The best horrow history of all times

Movie Review: “A Haunting in Connecticut”
The movie “A Haunting in Connecticut” can often be seen on the Discovery Channel’s series “A Haunting.”
The movie on Discovery was filmed in 2002. It is based on a true story. Some of the family members were interviewed, but appeared only in silhouette.
Ed and Karen Parker had four children. Their eldest, Paul, was a teenager suffering from cancer. The Parkers moved their family to a home in Connecticut that was close to a hospital where Paul would receive his treatments. What they didn’t tell the children was that the house was formerly a mortuary.
After the family moved into the house, Ed went back to the city they moved from as his job was there and his transfer hadn’t gone through yet. He visited the family on weekends. Karen was left to run the house and take care of Paul, sons Bobby, Mark and daughter Connie.
Paul and Bobby slept in the basement of the house. On several occasions they reported seeing a man or several figures of men in the basement. Ed and Karen thought the boys found out the house was a mortuary and it was their overactive imagination getting the best of them.
Then one day Connie told Karen she saw a woman in her room. Karen looked all over the house and didn’t find anyone. Paul told her he heard a voice calling his name in the basement. Karen scolded Paul, saying he should be a role model for his younger siblings and not fill their heads with ghost stories. Ed admitted the house was a mortuary, but that it didn’t make it haunted.
Paul became very withdrawn. He stopped talking to Karen and asked that he have the basement room to himself. Ed and Karen thought perhaps Paul was having some kind of reaction to his cancer treatments. They asked Paul’s doctors if they thought it could be hallucinations from the medication. The doctor said no, that it could be Paul had a psychological issue. Karen took Paul to a counselor, but Paul refused to talk. Paul insisted an evil spirit was after him, yet his parents refused to believe him.
Karen invited her niece Theresa to visit the family. Theresa was 17 and her parents were going through a divorce, so she needed a break from home. Theresa and Paul had always been good friends, but Theresa found Paul seemed angry and mean. He told Theresa there was a spirit by his bedside and that he saw and heard strange things in the house. Paul told Theresa the spirit would tell him to do bad things. Theresa told Karen she was concerned about Paul. She said Paul talked about “the man in the suit.” Karen thought Paul was having trouble facing his own mortality at such a young age.
Over time the demon got stronger. Paul was unable to leave his room and couldn’t talk back to the demon to make it leave him alone. A visit to the doctor showed Paul’s cancer was in complete remission. Though his physical health improved, his mood hadn’t.
One night Paul attacked Theresa in her room. That was the last straw for Karen and Ed - they had Paul taken to the hospital’s psychiatric ward. As his parents left him at the hospital Paul gave them an ominous warning: “Now that I’m out of the house, they’ll be after you.”
The next day Karen went into the basement. She sat on the steps and felt afraid and cold. She dared the evil to show itself and told it to leave her children alone. The demon never showed itself to Karen.
The demon pulled Theresa’s covers off her bed one night. Karen gave Theresa a rosary and she felt better, however, soon after the demon pulled the rosary from Theresa’s neck and sent the beads scattering. In the kitchen, Karen and Theresa were attacked by a black mass. Theresa said it felt like a thousand hands touching them and they couldn’t get away from it.
Fearing the entity would follow them wherever they would go, Karen decided to call their priest for help. The priest told Karen and her family to ignore the entity, to forget it and it would stop bothering them. This didn’t work. Karen saw a newspaper article about paranormal researchers Ed and Lorraine Warren. She called the Warrens and they came to the Parkers’ home. Lorraine immediately felt the presence. She said it was a “horrible infestation” and was “not a human spirit.” The Warrens told the Parkers they would need to sanction an exorcism. The type of exorcism the Parker home needed was rarely performed by the Catholic church. The Warrens also contacted demonologist John Zaffis, who was asked to witness the events in the house firsthand and assist the Parkers in their plea for an exorcism.
Michael Cuneo, author of American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty (click here to link to Amazon.com for information on the book) said that people, houses and even rooms can be infested with evil spirits. He said a priest should be skeptic when doing an exorcism.
John Zaffis and the Warrens’ paranormal team moved into the Parkers’ house. They set up video, audio and took photographs in the house. With Paul gone, tbe entity chose the next most vulnerable person to attack: Karen. She was the most psychologically stressed and the entity knew it. Karen said she felt the very worst human emotions - fear, hatred and envy. She felt she was in a dark hole with dark figures clutching at her. When she awoke from the state she was in, she was told she had been out for over eight hours.
Zaffis blessed the house and used holy objects to keep the spirit away from the family. “I’ve never encountered a presence that strong,” he said. “How do you fight something you can’t see?” Zaffis did see something when he went into another room to do some work on the tapes the team was recording. Everyone in the house stayed together as the entity liked to isolate its targets. With everyone sleeping, Zaffis thought it would be okay to view some tapes. He heard something in the basement and went to investigate. He saw the entity and it threw a fireball at him! He immediately left the house, saying he had never seen anything like it before and never again.
A priest named Father Frank assisted the Parker family in having the exorcism performed. Father Richard came to the house. By performing the exorcism he provoked the entity. Karen saw Father Richard’s shirt being pulled by unseen hands, but Father Richard ignored it and continued with his work. If he acknowledged the entity it would give it strength.
When Father Richard took the family into the living room, objects began moving and falling off shelves. Karen was pushed up against a wall and Theresa felt unseen hands choking her. The family did their best to ignore these events and focus on their prayers. Michael Cueno said there is an “expectation of healing” when an exorcism is performed.
The Parker family credited their faith with the success of the exorcism. When it was over their house became warm and full of light. After 9 weeks, the narrator said that what happened in the Parker house “is open to interpretation.”
The Parkers moved shortly after the exorcism ritual. They didn’t want to take any chances that the entity may come back or still exist in the house. In silhouette, Bobby Parker, appearing to be a teenager himself, said that this “chapter of his life is closed,” and that this “would be the last time” he would talk about it.
Paul was released from the hospital. His cancer never returned. The Parker family has moved forward with their lives but still feels haunted by the incidents that happened to them in their Connecticut home.
The acting in the movie wasn’t that great, though it was obvious the actors did their best. The lighting was muted and sometimes the voices other than the narrator’s were difficult to hear. If you haven’t seen this version of the movie, there is another one coming soon.
Award-winning actress Virginia Madsen stars as Karen Parker in the 2008 movie “The Haunting in Connecticut.”She won an award for her role in “Sideways.” Martin Donovan, who played Melinda’s father on “Ghost Whisperer” plays Ed Parker. This version changes the family’s name to Campbell. There are some characters listed in the Internet Movie Database’s entry that I’m not sure of, as they didn’t appear in the 2002 version. I’m sure it will be interesting to see how this film handles the Parker family’s story. HSD Team Member Dave is particularly interested in this since Virginia Madsen is one of his favorite actresses. And he has a crush on her. But I can’t give him too much lip since he knows I am in love with Jared Padalecki from “Supernatural.”
I’m not sure when “The Haunting in Connecticut” will be released. IMDb says it’s in post-production at the moment. If I hear anything new about it, I’ll definitely post it here.