I stumbled onto the story of Jack Fiddler and the wendigo legend after reading Pet Semetary, by Stephen King. I am slowly working my way through all of his books, making up for the time I spent not reading them. While King’s fictional portrayal of the wendigo is not historically accurate, it did spark my curiosity. I had never heard of it before. What I found were many accounts of supposedly true encounters with wendigo, mostly from the Canadian wilderness at the turn of the century. The reports behind the legend were almost stranger than fiction. It’s a reality I come across frequently as I find connections between horror fiction and supposedly true events that many books and movies are based on.
The inspiration behind The Conjuring 3, the Brookfield trial,1 is no different. A young man named Arne Cheyenne Johnson was found babbling and covered in blood after stabbing his landlord and friend to death with a pocket knife. He claimed to have no recollection of the murder.
There was no clear cut motive, and Johnson supposedly did not have a violent past. Family members present that day claimed that while Arne did in fact stab Alan Bono to death, it wasn’t his fault. In fact, it wasn’t really him that did it. The cause was supernatural, a case of diabolical possession, the origins of which stretched back to a year prior.
There to defend the strange claims to the media and law enforcement were the famed couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren. They had been working with the family and the local Catholic diocese to help deal with a suspected case of possession. They claim they were present at the deliverance session (known as “lesser exorcisms”) of David Glatzel, a 12-year-old boy who was experiencing torment at the hands of a demonic entity he called The Beast. Arne was the boyfriend of David’s sister, Debbie Glatzel, and he was living with the family at the time. He was also present at the deliverance sessions, and invited the spirit that was tormenting David to come into him instead.
According to Ed Warren and the Glatzel family who lived with Johnson at the time, this was the fatal moment. While David Glatzel was freed from months of torment after the prayer session where they performed “the laying on of hands2”, Arne Cheyenne Johnson began exhibiting signs of possession himself. These symptoms ranged from profanity laden outbursts at church to trance states where Johnson would growl, hallucinate and mumble. After these outbursts, he would claim to have no memory of it. Once, Debbie found him looking out the window, murmuring, “The Beast. There he is. I see him.”
This all occurred within days of David’s deliverance session. Debbie and Arne decided to move out of her mother’s house, the place they had been sharing while David suffered under apparent possession, and into a place of their own. Her employer, Alan Bono, managed a kennel and worked as a dog groomer.
He also rented an apartment to her and Arne, whom they also socialized with outside of work. But shortly after moving in, Arne would be arrested for the Alan Bono’s murder, a man who had bought him lunch only hours before. It was the first murder to ever occur in Brookfield, Connecticut, and the forthcoming details in the weeks that followed would put the little town on the map forever.
In the Beginning Were the Warrens
If you haven’t seen any of The Conjuring3 movies, you probably haven’t heard of Ed and Lorraine Warren. They may be America’s most famous paranormal investigators, a husband and wife team dedicated to exposing evil as a proof for God’s existence. They founded the New England Society for Psychic Research (NESPR), wrote dozens of books on their experiences with hauntings and possessions, and claim to have participated in exorcisms alongside priests.
Ed was a self-taught demonologist. Lorraine was a clairvoyant. It was a match made in heaven. Over the years they covered some of America’s best known hauntings, such as the Amityville house or the possessed Annabelle doll. Those stories involved supernatural hauntings and torment by invisible spirits, but none of them compared to a crime like the one that occurred in Brookfield, Connecticut.
In later interviews, the Warrens would go on to say that they knew some violent act was imminent, but they didn’t think the culprit would be Arne Cheyenne Johnson. In the year prior to the killing, it was David Glatzel, a 12-year-old boy with a learning disability, who had to be restrained by family members as he laughed maniacally. He attempted to stab his mother and grandmother and displayed strength that made it difficult for grown men to hold him down.
He had been a reserved child, quiet and obedient, before his behavior suddenly and radically changed. It had started after the Glatzels visited a house that Debbie and Arne wanted to rent. It was beautiful, located in the countryside in the woods. The whole family came with them to see it, remarking at how perfect it was. A waterbed, located in one of the bedrooms, was where David first experienced an attack.
He was alone in the bedroom as the family looked around the place, when he was pushed by an invisible force onto the bed. An old man appeared before him and told him to beware. Later that night, in his own home, David saw the man again. Only he looked different than he had earlier, with charred black skin and feet like a deer.
His mother, Judy Glatzel, didn’t hesitate for one moment. She believed him. An advocate for the supernatural and a devoted Catholic, she didn’t question that the experience was real. But her and her family believed it was a ghost of some kind, a spirit that inhabited the house they had looked at earlier, and was now attached to her son.
