In "The Haunting in Connecticut," Virginia Madsen plays the mother of a young man with cancer who stands as the nexus of supernatural activity when the family rents a former funeral home.
Carmen Reed (then Carmen Snedeker) is the real-life mother Madsen portrays, the woman who lived through the events of story that took place in a renovated funeral home in Southington, Connecticut. This is her story.
Almost everyone knows that when a movie uses the phrase "based on actual events," the actual similarities between life and art can be miles apart. How far is the film from what you experienced?
It's hard to give a percentage. A lot of things you saw -- for example, the shower curtain scene -- definitely happened to me (it didn't happen to my niece), and there were apparitions in the house. My son did have cancer.
As far as bodies in the wall, all of that is fictionalized.