Travel Channel launches their new Shock Docs series on Monday, September 7th at 9pm ET/PT with Devil’s Road: The True Story of Ed and Lorraine Warren. This two-hour special focuses on the history of America’s most famous ghost hunting couple, and it contains classic footage and new interviews detailing their most famous cases. The special serves as a solid primer on the Warrens’ pioneering work in the world of the supernatural, and the show will entertain and inform everyone ranging from those who are only aware of the popular movies which are based on their cases to those who have been following their work for decades.
Travel Channel went directly to the source to make Devil’s Road an engaging and compelling documentary. A rare interview with Judy Spera (Ed and Lorraine’s daughter) runs throughout the program, as does commentary by her husband, Tony Spera. Mr. Spera worked with Ed and Lorraine for decades, served as the moderator of their classic show, Seekers of the Supernatural, and he currently leads the New England Society for Psychic Research, which was founded by the Warrens in 1952. Seekers of the Supernatural was originally only available on local television to fans who lived near the Warrens’ hometown in Connecticut in the nineties, and clips from the series appear in Devil’s Road. For the first time ever, the entire nation can see Ed and Lorraine themselves speak in detail about some of their most famous cases. To round out the documentary, Devil’s Road also features current experts in the field who were inspired by the Warrens, along with chilling photographs, classic news clips, and other artifacts from their work. In this documentary, you won’t just learn about a case through standard narration… you will see pictures of haunting artifacts and locations and you will listen to actual audio recordings of everything from police officers who were on the scene of a haunted house to real life video footage of an actual exorcism. This collection of sources provides for a thorough and engaging experience.
The Warrens have so many famous cases that it is difficult to whittle their extensive work down into a two-hour special. Devil’s Road focuses mainly on cases which appear in Warner Bros.’ The Conjuring franchise and cases which have become films and/or figments of pop culture legend such as The Amityville Horror. There are pros and cons to this selection, and it leads to areas of the documentary which may feel too short and others too long. Because Devil’s Road is a single special, this Shock Doc could only focus on a specific case for so long before moving on to other topics. This sometimes leads to major pieces of classic stories being conspicuously absent from the narrative of the documentary. Some of the missing pieces make the less well-known cases sometimes seem to have less of a narrative impact, and viewers might wish they were cut altogether to favor the more popular cases. This minor flaw speaks to the overall strength of the documentary: Devil’s Road is so well made and so interesting that it could easily use a couple more episodes to detail the complete story of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Based on the quality of this documentary, it is clear that an extended Shock Docs series focusing exclusively on the Warrens would be a fantastic way to further chronicle the Warrens’ cases in further detail. One can only hope that the Devil’s Road has miles to go!
Devil’s Road: The True Story of Ed and Lorraine Warren proves that Travel Channel’s new Shock Doc series is the definitive high quality experience this fall for viewers looking to expand their knowledge on the interesting and unsettling subject of the real life cases of the supernatural.