The Smurl Haunting: Sixteen Years of Terror in the Poconos

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Some houses don’t announce themselves.

They don’t creak ominously or drip with shadows the moment you step inside. They don’t feel cursed or wrong at first glance.

They feel normal.

The Smurl family’s home on Chase Street was one of those houses.

A modest duplex in West Pittston, Pennsylvania. White siding. Narrow rooms. A shared wall separating one family from another. The kind of place where sounds travel easily and privacy is thin, but life goes on anyway.

Jack and Janet Smurl raised their daughters there. Jack’s parents lived next door. It was supposed to be temporary.

It wasn’t.

The house didn’t turn hostile overnight.

It didn’t explode into chaos or spectacle.

Instead, it settled in quietly, changing the rules inch by inch until the family realized something fundamental had shifted.

It started with smells that had no source — sharp, sour, chemical, burning the back of the throat.

Then came sounds that didn’t belong to either side of the duplex. Footsteps where no one stood. Whispers carried through walls that should have muffled them.

Sleep became unreliable.

Rooms felt crowded when empty.

And the longer the family stayed, the more the house seemed to learn their routines — when they were alone, when they were vulnerable, when no one would witness what happened next.

What made it worse wasn’t fear.

It was persistence.

Whatever lived inside that house didn’t rush.

It didn’t need to.

It had time.

And it wasn’t going anywhere.

A Duplex and a Fresh Start

In 1973, Jack and Janet Smurl were a young couple with four daughters, looking for stability. They found it — or thought they did — in a duplex on Chase Street. Jack’s parents, John and Mary, lived in one half, and Jack, Janet, and the kids lived in the other.

The home was affordable and close to work, schools, and family. The neighborhood was quiet. There were no local ghost stories about the property, no rumors of tragedy. If anything, it seemed like the perfect place to settle down after years of renting.

For the first year or so, everything was normal. But then, subtle oddities began to creep in.

Small Things at First

The earliest changes were easy to dismiss.
They didn’t arrive with force. They arrived with plausible excuses.
Water stains appeared on freshly painted walls — thin, spreading marks that shouldn’t have been there. A strange smell drifted through the duplex without warning, sour and metallic, lingering just long enough to make eyes sting before vanishing.
At first, the Smurls assumed it was plumbing.
Old pipes. Poor ventilation. A shared wall between two families meant smells could travel, right?
Except no source was ever found.
The odor didn’t behave like something natural. It didn’t rise or settle. It didn’t linger in one place. It moved — passing through rooms as if carried by intent rather than air.
Then came the sounds.
Footsteps in empty rooms. Not rushing. Not heavy. Just present. Janet would hear them while cleaning, slow and deliberate, pacing rooms she’d just left. Jack would hear movement upstairs, only to find the space empty when he checked.
Sometimes the sounds came from the other side of the duplex.
Sometimes they didn’t.
That’s when the unease started to set in.
Walls that should have muffled noise carried it too clearly. Voices murmured just beyond comprehension — not loud enough to understand, but close enough to recognize as speech.
Janet began hearing her name whispered while she was alone.
Jack would walk into the kitchen and find the faucet running, though no one had been there. Lights flicked on and off without tripping breakers. Doors were found ajar when everyone swore they’d been shut.
Each incident was small.
Each one, on its own, was explainable.
But the house didn’t stop.
It layered the activity — sound on top of smell, movement on top of silence — until the Smurls realized something was changing.
Not the house itself.
The rules inside it.
What unsettled them most wasn’t what happened.
It was how often it happened.
Not once a week. Not once a month.
Daily.
And always just subtle enough to make doubt feel reasonable — until doubt became harder to hold onto than fear.

When Normal Starts to Shift

For a long time, the Smurls didn’t call it a haunting.
They called it adjustment.
You live in a house long enough, you learn its quirks. Floors creak. Pipes knock. Old buildings breathe. That’s what people say — and for a while, that explanation held.
So the family adjusted.
They ignored the footsteps unless they got too close. They stopped commenting on the smells out loud. Janet learned which lights tended to flicker and left them on. Jack double-checked doors before bed without mentioning why.
No one wanted to be the first to say it felt wrong.
Because saying it out loud made it real.
The most unsettling part wasn’t fear — it was normalization. The way strange things slowly folded into daily life. The way the house taught them what it could do, then waited for them to accept it.
When visitors came over, the activity quieted.
Almost completely.
Friends would sit at the kitchen table while the Smurls exchanged looks across the room, waiting for something to happen — and nothing did. No smells. No sounds. No flickering lights.
The house behaved.
As soon as the door closed behind the guests, something would shift.
A television would click on in an empty room. A door would shut hard enough to rattle the frame. The smell would roll through the hallway, sharp and sudden, as if reminding them who the house belonged to.
That pattern didn’t feel random.
It felt selective.
Over time, the family realized the activity didn’t just happen to them — it reacted around them. It responded to attention. It escalated when ignored. And it seemed to prefer moments of quiet, isolation, and fatigue.
Especially at night.
Especially when everyone was asleep.
That’s when the Smurls began waking without knowing why — hearts racing, rooms silent, the sense of being watched lingering long after they opened their eyes.
No nightmares.
No sounds.
Just awareness.
And once that awareness settled in, it became impossible to fully relax again.

