Valak: The Demon Nun of The Conjuring
Then the room shifts.
Wood creaks though no one moves. A crucifix loosens and turns. A whisper brushes the back of your neck, saying your name in a voice that sounds like yours, only wrong. From the side aisle, a figure glides into view: a veiled face, chalk-white skin, eyes like bruised gold. The smile is too wide.
You can’t make yourself run. The air tastes metallic, your chest tight, your mouth dry. The portrait’s nun looks past you now, toward the doorway. The real one—if it’s real—doesn’t blink.
This isn’t a sister praying for lost souls. This is Valak—an old name in older books, wearing a habit like a dare.
WHO (OR WHAT) IS VALAK?
On screen, Valak is “the Nun,” a gaunt, veiled figure that stalks halls, paintings, and dreams. But in grimoires like the Lesser Key of Solomon (Ars Goetia), Valak (also spelled Valac, Ualac, Volac, or Valu) looks nothing like a sister of any order. He’s described as a winged child riding a two-headed dragon, a high-ranking demon who commands 30 legions and reveals hidden treasures while exerting power over serpents.
That contrast—cherubic rider vs. specter in a habit—says a lot about how legends evolve. The grimoire entry casts Valak as a revealer and controller: someone (or something) you’d conjure to show you what’s buried or to bend snakes to your will. It’s transactional, almost bureaucratic: rank, seal, power.
The film version weaponizes symbolic inversion. A nun is supposed to embody refuge, humility, and trust; letting a demon wear that uniform makes the familiar feel treacherous. That single visual choice explains why Valak vaulted from an obscure footnote to a modern horror icon: we don’t just see a monster—we see faith itself being mocked.
Under both masks, the function’s similar. Valak exposes what’s hidden, then turns the knife by corrupting what you thought was safe.
ORIGIN STORY / VARIATIONS
Valak’s paper trail runs through early modern Europe, where demon catalogues blended folklore, theology, and ritual instructions. In the Ars Goetia, Valak appears with a sigil, a title (President/Marquis), and a job description: reveal treasures, command serpents, answer questions about the unknown. Other lists—like the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum—echo the essentials while drifting on names and spellings.
What’s striking is the disguise of innocence. A winged child astride a dragon feels paradoxical on purpose—an emblem that warns: not all sweetness is safe. That motif—the trusted face that hides teeth—will be the thread modern horror pulls centuries later.
When The Conjuring 2 (2016) needed a face for the malign presence Lorraine Warren perceived, director James Wan steered toward a nun—not because of grimoire precedent, but because the image would collide with Lorraine’s Catholic faith. The habit became a cinematic instrument: a moving violation of the sacred.
From there, the franchise built lore around a Romanian abbey (The Nun, 2018; The Nun II, 2023). These films stitch together real exorcism imagery, invented backstory, and the grimoire’s old name to create a legend that feels both ancient and immediate. In this telling, Valak doesn’t just reveal secrets; it enforces doubt, turning holy architecture into a hunting ground and devotional objects into props for fear.
Beyond the screen, modern occultists sometimes treat Valak’s snake motif as serpentine paths—not just literal reptiles, but winding routes to hidden knowledge and the danger that knowledge exacts a price. That reading keeps Valak close to the archetype of the threshold guardian: a being you can ask for shortcuts, if you’re prepared to pay.
Across variations, the constants are reversal and revelation. Old texts promised secrets at a cost. New movies promise that even sanctuaries can’t save you. It’s the same dread in two dialects.
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU ENCOUNTER THEM?
Should you cross paths with Valak, whether in a nightmare or a whispered tale, encounters often unfold in three chilling phases:
1) Desecrated space. Crosses skew. Icons feel watchful. Candles gutter in rooms with no draft. The place that should calm you hums like a live wire.
2) Dream incursions. Nightmares sharpen into memory: long corridors, wet stone, the soft drag of cloth. People wake tasting iron, the name “Valak” lodged like grit behind the tongue. Sleep paralysis often frames these episodes—the body locked while a veiled silhouette edges closer.
3) Oppression to attack. A weight settles on the chest. Cold spreads. Scratches appear—often in threes. Frames tremble on the wall; a heavy book slides on its own. Whether paranormal or psychogenic, the sequence is theater designed for you: spectacle, fixation, fear.
“Rules” vary. Traditional responses cite prayer, sacramentals, fasting, and seeking help from clergy. A different school of thought urges non-engagement: don’t speak the name, don’t taunt, don’t bargain. Either way, people find that attention is fuel. The more you stare into the habit, the more it stares back.
WHERE THE LEGEND SPREADS
The grimoire entry stayed niche for centuries; the nun went global in six years. Streaming clipped the distance between a Romanian set and your midnight living room, which is how Valak leapt from a Latin seal to a living urban legend.
The spread rides three currents:
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Screens. Clips of the painting scene, the corridor confrontations, and chapel showdowns repeat until they feel like memories you had.
