The Warrens didn’t charge for their investigations; they made their money from movie and television licensing rights, books, lectures and tours of a modest museum of supernatural artifacts adjacent to their home in Monroe, north of Bridgeport, Conn. They had, of course, many detractors.

“Warren, along with her late husband, Ed, are audacious and unabashed frauds, capitalizing on the completely meritless superstition which is all too common in modern society,” The Viking News of Westchester Community College wrote in a 2012 editorial objecting to the use of student activity fees to pay Ms. Warren to lecture.

The Warrens were Roman Catholic, and Ms. Warren said it was her belief that a lack of religion was what often opened the door for malevolent forces to enter a home or a life.

“When there’s no religion, it is absolutely terrifying,” she told The Irish Independent in 2013. “That is your protection. God is your protection. It doesn’t matter what your religion is.”

Lorraine Rita Moran was born in Bridgeport on Jan. 31, 1927. She began having clairvoyant experiences as a child, she said.

She was 16 when she met Ed Warren. Some friends had taken her to a James Cagney movie, and he was an usher at the theater. Soon he was fighting in World War II. They married in 1945, when he was home on leave.