Year by Year, It Grew Worse

By the mid-1970s, furniture began to move on its own. Drawers would slide open, chairs would scrape across the floor, and pictures would fall from the walls without warning. The smell — sometimes like rotten meat, sometimes like decaying garbage — became more frequent.
Appliances started breaking down without explanation. A new television would last only weeks. Toasters, washing machines, and even a brand-new ceiling fan burned out. Repairmen could find no cause.
Then came the cold spots — pockets of air so frigid that walking through them felt like stepping into a freezer.
The family dog began growling at empty corners. At times, it refused to enter certain rooms at all.

The Attacks Begin

By the early 1980s, the house stopped being a nuisance and became a predator.

The activity was no longer just about movement or sound; it turned explicitly violent. Jack reported being shoved against walls and scratched by invisible hands, leaving deep welts on his back. Janet found herself pinned to the bed by an invisible weight, unable to scream or breathe. One night, she awoke to the terrifying sensation of her blankets being ripped off and her body being dragged toward the foot of the bed.

Even the family dog, a German Shepherd named Simon, was targeted. The Smurls claimed to have watched in horror as the dog was lifted and slammed against the wall by an unseen force, leaving the animal terrified of certain rooms.

But there was a darker, more personal layer to the violence that the family was initially too ashamed to report. Jack and Janet eventually confessed to harrowing accounts of sexual assault by a malevolent, shapeshifting presence. Jack described an entity—sometimes appearing as a decaying, elderly woman—that would manifest in the bedroom to physically and sexually overpower him.

Their daughters were not spared from the escalation. Beyond hearing voices calling their names, the girls were subjected to physical intimidation. One daughter was grabbed and yanked so violently it left deep bruising on her arm; another reported seeing a "pig-like" face leering at her from the shadows of her closet.

Even the elder Smurls on the other side of the duplex were drawn into the violence. Mary claimed to have been pushed down the stairs by a cold, invisible hand, while John reported a solid, black mass that would block the light in the kitchen, standing with a heavy, suffocating presence that made it impossible to breathe.

The Smurls were no longer just living in a haunted house. They were under siege.

Calling in the Warrens

By 1986, the Smurls had endured over a decade of strange phenomena. The activity was now daily and severe. In desperation, they contacted Ed and Lorraine Warren — the famed husband-and-wife paranormal investigators who had worked on the Amityville case.
The Warrens spent months visiting the Smurl home, interviewing the family, and conducting investigations. Lorraine, a self-described clairvoyant, claimed she could sense four entities in the home: a harmless human spirit, a violent poltergeist, a demonic presence, and a spirit she described as “something inhuman.”
According to the Warrens, the demonic entity was the strongest and was using the others to terrorize the family. They claimed it could mimic voices, move between rooms instantly, and had the ability to physically harm people.

Escalation During the Investigation

After the Warrens got involved, the activity reportedly grew even worse. Ed Warren claimed to have been physically attacked during one visit. Lorraine said she saw a dark, hooded figure that radiated pure malice.

The family reported that strange noises followed them outside the house — even on vacations. At one point, Jack claimed to see a “black, headless form” hovering over Janet as she slept.

Janet began having vivid nightmares, often waking with scratches on her arms and legs. The girls were plagued by terrifying dreams and sudden illnesses that doctors couldn’t explain.

The Church Steps In

The local Catholic Church became involved after the Warrens recommended an exorcism. Several priests visited the home, blessing the rooms and performing rites.

While the Smurls reported temporary relief after these visits, the phenomena always returned — sometimes within hours.

By 1989, after nearly 16 years in the house, the Smurls decided enough was enough. They moved to another location — and claimed that some of the activity followed them.

Pop Culture Legacy

In 1986, before the family moved out, the haunting began attracting media attention. Newspapers, talk shows, and even People magazine covered the story.

In 1988, the book The Haunted was published, detailing the family’s experiences. Two years later, a made-for-TV movie based on the book aired, starring Sally Kirkland as Janet Smurl.

Now, decades later, the Smurl haunting is set to re-enter public consciousness thanks to The Conjuring: Last Rites. While the filmmakers haven’t confirmed how closely it will follow the case, fans speculate that the Smurl story will play a major role — especially given the Warrens’ involvement. 

Similar Legends 

The Perron Family Haunting (Rhode Island)

Later popularized as The Conjuring, this case involved years of escalating poltergeist activity in a rural farmhouse. Objects flew, doors slammed, and a dominant female presence targeted the mother of the household. Like the Smurl case, the activity intensified over time and seemed to respond to attention rather than fade.

The Bell Witch (Tennessee)

Long before modern investigations, the Bell family endured a haunting that spoke, struck, mocked, and terrorized them openly. The entity addressed people by name and reacted emotionally — traits that mirror the Smurl home’s apparent awareness.

The Demon House (Gary, Indiana)

This case blurred the line between haunting and possession, involving physical attacks, illness, and extreme psychological distress. Investigators noted that the house seemed to resist documentation and escalated when challenged — a behavior pattern also reported by the Smurls.

Final Thoughts

The Smurl haunting endures because it’s one of those rare paranormal cases that spans years, involves multiple witnesses, and blends domestic life with something otherworldly. Whether you believe the Smurls or side with the skeptics, the story is unsettling: a family in a normal, suburban setting claiming to be under siege by forces they couldn’t fight.

And that’s the kind of story that sticks with you — the idea that terror doesn’t have to come from a graveyard or an abandoned asylum. Sometimes it moves in right next door.

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