But what seemed like a simple ghostly encounter turned the family’s life upside down in the coming weeks. After his two visions, David was regularly attacked at night by an invisible entity he called the Beast, and smaller demonic entities whom he referred to as helpers. They stabbed and choked him. He writhed in pain, spit on his mother and grandmother, screamed and cussed.
After twelve days of what Judy Glatzel described as a living hell, they called the Warrens.
Can we pause for a second here?
If you’re like me, you might be wondering how and why they knew to call the Warrens at all. On the one hand, the Warrens lived in Connecticut. Indeed, most of their cases I’ve skimmed over took place there. On the other, Judy Glatzel had actually listened to many of the Warren’s lectures. She was an avid reader on the supernatural, and when David’s torments weren’t resolving on their own, she called in the couple to help.
When they arrived, they told Judy that they did not believe a ghost was involved. They suspected the source was demonic. By this time, members of the Glatzel family and Arne Cheyenne Johnson were taking turns staying up with David at night, holding him to the bed as he contorted and screamed out his visions of The Beast. Both the Warrens and the Glatzels claimed that David would sometimes go into trances, during which only the whites of his eyes showed and his face contorted into a snarl.
Members of the household also experienced paranormal activity. Plates would levitate, chairs flew through the air, and dresser drawers filled with clothes would be dumped carelessly around the room. The entire family was being tormented, but David was at the crux of it all. The Warrens contacted the priests at St. Joseph’s parish and asked them to come and see if the boy could undergo exorcism.
Two priests visited and blessed the house. The Warrens and the Glatzels claim that they also performed several deliverances of the boy, which involve prayers against demonic forces, but are not at the level of a formal exorcism.
When questioned about this in 1981, after the murder of Alan Bono was splashed across major newspaper headlines across the country, the bishop of Bridgeport stated that there was no exorcism rite authorized for David Glatzel. He also forbid the priests involved in the Glatzel case from talking to the press. So why wasn’t exorcism granted in a case that, at least if you take the word of the family and the Warrens, seems to be a classic case of possession?
In an interview with The Washington Post, Fr. Nicholas Grieco, director of communications for the diocese of Bridgeport, stated that it wouldn’t be right to divulge the details of a pastoral matter. He did state that the exorcism was never allowed because the family refused to allow David to undergo psychological evaluation, a requirement by the church before exorcism rites can be authorized. 4
"It's a delicate situation," Grieco says. "In cases of this nature, you don't presume anything. Through prayers and through observation, you make a decision. Lots of things we can explain through psychology, and yet we can't explain everything rationally. What we're looking for is a balance. These things do exist. These things do happen. But not that often."
Fr. Nicholas Grieco, The Washington Post, “By Demons Possessed”, by Lynn Darling, September 13, 1981
Judy Glatzel’s retort was that she had taken David to a psychologist. The church would not accept those findings (which I have not been able to verify). For the requirement to be met, the church must arrange the testing themselves. Judy scoffed in that interview when asked about it, stating that they only wanted to poke needles into her kid, and she wasn’t having it.
Another pause. If your child was exhibiting symptoms of diabolical demonic possession, a few blood tests would probably be the least of your worries. But maybe that’s just me.
Still, the church didn’t refute the fact that there had been priest involvement. And they had recommended that the Glatzels take David to be seen by a psychiatrist to rule out a rational explanation for his behavior. Maybe they saw something there, something out of the ordinary. Or maybe they suspected a mental illness of some kind.
Even after Arne Johnson was arrested, David was still exhibiting signs of possession, although it was much more manageable than before. It’s interesting given that the 42 demons that supposedly inhabited his body had gone into Johnson the night he touched a crucifix to the boys head during a deliverance session, and challenged the demons to take him instead…
The Murder
Arne Cheyenne Johnson and Debbie Glatzel had finally moved into their own place. Debbie was working for a dog groomer who was managing his sister’s kennel. He had been living in Australia and then Florida before he moved to New England to help with his sister’s business. He was a braggert and a drinker, a man who liked to tell stories about his adventures, but didn’t know much about running a dog kennel.
Luckily for him, Debbie Glatzel was happy to take on the day-to-day chores of feeding and exercising the dogs. Arne Cheyenne Johnson was working for a tree trimming company. He was only 19 years old, but was already a hard worker who had dropped out of school by the time he was 16 to help his sick mother pay bills and look after his younger siblings.
Two of his little sisters, Wanda, who was 15 years old, and Janice who was 13, were with him the day he killed Alan Bono. So was Debbie’s little cousin, Mary, who was only 9 years old at the time. She often brought family to work with her to help with the dogs, while Alan drank and told stories. That day, February 16th, 1981, Arne called in sick to work, and came along with them.
Alan Bono bought everyone lunch, and they returned to the kennels that afternoon. Arne fixed a broken stereo, and Alan turned the music up loudly. The noise was irritating. It set everyone on edge. Debbie decided to leave with the girls to get pizza. Wanda later recalled that Debbie was anxious to get home, sensing that there would be trouble between Alan and Arne.
