The Haunting in Connecticut: The Snedeker Family’s Nightmare
208 Meriden Avenue, Southington, Connecticut: 1986 to 1988
In the summer of 1986, a family’s search for accommodation nearer to a cancer treatment facility for their son, led them to a spacious rental property in a quiet Connecticut suburb. What followed became one of the most harrowing paranormal cases in American history. The events at 208 Meriden Avenue involved violent supernatural phenomena, a teenage boy’s psychological deterioration under possession, and an investigation by prominent paranormal researchers that culminated in a full exorcism. The case generated extensive media coverage, a bestselling book, and eventually a Hollywood film. This is the Snedeker family’s account of what happened, at their house that, unbeknownst to them, at the time, was once Southington’s Hallahan Funeral Home.
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The Medical Crisis
Philip Snedeker was thirteen years old in 1986 when his parents faced an impossible situation. The boy had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer affecting the body’s lymphatic system. Treatment was available at the University of Connecticut Hospital in Hartford, but the family lived in upstate New York. Five times each week, they made the three-hundred-mile round trip. The radiation therapy burned Philip’s skin from the inside. Carmen Snedeker, his mother, later stated she feared the journeys would kill her son as quickly as the disease itself.
The family’s circumstances offered little room for choice. Allen Snedeker worked as a stonemason and was reported to struggle with alcoholism. Carmen worked as a waitress between jobs. Money was scarce. They had four children to house: Philip and his younger brother Bradley (both Carmen’s sons from a previous marriage), eleven-year-old Allen Junior, and six-year-old Jennifer. The decision to relocate to Connecticut was driven by medical necessity and limited financial resources.
Carmen contacted rental agencies throughout the area. Many refused to consider families with more than two children. In June 1986, she located a property at 208 Meriden Avenue in Southington that would accommodate them. The house was large. It had five bedrooms and two bathrooms. The rent fell within their budget at $300 per month. Crucially, the property stood approximately 3 miles from the University of Connecticut Hospital, reducing the family’s weekly commitment from three hundred miles of driving to a journey of minutes. Given Philip’s deteriorating condition and the pain he endured during the long journeys from New York, Carmen accepted the terms without viewing the property.
The House on Meriden Avenue
Southington lies approximately twenty kilometres south of Hartford. The town developed in the nineteenth century as a manufacturing centre and by the 1980s retained its character as a modest residential community. Meriden Avenue runs through an older neighbourhood where houses from the early twentieth century line both sides of the street.
Number 208 was a substantial colonial-style house built in 1916. It had been converted to a duplex, with separate living spaces on the upper and lower floors. The house had a particular history. From 1936 onwards, it had operated as the Hallahan Funeral Home. The business ran for decades before relocating to Plantsville in the mid-1980s. The building then stood empty for several years. New owners converted it back to residential use, intending initially to operate a real estate office before zoning restrictions forced them to create rental accommodation instead.
Carmen later stated she had no knowledge of the property’s history as a funeral home when she accepted the lease sight unseen. The combination of the house’s size, its proximity to the hospital, and the remarkably low rent of $300 per month for such a spacious property made it appear an answer to the family’s desperate circumstances. Whether the affordable rent reflected the building’s history or simply the owners’ need to fill a difficult property remains unclear.
The family signed the lease on 30 June 1986 and moved in immediately. Above every doorway hung a crucifix. The significance of this detail would become apparent shortly.
Discovery in the Basement
The move proceeded smoothly. The children selected their bedrooms with minimal argument. Philip and Bradley, as the eldest sons, wanted privacy and space away from their younger siblings. The basement offered both. It was significantly larger than the upstairs bedrooms and had been divided into several rooms. The boys chose to share the largest of these spaces.
Carmen went down to the basement whilst the family was unpacking. What she found there was covered in dust sheets and old boxes: embalming tables, a chain-and-pulley system for lifting coffins, drainage equipment, and mortuary tools. She also discovered numerous toe tags, a head tag, and several photographs of deceased persons. There were coffin handles in storage containers. The adjacent room contained what was clearly identifiable as preparation equipment for human remains.
