It’s Friday night you ,your last night snack and that one long thriller series that you’ve been watching since ages , now you are all bored up and transitioning into a slow sleep , a sudden creak wakes you up ! with no one in the house except for you wondering where the sound came from with your lackluster eyes walking around the house all drowsy ; a sudden crack grabs your attention it’s coming right from the corner of the house where you’ve placed your tall mirror and a sound follows it is the sound of a glass shattering but with ample of light around the mirror you are wondering about it and eventually move towards the mirror and fraction second later you see and flash of red light behind you and the moment you turn back again it’s your reflection but not you feeling eneasy you break the eye contact and the glass shatters boom ! . This story corners around spine chilling incidents like these;The lights have gone down for good on one of horror’s greatest cinematic epics. With the long-awaited conclusion, The Conjuring: Last Rites, arriving in theaters, it promises to return us to the scariest case Ed and Lorraine Warren ever encountered—a case so sinister it drove them out of retirement. But this is more than a story about Hollywood spectacle. The on-screen bone-chilling occurrences are inspired by a nightmare that took place in a peaceful Pennsylvania town. For the Smurl family in West Pittston, the fear was real. In the 1980s, they alleged to be possessed by a strong, evil demon. The film is frightening, but what actually transpired on Chase Street? Let’s lift the curtain and distinguish between the Hollywood horrors and the verified facts.
The Movie’s Plot
A Glimpse into the Final Frights
The Conjuring: Last Rites propels us into another haunting that becomes an intimate and dangerous one for the Warrens soon enough.
Following what seems like a typical case of one family tormented by an intense, invisible force, Ed and Lorraine realize that the presence of demons is connected to an antique mirror—a cursed artifact whose past is directly linked to their first case. The family starts to attack their own daughter, Judy, and they must face their “last rite” of coming of age. The movie sets this as the ultimate confrontation of spirits, one that will try their faith, their family ties, and their lives. With their daughter’s soul in the balance, the Warrens have to employ every bit of knowledge and belief at their disposal to vanquish this evil once and for all, providing them with a last, dramatic curtain call.
The Real Case File: Inside the Smurl Haunting
The actual story started not with a haunted mirror, but with a gradual, creeping increase in supernatural activity. Jack and Janet Smurl, and their four daughters, took up residence in their new West Pittston home in the mid-1970s. In the beginning, the disturbances were slight—odd noises, unpleasant odors which would manifest and then disappear, and appliances that seemed to malfunction mysteriously. But when the 1980s arrived, the activity turned violent and intensely personal. The Smurls’ horror claims became legend.
The family dog, a German shepherd, allegedly was slammed against a wall by an unseen hand. One of the daughters was shoved down a staircase. But the worst reports came directly from Jack and Janet themselves, who described being attacked physically and even sexually by non-corporeal beings while in their own beds. The fear became so pervasive and unrelenting that the family, in a last-ditch effort, called upon the world-renowned paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warrens came in 1986 and, after investigating for themselves, determined that the house was indeed tormented by not one, but four entities. They found an old woman, a violent little girl, a man who had died in the home, and, worst of all, a powerful, dominating demon manipulating the other spirits to harass the family.
Fact vs. Fiction
What Really Happened? For viewers of The Conjuring movies, fact and fiction have long since been mashed together in the interests of drama. In Last Rites, no exception is made.
What the Movie Got Right
The movie did a superb job of conveying the sheer violence of the haunting. The accounts of an invisible force physically injuring the family and the inescapable horror of the attacks are taken straight from the Smurl family’s testimony. The film also accurately pinpoints the root problem: the existence of several, discrete entities, all controlled by a powerful, evil demon. It’s this layered threat that made the Smurl case so notorious and intriguing.
What the Movie Changed
It is here that the cinematic license is evident. The film’s main plot device—the haunted mirror linking to the Warrens’ initial case and aimed at their daughter—is purely fictional. There was no haunted artifact and no direct connection to an earlier case in the Warrens’ long career during the actual Smurl haunting. The film also frames this as the Warrens’ “last” case, the one that prompts them to retire.
In real life, the Warrens went on to do their paranormal work for decades following the Smurl case’s closure. The largest disparity, though, is in the conclusion. The movie culminates in a dramatic, cinematic exorcism by the Warrens. Real-life haunting, according to most testimony, did not conclude along these lines. Rather, a local Catholic priest conducted several blessings and prayers, and the activity gradually, and less theatrically, declined. The Smurls themselves relocated to a new residence in 1988, and the occupants who took their former home reported no ghostly activity.
The Aftermath & The skeptics
Though the Smurls’ case was a 1980s sensation, it also drew considerable doubt. Most experts, including prominent paranormal researcher Paul Kurtz, called the case a hoax or a product of psychological pressure. They cited the absence of outside evidence and the media hype about the family. The Smurls themselves continued to assert their claims until their deaths, insisting that their family was haunted by something inexplicable.Now that you’ve heard the real story, did the movie do it justice? Let us know in the comments below!