When they returned, Alan invited them up to his apartment above the kennels for a drink. He was growing agitated, playing the TV loudly and hitting his open hand with a closed fist. Debbie decided it was time to get the kids out and take them home. Alan didn’t like that idea.
He grabbed Debbie’s cousin, 9-year-old Mary, and refused to let go. Johnson demanded he release her, and after Alan let go, Arne pulled a pocket knife and stabbed him five times. Wanda, Johnson’s sister, and Debbie both tried to intervene but to no avail. Johnson was growling like an animal in the moments before he brutally murdered the man. Alan Bono fell to the floor face first, and died in the hospital a few hours later.
An Open and Shut Case
To the police, the case was a simple one. A murder provoked by a heated interaction after a day of drinking. But to the Glatzels and the Warrens, it was anything but. The case drew international attention, with people reaching out from all over the world with prayers for the investigators wellbeing, and stories of similar occurrences.
The police chief, John Anderson, had a golden crucifix nailed to the wall when a Washington Post reporter interviewed him. A gift he received in the mail from someone praying for his protection. While he said he didn’t believe in demonic possession himself, not really, he was quoted as saying, “But why push your luck?”
The Verdict
In the end, Arne Cheyenne Johnson was not convicted of murder. Nor was his defense by reason of demonic possession accepted in court. His attorney balked at that, and the book I read in preparation for this article, The Devil in Connect, by Gerald Brittle, cited it as a great injustice. A refusal by the American courts to allow a defendant to really present the case as it happened.
Possession is not scientific, argued the judge, and thereby evidence of it can not be submitted in court. Be that as it may, the jurors were not able to agree on a murder conviction. There was no proof of a motive. The stab wounds were so deep that the pocket knife indicated in the crime would not have been able to pierce as deeply as it did. Additionally, the sisters of Arne Johnson and Debbie Glatzel would not corroborate the police reports they initially gave, citing that the officers did not take down their statements as they were told.
The Warrens gave interviews, arguing that the family had been actively trying to rid David Glatzel of a demon for seven months prior to the murder, and that Arne Johnson was possessed when he committed the crime. They told Arne’s defense attorney that a person possessed can not be held liable for their actions. They are not in control when total possession takes place.
Immediately after the incident, the Warrens got to work on book deals and press interviews. Their goal: to spread the word that the devil is alive and working, and thereby God is real. The attorney for Arne received plenty of media attention for proposing defense by reason of demonic possession, and gleefully told a Washington Post reporter that there would be millions in book deals and movies to come.
Meanwhile, Arne Cheyenne Johnson was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison. He got out for good behavior after 5, and went on to live a normal life with his wife Debbie Glatzel.
The Aftermath
The Warrens were a controversial couple, accused of exaggerating cases to feed their paranormal universe that now involves the horror movie franchise, The Conjuring, as well as Amityville Horror. They claimed that their intentions were to show the truth, to bring into the light that which lies in darkness. Ed Warren often ranted about how close-mouthed the Catholic church was about demonic possession. He wanted the cases aired out for the public.
After The Devil in Connecticut was written with the help of Lorraine Warren, and then re-published in 2006, Carl Glatzel Jr., David Glatzel’s older brother, joined him in suing the book publishers and the authors of the book for libel. Carl claimed that the Warrens exploited his brother’s mental illness, and that their portrayal of him in the book (an unfavorable one to be sure), was due to his skepticism and refusal to believe that his brother was possessed.5
The Warrens and Brittle defended the portrayal. Indeed, the author had interviewed all of the family, and had them sign off on the book before it was first published. For their part, Arne Johnson and Debbie Glatzel support all the claims made by the Warrens. They indicated that the lawsuits were brought for strictly monetary reasons.
Of course, the couple who argued demonic possession in court would say that, wouldn’t they? After all, if the devil didn’t make Arne Johnson do it, that would make him a cold blooded killer. And if the devil did, well, he can’t take the stand can he?
Researching this case has cast the Warrens in a bad light. It’s not that I claim to totally understand what happened, but with the parties who say that the events are true standing to gain so much, it’s hard to wade through the evidence and come out thinking they are doing it for the right reasons. I watched some videos on YouTube6 and honestly felt pretty cocky about my conclusion. Then I listened to the supposedly real recording of David Glatzel's deliverance.
I listened to it by myself in a quiet room. My rational mind tells me it could be fake. There’s no guarantee the recording was actually David. Then gooseflesh appears on my arms and neck. My heart rate increases. In the comments beneath that video people say prayers of protection. And I, like the chief of police with his crucifix, say them as well. Just in case.
A practice in prayer where physical touch is used to invoke healing or deliverance from evil spirits.
For more on Ed and Lorraine Warren.