During a pandemic, watching horror movies can be therapy. Supernatural horror tends to have religious themes, but ironically a strange short movie series “based on true events” has swapped fabricated religions for the “actual” entities.
One of the strangest horror movie titles is The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia. Apart from the fact that Georgia is over 800 air miles from Connecticut, and considering that the two stories are unrelated, some obvious questions arise. The solution is a little bit of a letdown, admittedly, but still part of a larger and intriguing story connecting horror and religion. It goes like this:
In 2002 the Discovery Channel was test screening for a series called A Haunting. The first two cases were A Haunting in Connecticut and A Haunting in Georgia. Although unrelated (except by title) these two made-for-television movies were aired and then packaged together for purchase in DVD format. These days they’re more easily found via streaming, but packaging things together implies important portents.
A Haunting in Connecticut is based on a book, In a Dark Place, written by Ray Garton for Ed and Lorraine Warren, the famous paranormal investigators. The character names were changed, but the story follows the trials of the Snedeker family (“Parker” in the film) as they deal with the childhood cancer of the eldest son Paul (in reality Philip, called “Steven” in Garton’s account). Financially and emotionally stressed, the Parkers moved from upstate New York to Connecticut to be closer to the hospital where Paul was receiving his treatments. The family rented a house that turned out to be a former funeral home. Paul and his younger brother slept in the basement next to the embalming room in which some implements of the trade had been inexplicably left behind. In the Discovery Channel version, Paul was approached by a demon and nearly possessed. The Parker family consulted with Ed and Lorraine Warren (who appear in the documentary) and an exorcism cleared the house of any issues. Demons bring us into the realm of religion. It’s a spooky tale on many levels.
You can stream the Discovery Channel documentary A Haunting in Connecticut on YouTube:
Meanwhile, away off in the Peach State the Wyrick family, a couple with a young daughter, move into a haunted house. They didn’t know it was haunted, of course. It’s a ranch-style home, fairly modern. The daughter Heidi, interviewed as an adult, began to see people who were decidedly living-challenged. The frantic parents called in William Roll, a parapsychologist who taught at the University of West Georgia, and the psychic Amy Allan, both actual people. Neither find demons. We haven’t wandered as far from religion as it might seem, however. Brother Steven Shelley, the pastor at New Hope Ministries—treated with respect by the camera—believes the presence is indeed demonic. He performs a kind of pentecostal exorcism.
Crossing that line in the salt between ghost and demon quickly brings a story from secular to sacred territory. Horror films thrive on the challenge to the almighty creator of the universe. What could be more frightening? Supernatural horror, by definition, defies the ordered cosmos for which western civilization tends to credit God. These made-for-television horror spots both suggest greater religious fear potential in the form of demonic entities.
The first theatrical version distinguishes itself by the changing of the article from indefinite to the more authoritative definite “The” Haunting in Connecticut (2009). The base story remains the same—that told by Garton in his account. The names have been changed yet again as the family becomes the Campbells and the stricken son is Matthew (aka Paul and Steven, actually Philip). This is more than a slavish retelling, however. A subplot of “necromancy” is added. That necromancy is made into a bizarre, Victorian form of religion. Necrophilia is actually present in Garton’s account where male-on-male rape by demon—among other violations—occurs. The made-for television-movie, understandably, left that bit out. So does the theatrical version. Interestingly, the full-length movie also omits Ed and Lorraine Warren. Their home universe is The Conjuring.
Check out the trailer for The Haunting in Connecticut (2009):
The Haunting in Connecticut goes on to devise an entire subplot of this alternative, necromantic religion. Some of the horror revolves around such strange ritualistic behavior as snipping off the eyelids of corpses and cutting runic marks into their bodies. To counter this unorthodoxy, the movie introduces a fictional minister who is also undergoing cancer treatment alongside Matthew, a Reverend Nicholas Popescu. He helps uncover this weird form of necromancy. What was once a story of a necrophiliac funeral director now becomes a new religion that is set against Christianity. But what is the denomination of Rev. Popescu? The film studiously avoids revealing his affiliation. His business card states no denomination, and the church outside which he sits has no sign. He introduces himself with the awkward, “I am a reverend.” It’s as if the movie doesn’t recognize any standard form of religion. Ironically, it removes the demons from the story. It’s all about ghosts.
That brings us back to where we started. On its own The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia (2013) is a passable horror movie. It departs rather radically from its namesake documentary, however. The Wyrick family (Lisa, Andy, and Heidi, along with Lisa’s sister Joyce) move to a remote, abandoned house in Georgia. While the documentary featured a house just outside town, this one is far from any neighbors. In a newly introduced conceit, it was also on the underground railroad. Indeed, the eponymous haunting is based completely on this fiction. (In the documentary the house was from roughly the middle of the twentieth century, a bit too late for the underground railroad.) Heidi, like her mother and aunt, sees the dead. Lisa takes medication for it, and the crux of the movie is that she must learn to believe in what she sees.
Check out the trailer for Haunting in Connecticut 2 here:
A Protestant minister also appears here, a Pastor Jordan Wells. Again, without giving any indication of which faith he represents, he shows up to introduce both himself and the underground railroad theme. Later, when a bathtub accident lands Heidi and Lisa in the emergency room, a doctor tells them they should see a psychiatrist, “or” she laconically adds, “a priest.” Pastor Wells comes back to anoint Heidi, to stop her from seeing spirits. Although there are some jokes about an exorcism, that’s not what’s happening here. In fact, what the documentary intimated were demons are once again downgraded to mere ghosts.
Both of the Haunting in Connecticut feature films are yoked together by their original airing strategy and packaging by the Discovery Channel. There’s also a sadness to them both. Philip Snedeker died of cancer in 2012. Just over four months later, Andy Wyrick, the father who appeared in the Georgia documentary, also died. Neither of them reached fifty. Both cinematic films feature well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual generic clergy. Perhaps most importantly, though, they both remove the demons that had originally energized their stories.
You can stream Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia on Amazon:
Steve A. Wiggins is an independent scholar who has taught at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Carroll College, and Rutgers and Montclair State Universities. He is the author of Holy Horror: The Bible and Fear in Movies (McFarland, 2018). Check out his website. Steve has also written for Horror Homeroom on sex and death in The Lighthouse and The Witch.
