Episode 166: The Snedeker Demon House
The Snedeker family consisted of Allen Snedeker, his wife Carmen, their four children: Philip, Bradley, Allen Jr., and Jennifer, and Carmen’s niece Tammy, who also lived with the family. Allen was a former stonemason who allegedly was thought to have been struggling with alcoholism, and Carmen was working as a waitress but was between jobs, so money was tight. Their oldest son Philip was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is a type of cancer that affects the body’s lymphatic system and typically affects children and young adults. He was getting treatment at the University of Connecticut Hospital, resulting in the family making frequent trips that were hours long. The car rides were long and even painful for Philip, especially on the drives back home after cancer treatments. The Snedekers made the decision to find a house closer to the hospital, and eventually found a beautiful five bedroom, two bathroom house at 208 Meriden Avenue in Southington, Connecticut. They signed the lease on June 30th, 1986.
The move initially seemed pretty seamless with the kids all picking their bedrooms without too much fighting and bickering, and everyone was relieved to be closer to the hospital for Philip. As everyone was moving in and exploring the house, Carmen went down into the basement. Absolutely nothing could have prepared her for what she found. Covered in dust, sheets and in old boxes were embalming equipment and other items from a mortuary. Carmen also said “There were a couple of photos in the home, but there were many toe tags and a head tag. There were other personal items of the deceased.” When they had toured the home, the family said that the basement had been blocked off with building materials from the renovators and no one really thought anything of it. It was not until they moved in and made the discovery that the house used to be a fully operating funeral home, the Hallahan Funeral Home, that was up and running for decades.
While this discovery was frightening and even disturbing, the family tried to push past this and the oldest boys, Philip and Bradley, even claimed the basement as their own space for additional privacy. Their bedroom was the former casket display room, down the hall from the old embalming room. Things began to take a turn the very first night in the house. Carmen said in a later interview, “My son started seeing this young man with long black hair down all the way to his hips. He would talk to my son every day. Sometimes he would threaten him, other times he would stand there and just say his name, which was enough to scare him.” Philip began reporting sightings of an older man with white hair wearing a pinstriped tuxedo.
He began seeing shadows and apparitions, hearing voices, and had frequent and recurring nightmares. His behavior also became noticeably different. Philip went from being a sweet, kind and caring teenager to being irritable, impulsive and even violent. He made Bradley lay on an old gurney before violently spinning it, causing Bradley to beg him to stop. He also locked him in a chest and walked away, which could have ended in tragedy if Bradley hadn’t been found. Philip later could not recall the incident. The final straw for the family was when Philip attacked Tammy, threatening her and attempting to sexually assault her. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance and was held for 45 days for psychiatric evaluation and treatment for schizophrenia. Philip moved in with extended family after he was discharged, and his behaviors and hallucinations stopped.
Unfortunately for the rest of the family, they began to see what Philip had been experiencing. It started out initially as the family hearing and reporting sounds around the home. The first was a scratching sound that seemed to come from all parts of the home and seemed to be too loud and from something too big to chalk up to just being mice. The house had an old dumb waiter, and the chains from the pulley system would shake, rattle and move on their own. The dumb waiter was allegedly used to move bodies down to the basement where the mortuary had been. The family would report dramatic changes in temperature in the house that seemed to change rapidly, feeling sudden bursts of ice cold.
On one occasion, Carmen was mopping the floors when she said that the water in the bucket and on the floor turned red, and she realized that it was blood. She said that it had an acrid smell like rotting flesh. Carmen also experienced the dishes putting themselves away after she had taken them out and finished setting the table. She would be slapped across the face by an unseen force, and on one occasion she reported the shower curtain lifting on its own to cover her face and being held there, suffocating her. Tammy heard the commotion and ripped it off of her. Both Allen and Carmen described physical encounters where they were sexually assaulted by the spirits in the home, and Tammy would have her blankets pulled off of her and her rosary beads ripped out of her hands.
Out of desperation, the family reached out to renowned paranormal investigator couple Ed and Lorraine Warren. They arrived the next morning accompanied by a priest, who did a blessing on the home. This only seemed to make things worse. The Warrens found in their own research that the home was built in the 1920’s as a funeral home, and that one of the employees was suspected of committing necrophilia and using the bodies for Satanic rituals.
The case was escalated to the Bishop, who directed that two priests go to the home to bless it again and hold a sacred Catholic Mass inside the home. During the mass, Ed Warren suffered a mild heart attack and said that he believed this was a result of one of the demonic spirits in the home as they were angry he brought in Catholic priests. Finally, a third priest conducted a three-hour long exorcism on September 6th, 1988. Lorraine said after that during the peak of the exorcism, a huge tree snapped in half and came crashing down into the yard, seemingly out of nowhere. The weather was mild and there wasn’t a storm or even a strong breeze, and other paranormal investigators felt that this was the force of the spirits being expelled from the home. After almost two years, the hauntings seemed to have stopped.
As the case gained popularity, it also gained scrutiny. The landlord, neighbors and the home’s new owners all reported that they did not believe the Snedeker’s stories and that they were lying for money and fame. A movie about the Snedeker’s encounters called “A Haunting in Connecticut” was released in 2009, and two weeks prior to the release, the new owner of the home was interviewed. She stated “We’ve lived in the house for 10 years. Our house is wonderful. This is all Hollywood foolishness. The stories are all ludicrous.”
On January 9th, 2012, Philip passed away at the age of 38 after his cancer sadly returned. He was living in Tennessee at the time and was working as a truck driver. He loved to hunt and loved music.
Image sources:
allthatsinteresting.com - “The True Story Of The Terrifying Events Behind ‘The Haunting In Connecticut’”