Conjuring Characters: Who Is Who in The Conjuring Universe

The main characters of The Conjuring universe fall into three groups: the investigators led by Ed and Lorraine Warren, the families who call them for help, and the entities that haunt those families. Across four main films and six spin-offs the same handful of names keeps returning, so it helps to know who is who before you press play.

Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) are the paranormal investigators who anchor every main film. On screen Ed handles the cameras, the equipment and the exorcism rites, while Lorraine sees visions, such as the demonic nun and the vision of Ed's death that rattle her in The Conjuring 2 (2016), directed by James Wan. For deeper profiles, see ed warren conjuring and lorraine warren conjuring.

Their daughter Judy Warren grows up across the series, and the role passes between actresses as she does. Sterling Jerins plays Judy as a child in The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring 2 and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Mckenna Grace plays her in Annabelle Comes Home, and Mia Tomlinson plays the adult Judy in The Conjuring: Last Rites, where she is in a relationship with Tony Spera (Ben Hardy). Her own page, judy warren conjuring, follows that arc, and the full credits sit on conjuring cast.

Two smaller figures help the Warrens along the way. Father Gordon (Steve Coulter) turns up in The Conjuring 2, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and The Conjuring: Last Rites, while Drew Thomas (Shannon Kook) works with the couple in The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and The Conjuring: Last Rites.

The films present each family as the subject of a case the Warrens claimed to investigate, and they report those claims rather than proving anything. Every household is named on screen, and the background to each case sits on conjuring true story.

• The Perron family (The Conjuring, 2013): Carolyn Perron (Lili Taylor) and Roger Perron (Ron Livingston) move their five daughters, Andrea, Nancy, Christine, Cindy and April, into a Rhode Island farmhouse in 1971.
• The Hodgson family (The Conjuring 2): Peggy Hodgson (Frances O'Connor) raises four children in Enfield, north London, in 1977, and her daughter Janet (Madison Wolfe) becomes the focus of the haunting. Maurice Grosse (Simon McBurney) supports the family as a researcher, while Anita Gregory (Franka Potente) is the skeptical investigator.
• The Glatzels and Arne Cheyne Johnson (The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, 2021, directed by Michael Chaves): in Brookfield, Connecticut, in 1981, young David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard) is the subject of an exorcism, and his sister's boyfriend Arne Cheyne Johnson (Ruairí O'Connor) later faces a murder charge. The Warrens set out to prove the killing was caused by demonic possession, with Debbie Glatzel (Sarah Catherine Hook) standing by Arne.
• The Smurl family (The Conjuring: Last Rites, 2025, also directed by Chaves): the family settles in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, in 1986, with Jack Smurl (Elliot Cowan) and Janet Smurl (Rebecca Calder) among the household.

The monsters of The Conjuring universe are a mix of named demons, a haunted doll and spirits from folklore, and the spin-offs exist largely to give each one a film. The wider conjuring demons guide goes further, but the headline names are these.

• Valak (Bonnie Aarons): a demon that takes the form of a nun. It first appears as the Demon Nun in The Conjuring 2 and then leads the nun 2018, directed by Corin Hardy, and the nun ii. See valak the nun.
• Annabelle: a porcelain doll that, in the Warrens' view, serves as a tool for a demon. She sits behind three spin-offs: Annabelle (2014), directed by John R. Leonetti, Annabelle: Creation (2017), directed by David F. Sandberg, and Annabelle Comes Home (2019), directed by Gary Dauberman. See annabelle doll.
• La Llorona (Marisol Ramirez): a weeping spirit whose story begins in 17th century Mexico and moves to 1973 Los Angeles in The Curse of La Llorona (2019), directed by Michael Chaves. See la llorona.
• Bathsheba Sherman: a former owner of the Perron farmhouse who was accused of witchcraft, and the ghost behind the haunting in The Conjuring (2013).
• The Crooked Man: a haunted toy that Ed adds to the Warrens' collection of cursed objects at the end of The Conjuring 2, covered at crooked man conjuring.
• The Ferryman, the Bride and the Black Shuck: cursed objects and entities in the Warrens' artifacts room that wake up in Annabelle Comes Home.

