Though Judy Spera was long afraid of the supernatural, she's now proudly preserving the legacies of her demonologist parents Ed and Lorraine Warren.
AFF/Alamy Stock PhotoJudy Spera (née Judy Warren) with her husband Tony Spera at the Annabelle Comes Home premiere.
The Conjuring was a breakout success when it premiered in 2013, and more than a decade later, it still remains part of one of the most successful horror franchises in the world. The series is, of course, based on the lives and investigations of famous paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. While the first film doesn’t focus too much on the Warrens’ personal lives, subsequent films dive deeper into the demonologists as people — and their family members, including their daughter Judy Warren.
While Ed and Lorraine Warren have since passed on, Judy Warren — now known as Judy Spera, since she married her husband Tony Spera — is still alive, speaking openly about her childhood, what it was like to have parents who investigated the paranormal, and the widespread fame they achieved. While Judy was already an adult in her 20s by the time her parents truly became celebrities, she still grew up hearing their incredible stories.
The Warrens have also proven to be controversial figures at times, with allegations of fabricating investigations and even abuse being levied against them. But Judy Spera has stuck by her parents’ stories. She and her husband continue to run the Warrens’ organization New England Society of Psychic Research (NESPR). Though Judy Spera spent much of her life afraid of the supernatural, she’s determined to preserve her parents’ legacy, offering more insight into the real lives of Ed and Lorraine Warren.
Inside Judy Warren’s Unusual Early Life
Judy Spera was born to Ed and Lorraine Warren on January 11, 1946 in Connecticut. Not long after that, in 1952, the Warrens would found NESPR. Although they didn’t really garner mainstream attention until the mid-1970s, when Spera was in her 20s, their paranormal ambitions were clearly already there. Spera’s descriptions of her early years, however, paint a very different picture of the Ed and Lorraine Warren that most people know.
“When I was quite small, they were artists and that’s what they did,” Judy Spera said in a 2020 interview with Den of Geek. “They traveled and sold their paintings, and they did art classes. It wasn’t until I was getting older when this ghost thing happened. As a little child, I didn’t know they were doing that. I knew they were always interested.”
TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy Stock PhotoEd and Lorraine Warren with their daughter Judy Warren.
Spera said her parents were always telling ghost stories, and they hosted countless elaborate Halloween parties. But she also said that she lived with her grandparents for most of her childhood, since her parents were traveling so much. In the brief periods where she did live with her parents, she said she was “terrified there, in their house” and found it difficult to sleep.
Later on, Spera said she became afraid of the “possessed” Raggedy Ann doll known as “Annabelle.” But unlike The Conjuring, where she’s portrayed as a young child who narrowly avoids a terrifying attack from the evil doll, Spera didn’t actually learn about Annabelle until she was in her 20s. That said, the real Spera was just as fearful of the object as her fictional counterpart, and she still believes the real Annabelle doll is scarier than the one in the movie.
AmityPhotos/Alamy Stock PhotoThe real, purportedly haunted Annabelle doll.
“The eyes, the eyes are just dead,” Judy Spera said, referring to the real Annabelle. “It’s not like the eyes on the movie doll at all.”
Despite Spera’s uneasiness with the paranormal, she believes there’s a possibility that she inherited some special abilities from her family, though perhaps not quite as obvious as those her young fictional counterpart has in The Conjuring movies: “I have had some things happen. It’s a lot of dreams that are very strange, and warnings — from my father.”
Throughout the Den of Geek interview, Spera made it clear that although she believed in her parents’ stories and never questioned their paranormal investigations, she never wanted to follow in their footsteps. The same, however, could not be said of her eventual husband Tony Spera.
When Judy Warren Met Tony Spera
Tony SperaJudy and Tony Spera.
Tony Spera and Judy Warren met in late September 1979. At the time, he was working as a police officer in Bloomfield, Connecticut. As he tells it in a personal blog post, he was in the middle of writing a report when he looked up and saw “a beautiful, young woman passing by.”