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Stories. TikTok, Reddit, and late-night group chats trade “I saw it too” accounts: a veil in a doorway, a hissed prayer in a dream, a candle that died at the worst possible second.
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Sites. Ghost tours in old churches and convents borrow the silhouette. A cold corner becomes “the Nun’s pew.” A rumor about a sacristy door adds a chapter.
In each place, the costume changes slightly—the angle of the veil, the color of the eyes—but the function is the same: corrupt the familiar. That’s how a demon from a list becomes a local specter that knows the route from the vestibule to your street.
WHY THE STORY STICKS
Valak fuses two anxieties we rarely admit in daylight. First, the fear of demons—that there’s a predatory intelligence just outside our rituals and routines. Second, the fear that institutions can fail—that the rooms we made for safety (churches, schools, even bedrooms) can’t keep the dark out.
Horror loves reversals. The clown should be funny. The doll should be harmless. The nun should be holy. Flip any of those and the audience has to renegotiate reality on the fly. That renegotiation is sticky; we replay it later walking past a chapel at dusk, just to check if the world still aligns.
It helps that Valak has pedigree—not invented whole cloth, but carrying an old name and a seal from dusty pages. The legend feels earned, even when the habit is new. And once an image gets good at bending trust, it doesn’t leave.
MODERN SIGHTINGS
Most “sightings” arrive as experience reports: the bed-edge veil during sleep paralysis; a nun-shape in peripheral vision after a late screening; a church candle that fails three times in a row. Skeptics call it priming—you see what you’ve been taught to fear. Believers call it provocation—naming invites presence.
Paranormal groups occasionally log cases in which religious décor behaves oddly: votive candles dying without a draft; frames vibrating; an ozone scent before lights strobe. None of that proves a demon, but each detail tucks neatly into the Valak template: holy space, wrong behavior.
A smaller vein of testimony comes from artists and clergy who linger with the image professionally. Iconographers talk about “feeling watched” painting late in sacristies. Priests mention parish corners people avoid without knowing why. Whether psychological residue or something with teeth, the nun silhouette has annexed a surprising amount of twilight.
One practical takeaway threads through both camps: don’t feed it. Fixation, taunts, and amateur “rituals” tend to make nights longer. Curiosity is its own doorway; you don’t have to open every one.
POP CULTURE REFERENCES
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The Conjuring 2 (2016): Debut of the Nun—most viewers’ first brush with the name Valak. The painting sequence becomes instant canon.
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The Nun (2018): A backstory in a Romanian abbey, cementing the habit as Valak’s signature. Box-office smash despite mixed reviews.
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The Nun II (2023): Expands the myth, relocating terror and stitching more connective tissue to the Conjuring timeline.
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Tie-ins and fan works: Comics, novels, fan art, and game mods replicate the veil in every haunted corridor imaginable.
Just like Annabelle, Valak became an instant horror icon, blurring the lines between real folklore and Hollywood’s imagination. If you haven’t read it yet, check out our post on the real story behind the Annabelle doll.
SIMILAR SPIRITS/CREATURES AROUND THE WORLD
Valak’s terror comes from subverting what should be safe. These cousins work the same trick—familiar faces turned sharp:
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La Llorona (Mexico/Latin America): A grieving mother whose cry should cue compassion, not caution. She embodies nurture inverted; rivers that should cleanse become boundaries you don’t cross.
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Pontianak/Kuntilanak (Malaysia/Indonesia): A beautiful woman with a smile that splits too wide. She lures at crossroads and banana trees, punishing betrayal and preying on the unwary. The echo with Valak is the feminine visage as trap.
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The White Lady (Europe, Philippines, global): Veiled women near graveyards or roads, tied to betrayal or loss. The veil—symbol of purity or mourning—becomes an instrument of dread, as the habit does for Valak.
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Lilith (Jewish folklore): Night-bound, serpentine, a figure of temptation and the undoing of domestic order. Her association with serpents and forbidden knowledge traces the same line grimoires draw through Valak.
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Banshee (Ireland): Not evil in every tale, but a keening herald whose cry sanctifies grief while terrifying households. Like Valak’s habit, the banshee’s role takes a culturally “allowed” feminine space—mourning—and makes it uncanny.
The family resemblance isn’t literal costume; it’s function. Each bends a trusted symbol—mother, bride, sister, mourner—until it points back at you. That’s why they linger. It’s easier to stop trusting the dark than to stop trusting what you were taught was safe.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Strip the jump scares away and what’s left of Valak is a habit in half-light and the sense you’ve been mistaken about your safe places. Old books offered a demon that reveals secrets for a price. New films offer one that demands you doubt. Together they leave you with a simple dare: how sure are you that the symbol on the wall belongs to you and not to something watching from behind it?
If you pass a chapel after dark and feel the urge to peer in the window, remember—some doors open because we knock. Others open because we stare.
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