Is Valak a guy or a girl? Valak is a demon that takes the form of a nun, and Bonnie Aarons, an actress, plays that form, so on screen it presents as a woman. The films treat the creature as a demon rather than as a person.

The monsters work best when you read them as one connected rogues' gallery rather than separate films, and the connections are deliberate. Valak shows the method clearly: the demon is glimpsed in Lorraine's Amityville vision at the start of The Conjuring 2, stays nameless through the Enfield haunting, and only gets its name when Lorraine speaks it to order the demon back to Hell. The Nun (2018) then goes backward to 1952 at the Romanian abbey of St. Carta, a setting that Annabelle: Creation had already teased in its final post-credits scene, and it closes by revealing that Frenchie, whose real name is Maurice, is the possessed man in the lecture footage Ed presents in The Conjuring (2013). The Nun II (2023) adds a rule the earlier films lacked, with Valak hunting descendants of St. Lucy, which is why Sister Irene's bloodline protects her from its fire.

The objects follow a second pattern. The Conjuring (2013) ends with a music box carried home to the Warrens' collection, The Conjuring 2 adds the Crooked Man toy beside the Annabelle doll, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It places a cup from the occultist's altar in the same room, and Annabelle Comes Home finally opens the case and lets the Ferryman, the Bride, a haunted board game and the Black Shuck loose in one night. If you want a comparison from ordinary life, the artifacts room behaves like a shared shelf in a flat: everything is stored together, and the trouble starts when someone who should not touch it picks something up. Last Rites keeps the habit by sending the cursed mirror back to the museum.

There is also a recurring answer to the monsters, and it is a person rather than a prop. Lorraine reaches Carolyn Perron by recalling a happy family memory, pulls Ed out of the curse in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It by reminding him of their love, and saves Judy again in Last Rites. It could be argued that this is the saga's real rule, and it is why Lorraine, more than Ed, carries the scariest scenes. The spin-offs differ here: Annabelle (2014) ends with Evelyn giving up her own soul in Mia's place, and The Curse of La Llorona resolves with a cross made from a tree beside the river, so those films lean on sacrifice and ritual objects instead. Wan's two main films give the monsters the most room to breathe, whereas the spin-offs tend to hand each creature a self contained case.

The spin-offs bring their own casts, and a few faces cross from one film to the next.

• Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga): the novice who travels with Father Burke (Demián Bichir) to a Romanian abbey in 1952, guided by a local called Frenchie, whose real name is Maurice Theriault (Jonas Bloquet). She returns in The Nun II with Sister Debra (Storm Reid). See sister irene conjuring.
• The Annabelle households: Mia Form (Annabelle Wallis) and John Form (Ward Horton) in 1967, the Mullins family of Samuel (Anthony LaPaglia) and Esther (Miranda Otto) with Sister Charlotte (Stephanie Sigman), Janice (Talitha Eliana Bateman) and Linda (Lulu Wilson), and the babysitters of Annabelle Comes Home, Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman) and Daniela Rios (Katie Sarife).
• The La Llorona cast: caseworker Anna Tate-Garcia (Linda Cardellini), the former priest turned folk healer Rafael Olvera (Raymond Cruz) and Patricia Alvarez (Patricia Velásquez). Father Perez (Tony Amendola) links that film back to Annabelle (2014).

Women hold the lead in many of the universe's stories. Among the female characters are Lorraine Warren, Judy Warren, Carolyn Perron, Peggy Hodgson, Sister Irene, Sister Debra, Anna Tate-Garcia and Mia Form. Male characters include Ed Warren, Roger Perron, Father Burke, Father Gordon, Arne Cheyne Johnson, Rafael Olvera and John Form.

The next film is conjuring first communion, which TheWrap reported Warner Bros. dated for September 10, 2027. Entertainment coverage reports, without a studio statement behind it, that Rodrigue Huart is directing from a script by Richard Naing and Ian Goldberg, that Garrett Wareing and Amanda Fix are playing young Ed and Lorraine Warren, and that Matthias Schweighöfer, Charles Parnell, Marta Kessler and Caleb Dolden have joined the cast. These casting and crew details, and the production status, remain reported rather than confirmed.

If you are new to the saga, start with conjuring movies in order, which shows where each of these characters first appears.