Contradictions, Confusion and Miracles.

Based On A True Story

How many times do you see this on a movie poster, or the phrase ‘based on real events’ and think that the whole story must be real?

To completely burst your bubble, they could only use a tiny bit of any story and make the rest up to put either of these phrases on their advertising. Because it wouldn’t necessarily be a lie.

Now, we all know that I’m a sceptic – albeit a reluctant one, as my dear friend calls it – but I love nothing better than a good ghost story. I love something so spooky that it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and sends shivers down my spine. I loved the film of The Haunting In Connecticut. The pairing of Virginia Madsen and Elias Koteas was enough to get me into the cinema as they’re both amazing. (They were together in another film called The Prophecy in 1995, which also starred Christopher Walken and lots of other amazing actors.) The film was filled with suspense and scares, so it did not disappoint.

In the case of the actual haunting, it’s hard to determine what to believe – and I’ve really struggled with this one. This is probably why it’s taken me so long to be able to write this article. There is a lot of the film that is entirely fiction, and this is what made it great. There’s also a lot of information that wasn’t included. But we’ll get to that later.

First, let’s talk about the facts.

The Real Snedeker Haunting

In 1986, Al and Carmen Snedeker’s eldest son, Philip, was taking part in a clinical trial at UConn (University of Connecticutt) Hospital to treat Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Carmen was driving him from their home in upstate New York to the hospital for his appointments and the hundreds of miles of travel, along with the brutal cobalt treatments, were really taking their toll on Philip and the family.

It wasn’t just the time and the cost, but Philip was so sick that he wasn’t getting the rest that he needed to help him recover. I’ve had brutal cancer treatments and there’s really no way to describe how they make you feel unless you’ve been there.

Al and Carmen decided that it would be a good idea to try and look for somewhere that they could rent that was closer to the hospital so that Philip didn’t have to travel so far. They would keep their place in Hurleyville, NY, so that Al could stay there while he worked during the week, then he would join the rest of the family at the weekends.

They were a big family, with three other children besides Philip, so finding a place that was big enough and within their price range was proving to be difficult. The cost of travel to the hospital and motels, as well as medical bills that were escalating by the day, didn’t leave much for rent, and the more Carmen looked, the more desperate they became. Carmen had come across one house that was perfect for them, where she had seen the owner hammering in a sign out front, but it was an old funeral home and it still had the mortuary and body lift in the basement where they had prepared the bodies. It was within their price range and was being refurbished, but she still thought that it might be a bad choice.

It was on one particularly bad journey home where Philip was so sick that they had to stop repeatedly for him to throw up, that she made the executive decision to take the funeral home house and moved her and Philip in that night.

Philip and his younger brother made their bedroom in the basement of the house, in what used to be a storage room for coffins, whilst the other two children slept upstairs on the same floor as their parents.

It wasn’t long after they moved in that Philip said that they needed to move out, because he thought that the house was bad. He said he didn’t like it there and they should leave. He would come up into the living room during the night to sleep on the sofa with the television on for company, trying to avoid the basement. But he couldn’t avoid the voice that kept talking to him day and night. Within months, his personality started to change drastically and he started seeing and talking to a tall thin man with scraggily long black hair.

Carmen saw and heard things too, but she tried to find explanations for the voices and the noises, as well as the shadows she would see flitting around the place. She alleged that she was mopping the floor one day and the water turned into blood in front of her eyes, covering the room with a thick red coat of the stuff before it went back to plain water. She also said that she took a stack of plates out of the cupboard to set the table and when she turned around again they were gone.

Philip began to torment his younger siblings, being really mean to them and deliberately getting them into trouble. He persuaded one of his younger brothers to lie down on the mortuary table that was anchored to the floor in one of the basement rooms, and then spun him round so fast on it that he was petrified, begging Philip to stop.

Similarities to Other Famous Hauntings

Your typical haunted house stuff happened all the time – flickering lights, music and talking waking the family up in the middle of the night, and shadow people appearing at the end of beds and in doorways. The music and chatter that happened seemed to bear some resemblance to the happenings in Amityville, where George Lutz said that he was woken at the same time each night by the sound of music and like a party was going on downstairs.

Carmen mentioned to reporters and interviewers that they had found photographs of dead people and toe tags in the house when they were cleaning it, and lots of items belonging to people who had been interred there. I think I would have been having serious words with the landlord if this had happened to me, especially as the home had just been refurbished. The workmen couldn’t have done a very good job if they’d left things behind.

Two of Carmen’s nieces came to live with them at the house after Carmen had either invited them because of their parents divorce, or Carmen had been asked because things were difficult for them at home because of the divorce. Either way, they lived with their aunt and uncle at the house, bringing it up to eight people living in the Southington home. Although it doesn’t seem that all of them experienced paranormal activity. But it’s very difficult to establish because the stories are all over the place – different explanations of the same incidents coming from Carmen and Al.

The incidents also seemed to mirror other famous hauntings that had made the news at that time. For instance, a shower curtain wrapped around Carmen’s face once when she was in the shower and her eldest niece had to come in and unwrap her from it because she couldn’t breathe. An incident very similar to what happened in The Entity haunting.

