The vast majority of Netflix’s The Devil on Trial, a so-called documentary that began streaming today, is spent indulging outlandish stories of demonic possession, despite the complete lack of credible evidence. But an hour into the film, director Christopher Holt finally introduces a voice of reason: Carl Glatzel, who calmly explains how his family was exploited by the self-proclaimed “demonologists” Ed and Lorraine Warren, whom Glatzel describes as “con people.”
Most folks know the names Ed and Lorraine Warren from The Conjuring, a hugely successful, billion-dollar supernatural horror movie franchise that claims to dramatize the “real-life” ghost-hunting adventures of the Warrens. Played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga in the films, the Warrens supposedly investigated dozens of demons and evil spirits from hell. (Including their most famous investigation, the Amityville haunting.) The popularity of their tales is no accident—the real Warrens made themselves famous by writing books and a carefully-planned media campaign. The Devil Wears Trial provides insight into how exactly they found their book subjects.
Carl Glatzel was 15 years old when his 11-year-old brother, David Glatzel, made headlines for being “possessed by the devil.” The boys’ mother—whom Carl describes as having “her own agenda” in the film—believed her son had been taken over by an evil spirit in the year 1980. She called the Warrens, who were already famous from the 1975 Amityville Horror case, which later inspired horror books and film series. Carl recalls the Warrens arriving at his childhood home, and sitting down with his mother and David at the kitchen table to describe what might happen, if David were to be possessed.
“They were saying, ‘He could start cursing at you, spitting at you. He’ll grunt and growl like a savage,'” Carl said in the film. “My concern was, why talk about the subject when [he’s] sitting right there? Have the kids go outside, go downstairs, go do something. But they wanted to make sure we heard it. And we did. Like, you’re leading them on, what to do.”
Sure enough, it wasn’t long before David was cursing, spitting, and growling like a savage at his mother. “A couple days later, David was doing just that, word for word,” Carl said. And the Warrens showed up with a microphone and camera to record all of it.
“Every night they had the cameras ready; the microphones ready. It turned into a show.” The Warrens were far more focused on recording his brother than they were on helping him, Carl said.
After a friend of the family attempted to claim that he, too, had been possessed by the devil when he murdered his landlord by a stabbing four times, the Glatzels were thrust into fame. David’s mother began taking Hollywood meetings and was involved in book deal talks with the Warrens. The Warrens promised to make the family millionaires. Carl remembers the author hired to write the book, Gerald Brittle, contested some of the facts, only to be shot down by Ed Warren. “Ed said, ‘Make it scary. People come to us. They buy scary.'”
Even an adult David and his other brother, Alan—both of whom maintain to this day that David really was possessed by the devil—agree with their older brother that their family was exploited by the Warrens. “Lorraine told me I was going to be a rich little boy from this book deal, and that was a lie,” David said in the film.
In the end, the family got less than $5 thousand for the book, compared to the tens of thousands that the Warrens made—not even counting all the money made from the Conjuring franchise. The Glatzels’s story was the direct inspiration for the 2021 Conjuring movie, The Devil Made Me Do It. (It should be noted that Ed Warren died in 2006, and Lorraine Warren died in 2019.)
“The Warrens made a lot of money off us. If they can profit off you, they will,” David said in the film. “They’re not gonna pass up that deal.”
In his own interview, Carl Glatzel concluded, “They were good at what they did. They knew how to talk to people and how to play people. They were very good con people.”