The family learned definitively that their new home had been a fully operational funeral parlour. The basement room where Philip and Bradley would sleep had served as the casket display area. The room next door, separated by a single wall, was where bodies had been embalmed.
Despite this unsettling discovery, the family’s circumstances offered few alternatives. They had already committed financially to the property. Philip’s treatment schedule demanded proximity to the hospital. They could not afford to move again immediately. The boys maintained they wanted to stay in the basement despite its history.
The First Disturbances
According to Carmen’s subsequent accounts, unusual events began on the first night. Philip reported hearing voices. He told his mother the house was evil and wanted the family to leave. Carmen attributed these statements to the acoustics of an empty house, suggesting Philip had heard her talking to Allen upstairs. The boy was unconvinced.
Philip began seeing figures. He described to his mother a young man with long black hair that reached to his hips. This figure would appear in the basement and speak to him daily. Sometimes it would threaten him. Other times it would simply stand and say Philip’s name. The boy also reported seeing an older man with white hair wearing a pinstriped suit. This figure’s feet were in constant motion, as though pacing or unable to remain still.
Carmen initially dismissed these accounts. Philip was undergoing intensive radiation therapy. She wondered whether the treatment might be causing hallucinations, though his oncologist later stated there was no possibility of such side effects from the medication Philip was receiving.
The younger children, Allen Junior and Jennifer, also began reporting phenomena. They claimed to see strange people moving through the house. They heard voices. They experienced sudden inexplicable fear. Temperature drops occurred in various rooms without apparent cause. The family heard knocking sounds, scratching noises within the walls, and the rattling of the coffin lift’s chain pulleys when nothing was loaded onto the mechanism.
One day, the boys explored beneath the basement counters and found dark stains on the floor. They ran upstairs, frightened, claiming they had discovered blood seeping from the walls. Carmen investigated and told the boys it was likely paint, but it filled her with a deep feeling of unease.
Objects began to move. Carmen set dishes on the table and later found them missing entirely. She reported that mop water she was using turned deep red whilst she cleaned the basement floor. The water smelled of decay. Bradley claimed that light fixtures flickered constantly, even after Allen removed the bulbs to reduce the electricity bill, which had increased substantially over time time the Snedeker family lived in this home.
Philip’s Deterioration
The most disturbing changes occurred in Philip himself. His personality altered dramatically over the weeks following their arrival. The boy who had been described as sweet, kind and caring became withdrawn, irritable, and increasingly violent. He developed an interest in demonology. He began wearing exclusively black clothing. His behaviour became unpredictable and alarming to his family.
One incident involved Bradley. Philip placed his younger brother on the old mortuary gurney and spun it violently whilst Bradley screamed for him to stop. Bradley later recalled being terrified but not wanting to run because he felt he had to appear tough around his older brother. On another occasion, Philip locked Bradley inside a storage body storage chest and walked away. The younger boy might have suffocated if he had not been discovered. When confronted about these acts of cruelty towards a sibling he had previously protected and cared for, Philip could not recall either incident. The disconnect between his former character and these violent actions frightened the family as much as the acts themselves.
The situation escalated further. Philip attacked his cousin Tammy, threatening her and attempting to assault her sexually. This attack prompted immediate intervention. Philip was taken by ambulance to a psychiatric facility where he was held for forty-five days for evaluation and treatment. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia. During this hospitalisation, Carmen’s interviews suggest Philip’s visions and aggressive behaviour ceased entirely.
After his discharge, Philip went to live with extended family members away from Meriden Avenue. His symptoms did not return whilst he remained away from the house.
The Family’s Experiences
With Philip gone, the family expected things to settle down, but the phenomena began to happen to the other family members for the first time. Carmen claimed that she and Allen experienced sexual assaults by unseen entities whilst in their bed. They described hearing ambient music from the 1930s before these attacks occurred. Carmen stated she was raped repeatedly by what she termed a demonic presence.
