Thankfully, I don’t live in Connecticut. The past few years have brought an array of movies based on places or people, which have been haunted in Connecticut. “A Haunting in Connecticut” is set in the 1980s and follows a family who has relocated to Connecticut for their son’s cancer treatments. After moving into their new house, the family, and especially Matt, the son with cancer, starts experiencing disturbing, sometimes violent, paranormal events.
As it turns out, the house used to be a funeral home and is surrounded by bad energy. Matt’s experiences are blamed on the stress he undergoes through cancer treatments, but the events get worse and more intense. Matt starts seeing visions of a young boy named Jonah, discovered to be the ghost of a psychic that had been part of the activities in the funeral parlor. Matt seeks advice from a minister he meets during his cancer treatment and is informed that the paranormal activities he and his family are experiencing are due to the previous tenants’ shady activities inside the house. The climax comes when Matt discovers the source of the bad energy and attempts to rid the house of the energy himself.
I do love a good haunting story but I also find it difficult to believe them. As with previous movies, it takes a little extra brain power for me to be able to wrap my head around the idea that these types of things have really happened to people. In the case of “A Haunting in Connecticut,” the events portrayed in the movie are more closely related to real life than I had thought.
The real story revolves around the Snedeker family who moved from New York to Connecticut for their son to receive cancer treatments. In the real story, the Snedeker family moved into the house in Connecticut because they couldn’t find anywhere else to live. Carmen, the mother, happened across a house with an owner that would actually rent to a family with six children, she snapped it up. Little did she know that the house would plague her for the rest of her life.
According to Carmen, as soon as the family moved in, her son knew immediately that there was something wrong with the house. She herself would hear footsteps when nobody was home and other noises that she blamed on stress or her imagination. It took Carmen about two years to really believe that something was happening to her family. After witnessing what appeared to be a hand moving up the back of her niece’s night shirt, Carmen was convinced. In an interview about her experiences and the movie being made about them, she described the most horrifying experience in the house as seeing a very tall man with long black hair, thin features and no lips in her house.
It was at that point that Carmen decided she needed help. She called for help from Ed and Lorraine Warren, demonologists and a local minister. The Warren’s conducted an investigation of the house and documented all the activity. They also documented the exorcism that was performed the day after Carmen’s niece was haunted in front of her eyes.
While in interviews Carmen doesn’t go into much detail on how accurately the movie depicts the actual paranormal and supernatural events her family experienced, she seemed very pleased with how things turned out. After the exorcism, the family moved away. Her son got better and is now 35 years old with four children. According to Carmen, her son doesn’t get involved with any media relating to his time in the house.
“A Haunting in Connecticut” is worth the watch. It’s scary and made me think. While there are a lot of movies that are fake, finding and watching a good, true story movie makes up for all the previous disappointments.
