WARNING: There are SPOILERS ahead for The Conjuring 3.
Lorraine Warren's psychic abilities and visions certainly get a chance to shine in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. As one-half of the renowned paranormal investigative team, Lorraine's gift plays a major role in the Warrens' quest to take on the demonic. But just what exactly can Lorraine do, and how do her abilities in The Conjuring 3 compare to her real-life counterpart?
In The Conjuring 3, the Warrens are trying to prove demonic possession in the court of law. To do that, they're chasing the trail of an entity that is wreaking havoc through Connecticut, leaving death in its wake. The movie starts with the exorcism of David Glatzel — but when that goes wrong, the entity ends up possessing Arne Johnson, Glatzel's sister's boyfriend. When Johnson claims he was possessed while murdering his landlord a few months later, the Warrens follow a string of similar cases until they're led to the Occultist, who meets her demise at the hands of a demon after the Warrens thwart her plans to kill Arne.
Lorraine's abilities have been an integral part of The Conjuring universe. During the first movie, Lorraine's visions show her that the entity in the Perron's family house compels mothers to kill their children. In The Conjuring 2, Lorraine has multiple visions of the franchise's major demon, Valak, and watches the Amityville murders through the eyes of Robert DeFeo himself. She also seems to have a psychic connection to their daughter, Judy, as she has visions of her daughter multiple times throughout the movies. Here are all of Lorraine's abilities and visions in The Conjuring 3, explained.
David Glatzel Vision
During the exorcism of 8-year-old David Glatzel in The Conjuring 3, Lorraine sees flashes of a vision after she touches David: a hand lighting a candle, a cauldron, and hands that appear to be preparing a spell or completing a ritual, though the owner of the hands isn't yet revealed to her. Later in the film, Lorraine learns she is seeing the connection between David and the Occultist, the woman who cursed him with the Witch's Totem. Lorraine was only able to get a brief glance at the connection during the exorcism, but it is enough to lead them on the right path to the truth.
Jessica Louise Strong Vision
In search of more Occultist victims, the Warrens find the case of Jessica Louise Strong and Katie Lincoln. Strong was still missing, while Lincoln's body had been found. Lorraine offers to help the investigators find Jessica via psychic means. To prove herself to them, she pinpoints which knife killed Katie from a line-up of weapons, as she is able to read the energy off of each item and see which one caused Katie's end.
When the Warrens are brought out to the woods, Lorraine begins to see what happened as she is transported back to that fateful night once she makes a connection with the land, something she hasn't done to this level before The Conjuring 3. Ed and the police officer melt away as she watches Jessica run out through the woods with her best friend Katie. Here, Lorraine's psychic abilities are letting her step into Jessica's place in the spiritual world and watch the murder take place through her eyes, all while Lorraine's body is acting out the murder in real life.
The Occultist Connection
After a body is found where Lorraine says Jessica likely ended up, Ed and Lorraine Warren break into the morgue it was taken to. If Lorraine was able to get a glance at the connection during the exorcism, it's possible she will be able to see more if she's able to touch Jessica. This time, the solid contact allows Lorraine to see much more than before — likely because a corpse is easier to keep contact with than a young boy who is currently being exorcised. Once again, the connection allows Lorraine to transport her consciousness from the physical realm and she is able to dance between her own consciousness and that of the Occultist's. Physically, she hasn't gone anywhere. Spiritually, she's in an entirely different place — she can even hear the train outside the Occultist's lair.
It's in this moment of The Conjuring 3 that Lorraine finds that, for once, the connection goes both ways; just as she is able to see the Occultist and enter her domain, so could the Occultist see her. She's even able to have a conversation with the Occultist during her vision, something audiences haven't seen her do before. Usually, what Lorraine sees is residual energy, meaning she's more of an observer than an active participant. This two-way connection with the Occultist seems to have amplified her abilities, even letting her hinder the Occultist's plans with prayer through their connection. She gets a brief glance through the Occultist's eyes as she kills her father, Kastner, and even uses her eyes to see the rock on the ground beside her when the Occultist is trying to kill her. It's unclear if this level of connection is a permanent development or a side effect of the Occultist's connection exclusive to The Conjuring 3, but it could be a very useful tool in future cases.
The Real-Life Lorraine Warren
The real-life Lorraine Warren did possess psychic abilities. She would use them in her work with her husband Ed as they looked for people that needed help fighting off the paranormal. Lorraine's psychic abilities began as a child, and after she met her husband, the pair dedicated their lives to uncovering the truth surrounding the paranormal. The two founded the New England Society for Psychic Research, and never charged for their services. Over their career, the Warrens claim to have investigated almost 10,000, though most ended up having a non-paranormal explanation. The pair also ran a small museum of their own paranormal objects. Lorraine also used her clairvoyant abilities to help the police with open cases in the 1980s, including missing-persons cases like Jessica Strong's. She lent her psychic abilities to cases like Amityville and the Snedeker house, which inspired the movie The Haunting in Connecticut. In an interview with The Irish Independent, Lorraine explained that her preferred method to read a person is to sit at the foot of their bed, as that's where all of their thoughts gather at night. While there's no evidence Lorraine possessed the caliber of abilities shown in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, there is evidence that she indeed had a connection to the other side.