Eerie occurrences in Connecticut

MANILA, Philippines - The history of the US is teeming with ghosts. Tales of haunted houses and legends of the malevolent dead may be found particularly among the records of New England and the Tri-State area. In Connecticut, entire villages have disappeared as a result of hauntings. In the northwest region of the state, residents of Dudleytown were driven insane en masse after an entire generation of spirit attacks destroyed their hopes.

In 1987, a particularly nightmarish haunting occurred in Connecticut town of Southington to an ordinary family that had just moved in to a long empty house on Meriden Avenue. Soon after settling in, the family discovered a small graveyard at the back, an embalming chamber in the basement, and drawers full of eerie corpse photographs. They find out later on that their new house had previously been a funeral home dating back to the 1920s.

Almost immediately, the family began to experience paranormal activity — strange sounds, changes in temperature, the appearance of mysterious figures which were so intense and frequent it nearly destroyed them. All the while, they remained unaware that their experiences comprised one of the most extreme and convincing cases of supernatural activity ever recorded.

The Haunting in Connecticut captures all of these paranormal occurrences retold on film based on the life of Carmen Reed and her family. Producer Andrew Trapani sought Reed out to get a stunning first-hand account of the unimaginable horrors her family withstood for months. Director Peter Cornwell found this particular story compelling and redid the story in the life of Sara Campbell.

“It only makes the things that happen to them more terrifying,” says Cornwell, “when you can genuinely relate to them as real people and not just characters in a film.” This is the reason why Haunting in Connecticut comes out rooted in reality and essentially faithful to the family’s story.

Virginia Madsen, who earned cult status among horror fans for her compelling performance in Bernard Rose’s Candyman, had been looking for a script in the horror genre for about three years. But the 25 or more screenplays she had read mostly resorted to cheap scare tactics involving torture and excessive gore. “Then I got this script with a great story and a complex female character in Sara Campbell... and it scared me to death,” she says.

Amidst the dark atmosphere of the project, Madsen was protective of the young actors who play her children on screen. Amanda Crew, who plays Sara’s niece Wendy, says, “Virginia recognized that we needed her support to get through this difficult story. Like the mother in the film, she was the guiding light for us on set.” Kyle Gallner playing Matt Campbell posed a formidable challenge requiring considerable emotional range from him. Matt was grappling with a strained relationship with his mother as well as repeated visitations from his doppelganger, a charred, seemingly evil boy named Jonah. “That part was intimidating,” says Gallner, “and very intense for me. And we were only shooting a movie.   It’s unimaginable to me what it must have been like for the family at that time.”

The Haunting In Connecticut opens April 22 in Metro Manila.