'Haunting In Connecticut' Should Be Titled 'Hogwash In Connecticut,' Homeowner Says

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'Haunting In Connecticut' Should Be Titled 'Hogwash In Connecticut,' Homeowner
Says
March 27,2009
By JESSE LEAVENWORTH
courant.com


Soon after moving to Southington in 1987, Carmen Reed and her family learned that their new home had been a funeral parlor.

That would become a key element in the subsequent horror story that Reed says her family endured — a tale that has evolved from newspaper articles to a book, TV documentary and now a feature film that debuts in theaters nationwide today.

"The Haunting in Connecticut" has the same outline as several other horror films: A family moves into a new home, not realizing it once served as a mortuary. Strange sounds and sights escalate into an all-out other-worldly attack until the family is forced to call in demon hunters and an exorcist to root out the malicious entities.

But that's just bunk, fiction and Hollywood foolishness, says the family that lives in the house now, along with the man who rented the place to Reed's family, and even the author of the first book about the case.

"Our house is great. We love our house," says Susan Trotta-Smith, who has lived in the home with her husband and children for the past 10 years. "Nothing strange ever happened here."

Reed, who was married to Allen Snedeker at the time, says she didn't believe in such forces either when the couple and their four children moved to Southington so they could be close to John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington, where their 13-year-old son was being treated for cancer.

"I believed in God, and I believed that the devil was a voice in your head, but it couldn't physically knock you around," Reed says during a recent interview. "I didn't believe that houses could be haunted."

Even after her children and the two nieces who moved in with the family began telling her about voices, weird sights, sudden chills and rotten smells, Reed says she wasn't convinced.

Then one night one of her teenage nieces knocked on Reed's bedroom door and said, "It's happening again. ... It's coming, Aunt Carmen; can you feel it?"

Reed says she felt "an energy," then she saw the outline of a hand moving inside the long nightshirt her niece was wearing. Reed said she clearly saw the knuckles in the hand creeping up toward one of the girl's breasts. Suddenly, the hand flew out of the girl's nightshirt, followed by "a hideous laugh," Reed says.

Convinced that forces beyond her understanding were at work, Reed says she called in Connecticut's own paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren. To confirm and document the demonic infestation, the Warrens assembled a team headed by their nephew, John Zaffis.

Zaffis says he spent 9 1/2 weeks living in the house in the summer of 1988. He had to take a three-day break, however, after seeing "an entity" descending a staircase. Asked if the figure was human, Zaffis says he could only describe it as "transparent, murky ... The stupid thing stunk like hell.

"It scared the crap out of me," he says.

Eventually, a Catholic priest, whom they would not name, exorcised the dark entities, Reed and Zaffis say. A representative of the Hartford Archdiocese told The Courant in 1992 that no authorized exorcism occurred at the house.

Holes In The Story
Horror and science-fiction author Ray Garton heard about the case from his agent. He met with the Warrens and the Snedekers after they had moved out of the Southington house in 1988. Garton began to assemble the story but says he soon found that the pieces didn't fit. Snedeker family members were telling different, conflicting stories, Garton says. Also, the Warrens had said they had a videotape of paranormal activity inside the house, but they were never able to produce it, Garton says. He says he couldn't get into the house himself because the people who had moved in after the Snedekers "wanted nothing to do with this nonsense."

Garton says he approached Ed Warren about his difficulty in writing a nonfiction account of what supposedly happened. Warren, who has since died, told him to use what he could from interviews "and make the rest up," as long as it was scary, Garton says. Nevertheless, the resulting book, "In a Dark Place," would be billed by the publisher as "The most terrifying true case of demonic possession ever recorded!"

"My husband would never in 10 million years say that," Lorraine Warren said. "My husband was a man of honor." Warren also said that she has no doubt that paranormal activity occurred at the house.

Peter Cornwell, director of "The Haunting in Connecticut," says he did not read Garton's book. The film, Cornwell says, was based, in part, on a Discovery Channel show similarly titled "A Haunting in Connecticut."

Andrew Trapani, the feature film's producer, saw the TV show in 2003 and was "riveted," according to the film's production notes. Trapani and another producer spoke with Reed and decided that "her story was unprecedented and demanded to be told," according to the notes.

Cornwell — whose filmmaking career was launched in 2003 with the award-winning animated short "Ward 13" — says two of his favorite horror movies are "The Exorcist" and "The Shining."

"What I like about them is how the real-world part of the film helps sell the supernatural part of it," Cornwell says. "That's what we're aiming for in this film."

Zaffis and Reed intend to release a new book about the case this summer to tell the true story of what happened, Zaffis says. Allen Snedeker could not be reached for comment.

But the former owner of the Southington home, Darrell Kern, says the only truth in the tale is that the house, in fact, had served for decades as the Hallahan Funeral Home; that he bought it in the 1980s, planning to use it as a real estate office, but town officials would not allow that use; that he converted the house into a two-family and rented the first floor to the Snedekers in 1987.

The rest of the story — ghosts and demons, etc.? It's pure hokum, Kern says. A woman who lived in the other half of the house while the Snedekers were there never reported anything out of the ordinary, and others who lived there afterward reported no demonic activity either, Kern says.

The real trouble started with the publicity about the alleged haunting, Kern says. He couldn't get anyone to rent the place for months after the Snedekers left [owing him rent], and he had to field lots of calls from "strange people" who wanted to spend a night there, Kern says.

Just recently, as word about the new feature film spread, more people have been driving by the house at all hours, Trotta-Smith says. She had to call the police after seeing one man skulking around the property recently, she says.

"I was haunted," Kern says. "The neighborhood was haunted by the Snedekers. That's the real haunting in Connecticut."