Unwanted visitors haunt home

By PAT EATON-ROBB

SOUTHINGTON, Conn. — A Hollywood horror film that depicts the alleged haunting of a former funeral parlor in central Connecticut is turning into a nightmare for the home’s current owners and their neighbors.

The movie, “A Haunting in Connecticut,” doesn’t open until Friday, but curious fans are already making a beeline for the Southington home that inspired the movie.

“It’s just been really, really stressful,” said Susan Trotta-Smith, who bought the home 10 years ago with her husband. “It’s been a total change from a very quiet house in a very quiet neighborhood to looking out the window and seeing cars stopping all the time. It’s been very, very stressful, and sometimes worrisome.”

The family has never seen anything unusual inside their five-bedroom, two-family white wooden-frame house and does not believe the property was haunted.

“It’s got beautiful woodwork, and there is a nice, warm feeling to the house,” Trotta-Smith said. “Because it was a funeral home, the upstairs apartment is much more spacious. It’s like two full houses, and it has a beautiful yard, too.”

The movie, starring Virginia Madsen and Kyle Gallner and released by Lionsgate, is loosely based on stories that revolved around the house in the 1980s.

The residents at the time, the Snedeker family, claimed their son would hear strange noises in his basement bedroom, which once held coffin displays and was near the old embalming room. He also claimed to see shadows on the wall of people who were not there. A niece visiting the home said she felt hands on her body as she tried to sleep, and her covers levitated.

The family brought in Ed and Lorraine Warren, self-described paranormal researchers, who became famous for documenting the alleged “Amityville Horror” haunting of a home on Long Island.

Lorraine Warren says she felt an evil presence in the Southington home and experienced the haunting herself when she spent a night there.

“In the master bedroom, there was a trap door where the coffins were brought up,” she said. “And during the night, you would hear that chain hoist, as if a coffin were being brought up. But when Ed went to check, there was nobody down there.”

Warren, whose husband died in 2006, has nothing to do with the movie. She said the house was “cleared” of the evil presence after a seance in 1988. A book and a television documentary followed.

The current owners, who rent out part of the home to another family, have removed the street number from the house and posted “no trespassing” signs. Trotta-Smith says they are concerned about the four children who live there.

“Most people are respectful. They stay on the road. They might take a picture,” Trotta-Smith said. “But we have had a few problems with people kind of rudely coming up to the door and scaring our kids, telling them the house is haunted.”