Haunting in Connecticut Based on True Story

For whatever reason, there is always a ton of interest in horror films when they are purported to be "Based on True Events". Back when "The Strangers" came out, we were pretty astounded by the traffic sent our way from people searching for the story that the film was supposed to have been based on. Of course, all they found when they got here was this... Helpful? No. Hilarious? Sure.

At the end of this month Lions Gate will be releasing "The Haunting in Connecticut", and so far all the promotional materials have pushed the "true story" angle pretty hard. In this case though, we at least have some source material to cite.

The source in question is the 1992 book "In A Dark Place". The synopsis to the book reads pretty much word for word when compared to the story of the movie.

From Amazon:

The book appears to have been out of print for a while, and presumably emboldened by the upcoming film release, those who do own copies are selling them on Amazon for over 100$. Out of all the reviews for it on Amazon though, most seem to be positive. Here are a few examples:

This one gets a bit more interesting...

That's an interesting quote, mainly because as far as I can tell there hasn't been a film adaptation of this book yet. So, presumably she's actually talking about "The Haunting in Connecticut"? This close to the release, I guess it's reasonable that she's seen a test screening, but she's so vague in that quote that it's honestly hard to tell what she's talking about. Either way, both of these people seemed to love the book.

This guy, however, wasn't buying it. He seems to cast doubt on the believability of the story:

Well, at least this time we have a little something more to go on than we did with "The Strangers". Has anyone out there ever read this book? I'm almost compelled to pick this up now, but no way am I paying $100 for it. I could go to the library, but that's where all the homeless guys hang out in West Palm, so that won't be happening any time soon either.