About this episode

This episode explores the Snedeker family's haunting experience in Connecticut and the subsequent investigation by Ed and Lorraine Warren, contrasting documented history with later fictional portrayals.

In 1986, Allen and Carmen Snedeker moved their family into a rented duplex at 208 Meriden Avenue in Southington, Connecticut, seeking to reduce the burden of their son Philip’s treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma. The house had once been the Hallahan Funeral Home, and mortuary-related equipment reportedly remained in its basement. The family later described apparitions, strange sounds, physical attacks, disturbing changes in Philip’s behavior, and a growing sense that the former funeral home was dangerous. Ed and Lorraine Warren investigated and concluded that the home was affected by hostile supernatural forces. By 1988, local Connecticut newspapers were reporting the claims and a religious intervention described as an exorcism. But the case has another side. Ray Garton, the horror writer hired to turn the story into the 1992 book In a Dark Place, later said the family’s accounts did not match. He also alleged that Ed Warren encouraged him to build frightening material around gaps in the testimony. Landlord-associated witnesses and skeptical investigator Joe Nickell challenged major elements of the story, while no publicly authenticated physical evidence has established a paranormal…

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