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Norm Waitt

The Haunting in Connecticut is a 2009 psychological supernatural horror film based on the allegedly true story of a paranormal event in Connecticut.



Plot

Set in 1987, the story centers on Matthew William Campbell, who is being treated for cancer on a trial therapy in a remote hospital. After seeing the effect the long commute has on Matt, his mother rents a nearby house, which she learns was previously a funeral home. They discover a mortuary room in the basement that they are unable to enter initially, which severely burns Matt when he attempts to enter. The family begins experiencing violent, supernatural events that the parents first blame on stress and hallucinations from Matt's medications and treatment. Matt also experiences several disturbing visions from the point of view of a young man named Jonah, including an intense séance, and witnessing a doctor inscribe runes onto the skin of a corpse. After a game of hide and seek, during which Matt's younger brother encounters a badly burned ghost in a dumbwaiter, and his younger sister's leg falls through the floor of the attic. Matt then discovers a box under the attic floor boards containing a number of photographs from the séance, and pictures of the boy, Jonah that he believed he had been hallucinating and pictures of other people that had appeared in his "hallucinations", as well as a box of human eyelids.

They investigate the house's past, and discover that during the 1920s, the previous owner, Doctor Aickman, conducted séances in the house, using his assistant Jonah as a medium, who convinced many skeptics of his abilities. Doctor Aickman and his guests all died during one of the séances when the ectoplasm that seeped out of Jonah's mouth exploded into fire and incinerated everyone present, and Jonah eventually was incinerated too when he tried to escape the mercy of the spirits and went missing. Matt then contacts Nicholas, a minister he meets at the hospital and who is also dying of cancer, to ask for his help. Nicholas hypothesizes that Aickman was performing necromancy on the bodies that he was meant to inter to enhance Jonah's abilities as a medium. He had stolen the corpses sent to his funeral home and buried coffins filled with sandbags instead. Nicholas, after initially being driven out by the mother, is called back after the entire family encounters ghosts in a single night, including an electrical storm that takes place throughout the house. After searching the house, Nicholas discovers ashes and a portion of a skull in the mortuary oven. While removing it, the doors and windows begin to slam violently, which abruptly ceases after Nicholas is outside. He then leaves with the human remains, assuring the family that the threat is over. The same night, the family wakes to find strange markings carved into Matt's body, and he is rushed to the hospital.

Nicholas runs off the road after seeing the burned ghost in his rear view mirror. Both he and Matt have a similar vision, revealing that the burned ghost is Jonah, who was killed after the séance by the spirits, who used his abilities as a medium to burn the other guests alive. Nicholas realizes that he has made a terrible mistake by removing Jonah, who was actually trying to help free the ghosts of the corpses stolen by Aickman. By removing Jonah from the house, the family would now be at the mercy of the rest of the enraged ghosts. Matt, after encountering Jonah and learning that he has only a few days left to live, breaks out of the hospital and rushes home. After breaking into the house with a fire axe, he rushes his siblings outside, and barricades himself in the house. He then smashes the interior walls of the living room, revealing dozens of embalmed corpses and then sets the house ablaze, intending to finish the task that Jonah had failed to accomplish. Just as he is surrounded by a swarm of ghosts, his mother comes in to save him, and firemen pull them both out of the burning house, and Matt is revived. Jonah is shown one last time, unharmed, before vanishing. After credits indicate that Matt's cancers went into total remission, and that the Aickman house was rebuilt and resold, with no further incidents reported.