Their niece Tammy had moved in with the family during this period. Carmen reported an incident in which she witnessed what appeared to be a skeletal hand rising beneath Tammy’s clothing, groping the girl whilst Carmen read from the Bible. The rosary beads around Tammy’s neck were torn away and scattered across the floor by an invisible force. Tammy herself claimed to experience the sensation of being touched inappropriately whilst in bed, yet she could not see anyone.
Carmen described an event involving the shower curtain in the bathroom. She stated the curtain wrapped tightly around her face and was held there, suffocating her, until Tammy heard the commotion and pulled it away. On multiple occasions, Carmen reported being slapped by unseen hands.
The crucifixes that had hung above every doorway began disappearing. Each would vanish whilst the nail that had held it remained undisturbed in the wall. Eventually, all of them were gone.
Allen experienced physical attacks as well, though specific details of these incidents were less clearly documented in the family’s various accounts. The electrical phenomena continued. Foul odours described as rotting meat or human waste were reported throughout the house, though no source for these smells could be identified.
The Warren Investigation
In their desperation, the Snedekers contacted Ed and Lorraine Warren. The couple operated as demonologists and had gained prominence through their involvement in cases including the Amityville haunting. Ed Warren had died in 2006, followed by Lorraine in 2019, but in 1986 both were actively investigating claims of paranormal activity. They were accompanied by their nephew, John Zaffis, who was developing his own career in paranormal research.
The Warrens arrived at Meriden Avenue with a Catholic priest. The priest performed an initial blessing of the property. According to the family, this intervention had no effect. The phenomena allegedly worsened.
The Warrens moved into the house for several weeks along with other investigators. They claimed to experience the same disturbances the family reported: physical attacks, objects moving, apparitions, and hostile presences. Team members reported being slapped, pushed, and knocked to the floor by invisible forces. John Zaffis later stated he experienced sleep paralysis whilst in the house, and has not experienced it prior or since.
The Warrens conducted historical research on the property. They concluded that the former funeral home had been the site of necrophilic acts by an employee, performed supposedly as part of Satanic rituals. This claim became central to their theory that the house was infested with demonic entities attracted by these earlier violations.
The Warrens determined that a full exorcism was necessary. The case was escalated to the Catholic Diocese. Two priests were sent to the house to conduct another blessing and hold a Mass within the property. During this Mass, Ed Warren suffered what he described as a mild heart attack, which he attributed to attack by the demonic forces present.
On 6 September 1988, a third priest performed a three-hour exorcism of 208 Meriden Avenue. Lorraine Warren later claimed that during the peak of the ritual, a large tree in the yard snapped in half and crashed to the ground despite mild weather and no wind. Other investigators interpreted this as evidence that the spirits were being expelled from the property.
After the exorcism, the Warrens declared the house cleared. The family remained in the property for approximately two more years and reported no further paranormal disturbances.
The Aftermath
The Snedekers moved from 208 Meriden Avenue sometime around 1988 or 1989. They relocated to Tennessee. Carmen changed her surname to Reed and began working as a self-described spiritual adviser. She has continued to give interviews and presentations about the haunting. Plans for additional books were announced but have not materialised.
Philip’s cancer went into remission and remained in remission for twenty-four years. He worked as a lorry driver and fathered four sons. He enjoyed hunting and music. On 9 January 2012, Philip died in Tennessee at the age of thirty-eight after his cancer returned. He is buried in Wilson Cemetery in Elizabethton.
The case generated a Discovery Channel documentary in 2002 titled “A Haunting in Connecticut”, followed by the 2009 theatrical film “The Haunting in Connecticut”. Both were marketed as being based on true events. The film grossed approximately $78.8 million at the box office.
The account persisted because of the circumstances that surrounded it. A family under strain moved into a building shaped by its earlier purpose, and the events they described were carried forward through interviews, investigations, and later adaptations. After the Snedekers left, the house passed quietly to new occupants and nothing comparable was reported again. The building on Meriden Avenue still stands, outwardly ordinary, its place in the story preserved only through the narrative that grew around it.