"The Haunting" Based on Air Force Brat's Experiences
Kat Bergeron - The Sun Herald
Jul 14, 2009
Carmen Reed, a self-styled "intuitive" whose supernatural tale is the basis of today's DVD/Blu-ray release of "The Haunting in Connecticut," was born in Biloxi. She returned only years later to help with Hurricane Katrina recovery.
What she experienced in 2005 was markedly different from her first blissful years on the Mississippi Coast, and different again from what led to the Connecticut-based movie.
When the tale of a funeral home turned haunted house hit theaters in March, skeptics of the claims of the "chilling true story" weighed in with believers and fans of the horror genre.
Lionsgate, the studio that released "Haunting," expects no less attention from the sales-rental debut. Reed is helping with media interviews, having explained long ago "the story would not leave me alone." That story is the basis of two books, a New Dominion documentary and numerous media stories and TV appearances.
The movie is loosely based on ghost accounts told by Reed, her children and then-husband Allen Snedeker, who lived in a Southington, Conn., house in the mid-1980s. Critics and skeptics are as steadfast in debunking their stories as Reed is in attesting to their reality.
Reed, who has returned to her maiden name, was born in Biloxi in 1955 to Staff Sgt. Marion Lee and Bobbie Reed. She said she felt her intuitive abilities in childhood but "I don't claim I'm a psychic medium."
Reed explains her "gift" this way: Sensing one of her four children should not leave on a trip right away but not "seeing" what would happen if they did.
This ability, she said, is likely inherited from a grandmother but Reed remembers no "intuitive" moments when she lived on the Coast. That would come decades later, when she returned after Katrina.
Although she moved away when only 3, Reed, now 54, tells people Biloxi is where she is from. She was born on Keesler Air Force Base where she and three siblings lived on base and happily played in the sand.
"When you are an 'Air Force brat,' you move around a lot," Reed said in a phone interview from her Bristol, Tenn., home. "Biloxi is where I was born and I have good memories there."
When Reed finally returned, the comforting memories of early childhood quickly contrasted with the hurricane's death and destruction.
Katrina, which killed at least 167 in coastal Mississippi and leveled waterfronts and neighborhoods, added yet another witnessing of tragedy in Reed's life. She came with an uncle, a building contractor who helped in recovery.
Reed recalls seeing two Biloxi men sit on a porch -- all that remained of the house. The men silently watched as disaster workers combed the neighborhood, marking on houses to indicate bodies within.
"I could not believe all the devastation," Reed said. "I felt compelled to take a lot of pictures."
While photographing, Reed saw what she calls "orbs." One night, near the wrecked Biloxi Bay Bridge, she took a photo of the moon, "but there were so many orbs I couldn't tell which is the moon."
Reed said skeptics explain away such orbs as light playing on dust. To her, the "spirit energy" is very real.
"Some were so surprised they had died, and others were expecting it," Reed said.
Reed was particularly affected at one apartment site near the water, where she was told people had died. She remembers the smashed waterfront casinos, debris piles around the seashell-shaped St. Michael Catholic Church and leveled houses.
"I was very drawn to the trauma of it all," Reed said.
That statement, in some ways, is also what led to the release of "Haunting." At the theaters, the film brought $55 million in box office receipts, a surprising amount without huge stars.
In the movie, the Snedeker family becomes the Campbells. Virginia Madsen plays Sara Campbell and the lead sibling is played by Kyle Gallner. He undergoes cancer treatments, the reason the family had for renting a charming but cheap Victorian that had been a funeral home.
In the real story, when weird and scary things started happening, Ed and Lorraine Warren were brought in. They are the same "demonologists" called in by another real-life family, which gave rise to "The Amityville Horror."
Movie changes from the real story are obvious, such as the film's burning of the house and bodies everywhere.
"As for the things that are fiction in the movie, I think of it as symbolism," Reed said. "When I first realized it was not a blow-by-blow account, I was horrified, but after seeing it, I'm pleased."
On further reflection, the hardest thing for Reed was the effect of the relentless attention on her children, especially when they were young and story embellishment was rampant.
"The experience kinda wrecked my family," Reed said. "They were painted a target in public. Skeptics say what they want and it hurts children."
Now grown, several agreed to be interviewed for the DVD/Blu-ray's special features.
Reed, now divorced, sells real estate and does a paid lecture circuit that includes paranormal conventions. Her Website, CarmenReed.com, refers to her as a spiritual adviser.
"The good thing that came out of this experience," she said, "is that it gave me a platform to help other people going through this."
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Copyright 2009 by The Sun Herald
