The hype for The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is building, and horror fans are using these last few days before The Conjuring 3 comes to theaters and HBO Max to catch up on the other seven films in the Conjuring movie-verse.
That includes The Nun, the 2018 spin-off film that serves as a prequel to The Conjuring 2.You may recall that in The Conjuring 2, actor Bonnie Aarons plays the film’s antagonist: A demon nun channeling the spirit of the evil Valak. The Nunserves as an origin story of sorts—a non-demon nun named Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) and a priest named Father Burke (Demián Bichir) travel to investigate a monastery in 1952 Romania. Apparently, some pretty creepy stuff has been happening at this monastery—like nuns being attacked by invisible, evil spirits.
Sister Irene and Father Burke eventually learn that the abbey was built on a rift intended to seal out the evil demon Valak, but thanks to the WWII bombings, the seal has been broken. Valak is on the loose and killing nuns left and right, and will eventually be faced by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) in The Conjuring 2.
As you may know, the characters of Ed and Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring movies are based on the true story of the real-life Ed and Lorraine Warren, who were paranormal investigators and authors who wrote and sold a lot of books describing their so-called investigations of paranormal activity. This is not to say that the ghosts and demons in The Conjuring franchise are real—just that the Warrens were real people who made real money by saying that ghosts were real.
So you might be wondering: Were the strange happenings at the 1952 Romanian monastery in The Nun also based on a real case?
IS THE NUN BASED ON A TRUE STORY?
I mean… no. Obviously, there is no evidence that there is actually a demon nun who escaped from hell and killed a bunch of nuns in Romania. If you’re wondering if that part of The Nun is a true story, I can’t help you. There is also no evidence of a real-life paranormal case in a Romanian monastery in 1952.
However, as reported by Cosmopolitan, the movie may have been inspired by a “real” encounter that demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren claimed to have had with a nun at a British abbey. In 2018, Esquire magazine spoke with the Warrens’ son-in-law Tony Spera, who said that the demon nun in the movie was similar to a ghost nun that the Warrens supposedly met at a haunted Borley church in southern England in the 1970s.
Weird things were rumored to be going on at the church like bells ringing unexpectedly, a mysterious headless monk leaving writings on the walls, and a spectral nun haunting the halls at night. The Warrens, who made a career out of ghost stories, went to investigate, and apparently came face-to-face with the ghost nun, who was supposedly buried alive in the walls of the church after she was caught having an affair with the monk. Lorraine Warren was said to have “felt the presence of a nun in this church.”
In his interview, Spera said to Esquire, “Is The Nun based on that experience? I think Hollywood takes bits and pieces of different stories and puts them together… They couldn’t just come up with [The Nun] out of the blue.”
Meanwhile, The Nun director Corin Hardy has said the demon in The Nun was inspired by a demon that the real Lorraine Warren said she saw in her home and described as “a swirling tornado vortex with this hooded figure.”
Just to sum up: Ghosts aren’t real. The Nun is not based on a true story. But it’s possibleThe Nun was inspired by several of the Warren’s cases, even though the things that happened in those cases may or may not be true. Cool? Cool.