The Incidents Intensify

Almost a year into their residency, the paranormal activity began to intensify, with Carmen seeing and hearing the entities on a daily basis. The whole family had become withdrawn and quiet, not like their normal selves. Apart from the two youngest children who seemed to be oblivious to the ghosts. And Philip, who had become angry and mean – listening to ‘devilish’ rock music and growing his hair long. He let his appearance get out of hand and wasn’t washing or changing his clothes.

Carmen and Al reported that they were raped and sodomised by the spirits, while the eldest niece said someone kept coming into her room and pulling the covers off her bed before undressing her as she tried to sleep.

A friend of Carmen’s saw something in the house when she was visiting at one time and refused to come back in, avoiding Carmen at every opportunity.

The family reported that the beds seemed to be ‘breathing’ – moving up and down like they were alive.

The Snedekers were afraid for their family, but mostly for the change they saw in Philip. He was talking to people that weren’t there, and laughing with them. Carmen would frequently hear another voice alongside his if she was calling to him downstairs. The same voice that would chatter and laugh in her ear when she was cooking or doing housework on the floor above.

Philip allegedly attacked the niece quite badly, resulting in him being taken to a psychiatric hospital and held for a couple of months. Carmen mentioned that during this time when he was away from the house his personality reverted back to what it was before they moved in. He became his old self again.

Enter The Warrens

The Snedekers are alleged to have had a priest come and perform an exorcism at the house, although there is no confirmation that this ever happened – or that any priests visited the property. They said that the house became normal for a while, even pleasant, but reverted back to the horror house pretty quickly soon after.

It was the same friend that refused to come back into the house, who allegedly told Carmen to call the Warrens to have them come and investigate the house. Ed and Lorraine Warren, along with their nephew John Zaffis are reported to have spent nine weeks in the house, investigating at the Snedeker’s request.

As with all of their investigations, Lorraine picked up on many evil entities within the house, all of them demonic and wanting to cause the family harm. Ed told the family that the reason there were so many angry presences in the house was because somebody in the funeral home had been practising necrophilia with the corpses and this had invited the demonic entities into the home. There is absolutely no evidence that this ever happened at any point in time, with many people stating that the funeral home was a very reputable one. Carmen has even stated that it wasn’t people who worked at the funeral home, but workmen who had come in and committed the necrophilia with the corpses. Again, there is no substantial proof of this so we can’t really say that this ever happened.

In fact, there is very little evidence or proof that anything paranormal ever happened in the house during the two years that the Snedekers lived there. The landlord has even stated that nobody before or since the Snedekers lived in the old Hallahan Funeral Home has experienced anything supernatural in any way, shape or form.

The Truth Is Out There

As I said earlier on, I have struggled writing this one, because the story flip flops all over the place. Everyone’s account is different, like they don’t remember the story they’re supposed to tell.

I reached out to John Zaffis and members of the Snedeker family, including Carmen – who goes by Carmen Reed now – but nobody got back to me. I thought that maybe trying to talk to someone who was there would help me get things straight, but alas, it wasn’t to be. And generally, if people are afraid to talk to me, it’s usually because there is something dodgy afoot. Or, it could be because there had been a new book rumoured being written by Carmen and John Zaffis and they don’t want to discuss things with me. But this has been rumoured for a very long time and still hasn’t surfaced. So who knows?

I can only tell you facts that have come from people outside the family and the investigation that might help you make up your mind.

Was Any Of It Real?

Before you read any further, have a quick watch of this television program, where the Snedekers and the Warrens discuss the case with Sally Jessy Raphael. Note that John Zaffis is in the audience.

The Snedekers are quite forthcoming about the haunting during the program, explaining everything that happened to them in great detail without embarrassment. They even demonstrate what happened to the beds by getting on one in the studio for Sally and the audience to see, just in case it wasn’t clear.

There are also neighbours of the Snedekers in the audience, as well as friends of the children who hung around with them while they were living at the house. A lot of these people had differing views about the alleged haunting.

The Warrens

Ed and Lorraine Warren are always very keen to insist that they never take any money from people who they go to help with investigations into their haunted homes. And they don’t take money from the families at the time. They wait until they have completed an investigation, and then they write about it. I could be wrong – and if I am, then I will admit it – but the Warrens made a small fortune from the hauntings that they investigated over the years, from books, films and personal appearances. One could even say that they only took on these investigations when they realised they could make money out of it.

Ed and Lorraine Warren hired writers to pen the books, and novelist Ray Garton was hired to write the Snedeker’s haunting, which was released as ‘In A Dark Place‘.

Garton was a fiction writer who wrote horror stories, like most of the writers that the Warrens hired for their books. In an interview for The Damned Connecticut, Garton states that he was having trouble with the Snedeker’s stories and he couldn’t get a clear picture from any of them. He mentioned this to Ed Warren, who is alleged to have said “They’re crazy. All the people who come to us are crazy, that’s why they come to us. Just use what you can and make the rest up. You write scary books, right? Well, make it up and make it scary. That’s why we hired you.” Garton also mentions that writers that had been hired by the Warrens before him all had similar stories to his own.

