for Ed, and an direct threat to the Warrens’ psychic daughter, Judy. None of these personal family stakes or the mirror subplot were part of the actual Smurl case files.

The “Stitched-Together History” Tier

These movies feature real objects or real places connected to the Warrens, but the plots are completely made up.

5. Annabelle, Annabelle: Creation, & Annabelle Comes Home

• The Real Core: The real Annabelle doll does exist, and she resides in the Warrens’ occult museum. The real-life case involved two nursing students in 1970 who claimed the doll moved on its own and left notes.
• The Hollywood Fabrication: Literally everything else. The real Annabelle is not a terrifying, cracked porcelain Victorian doll; she is a standard, friendly-looking Raggedy Ann doll. The tragic backstory of the dollmaker, the satanic cultists murdering people next door, and the doll breaking loose to terrorize a house full of babysitters are 100% fictional scripts crafted by screenwriter Gary Dauberman.

6. The Nun & The Nun II

• The Real Core: The demonic character Valak is pulled from real-world, medieval occult grimoires (like The Lesser Key of Solomon), though historical texts describe Valak as a child with angel wings riding a two-headed dragon, not a nun. The concept of the character was sparked when Lorraine Warren mentioned to James Wan that she was occasionally stalked by a “swirling vortex of dark mist”.
• The Hollywood Fabrication: The setting, the plot, and the characters are totally fabricated. The Warrens never traveled to a Gothic Romanian monastery to fight ancient demons with the literal Blood of Christ.

The “Total Fabrication” Tier

This movie has absolutely zero connection to the Warrens or their real-world case files.

7. The Curse of La Llorona

• The Real Core: The movie is based on the famous, generations-old Mexican folklore of the “Weeping Woman,” a tragic ghost cursed to wander the earth after drowning her own children.
• The Total Fabrication: Ed and Lorraine Warren never investigated a La Llorona case. The movie was written as a completely standalone horror film. The studio retroactively forced it into The Conjuring universe by adding a tiny cameo from Father Perez (the priest from Annabelle), who holds a folder referencing the universe’s timeline.

Whether you view Ed and Lorraine Warren as genuine paranormal pioneers or masterful self-promoters, there is no denying they handed Hollywood a goldmine. The real genius of the Conjuring universe isn’t the ghosts—it’s how brilliantly the films blend a tiny nugget of real-world history with pure cinematic nightmare fuel.