Judy Warren waved to him, got into her car, and drove away. Entranced, Tony Spera turned on his flashing lights and sped off after her, hoping he could catch up. He did, they waved to each other again, and then she vanished into a dress shop, and he left, feeling dejected. Luckily for him, a fellow officer also ran into Judy Warren that day, and offered to introduce them.
Shortly afterward, they went on a date, and they have been together ever since then. It’s a touching, classic love story that could happen in any town, but there is one twist: Tony Spera is now a paranormal researcher.
While Judy Spera chose not to take control of the family business, her husband was more than eager to. After meeting the Warrens, Tony Spera became open to the idea of an afterlife, prompted, as he said in another post, by questions about what happened to his late mother and brother. “So I guess in a way I was searching for some type of answer,” he wrote.
Eventually, that curiosity made him a key figure in the Warrens’ paranormal empire. He conducted interviews with Ed and Lorraine Warren, aided them in their investigations, and helped manage the business itself.
TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy Stock PhotoEd and Lorraine Warren’s work with paranormal investigations inspired their son-in-law to follow in their footsteps.
After Ed and Lorraine Warren died, Tony Spera inherited their occult museum, and since Judy wanted nothing to do with it, her husband is essentially the man now responsible for maintaining the Warrens’ legacy.
“I know my husband will take it from here,” she told Den of Geek, “and he inherited the museum because I certainly didn’t want it. He’d better stay around longer than me, and take care of that place!” (The museum is currently closed, and it’s unclear whether it’ll open again.)
Of course, the Warrens’ legacy can’t be discussed without diving into some of the more controversial elements of it. In particular, the Warrens frequently faced criticism and allegations that they were fabricating parts of their stories and using the stories of victims for their own financial gain. Judy Spera has expressed frustration when “reading negative articles about my parents,” perhaps not surprisingly, but troubling rumors remain.
What Ed And Lorraine Warren’s Daughter Says About Their Legacy
Warner Bros. PicturesSterling Jerins (left) portraying Judy Warren in The Conjuring 2. In the movie, she warns her mother Lorraine (played by Vera Farmiga) about a demonic nun, but the real Judy Warren only learned about her parents’ cases when she got older.
The most well-known critique of the Warrens is that they were effectively scam artists, exaggerating, embellishing, and lying about their paranormal investigations in order to make money. Take their involvement in the Amityville case, for example. Lorraine Warren, who claimed to have some sort of clairvoyant ability, said she was certain there was a demonic presence within the house — despite claims that George Lutz and his wife Kathy, who briefly owned the home, allegedly made that story up.
Then, in the case of The Conjuring 2, the film centers around the Warrens’ involvement in the Enfield haunting. But in reality, the Warrens spent a relatively short time at the Hodgson house, ultimately declaring, once again, that there was some supernatural presence in the home.
There was also the infamous case explored in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, in which the Warrens argued during a trial that a demon had compelled 19-year-old Arne Johnson to commit murder.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesArne Cheyenne Johnson, a 19-year-old who murdered his landlord and claimed the Devil made him do it.
This case, in fact, was one of the few that Judy Spera said she recalled her parents discussing. “The one case that I was older that they were talking about the most was The Devil in Connecticut case,” she remembered.
Of course, the Warrens sold books, and eventually, movies were made about their stories, so the family certainly did make a living off of these cases. This has raised the question, many times over, as to whether there was, in fact, any authenticity to any of it, or if they were just in it for the money or the celebrity status. On that, Spera said she “had a hard time with that criticism.”
“They were really, really trying, and they always tried,” she said. “After my dad collapsed, he was a full-care patient for five years, so he wasn’t even ‘there.’ He was in the house, but you know. My mom, she would take these calls in the middle of the night and sit and talk to people. We wanted to change the house number so many times, but she wouldn’t let us.”
As it stands now, Judy Spera’s husband still handles much of the Warrens’ paranormal business, and it doesn’t seem as if she will ever take much of an interest in the paranormal herself. However, it’s clear that she’ll do whatever it takes to help preserve — and protect — her parents’ legacies.
After reading about Judy Warren, learn about Hans Holzer, America’s first ghost hunter. Then, discover history’s most terrifying true ghost stories.