The Warrens also repeatedly told Garton that they had video of supernatural activity that had been shot in the house – where the author had never been when he began writing the book because the new tenants wanted nothing to do with any of it – but the tape never materialised. Ed kept saying that they couldn’t find the tape, or that it was on its way. But it never materialised. Could it be that it never existed in the first place?

The Son

There have been rumours floating around, and Garton mentions it in his interview, that there was some question as to whether he had cancer or not, or that they weren’t sure what kind of cancer he had. Whatever the truth is with this one, although he went into remission from the cancer he was having treatment for during the haunting, he has since passed away from cancer in 2012, so is no longer around to substantiate this.

The haunting at the former funeral home was said to be because Philip was close to death from all his treatment, and that’s why he was the one who saw the most entities or why he was able to talk to them. In his interview with The Damned Connecticut, Ray Garton mentions that he was never allowed to meet with the son or talk to him face to face. He did manage to speak to him on the phone once, but was cut off by Carmen when the boy started to say that everything he saw in the house went away when he began taking medication.

Philip was also rumoured to have been taking recreational drugs such as marijuana and LSD, which has severe hallucinogenic properties and could have well been the reason he was wandering around laughing and talking to people who weren’t there. His friends at the time have spoken about his drug taking and the type of person he was. They all seem to describe him as a bit of a trouble maker. It’s also alleged that his stint in a psychiatric hospital was actually a stint in prison for attacking his cousin.

One of the most alarming facts to have come out of this about Philip Snedeker, is that he is alleged to have said that he used to sneak into his cousins room at night and mess with her covers and clothes pretending to be the ghost. It seems to be a little bit more sinister than this when researching it, but I’m going to leave it at that for now.

There is one of Philip’s friends on the Sally Jessy Raphael show who mentions the recreational drugs and it is corroborated by Carmen Snedeker as well. So this could be a huge part of how the haunting came to be.

Neighbours Debunk The Haunting

Various neighbours have come out and stated that they didn’t believe that the house was haunted. Even the owner of the house has publicly said that there had never been any issues in the property – even when it was a funeral home.

One neighbour, a Katherine Altemus, alleged that she ‘think they had this planned right from when they moved in.’

Local youths, after the story was printed in a local newspaper, used to come to the house playing pranks and rattling chains outside, causing a lot of upset on the street. Katherine Altemus thinks that the Snedekers moved away because nobody in the neighbourhood bought into their story. There was also some disbelief that they would stay for two years when they were having such an horrific time living there.

Jeffrey Pooler, who was friends with Philip, described him as a story teller who always had to be the centre of attention. He didn’t think that there was anything going on in the house.

A Hoax To Make Money?

The owner of the old Hallahan Funeral Home, Darrell Kern, owned the house since 1985 and called the whole thing a joke and a hoax. He is adamant that they were well aware of the house being a funeral home before they moved in, despite Carmen insisting that the sign was covered up and they didn’t see the downstairs apartment when they were first shown it because it was having work done.

This is straight from the landlord’s mouth, as told to reporters for a Connecticut newspaper – “It’s a scheme to make money.”

The House On Meriden Avenue

So this is the story of the old Hallahan Funeral Home on Meriden Avenue, Southington, Connecticut. All was quiet and serene until a family moved in and said it was haunted. Movies like The Amityville Horror and The Entity were extremely popular at the time and we were much more naive in those days – believing everything that filmmakers told us was true. I spent many an hour on the school yard discussing these ‘true’ stories with my friends.

A self proclaimed demonologist and exorcist, along with his ‘psychic’ wife spent 9 weeks in the house investigating the haunting, coming to the conclusion that the house was filled with demonic entities and extremely haunted. So much so that they arranged for an exorcism to clean the house. They said that the house became quiet after the exorcism, but there is no record of any such thing taking place.

Residents of the house both before and after the Snedekers’ residency have reported never seeing anything strange or paranormal while they lived in the home.

Ed Warren professed to owning video evidence of paranormal activity taking place in the property, but the tape never materialised so nobody knows if it ever existed in the first place.

We have many writers, including Ray Garton who wrote the story of Meriden Avenue in ‘In A Dark Place‘ confirming that they have been told to make things up to make the stories more scary and interesting.

It seems that the true haunting of 208 Meriden Avenue in Connecticut has nothing to do with demons or ghosts, but more to do with the hoards of ghosthunters who trawl past the property on a daily basis, much like the Amityville house, causing disruption to the residents who live there.

There is so much information on the internet about this haunting – from both those who believe it and those who don’t.

The only thing that I can suggest, when trying to understand this case and all its ups and downs, is to go and research for yourself. I’ve really only scratched the surface of everything that’s out there to give you the basics so that you can make an informed decision. There is so much more to discover.

Me? I’m glad to put this one away. I would accept an invitation to the house for a cup of tea though. Just to see for myself.

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