The house on the Arnold Estate,
where the haunting was supposed to have happened
I watched "The Conjuring," a movie supposedly based on a true story of a Rhode Island haunted house and the Perron family who lived there in the 1970s. It's a scary scary movie--and it would be even more scary if one really believed it were true. I sort of don't. At least not all of it.
The house was supposed to have been infested with a boodkoodle of spooks and spirits, one of whom was a woman named Bathsheba, who was vile beyond description. She might or might not have been a witch in real life, and her body is said to have turned to stone when she died in 1885 as an old woman.
Now I do indeed believe in paranormal occurrences. My mother grew up in a haunted house. She could raise the hair on the back of your neck with tales of the happenings in her home. And I lived briefly in a perhaps mildly haunted house with my first husband and two children in the 70s. At least there were plenty of strange happenings there. They didn't so much scare us though as they annoyed us: loud bangings in the night that woke us up, invisible entities jumping or sitting down on the bed after we had snuggled in for the night, objects being dropped (at least that's what it sounded like) behind us that weren't there when we turned around.
But when a haunted house is connected with Hollywood and the making of millions of dollars, my skepticism gene is triggered, and I have a hard time believing the tale. Remember "Amityville Horror?" The same "paranormal investigators," the Warrens, that investigated the Arnold Estate were somehow connected with the Amityville house. I believe the Amityville tale has been all but discredited, if memory serves.
Maybe someday I'll write I book about my Mama's haunted house (I recently found an old essay that I wrote about it many years ago). And then not let Hollywood make a movie about it. If I could bring myself to turn down all those millions of dollars.
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On 01/10/2014, Barbara Anne said ...
OOOOhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! By the prickling of my thumbs ...!
We've watched two Agatha Christie's Marple DVDs this evening and that was one of them.
I haven't lived in any haunted houses or anywhere that odd, scary things happen but have often experienced the sensation of someone or something sitting down on the bed beside me and that creeps me out to the max. Jeepers creepers!
I think I remember reading that the house in Amityville that was the scene for the hauntings or "hauntings" was torn down. Am I mistaken? I'm up too late to look it up!
Sweet dreams!
Hugs!
On 01/11/2014, Linda said ...
I both want and don't want to read your essay. :-O
On 01/11/2014, Denise in PA said ...
oooooo, I'd love to read the story of your mother's haunted house happenings!
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